0:00

Dylan Collins: I love making money for other people.

0:04

Dylan Collins: That was acquired by Activision Blizzard Dylan Collins: and it became essentially the Call of Duty

0:10

Dylan Collins: backbone, and that company last year

0:14

Dylan Collins: celebrated 20 years because they sent me a

0:17

Dylan Collins: nice poster. Dylan Collins: What did it feel like? Dylan Collins: I was like what's next?

0:24

Gary Fox: Welcome to the Entrepreneur Experiment Gary Fox: Podcast with me, gary Fox.

0:27

Gary Fox: Today, my guest is Dylan Collins, the

0:30

Gary Fox: founder of companies such as Demonware and

0:33

Gary Fox: Super Awesome. Gary Fox: There are no words to describe how good

0:36

Gary Fox: this episode is going to be. Gary Fox: There's no false modesty.

0:39

Gary Fox: Dylan is one of the finest business Gary Fox: thinkers I've ever had on this podcast, so

0:43

Gary Fox: sit back and relax and listen to our

0:46

Gary Fox: longest ever conversation. Gary Fox: Digitalization what exactly is it and how

0:54

Gary Fox: can it transform your business? Gary Fox: Well, the local enterprise office have you

0:58

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1:01

Gary Fox: tools into your business to improve Gary Fox: efficiency and productivity, saving you

1:05

Gary Fox: time, money and energy.

1:08

Gary Fox: It could be anything from stock control to

1:10

Gary Fox: an online payments or booking system, and

1:12

Gary Fox: now there's a grant for it all. Gary Fox: The Grow Digital Voucher helps businesses

1:18

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1:22

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1:24

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1:27

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1:30

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1:32

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1:34

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1:37

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1:39

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1:42

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1:44

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1:51

Gary Fox: enterprise office today or go to Gary Fox: wwwlocalenterpriseofficeie forward slash

1:57

Gary Fox: digital to find out more, or click the link

1:59

Gary Fox: in the description below. Gary Fox: Now on with today's episode.

2:03

Gary Fox: Description below. Gary Fox: Now on with today's episode Dylan.

2:07

Gary Fox: Welcome to the pod. Gary Fox: Thanks, gary, a genuine privilege to have

2:10

Gary Fox: you here. Gary Fox: One of the OGs of the Irish startup scene.

2:20

Dylan Collins: OGs like triple OG. Dylan Collins: Yeah, I guess this is cool. Dylan Collins: It also makes me feel super old, but hey

2:23

Dylan Collins: look, I was. Dylan Collins: You know, it's an incredible archive that

2:25

Dylan Collins: you've got here. Gary Fox: Thank you. Dylan Collins: Like. Dylan Collins: The history that you have captured is

2:30

Dylan Collins: amazing. Gary Fox: I get such a buzz off it, because I think

2:32

Gary Fox: it would. Gary Fox: In the same way, it's like a snapshot of

2:35

Gary Fox: the person in that time, but we're like Gary Fox: we're catching up on all the history that

2:39

Gary Fox: they've got. Gary Fox: But then, but then everyone goes on to do Gary Fox: way more.

2:41

Gary Fox: And now I'm five years in now. Gary Fox: So now I'm in that lovely position to be

2:45

Gary Fox: able to go back to talk to people and I'll

2:47

Gary Fox: just do that forever. Gary Fox: Like it's amazing every five years, every

2:50

Gary Fox: couple of years, to be able to go back and Gary Fox: go what's been happening since?

2:53

Gary Fox: Because some companies go on a great growth Gary Fox: trajectory, some don't, but the founder

2:57

Gary Fox: story are just fascinating to me.

3:00

Dylan Collins: I just want to have this on like sort of

3:02

Dylan Collins: shuffle. Dylan Collins: So, like each day, I'm just getting a

3:05

Dylan Collins: different bit of, like you know, irish

3:07

Dylan Collins: business history. Dylan Collins: I love it. Dylan Collins: Irish founder history.

3:10

Dylan Collins: It's, it's no, it's very cool. Dylan Collins: It's very cool. Gary Fox: Yeah, well, look out for the book.

3:14

Gary Fox: Come to all bookshelves soon, right? Dylan Collins: I got to get that out there, I hear about

3:17

Dylan Collins: that. Gary Fox: You were nudging me forward, which is I

3:26

Gary Fox: just need to get get off and get it done. Gary Fox: You can overthink everything, right? Gary Fox: So give me a brief context of I don't even Gary Fox: know where to start with you.

3:28

Gary Fox: To be honest, I was like doing my research, Gary Fox: I was like I'm not even sure where to begin. Gary Fox: Where would you like to begin?

3:32

Dylan Collins: where would I like to begin? Dylan Collins: Oh, I mean, I suppose I've led a few lives,

3:36

Dylan Collins: yeah, um, rich life, both best kind.

3:39

Dylan Collins: Uh, yeah, I've been fortunate to work on

3:42

Dylan Collins: some amazing things and with some Dylan Collins: incredible people, so it's been, it's been

3:45

Dylan Collins: a very cool journey. Dylan Collins: I suppose I think most people always start

3:51

Dylan Collins: with the demonware kind of origin story,

3:53

Dylan Collins: like in Dublin. Dylan Collins: I mean, I think that's been told.

3:56

Dylan Collins: I mean, sean Blanchfield has talked about

3:58

Dylan Collins: that recently, I think Ronan Percival

4:00

Dylan Collins: mentioned it when he interviewed him as Dylan Collins: well. Dylan Collins: Yeah, so we can talk about that a little

4:04

Dylan Collins: bit. Gary Fox: But I mean, I suppose, Was that the start

4:06

Gary Fox: for you? Gary Fox: Was that the first like founder?

4:08

Dylan Collins: journey, I suppose. Dylan Collins: Well, I mean it technically starts before

4:12

Dylan Collins: that. Dylan Collins: And I mean again, like you know, if anyone

4:15

Dylan Collins: listening or watching this, you should just Dylan Collins: go and listen to Ronan's excellent

4:19

Dylan Collins: interview where he talks about sort of um,

4:23

Dylan Collins: him and sean blanchfield and me sort of

4:25

Dylan Collins: meeting up in college and sort of starting Dylan Collins: our very first company, which was in the

4:29

Dylan Collins: sort of a text messaging platform. Dylan Collins: This was like in the late 90s, when text

4:33

Dylan Collins: was new yeah, so for anyone sort of

4:36

Dylan Collins: scrunching up their face right now to go. Dylan Collins: Why are you talking about text message?

4:38

Dylan Collins: What's a text message? Dylan Collins: Like you mean whatsapp no, no before that

4:42

Dylan Collins: there was a time pre-smartphone where that

4:44

Dylan Collins: was the dominant method of communication,

4:47

Dylan Collins: and we built a platform whilst we were

4:51

Dylan Collins: still in Trinity College to make it easier

4:54

Dylan Collins: for companies to send out messages to

4:57

Dylan Collins: people's phones. Dylan Collins: That was also kind of pre-data privacy era

5:02

Dylan Collins: as well, so that's where we started.

5:06

Dylan Collins: It was kind of meeting like-minded people

5:10

Dylan Collins: when we were in college together. Gary Fox: Did you want to be a founder?

5:15

Gary Fox: Did you think, when I leave college, I want

5:17

Gary Fox: to be a founder, or what were you thinking? Dylan Collins: No, but I think we were in university, late

5:23

Dylan Collins: in university, like late 90s, early 2000s,

5:26

Dylan Collins: like we all kind of graduated around two or

5:28

Dylan Collins: three I think, and it was kind of like kind

5:32

Dylan Collins: of coming out of that first internet bubble,

5:37

Dylan Collins: and so we had sort of been inspired by

5:40

Dylan Collins: hearing about all these internet companies, Dylan Collins: hearing about all these internet companies

5:47

Dylan Collins: and and that really had been sort of quite Dylan Collins: effective, I think, in opening our eyes to, Dylan Collins: oh, like you know, people can just go and

5:50

Dylan Collins: build stuff and I, I know to sort of you

5:52

Dylan Collins: know, anyone probably under the age of 40 Dylan Collins: today who's listening to this is like, well,

5:56

Dylan Collins: okay, that's kind of obvious. Dylan Collins: And you, you know, you you listen to, you

5:59

Dylan Collins: know, a lot of podcasts or read blogs, Dylan Collins: whatever, and and that seems to be sort of

6:02

Dylan Collins: a very obvious thing to go and do. Dylan Collins: But back then it was less so, you know,

6:06

Dylan Collins: certainly in the technology space. Dylan Collins: So I think we were just surrounded by

6:10

Dylan Collins: stories of people doing things with

6:13

Dylan Collins: technology and with digital media and to us

6:15

Dylan Collins: it felt totally native because we were sort

6:17

Dylan Collins: of that first generation growing up. Dylan Collins: Okay, to you it was obvious it really was,

6:21

Dylan Collins: and like every. Dylan Collins: I mean it was obvious it really was, and

6:26

Dylan Collins: like every. Dylan Collins: I mean like every day. Dylan Collins: Like I think ronan and I would sit down and Dylan Collins: we would look at like what telecoms company

6:29

Dylan Collins: in europe was rolling out what digital Dylan Collins: strategy and we would come up with five

6:32

Dylan Collins: ways that they were doing it wrong and 10 Dylan Collins: ways they could do it better.

6:35

Dylan Collins: And it was just absolutely supernatural for Dylan Collins: us. Dylan Collins: So I think we were always looking for a

6:39

Dylan Collins: thing and and there was a, there was a kind

6:41

Dylan Collins: of a chemistry between us in terms of like

6:44

Dylan Collins: thinking that way. Dylan Collins: I mean, you know, sean was a PhD in

6:49

Dylan Collins: computer science, ronan studied law, I did

6:52

Dylan Collins: business and politics, so we were coming

6:55

Dylan Collins: from sort of different places, but yeah, we

6:58

Dylan Collins: were just excited about building. Dylan Collins: We had literally nothing to lose

7:01

Dylan Collins: economically. Dylan Collins: You know literally nothing to lose

7:05

Dylan Collins: economically. Dylan Collins: And the text messaging thing ultimately

7:07

Dylan Collins: then sort of split in two. Dylan Collins: One part of it became Forest, which Ronan

7:12

Dylan Collins: has built very successfully. Gary Fox: The other became Demonware, which was the

7:16

Gary Fox: Two very different paths, very different Gary Fox: paths, which is interesting, though and

7:21

Gary Fox: this is why I love doing this podcast, Gary Fox: because people always ask me when I meet

7:25

Gary Fox: them. Gary Fox: They're like what are they all going to Gary Fox: comment? Gary Fox: What's the, what's the, what's the success

7:30

Gary Fox: formula, and I've kind of like moved into Gary Fox: this thing called the founder formula,

7:33

Gary Fox: which I'm showing people now. Gary Fox: Sounds like a good book title.

7:37

Gary Fox: There you go, right, I'm seeding it right

7:39

Gary Fox: Just throwing it out to just see what, see Gary Fox: what nibbles right.

7:42

Gary Fox: The founder formula, and my whole point is

7:46

Gary Fox: I am asking everyone on the new series, Gary Fox: including you, like, what's your founder

7:49

Gary Fox: formula for success? Gary Fox: Because I want people to see a list of a

7:52

Gary Fox: hundred and they'll all be different.

7:55

Gary Fox: There's key characteristics. Gary Fox: You know this as an investor and a founder

7:58

Gary Fox: like there's fundamentals right. Gary Fox: You just can't build without it.

8:02

Gary Fox: But everyone has a different route. Gary Fox: Even Even you guys were so close, shared

8:07

Gary Fox: the same ideas, you went in completely

8:10

Gary Fox: different directions. Dylan Collins: Yeah it's.

8:12

Dylan Collins: I mean, I don't know, I spend a bunch of

8:17

Dylan Collins: time reading psychology and thinking about Dylan Collins: how people's brains work.

8:21

Dylan Collins: I mean, I think you know myself and all the

8:27

Dylan Collins: various co-founders I've worked with over Dylan Collins: the years like we've kind of had the

8:31

Dylan Collins: attitude of like, I suppose, sequential

8:34

Dylan Collins: building, serial building, ronan, I

8:37

Dylan Collins: remember this. Dylan Collins: This is funny. Dylan Collins: This is turning into an interview about

8:40

Dylan Collins: Ronan, which is great. Dylan Collins: But he, like I remember Ronan saying to me

8:44

Dylan Collins: like very early on, it's like you know, I

8:47

Dylan Collins: just want to see what would happen if I Dylan Collins: just built one company basically forever

8:53

Dylan Collins: and and he said this to me literally

8:55

Dylan Collins: decades ago and he's done it like and and

8:59

Dylan Collins: um. Dylan Collins: You know, I I've the great privilege of

9:02

Dylan Collins: still being like close with him and close Dylan Collins: to Sean and we, we, we, we talk a lot and

9:06

Dylan Collins: and um and we, we compare notes over the

9:09

Dylan Collins: years and it's it's, it's like it's one of Dylan Collins: those it's kind of a lot of things you

9:13

Dylan Collins: don't realize until you get older and you Dylan Collins: start to appreciate it, but like it's

9:16

Dylan Collins: connected in reverse. Dylan Collins: Yeah, it is, but it's also like the, the,

9:21

Dylan Collins: having had the good fortune to be able to Dylan Collins: go on like similar but different paths with

9:26

Dylan Collins: people who you're still close to like.

9:29

Dylan Collins: And again, you know, you know this it's Dylan Collins: like building companies is a pretty lonely

9:33

Dylan Collins: business and you generally sort of get less Dylan Collins: close to people rather than more which is

9:37

Dylan Collins: weird. Gary Fox: It doesn't make sense. Dylan Collins: But human psychology behind it all is

9:40

Dylan Collins: amazing oh for sure, like, and it's, it's,

9:43

Dylan Collins: you know, to some degree it's, it's, you

9:45

Dylan Collins: know, building companies becomes the Dylan Collins: identity and you, you know, it sort of

9:48

Dylan Collins: subsumes the ego, etc. Dylan Collins: But like. Dylan Collins: But I think that that the the unusual kind

9:51

Dylan Collins: of genesis that we had, where we're still

9:54

Dylan Collins: like, we still have a thing like and we're

9:57

Dylan Collins: able to catch up and compare things, it's, Dylan Collins: it's, it's pretty amazing to be able to do.

10:01

Dylan Collins: But so I don't, I don't why we like, as in

10:05

Dylan Collins: you, go back further at a psychological Dylan Collins: level, why we took those paths particularly.

10:10

Dylan Collins: But like, I think all of us and all

10:14

Dylan Collins: founders have a certain grit well, the

10:17

Dylan Collins: successful ones at least a determination, Dylan Collins: sort of, you know, a willingness to just

10:23

Dylan Collins: not die, refusal to like survive to thrive.

10:27

Dylan Collins: That's one of the things I say all the time Dylan Collins: in the pod just just survive first, and

10:31

Dylan Collins: then you can figure it all out later like Dylan Collins: it, a lot of it, a surprising amount of it

10:36

Dylan Collins: comes down to that if you can stay in the

10:38

Dylan Collins: game and you've got something that is

10:41

Dylan Collins: halfway viable, like you will beat, um,

10:45

Dylan Collins: probably the majority of other people who

10:48

Dylan Collins: who will show up, but don't keep showing up

10:50

Dylan Collins: and it's your time will come. Gary Fox: How many stories have we heard, dylan,

10:53

Gary Fox: whereby, oh, we're at it for like five, ten

10:57

Gary Fox: years and then, boom, this happened. Gary Fox: You know this external force you could

11:02

Gary Fox: never in a million years predict, not in a Gary Fox: million years.

11:04

Gary Fox: Covid is a perfect example. Gary Fox: It's a horrible example, but it's a perfect

11:07

Gary Fox: example. Gary Fox: How many companies have you seen where

11:10

Gary Fox: you're like oh, we're working on this Gary Fox: technology for ages and then boom, zoom.

11:14

Gary Fox: Like you know, all these companies were Gary Fox: kind of bubbling away doing okay, but then

11:18

Gary Fox: that just transformed us or we got this

11:25

Gary Fox: supplier contract from this random thing Gary Fox: and then overnight, our business changed. Gary Fox: Because you're there, you've you've done

11:28

Gary Fox: the reps, you've built the systems, you're Gary Fox: in the position to get lucky.

11:32

Dylan Collins: Yeah, no I mean it's, it's, it's your well,

11:35

Dylan Collins: look, I mean it's, it's, it's waiting, it's

11:38

Dylan Collins: not dying, it's also trying to be Dylan Collins: successful and actually be semi-competent

11:41

Dylan Collins: at a bunch of stuff as well. Dylan Collins: And there's like how do you manufacture

11:43

Dylan Collins: serendipity and and like things like that Dylan Collins: along the way.

11:45

Dylan Collins: But yes, absolutely, you know, the minimum

11:48

Dylan Collins: viable requirement for for for founders is

11:52

Dylan Collins: to just figure out how to be able to

11:54

Dylan Collins: survive and be willing to make the Dylan Collins: decisions that lead to survival.

11:57

Dylan Collins: You know, and they can be. Dylan Collins: You know they can be, they can be very,

12:00

Dylan Collins: very tough. Dylan Collins: I mean, I think it helps if you are able to

12:03

Dylan Collins: pick, you know, an industry that have that,

12:05

Dylan Collins: that has some good dynamics. Dylan Collins: You know, I think you know I've been in

12:10

Dylan Collins: tough industries and I've seen incredibly

12:12

Dylan Collins: talented founders and management teams.

12:15

Dylan Collins: You know, just battle against really,

12:18

Dylan Collins: really tough industries and raging against

12:21

Dylan Collins: the dying of the light. Dylan Collins: Yeah, I mean raging against the dying of

12:24

Dylan Collins: the light. Dylan Collins: Yeah, I mean raging against the dying of Dylan Collins: your unit economics.

12:27

Dylan Collins: But, like it's, you know, I mean I, I again,

12:29

Dylan Collins: I like our last company, super awesome. Dylan Collins: You know, we, we, we spent a lot of time in

12:33

Dylan Collins: the advertising space, you know, and that Dylan Collins: is just some pretty brutal.

12:38

Dylan Collins: You know unit economics about it and, um,

12:42

Dylan Collins: you know it, it that can really make things

12:44

Dylan Collins: hard. Dylan Collins: And I think the more of companies and

12:47

Dylan Collins: company building and sort of occasional

12:49

Dylan Collins: investing that I see and do like, the more

12:52

Dylan Collins: I really think about like, okay, what is

12:54

Dylan Collins: this industry doing Like, can it grow?

12:57

Dylan Collins: Is it going to grow? Dylan Collins: What are the underlying unit economics?

13:00

Dylan Collins: I mean you look at the world of like you Dylan Collins: know last mile food delivery, for example,

13:03

Dylan Collins: right. Dylan Collins: I mean you look at the world of like you Dylan Collins: know last mile food delivery, for example, Dylan Collins: right, like. Dylan Collins: And you look at sort of the sheer quantity

13:08

Dylan Collins: of capital that went in there like over the

13:10

Dylan Collins: last decade. Dylan Collins: It still continues to do and you're like I,

13:35

Dylan Collins: I think you've got to try and be mindful Dylan Collins: about that and like how can you sort of Dylan Collins: stack the probabilities in your favor when

13:38

Dylan Collins: you're starting? Dylan Collins: Now, like you know, I'm, whatever, four

13:43

Dylan Collins: companies deep at this point. Dylan Collins: It's very easy for me to talk about this

13:46

Dylan Collins: stuff Like when we were starting, we paid Dylan Collins: this no mind whatsoever.

13:50

Dylan Collins: And sometimes, like there is an interesting Dylan Collins: argument about do you pick growth versus

13:54

Dylan Collins: unit economics and all the delivery

13:56

Dylan Collins: investors would say, well, yes, absolutely. Dylan Collins: Or at least all the ones who made money

13:59

Dylan Collins: would say yes. Dylan Collins: All the ones who lost money would say

14:03

Dylan Collins: absolutely no way. Dylan Collins: You know, I mean it's, it's, it's. Dylan Collins: But I I do think I mean it's what I spend a

14:06

Dylan Collins: lot of time looking for. Dylan Collins: Now, like you know, as we sort of come out

14:09

Dylan Collins: of this, this last big kind of 10-year wave

14:12

Dylan Collins: of growth and technology and media, which

14:14

Dylan Collins: was sort of driven by zero, um, interest

14:17

Dylan Collins: rates and things like that, and now you've Dylan Collins: got ai coming in which is kind of

14:20

Dylan Collins: threatening to flatten everything. Dylan Collins: Like where are the big growth vectors like

14:25

Dylan Collins: for the next sort of decade, two decades so?

14:27

Gary Fox: tell us, where are they, where are they so?

14:29

Dylan Collins: people are here for, I mean, I, I think

14:32

Dylan Collins: it's um, I think ai is clouding everything

14:36

Dylan Collins: and I'm I. Dylan Collins: I do my best to try and ask questions about

14:39

Dylan Collins: ai and listen rather than opine on it,

14:42

Dylan Collins: because I think there's everyone's got some

14:44

Dylan Collins: very fluffy comments. Dylan Collins: I'm the exact same.

14:47

Gary Fox: I can't. Gary Fox: I can't figure it out.

14:50

Gary Fox: It's going to be transformational, but I Gary Fox: think there's.

14:52

Gary Fox: So it's like everything right. Gary Fox: It's like every wave.

14:55

Gary Fox: It attracts the bullshit artists, the

14:57

Gary Fox: scammers, the grifters, the, the startup

15:00

Gary Fox: wannabes, the cloud, everything, yeah, and

15:04

Gary Fox: I can't. Gary Fox: I'm trying to like peer through the mire,

15:07

Gary Fox: trying to find what it is.

15:10

Gary Fox: What are your thoughts? Gary Fox: Like I know, you don't want to opine too

15:12

Gary Fox: much on it, but go back to the waves you Gary Fox: talk about.

15:15

Gary Fox: Ai is going to be more waves. Gary Fox: What else coming?

15:17

Dylan Collins: well, let's, let's yeah, let's ignore ai Dylan Collins: for a minute and come back to it.

15:21

Dylan Collins: But, like I think one of the areas I'm I'm

15:24

Dylan Collins: spending a bit of time looking at is, um,

15:29

Dylan Collins: old people and you know, when you look at

15:34

Dylan Collins: sort of digital security and cyber security

15:37

Dylan Collins: whatever you want to call it around old Dylan Collins: people, like if you look at I've been

15:40

Dylan Collins: looking into some fraud data in terms of,

15:42

Dylan Collins: like, what's going on with cyber fraud

15:44

Dylan Collins: generally across all the age demographics, Dylan Collins: and I mean unsurprising to literally anyone

15:49

Dylan Collins: who's listening like it is just rising and Dylan Collins: rising and rising, but it's probably just

15:52

Dylan Collins: beginning. Dylan Collins: And when you sort of see, you know sort of

15:55

Dylan Collins: what ai is doing in terms of the ability to

15:59

Dylan Collins: sort of replicate and recreate voices like

16:03

Dylan Collins: I, I, I think there's some very interesting

16:06

Dylan Collins: opportunities to build necessary tools and

16:09

Dylan Collins: protections for older people who are

16:12

Dylan Collins: interacting with just about anything that's

16:14

Dylan Collins: that's got an internet connection, although Dylan Collins: it's kind of. Dylan Collins: I was looking at at um, the uh report that

16:19

Dylan Collins: came out of the U? Dylan Collins: S, and, interestingly, the two biggest age

16:25

Dylan Collins: brackets where you're seeing fraud and

16:28

Dylan Collins: identity theft was in 60 to 69 and 30 to 39.

16:36

Dylan Collins: So it's. Dylan Collins: What's the correlation.

16:38

Gary Fox: Is there a correlation? Dylan Collins: I don't think there's a correlation.

16:41

Dylan Collins: I just think that we're we're starting to

16:43

Dylan Collins: see, you know, different waves of of, uh,

16:49

Dylan Collins: of of sort of attack vectors and different

16:52

Dylan Collins: waves of, like digital naivety, and I

16:55

Dylan Collins: haven't pieced it together yet. Dylan Collins: This is me, like, as I'm doing, my kind of

16:58

Dylan Collins: gandalfian, wandering around what I'm going

17:00

Dylan Collins: to do next, but I I again just taking this

17:05

Dylan Collins: back to sort of a growth point, like it's

17:08

Dylan Collins: the kind of characteristics I look for,

17:11

Dylan Collins: like okay, is this a market that is capable

17:14

Dylan Collins: of of, like you know, tripling and tripling

17:17

Dylan Collins: and tripling and doubling and doubling, you

17:20

Dylan Collins: know, over the next five years, like, can Dylan Collins: it it grow by 500 in sort of five to ten

17:26

Dylan Collins: years? Dylan Collins: And it's quite hard, understandably, to

17:31

Dylan Collins: find markets like that. Dylan Collins: I mean, I think when we started just to

17:35

Dylan Collins: jump around a bit, when we started Dylan Collins: demonware you know that was when

17:39

Dylan Collins: multiplayer gaming on console was just

17:42

Dylan Collins: beginning like that ended up going on,

17:46

Dylan Collins: fundamentally, I suppose, a 20-year tear,

17:48

Dylan Collins: and you could never have predicted that Dylan Collins: right Well to some degree we did right.

17:54

Dylan Collins: We were building the technology to enable Dylan Collins: it. Dylan Collins: I mean, I think probably, looking back, we

18:01

Dylan Collins: sold Demonware too early and when you look

18:07

Dylan Collins: at, sort of super awesome it was built

18:16

Dylan Collins: around the fact that kids were clearly Dylan Collins: going to become a much, much, much greater

18:18

Dylan Collins: part of the internet in terms of usage, Dylan Collins: which they did over the course of 10 years,

18:24

Dylan Collins: um, but now you sort of you kind of look at Dylan Collins: what's going on in a lot of those spaces

18:27

Dylan Collins: and you know growth, revenue, growth,

18:30

Dylan Collins: whatever kind of drops from sort of you

18:32

Dylan Collins: know, 20, 20 per year to maybe five, six,

18:34

Dylan Collins: seven, eight percent a year. Dylan Collins: I mean the game, the video game space, is

18:37

Dylan Collins: now the biggest entertainment sector in the Dylan Collins: world, has been for years, but its growth

18:41

Dylan Collins: this year might be four or five percent. Dylan Collins: Like it's flat, it's mature.

18:44

Dylan Collins: Okay, where are the next growth spaces

18:46

Dylan Collins: going to come out of? Dylan Collins: You know? Dylan Collins: So I think those are, those are sort of

18:49

Dylan Collins: things that I, that that I mull and I think

18:51

Dylan Collins: what's like? Dylan Collins: Like there's there's a huge bias, or a lot

18:55

Dylan Collins: of bias, I think, around where founders Dylan Collins: choose to build because it's kind of

18:58

Dylan Collins: relevant to themselves, and that was one of Dylan Collins: the reasons that you didn't get a lot of

19:01

Dylan Collins: solutions for kids being built, because

19:04

Dylan Collins: most founders are not 11. Dylan Collins: And then I think the same bias is leading

19:08

Dylan Collins: to sort of a lack of investment into what's

19:11

Dylan Collins: needed by, uh, you know, people above 60,

19:13

Dylan Collins: 65. Gary Fox: I was just going to say the same thing. Gary Fox: Yeah, we scratch our own itch and it makes

19:18

Gary Fox: sense because we know that's a problem. Gary Fox: That's a problem for me, even if it's a

19:21

Gary Fox: problem for 10% of people. Gary Fox: We're off to the races here. Gary Fox: I think there is like going to be a gap now

19:26

Gary Fox: between like not being able to understand

19:28

Gary Fox: those problems, like everyone's getting Gary Fox: older yeah living for longer.

19:32

Gary Fox: That is a huge knock on effects on the Gary Fox: economy in terms of like housing and

19:36

Gary Fox: healthcare is a huge one. Gary Fox: Like that is going to be astronomical.

19:39

Gary Fox: Nursing homes is a huge one. Gary Fox: Assisted living, care, all that kind of

19:42

Gary Fox: stuff the nursing is going to become one of Gary Fox: the biggest professions in the world.

19:45

Gary Fox: Yeah, like ai is great, but it clouds so

19:48

Gary Fox: much. Gary Fox: Uh, it's really interesting to hear you say Gary Fox: that because it's now skewing everything,

19:53

Gary Fox: everyone's solution to every problem.

19:56

Gary Fox: To the man with the hammer, everything is a Gary Fox: nail. Gary Fox: To the man with the laptop, everything is

20:00

Gary Fox: ai. Gary Fox: It's just. Gary Fox: And you're kind of going, oh l lads, don't,

20:04

Gary Fox: don't do it Like, don't put ai at the end Gary Fox: of your company and think that that's the

20:08

Gary Fox: answer. Gary Fox: Because we've been here, we've seen how

20:11

Gary Fox: many hype cycles and the hype cycles used Gary Fox: to be like five years, now they're like 18

20:15

Gary Fox: months. Gary Fox: I get web four, web three web three was it.

20:20

Gary Fox: That's going well. Dylan Collins: You know, look, look, yeah, there's,

20:26

Dylan Collins: there's, there's, there's cycles and all Dylan Collins: these things for sure. Dylan Collins: I mean I, I think that that, um, you know

20:29

Dylan Collins: it's, I, I think this ai wave is, and I

20:35

Dylan Collins: mean I, I do not speak as an expert in this.

20:38

Dylan Collins: I have an interest, but it is sort, it is

20:43

Dylan Collins: only semi-informed. Dylan Collins: But I think one of my observations is that

20:48

Dylan Collins: it's unusual, I think, for like this early

20:53

Dylan Collins: in a technology cycle, to have it so

20:56

Dylan Collins: dominated by the incumbents already.

20:59

Gary Fox: Yeah. Dylan Collins: And I think you know I was.

21:02

Dylan Collins: I was in a conversation with someone last

21:05

Dylan Collins: week where they were, you know, discussing

21:07

Dylan Collins: whether they should invest into the open AI

21:10

Dylan Collins: investment rent, and the argument was like,

21:14

Dylan Collins: well, you could do that or you could just

21:16

Dylan Collins: buy some more Microsoft stock. Dylan Collins: You know, and I mean most of the

21:20

Dylan Collins: foundational models at this, you can, you

21:24

Dylan Collins: can just buy exposure to by buying into

21:26

Dylan Collins: amazon or meta or microsoft, um, google

21:29

Dylan Collins: obviously, um, and I think that's kind of

21:32

Dylan Collins: unusual, like actually is. Gary Fox: Yeah, when you think about it.

21:35

Dylan Collins: Usually there's great disruptors there are,

21:37

Dylan Collins: and they're private and they're coming Dylan Collins: through, and I mean there's obviously a

21:40

Dylan Collins: couple of those, no, you know, no doubt. Dylan Collins: But like at a foundational level, if you

21:43

Dylan Collins: think about, like, where the huge, huge Dylan Collins: wealth is potentially going to be created,

21:47

Dylan Collins: like I think a lot of that is already Dylan Collins: locked up and it's it's sort of being baked

21:51

Dylan Collins: into share prices, and I think the capital

21:53

Dylan Collins: requirement now to get into that is so

21:56

Dylan Collins: enormous that it's going to be very

21:58

Dylan Collins: difficult, I think, for people to break Dylan Collins: into it.

22:01

Dylan Collins: And I, so I, what does that mean? Dylan Collins: I that mean I don't know, I, I, I like, I

22:05

Dylan Collins: still think you know, I mean I see not

22:09

Dylan Collins: hundreds, but certainly tens of sort of AI

22:11

Dylan Collins: pitches a week, um, from companies that are

22:16

Dylan Collins: sort of trying to augment existing Dylan Collins: solutions or or or do whatever, but, like I

22:22

Dylan Collins: would say, the vast majority of those are

22:24

Dylan Collins: probably just going to get crushed by the

22:27

Dylan Collins: existing distribution that companies like

22:29

Dylan Collins: adobe and salesforce and everyone has, like

22:31

Dylan Collins: I feel a lot of them are building features,

22:34

Dylan Collins: not products. Gary Fox: I feel some of them are building a little

22:38

Gary Fox: thing that makes your life a little bit

22:40

Gary Fox: better, but exactly what you said there, Gary Fox: the big ones can just turn it on.

22:44

Gary Fox: Yeah, click. Gary Fox: How many, how many ai startups have you

22:47

Gary Fox: seen crushed by open? Dylan Collins: ai, here's a new update.

22:50

Gary Fox: There's no up in there like oh, that was Gary Fox: our whole business model and that's just

22:53

Gary Fox: like line 10 of their update no, I think

22:56

Gary Fox: it's. Dylan Collins: I think it's um, I think it's very tough Dylan Collins: and I think it's.

22:59

Dylan Collins: It's um like again, I'm a bit weird as a

23:04

Dylan Collins: startup person, or whatever you want to Dylan Collins: call me, in that, like, I like to generate

23:12

Dylan Collins: money for investors and I I'm always

23:15

Dylan Collins: looking for where the exits are um, and I

23:18

Dylan Collins: get into a lot of arguments with vcs about Dylan Collins: this historically, where they're like don't

23:21

Dylan Collins: worry about that, it'll take care of itself, Dylan Collins: but bcs, oh, yeah, surely that's their

23:25

Dylan Collins: whole job well it is, but they only started

23:29

Dylan Collins: realizing it when interest rates began to Dylan Collins: go up and it was harder and harder to raise

23:34

Dylan Collins: the next fund. Dylan Collins: Um, but I, but I think on the ai side of

23:37

Dylan Collins: things, like an awful lot of money is going Dylan Collins: in and it's okay.

23:42

Dylan Collins: What is the series of events that's going

23:44

Dylan Collins: to return this capital? Dylan Collins: That's going to grow that by 20 or 30% IRR

23:50

Dylan Collins: a year, which is what VCs are meant to be Dylan Collins: delivering. Dylan Collins: You've got to believe in a whole sequence

23:56

Dylan Collins: of semi-miraculous things. Dylan Collins: I'm not saying people won't make money out

24:00

Dylan Collins: of it. Dylan Collins: I mean, again, if you hold all those public Dylan Collins: companies or if you hold Nvidia stock, you

24:04

Dylan Collins: already have, but they may well be the best

24:06

Dylan Collins: ways of ways of doing it, um, so I think it

24:10

Dylan Collins: it's. Dylan Collins: It just creates a very murky environment.

24:13

Dylan Collins: You're right, and I think, like so much of

24:16

Dylan Collins: it is, is our little bubble of, like tech

24:18

Dylan Collins: and media. Dylan Collins: To your point, on on man of the hammer,

24:21

Dylan Collins: like you know, there's still a lot of Dylan Collins: physical stuff, um, a lot of physical

24:26

Dylan Collins: things that are huge problems. Dylan Collins: I mean, you talk about demographics, like I

24:30

Dylan Collins: want to know where the next generation of Dylan Collins: plumbers are going to come from like we

24:35

Dylan Collins: still live in houses. Gary Fox: Sorry, you've hit a sore point oh really, I

24:38

Gary Fox: am hunting for a plumber for three months.

24:41

Gary Fox: Do you know how many? Dylan Collins: conversations about plumbers I've had with

24:43

Dylan Collins: people in different parts of the world. Dylan Collins: Like there is a plumber bottleneck that's

24:47

Dylan Collins: happening like people talk about gpus, but

24:49

Dylan Collins: honestly, plumbers are going to be more of

24:51

Dylan Collins: a commodity than gpus in two years time.

24:54

Dylan Collins: Mark my words. Gary Fox: I I have a business ideas database I put

24:57

Gary Fox: down and one of them was called sparks and Gary Fox: it was just training electricians and

25:02

Gary Fox: bringing them on an apprenticeship scheme Gary Fox: and getting them to commit to you for five

25:05

Gary Fox: years, and then the same thing for plumbers. Gary Fox: I didn't have a catchy name for the

25:09

Gary Fox: plumbing one. Gary Fox: We'll come up with.

25:12

Gary Fox: You've got good, super awesome. Gary Fox: We'll come up with something similar.

25:14

Gary Fox: Right, I will partner with you on this

25:18

Gary Fox: because it's because my background is Gary Fox: property management.

25:20

Gary Fox: I had a property managing company for like Gary Fox: eight, nine years and my heart was broken

25:26

Gary Fox: like, and when I found a good one, I was Gary Fox: just like yep cuddling them.

25:32

Gary Fox: Yeah, I look after you. Gary Fox: Stay with me um, at the minute at home.

25:36

Gary Fox: Can I get someone back? Gary Fox: Yeah, I literally had a guy come out and

25:41

Gary Fox: he's. Gary Fox: I always try to go rock recommendations. Gary Fox: That's just how I run everything.

25:45

Gary Fox: Got a guy recommend a recommendation. Gary Fox: He came out and he was there a good three

25:50

Gary Fox: and a half hours. Gary Fox: Nice guy trying to wait him for three and a

25:53

Gary Fox: half hours. Gary Fox: He just kind of shrugged his shoulders. Gary Fox: He goes right, I have to head off there now.

25:57

Gary Fox: I was like, all right, it's fixed. Gary Fox: He goes no, no, I just have no idea what's

26:02

Gary Fox: going on. Gary Fox: Yeah, I was like, oh shit, we know all

26:06

Gary Fox: water, no heat. Gary Fox: I was like, right, you come back in the

26:10

Gary Fox: morning. Gary Fox: He goes no, no, I'll be back next Thursday.

26:12

Gary Fox: This was Thursday. Gary Fox: I was like, oh, seven days, right, so how

26:14

Gary Fox: are we going to get the old hot water Gary Fox: working? Gary Fox: He goes yeah, it's a tricky one.

26:19

Gary Fox: That was his answer. Dylan Collins: Honest to God, I was answer.

26:26

Dylan Collins: Yeah, I honest to god, I was just baffled. Dylan Collins: Yeah, no, I mean, look, if you were gonna Dylan Collins: make some sort of long duration investments,

26:29

Dylan Collins: like 20, 30 year horizons, like betting on

26:33

Dylan Collins: a lot of those sort of like physical

26:36

Dylan Collins: service layers, I think would make a lot of

26:38

Dylan Collins: sense because, I mean, you've got Dylan Collins: demographics are in your favor, right

26:42

Dylan Collins: there's less and less young people that are

26:44

Dylan Collins: going to be around to an older population Dylan Collins: who are going to be living longer, who are,

26:49

Dylan Collins: unless some sort of singularity actually

26:52

Dylan Collins: happens are going to be physical and living Dylan Collins: in houses and apartments and everything

26:55

Dylan Collins: else. Dylan Collins: And you know we're going to need more of

26:58

Dylan Collins: this, not less. Dylan Collins: And we, we kind of I think there's been a

27:02

Dylan Collins: complete over-rotation into AI, well, into

27:05

Dylan Collins: technology in general. Gary Fox: Yeah. Dylan Collins: You know and you like.

27:08

Gary Fox: I don't know whether it's kind of Gary Fox: monopolizing more of the general startup

27:13

Gary Fox: talent but like I think so I think these

27:17

Gary Fox: things will try to attract people who kind Gary Fox: of are drawn to the bright, shiny thing,

27:20

Gary Fox: especially founders. Gary Fox: We are our focus levels are First of all

27:24

Gary Fox: Questionable. Gary Fox: At best, right, the sweaty startup, right

27:27

Gary Fox: that's there's great great Cody Sanchez in

27:31

Gary Fox: the States does a lot of great content on Gary Fox: this and she has an incredible point.

27:35

Gary Fox: Like and you flip your point the other way

27:38

Gary Fox: you're saying like the older generation are Gary Fox: going to need it, the younger generation

27:41

Gary Fox: need it. Gary Fox: Like I would do a good bit of work on our

27:43

Gary Fox: house at home. Gary Fox: And people go oh, you're very handy.

27:45

Gary Fox: I'm like no, I'm not at all, I just try, I

27:48

Gary Fox: would just give it a crack. Gary Fox: I went, did a diy course in cabin tealy

27:51

Gary Fox: community college over 10 weeks every three,

27:55

Gary Fox: every wednesday for three hours, and he Gary Fox: just taught you the basics plumbing, wiring,

27:59

Gary Fox: block, wall plastering. Gary Fox: You know basics that we all should know.

28:04

Gary Fox: Yeah, but no one knows. Gary Fox: Yeah, so like your house is your biggest

28:07

Gary Fox: ever investment, mostly for most people. Gary Fox: Yeah, and we're walking around like we.

28:11

Gary Fox: We bought our house five years ago. Gary Fox: We got an email with who who the bins are

28:16

Gary Fox: provided by, what broadband they had, and

28:19

Gary Fox: that was it the rain coming.

28:21

Gary Fox: User manuals like yeah, yeah, buy some 30

28:24

Gary Fox: quid and there's like this endless Gary Fox: documentation that comes with you.

28:27

Gary Fox: Accordion it out like there's so many big

28:30

Gary Fox: problems yet to be solved. Gary Fox: We live in a dumb world.

28:33

Gary Fox: So much stuff we have is dumb.

28:36

Gary Fox: We talk about the internet things. Gary Fox: We talk about AI. Gary Fox: There's so much disconnect between the

28:41

Gary Fox: actual real world. Gary Fox: Yeah, yeah, yeah, why is it factor fiction

28:44

Gary Fox: is between the actual real world. Gary Fox: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gary Fox: Why is it factor fiction? Gary Fox: Is there less wow moments in technology now

28:49

Gary Fox: than there used to be, or is our bias

28:51

Gary Fox: taking over? Gary Fox: So, like the first iPhone, things like that

28:55

Gary Fox: that genuinely surged things forward?

28:57

Gary Fox: People would lean over in a pub going what

29:00

Gary Fox: is that? Gary Fox: I can't remember the last time I saw

29:03

Gary Fox: something or bought something that was like

29:06

Gary Fox: this changes everything. Gary Fox: Is that bias or is that fact?

29:11

Dylan Collins: I don't know. Dylan Collins: I mean it's certainly subjective, but like

29:14

Dylan Collins: it's, you know, I think everyone is is sort

29:19

Dylan Collins: of fully immersed in, you know, content and

29:26

Dylan Collins: real-time content and and access to

29:29

Dylan Collins: absolutely everything. Dylan Collins: So I think it, yeah, it certainly takes

29:32

Dylan Collins: proportionately more, um, I think that's

29:34

Dylan Collins: why money keeps going into vr, you know,

29:37

Dylan Collins: because and now glasses, with what meta's

29:41

Dylan Collins: unveiled with orion, like you know, because

29:43

Dylan Collins: it is a sufficient kind of step change in

29:45

Dylan Collins: experience, um, and I think when you, you

29:49

Dylan Collins: know, when you put on any sort of vr Dylan Collins: headset, it's kind of like, holy shit, like

29:52

Dylan Collins: this is, this is cool and different, um,

29:56

Dylan Collins: but yeah, I, I think we're, we're, we're,

29:59

Dylan Collins: you know, we are getting desensitized to

30:01

Dylan Collins: lots and lots of things, you know. Dylan Collins: And to your earlier point, like you know,

30:05

Dylan Collins: everyone's kind of I don't know if they're

30:07

Dylan Collins: getting more specialized in areas, but

30:11

Dylan Collins: they're certainly abstracting away more of

30:13

Dylan Collins: their lives. Dylan Collins: You know, which is interesting, you know I

30:19

Dylan Collins: sort of people pitch a lot of use cases to

30:21

Dylan Collins: me around AI and sort of like, well, you

30:23

Dylan Collins: know, I use it to sort of construct an Dylan Collins: argument or to do, you know, to try and do

30:27

Dylan Collins: some reasoning for me and I'm like, okay,

30:29

Dylan Collins: that's cool and I see the productivity, but

30:32

Dylan Collins: also I don't know if I want to outsource my

30:35

Dylan Collins: reasoning capability. Gary Fox: I was just going to take the words you're

30:37

Gary Fox: thinking that's your brain. Gary Fox: I use AI and I use notion, and the two of

30:41

Gary Fox: them together are like a second brain for Gary Fox: me. Gary Fox: Yeah, yeah, shouldn't be my brain, if you

30:45

Gary Fox: take away humans' ability to reason and

30:48

Gary Fox: humans' ability to think logically. Dylan Collins: No, I mean, look, there's no.

30:52

Dylan Collins: I think with every technology wave, I mean,

30:55

Dylan Collins: I end up still kind of getting drawn into

31:00

Dylan Collins: conversations about, like you know,

31:02

Dylan Collins: technology and kids and the impact of

31:05

Dylan Collins: social and internet and smartphones, you

31:08

Dylan Collins: know, on on sort of kids and teens and and,

31:11

Dylan Collins: like every wave of technology brings pros

31:15

Dylan Collins: and cons. Dylan Collins: Like it's not, you know, it is like nothing

31:20

Dylan Collins: is is completely better.

31:23

Dylan Collins: It always there is always a trade-off right

31:26

Dylan Collins: and things just change. Dylan Collins: You know, and you look at the history of of,

31:29

Dylan Collins: like you know, our species and you know it

31:34

Dylan Collins: has risen and fallen and and, like you know,

31:37

Dylan Collins: we, we, we advance things or we take a few

31:39

Dylan Collins: steps back, and that has just historically

31:42

Dylan Collins: always been one of the very few consistent Dylan Collins: things you can say.

31:45

Dylan Collins: And so you know, I think you know, when you

31:49

Dylan Collins: look about sort of the rush into AI, like

31:52

Dylan Collins: you know, it's still kind of wild that you Dylan Collins: have a lot of people sort of declaring that

31:55

Dylan Collins: sort of, okay, well, we're trying to build Dylan Collins: AGI because that's going to go and

31:58

Dylan Collins: basically do everything for us, and then Dylan Collins: that deflates the economy and universal

32:04

Dylan Collins: basic income and then we have nothing and Dylan Collins: it's kind of like, okay, so we're all

32:07

Dylan Collins: basically talking about some giant sort of

32:10

Dylan Collins: digital death cult that we're all Dylan Collins: subscribing to and investing tens of

32:13

Dylan Collins: billions of dollars in. Dylan Collins: I can't get the logic. Dylan Collins: It's well, it's.

32:18

Dylan Collins: Yeah, it's fascinating, and I and and to Dylan Collins: some degree, like you know well, to a very

32:23

Dylan Collins: large degree people don't know exactly Dylan Collins: where this is going like.

32:26

Dylan Collins: Are there enormous benefits that will come

32:29

Dylan Collins: out of what's now being built around llms?

32:32

Dylan Collins: Yeah, I'm sure. Dylan Collins: Lots right, and maybe even some

32:34

Dylan Collins: productivity too. Dylan Collins: Who knows? Dylan Collins: Um, but it's, it's, I, it's not.

32:40

Dylan Collins: It isn't unusual in the history of things

32:43

Dylan Collins: for for for people to just be sort of

32:46

Dylan Collins: barreling towards the unknown, with Dylan Collins: everyone's really, really excited, but they

32:49

Dylan Collins: can't really tell you why. Dylan Collins: And they can't really tell you what's

33:04

Dylan Collins: actually going to happen. Gary Fox: Oh, it's going to be class, okay, how

33:10

Gary Fox: specifically? Gary Fox: Oh, like it's going to do all the shit work

33:12

Gary Fox: you don't want to do, okay, but like

33:14

Gary Fox: there's loads of shit work I have to do, I Gary Fox: just love to cut my garden.

33:17

Gary Fox: I still have to. Gary Fox: Like now you can get robo mowers, I know, Gary Fox: but like yeah, I just can't fully square

33:22

Gary Fox: that circle. Gary Fox: There's a couple of things I want to talk Gary Fox: to you about technology and kids, but I

33:25

Gary Fox: also want to go back to a couple of the. Gary Fox: We got drawn into the ice oh, it's so easy

33:29

Gary Fox: to do. Dylan Collins: I wish I wish people would invest more

33:32

Dylan Collins: money into um, more money into thinking

33:37

Dylan Collins: about demographics and fertility rates,

33:40

Dylan Collins: because that's an issue, and I wish more Dylan Collins: people or there would be more capital

33:44

Dylan Collins: invested into research into the sun and

33:48

Dylan Collins: more capital invested into near-Earth

33:52

Dylan Collins: object identification, because it would be

33:54

Dylan Collins: an awful shame to develop some kind of API

33:58

Dylan Collins: for an asteroid to wipe out the planet and

34:01

Dylan Collins: I don't know. Dylan Collins: It feels like we could just allocate a

34:03

Dylan Collins: little bit to that. Gary Fox: What waves? Gary Fox: Right, so we're going to sidestep AI?

34:07

Gary Fox: What other waves? Gary Fox: You said two there demographic and

34:09

Gary Fox: fertility rates. Gary Fox: Actually, we had Philip McLeod from Therapy

34:12

Gary Fox: Fertility just literally before you and he

34:15

Gary Fox: was talking about that like how it's a Gary Fox: massive, massive issue, like globally,

34:19

Gary Fox: fertility rates are dropping astronomically

34:23

Gary Fox: Huge environmental factors contributing to

34:25

Gary Fox: it. Gary Fox: What are you thinking in that space? Dylan Collins: I'm not a scientist, I just sort of look at

34:30

Dylan Collins: the numbers. Dylan Collins: I mean I think it's you know.

34:32

Dylan Collins: You look at the implications for

34:37

Dylan Collins: demographics over the next 50 to 100 years

34:42

Dylan Collins: and, like in the west, it's pretty

34:45

Dylan Collins: frightening, you know one in terms of the

34:48

Dylan Collins: proportion of, of, um, uh, younger working

34:53

Dylan Collins: people whose tax base is going to be Dylan Collins: required to support all the older people.

34:57

Dylan Collins: I mean, there is the mother of all battles Dylan Collins: coming up between old and young, like, like

35:01

Dylan Collins: um, which is sort of going to be very

35:04

Dylan Collins: interesting, um, you know.

35:06

Dylan Collins: Secondly, like for countries like China, I

35:09

Dylan Collins: mean in the next, within the next hundred

35:11

Dylan Collins: years, on the current trajectory, china

35:14

Dylan Collins: loses 50% of its population. Gary Fox: I was reading that last week the financial

35:17

Gary Fox: times in a brilliant like in-depth piece on

35:20

Gary Fox: it, I was like whoa and they actually went

35:23

Gary Fox: back 25, 30 years, 40 years, the single

35:26

Gary Fox: child policy and how that now is playing

35:28

Gary Fox: out. Dylan Collins: Well, I mean, in contrast, you've got the

35:31

Dylan Collins: US right, which went through the baby boom, Dylan Collins: and they are one of the few countries in

35:35

Dylan Collins: the West, actually, who will have a larger

35:39

Dylan Collins: population for for longer, just because

35:41

Dylan Collins: they've had more kids. Dylan Collins: They've had, like historically, a slightly

35:45

Dylan Collins: higher fertility rate. Dylan Collins: I mean it's it's like it has all sorts of

35:50

Dylan Collins: interesting impacts. Dylan Collins: But, like, one of the things that I sort of

35:52

Dylan Collins: poke at a little bit is, like how does this

35:55

Dylan Collins: break our, our investing assumptions about

35:58

Dylan Collins: the future? Dylan Collins: Right, so we think we tell people now to go

36:01

Dylan Collins: and, like you know, when they're, when Dylan Collins: they're thinking about their pension, it's

36:04

Dylan Collins: like, well, you know you should go and Dylan Collins: invest in the in the market because this is

36:07

Dylan Collins: the return it's going to give you. Dylan Collins: But like that return is sort of based on,

36:12

Dylan Collins: well, very much based on on historic

36:15

Dylan Collins: performance. Dylan Collins: But all of that, like you know, certainly

36:18

Dylan Collins: in the us market and other markets, like

36:20

Dylan Collins: was predicated on population growth at a

36:22

Dylan Collins: certain level. Dylan Collins: Like if you look at when Charlie Munger and

36:25

Dylan Collins: Warren Buffett started investing together, Dylan Collins: which was roughly from the late 60s, like

36:30

Dylan Collins: the US population over in the 50 year span

36:33

Dylan Collins: since that, like the US population doubled

36:36

Dylan Collins: right, doubled right. Dylan Collins: So they had, you know you could make a

36:39

Dylan Collins: bunch of investments and you could do Dylan Collins: absolutely nothing and on the basis of

36:42

Dylan Collins: there being more people to consume more Dylan Collins: stuff, your investment was going to go up.

36:47

Dylan Collins: Now, if you look at the us today and you go Dylan Collins: forward 50 years, there's still growth

36:51

Dylan Collins: there in terms of population, but it's only Dylan Collins: half that okay um and like.

36:57

Dylan Collins: That is a very, very different picture, Dylan Collins: obviously, and like that's the best case.

37:01

Dylan Collins: Most of the other countries are far, far

37:03

Dylan Collins: less than that. Gary Fox: Is this skewing how you think about Gary Fox: investing?

37:07

Dylan Collins: It's making me think about, like what you

37:11

Dylan Collins: know, like these are the long term trends

37:14

Dylan Collins: and that is the math. Dylan Collins: At what point do these things start to get

37:20

Dylan Collins: pulled forward in terms of how people are

37:22

Dylan Collins: thinking about them? Dylan Collins: And right, like if, if?

37:25

Dylan Collins: My assumption is that, like you know, I can

37:28

Dylan Collins: generate sort of I don't whatever seven, Dylan Collins: eight, nine, ten percent a year from the

37:31

Dylan Collins: SMP and like because that has been true for

37:35

Dylan Collins: the last 40 years, it's like okay, that's

37:37

Dylan Collins: probably gonna come down a lot like over Dylan Collins: the next, sort of 10, 20, 30.

37:40

Dylan Collins: I mean, this is probably a conversation for Dylan Collins: for stephen kensler or ronan lyons to get

37:44

Dylan Collins: involved with. Dylan Collins: But the, the, the um, it, it like it does

37:50

Dylan Collins: feel like the future, the nearish future,

37:54

Dylan Collins: is going to diverge from what the

37:57

Dylan Collins: historical norms have been over the last 30,

38:00

Dylan Collins: 40, 50 years, and I don't really know what

38:03

Dylan Collins: the consequences of that are. Dylan Collins: I'm just trying to poke around and figure

38:06

Dylan Collins: out, like you know where, where are, where

38:10

Dylan Collins: is there going to be? Dylan Collins: You know something that is kind of seismic,

38:14

Dylan Collins: I mean either good or bad, and then sort of

38:17

Dylan Collins: figure out where the businesses that can be, Dylan Collins: that can be built around that.

38:20

Gary Fox: It's the mongerer thing. Gary Fox: Show me where I'll die, so I'll never go

38:22

Gary Fox: there, absolutely. Dylan Collins: It's just he's a cold machine, right?

38:25

Dylan Collins: I mean he's. Dylan Collins: He's the master of inversion, right yeah?

38:28

Gary Fox: exactly. Gary Fox: So let's pull some signal from the noise.

38:31

Gary Fox: Then this is your Gandalf moment, like

38:34

Gary Fox: you've been wandering and figuring all the Gary Fox: stuff out for me.

38:37

Gary Fox: So we loads of aspiring founders listening. Gary Fox: What areas should they be doing deep dives

38:42

Gary Fox: into? Dylan Collins: where to build businesses.

38:47

Dylan Collins: I hate, I hate asking or answering that

38:49

Dylan Collins: question. Dylan Collins: I mean, look, I think I will give you a

38:53

Dylan Collins: collection of probably not connected

38:56

Dylan Collins: answers. Dylan Collins: I mean, I've spent a bunch of time looking

39:00

Dylan Collins: at the UGC gaming space, so user generated

39:03

Dylan Collins: content, gaming space. Dylan Collins: So around Fortnite, roblox, discord you're

39:08

Dylan Collins: seeing like lots of interesting companies

39:12

Dylan Collins: be built from people who are just starting

39:14

Dylan Collins: with games or communities in those places.

39:18

Dylan Collins: And what's really interesting about those, Dylan Collins: at least in my opinion, is that there are

39:22

Dylan Collins: companies that are being built in a sort of

39:25

Dylan Collins: a non-startup ecosystem. Dylan Collins: Like when you go I spend a lot of time with

39:30

Dylan Collins: with these founders and like they're all

39:32

Dylan Collins: young, like 19, 20, 21, 22, like they've

39:35

Dylan Collins: never heard of y combinator and they don't

39:38

Dylan Collins: give a shit about it. Dylan Collins: Probably good thing, because they're making

39:40

Dylan Collins: all their money from roblox or they're Dylan Collins: making all their money from from Fortnite

39:44

Dylan Collins: and UEFN, and like I think those places are

39:49

Dylan Collins: like when you're interviewing and, let's

39:52

Dylan Collins: say, 10 years time, right, like that cohort

39:56

Dylan Collins: of, let's say, irish founders who've come

39:59

Dylan Collins: through through, I guarantee you some Dylan Collins: percentage of them will have started their

40:03

Dylan Collins: first company not as a text messaging Dylan Collins: platform, but as a game or a map or

40:08

Dylan Collins: something that they built a new afn or Dylan Collins: roblox, like and and I'm I'm also

40:12

Dylan Collins: reasonably convinced that, like you know,

40:15

Dylan Collins: at least one billion dollar plus company is

40:18

Dylan Collins: going to come out of those ecosystems Dylan Collins: because they are being built as places for

40:24

Dylan Collins: developers to go and build and play and

40:26

Dylan Collins: monetize, and you know they're they're

40:30

Dylan Collins: they're interesting for a couple of reasons.

40:33

Dylan Collins: I think, um, you know, one is because they

40:37

Dylan Collins: are, to some degree they have kind of been

40:41

Dylan Collins: hijacked as originally gaming places which

40:47

Dylan Collins: are now turning into social places, right,

40:49

Dylan Collins: interesting. Dylan Collins: So they are like, when you think about sort

40:51

Dylan Collins: of you know the last way, the last sort of

40:55

Dylan Collins: collection of sort of social channels right,

40:57

Dylan Collins: it was Facebook and it's Insta and it's Dylan Collins: WhatsApp and it's sort of text messaging Dylan Collins: right, it was Facebook and it's Insta and

41:00

Dylan Collins: it's WhatsApp and it's sort of text Dylan Collins: messaging, right, like now it is, you know,

41:04

Dylan Collins: telegram and Fortnite and Roblox and Dylan Collins: Discord, like it's a whole new cluster.

41:08

Dylan Collins: But they're not apples to apples, like they

41:11

Dylan Collins: are very different things in terms of how Dylan Collins: they're being used.

41:13

Dylan Collins: So I think that's interesting. Dylan Collins: I think the second interesting thing is,

41:16

Dylan Collins: like, that first wave of sort of social

41:20

Dylan Collins: platforms to a large degree was sort of

41:23

Dylan Collins: social functionality being built on an Dylan Collins: advertising engine, right these, because

41:28

Dylan Collins: the majority of these new platforms

41:31

Dylan Collins: originally originated as sort of gaming Dylan Collins: platforms.

41:33

Dylan Collins: They are being built on kind of a Dylan Collins: transactional basis, so they're not being

41:37

Dylan Collins: built as advertising first, yeah, and which

41:39

Dylan Collins: I think is good. Dylan Collins: I, I think it, yeah, I I've, I have

41:44

Dylan Collins: complicated, I have a complicated

41:47

Dylan Collins: relationship with advertising, um, in that,

41:50

Dylan Collins: like, we've built quite successful Dylan Collins: businesses around it, but I also believe

41:54

Dylan Collins: that the attention economy has probably

41:57

Dylan Collins: destroyed the internet, and if I could go Dylan Collins: back in time and change one thing, it would

41:59

Dylan Collins: probably be that. Dylan Collins: So, but so, yes, I, I, I, I do kind of

42:04

Dylan Collins: agree about that, I think. Dylan Collins: I think advertising is a terrible business

42:11

Dylan Collins: model for content consumption for humanity.

42:15

Gary Fox: Um, it's your incentives again, god. Gary Fox: It's like a monger fan club, but like, show

42:19

Gary Fox: me your incentives, I'll show you your Gary Fox: outcome. Gary Fox: Absolutely, it's true.

42:22

Gary Fox: Like across and like you, I read a lot of

42:24

Gary Fox: psychology, mainly to understand my own Gary Fox: brain, which then helps me understand

42:27

Gary Fox: others, because you don't understand Gary Fox: yourself, you never understand anyone else.

42:31

Gary Fox: It's true, though what you're incentivized

42:34

Gary Fox: by will determine how you act, both in the

42:37

Gary Fox: short term and the long term. Gary Fox: You seek short-term monetary gain.

42:41

Gary Fox: People tend to take shortcuts sometimes, Gary Fox: which doesn't necessarily have the best

42:45

Gary Fox: overall outcome for humanity. Dylan Collins: Yeah, I think that's totally true.

42:50

Dylan Collins: I mean, it's why I'm actually like I'm very

42:53

Dylan Collins: pleased to see the rise of newsletter

42:56

Dylan Collins: commerce and I think like I pay for a bunch

43:02

Dylan Collins: of newsletters. Dylan Collins: I'm sure do, I'm sure everyone listening Dylan Collins: goes right and and and it's cool.

43:05

Dylan Collins: What are your favorites? Gary Fox: I mean recommendations the.

43:09

Dylan Collins: Uh, I have to pull out my phone, um, but

43:12

Dylan Collins: like I subscribe to, like some ancient

43:15

Dylan Collins: history, I mean, the thing is like you let

43:18

Dylan Collins: your nerd out, it's fine you're hoping for Dylan Collins: a business answer and it's like dude, I'm

43:22

Dylan Collins: going to be like restaurant. Gary Fox: No, because this is the complexity right.

43:26

Gary Fox: I actually think we can get too obsessed by

43:29

Gary Fox: these things. Gary Fox: We can get too obsessed by reading,

43:31

Gary Fox: consuming content all the time. Gary Fox: It's funny. Gary Fox: People always ask me like what other

43:34

Gary Fox: podcast do you listen to? Gary Fox: I'm like I'll give you a list, but

43:37

Gary Fox: generally like random stuff, like some

43:40

Gary Fox: history, but like sport, I like to tune out.

43:42

Gary Fox: I'll listen to like man united podcast of

43:45

Gary Fox: like 59 minutes about why they got Gary Fox: absolutely wild this week again.

43:49

Gary Fox: I consume a eclectic mix like I will read

43:52

Gary Fox: all like this morning I was reading a Gary Fox: parenting book like I think the best, the

43:57

Gary Fox: most interesting people I know are Gary Fox: interested, be interesting and be

44:00

Gary Fox: interested. Gary Fox: That's how I think about like myself, like

44:03

Gary Fox: be, interested in others and be an Gary Fox: interesting person, and you do that by

44:07

Gary Fox: having breath. Dylan Collins: Yeah, I yeah look, I think each their own.

44:10

Dylan Collins: I just try and be interested in other Dylan Collins: people as much as I can.

44:12

Dylan Collins: I mean like I, you know I subscribe to, Dylan Collins: like for for food writing vittles.

44:16

Dylan Collins: You know which is jonathan nunn? Dylan Collins: Uh, who's?

44:19

Dylan Collins: Who's a London based, excellent London

44:21

Dylan Collins: based food writer for history. Dylan Collins: I subscribe to.

44:24

Dylan Collins: To razib Khan uh, I just signed up to to

44:27

Dylan Collins: Taylor Lorenza's um new, so Taylor's,

44:31

Dylan Collins: taylor Lorenza, taylor Lorenz and she's a

44:34

Dylan Collins: very interesting reporter, mostly on sort

44:37

Dylan Collins: of the creator economy um, what's the new?

44:40

Gary Fox: Do you know what the newsletter is called? Gary Fox: I forgot, taylor.

44:43

Gary Fox: You'll search for it. Gary Fox: I'll find her. Dylan Collins: Okay, You'll find it.

44:48

Dylan Collins: I mean well, the currency isn't newsletter,

44:50

Dylan Collins: but I also subscribe to that. Dylan Collins: I sort of almost categorize it sort of

44:54

Dylan Collins: within that there's a rap newsletter I a.

44:59

Dylan Collins: I mean there's a. Dylan Collins: There's a rap newsletter I subscribe to.

45:03

Gary Fox: A what now? Dylan Collins: A rap sort of a well it's more sort of a

45:07

Dylan Collins: Patreon. Gary Fox: You are really an eclectic character, rap.

45:11

Dylan Collins: Well, I started by I mean so much of what I Dylan Collins: I mean a lot of people joke that so much of

45:15

Dylan Collins: what I do. Dylan Collins: I was a terrible rap DJ and sort of that

45:18

Dylan Collins: career didn't go anywhere. Gary Fox: Oh, now we're getting into it.

45:21

Gary Fox: Now we're going somewhere. Gary Fox: Fun Rap DJ.

45:24

Dylan Collins: I used to be a hip hop DJ, like I mean back

45:27

Dylan Collins: when pirate radio was a thing. Dylan Collins: I played on pirate stations in Dublin.

45:30

Dylan Collins: Did you have a name? Gary Fox: Yes, going to tell us no.

45:33

Dylan Collins: You can Google and you can probably find it.

45:47

Dylan Collins: Actually I, you can probably find it. Dylan Collins: Um, actually I don't know. Dylan Collins: I haven't tried that, so I'm not sure.

45:49

Gary Fox: Rapidly sweating checking google to see if Gary Fox: people are uh, finding it. Gary Fox: No, no, no, I mean hip-hop and rap is my

45:51

Gary Fox: thing. Gary Fox: I absolutely love it like it's, it's um. Gary Fox: I think there'd be a lot of people Gary Fox: listening would have known that about you. Gary Fox: So there you go.

45:53

Dylan Collins: I don't know, I think I think anyone who's

45:56

Dylan Collins: worked with me knows it because all of our Dylan Collins: project, when we're looking at like

46:00

Dylan Collins: investments or acquisitions or doing Dylan Collins: anything, I always insist on code names

46:04

Dylan Collins: because it's important and people like leak

46:06

Dylan Collins: information accidentally.

46:10

Dylan Collins: But you will always know a project I'm Dylan Collins: involved with because it will have like a

46:14

Dylan Collins: rap album name as its code name.

46:17

Gary Fox: Give me some of the ones that are expired.

46:20

Gary Fox: You don't have to give us current top Gary Fox: secret ones. Dylan Collins: Well, you don't know what they are, but I

46:23

Dylan Collins: mean there was a very big project like in

46:26

Dylan Collins: Epic Games at one point that was called Dylan Collins: Project Illmatic, for example.

46:29

Dylan Collins: Illmatic yeah, it's the first Nas album. Dylan Collins: Okay, I love this.

46:35

Dylan Collins: Now we're really getting.

46:38

Dylan Collins: I wanted to reference Scary Era in a

46:40

Dylan Collins: codename but no one could pronounce it

46:42

Dylan Collins: because I was dealing with too many Dylan Collins: Americans. Dylan Collins: Scary Era was one of the classic Irish rap

46:46

Dylan Collins: groups Reraw and DJ Mech.

46:51

Dylan Collins: They were assigned to Island Records, I Dylan Collins: think in the 90s.

46:54

Dylan Collins: You should look them up. Gary Fox: They're very good, I love that they're the

46:56

Gary Fox: little things that make life fun, right Gary Fox: having a bit of crack in your day-to-day

47:01

Gary Fox: going yeah, we're going to have like code

47:03

Gary Fox: names and it's going to be like about rap Gary Fox: albums well, it's always amazing when

47:06

Gary Fox: people ask us so where did this code name Gary Fox: come from?

47:08

Dylan Collins: and you just sort of describe it and just Dylan Collins: the room goes quiet because no one really

47:12

Dylan Collins: knows what to say, and particularly in some

47:15

Dylan Collins: of the circles I move that are a little bit

47:17

Dylan Collins: more polished than me perhaps. Gary Fox: So bring me back to your own journey, right?

47:21

Gary Fox: Because I think people will be familiar Gary Fox: with Demonware.

47:24

Gary Fox: You built that up and then you sold.

47:27

Gary Fox: You said earlier you kind of referenced Gary Fox: maybe selling too early, but what was the

47:31

Gary Fox: process around selling that? Gary Fox: Because I'm interested to get your ideas

47:34

Gary Fox: and your insights around, kind of like Gary Fox: founder selling companies.

47:38

Dylan Collins: Oh, I have lots of thoughts on that. Dylan Collins: Well, I mean, I suppose let me just take a

47:43

Dylan Collins: run through all of them so you've got the Dylan Collins: context. Dylan Collins: But like that was acquired by Activision

47:48

Dylan Collins: Blizzard and it became essentially the Call

47:52

Dylan Collins: of Duty backbone. Gary Fox: Amazing.

47:56

Dylan Collins: And that company last year celebrated 20

48:01

Dylan Collins: years because they sent me a nice poster. Dylan Collins: It was just amazing.

48:05

Dylan Collins: Just a poster, yeah, nothing else. Dylan Collins: Well, they sent me something earlier on as

48:09

Dylan Collins: well A Lamborghini.

48:14

Dylan Collins: It was kind of amazing that for a software

48:16

Dylan Collins: company to be in business for 20 years and Dylan Collins: also for an acquired acquired business,

48:21

Dylan Collins: okay, to be around for 20 years, is Dylan Collins: absolutely remarkable judy, though, is an

48:24

Dylan Collins: epic franchise. Gary Fox: I'm a call of duty gamer.

48:27

Dylan Collins: I love it and then warzone and everything

48:29

Dylan Collins: else. Dylan Collins: Yeah, no, the team morrison's my switch off.

48:31

Dylan Collins: That's how I switch off. Dylan Collins: Yeah, that's how I, if I I mean I'm still

48:34

Dylan Collins: more fortnight for kind of obvious reasons. Dylan Collins: But yeah, john kirk and the team did did

48:38

Dylan Collins: absolutely amazing work growing and Dylan Collins: building that in Activision.

48:43

Dylan Collins: And yeah it was a great example of an Dylan Collins: excellent acquisition, where they invested

48:47

Dylan Collins: in it and really added a tremendous amount

48:50

Dylan Collins: of value. Dylan Collins: And two separate former Activision CFOs

48:57

Dylan Collins: have told me the internal valuation of it

49:00

Dylan Collins: and um laughed at what we sold it for

49:04

Dylan Collins: versus what they now value it at oh like Dylan Collins: okay, um, context is everything, though At

49:08

Dylan Collins: the time I'm sure that was all the money in Dylan Collins: the world to you.

49:11

Dylan Collins: Oh for sure, Um, but it's. Dylan Collins: It's an you know like I think, when it

49:15

Dylan Collins: comes to sort of selling, companies are

49:17

Dylan Collins: being acquired like there are so many

49:20

Dylan Collins: considerations that go into it and I am a

49:23

Dylan Collins: believer in sort of like, you know, pricing

49:27

Dylan Collins: maximums where you are local maximums, in

49:29

Dylan Collins: pricing right when you can. Dylan Collins: You know what does that mean as in like you

49:33

Dylan Collins: know, sometimes you will be in a little Dylan Collins: micro bubble within a bubble, you know, and

49:37

Dylan Collins: people are over pricing things. Dylan Collins: You know and and you have to, you have to

49:42

Dylan Collins: be able to have a grownup conversation with Dylan Collins: investors and say, look, we think we're

49:45

Dylan Collins: being priced probably two or three years Dylan Collins: ahead of where we are right now.

49:47

Dylan Collins: Like, you know, if we don't take this, we

49:50

Dylan Collins: don't need to take this because our balance Dylan Collins: sheet might be good, but this probably

49:53

Dylan Collins: means that we are going to be here for Dylan Collins: another six years or seven years or eight

49:56

Dylan Collins: years and, um, seven years or eight years,

50:04

Dylan Collins: right and um, it's. Dylan Collins: You know those are, those are tricky Dylan Collins: conversations, you know, especially when

50:06

Dylan Collins: you're because, again, you're, you're sort Dylan Collins: of like I always laugh when investors say

50:12

Dylan Collins: you know, kind of casually say, oh, we'll

50:14

Dylan Collins: just sell this company. Dylan Collins: It's like I, just it's like that anyone who

50:18

Dylan Collins: says that doesn't know what they're doing Dylan Collins: or hasn't done a huge amount of it.

50:22

Dylan Collins: Because you don't just sell a company Like

50:25

Dylan Collins: the, if you're in a fund and you're

50:27

Dylan Collins: investing, like the duration of your fund

50:33

Dylan Collins: is absolutely no bearing on the optimal

50:35

Dylan Collins: time to sell that company, because that is

50:38

Dylan Collins: predicated on, like what's going on in the

50:40

Dylan Collins: market. Dylan Collins: It's what it's, it's what you know, what um

50:44

Dylan Collins: strategics are doing, and like a timeline

50:47

Dylan Collins: for a strategic buyer, like you know it's a Dylan Collins: big software company, big tech company,

50:50

Dylan Collins: whatever right like their timeline is

50:52

Dylan Collins: wholly independent and unrelated to what

50:55

Dylan Collins: you're doing, right, and that like, at some

50:58

Dylan Collins: point that will be there and at some point Dylan Collins: that won't be there. Dylan Collins: And I mean, you know you can argue around

51:03

Dylan Collins: sort of the entire spectrum of this stuff. Dylan Collins: But like I am a believer in, like you know,

51:09

Dylan Collins: not necessarily being able to choose the

51:11

Dylan Collins: optimal time to sell. Dylan Collins: You know sometimes you get lucky on that

51:16

Dylan Collins: and sometimes it sort of is around where,

51:19

Dylan Collins: like you know, an amount of money has gone

51:21

Dylan Collins: in and it's not too much and it's not too Dylan Collins: little, and it's gotten you to a certain

51:24

Dylan Collins: scale, et cetera, et cetera. Dylan Collins: But I think you know in general, I think,

51:28

Dylan Collins: investors certainly the more recent

51:31

Dylan Collins: generation of venture investors have to get

51:36

Dylan Collins: much more aggressive, much more hands-on, Dylan Collins: much more creative in how they are

51:40

Dylan Collins: returning capital. Dylan Collins: You know, and that means you've got to have

51:44

Dylan Collins: and I think you can have that now, like Dylan Collins: when you know, these days, when I talk to

51:48

Dylan Collins: venture investors and you're talking about Dylan Collins: exits and selling companies, you know, no

51:52

Dylan Collins: one is getting weird about those words

51:55

Dylan Collins: being used in a room, whereas you go back Dylan Collins: to 2018 and 2019, you know, and you're in a

51:58

Dylan Collins: room with VC and you're talking about, you Dylan Collins: know, money and you're sort of saying, well,

52:01

Dylan Collins: shall we talk about where the exit's going Dylan Collins: to come from? Dylan Collins: And they're like, oh well, we don't really

52:05

Dylan Collins: want to talk about that too much. Dylan Collins: You know, blue sky, just keep going, keep

52:07

Dylan Collins: going, keep going. Dylan Collins: Why we're going to come in and sell this

52:22

Dylan Collins: out for monday, because I know there's a Dylan Collins: wave of that. Dylan Collins: I read um the power law recently. Dylan Collins: Yeah, sure, sure, such a good book, yeah

52:24

Dylan Collins: that's great. Gary Fox: It's a really good book. Gary Fox: One of my, one of my founder Gary Fox: recommendations, yeah, really helped me Gary Fox: kind of understand investing a lot more,

52:27

Gary Fox: especially, if you see investing, um, and

52:30

Gary Fox: there was a wave of like, you know, Gary Fox: companies again bought, broken apart, sold,

52:34

Gary Fox: and then there was like the reverse wave Gary Fox: when founders were empowered, you know.

52:38

Gary Fox: You know they were like empowered to go Gary Fox: because it was kind of the the hero founder

52:42

Gary Fox: era. Gary Fox: Yeah, was that why they were afraid to kind

52:46

Gary Fox: of like be seen as like the big bad vc wolf

52:49

Gary Fox: yeah, I think there's a little bit of that Gary Fox: and and uh, you know there is a I.

52:56

Dylan Collins: I think you got to separate out, like what

52:58

Dylan Collins: the companies were doing and the funds

53:01

Dylan Collins: trying to convince founders to take money, Dylan Collins: versus, like, the business of building a

53:06

Dylan Collins: fund. Dylan Collins: You know, you got to bear in mind that,

53:08

Dylan Collins: like, when you're a fund and you're Dylan Collins: investing, like to one degree or one level,

53:12

Dylan Collins: you are trying to sell to founders hey, Dylan Collins: take my money but on the other hand, you're

53:16

Dylan Collins: also trying to sell to your LPs, to your Dylan Collins: investors.

53:19

Dylan Collins: It's like, hey, give me some more money. Dylan Collins: Other hand, you're also trying to sell to

53:21

Dylan Collins: your lps, to your investors. Dylan Collins: It's like, hey, give me some more money. Dylan Collins: You know, so you're really trying to, like,

53:23

Dylan Collins: serve two masters and at some point, that Dylan Collins: starts to diverge.

53:27

Dylan Collins: Um, so I think, like you know, if you're in Dylan Collins: the, if you want to be in the long-term

53:30

Dylan Collins: business of running a fund, you have got to

53:32

Dylan Collins: raise more funds because you have to Dylan Collins: increase your assets under management so

53:36

Dylan Collins: that you can generate more fees, so you can Dylan Collins: can do more things, et cetera.

53:38

Dylan Collins: Right, so you have to be able to show

53:41

Dylan Collins: markups as in, like you've got to be able

53:44

Dylan Collins: to show your portfolio increasing in value, Dylan Collins: which means you've got to get into the

53:47

Dylan Collins: important deals, which means you've got to Dylan Collins: be nice to founders, which means you've got

53:50

Dylan Collins: to make founders feel that you're Dylan Collins: non-hostile, non-threatening, you know.

53:54

Dylan Collins: So I think all of that like was Did it go

53:56

Dylan Collins: too far, though? Gary Fox: Did it go too fuzzy friendly?

54:00

Gary Fox: Did it go too far? Dylan Collins: I don't know, it's hard to generalize.

54:04

Dylan Collins: I mean, yeah, sure, at the extremes, yeah, Dylan Collins: of course, like, and we work and everything

54:08

Dylan Collins: else Right, but like it's, I do think that,

54:11

Dylan Collins: like in general, um, venture capital has

54:17

Dylan Collins: got not enough people who have got

54:22

Dylan Collins: experience returning money to investors,

54:26

Dylan Collins: not enough experience selling companies. Dylan Collins: Now I do think that is changing.

54:29

Dylan Collins: Like and and again, this is not me sort of

54:31

Dylan Collins: shitting on the VC class Like there are Dylan Collins: some very good investors out there, like um,

54:37

Dylan Collins: and, but there are a lot of other investors

54:39

Dylan Collins: that are not good, and that's true in any Dylan Collins: asset class, right.

54:42

Dylan Collins: But I think I think the challenge in vc is

54:44

Dylan Collins: that, like you know, it has probably been

54:49

Dylan Collins: one of the great mark business marketing

54:51

Dylan Collins: success stories of the last 20 years, right,

54:54

Dylan Collins: like you know, vc, sort of convincing the

54:57

Dylan Collins: world that it exists as a thing and that

55:00

Dylan Collins: you should be part of that ecosystem, and Dylan Collins: it's it's sort of the the world that it Dylan Collins: exists as a thing and that you should be Dylan Collins: part of that ecosystem, and it's it's sort

55:03

Dylan Collins: of the startup industrial complex, right,

55:06

Dylan Collins: and and and, like you know, if you're

55:08

Dylan Collins: building a thing like I, I'm still

55:10

Dylan Collins: surprised that I, that I, I get Dylan Collins: conversations from from, from founders like

55:14

Dylan Collins: younger founders today, and they're like Dylan Collins: well, I need some money.

55:17

Dylan Collins: Therefore, I'm going to go and talk to some Dylan Collins: vCs and I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,

55:20

Dylan Collins: whoa, whoa, whoa, like one, why do you need

55:23

Dylan Collins: money? Dylan Collins: Two, like you know, do you understand, like

55:26

Dylan Collins: VC models, do you understand their Dylan Collins: economics, do you understand what their

55:29

Dylan Collins: returns need to be? Dylan Collins: And I think, like it has, it has been in

55:36

Dylan Collins: many respects too successful for its own Dylan Collins: good, as in the marketing of the space,

55:39

Dylan Collins: because everyone thinks you need to go Dylan Collins: there and tick that box. Gary Fox: I was just going to say that to you.

55:42

Gary Fox: You've given me two gems there. Gary Fox: The startup industrial complex I'm robbing

55:45

Gary Fox: that. Gary Fox: You'll hear that come out of my mouth loads Gary Fox: of times now.

55:48

Gary Fox: But then the marketing of VC that's a

55:50

Gary Fox: really interesting point. Gary Fox: They became the default solution.

55:54

Gary Fox: Startups need money. Gary Fox: Vc Startups need money. Gary Fox: Vc Like bootstrapping fell out of fashion.

55:59

Gary Fox: You know, angels fell out of fashion. Gary Fox: Getting loans fell out of fashion.

56:03

Gary Fox: It was always the VC. Gary Fox: So where do we sit now?

56:06

Gary Fox: Because there's been, obviously, we had the Gary Fox: hype cycle of 2020 to 22.

56:11

Gary Fox: And then now it's been a real cooling off Gary Fox: period. Dylan Collins: So where do we sit in 2024 with this?

56:18

Dylan Collins: Well, I think it's really interesting.

56:21

Dylan Collins: I think that at a founder level, like you

56:24

Dylan Collins: know, I get into lots of conversations with

56:33

Dylan Collins: founders who are starting their first thing Dylan Collins: or second thing and their attitude is like, Dylan Collins: well, I'm going to bootstrap it, which

56:35

Dylan Collins: means either I'm just going to sort of try Dylan Collins: and do this purely through revenue or I'm

56:40

Dylan Collins: only going to take one check, one round and

56:43

Dylan Collins: I'm not sort of planning on making this Dylan Collins: sort of a daisy chain of of financings in

56:47

Dylan Collins: terms of, like you know, pre-seed seed Dylan Collins: series A, et cetera, et cetera.

56:51

Dylan Collins: Um, and that's kind of their attitude.

56:53

Dylan Collins: I wouldn't say it's like an anti, an anti

56:56

Dylan Collins: VC attitude, but like it's definitely being

56:59

Dylan Collins: more mindful about what capital is going in.

57:02

Dylan Collins: I think. Dylan Collins: Second, third time, repeat founders, like

57:06

Dylan Collins: you know again, generalizations, but like I

57:08

Dylan Collins: think a lot of them get a lot more Dylan Collins: comfortable in using debt, you know where

57:12

Dylan Collins: they can. Dylan Collins: I think you're seeing a lot of people

57:14

Dylan Collins: thinking about roll-ups and sort of M&A and

57:16

Dylan Collins: structured stuff in terms of how to build Dylan Collins: and how to scale, and I think that's very

57:22

Dylan Collins: healthy right. Dylan Collins: Like you know, there are lots of different

57:25

Dylan Collins: ways to sort of build and construct Dylan Collins: companies and I think having a little bit

57:28

Dylan Collins: more like of a I mean, I've always sort of

57:31

Dylan Collins: felt myself as having kind of a private Dylan Collins: equity mindset and a VC ecosystem and I

57:36

Dylan Collins: think having a little bit more of that is Dylan Collins: probably good because, at the end of the

57:40

Dylan Collins: day, if you are taking money from people,

57:43

Dylan Collins: you know sometimes everyone forgets that

57:45

Dylan Collins: you have got to return it. Dylan Collins: You know, with a kind of a comm, how

57:49

Dylan Collins: founders think about building. Dylan Collins: And I think on the investor side, like you

58:04

Dylan Collins: are definitely seeing, um, you know some

58:08

Dylan Collins: VCs start to think, um, you know much more

58:13

Dylan Collins: creatively about how they're scaling. Dylan Collins: So, um, you know Molson Ventures actually

58:18

Dylan Collins: today or yesterday just announced they'd Dylan Collins: acquired another fund.

58:21

Dylan Collins: You know they've been. Dylan Collins: It's their stated strategy.

58:23

Dylan Collins: They buy secondary portfolios. Dylan Collins: So they're basically buying portfolios from

58:27

Dylan Collins: other VCs. Dylan Collins: You can almost kind of think of them as

58:30

Dylan Collins: like a VC fund roll up and that's really

58:33

Dylan Collins: interesting because you know you'll have Dylan Collins: all of these VCs and they're sitting on a

58:37

Dylan Collins: portfolio of stakes and the companies

58:40

Dylan Collins: aren't getting acquired but they still have

58:42

Dylan Collins: to figure out how to return money, you know, Dylan Collins: to their investors.

58:45

Dylan Collins: So when you've got a player in the market Dylan Collins: who's saying, okay, well, we're going to

58:48

Dylan Collins: buy your portfolio that returns money to

58:50

Dylan Collins: those investors that fund can then go and

58:52

Dylan Collins: raise another fund that puts more money Dylan Collins: into the ecosystem, like I think that's

58:56

Dylan Collins: super interesting to see.

58:59

Dylan Collins: But I also think you're seeing, like you

59:01

Dylan Collins: know, a lot of or certainly much, far more

59:04

Dylan Collins: and definitely more in Europe serial

59:08

Dylan Collins: founders, repeat founders, who are putting

59:10

Dylan Collins: together like SPVs and syndicates of angel

59:13

Dylan Collins: investors to go and do rounds and lead

59:16

Dylan Collins: rounds. Dylan Collins: I mean, this has been going on in the US, Dylan Collins: obviously, for years and it's been going on

59:19

Dylan Collins: in Europe for a bit, but you're seeing it, Dylan Collins: or at least I'm seeing it, more and more,

59:24

Dylan Collins: and in several cases you're seeing Dylan Collins: companies that are turning down a VC term

59:29

Dylan Collins: sheet because they would prefer to take a Dylan Collins: syndicate of useful angels.

59:34

Dylan Collins: So I think that there's a shortening of the

59:38

Dylan Collins: distance between founders and capital that

59:41

Dylan Collins: has come out from all of this because, you

59:44

Dylan Collins: know, founders are getting a bit more Dylan Collins: capital, sophisticated, I would say on

59:48

Dylan Collins: average, and I think you know, five years

59:50

Dylan Collins: time I would expect, you know, the VC

59:53

Dylan Collins: market to probably look a lot more

59:55

Dylan Collins: consolidated and I would expect some of

59:57

Dylan Collins: them to sort of look a little bit more like

1:00:00

Dylan Collins: private equity and getting a little bit

1:00:02

Dylan Collins: more creative in terms of what they're Dylan Collins: doing. Dylan Collins: I would also expect there to be a lot more

1:00:05

Dylan Collins: debt floating around. Dylan Collins: You know I think everyone like um, you know

1:00:11

Dylan Collins: venture debt has been like has quite an

1:00:13

Dylan Collins: interesting history, you know, and and you

1:00:16

Dylan Collins: know we took a lot of it or took a chunk of

1:00:18

Dylan Collins: it at least in in super awesome and it

1:00:20

Dylan Collins: makes a lot of sense. Dylan Collins: Anyone who's an equity investor kind of

1:00:28

Dylan Collins: doesn't like it for the obvious reasons, Dylan Collins: but I do think you're going to see more of

1:00:31

Dylan Collins: that over time. Dylan Collins: So I think we're going to come out of this Dylan Collins: decade in general with a much healthier

1:00:36

Dylan Collins: sort of company building, company investing

1:00:39

Dylan Collins: ecosystem. Dylan Collins: Probably not without a bunch more pain

1:00:41

Dylan Collins: along the way, but I think you you actually

1:00:43

Dylan Collins: end up with with with more kind of robust

1:00:47

Dylan Collins: um companies and and probably higher Dylan Collins: quality investors.

1:00:50

Dylan Collins: Now I think it'll take the rest of the Dylan Collins: decade, though so take me back then to

1:00:53

Dylan Collins: super awesome. Gary Fox: What a name the exit demonware.

1:00:56

Gary Fox: The exit demonware.

1:00:59

Dylan Collins: Yep. Dylan Collins: What happens then? Dylan Collins: Left demonware, well, left Activision.

1:01:06

Dylan Collins: So you were bought and you stayed for a wee Dylan Collins: bit, stayed for a bit, was very impatient,

1:01:11

Dylan Collins: felt a burning need to start a new thing. Dylan Collins: At the time this was like 2007, 08, I guess

1:01:23

Dylan Collins: Social gaming was starting to become a Dylan Collins: thing. Dylan Collins: So you had like Zynga and companies like

1:01:27

Dylan Collins: that, and so, um, uh, I started a uh, that

1:01:32

Dylan Collins: was the only company I started as a solo Dylan Collins: founder uh, um, games publisher called jolt,

1:01:39

Dylan Collins: and we licensed ip and and and built social

1:01:43

Dylan Collins: games, um, social games and browser games.

1:01:47

Dylan Collins: Um, what? Gary Fox: what does that mean for anyone not familiar?

1:01:49

Dylan Collins: I'm sure it was like I mean everyone Dylan Collins: probably knows the names if you say them

1:01:52

Dylan Collins: yeah, I mean we, we licensed uh, made games

1:01:55

Dylan Collins: like zork and we made uh, I think um

1:01:58

Dylan Collins: playboyboy Manager and a bunch of other

1:02:01

Dylan Collins: ones. Dylan Collins: The Playboy game was quite amusing. Gary Fox: I thought you said it.

1:02:05

Gary Fox: I was like maybe it means football manager. Gary Fox: No, no, no it was Playboy Manager.

1:02:08

Dylan Collins: We licensed the IP from Playboy, which led

1:02:12

Dylan Collins: to some very amusing conversations, and

1:02:16

Dylan Collins: that company ended up getting acquired by Dylan Collins: GameStop who.

1:02:19

Dylan Collins: This was around 09, I think, oh, wow, 10,

1:02:23

Dylan Collins: because that was when GameStop who.

1:02:26

Dylan Collins: This was kind of pre-meme GameStop.

1:02:30

Gary Fox: I watched that movie a few days ago. Gary Fox: It was come back in a ferry and they had.

1:02:34

Gary Fox: I was like I've been meaning to watch this Gary Fox: for ages. Dylan Collins: It was brilliant.

1:02:36

Dylan Collins: It's amazing. Dylan Collins: But if you can imagine like 10 years before

1:02:39

Dylan Collins: that, when they were like probably peak

1:02:42

Dylan Collins: retail yeah, so they had probably about Dylan Collins: four and a half thousand stores in the us

1:02:46

Dylan Collins: they were like it was kind of peak like

1:02:49

Dylan Collins: physical console gaming I used to love it Dylan Collins: going in to get the new football manager or

1:02:53

Dylan Collins: getting in to get the new, like call of Dylan Collins: duty, oh it was huge.

1:02:56

Gary Fox: Yeah, the the have you interviewed kevin Gary Fox: neary? Dylan Collins: Oh, you should interview Kevin.

1:03:01

Dylan Collins: He ran a games retail chain in Ireland Dylan Collins: called Games World.

1:03:04

Gary Fox: Oh yeah, and he was acquired by GameStop. Dylan Collins: But, interesting fact, kevin was one of the

1:03:10

Dylan Collins: first angel investors in Demonware and in

1:03:13

Dylan Collins: Jolt. Dylan Collins: Okay, so you should talk to Kevin.

1:03:16

Gary Fox: Okay, we'll set that up, he's good should Gary Fox: talk to kevin. Dylan Collins: Okay, we'll set that up. Dylan Collins: He's good.

1:03:18

Dylan Collins: Um uh. Dylan Collins: So that that was when, um gamestop were

1:03:28

Dylan Collins: trying to shift from not shift, but trying Dylan Collins: to figure out, like okay, we've got this Dylan Collins: amazing physical retail business, what do

1:03:31

Dylan Collins: we do about the internet? Gary Fox: so let's not become an extra vision yeah

1:03:34

Gary Fox: and um. Dylan Collins: So they acquired us to to try and kick off

1:03:38

Dylan Collins: that strategy and they ended up buying four

1:03:43

Dylan Collins: or five, six other companies. Dylan Collins: I would say in general, it was not a

1:03:49

Dylan Collins: success because they were in that classic

1:03:54

Dylan Collins: sort of corporate crossing the chasm

1:03:56

Dylan Collins: challenge where they were, like you know

1:03:59

Dylan Collins: know, they felt that anything they were Dylan Collins: investing in on the digital side was

1:04:03

Dylan Collins: cannibalizing their physical business and

1:04:06

Dylan Collins: at any one point, like right, a huge chunk

1:04:09

Dylan Collins: of their their outstanding shares was was

1:04:11

Dylan Collins: being shorted by the market. Dylan Collins: So everyone was basically betting that the

1:04:14

Dylan Collins: share price was going to go down, which Dylan Collins: meant that, like you know, every quarterly

1:04:18

Dylan Collins: earnings was just like you, you know,

1:04:20

Dylan Collins: running through a minefield. Dylan Collins: So you sold two.

1:04:24

Gary Fox: You sold two companies. Gary Fox: How close to each other did you sell them?

1:04:30

Gary Fox: That was probably within three years. Gary Fox: What was different the second time?

1:04:34

Dylan Collins: Um what was different Did you?

1:04:39

Gary Fox: approach it differently. Gary Fox: I'm always curious about serial founders.

1:04:43

Gary Fox: I love kind of try to tease out like I hate

1:04:46

Gary Fox: asking that cliche question. Gary Fox: If you knew now what you knew, then Because

1:04:49

Gary Fox: I think it just leads to cliched answers. Dylan Collins: I think that has emerged over time with my

1:04:56

Dylan Collins: experiences on this. Dylan Collins: Because I mean, if you look at sort of

1:04:59

Dylan Collins: Demonware and Jolt and Super Awesome on Dylan Collins: this, because I mean, if you look at, if

1:05:02

Dylan Collins: you look at sort of demonware and jolt and Dylan Collins: super awesome, but then also potato, where

1:05:04

Dylan Collins: I was um chairman, sort of more executive

1:05:07

Dylan Collins: chairman on that with with the two founders. Dylan Collins: That was um marketing services agency in

1:05:12

Dylan Collins: london which, uh, wpp acquired um, I was

1:05:16

Dylan Collins: sort of doing that in my spare time. Dylan Collins: But if you look at that sort of data set,

1:05:25

Dylan Collins: like a lot of it this is also not a

1:05:29

Dylan Collins: surprise comes down to relationships and

1:05:32

Dylan Collins: chemistry. Dylan Collins: Like it's very rare, even in all the things

1:05:39

Dylan Collins: that I've seen sort of tangentially or from

1:05:41

Dylan Collins: a distance, like that deals get done

1:05:44

Dylan Collins: without some kind of pre-existing chemistry

1:05:46

Dylan Collins: between the principles. Dylan Collins: And one of the things I like when I people

1:05:51

Dylan Collins: sometimes ping me and they're at a certain Dylan Collins: stage in the company and they're like, hey,

1:05:54

Dylan Collins: like you know, we're thinking about maybe Dylan Collins: selling it or we've had some inbound, or

1:05:57

Dylan Collins: like what do we do? Dylan Collins: And I'm like, okay, have you gone and made

1:06:00

Dylan Collins: a list of all the people who might buy you? Dylan Collins: And they're like, well, kind of yeah, I'm

1:06:04

Dylan Collins: like, okay, cool, um, do you know, like who

1:06:07

Dylan Collins: the key people that are? Dylan Collins: Do you know the ceos in there? Dylan Collins: Have you got relationship?

1:06:10

Dylan Collins: You founders, um, whoever they are like,

1:06:13

Dylan Collins: have you got relationships in there? Dylan Collins: Do you know them? Dylan Collins: And most of the well, some of the time they

1:06:17

Dylan Collins: do, some of the time they they don't. Dylan Collins: But, like, usually, like I really hate

1:06:21

Dylan Collins: giving advice because so much of this is Dylan Collins: survivorship bias, but, like, one of the

1:06:24

Dylan Collins: things that I do think is really good Dylan Collins: investment is like build up a relationship

1:06:27

Dylan Collins: with all the people you think might at some Dylan Collins: point buy you Because it matters and like

1:06:33

Dylan Collins: you can have. Dylan Collins: I mean, okay, you can have an incredible

1:06:37

Dylan Collins: business that is phenomenally profitable,

1:06:39

Dylan Collins: amazing growth, and you can hire a bank to Dylan Collins: go and sell you and, okay, that will

1:06:44

Dylan Collins: probably work. Dylan Collins: But most companies are not going to be in

1:06:47

Dylan Collins: that top um decile or top sort of quintile

1:06:51

Dylan Collins: of companies. Dylan Collins: Most companies are going to be good, okay,

1:06:55

Dylan Collins: you've got a couple of potential buyers, Dylan Collins: it's you know, maybe you are lucky enough

1:07:00

Dylan Collins: to have someone saying, hey, we think we Dylan Collins: might want to buy you, like, but a lot of Dylan Collins: the time it's you know, maybe you are lucky Dylan Collins: enough to have someone saying, hey, we Dylan Collins: think we might want to buy you Like, but a

1:07:04

Dylan Collins: lot of the time it's way, messier, behind Dylan Collins: the scenes and you will take, you know,

1:07:08

Dylan Collins: multiple runs at these things. Dylan Collins: But like in all of those cases, like when,

1:07:12

Dylan Collins: when we've been acquired, like, um, it was

1:07:17

Dylan Collins: never, there was one exception, but like it

1:07:21

Dylan Collins: was never. Dylan Collins: Like someone leaning across the dinner

1:07:25

Dylan Collins: table, going, we'd like you to join the

1:07:27

Dylan Collins: family. Dylan Collins: It was always like spending time with

1:07:31

Dylan Collins: people and comparing notes on strategy and

1:07:33

Dylan Collins: then, like you know, oftentimes it's like

1:07:35

Dylan Collins: we were going out to raise investment and Dylan Collins: we're like, hey, we're going to raise to do

1:07:39

Dylan Collins: this, here's our plan, you know. Dylan Collins: You know we've got chemistry.

1:07:42

Dylan Collins: Like you know, we've got some shared values

1:07:46

Dylan Collins: and it's usually at that point like where, Dylan Collins: where something can, can, come around, but

1:07:49

Dylan Collins: but I, I, I like investing in network and

1:07:53

Dylan Collins: investing very specifically in potential

1:07:57

Dylan Collins: acquirer network, and I mean that sounds

1:07:59

Dylan Collins: like it's a little bit like unimaginative,

1:08:02

Dylan Collins: because and often you know, companies come

1:08:05

Dylan Collins: out of nowhere that you haven't thought Dylan Collins: about, but like it will usually always pay

1:08:09

Dylan Collins: some kind of dividend there's very little

1:08:12

Dylan Collins: downside, right, there's very little Dylan Collins: downside to building more quality people in

1:08:15

Dylan Collins: your network. Gary Fox: It's it's one of those bits of advice that

1:08:19

Gary Fox: you seem is quite that, seems quite logical

1:08:21

Gary Fox: and obvious, but when you actually sit down

1:08:24

Gary Fox: and think about it, it's not. Gary Fox: People won't have kind of gone okay, who

1:08:27

Gary Fox: could buy us? Gary Fox: Okay, great, do we have any relationship

1:08:30

Gary Fox: with them If they're just names on a

1:08:33

Gary Fox: spreadsheet? Dylan Collins: I mean people.

1:08:36

Dylan Collins: I think make what is often the mistake of

1:08:38

Dylan Collins: thinking they just need to know the corp Dylan Collins: dev person. Dylan Collins: It's like, no think make what is often the

1:08:42

Dylan Collins: mistake of thinking they just need to know Dylan Collins: the corp dev person. Dylan Collins: I was like no in. Dylan Collins: In most a lot of companies corp dev are

1:08:46

Dylan Collins: kind of admin, like they're lining it up,

1:08:49

Dylan Collins: they've got to find a champion internally Dylan Collins: to go and put some career risk on the line,

1:08:52

Dylan Collins: because most deals these days, like I think

1:08:55

Dylan Collins: what a lot of people don't realize is that Dylan Collins: like a lot of acquisitions equate to career

1:08:59

Dylan Collins: risk for someone on the acquiring side.

1:09:02

Dylan Collins: Like people don't think like that. Dylan Collins: You know, yeah, and you know I think in

1:09:09

Dylan Collins: GameStop, you know it was a very different

1:09:15

Dylan Collins: type of acquisition because they were sort Dylan Collins: of trying to bridge into the future.

1:09:20

Dylan Collins: Because they were sort of trying to bridge Dylan Collins: into the future, whereas in Activision they

1:09:23

Dylan Collins: already felt they were there and it was a

1:09:26

Dylan Collins: slight. Dylan Collins: You know they didn't have a technology

1:09:33

Dylan Collins: division in Activision at the time, it was Dylan Collins: all game studios and so Demonware became

1:09:38

Dylan Collins: sort of essentially the bedrock, the

1:09:41

Dylan Collins: foundation of their technology business. Dylan Collins: Well, that's a transformational acquisition.

1:09:53

Dylan Collins: It's transformational, but it's really sort Dylan Collins: of like, you know, it's adding on another

1:09:56

Dylan Collins: dimension, or it's adding on another piece Dylan Collins: to a direction you were heading in, whereas

1:09:58

Dylan Collins: with the GameStop deal, because you were Dylan Collins: trying to do something that was a different

1:10:00

Dylan Collins: business and that, fundamentally, like that Dylan Collins: was transformational, because you sort of

1:10:04

Dylan Collins: long term, you wanted to say, hey, we got Dylan Collins: to move all of this revenue all the way

1:10:07

Dylan Collins: over here and that's going to displace a Dylan Collins: whole bunch of stuff, and you were running

1:10:11

Dylan Collins: into all sorts of like politics.

1:10:14

Dylan Collins: You were running into sort of like there's Dylan Collins: vested interests.

1:10:17

Gary Fox: Oh, I mean vested it like that's the one Gary Fox: thing I think people forget, in a literal

1:10:21

Gary Fox: sense. Dylan Collins: I mean, you had their e-commerce teams that

1:10:24

Dylan Collins: were running the website, fundamentally

1:10:27

Dylan Collins: competing with their physical retail teams,

1:10:30

Dylan Collins: and they couldn't discount on the website

1:10:33

Dylan Collins: because that would undermine, obviously, Dylan Collins: physical retail, which meant that

1:10:37

Dylan Collins: e-commerce couldn't be competitive with Dylan Collins: Amazon, right?

1:10:40

Dylan Collins: And you think about, like how do you try Dylan Collins: and untangle like that sort of Gordian knot?

1:10:46

Dylan Collins: And so you know, like again, when we went

1:10:49

Dylan Collins: in there, one of the things we were Dylan Collins: pitching it's actually one of the coolest

1:10:51

Dylan Collins: things we did was we?

1:10:54

Dylan Collins: So at the time, we were doing all of our Dylan Collins: user acquisition, obviously through

1:10:57

Dylan Collins: Facebook, so we were acquiring users and Dylan Collins: spending money, and we user acquisition

1:11:01

Dylan Collins: obviously through through Facebook, so we Dylan Collins: were acquiring users and spending money.

1:11:03

Dylan Collins: And we kind of realized, well, holy shit, Dylan Collins: like GameStop had built this amazing Dylan Collins: loyalty program.

1:11:05

Dylan Collins: So when you, when you went, in and you sort Dylan Collins: of traded again, you would swipe your card

1:11:08

Dylan Collins: and it would go in. Dylan Collins: We said, well, can we connect our user

1:11:11

Dylan Collins: acquisition system to your point of sale Dylan Collins: system? Dylan Collins: And absolutely everyone told us no.

1:11:16

Dylan Collins: And we were like, well, how about yes?

1:11:19

Dylan Collins: So I remember we managed to convince our

1:11:22

Dylan Collins: management team to let us roll out an

1:11:26

Dylan Collins: integrated system into their point of sale

1:11:28

Dylan Collins: across the entire North American retail Dylan Collins: chain, where, whenever you would go in and

1:11:32

Dylan Collins: buy a game, on the physical receipt it

1:11:36

Dylan Collins: would give you a unique code which you Dylan Collins: could plug into our social games, and it

1:11:39

Dylan Collins: reduced our user acquisition costs by 75%.

1:11:42

Dylan Collins: Wow, and it was at that point where I said,

1:11:44

Dylan Collins: guys, you don't realize what you've got Dylan Collins: here. Dylan Collins: You are the world's biggest gaming social

1:11:49

Dylan Collins: network. Dylan Collins: You just haven't turned it on yet. Gary Fox: Yeah, and you have that critical

1:11:53

Gary Fox: relationship with the gamer. Dylan Collins: For sure.

1:11:57

Dylan Collins: And it was like, and it was fucking amazing

1:11:59

Dylan Collins: for a quarter no-transcript, like what the

1:12:27

Dylan Collins: counterfactual was. Dylan Collins: But I mean like the counterfactual today.

1:12:31

Dylan Collins: The counterfactual of GameStop is that

1:12:33

Dylan Collins: today, you know, it would be bigger than

1:12:36

Dylan Collins: Steam, bigger than Discord, like it would

1:12:39

Dylan Collins: be the western version of tencent, right,

1:12:46

Dylan Collins: if you look at tencent today, right, Dylan Collins: chinese media company, yeah, by far I would Dylan Collins: say, probably the most successful video

1:12:49

Dylan Collins: games investor of all time. Dylan Collins: If you, I mean literally like and no one is Dylan Collins: probably even close gamestop had that

1:12:52

Dylan Collins: opportunity to be there. Gary Fox: Like, and it's amazing how many traditional

1:12:56

Gary Fox: companies had that but couldn't, as you say,

1:12:59

Gary Fox: cross the chasm between the digital and the

1:13:01

Gary Fox: physical because that you had two different Gary Fox: warring factions.

1:13:04

Dylan Collins: I still hope I still.

1:13:07

Dylan Collins: That's why I'm quite a big fan of Smith's

1:13:09

Dylan Collins: toys, oh yeah oh, that's an unbelievable Dylan Collins: business.

1:13:11

Gary Fox: It's amazing. Gary Fox: I bring my daughter there and mainly she's

1:13:14

Gary Fox: just cover. Gary Fox: She's just cover, so I'm not wandering

1:13:17

Gary Fox: around on my own as a grown man in smiths Gary Fox: Unbelievable.

1:13:21

Dylan Collins: But I think they're in a position and

1:13:23

Dylan Collins: they've got the thinking and the Dylan Collins: sophistication where they could do

1:13:26

Dylan Collins: something very interesting, I think in

1:13:29

Dylan Collins: retail and commerce and kids and family at

1:13:31

Dylan Collins: some point in the future. Dylan Collins: But it is tough, like you know, that kind

1:13:37

Dylan Collins: of business transformation which is you're

1:13:39

Dylan Collins: just trying to do so many things and whilst

1:13:42

Dylan Collins: public it's just what did you make of that

1:13:45

Dylan Collins: whole Roaring Kitty GameStop run?

1:13:48

Gary Fox: How did you view that as an industry Gary Fox: insider?

1:13:51

Gary Fox: Because I was fascinated watching it at the Gary Fox: time.

1:13:55

Gary Fox: I was doubly fascinated reliving it. Gary Fox: Then, through what, we're watching it and

1:13:57

Gary Fox: my wife turns to me and goes why weren't Gary Fox: you involved in this?

1:14:00

Gary Fox: It's the exact kind of scheme I would love Gary Fox: to get involved in.

1:14:02

Gary Fox: I was deep in Bitcoin at the time. Gary Fox: No, were you I had enough fires to put out,

1:14:06

Gary Fox: Michelle. Gary Fox: I had enough things trying to occupy my Gary Fox: mind.

1:14:08

Dylan Collins: I mean, I think we were. Dylan Collins: This was pre, I suppose it was 2020, wasn't

1:14:16

Dylan Collins: it 2020,. Dylan Collins: We were getting acquired by Epic Games at

1:14:18

Dylan Collins: that point so I was kind of distracted, Dylan Collins: Okay, but no, lots of people pinged me and

1:14:21

Dylan Collins: they said do you still have your GameStop Dylan Collins: shares? Dylan Collins: I'm like nope, but it was the games

1:14:28

Dylan Collins: industry's general response was just sort

1:14:30

Dylan Collins: of bemusement. Gary Fox: I think that's what everybody's.

1:14:33

Dylan Collins: Yeah for sure. Dylan Collins: Right, it was kind of like this is just

1:14:36

Dylan Collins: wild, you know, and I think it was kind of

1:14:39

Dylan Collins: interesting from a, from a, um, from a Dylan Collins: capital market standpoint, which is sort of

1:14:43

Dylan Collins: one of my other hats, like in the sense Dylan Collins: that, like the, the sort of the power of

1:14:48

Dylan Collins: retail, like and everyone laughs at retail

1:14:50

Dylan Collins: behind the scenes, right, like you know, if Dylan Collins: you're selling to retail, like you know, as

1:14:54

Dylan Collins: a financial product or whatever it's like Dylan Collins: you know, what do these idiots know?

1:14:58

Dylan Collins: But the fact that they were sort of like Dylan Collins: essentially coming together and and you

1:15:03

Dylan Collins: know they felt they were dumb money is such

1:15:05

Dylan Collins: a good title it is, but they look, they,

1:15:08

Dylan Collins: they. Dylan Collins: You know I wouldn't, um, you know, don't

1:15:11

Dylan Collins: fuck with reddit, like you know, and and uh

1:15:15

Dylan Collins: it's, I think there is still a lurk.

1:15:18

Dylan Collins: Mean he's obviously come back, or allegedly

1:15:20

Dylan Collins: it was him who came back recently and

1:15:24

Dylan Collins: traded on that, made a ton of money and has Dylan Collins: since vanished.

1:15:26

Dylan Collins: Right Like I mean Matt Levine I don't know

1:15:29

Dylan Collins: if you read his newsletter. Gary Fox: No. Dylan Collins: Excellent.

1:15:32

Dylan Collins: What does he cover?

1:15:35

Dylan Collins: He's a Bloomberg newsletter writer but he

1:15:38

Dylan Collins: writes about sort of public markets and

1:15:40

Dylan Collins: things like that and he writes excellently

1:15:42

Dylan Collins: on elon musk. Dylan Collins: He writes excellently on on um, on all the

1:15:46

Dylan Collins: gamestop stuff. Dylan Collins: He has speculated about many things around

1:15:49

Dylan Collins: there, um, but I I think there is there's

1:15:52

Dylan Collins: kind of a lurking retail power there that

1:15:57

Dylan Collins: that will get reactivated from time to time

1:15:59

Dylan Collins: and obviously it took a run at Web3.

1:16:02

Dylan Collins: It's taken a run at other things, but it is

1:16:06

Dylan Collins: interesting where it comes from. Dylan Collins: Like I went through a spate recently, like

1:16:09

Dylan Collins: of being in a few Ubers and like the

1:16:11

Dylan Collins: drivers would turn around to me and they Dylan Collins: would ask, apropos, nothing like what are

1:16:14

Dylan Collins: you investing in? Dylan Collins: I'm like I was like really yeah, yeah.

1:16:22

Dylan Collins: And I'm like I was like really yeah, yeah. Dylan Collins: And and I'm like I I was like well, various Dylan Collins: things. Dylan Collins: I was like, but kind of give me some

1:16:25

Dylan Collins: context, what are you investing in? Dylan Collins: And and this was this was random, right,

1:16:27

Dylan Collins: that's always such like alert, alert, alert

1:16:30

Dylan Collins: sell everything kind of well no, no, no,

1:16:32

Dylan Collins: but it was. Dylan Collins: But they were, they were investing in, like.

1:16:34

Dylan Collins: So they were telling me different coins Dylan Collins: they were investing in and I'm like, okay,

1:16:37

Dylan Collins: it's like there's a lot of there was a lot Dylan Collins: of kind of crypto stuff, but it's.

1:16:41

Dylan Collins: And I was like, and they were like, well, Dylan Collins: what should I invest in?

1:16:43

Dylan Collins: I said, well, why don't you just go and buy

1:16:47

Dylan Collins: a really cost-effective index fund in the

1:16:49

Dylan Collins: snp, like? Dylan Collins: And they were like what's that?

1:16:51

Gary Fox: I'm like huh, so they were share.

1:16:54

Gary Fox: They were buying individual shares, were Gary Fox: they?

1:16:56

Dylan Collins: they were buying coins. Dylan Collins: They were buying coins, I mean, they were Dylan Collins: buying crypto, no, but the point was that,

1:17:00

Dylan Collins: like you have, you know, I used to sort of

1:17:04

Dylan Collins: roll my eyes a little bit when, when people Dylan Collins: would talk about, like the need for kind of

1:17:07

Dylan Collins: financial literacy and investment literacy Dylan Collins: and things like that how many people are

1:17:17

Dylan Collins: comfortable investing but don't sort of

1:17:22

Dylan Collins: have the basics on, sort of you know how

1:17:25

Dylan Collins: some of the markets work, like how sort of

1:17:28

Dylan Collins: index funds work and there's pros and cons

1:17:31

Dylan Collins: to those, and you'll hear interesting Dylan Collins: arguments around around that, but like, but

1:17:35

Dylan Collins: ultimately, I think you're getting more and Dylan Collins: more pressure, like probably post COVID and

1:17:38

Dylan Collins: post Robinhood and everything else, where Dylan Collins: people are just looking for ways to make a

1:17:42

Dylan Collins: little bit more money, and I think that's

1:17:45

Dylan Collins: actually quite healthy, um, but I just wish

1:17:49

Dylan Collins: there were more alternatives than sort of, Dylan Collins: like you know, whatever sort of buying or

1:17:53

Dylan Collins: selling options on on on GameStop or things

1:17:56

Dylan Collins: like that. Dylan Collins: Like, I do think probably in the West,

1:18:00

Dylan Collins: maybe everywhere, financial literacy, Dylan Collins: investment literacy, is really, really bad,

1:18:04

Dylan Collins: and TikTok is probably making it worse.

1:18:09

Dylan Collins: So I don't know what else to think about Dylan Collins: that, and I may well be wrong.

1:18:12

Dylan Collins: Like you know, this is why my newsletter is

1:18:16

Dylan Collins: called half-formed thoughts, not fully Dylan Collins: formed, it's like I don't know.

1:18:18

Dylan Collins: I put half of that there and just see what Dylan Collins: I hear back and I get.

1:18:21

Dylan Collins: I get smarter on that Look you and me share

1:18:23

Dylan Collins: this. Gary Fox: Like I do these experiments and I'm

1:18:25

Gary Fox: starting to get more I'm willing to put Gary Fox: myself out there a bit more.

1:18:27

Gary Fox: I think I've hidden behind guests a little Gary Fox: bit too much over the years.

1:18:30

Gary Fox: So I'm starting to do these little Gary Fox: experiments because that's how I believe

1:18:33

Gary Fox: and how I live. Gary Fox: During COVID, I did coffee to crypto every

1:18:35

Gary Fox: day. Gary Fox: I'd not buy my morning coffee, which is

1:18:43

Gary Fox: three quid, and invest in crypto. Gary Fox: Oh interesting End of the year.

1:18:46

Gary Fox: We had a couple of grand, Brilliant. Gary Fox: Just to teach myself the power of

1:18:51

Gary Fox: compounding. Gary Fox: Because it's the psychology thing you

1:18:53

Gary Fox: talked about, ronan there at the start been

1:18:55

Gary Fox: able to see into the future going. Gary Fox: I'm just going to do one company forever.

1:19:05

Dylan Collins: Very few of us have that foresight and that Dylan Collins: patience and the ability to delay the

1:19:07

Dylan Collins: gratification. Gary Fox: You know the marshmallow test. Gary Fox: Most of us leave the marshmallow. Gary Fox: Very few people can sit in the room without

1:19:09

Gary Fox: with the marshmallow and just I'm gonna Gary Fox: have that later, be nicer later.

1:19:12

Gary Fox: So I've just been teaching myself that Gary Fox: through, like reading psychology books.

1:19:16

Gary Fox: You know atomic habits, psychology and

1:19:18

Gary Fox: money, the power compounding all those Gary Fox: books I learned by doing so.

1:19:21

Gary Fox: I did the copy of crypto and then I brought Gary Fox: it back a month ago for, like the art of

1:19:25

Gary Fox: compounding, which is going to be a year, Gary Fox: I'm going to put 10 euros every single day

1:19:28

Gary Fox: into bitcoin, 10 years every single day Gary Fox: into an index fund.

1:19:31

Dylan Collins: We'll see, oh, we should do something Dylan Collins: together on this, because I, because I

1:19:34

Dylan Collins: think there's like, I think there's very

1:19:39

Dylan Collins: interesting things to think about around, Dylan Collins: like going back to my point on demographics,

1:19:43

Dylan Collins: right, and how to invest for the future, Dylan Collins: and like people talk to me about pensions

1:19:47

Dylan Collins: sometimes and they sort of ask me where to Dylan Collins: invest and like, don't ask me that because,

1:19:51

Dylan Collins: like, all I can tell you is a whole bunch Dylan Collins: of stuff I don't know.

1:19:53

Dylan Collins: But like, but when you look at sort of like Dylan Collins: how you should be investing in public

1:19:56

Dylan Collins: markets or at all, or private markets or at

1:20:00

Dylan Collins: all, or instead just sort of you know, Dylan Collins: putting much more into fixed income and

1:20:04

Dylan Collins: credit, you know like there's lots of

1:20:07

Dylan Collins: interesting questions to ask around this Dylan Collins: and, um, like, I I think it's a, it's a

1:20:13

Dylan Collins: fascinating discussion we should talk more Dylan Collins: about this, because it's yeah, because I

1:20:17

Dylan Collins: think it's like I mean, maybe you see this

1:20:20

Dylan Collins: as well, but, like you know, I have like

1:20:23

Dylan Collins: founders are, you know, existing or

1:20:25

Dylan Collins: whatever. Dylan Collins: Like a lot of the time people are kind of

1:20:28

Dylan Collins: asking like where? Gary Fox: do you? Dylan Collins: invest, because you know all people have

1:20:31

Dylan Collins: ever done is invest in their own thing a

1:20:33

Dylan Collins: lot of the time where they haven't had the Dylan Collins: time to think about it.

1:20:36

Dylan Collins: And it's like you get a lot of people

1:20:38

Dylan Collins: coming together and they're either trying Dylan Collins: to reinvent the wheel, or they're trying to

1:20:40

Dylan Collins: learn everything from scratch, or they're Dylan Collins: like where do we? Gary Fox: go next Trying to become an expert in it.

1:20:43

Gary Fox: You don't need to become an expert, you Gary Fox: just need to know enough. Gary Fox: Yeah, you can't be an expert in everything.

1:20:47

Dylan Collins: I think, look, my sort of basic outlook is

1:20:50

Dylan Collins: trying to avoid the traps, right. Gary Fox: I mean, it's the I find strange.

1:21:05

Gary Fox: Two things I find strange. Gary Fox: I'll give you the kicker about my

1:21:07

Gary Fox: experiment now in a second. Gary Fox: One thing I find strange is that people

1:21:10

Gary Fox: will do nothing and then try, leap to

1:21:13

Gary Fox: genius mode, like, try get outsmart the

1:21:17

Gary Fox: market. Gary Fox: Very few people can do that.

1:21:20

Gary Fox: Probably one in a million can outsmart the Gary Fox: market by getting really lucky.

1:21:23

Gary Fox: But we have this false illusion that we can

1:21:26

Gary Fox: outsmart the market just even though we've Gary Fox: no real experience in it.

1:21:29

Gary Fox: So I just try to do the opposite. Gary Fox: I just try to be very, very steady, very

1:21:32

Gary Fox: kind of like, just be involved. Gary Fox: Here's the kicker.

1:21:35

Gary Fox: So I said right, anyone do with me.

1:21:42

Gary Fox: Just get involved again. Gary Fox: Caveat, caveat, not financial advice. Gary Fox: Caveat don't invest. Gary Fox: You know all the usual chai.

1:21:44

Gary Fox: Just kind of cover yourself with um. Gary Fox: I said, look, if you want to get involved, Gary Fox: I'll just create a small group.

1:21:48

Gary Fox: So 50 people replied, said, yeah, love to Gary Fox: do with you.

1:21:51

Gary Fox: Wrote them an email. Gary Fox: So, right, look, it's week one, we're going

1:21:54

Gary Fox: to do it. Gary Fox: I'm going to put 50 quid into bitcoin, 50,

1:21:56

Gary Fox: or sorry, 70 quid into bitcoin, 70 quid Gary Fox: into just an index fund and um, so it's 50

1:22:01

Gary Fox: people. Gary Fox: We're week four this week, right, this week

1:22:04

Gary Fox: five just started week five. Gary Fox: How many people are still active?

1:22:08

Gary Fox: Oh, I would assume so week four, we've just

1:22:11

Gary Fox: gone into week five, and I said right, look, Gary Fox: and you had 50, 50 people originally, keep

1:22:16

Gary Fox: writing this email because I don't know if Gary Fox: anyone's really engaged.

1:22:18

Gary Fox: What I'm going to is going to move you all Gary Fox: into a WhatsApp group. Gary Fox: Anyone's still active?

1:22:22

Dylan Collins: reply to me I would say how many are?

1:22:24

Dylan Collins: Five out of 50? Dylan Collins: I would say a third.

1:22:27

Dylan Collins: So like what? Dylan Collins: Somewhere less than 20. Dylan Collins: Five.

1:22:32

Gary Fox: I was shocked. Gary Fox: 10%. Gary Fox: And these are, these are smart people.

1:22:35

Gary Fox: These are people who listen. Gary Fox: They're business owners or listen, listen

1:22:45

Gary Fox: to a lot of business content, so they're Gary Fox: engaged. Gary Fox: They're, I would think, of the demographic. Gary Fox: They're quite an engaged demographic

1:22:47

Gary Fox: because loads of people love talking about Gary Fox: it but very few people do it, and loads of Gary Fox: people followed along my coffee to crypto Gary Fox: and so few people did it yeah, but I mean

1:22:51

Gary Fox: that's. Gary Fox: That's true of lots of things it is like Gary Fox: you know, but I just find interesting with

1:22:54

Gary Fox: the, with the, the finance thing, that that Gary Fox: that's where we are.

1:22:57

Dylan Collins: That's that's I mean. Gary Fox: Yeah, that's, that's a pretty remarkable

1:23:00

Gary Fox: drop off, but I love that kind of stuff Gary Fox: because, like you said, you have to be in

1:23:04

Gary Fox: it, like you can't just talk about it, you Gary Fox: can't think about it, you have to be

1:23:07

Gary Fox: actually doing it to learn. Gary Fox: So I'd never be able to uncover those that

1:23:11

Gary Fox: data without like. Dylan Collins: I think people the thing that I've read

1:23:20

Dylan Collins: poker players do quite a bit. Dylan Collins: I think Annie Duke has written about this

1:23:24

Dylan Collins: Very good writer. Dylan Collins: Where she what? Dylan Collins: Very good writer.

1:23:27

Gary Fox: Yeah, she was great. Dylan Collins: Yeah, you know where, where, like you would

1:23:32

Dylan Collins: go and sort of explain like why you did

1:23:35

Dylan Collins: certain things. Dylan Collins: But in a group, you know, and it's like,

1:23:39

Dylan Collins: hey, give me feedback on this, and I think Dylan Collins: there's.

1:23:42

Dylan Collins: You know, those sort of peer clustering can

1:23:47

Dylan Collins: be very helpful for change. Gary Fox: And I've done that with entrepreneurs over

1:23:51

Gary Fox: the years. Gary Fox: I did it during COVID because I felt Gary Fox: everyone was a bit disconnected and it's

1:23:54

Gary Fox: interesting to watch the dynamics of people.

1:23:57

Gary Fox: I do like maybe meetups for 12 people, Gary Fox: early stage founders and um.

1:24:01

Gary Fox: Some people come every week, every month, Gary Fox: with the same problem.

1:24:03

Gary Fox: That's why I stopped, because I felt we Gary Fox: were spinning our wheels yeah, right, right,

1:24:06

Gary Fox: because it was kind of yeah, I was all kind Gary Fox: of do for, for due diligence and I was

1:24:10

Gary Fox: doing it for the good and I was like if I Gary Fox: was charging probably two grand a year or

1:24:13

Gary Fox: 10 grand a year, people would be more skin Gary Fox: in the game.

1:24:16

Gary Fox: And I stopped because people come with the Gary Fox: same problems every month but not acting,

1:24:19

Gary Fox: whereas there'd be a subset of maybe three Gary Fox: who'd come with a notebook and it'd look

1:24:23

Gary Fox: like this like my notebook here, it would Gary Fox: have scribble, scribble, scribble, a bit of

1:24:27

Gary Fox: all the notes from what they said. Gary Fox: We're going to do what they did, what they

1:24:31

Gary Fox: learned, what the outcomes were, and you'd

1:24:33

Gary Fox: have a subset of people who just thrive on

1:24:35

Gary Fox: accountability. Gary Fox: I do it with a friend of mine every month.

1:24:39

Gary Fox: We sit down for two to three hours every

1:24:42

Gary Fox: month because we're everything. Gary Fox: What have you done? Gary Fox: What have I done?

1:24:44

Gary Fox: What do you say we're going to do? Gary Fox: Why did you not do that? Gary Fox: What actually to learn?

1:24:47

Gary Fox: Why did you change that? Gary Fox: And like it's unbelievable that we're two

1:24:50

Gary Fox: different industries, just very similar Gary Fox: mindsets.

1:24:53

Gary Fox: It's one of the best things I do every Gary Fox: month two three hours raw honesty.

1:24:58

Gary Fox: So you bring me slightly back. Gary Fox: You got out of jolt, so I want to ask you

1:25:05

Gary Fox: one question, sorry, before we go on there. Gary Fox: This is something I'm very curious about.

1:25:09

Gary Fox: What did it feel like when you sold? Gary Fox: What was your feeling the next day?

1:25:13

Gary Fox: You've sold money's in the bank, whatever.

1:25:16

Gary Fox: What did it feel like? Dylan Collins: in jolt or in either.

1:25:21

Dylan Collins: I was like, what's next so interesting?

1:25:25

Dylan Collins: I I um, I love making money for other

1:25:31

Dylan Collins: people. Dylan Collins: I am not particularly um consumerist about

1:25:38

Dylan Collins: anything I don't like. Dylan Collins: Is there anything you wanted to get for

1:25:40

Dylan Collins: yourself or anything for others that you Dylan Collins: were? Gary Fox: I'm consumerist about anything I don't like. Gary Fox: Is there anything you wanted to get for

1:25:42

Gary Fox: yourself or anything for others that you Gary Fox: were like, yeah, now I'm going to, I'm

1:25:46

Gary Fox: going to do this now. Dylan Collins: No, I mean, I like, I, I'm just, it's not

1:25:50

Dylan Collins: like, I'm not. Gary Fox: I'm not a watch guy, I'm not a car guy, I'm

1:25:53

Gary Fox: not a it's not just not you've got your eye

1:25:57

Gary Fox: on or a classic rap album or anything like

1:26:00

Gary Fox: just there's nothing. Gary Fox: You just kind of like, you just. Dylan Collins: I buy all my stuff secondhand.

1:26:05

Dylan Collins: Like I'm not, like I just I don't.

1:26:08

Dylan Collins: It's never been a thing and it's funny. Dylan Collins: I've got a couple of friends who are

1:26:14

Dylan Collins: absurdly successful and are very into cars

1:26:17

Dylan Collins: and are deeply disappointed that I'm not Dylan Collins: into cars.

1:26:19

Dylan Collins: I just shrug my shoulders like I'm not into Dylan Collins: cars. Dylan Collins: I just broke my shoulders. Dylan Collins: I'm sorry, I just whatever.

1:26:22

Gary Fox: Like I want you to feel that passion.

1:26:26

Gary Fox: What gets you going outside of business? Gary Fox: What gets you going?

1:26:30

Dylan Collins: Um, I like ancient history I'm an ancient

1:26:33

Dylan Collins: history nerd the history of, of humanity.

1:26:36

Dylan Collins: I like sort of everything almost um,

1:26:39

Dylan Collins: pre-neolithic, so everything before 5000 BC,

1:26:42

Dylan Collins: going back to maybe about 100,000 BC, which

1:26:47

Dylan Collins: is sort of a relatively new area of study

1:26:55

Dylan Collins: which technology has opened up, which is Dylan Collins: kind of cool.

1:26:58

Dylan Collins: So ancient DNA analysis, where people are

1:27:01

Dylan Collins: going and um, doing what it sounds like dna

1:27:03

Dylan Collins: analysis on um, uh, skeletons and it's now

1:27:07

Dylan Collins: showing us essentially what the uh, the

1:27:11

Dylan Collins: patterns of humans were, you know, over the

1:27:14

Dylan Collins: last tens of thousands of years. Dylan Collins: So originally this is now going to turn

1:27:18

Dylan Collins: into an ancient history podcast. Dylan Collins: But originally our sort of thinking on how

1:27:23

Dylan Collins: sort of humans populated the earth was

1:27:25

Dylan Collins: what's called an out-of-Africa theory, Dylan Collins: where, like, there was kind of one wave and

1:27:28

Dylan Collins: they populated the world. Dylan Collins: What we've now realized through archaeology,

1:27:31

Dylan Collins: but mostly ancient DNA analysis, is that,

1:27:34

Dylan Collins: like you, had multiple waves of Homo

1:27:36

Dylan Collins: sapiens and Neanderthals and a species

1:27:39

Dylan Collins: called Denisovans and they were all sort of Dylan Collins: interbreeding and they had all these

1:27:42

Dylan Collins: different pockets around the world and it's Dylan Collins: incredibly complex over the last hundred

1:27:46

Dylan Collins: thousand years. Dylan Collins: But we're also realizing that, like you

1:27:49

Dylan Collins: know, the way we're taught in school, which Dylan Collins: is a terribly, terribly basic sort of

1:27:54

Dylan Collins: version of ancient history which was kind Dylan Collins: of like you know, um apes and trees and

1:28:00

Dylan Collins: then caveman and then on the moon right,

1:28:02

Dylan Collins: yeah, I was just gonna say, and then blast

1:28:04

Dylan Collins: forward and it's. Dylan Collins: It's as a result.

1:28:06

Dylan Collins: It's kind of created this um huge um bias

1:28:12

Dylan Collins: towards like simplicity of um our ancient

1:28:17

Dylan Collins: past, where we sort of think that, okay, Dylan Collins: like you know, people were using basic

1:28:21

Dylan Collins: tools, therefore they couldn't do much. Dylan Collins: But when you look at everything that's now

1:28:24

Dylan Collins: being discovered in South America and even

1:28:27

Dylan Collins: North America, you know and you go back to

1:28:29

Dylan Collins: maybe, let's say, sort of 4,000 BC, 5,000

1:28:31

Dylan Collins: BC, even 3,000 BC. Dylan Collins: Originally, like archaeologists estimates

1:28:35

Dylan Collins: were like maybe there were like a few Dylan Collins: thousand people here, and then they've been

1:28:38

Dylan Collins: revised up to sort of tens of thousands. Dylan Collins: Now, when you look at sort of what LiDAR is

1:28:43

Dylan Collins: uncovering and that's kind of like a Dylan Collins: surface radar that was able to look through

1:28:47

Dylan Collins: forests, they're realizing that sort of the

1:28:50

Dylan Collins: peak population in South America was

1:28:52

Dylan Collins: probably in the tens of millions. Dylan Collins: And it's like we're absolutely rewriting

1:28:58

Dylan Collins: everything that we thought was the case

1:29:01

Dylan Collins: about our ancient history. Dylan Collins: And to me that's really cool because it's

1:29:04

Dylan Collins: like it's this huge mystery that is

1:29:09

Dylan Collins: changing a huge amount that gives so like

1:29:12

Dylan Collins: that is so much depth in terms of like what

1:29:15

Dylan Collins: happened before us. Dylan Collins: And when you look at sort of the ancient

1:29:18

Dylan Collins: monuments that exist around the world, like

1:29:20

Dylan Collins: whether it's Newgrange or whether it's Dylan Collins: Gobekli Tepe in Turkey or whether it's, you

1:29:26

Dylan Collins: know, anywhere in South America, like there

1:29:28

Dylan Collins: was some incredibly sophisticated

1:29:30

Dylan Collins: engineering that was going on. Dylan Collins: But our kind of mental model of the past is

1:29:34

Dylan Collins: like cavemen right. Gary Fox: Well, we kind of tend to like almost make

1:29:37

Gary Fox: them like childlike. Gary Fox: Yeah, what could they do?

1:29:40

Dylan Collins: Well, either we go childlike or we go Dylan Collins: aliens right and it's like hey, hey, hey,

1:29:44

Dylan Collins: hey, are we gonna go full joe rogan here? Gary Fox: yeah, I mean well um the uh.

1:29:50

Dylan Collins: So I, I, all that stuff is kind of cool and Dylan Collins: I, I, I spent a lot of time, well, bit of

1:29:54

Dylan Collins: time, a lot of time reading about it, bit Dylan Collins: of time traveling around going to a lot of

1:29:57

Dylan Collins: those sites okay, all, right, okay but but Dylan Collins: my like, no, I, I'm a business nerd, like I

1:30:02

Dylan Collins: I um, you know I. Dylan Collins: I like building things.

1:30:05

Dylan Collins: I, like you know, I historically sat on a

1:30:07

Dylan Collins: few boards and do a little bit of that now Dylan Collins: as well.

1:30:09

Dylan Collins: I like helping people to build Um.

1:30:25

Dylan Collins: It will always have to be the founder um Dylan Collins: and then the market. Dylan Collins: I mean it needs to be all of those, but it

1:30:28

Dylan Collins: is founders a founder a founder is first, Dylan Collins: um, you know, and all the qualities that

1:30:33

Dylan Collins: we've talked about, you know, resilience,

1:30:35

Dylan Collins: ability to not die. Dylan Collins: Um, what is the chemistry of the founders?

1:30:42

Dylan Collins: Think I think in with them or would you?

1:30:45

Dylan Collins: know with with each other, with them, um,

1:30:48

Dylan Collins: the, the, uh. Dylan Collins: I think it's like I've been in this, like I

1:30:55

Dylan Collins: think everyone gets into this conversation Dylan Collins: when you're trying to hire, like you're,

1:30:58

Dylan Collins: you know, your first senior person, when Dylan Collins: you're at whatever stage, and I think

1:31:02

Dylan Collins: everyone underestimates sort of the, the

1:31:05

Dylan Collins: personality, compatibility aspect of all of

1:31:09

Dylan Collins: that. Dylan Collins: Um, I do think that's hugely underrated, um,

1:31:13

Dylan Collins: in terms of trying to get that, that human Dylan Collins: chemistry right and sort of just watch and

1:31:18

Dylan Collins: observe. Dylan Collins: And, like you know, I I'll meet founders

1:31:21

Dylan Collins: from time to time. Dylan Collins: They're like you know, we're amazing, we're

1:31:23

Dylan Collins: really close, it's like cool, tell me your Dylan Collins: last really bad argument.

1:31:26

Dylan Collins: They're like we haven't had one. Dylan Collins: I'm like all right, come back when you've

1:31:29

Dylan Collins: had that and see how it is Can't have tough

1:31:31

Dylan Collins: conversations. Gary Fox: There's going to be a lot of issues Gary Fox: bubbling under the surface there.

1:31:34

Dylan Collins: You've got to be able to have robust Dylan Collins: engagement and to be able to come out and

1:31:49

Dylan Collins: know that it's okay. Gary Fox: Everything isn't a nuclear thing.

1:31:54

Gary Fox: I think that's what happens. Gary Fox: People sweep issues under the rug and then

1:31:57

Gary Fox: a small thing becomes a big thing and the Gary Fox: whole nuclear bond is pressed over

1:32:00

Gary Fox: something so minor. Dylan Collins: Well, it's not. Dylan Collins: I mean, even when you face serious things,

1:32:04

Dylan Collins: you know you got differences of opinions Dylan Collins: and you know someone wants to do a feature

1:32:08

Dylan Collins: product or whatever, take money or Dylan Collins: something, and the other doesn't.

1:32:11

Dylan Collins: Like you know, you've got to have that sort

1:32:15

Dylan Collins: of trust framework and sort of you know, be

1:32:19

Dylan Collins: able to disagree but know that you're all Dylan Collins: still pointed in the same direction.

1:32:23

Dylan Collins: And I I think that that takes time, like

1:32:26

Dylan Collins: you know. Dylan Collins: Um, so that you know I I'm, I, I think I've

1:32:31

Dylan Collins: something of a reputation of spending huge

1:32:33

Dylan Collins: amounts of time with people on interviews

1:32:37

Dylan Collins: when, when they're joining our companies. Dylan Collins: Um, because I really think there's not

1:32:42

Dylan Collins: enough hours clocked on interviews with

1:32:44

Dylan Collins: people and I think, with, with founders. Gary Fox: Weird thing like foreign interviews are

1:32:47

Gary Fox: weird in the format. Gary Fox: Oh, I, I, I mean, look there's.

1:32:51

Dylan Collins: There's two, I think two of the best um

1:32:58

Dylan Collins: manufacturing scenarios for lying that our

1:33:02

Dylan Collins: civilization has invented. Dylan Collins: One is interviews and the other is age

1:33:05

Dylan Collins: gates on websites oh yeah.

1:33:08

Gary Fox: Are you over 18? Dylan Collins: sure, yeah, yeah sure, I mean I well, or

1:33:12

Dylan Collins: are you over 13, which was part of the

1:33:15

Dylan Collins: challenge that we were solving. Dylan Collins: It's super awesome, but like yeah, um,

1:33:19

Dylan Collins: what's? Gary Fox: what's your red flags for working with

1:33:25

Gary Fox: people, founders, staff, investors.

1:33:27

Gary Fox: What are your red flags? Gary Fox: What are the things you just will not get

1:33:31

Gary Fox: over? Dylan Collins: um, I think, when it comes to investors,

1:33:45

Dylan Collins: it's ego and just general attitude of you

1:33:58

Dylan Collins: know, not wanting to be helpful but also

1:34:06

Dylan Collins: wanting to sort of leverage their

1:34:08

Dylan Collins: involvement with the company. Dylan Collins: Um and uh, I I think investing is such a

1:34:16

Dylan Collins: longterm game that, like you, just by

1:34:19

Dylan Collins: definition you have to get a lot of ego in Dylan Collins: it, you know, because you're having to talk

1:34:23

Dylan Collins: up your your own book the whole time and it Dylan Collins: takes you 10 years to figure out whether

1:34:26

Dylan Collins: you're you're actually any good as an Dylan Collins: investor. Dylan Collins: Um, I think it's it's people who can't like,

1:34:38

Dylan Collins: who are painful to deal with when you have

1:34:43

Dylan Collins: a disagreement, and their way of

1:34:45

Dylan Collins: disagreeing is to go nuclear, you know.

1:34:49

Dylan Collins: And I think when you're negotiating, I mean

1:34:51

Dylan Collins: it's like, hey, well, we're just going to Dylan Collins: walk out completely.

1:34:53

Dylan Collins: It's like it's not, it's not how you

1:34:56

Dylan Collins: structure a thing like. Dylan Collins: Um, I think it's people who don't, who, you

1:35:01

Dylan Collins: know, who don't think. Dylan Collins: I mean, yes, this is transactional, but yes,

1:35:04

Dylan Collins: this is a partnership and we're going to be Dylan Collins: working together for some number of time,

1:35:08

Dylan Collins: some number of years. Dylan Collins: I think on the, on the, on the founder side,

1:35:11

Dylan Collins: it is, I mean, people who are not pleasant

1:35:19

Dylan Collins: to be around is an entirely obvious thing

1:35:22

Dylan Collins: to say. Dylan Collins: I mean, I've yet to meet anyone who doesn't

1:35:25

Dylan Collins: have a no-assholes rule. Gary Fox: Weird.

1:35:30

Gary Fox: Everyone has a no-assholes rule, but Gary Fox: there's tons of assholes in the startup

1:35:32

Gary Fox: game. Dylan Collins: Yeah it is strange, isn't it? Dylan Collins: It's strange, um, but I think it's.

1:35:52

Dylan Collins: It's uh, you know someone who, um, is

1:35:54

Dylan Collins: prepared. Dylan Collins: What I'm looking for are people who are

1:36:02

Dylan Collins: prepared to invest lots of up and scale

1:36:06

Dylan Collins: down, saying, yes, cool, we're gonna go, go

1:36:09

Dylan Collins: and do the shiny presentations and talk to

1:36:11

Dylan Collins: investors and, you know, speak at

1:36:14

Dylan Collins: conferences and whatever, but also we're

1:36:17

Dylan Collins: just gonna roll our sleeves up and we're

1:36:19

Dylan Collins: just going to go and, like, do the

1:36:21

Dylan Collins: documents and hang out and drink coffee

1:36:26

Dylan Collins: with people, and you know they can flex all Dylan Collins: the way up and down.

1:36:29

Dylan Collins: I mean, I think anyone who can't do that is

1:36:31

Dylan Collins: not sort of quite well equipped for what

1:36:36

Dylan Collins: needs to be done. Dylan Collins: And I think there is like an emotional

1:36:43

Dylan Collins: stability. Gary Fox: Um, it's probably probably an important

1:36:49

Gary Fox: don't get too high, don't get too low yeah

1:36:53

Gary Fox: or um. Dylan Collins: Yeah, I think I mean all of those are

1:36:56

Dylan Collins: probably different sides of of the same

1:37:00

Dylan Collins: coin. Dylan Collins: I mean I think I've become much more

1:37:04

Dylan Collins: mindful, or I've learned to become much

1:37:06

Dylan Collins: more mindful of, of how people feel.

1:37:11

Dylan Collins: Um, sounds like a slightly robotic thing to

1:37:14

Dylan Collins: say, but um, you know, in terms of in terms

1:37:17

Dylan Collins: of learning from others and and sort of

1:37:20

Dylan Collins: thinking more empathetically or trying to Dylan Collins: be more empathetic about that, yeah, it's a

1:37:26

Dylan Collins: good question. Dylan Collins: I don't know. Gary Fox: What mistakes do you see startups make

1:37:31

Gary Fox: consistently? Dylan Collins: Raising VC money when they shouldn't?

1:37:46

Dylan Collins: Um not understanding what vc economic model

1:37:51

Dylan Collins: is, what kind of returns they need to

1:37:54

Dylan Collins: produce and therefore what value and

1:37:58

Dylan Collins: valuation the company needs to get to and

1:38:01

Dylan Collins: whether their industry can support it. Dylan Collins: I think the other thing they don't consider

1:38:11

Dylan Collins: is that their own internal opportunity cost.

1:38:15

Dylan Collins: So when you've got money, if you've raised

1:38:17

Dylan Collins: money from VC and you're looking at, you

1:38:21

Dylan Collins: know how do you allocate that money Like, Dylan Collins: okay, what markets are we going after?

1:38:25

Dylan Collins: What countries are we going after? Dylan Collins: What features are we building?

1:38:27

Dylan Collins: What customers are we serving? Dylan Collins: Like, if you're not able to generate, like

1:38:34

Dylan Collins: you know, at least twice your investors

1:38:39

Dylan Collins: rate of return on, that shouldn't be doing

1:38:41

Dylan Collins: it. Dylan Collins: So, like a vc is typically trying to

1:38:44

Dylan Collins: generate, I mean roughly, let's say, 20 irr,

1:38:47

Dylan Collins: so 20 return on the money per year.

1:38:50

Dylan Collins: Right, so they are trying to, in theory,

1:38:52

Dylan Collins: kind of 3x the money for their investors,

1:38:55

Dylan Collins: which means if they're giving you money Dylan Collins: like and you're investing it into something

1:38:59

Dylan Collins: that's kind of incremental, like, that's

1:39:02

Dylan Collins: not going to work, you know so you need to

1:39:04

Dylan Collins: think like, unless you are like taking Dylan Collins: fairly aggressive swings with what you're

1:39:08

Dylan Collins: what, with what you're capitalized, to do

1:39:10

Dylan Collins: like this isn't going to work out and like

1:39:15

Dylan Collins: you know. Dylan Collins: So I mean, if, if you don't see a way to

1:39:17

Dylan Collins: whatever the the thing is that you're doing

1:39:20

Dylan Collins: with that money, being able to generate at Dylan Collins: least 40%, 50% revenue growth per year,

1:39:23

Dylan Collins: it's probably not the thing you should be Dylan Collins: spending money on, or that's not the kind

1:39:28

Dylan Collins: of money you should have taken, and I think

1:39:30

Dylan Collins: people should go.

1:39:32

Dylan Collins: I mean, all this stuff is written Dylan Collins: everywhere. Dylan Collins: At this point, right, and the parallel book

1:39:38

Dylan Collins: that you referenced is one of several very

1:39:40

Dylan Collins: good ones out there which which talk about Dylan Collins: VC business models and how they work, and I

1:39:44

Dylan Collins: think founders should be educated on it. Dylan Collins: You know, because there's there's lots of

1:39:47

Dylan Collins: different types of capital that you can go Dylan Collins: after. Dylan Collins: You know, at this point, um and um, I I

1:39:54

Dylan Collins: think it is, yeah, I think it's that Dylan Collins: capital matching which is the most common

1:39:58

Dylan Collins: thing I run into. Gary Fox: That's, that's pretty consistent capital

1:40:01

Gary Fox: matching, which is the most common thing I Gary Fox: run into. Gary Fox: That's. Gary Fox: That's pretty consistent.

1:40:05

Gary Fox: Before we go to a wrap fire round, what are Gary Fox: you most excited about right now? Gary Fox: You're in your Gandalf era of wandering,

1:40:08

Gary Fox: collecting, observing. Gary Fox: What are you most excited about?

1:40:17

Dylan Collins: I'm most excited by the lack of visibility

1:40:28

Dylan Collins: on the future, and the reason that kind of

1:40:34

Dylan Collins: excites me is that, like, it's going to

1:40:37

Dylan Collins: lead to some very interesting outcomes, Dylan Collins: because you've got very, very binary views

1:40:41

Dylan Collins: on the world and, by definition, both of

1:40:44

Dylan Collins: those can't be right. Dylan Collins: Like so you're going to see some very

1:40:47

Dylan Collins: interesting winners and very interesting Dylan Collins: losers. Dylan Collins: I think, like um, you know, I've never

1:40:56

Dylan Collins: experienced this level of um, very smart

1:41:04

Dylan Collins: people having very clouded views on what

1:41:08

Dylan Collins: comes next in terms of positive, negative,

1:41:11

Dylan Collins: who knows. Dylan Collins: Like, and I, I think, I think I I sort of

1:41:14

Dylan Collins: mean that at a sort of a business and Dylan Collins: technology and digital media level.

1:41:17

Dylan Collins: But like you look around the world Dylan Collins: geopolitically and like you know, christ,

1:41:21

Dylan Collins: um, and that on one hand it's scary and

1:41:24

Dylan Collins: weird, but on the other hand it's, it's Dylan Collins: exciting, like you know I.

1:41:27

Dylan Collins: So I think at a macro level, that's the Dylan Collins: case, um, I would say on a, on a, on a

1:41:34

Dylan Collins: micro level, like um, I'm just gonna go

1:41:38

Dylan Collins: back and say it's, it's it's level.

1:41:41

Dylan Collins: Like um, I'm just gonna go back and say Dylan Collins: it's, it's, it's all the, the advancements

1:41:43

Dylan Collins: that we're making in in understanding Dylan Collins: ancient history, like we're now.

1:41:46

Gary Fox: No, but it's, it's the meeting I thought Gary Fox: you were going to give me some deep Gary Fox: personal insight there.

1:41:49

Dylan Collins: Oh Lord, no, I've none of that, but the the

1:41:52

Dylan Collins: like the intersection of technology with

1:41:54

Dylan Collins: with archeology is like it's incredible.

1:41:57

Dylan Collins: Like there was this interesting sort of

1:41:59

Dylan Collins: machine learning project called the Dylan Collins: Vesuvius Scrolls, where they were looking

1:42:04

Dylan Collins: at all of these scrolls that had been

1:42:06

Dylan Collins: recovered from Pompeii and you couldn't

1:42:09

Dylan Collins: open them without them disintegrating. Gary Fox: Oh yes, I don't know if you saw that

1:42:12

Gary Fox: project. Dylan Collins: Yeah, I haven't seen it, but I've seen Dylan Collins: people talking about similar things there

1:42:16

Dylan Collins: was an AI investor I'm blanking on his name, Dylan Collins: not something Nat Friedman, I think and he

1:42:20

Dylan Collins: put together this project and you had some

1:42:23

Dylan Collins: fantastic sort of ML and AI minds all going

1:42:27

Dylan Collins: at this, starting now to be able to go and

1:42:30

Dylan Collins: sort of decipher ancient text from rolled

1:42:34

Dylan Collins: up scrolls using scans. Dylan Collins: And we will obviously never invent time

1:42:40

Dylan Collins: traveling, but like you're getting to the Dylan Collins: point where you're able to deploy this

1:42:42

Dylan Collins: technology in such interesting ways to Dylan Collins: understand more about where we came from

1:42:46

Dylan Collins: and and I think that's very cool. Dylan Collins: And, last thing, I don't you're gonna have

1:42:51

Dylan Collins: to chop this up and edit it we're gonna go

1:42:54

Dylan Collins: for a record length of time here. Gary Fox: I've I've nearly taken you for an hour and

1:42:57

Gary Fox: 50 minutes. Gary Fox: Oh, no, we'll do a record, a record pod

1:43:00

Gary Fox: here. Dylan Collins: We'll let a lot of editing. Dylan Collins: I'm sorry to everyone listening.

1:43:03

Dylan Collins: I'm yeah, I'm kind of excited about

1:43:07

Dylan Collins: whatever it is I do next. Dylan Collins: What's that going to be Come?

1:43:10

Gary Fox: on, give us an exclusive. Gary Fox: Come on, give us a reveal.

1:43:14

Dylan Collins: I'm not. Dylan Collins: I'm not being coy Like I'm, I'm um, the uh,

1:43:19

Dylan Collins: uh. Dylan Collins: Look, I think the the there's lots of like

1:43:23

Dylan Collins: this next generation of of founders and Dylan Collins: builders coming out who are either building

1:43:27

Dylan Collins: from a kind of a conventional startup Dylan Collins: perspective or, as I said earlier, like

1:43:30

Dylan Collins: building out of, like Fortnite and Roblox Dylan Collins: and places like that.

1:43:33

Dylan Collins: Like you know, we've we've never, we've

1:43:37

Dylan Collins: never seen as young a group of builders who

1:43:42

Dylan Collins: have access to monetization and Dylan Collins: distribution as exists today, like when you

1:43:49

Dylan Collins: look at sort of Gen Z but even Gen Alpha, Dylan Collins: like 12 year olds.

1:43:52

Dylan Collins: We've never seen that before. Dylan Collins: Right, and you know there is, as I said,

1:43:56

Dylan Collins: you are going to see, like an Amazon shaped

1:43:58

Dylan Collins: thing that's going to emerge from that a

1:44:01

Dylan Collins: decade from now, I'm certain of it.

1:44:04

Dylan Collins: Um, and it'll probably come from like it'll

1:44:06

Dylan Collins: start within a group in discord, you know,

1:44:09

Dylan Collins: and it'll be something else and that will Dylan Collins: turn into a multi-billion dollar business

1:44:13

Dylan Collins: we talk about body, business, brain here so Dylan Collins: quickly before our um quickfire round.

1:44:18

Gary Fox: How do you look after your body? Dylan Collins: um, I started by giving up companies

1:44:26

Dylan Collins: because it turns out that's terrible for Dylan Collins: for your body distress.

1:44:30

Dylan Collins: Um, I uh started um investing in my sleep,

1:44:38

Dylan Collins: maybe four or five years ago. Dylan Collins: Properly, I was one of those idiots that

1:44:42

Dylan Collins: went through sort of a belief in polyphasic

1:44:47

Dylan Collins: sleeping. Gary Fox: What's that? Dylan Collins: It's essentially thinking that you could

1:44:51

Dylan Collins: reduce the amount of sleep so that you Dylan Collins: could be more productive, so you would

1:44:54

Dylan Collins: sleep in, like you know, units of like two

1:44:57

Dylan Collins: or three hours oh wow, it is, I think the Dylan Collins: dumbest.

1:44:59

Dylan Collins: Two or three hours oh wow, it is, I think Dylan Collins: the dumbest thing I've ever done in my life.

1:45:01

Dylan Collins: I mean, it probably shortened my lifespan Dylan Collins: by some material amount.

1:45:05

Dylan Collins: Um, didn't do it for very long, but I

1:45:08

Dylan Collins: absolutely grew up in an era of like, oh, Dylan Collins: you just sleep less to be more productive,

1:45:12

Dylan Collins: and that is utterly idiotic.

1:45:14

Gary Fox: And Margaret Thatcher. Dylan Collins: Yeah, yeah, and I read Matthew Walker's why

1:45:22

Dylan Collins: we Sleep Pretty good and I have become

1:45:26

Dylan Collins: something of a sleep evangelist with people.

1:45:29

Dylan Collins: So that started and I do intermittent

1:45:32

Dylan Collins: fasting, I lift heavy weights, I mean I

1:45:35

Dylan Collins: kind of think it's probably like Huberman Dylan Collins: 101 for a lot of stuff.

1:45:39

Gary Fox: But common knowledge isn't that common. Gary Fox: That's why I like to ask it, because, like

1:45:44

Gary Fox: some of the smartest people I know have Gary Fox: just no concept of looking after themselves.

1:45:47

Gary Fox: So that's why I like to try to have some Gary Fox: sort of holistic view on the whole thing

1:45:50

Gary Fox: because, like without the good body, the Gary Fox: good brain, having a good business is kind

1:45:55

Gary Fox: of almost pointless. Dylan Collins: You can you kind of almost pointless.

1:46:00

Dylan Collins: You can, you can I mean, look you're, Dylan Collins: you're gonna pour your your literal life

1:46:03

Dylan Collins: force into companies and, um, you have to Dylan Collins: try and balance all that stuff out.

1:46:06

Dylan Collins: It's very hard to do, like I mean, but it

1:46:11

Dylan Collins: does help. Dylan Collins: And the sleep thing is obvious, but it

1:46:16

Dylan Collins: works. Dylan Collins: And you know, if you can sort of boost your,

1:46:20

Dylan Collins: your sort of nutritional intake, that's

1:46:24

Dylan Collins: helpful too. Dylan Collins: I also try and just not eat bread or pasta,

1:46:29

Dylan Collins: which are both delicious. Gary Fox: They're delicious they're so good, but but

1:46:34

Gary Fox: yeah, you know everything in moderation,

1:46:36

Gary Fox: right. Gary Fox: What's the? Gary Fox: What matters? Gary Fox: The dose is the poison.

1:46:40

Gary Fox: The poison is the dose. Gary Fox: What's that phrase? Dylan Collins: I don't know.

1:46:42

Dylan Collins: I've never heard that. Dylan Collins: I started doing like maybe two, three years

1:46:45

Dylan Collins: ago. Dylan Collins: I started doing blood tests twice a year. Gary Fox: That was speaking my language.

1:46:49

Gary Fox: Yeah, it was a game changer and that's an

1:46:51

Gary Fox: area I would love to either start or be an

1:46:53

Gary Fox: investor in longevity space. Gary Fox: I started 2019 doing blood tests every six

1:46:57

Gary Fox: months. Gary Fox: I've been able to reverse my biological age

1:47:00

Gary Fox: by nine years. Gary Fox: What's your metabolic age? Gary Fox: 32.

1:47:02

Gary Fox: Oh, I'm 30. Dylan Collins: Damn it. Dylan Collins: Yeah, I got my bloods done like three weeks

1:47:06

Dylan Collins: ago. Gary Fox: So Well, my goal for this year is dropping

1:47:08

Gary Fox: to my twenties. Dylan Collins: That's my 12 month goal. Gary Fox: He's like, oh, that'll be, that'll be tough

1:47:12

Gary Fox: guy. Gary Fox: You've kind of like you're, you're not Gary Fox: maxing out.

1:47:14

Dylan Collins: It was very good. Dylan Collins: I mean it's yeah. Gary Fox: Yeah, so like, but now I'm going to just

1:47:18

Gary Fox: have to beat you. Dylan Collins: I mean, I don't know how, I don't know how Dylan Collins: accurate metabolic ages are, but like Even

1:47:22

Dylan Collins: if they're half right, I'll take four and a

1:47:25

Dylan Collins: half. Gary Fox: But do you know what? Gary Fox: It's just more than nudges in the right

1:47:28

Gary Fox: direction. Gary Fox: It's more so because now I'm part of it the

1:47:35

Gary Fox: blood, because I think like where I think

1:47:38

Gary Fox: our future generation look back and go just

1:47:40

Gary Fox: walking around like a lunatic. Gary Fox: You didn't know what was going on in your

1:47:43

Gary Fox: body. Gary Fox: How many stories have you heard?

1:47:45

Gary Fox: Oh, he's walking around. Gary Fox: He was really healthy and jizzy, just

1:47:47

Gary Fox: dropped dead, or, oh my God, if they caught Gary Fox: it earlier.

1:47:53

Gary Fox: That will never happen to me. Gary Fox: If it was more accessible and easy, I'd

1:47:56

Gary Fox: have no problem going in and going quick Gary Fox: blood test Okay, quick.

1:47:59

Gary Fox: Well, you can oversample too, but like you Gary Fox: can, but I think that the trend has to be

1:48:03

Gary Fox: there, like the data I've got now over the Gary Fox: last like five, six years is huge and now

1:48:07

Gary Fox: I'm able to see trends I'm able to tweak Gary Fox: and modify, and it's incredibly passionate.

1:48:29

Dylan Collins: And then your, you know, I mean again, I Dylan Collins: sort of wire that in there. Dylan Collins: I mean I find exercise is the thing that is

1:48:32

Dylan Collins: very good for my brain and there's Dylan Collins: absolutely been a correlation between sleep Dylan Collins: and sort of general mental health.

1:48:34

Dylan Collins: An absurd amount, I mean. Dylan Collins: I would probably do a quarter of a million

1:48:39

Dylan Collins: half million miles a year. Dylan Collins: And travelers, you know, going out and

1:48:43

Dylan Collins: meeting customers and being face-to-face Dylan Collins: like it matters and it, it changes things.

1:48:47

Dylan Collins: But jet lag just is a killer.

1:48:50

Dylan Collins: And you know, I, I, um, yeah, it's, it's,

1:48:54

Dylan Collins: it's, that's. Dylan Collins: If it was a way to avoid jet lag, that

1:48:59

Dylan Collins: would be awesome, but there simply isn't. Dylan Collins: So you've just got to mind your sleep I

1:49:03

Dylan Collins: think less. Gary Fox: I think like hybrid and remote is good, but

1:49:06

Gary Fox: like nothing beats the in-person thing. Gary Fox: But I think like once a quarter.

1:49:09

Gary Fox: I'm just kind of trying to think of a Gary Fox: cadence of good travel. Dylan Collins: It's probably once a quarter, I think

1:49:12

Dylan Collins: that's, that's, that's what I ended up, Dylan Collins: sort of, but I mean, it depends on the

1:49:15

Dylan Collins: situations that you're in, yeah of course, Dylan Collins: Like different horses for courses.

1:49:19

Gary Fox: Right, We'll finally get to the quickfire Gary Fox: round. Gary Fox: Might even have to make this, Although I

1:49:23

Gary Fox: said yesterday to someone I was like you Gary Fox: know what I'm really going to start do a

1:49:25

Gary Fox: few really long ones. Gary Fox: So there you go, I talked into existence.

1:49:28

Dylan Collins: Well, hold on, Let me just actually see Dylan Collins: what I you asked me some very specific man

1:49:41

Dylan Collins: to do it. Gary Fox: So yeah, when you're in your own time. Dylan Collins: What book would you recommend every founder Dylan Collins: should read?

1:49:43

Dylan Collins: Um, well, I actually keep a list of 17

1:49:46

Dylan Collins: books for founders unreal. Dylan Collins: Okay, I'll put in the show, I'll send you

1:49:51

Dylan Collins: links, it's on my, it's on my goodreads Dylan Collins: page, but I would say, well, I'm actually

1:49:55

Dylan Collins: going to give you two rather than one. Dylan Collins: I would would say almost anything by Daniel

1:49:59

Dylan Collins: Kahneman. Dylan Collins: Thinking Fast and Slow is very good.

1:50:02

Dylan Collins: And then I would also recommend a book by

1:50:09

Dylan Collins: his occasional research partner, robert

1:50:11

Dylan Collins: Chialdini, called Presuasion.

1:50:15

Gary Fox: Presuasion. Gary Fox: I haven't. Gary Fox: Influence is unbelievable.

1:50:18

Gary Fox: Yeah, it's amazing. Gary Fox: This was a sequel Presuasion Very good.

1:50:20

Gary Fox: Chiald is unbelievable yeah, it's amazing. Gary Fox: This was a sequel Pre-Suasion Very good.

1:50:23

Dylan Collins: I actually didn't know they collaborated?

1:50:25

Dylan Collins: Yeah, they did. Dylan Collins: They did one paper, I think.

1:50:27

Gary Fox: Okay. Dylan Collins: What is something you'd learn the hard way?

1:50:44

Dylan Collins: That when you're building a company, you Dylan Collins: are always equidistant from success and

1:50:47

Dylan Collins: failure, no matter how good you might be Dylan Collins: feeling, um, you know, until you have got

1:50:51

Dylan Collins: money in the bank and the company has been Dylan Collins: acquired and it's the money's been wired to

1:50:57

Dylan Collins: all the shareholders. Dylan Collins: Like you are equidistant between success

1:51:01

Dylan Collins: and failure. Dylan Collins: I mean, I once, like a tiny ramble, like we

1:51:07

Dylan Collins: had a um. Dylan Collins: One of our companies was being acquired and,

1:51:12

Dylan Collins: um, the long form had been done, it was

1:51:16

Dylan Collins: waiting signature. Dylan Collins: We had draft press releases ready to go.

1:51:19

Dylan Collins: It's a public company and there was one

1:51:23

Dylan Collins: customer reference call to do because it Dylan Collins: was a big customer.

1:51:25

Dylan Collins: Ceo of the acquiring company called the cmo

1:51:29

Dylan Collins: of big customer. Dylan Collins: It's a big, big, big company.

1:51:33

Dylan Collins: It should have been just routine five

1:51:35

Dylan Collins: minute. Dylan Collins: You guys good, cool, great, fine, done.

1:51:38

Dylan Collins: Somehow that whole thing got wildly out of

1:51:41

Dylan Collins: control, went absolutely sideways.

1:51:44

Dylan Collins: Someone said something weird. Dylan Collins: The other person reacted weird the deal

1:51:48

Dylan Collins: fell apart. Dylan Collins: I had to call. Dylan Collins: I was um on the board of this company.

1:51:52

Dylan Collins: I had to call the founders who were sitting

1:51:55

Dylan Collins: at a pool waiting to open champagne to tell

1:51:58

Dylan Collins: them the deal had fallen apart. Dylan Collins: No, and they, they actually couldn't

1:52:01

Dylan Collins: believe me. Dylan Collins: I understand we put it back together.

1:52:04

Dylan Collins: It took us 18 months to do, oh my god, and.

1:52:07

Dylan Collins: But like it was, it was the most

1:52:11

Dylan Collins: unbelievable thing I've ever seen, and I'm Dylan Collins: sure people have lots of stories like that,

1:52:14

Dylan Collins: so you never know good lesson, though

1:52:18

Dylan Collins: literally don't count the champers until Dylan Collins: it's popped.

1:52:21

Gary Fox: What have you sacrificed to achieve your Gary Fox: success? Dylan Collins: Inner calm Relationships, friends, ability

1:52:37

Dylan Collins: to relate to people, I'm sure, just all the

1:52:39

Dylan Collins: usual stuff that founders have to go

1:52:41

Dylan Collins: through. Dylan Collins: Do you think they have?

1:52:43

Dylan Collins: to I think when you are building a company,

1:52:50

Dylan Collins: you, as I said, you are pouring your life Dylan Collins: force into it.

1:52:53

Dylan Collins: It doesn't come for free, like I think it's.

1:52:56

Dylan Collins: I think it's very tough being the partner

1:52:59

Dylan Collins: of a founder and I think it's one of the

1:53:03

Dylan Collins: reasons that, like I've been lucky to have

1:53:05

Dylan Collins: such amazing co-founders over the years, Dylan Collins: like you know.

1:53:09

Dylan Collins: But but you know, if you're a partner of a

1:53:12

Dylan Collins: founder, of someone or some people are Dylan Collins: building a company, they have to put the

1:53:15

Dylan Collins: company first. Dylan Collins: Very difficult to juggle that.

1:53:19

Gary Fox: Very difficult To even say that out loud is

1:53:22

Gary Fox: difficult. Gary Fox: Hopefully you're listening to the pod and

1:53:26

Gary Fox: you're feeling inspired. Gary Fox: Maybe you want to do new things in your own

1:53:28

Gary Fox: business, or maybe you have that brilliant

1:53:31

Gary Fox: idea you've always wanted to bring a little Gary Fox: bit further and see if it works.

1:53:34

Gary Fox: So why not right now? Gary Fox: You listen to the majority of the guests in

1:53:37

Gary Fox: this show and they've been helped by the Gary Fox: local enterprise office at some stage in

1:53:41

Gary Fox: the journey. Gary Fox: They have something for everybody.

1:53:44

Gary Fox: Whether you have that idea you want to Gary Fox: develop, you want to get your products in

1:53:47

Gary Fox: new markets, you want to innovate your Gary Fox: existing products or you want to expand

1:53:51

Gary Fox: staff and premises, they have the supports

1:53:54

Gary Fox: to help. Gary Fox: So why not today?

1:53:56

Gary Fox: If you want to start up or grow your Gary Fox: business, then contact your local

1:53:59

Gary Fox: enterprise office today. Gary Fox: What would you do today if I give you 10

1:54:04

Gary Fox: million euro? Dylan Collins: I would split it into 100 checks of 100

1:54:12

Dylan Collins: grand and I would go and find 100 very

1:54:18

Dylan Collins: interesting builders in Discord, Roblox and

1:54:21

Dylan Collins: fortnite and I would invest across all of

1:54:25

Dylan Collins: them very specific. Gary Fox: They're the perfect kind of questions I

1:54:28

Gary Fox: like answers specific, tangible, real.

1:54:31

Gary Fox: Now a variation on the theme. Gary Fox: I'm going to give you 1 million, but it's

1:54:35

Gary Fox: for one person or one company to invest in.

1:54:37

Gary Fox: Who is it? Dylan Collins: Two answers, big and small.

1:54:43

Gary Fox: Is this breaking it? Gary Fox: No founders answer this question straight.

1:54:45

Gary Fox: I think it's definition of a founder. Dylan Collins: Actually no you should ask better questions,

1:54:48

Dylan Collins: because you should define what kind of

1:54:50

Dylan Collins: return you want. Dylan Collins: Okay, Because, like when you say you give

1:54:53

Dylan Collins: me 10 million, it's like, well, what do you Dylan Collins: want back? Dylan Collins: Do you want yield?

1:54:56

Dylan Collins: Do you want me to turn that 10 into 20 or

1:54:59

Dylan Collins: 10 into a hundred? Dylan Collins: Okay, what's the level of risk you're

1:55:01

Dylan Collins: willing to take? Gary Fox: Very interesting. Gary Fox: No one's fed that back to me.

1:55:04

Dylan Collins: Cause I'm like I can give you very Dylan Collins: different answers, okay, so okay, let me,

1:55:20

Dylan Collins: let me give you, let me give you the on the Dylan Collins: 1 million question. Dylan Collins: So, if you want to convert your 1 million

1:55:22

Dylan Collins: into 5 million, I would say there's a very Dylan Collins: interesting software company in italy Dylan Collins: called bending spoons and they are buying

1:55:25

Dylan Collins: up a lot of um, tier two, um apps and Dylan Collins: pieces of software. Dylan Collins: So they were the ones who bought evernote

1:55:29

Dylan Collins: and they're basically going in retooling Dylan Collins: the whole thing, changing pricing, firing

1:55:32

Dylan Collins: everyone. Dylan Collins: They are basically what the future of

1:55:35

Dylan Collins: private equity is going to look like, which Dylan Collins: is software.

1:55:38

Dylan Collins: So if you think about private equity buys Dylan Collins: like a lot of like, you know, mom and pop, Dylan Collins: yeah, business things like that. Dylan Collins: Well, if you think about what the future Dylan Collins: that's equity is going to look like, which Dylan Collins: is software so if you think about private

1:55:40

Dylan Collins: equity buys like a lot of like you know, Dylan Collins: mom and pop type business, things like that.

1:55:43

Dylan Collins: Well, if you think about what the future of Dylan Collins: that's going to be, it's going to be people Dylan Collins: running sort of apps and people running,

1:55:46

Dylan Collins: you know, pieces of software like that. Dylan Collins: So they're doing that.

1:55:49

Dylan Collins: So you give 1 million to them, you get 5 Dylan Collins: million back. Dylan Collins: That's my sort of interest style answer to

1:56:02

Dylan Collins: the 1 million. Dylan Collins: I would look at what Sean Blanchfield's new Dylan Collins: AI startup is, which is called Gentic, and

1:56:05

Dylan Collins: that is my. Dylan Collins: How do you turn 1 million into 100 million?

1:56:07

Dylan Collins: I would go there, Wow two cracking answers.

1:56:10

Gary Fox: Brilliant. Gary Fox: If you were starting from zero again in

1:56:13

Gary Fox: 2024, what would you build? Dylan Collins: Something focused on old people and

1:56:20

Dylan Collins: cybersecurity. Dylan Collins: That is again like I look for growth

1:56:25

Dylan Collins: markets. Dylan Collins: What is something I can look at and go

1:56:29

Dylan Collins: that's going to be 10 times bigger or 50

1:56:32

Dylan Collins: times bigger in 10 years time and I think

1:56:36

Dylan Collins: digital crime around fraud, around identity

1:56:40

Dylan Collins: theft, and not just for old people I think

1:56:42

Dylan Collins: that's going to come down as we talk. Dylan Collins: We all get older.

1:56:45

Dylan Collins: We all drop in that bucket, no, but also. Dylan Collins: But I think we're actually getting older

1:56:49

Dylan Collins: quicker, like when you see sort of like 20

1:56:52

Dylan Collins: year olds and how they will run around us, Dylan Collins: who are still very much digital natives,

1:56:57

Dylan Collins: things like TikTok, still very much digital

1:57:02

Dylan Collins: natives, things like TikTok and it's. Dylan Collins: You know, as I said, I don't. Dylan Collins: I think it's interesting that you are

1:57:05

Dylan Collins: seeing the second highest rate of digital Dylan Collins: fraud in the US and, within that, happening

1:57:09

Dylan Collins: within 30 year olds. Dylan Collins: I think they've gotten a bit complacent.

1:57:15

Gary Fox: It's an interesting one. Gary Fox: I must look into it. Gary Fox: My theory would be that they're trying to

1:57:19

Gary Fox: gamble on things that might be too good to Gary Fox: be true.

1:57:22

Dylan Collins: That would be my theory I, yeah, but I

1:57:25

Dylan Collins: think they're still being naive about then,

1:57:28

Dylan Collins: like what that is, because this is, this is

1:57:30

Dylan Collins: fraud, right? Dylan Collins: So I mean it's not. Dylan Collins: Hey, I did a stupid thing and I put money

1:57:34

Dylan Collins: into a coin. Dylan Collins: This is like someone someone stole my

1:57:36

Dylan Collins: credentials or whatever, right? Dylan Collins: So, yes, I, yes, I think it's linked to all

1:57:40

Dylan Collins: of that, but I mean, you know, it's still

1:57:43

Dylan Collins: sort of a level of naivety about a thing, Dylan Collins: right, yeah?

1:57:46

Gary Fox: there's so much data, we have so much data Gary Fox: and we produce so much data every day that

1:57:50

Gary Fox: it's difficult. Gary Fox: What do you believe other people would find

1:57:54

Gary Fox: strange or strongly disagree with? Dylan Collins: I am always quite skeptical about second

1:58:02

Dylan Collins: time founders say a little bit more, I

1:58:08

Dylan Collins: think you won.

1:58:12

Dylan Collins: Founders often learn very little from

1:58:14

Dylan Collins: success and I think and I include myself in

1:58:18

Dylan Collins: this you go into your second venture Dylan Collins: thinking you know a hell of a lot more than

1:58:23

Dylan Collins: you actually do, or think you've learned a Dylan Collins: lot more than you actually do, and, um, I

1:58:29

Dylan Collins: think there is a lot of of of um

1:58:32

Dylan Collins: incorrectly directed confidence that goes

1:58:36

Dylan Collins: into second time founders, third time Dylan Collins: founders I'm very interested in.

1:58:41

Gary Fox: It's your next fund, third time founder Gary Fox: fund 3TF Worst ideas.

1:58:47

Gary Fox: What's been your worst investment? Dylan Collins: Polyphasic sleeping Close.

1:58:58

Gary Fox: second wasish property in 2007 two very

1:59:03

Gary Fox: unique and good answers. Gary Fox: Yeah, the irish property doesn't.

1:59:05

Gary Fox: We've all been there don't, don't feel Gary Fox: alone.

1:59:08

Gary Fox: What's been your best investment um?

1:59:15

Dylan Collins: spending excessive amounts of money on

1:59:18

Dylan Collins: flying to places to meet people in person

1:59:23

Dylan Collins: and and it's an argument I've got often

1:59:29

Dylan Collins: gotten into with people about do you need

1:59:31

Dylan Collins: to go to a place? Dylan Collins: Could you not maybe just call them?

1:59:35

Dylan Collins: But I have found time and time and time and

1:59:39

Dylan Collins: time Um, this is also not a surprising

1:59:42

Dylan Collins: statement that like you go and you you

1:59:44

Dylan Collins: physically hang out with people and you

1:59:46

Dylan Collins: build some chemistry and it works and okay,

1:59:51

Dylan Collins: like it means flying to wherever North

1:59:55

Dylan Collins: Carolina or Buenos Aires or Sydney or

1:59:58

Dylan Collins: whatever it is, but it is worth doing.

2:00:01

Dylan Collins: It's hard, it's painful, it's not

2:00:03

Dylan Collins: brilliantly scalable. Dylan Collins: It still absolutely works.

2:00:06

Dylan Collins: I will continue to do it. Gary Fox: I am 1000% in agreement.

2:00:10

Gary Fox: This is a very different conversation. Gary Fox: If we're on Zoom, we're not doing two hours,

2:00:15

Gary Fox: we're not sitting here, we're not getting Gary Fox: really to know each other very well.

2:00:18

Gary Fox: We can have side tangents. Gary Fox: I am 1000% in agreement and that's why I'm

2:00:22

Gary Fox: going to travel so much next year. Dylan Collins: What's your final piece of advice to every

2:00:32

Dylan Collins: founder listening, assume that anyone

2:00:38

Dylan Collins: you're asking advice from is mostly just Dylan Collins: talking. Dylan Collins: Survivorship bias, like so much of this

2:00:43

Dylan Collins: game, is that and I mean that on both Dylan Collins: founder and investor side like um it's,

2:00:46

Dylan Collins: it's when you're building a company.

2:00:50

Dylan Collins: Like so much of it is situationally and and

2:00:53

Dylan Collins: and um it is situationally dependent, like

2:01:00

Dylan Collins: it is, um, temporally dependent on what's

2:01:03

Dylan Collins: going on and um you know.

2:01:08

Dylan Collins: That's why I really, when people ask me Dylan Collins: what advice, I really hate giving advice.

2:01:12

Dylan Collins: I sort of say here were my experiences, Dylan Collins: here's the shit we did wrong, here's what

2:01:17

Dylan Collins: we did and I think it might have been good. Dylan Collins: But, like you know, I see too many people

2:01:24

Dylan Collins: who sort of like listen to advice and take

2:01:27

Dylan Collins: it literally and run back into their Dylan Collins: companies going well, these two companies

2:01:33

Dylan Collins: had successful outcomes and they sort of Dylan Collins: created an org structure that looked like

2:01:36

Dylan Collins: this If X, then Y. Gary Fox: Yeah, Context is everything.

2:01:39

Dylan Collins: It's not even context, it's like it's it's

2:01:45

Dylan Collins: um outcomes.

2:01:48

Dylan Collins: Successful outcomes depend on so few things.

2:01:52

Dylan Collins: You can do an awful lot of things that have

2:01:55

Dylan Collins: an incremental impact, but it's only Dylan Collins: incremental, you know, and I think humans

2:02:00

Dylan Collins: in general are pretty bad at distinguishing

2:02:03

Dylan Collins: between innovation and novelty, because

2:02:06

Dylan Collins: they kind of both look the same at a Dylan Collins: certain range we didn't get to touch on

2:02:13

Dylan Collins: your writing. Gary Fox: Where can people learn a little bit more

2:02:16

Gary Fox: about you and your writing Cause?

2:02:18

Gary Fox: It is super. Gary Fox: I have to give a massive shout out to that.

2:02:22

Gary Fox: Go and read your writing Cause. Gary Fox: It is. Gary Fox: If you enjoyed this long, if you've made it

2:02:26

Gary Fox: to two hours you were going to you're going Gary Fox: to you're going to bloody love his writing.

2:02:30

Gary Fox: So where can people learn a little bit more Gary Fox: about you and follow some of your stuff

2:02:32

Gary Fox: that you're working on Well? Dylan Collins: I'm or Twitter whatever, but I write a

2:02:41

Dylan Collins: newsletter. Dylan Collins: You can get it at dylancollinscom or Dylan Collins: there's like a LinkedIn version which is

2:02:43

Dylan Collins: like weirdly 10 times popular, which says a

2:02:46

Dylan Collins: lot about LinkedIn Power distribution. Dylan Collins: More so than my writing.

2:02:49

Dylan Collins: It is the power distribution, but yeah, I

2:02:53

Dylan Collins: sort of it's a nice, it's a nice outlet for

2:02:55

Dylan Collins: me. Gary Fox: Dylan, thank you so much for joining us on

2:02:58

Gary Fox: this epic episode. Dylan Collins: dylan, thank you so much for joining us on Dylan Collins: this epic episode, gary.

2:03:01

Dylan Collins: Thank you and also apologies that it was so Dylan Collins: long, but it was very enjoyable.

2:03:04

Dylan Collins: I just kept you going. Gary Fox: I'd keep here for a four hour one if we

2:03:07

Gary Fox: could have done one of those eight hour. Dylan Collins: We're getting into lex friedman territory

2:03:11

Dylan Collins: with that right dylan, you're a gent.

2:03:13

Gary Fox: Thank you so much thanks.