Recapping Universo della Famiglia 2021 (Part 2): Speaker Insights
Join us for part two of recapping our Universo della Famiglia 2021 as we share more insights on topics like AI, fintech, sustainability and the venture landscape.
We’ve put together a selection of sharp, nuanced insights from our speakers that you’ll want to revisit with us as we look back on what we learned.
You can also watch the full video here.
7 speaker insights on AI, fintech, sustainability, the venture landscape and more.
#1 John Collison (Co-Founder & CEO of Stripe) on fintech in Europe and the role of VCs.
The fintech boom was born in Europe (not the US) through more innovation and open banking. It’s easy to miss this European competitiveness, but last year Europe minted at least 72 unicorns. Now the new internet usage is coming from emerging markets (not the US/EU).
COVID became the time where it became not optional for more traditional companies to figure out their digital strategy. The question today is: Can traditional companies get good at software faster than software companies get good at traditional industry?
VCs are the connector glue in the startup ecosystem. VCs help fill in the gaps in knowledge when it comes to funding, hiring executives, performance marketing, training leadership teams, etc. They take on a coaching and recruitment role, and allocate talent more efficiently (for example, if an engineer would be better as a founder).
#2 Joe Lonsdale (Co-Founder of Palantir & 8VC) on culture and the venture landscape.
Talent retention is about the culture. At Palantir, the engineers were in charge of the company and the culture rather than the business or sales people.
8VC as a venture fund has built a culture of stewardship, where people really care about the firm, stay curious and seek the truth.
Operating in today’s competitive and fast-changing venture landscape requires both:
- Being prepared. Know the spaces well. Know the people within these networks. Have your theses prepared ahead of time. The pre-work will allow you to go fast when you need to.
- Staying flexible. Relationships and theses can lead you astray. What really matters is getting to the top talent. Stay close to leaders and companies in your fields to understand what’s newly possible.
#3 Nat Friedman (CEO of GitHub) on artificial intelligence and European tech.
Today we are seeing AI actually ship in real products with the core value of the product being the AI (and not just a component of it, e.g. web search). AI has become the product itself. This is due to today’s ability to build much larger models with much more data and AI systems that were not possible before, the emergence of new neural architectures, and the power of sharing published papers, code and data.
When it comes to AI in Europe, there’s no lack of human capital — there are brilliant people and innovations at the frontier. In some cases there may be a lack of actual capital, conviction and courage. Europeans seem to be more worried about the problems of technology than the promise of technology.
However, breakthroughs do require conviction, as you have to be willing to spend millions to bring these big machine learning models on the street. We may need to think less of the problems of technology and more of the promise of technology.
#4 Elad Gil (Investor & Founder of Color Genomics) on early-stage mistakes and capital rich markets.
At the early stage, you need three things: (1) Not fight with your co-founder, (2) find product-market-fit, and (3) not run out of money. Mistakes are often made on the first two. Make sure you:
- Clearly define roles between co-founders. Co-founders can leave if there isn’t clear role definition upfront.
- Clearly understand what customers actually need. The product may sound neat to people, but that doesn’t mean customers will buy it later.
The sheer scale of technology markets and low interest rates means that large amounts of money that cannot find good returns elsewhere are now flowing into tech.
Founders are now raising more money than they need to and not thinking about the dilution. You can raise more money, but you can’t raise more equity. Be thoughtful about how much company you’re giving up at each round.
#5 Hemant Taneja (Managing Partner of General Catalyst) on responsible innovation and measuring growth.
There’s a false choice between great impact and great financial return. Responsible innovation is a mindset with which we build companies for growth and good.
Tech innovation cycles to anticipate over the next 10–15 years, besides digitalization, are (1) crypto and decentralization, (2) tools in biology (cell/gene therapy), and (3) robotics and automation/industrial IoT.
Key consequence indicators will be the way we measure success in the future. Measuring growth should center on mindset and mechanisms for building companies that have a more enduring transformation with a social diligence framework.
#6 Tyler Cowen (Professor of Economics at George Mason University) on nurturing talent.
If you’ve got the talent, the money will follow. Invest in your high potentials by:
- Having (or helping) them maximize their number of serendipitous encounters.
- Raising their level of ambition by sharing your sense of what is possible.
#7 Daniel Gross (Founder of Pioneer) on nurturing talent.
Raw energy is the largest predictor in great founders that’s often overlooked.
Different talent markets can affect if you should hire for precision or recall. Precision (if something is good, it’s good) can be particularly suited to small teams. Recall (optimizing to never miss a great hire, but potentially having to recall some hiring decisions later) is often more helpful in venture.
Three ways you can maximize your talent engine:
- At the early stages, spend half your time on hiring.
- Focus more on network hiring.
- Hire for energy and skills rather than resume.
Missed Recapping Universo 2021 (Part 1): Top #10 Highlights? Read it here.
