# Dean Forbes UK's Top Black CEO on Private Equity, & Building a $100M Business, Market Mondays Live

An episode of [Earn Your Leisure](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1450211392), 2 Jun 2026, 49 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/8dbc4f54-a337-4481-9ef2-b355012b0a3d/bbb4783b-4b9f-4335-ad7c-b45a00ab5eb2/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=eac4c628-29cb-469a-b5c8-b355012b0a48

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## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: This episode of the Market Monday's World Tour is brought
[0:05] Speaker 1: to you with limited interruption by Ally.
[0:23] Speaker 2: The Good Time for the Unforgettable Moments. You say, we're
[0:34] Speaker 2: all better off with an Ally A bird in the
[0:36] Speaker 2: stashly away.
[0:40] Speaker 3: On your feet and give it up from a guy,
[0:42] Speaker 3: Dean Forbes, a legend in the game, and he came
[0:45] Speaker 3: dressed to the nons. He he made a comment about
[0:48] Speaker 3: American fashion. I've noticed that you're now this is something
[0:52] Speaker 3: I've noticed that was funny. Europeans have a very disdain
[0:56] Speaker 3: for American fashion, but.
[1:00] Speaker 4: Understandable.
[1:00] Speaker 3: Most Americans can't dress. But you're not talking about You're
[1:04] Speaker 3: not talking about people from New York though, so that's different.
[1:08] Speaker 3: It's just it's a difference, like this New York fashion
[1:13] Speaker 3: and then there's Middle America fashion. It's good though, we
[1:20] Speaker 3: adopted them. But Dean, you look, you look very shocked,
[1:25] Speaker 3: my brother. So let's get into this. Man, what led
[1:28] Speaker 3: you to become a CEO in the tech sector and
[1:32] Speaker 3: what is your biggest motivator to keep going forward?
[1:34] Speaker 5: Oh man, Well, firstly, thank you guys for having me here.
[1:36] Speaker 5: Like I said before, you know, I'm a big, big
[1:39] Speaker 5: fan of the show, big fan of the format, you know,
[1:41] Speaker 5: getting these people together and giving all these jams. It's amazing.
[1:44] Speaker 5: So so it's a pleasure and the honor to to
[1:46] Speaker 5: be part of this. I think I've you know, told
[1:50] Speaker 5: that story a couple of times. What got me into
[1:52] Speaker 5: tech was the biggest kind of failure in my career,
[1:55] Speaker 5: right I was trying to play football that didn't work out.
[1:58] Speaker 5: I had a bunch of debt, and then when that
[2:00] Speaker 5: kind of all came to a head, my agent at
[2:02] Speaker 5: the time said, you've got to go work up motor
[2:04] Speaker 5: Oil because you're in so much debt. You need to
[2:06] Speaker 5: earn money right now. Why it is it going to
[2:08] Speaker 5: cripp you for life? And very tough decision, very difficult
[2:12] Speaker 5: moment in life, but it turned out it turned out
[2:15] Speaker 5: turned out to be okay.
[2:16] Speaker 6: Yeah, for someone sitting down in the crowd who was
[2:19] Speaker 6: inspired by you being here tonight, if you can go
[2:21] Speaker 6: back to when you were nineteen or twenty, what three
[2:24] Speaker 6: pieces of advice would you give them and talk about
[2:27] Speaker 6: the ups and downs as well, But what three pieces
[2:29] Speaker 6: of advice would you give them on the journey to
[2:32] Speaker 6: becoming you?
[2:35] Speaker 5: I mean nineteen twenty, you know, I'm probably a year
[2:39] Speaker 5: after being homeless a few months having been released from
[2:44] Speaker 5: playing football. I've got a mountain of debt. Like if
[2:46] Speaker 5: you'd have said to me at that moment in time
[2:48] Speaker 5: that life would be what it's become, it was like
[2:52] Speaker 5: unimaginable that the things that have happened to me could
[2:54] Speaker 5: have happened. So it's a little bit strange to think
[2:58] Speaker 5: back and say, what advice would you give yourself, because
[3:00] Speaker 5: I would be just chill out, you know, like stay calm,
[3:03] Speaker 5: don't panic, work hard, And I think I probably wasn't
[3:09] Speaker 5: good enough to have made it as a footballer, and
[3:12] Speaker 5: that was important because when I failed, I kind of
[3:14] Speaker 5: didn't want to fail again to It's like the next
[3:16] Speaker 5: thing I go into, you know, if it was bakery
[3:20] Speaker 5: or I don't know, track and field, whatever it was,
[3:22] Speaker 5: the next thing I went into, I was going to
[3:23] Speaker 5: apply myself so hard. I was probably going to be
[3:27] Speaker 5: okay or maybe even good at it. So if I
[3:29] Speaker 5: if I could go back now, I would say, calm down,
[3:32] Speaker 5: work ethic has to go up, and you've got to
[3:35] Speaker 5: be prepared to kind of play this out for the
[3:38] Speaker 5: long term, like this is it's going to take a while,
[3:40] Speaker 5: but you gotta keep going with it.
[3:42] Speaker 1: So it says a lot about your mindset, right, you
[3:45] Speaker 1: had the mental fort or tool to say, it doesn't
[3:47] Speaker 1: matter where I go, I'm going to be successful because
[3:50] Speaker 1: i want to turn up my mindset.
[3:51] Speaker 4: I'm gonna turn out the productivity.
[3:53] Speaker 1: I want to go back right because you start that
[3:56] Speaker 1: motorol though, but your first CEO role is at the
[4:00] Speaker 1: the Paris based firm KDS, So what does that deemed
[4:04] Speaker 1: for was like, because this you've now climbed up a
[4:06] Speaker 1: ladder and you've reached the pinnacle of a company at
[4:08] Speaker 1: a firm.
[4:09] Speaker 4: What was that like for you?
[4:11] Speaker 5: That was an interesting learning experience because I'd kind of
[4:15] Speaker 5: grown up at Premia Verrea. I wasn't CEO at Premire,
[4:18] Speaker 5: but I'd led a big part of that company and
[4:20] Speaker 5: it became the fastest growing part of that company. It
[4:23] Speaker 5: was an American software company, and my part of it
[4:25] Speaker 5: became the largest largest part of it. So I think
[4:28] Speaker 5: when I when I was in that position, then we
[4:31] Speaker 5: sold the company to Oracle and I made like life
[4:33] Speaker 5: changing money in that transaction. Then Oracle said you got
[4:37] Speaker 5: to stay, and we're going to pay you a bunch
[4:38] Speaker 5: of money to stay because we think, we think you're great.
[4:42] Speaker 5: I was like King of the Hill. I thought I
[4:44] Speaker 5: thought I'd cracked life, and then I didn't enjoy Oracle.
[4:48] Speaker 5: I got approached to go do the KDS thing, and
[4:50] Speaker 5: I was so sure of myself before I'd made it.
[4:52] Speaker 5: I'd worked this big firm Oracle. I had all this
[4:54] Speaker 5: money now, and when I became a CEO of KDS,
[4:59] Speaker 5: I took over from the founder of that company, and
[5:02] Speaker 5: the employee base, you know, was just committed to the
[5:06] Speaker 5: founder that you know, they didn't care about me. They didn't,
[5:09] Speaker 5: I don't know, they cared about the company so much.
[5:11] Speaker 5: They just were in love with this founder, with the founder.
[5:14] Speaker 5: So I took over. I had these great ideas. I
[5:16] Speaker 5: had what I thought was an incredible CV, and I
[5:19] Speaker 5: would hold staff meetings to management meetings, and people wouldn't
[5:22] Speaker 5: turn up, Like they just wouldn't. They wouldn't show up
[5:24] Speaker 5: for the meeting. So you'd be sat in the meeting
[5:26] Speaker 5: with crossants and coffee and and nobody's just you and
[5:30] Speaker 5: just you, yeah, just you. And there was there was
[5:32] Speaker 5: even a time I went into a meeting room and
[5:34] Speaker 5: I was like pouring coffee before the customer arrived, and
[5:37] Speaker 5: the team were complaining, and they went off to speak
[5:39] Speaker 5: to HR about me because I'd gone in the room
[5:43] Speaker 5: and dared to pour coffee, which was there for clients.
[5:45] Speaker 5: So it was a very difficult environment and it kind
[5:48] Speaker 5: of brought me back to ground zero and said, you know,
[5:51] Speaker 5: not not everybody thinks you're good, Not everybody cares, and
[5:55] Speaker 5: you're gonna have to kind of go back to the
[5:57] Speaker 5: basics and kind of win people over, and you know,
[6:00] Speaker 5: work a bit harder than this than I thought than
[6:01] Speaker 5: I thought I would. But yeah, I thought I cracked
[6:04] Speaker 5: it and everybody was just going to do what I
[6:05] Speaker 5: told them because I had this, you know, I had
[6:07] Speaker 5: a stellar kind of eight year career. But yeah, it
[6:09] Speaker 5: was very, very humbling and very educational.
[6:12] Speaker 4: Did you ever think like you're fired, You're not coming
[6:14] Speaker 4: to me, you're fired.
[6:16] Speaker 5: Well, like, sometimes you have to have what I call
[6:18] Speaker 5: like public executions, you know, like you can't and shouldn't
[6:23] Speaker 5: do that to everybody, But there's a professional courtesy, like
[6:27] Speaker 5: if there's a meeting happening, you should show up. Like
[6:29] Speaker 5: that's just a that's a professional courtesy. So when some
[6:32] Speaker 5: of those things continued for a while, yeah, you got
[6:35] Speaker 5: you know, you have to make examples of people so
[6:37] Speaker 5: that the rest of the village understands this behavior isn't
[6:41] Speaker 5: isn't sad?
[6:41] Speaker 4: You heard that? That's right up your alley public executions.
[6:46] Speaker 6: If I can do a follow up, real quick example,
[6:48] Speaker 6: how are you able to turn the tie to then
[6:50] Speaker 6: get them on your side after? Because I'm sure we
[6:52] Speaker 6: have some entrepreneurs and here that may be having issues
[6:55] Speaker 6: with their staff. How did you turn that ship to
[6:57] Speaker 6: get them back or initially in love with you when
[7:00] Speaker 6: they were so invested into the founder.
[7:03] Speaker 5: It's a really good point. I think that was such
[7:06] Speaker 5: an important learning moment for me. Right, it just killed
[7:11] Speaker 5: my ego. My CV was irrelevant, The amount of money
[7:14] Speaker 5: I had was irrelevant. So I had to stop and
[7:17] Speaker 5: ask myself, like, how are we going to get these
[7:19] Speaker 5: people on side? And it taught me to communicate. It
[7:22] Speaker 5: taught me to really spend a lot of time with
[7:24] Speaker 5: staff explaining what we were trying to do, why we
[7:26] Speaker 5: were trying to do it, and most importantly, ian like
[7:29] Speaker 5: what their role in that was going to be right,
[7:32] Speaker 5: Because I don't think you can invite hundreds of people
[7:34] Speaker 5: to come to work every day because you want to
[7:36] Speaker 5: build a big company or a highly valuable company, or
[7:39] Speaker 5: because you want the stock price to go through the roof,
[7:42] Speaker 5: because the guy working on the support desk who doesn't
[7:45] Speaker 5: have equity in the company. So I learned in that
[7:50] Speaker 5: moment to translate the strategy of the company and the
[7:52] Speaker 5: aspiration of the company into language that was meaningful for
[7:56] Speaker 5: everybody in the company. So I started talking about what
[7:59] Speaker 5: we wanted to do, what we wanted to be, and
[8:01] Speaker 5: why if you were in this spot in the company,
[8:04] Speaker 5: it would create opportunities for you or income for you,
[8:07] Speaker 5: or you know, something important for you. I made sure
[8:11] Speaker 5: every communication had that kind of three part trilogy to it.
[8:15] Speaker 5: What do we want to be, how we're going to
[8:16] Speaker 5: get there, and what it means for you know, rank
[8:18] Speaker 5: and file employee and that and and some people loved
[8:22] Speaker 5: it and were excited, and some people said, you know,
[8:25] Speaker 5: not for me, and they and they left and that
[8:26] Speaker 5: was that was okay too.
[8:28] Speaker 3: So all right, so let's get into this. So you're
[8:30] Speaker 3: the CEO, correct me if I'm saying this roll. You're
[8:32] Speaker 3: the CEEO of fort Toennaro for terror Portero, your partner
[8:36] Speaker 3: in courting Capital, and your chairman and f FG. So
[8:41] Speaker 3: that's a lot. So can you talk about for to
[8:45] Speaker 3: Naro courting capital. What are those two companies and how
[8:48] Speaker 3: does that intersect with your chairman position at f FG.
[8:53] Speaker 5: So, so, for Terra is a ERP software company focusing
[8:58] Speaker 5: on the industrial midline in Europe. It is probably the
[9:00] Speaker 5: biggest company in that space in Europe. So business to
[9:04] Speaker 5: business enterprise software. So we sell direct to customers, court
[9:09] Speaker 5: capitals and private equity firms. So it's a one point
[9:11] Speaker 5: two billion euro fund. I've been been part of the
[9:14] Speaker 5: team helped raise that fund. So now what we're trying
[9:17] Speaker 5: to do is invest from that fund into technology companies.
[9:21] Speaker 5: So one of the guys trying to find opportunities convinced
[9:24] Speaker 5: managers to sell us a controlling stake in their business.
[9:28] Speaker 5: And f FG is something that me and my family created,
[9:31] Speaker 5: Full's Family Group because on my career journey, I've been
[9:35] Speaker 5: helped by so many people. So many people have showed
[9:38] Speaker 5: up at a moment in time giving me advice, introduced
[9:41] Speaker 5: me to somebody, helped me out that I realized success
[9:46] Speaker 5: isn't always only talent based. Sometimes it's opportunities network. So
[9:50] Speaker 5: we set up f FG to try to try to
[9:53] Speaker 5: play that network effect back to people like us from
[9:56] Speaker 5: places like I said, it's a not for profit trying
[9:58] Speaker 5: to help people in their career aspirations.
[10:02] Speaker 6: Can you walk us through your investment philosophy? Everything everyone
[10:05] Speaker 6: here wants an investment jim from you. So when you're
[10:08] Speaker 6: looking to acquire a company, what are you looking at
[10:12] Speaker 6: in terms of the parameters before you buy a company?
[10:14] Speaker 6: And what is something that makes a company like jump
[10:18] Speaker 6: off of a sheet to you to say I have
[10:19] Speaker 6: to buy this or be involved.
[10:21] Speaker 5: With It's different. So at Fortierra we're an acquisitive company.
[10:25] Speaker 5: I bought six I bought six companies with for Tiero
[10:29] Speaker 5: last year, the largest of which paid one hundred and
[10:32] Speaker 5: fifteen million pounds for So the philosophy is are different
[10:37] Speaker 5: between how I invest in acquire companies at for Tierro
[10:40] Speaker 5: and how I would invests as a personal private investor.
[10:44] Speaker 4: Are you sure both? Yeah?
[10:45] Speaker 5: Yeah, So on for Tiero, we've got free value creation streams, right,
[10:50] Speaker 5: we want to grow the company by more than fifteen
[10:52] Speaker 5: percent organically every year. We want seventy percent or more
[10:56] Speaker 5: of the company to be recurring revenue. So that's customers
[10:59] Speaker 5: on long term subscription plans. Beau's a higher quality of revenue.
[11:03] Speaker 5: It allows you to invest for the long term because
[11:04] Speaker 5: you know you've got this annuity base. And then the
[11:08] Speaker 5: third is we want to expand our profit margins, both
[11:11] Speaker 5: in net profit and percentage terms. You're a vehica. We
[11:15] Speaker 5: want to show the company becomes more efficient as it scales.
[11:17] Speaker 5: So when we look at a business, we're trying to
[11:20] Speaker 5: figure out which of those parameters is going to accelerate.
[11:24] Speaker 5: So I like things that grow faster than us, that
[11:26] Speaker 5: are more recurring the seventy percent, and that have a
[11:29] Speaker 5: profit margin in percentage terms higher than we have. And
[11:33] Speaker 5: if it has all three of those and it's in
[11:35] Speaker 5: our space, we're probably going to do the deal. If
[11:37] Speaker 5: it has two of those, it's better, and not all three,
[11:41] Speaker 5: only two, but I can figure out how to accelerate
[11:44] Speaker 5: the third, that's even better. If it has none of
[11:47] Speaker 5: those three, but I can look at it and say
[11:49] Speaker 5: when I own it, I will be able to accelerate
[11:52] Speaker 5: all three of those. Those are the best because then
[11:54] Speaker 5: you buy those for cheaper and they become more accretive
[11:57] Speaker 5: in value terms. It's kind of the thesis on the
[12:02] Speaker 5: full terroor side. On the personal side, it's two things.
[12:05] Speaker 5: I invest in things that I know and understand because
[12:09] Speaker 5: I have a lot of time, so I need to
[12:11] Speaker 5: to be able to look from distance and say, okay,
[12:13] Speaker 5: you know this, it doesn't look like it's going well. Right,
[12:16] Speaker 5: So you need to have pattern recognition and a rhythm
[12:19] Speaker 5: for those businesses. So that's normally property and tech, and
[12:24] Speaker 5: now I do stuff with startups, which is more to
[12:28] Speaker 5: be supportive to founders who've got a great idea and
[12:31] Speaker 5: I think I can add value, and that's less about
[12:34] Speaker 5: whether I'll get a standout return and more just this
[12:37] Speaker 5: guy's there. He's from Lewisham like me. You know, I
[12:40] Speaker 5: think if I participate in this, let's go South London, Yeah,
[12:47] Speaker 5: then I'll invest in. I'll invest in that.
[12:50] Speaker 4: This is interesting.
[12:51] Speaker 1: I wonder when you talk to founders, like you said,
[12:55] Speaker 1: you do private equity, and so one of the things
[12:57] Speaker 1: that we notice, especially in the States, is that when
[13:01] Speaker 1: we have a company, we like to hold on to
[13:03] Speaker 1: our companies. We don't like to sell because there's a
[13:06] Speaker 1: stigma that if I sell a piece of ownership, I've
[13:08] Speaker 1: sort of sold out. What's that like when you approach
[13:11] Speaker 1: founders when you're looking at to be a part of
[13:14] Speaker 1: the investment opportunity and ownership of a company.
[13:19] Speaker 5: Yeah, I get it because I talk to founders all
[13:22] Speaker 5: the time. You know, they started their company in nineteen
[13:25] Speaker 5: ninety eight, they remortgage their house three times. You know,
[13:28] Speaker 5: they've been living in this business for twenty years, haven't
[13:31] Speaker 5: seen their kids, two divorces, and then I show up
[13:34] Speaker 5: and say, you know, on my maths, this thing is
[13:37] Speaker 5: worth you know, eighty million, and the guys or the
[13:40] Speaker 5: lady saying, I feel like my life's work is worth
[13:43] Speaker 5: you know, more than that, or I don't like the
[13:46] Speaker 5: emotional element of just handing it over to you for money.
[13:49] Speaker 5: There's two hundred people in this company who I know
[13:51] Speaker 5: their names, I know their family, So I get the
[13:54] Speaker 5: emotional element of doing those deals what I've always tried
[13:59] Speaker 5: to do, and conversations to explain that the legacy of
[14:02] Speaker 5: the founder will continue under my under my ownership, right,
[14:05] Speaker 5: so the things that they wanted to do, the things
[14:07] Speaker 5: that were important to them in building that company, will
[14:10] Speaker 5: continue to be important as long as that's true. Like
[14:12] Speaker 5: sometimes you're buying a company, you know you're going to
[14:14] Speaker 5: have the workforce on day one, which isn't a nice
[14:16] Speaker 5: thing to do, but that's the capitalist in us, and
[14:19] Speaker 5: that's the that's the business. But as far as you
[14:22] Speaker 5: can continue a founder's legacy and cash them out in
[14:26] Speaker 5: a meaningful way for it, it's normally it's normally a
[14:29] Speaker 5: good a good thing. And fortunately, I've kind of built
[14:32] Speaker 5: a reputation. So when I speak to founders and say
[14:35] Speaker 5: I'm going to continue a legacy, go talk to these
[14:38] Speaker 5: six founders who are acquired companies from before, They'll tell
[14:41] Speaker 5: you that that's what happened. I've been able to trade
[14:45] Speaker 5: a bit on my reputation, you know, my reputation with that.
[14:49] Speaker 5: But there is this like fetish of complete ownership, which
[14:55] Speaker 5: you know, which which I just don't agree with. Like
[14:57] Speaker 5: it's about value creation, like how does how does ten
[15:01] Speaker 5: million become one hundred million? And if if I can
[15:04] Speaker 5: make one hundred million owning the minority steak or make
[15:07] Speaker 5: twenty million own in all of it, I'm a capitalist,
[15:11] Speaker 5: so I'd rather take one hundred than the minority steak.
[15:13] Speaker 5: So yeah, I don't know why. Sometimes, especially in that culture,
[15:17] Speaker 5: we're a little bit obsessed with you know, ownership or
[15:21] Speaker 5: all costs, and I don't get I don't get that.
[15:23] Speaker 3: So let me ask you this. As far as for
[15:25] Speaker 3: people that are looking to get capital, whether it's on
[15:30] Speaker 3: you know, private equity side of a bunch of capital side.
[15:32] Speaker 3: What should they do to prepare themselves to pitch their
[15:37] Speaker 3: companies to somebody like you?
[15:40] Speaker 4: It's a great question.
[15:41] Speaker 5: Well, unfortunately, less than one percent of available private equity
[15:47] Speaker 5: capital goes to minority founders. So if you look like me,
[15:53] Speaker 5: you have a disproportionately poor likelihood of getting funded, which
[15:57] Speaker 5: is something you know through my relationship ship a cornerstone
[16:01] Speaker 5: we're trying to we're trying to train that we're focused
[16:03] Speaker 5: on investing in underrepresented founders. I think I see pictures
[16:08] Speaker 5: all the time, maybe maybe a one hundred messages a
[16:13] Speaker 5: week of pictures. The team at f FG probably get
[16:15] Speaker 5: probably get more. First of all, I invest when I
[16:19] Speaker 5: invest personally in a business, not on the full terroer side. Personally,
[16:23] Speaker 5: I'm investing in the person first, like the person, because
[16:27] Speaker 5: a good person will make an average idea a success.
[16:31] Speaker 5: An average person can destroy good but a good idea right,
[16:34] Speaker 5: So first thing is the person. So any business I'm
[16:38] Speaker 5: investing on the personal side, I spend so much time
[16:40] Speaker 5: with the person, Like they come to my house for dinner,
[16:43] Speaker 5: I go and meet their family, We go and watch games.
[16:45] Speaker 5: We sit and drink alcohol because people tell the truth
[16:48] Speaker 5: of the they've been drinking.
[16:49] Speaker 4: True great strategy.
[16:51] Speaker 5: So I spent a bunch of time right and normally,
[16:54] Speaker 5: what I'm looking for in that person is, you know,
[16:56] Speaker 5: all the all the normal things, good work, ethic, good
[16:58] Speaker 5: business mind. But I want to find the reason that
[17:00] Speaker 5: this person needs to be successful for themselves. I need
[17:05] Speaker 5: the driver in the person. I don't want the person
[17:08] Speaker 5: to tell me, if you invest in me, I'll make
[17:10] Speaker 5: sure you make a return. I don't want that. I
[17:13] Speaker 5: want the person to say, I was bullied at school,
[17:17] Speaker 5: my girlfriend left me, I lost a bunch of money,
[17:20] Speaker 5: and this making this a success. This is how I
[17:23] Speaker 5: This is how I change my past and creating future
[17:26] Speaker 5: right time. As the person is the first thing. The
[17:29] Speaker 5: second thing is a well fought out idea, And a
[17:33] Speaker 5: well fought out idea isn't always somebody describing how this
[17:36] Speaker 5: is going to be the next Facebook or Snapchat, which
[17:40] Speaker 5: too many founders do, and they I don't think they
[17:42] Speaker 5: realize the kind of scarcity element of a Facebook or
[17:48] Speaker 5: a Snapchat. And I don't think they realize how much
[17:50] Speaker 5: money there is to be made, you know, like a
[17:53] Speaker 5: free extra return is crazy, right, that's great, So don't
[17:57] Speaker 5: tell me I give you fifty grand and give me
[17:59] Speaker 5: back fifty million, and six years you fifty grand. You'veing
[18:02] Speaker 5: back one hundred and fifty grand in six seven years time. Amazing.
[18:05] Speaker 5: So a well fought out business idea with a path
[18:08] Speaker 5: to like a modest return, I'm all in. And then
[18:13] Speaker 5: like accuracy in the numbers. I've seen a lot where
[18:18] Speaker 5: people pitch businesses and they're very visionary, they're very creative,
[18:22] Speaker 5: which I admire because I'm not. And then we get
[18:24] Speaker 5: to the numbers and theyre kind of like, well, you know,
[18:26] Speaker 5: you don't really need to worry about those too much,
[18:27] Speaker 5: and I've forgotten and oh shit, I've just realized this
[18:30] Speaker 5: isn't adding up the way it's supposed to. Like, at
[18:34] Speaker 5: some point, this company is going to have an amount
[18:37] Speaker 5: of pounds in the bank, and if you are not
[18:39] Speaker 5: a careful custodian of those pounds, bad things are going
[18:43] Speaker 5: to happen. So if you're pitching your business and you
[18:46] Speaker 5: didn't have the fortitude to even rehearse to pretend you
[18:51] Speaker 5: were going to be good at managing the pounds, yeah,
[18:54] Speaker 5: you know, I'm out. I'm out. And sometimes people talk
[18:57] Speaker 5: to me as I just have multiple fifty thousand of
[19:00] Speaker 5: pounds that I'm just wanting to toss around, like for vibes,
[19:03] Speaker 5: and you know, because it's funny to do. Vibes are important,
[19:06] Speaker 5: but yeah, it's that's not going to happen. Yeah, so
[19:10] Speaker 5: those would be my free.
[19:12] Speaker 6: I feel like the geopolitical market and overall stock market
[19:15] Speaker 6: has been in a weird place since twenty nineteen. As
[19:18] Speaker 6: an investor and business owner, do you think these next
[19:21] Speaker 6: three or four years will become a little bit easier
[19:23] Speaker 6: or are we like setting up for a black Swan
[19:26] Speaker 6: event here anytime soon.
[19:28] Speaker 5: I think it's a great time to be an investor,
[19:30] Speaker 5: isn't it. Like all the nervousness, caution, downturn and these
[19:35] Speaker 5: are great times for investors because history has told us,
[19:39] Speaker 5: you know, we come out of recessions, we come out
[19:41] Speaker 5: of downturns, right, That's what history has told us. So
[19:44] Speaker 5: if you deploy capital now, if you're able to deploy
[19:47] Speaker 5: capital now, and you're able to leave that capital deployed,
[19:51] Speaker 5: you're almost invariably going to make money. Now you have
[19:53] Speaker 5: to make good choices about where you deploy it. But
[19:56] Speaker 5: downturns are just you know, kind of infinite opportunity. So
[20:00] Speaker 5: on a personal level, I've been invested more in this
[20:03] Speaker 5: downturn then you know in twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen.
[20:06] Speaker 6: Quick follow up, are you worried about VC valuations the
[20:09] Speaker 6: commercial real estate bubble that can pop any contagion level
[20:13] Speaker 6: events or are you just head down focus focusing on
[20:16] Speaker 6: the supercycles and buying.
[20:17] Speaker 5: These are time and these are all timing events. They're
[20:20] Speaker 5: all time. And like if you if you you know,
[20:24] Speaker 5: you buy a house to live in that house, and
[20:25] Speaker 5: at some point you might sell that house over a
[20:28] Speaker 5: twenty five year period, you're going to lose money on
[20:30] Speaker 5: that house. Not over twenty five year period, that is
[20:32] Speaker 5: it going to be worth a lot more than you
[20:34] Speaker 5: paid for it. So the only thing that matters is
[20:36] Speaker 5: the moment in time when you need to sell that house.
[20:38] Speaker 5: That's not true, that's the only thing that matters. So
[20:41] Speaker 5: so downturns, if you have capital, if you have liquidity,
[20:44] Speaker 5: if you can get it, are great times to invest.
[20:46] Speaker 5: And that's what that's what I've been doing. That's what
[20:48] Speaker 5: we've been doing at f FG. We're so aggressive a
[20:51] Speaker 5: court and trying to find stuff, you know, we bought
[20:53] Speaker 5: six companies last year at for TiO a little bit
[20:56] Speaker 5: because of that. So, yeah, you don't want to buy
[20:58] Speaker 5: something at the peak.
[21:00] Speaker 4: Of that, absolutely not.
[21:02] Speaker 5: That's tough. But yeah, it's a great, great time to.
[21:04] Speaker 4: Be what's your holding period? My last a lot?
[21:08] Speaker 5: It depends, it depends what it is. So for for
[21:11] Speaker 5: real estate, you know we own a lot of properties
[21:16] Speaker 5: double digit years, you know, ten, ten, fifteen years. Maybe
[21:20] Speaker 5: tech clap it up seven seven seven tech tech is
[21:25] Speaker 5: tech is up up to seven because normally over a
[21:29] Speaker 5: seven year cycle and privately held tech, yeah, you find it,
[21:32] Speaker 5: you find the moment to find a moment to get out.
[21:35] Speaker 5: But also tech can kind of define valuations. If you
[21:37] Speaker 5: have a hot company, strategic buyer, you can defy kind
[21:40] Speaker 5: of market conditions and evaluations to tech a little bit,
[21:43] Speaker 5: a little bit.
[21:44] Speaker 1: Can we go back to last year February twenty twenty two,
[21:47] Speaker 1: and I just want to give people context when we
[21:49] Speaker 1: talk about this is a rare conversation.
[21:51] Speaker 4: This is a.
[21:51] Speaker 1: Legendary moment for Tero achieved something that I don't think
[21:56] Speaker 1: we've spoken to anybody that has done this. You achieved unicorn, right,
[22:01] Speaker 1: which means a billion dollars raised.
[22:04] Speaker 4: Please clap it up for that. That's tough any market Euros, euros,
[22:11] Speaker 4: in euros even more. I mean, I trust my intuition,
[22:17] Speaker 4: but what is that like for you?
[22:19] Speaker 1: When you trust your intuition, you've got the process of
[22:21] Speaker 1: how you're gonna invest in companies.
[22:24] Speaker 4: But when you see something like this happened, what was that?
[22:27] Speaker 5: That moment like, oh oh my god, that was Yeah,
[22:32] Speaker 5: that was that was unbelievable. That was emotional for a
[22:35] Speaker 5: few reasons. You know. Number one, when I got to
[22:38] Speaker 5: for Terro, the evaluation was free seven six, So I
[22:42] Speaker 5: walked to the door. It was free seven six. Number two,
[22:47] Speaker 5: I told the investor who I was going to work
[22:49] Speaker 5: with that twenty four months been in euros and he
[22:51] Speaker 5: was like, yeah, knowing about it, you know six seven
[22:54] Speaker 5: will be okay. I said, no, been in euros. And
[22:59] Speaker 5: just secondly, the again, the scarcity of that, right. I
[23:03] Speaker 5: think I did something with Bloomberg where they said there
[23:06] Speaker 5: are six seven hundred privately held companies on Earth with
[23:11] Speaker 5: a market cap of a billion or more and only
[23:14] Speaker 5: eight of them are run by black you know, black operativiities.
[23:19] Speaker 5: So to be in that conversation is just just unbelievable.
[23:25] Speaker 4: That's amazing.
[23:27] Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's all. I mean, that's pretty amazing. But
[23:32] Speaker 3: it's also pretty alarming. Yeah, six thousand companies eight and
[23:37] Speaker 3: only eight are run by a black person. And another
[23:40] Speaker 3: thing that's pretty alarm in which you spoke about where
[23:42] Speaker 3: So we spoke with a gentleman named Don Peebles, who's
[23:46] Speaker 3: the top black real estate developer in America and yeah,
[23:49] Speaker 3: shout out to and he told us that there was
[23:54] Speaker 3: eleven trillion in private equity and venture capital in America,
[24:00] Speaker 3: money that's been flowing every every single year. And out
[24:04] Speaker 3: of that eleven trillion, ninety seven point five percent goals
[24:11] Speaker 3: to white men. So that means that two point five
[24:16] Speaker 3: percent is divvied up between women, all women of every race,
[24:23] Speaker 3: and every person of any color, Black, Spanish, Indian, doesn't matter.
[24:30] Speaker 3: So the whole entire, every single person outside of white
[24:33] Speaker 3: men are fighting for two point five percent. So when
[24:37] Speaker 3: we spoke to Robert Smith, who's the richest Black American ever,
[24:41] Speaker 3: he told us the other side of that.
[24:42] Speaker 4: Story where he said that.
[24:46] Speaker 3: Seven ninety seven point five percent of all venture capital
[24:50] Speaker 3: and private equity firms are run by white men. So
[24:55] Speaker 3: now it starts to make sense. White men lend to
[24:58] Speaker 3: white men, So how do we have more private equity
[25:04] Speaker 3: venture capital firms? Because I mean, it's been proven that
[25:09] Speaker 3: people kind of usually look out for each other and
[25:14] Speaker 3: that's just like historical fact. So black firms higher proportionally
[25:21] Speaker 3: lend to black people, it would make sense. The problem
[25:24] Speaker 3: is that we just don't have enough black companies. So
[25:26] Speaker 3: how do we get more black private equity firms and
[25:29] Speaker 3: more black venture capital because that's the part of the
[25:33] Speaker 3: wealth gap that nobody talks about where it's like, Okay,
[25:37] Speaker 3: you know you can, we can implement programs, we can
[25:39] Speaker 3: get more college degrees, but you ultimately are only going
[25:43] Speaker 3: to be as good as the exposure that you have
[25:45] Speaker 3: in the capital that you can raise. So if you
[25:47] Speaker 3: don't have access to money and you don't have any relationships,
[25:51] Speaker 3: you could be the brightest person in the world. It's
[25:53] Speaker 3: not going to work. Where Mark Zuckerberg he has a
[25:57] Speaker 3: great idea, but more portantly, he has millions of dollars
[26:02] Speaker 3: in capital to get Facebook started. If he didn't have
[26:05] Speaker 3: that money, then Facebook would have just been another good idea.
[26:08] Speaker 3: So how do we solve how do we have work
[26:10] Speaker 3: to solve this problem?
[26:12] Speaker 5: Wow?
[26:14] Speaker 4: I don't know.
[26:14] Speaker 5: No, Okay, it's a big it's a big deal. I
[26:18] Speaker 5: think there's like a few there's a few different elements
[26:22] Speaker 5: to write. So I'm a big believer in taking responsibility
[26:28] Speaker 5: for it. Let's take let's take responsibility for it. I
[26:32] Speaker 5: think I don't have hostility towards the way capital is
[26:36] Speaker 5: deployed by private equity, your bench capital, because of the
[26:40] Speaker 5: familiarity with what you see. Right, So I don't hold
[26:43] Speaker 5: any grudge to a white man who's going to make
[26:46] Speaker 5: a fifty million euro investment in a company doing it
[26:50] Speaker 5: to something and somebody that he feels very comfortable with,
[26:53] Speaker 5: very familiar with, he's seen a bunch of times before. Right,
[26:56] Speaker 5: I don't have any I don't have any any issue
[26:59] Speaker 5: with that. His job is to turn that capital into
[27:01] Speaker 5: more capital. So if he's more comfortable with this bet
[27:04] Speaker 5: versus this one, I don't have hostility towards them for
[27:09] Speaker 5: doing that. So when I say take responsibility, I mean
[27:13] Speaker 5: I feel like there's an element, there's an element of
[27:16] Speaker 5: us understanding this game. And when we walk into those
[27:20] Speaker 5: rooms understanding that one hundred and ten percent is the minimum,
[27:23] Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty percent maybe gets us the gig right.
[27:27] Speaker 5: That's just where we are in society. We're a minority
[27:30] Speaker 5: in most of the major economies. So whether we like
[27:33] Speaker 5: it or not, that is the gig right. So when
[27:35] Speaker 5: I say to you, I see I spend every Saturday
[27:37] Speaker 5: morning looking at pictures for FFG. And let's say I
[27:40] Speaker 5: look at ten pictures each Saturday morning, I can tell
[27:44] Speaker 5: you that seven or eight of those pictures are poorly prepared,
[27:46] Speaker 5: contains spelling mistakes, how people are wrestling with the technology
[27:51] Speaker 5: for the first time. And this is before we get
[27:54] Speaker 5: to the viability of the business idea. Before we get
[27:57] Speaker 5: to the viability of the business idea can show up
[28:00] Speaker 5: better than that. Let's invest and use our friends and
[28:04] Speaker 5: use our networks to show up to show up better
[28:06] Speaker 5: than that. So let's take responsibility for being uber excellent
[28:09] Speaker 5: in the first place. Then there comes the next part,
[28:12] Speaker 5: which is coming up with something that is credible, viable,
[28:18] Speaker 5: and having the tenacity to push it in the first place. Right,
[28:22] Speaker 5: So being prepared for the noose, being prepared for the
[28:25] Speaker 5: ego bumps, but continue to go, because even Zuckerberg and
[28:30] Speaker 5: Jobs and Bezos all had their moments where people were
[28:34] Speaker 5: kicking them in the shins. And saying this thing perhaps
[28:36] Speaker 5: isn't going to make it out, so we have to
[28:38] Speaker 5: be ready for those things too. And then yeah, there
[28:41] Speaker 5: is us in private equity. There is us in vcs
[28:45] Speaker 5: who have to work harder to break that familiarity cycle
[28:47] Speaker 5: of only ever deploying capital and things that we've seen before,
[28:50] Speaker 5: things that we know before, and people that we've worked
[28:53] Speaker 5: with before. Right, And I take myself out of that
[28:55] Speaker 5: for a moment, because now we're talking about the people
[28:57] Speaker 5: who control those firms who are invariably you know, not
[29:00] Speaker 5: us and don't look like us. There is more effort
[29:03] Speaker 5: that needs to be made, you know, to break that
[29:06] Speaker 5: familiarity cycle. But I definitely put it in place free,
[29:10] Speaker 5: I definitely put it in place. Three, do we collectively
[29:13] Speaker 5: want private equity to deploy a pound behind the black
[29:16] Speaker 5: founder who is you know, poorly prepared, poorly researched. I
[29:20] Speaker 5: don't think that's reasonable. Show up a game, well researched,
[29:25] Speaker 5: well prepared, good deck, and then yeah, then then you've
[29:29] Speaker 5: you've put it on them to back you. At that point,
[29:32] Speaker 5: I think we've got to take a lot of responsible
[29:33] Speaker 5: follow up. You gotta follow up. Okay, Well, I have
[29:38] Speaker 5: a follow up I know him ahead.
[29:40] Speaker 3: I agree with everything you said, but I also think
[29:43] Speaker 3: that it's awareness to have positions of So I we
[29:46] Speaker 3: was at Diddy's house and.
[29:49] Speaker 4: Shou out to Black Caesar. You see the little casual,
[29:52] Speaker 4: humble flex talk.
[29:54] Speaker 6: Your talk said again, well, Miami, Sarry Island, where were
[29:57] Speaker 6: you at?
[29:57] Speaker 5: Wait? Where were you at?
[30:00] Speaker 4: You know you've heard of that guy before.
[30:05] Speaker 3: So we was talking and he was very passionate about
[30:08] Speaker 3: wanting to solve the wealth gap and wanting to help
[30:10] Speaker 3: black people. And I was telling him that, Okay, we
[30:14] Speaker 3: have some people now that have become billionaires through entertainment,
[30:18] Speaker 3: through sports, a couple of different areas. It's great to
[30:23] Speaker 3: start a clothing brand or start a tequila brand, but
[30:26] Speaker 3: what would be better is if a few of them
[30:29] Speaker 3: came together and started a private equity firm, or started
[30:32] Speaker 3: a venture capital firm, or started a political lobby all. So,
[30:39] Speaker 3: I think that part of that is the education for
[30:42] Speaker 3: the people that do have resources. They may not be
[30:45] Speaker 3: able to do it themselves, but collectively, and they're not expertise.
[30:48] Speaker 3: That's what he said, I'm not expert. Well, you don't
[30:50] Speaker 3: have to be an expert. This is when you bring
[30:52] Speaker 3: somebody that has an expertise in to run the company,
[30:55] Speaker 3: just like somebody might not be an expert in fashion,
[30:58] Speaker 3: but they'll bring a designer in and they'll So I
[31:05] Speaker 3: understand why white people would while a white man would
[31:08] Speaker 3: lend to a white man. But it is not sustainable.
[31:15] Speaker 3: Here's a reason why the economies is on the decline.
[31:19] Speaker 3: This is what I told we was in front of
[31:20] Speaker 3: we was in Bloomberg. I told the room full of Bloomberg.
[31:23] Speaker 3: I said, look, the way that the capitalistic society in
[31:27] Speaker 3: America has worked is not working. And if you keep
[31:31] Speaker 3: if you keep with the same philosophy of empowering, the
[31:35] Speaker 3: problem is that a lot of people look at empowering
[31:38] Speaker 3: disenfranchised people as charity.
[31:40] Speaker 5: It's really it's best practices.
[31:42] Speaker 3: If you keep looking at like his charity, this is
[31:44] Speaker 3: why we are declining, right, and other countries are English.
[31:49] Speaker 3: So I think that we have to start pushing a
[31:52] Speaker 3: narrative of this, Like we got to push a narrative
[31:58] Speaker 3: to even make people aware that most people don't even
[32:00] Speaker 3: know that. They don't even know about private equity in
[32:02] Speaker 3: venture capital with different things that nature. So it's like,
[32:05] Speaker 3: we need more private acqu more venture capital. But if
[32:07] Speaker 3: they're not even aware of it, or if the narrative
[32:10] Speaker 3: is not pushed for it, then we're not even in
[32:13] Speaker 3: a position where we can even try to help ourselves.
[32:15] Speaker 5: I think you're right. But how it happens at scale,
[32:20] Speaker 5: I think is something that we can really take you know,
[32:24] Speaker 5: we can really take charge of if you take court capital.
[32:26] Speaker 5: We raised one point two billion. As part of my
[32:29] Speaker 5: participation with them, I said, we are going to invest
[32:31] Speaker 5: in ten black lead businesses each and every year, right,
[32:34] Speaker 5: which is cool. Does it shift the needle entirely? Probably not.
[32:39] Speaker 5: The main reason that's important to me is it will
[32:42] Speaker 5: condition these guys to reviewing, you know, fifty sixty businesses. Right,
[32:48] Speaker 5: so now they see sixty businesses that they may not
[32:50] Speaker 5: otherwise not have looked at. We'll invest in ten and
[32:53] Speaker 5: you get you start to change that familiarity cycle. And that,
[32:56] Speaker 5: for me is the main thing. Changing that familiarity cycle.
[33:00] Speaker 5: That's why these conversations are great. That's why you know,
[33:03] Speaker 5: my career I think has been important. Away from the numbers,
[33:06] Speaker 5: there's now a set of private equity firms who think
[33:09] Speaker 5: what we backed. We backed Dean, we made free for
[33:12] Speaker 5: six times our money. So when the next Dean walks
[33:14] Speaker 5: through the room, they kind of going, well, we don't
[33:16] Speaker 5: want to miss the next Dean, so maybe like we
[33:18] Speaker 5: listen to this a little bit differently. For me, it's
[33:20] Speaker 5: like breaking that familiarity cycle. But we like we got
[33:24] Speaker 5: to show up with ver a game, like we got
[33:27] Speaker 5: to take responsibility for that.
[33:28] Speaker 6: For all the entrepreneurs here, what project, products or innovation
[33:32] Speaker 6: needs to be created and there's a new landscape that
[33:35] Speaker 6: will allow them like an irresisible path to get funded.
[33:39] Speaker 6: So we have enough social media companies, we have enough
[33:42] Speaker 6: door dash and delivery service type companies.
[33:45] Speaker 4: What's the next wave?
[33:46] Speaker 6: AI is already here, So I think most of us
[33:49] Speaker 6: may have missed the boat on that. What do you
[33:51] Speaker 6: think is the next innovation or project or product that
[33:53] Speaker 6: we need to create that can get funded.
[33:55] Speaker 5: The thing I struggle with the most for Terror, The
[33:59] Speaker 5: thing we struggle with the most at Courton and the
[34:04] Speaker 5: businesses we look at at Corton and even for Tierra
[34:06] Speaker 5: struggle with is talent. It is you know, finding brilliant people,
[34:12] Speaker 5: you know, getting them into the company, keeping them in
[34:14] Speaker 5: the company for the right amount of timing. And I
[34:16] Speaker 5: know it sounds strained, but like extracting value from them
[34:19] Speaker 5: whilst they're kind of a talent of our company. So
[34:23] Speaker 5: I think any technology solution that is helping companies find
[34:28] Speaker 5: the right talent, engage the right talent, extract value or
[34:32] Speaker 5: not extract, exchange value because people should be compensated for
[34:35] Speaker 5: their work. Like that to me is a really important
[34:39] Speaker 5: place right now. Our strategy to create value for TIRA,
[34:43] Speaker 5: I think is very defensible. Market conditions are favorable. Whether
[34:47] Speaker 5: or not I'm successful depends on you know, the two
[34:50] Speaker 5: thousand people that come to work every day, the three
[34:53] Speaker 5: hundred of them that will leave, and the six hundred
[34:55] Speaker 5: of them are replaced with like how does that cycle move? That?
[35:00] Speaker 5: That is where success or failure will be determined to
[35:03] Speaker 5: anything around optimizing human capital. And you've been talent real quick.
[35:09] Speaker 4: You think we have more talent if tech companies decided
[35:12] Speaker 4: to pay more. You want's a TEXTI here, somebody's going
[35:17] Speaker 4: to work tomorrow that I can we be very honest here.
[35:22] Speaker 6: And in the States, there are a lot of people,
[35:24] Speaker 6: I think who are looking for jobs, but it seems
[35:27] Speaker 6: when I talk to people on a daily basis, they've
[35:29] Speaker 6: almost given up hope that almost all the good jobs
[35:31] Speaker 6: are gone. Or if I have a tremendous value. I
[35:34] Speaker 6: won't does everyone in here feel like they're getting paid
[35:37] Speaker 6: what they're worth? Does anyone here feel like they are
[35:43] Speaker 6: getting paid what they're worth?
[35:46] Speaker 4: Shot out to.
[35:46] Speaker 3: You, nobody's gonna pay you like you pay yourself off.
[35:51] Speaker 3: So you're never gonna get paid how much you work
[35:53] Speaker 3: unless you're paying yourself.
[35:55] Speaker 4: Great point. They took their clap back.
[36:01] Speaker 5: I don't know if if compensation creates talent and if
[36:06] Speaker 5: I don't know, if I pay a person more, they
[36:08] Speaker 5: become more you know, they become more talented. I do
[36:13] Speaker 5: think there's like a comp issue. Like in the text space,
[36:15] Speaker 5: we see Facebook been people. Google have laid off a
[36:17] Speaker 5: bunch of people. I think even Amazon have announced the
[36:20] Speaker 5: length of people. So yeah, there's a there's a there's
[36:23] Speaker 5: clearly a talent and compensation issue in the tech space,
[36:26] Speaker 5: for sure.
[36:27] Speaker 4: I think the beauty but not.
[36:28] Speaker 5: My company like that.
[36:29] Speaker 4: We got to be clear, not well coming, well commersated. Uh.
[36:35] Speaker 1: The thing about tech and I love it is because
[36:37] Speaker 1: of the growth and because of innovation and because of
[36:39] Speaker 1: disruption that it causes.
[36:40] Speaker 4: We said, AI is here.
[36:42] Speaker 1: I wonder how you look at it from a private
[36:44] Speaker 1: investor in terms of are you looking for companies that
[36:48] Speaker 1: are creating new forms of AI. Are you looking at
[36:51] Speaker 1: companies that if they had AI can enhance their performance?
[36:55] Speaker 5: That we love the latter, Like, if a company is
[36:58] Speaker 5: doing great and just haven't figured out out that applying
[37:01] Speaker 5: AI could create a bunch of value, then yeah, you
[37:04] Speaker 5: acquire that company, you put the AI in, and you
[37:06] Speaker 5: created a set of value that you know they may
[37:09] Speaker 5: be they may be missed out. And so yeah, we
[37:12] Speaker 5: you know, we love AI. We're doing some interesting things
[37:16] Speaker 5: you know with with AI at the moment. But any
[37:18] Speaker 5: any company that we can acquire where the application of
[37:21] Speaker 5: AI is an immediate accelerant is a is a great
[37:24] Speaker 5: deal to go after.
[37:25] Speaker 4: Can I get to follow up real quick? Absolutely?
[37:27] Speaker 1: So in terms of creating talent, I want to go
[37:30] Speaker 1: back to that a little bit, because yes, AI will
[37:32] Speaker 1: make things more efficient until that talent level kind of
[37:35] Speaker 1: gets decreased unless they have the talent inside of that space.
[37:39] Speaker 1: How do we go about forming intentionality around crafting the
[37:43] Speaker 1: talent or creating an incubator in a sense to have
[37:47] Speaker 1: talent so that we know where we can go if
[37:49] Speaker 1: we need it.
[37:51] Speaker 5: Yeah, Like, there's been a lot of debates about AI,
[37:53] Speaker 5: like wiping out mass jobs and these kinds of things.
[37:56] Speaker 5: And it comes back to like the innovation question, you know,
[37:58] Speaker 5: like over over time over decides disruptions innovation to happen
[38:02] Speaker 5: in the market. The wheel took out a bunch of
[38:05] Speaker 5: jobs where people would carry stuff from one place to
[38:07] Speaker 5: another place. Then we had the wheel, so now it
[38:09] Speaker 5: needed one person to drive wherever it was. So like
[38:11] Speaker 5: this stuff happens, you know, all of the time, So
[38:15] Speaker 5: like humanity will just redefine itself. I think, although AI
[38:19] Speaker 5: is probably the biggest you know, innovation and disruption of
[38:22] Speaker 5: the of the twentieth century or twenty first century, in
[38:26] Speaker 5: terms of talent, people are staying less in education than
[38:31] Speaker 5: they ever have, and people are staying shorter tenures in
[38:34] Speaker 5: jobs than they ever have. So as an employer, I
[38:38] Speaker 5: am a little bit worried about like the depth of expertise. Right,
[38:42] Speaker 5: So where people stayed ten years in a job and
[38:45] Speaker 5: they built up incredible expertise and the main knowledge in
[38:47] Speaker 5: the job, don't really do that anymore. And where people
[38:50] Speaker 5: stayed in education and got PhDs because it was the
[38:54] Speaker 5: thing to do, they don't. They don't do that anymore.
[38:56] Speaker 5: So you know, statistically you would expect the degree of
[39:00] Speaker 5: expertise to fall off, which as an employer is a
[39:04] Speaker 5: worrying a worrying phenomenon.
[39:07] Speaker 4: Question, how are you, how are you?
[39:09] Speaker 3: You say you're excited about AI as far, how are
[39:11] Speaker 3: you utilizing AI and what are your plans to utilize
[39:15] Speaker 3: AI in your in your businesses?
[39:16] Speaker 5: So so at for Terra the main application of AI,
[39:20] Speaker 5: which I think is pretty cool. So so we serve
[39:23] Speaker 5: industrial companies who are usually manufacturing goods right, manufacturing you know,
[39:28] Speaker 5: different elements of machinery, et cetera. So for some of
[39:32] Speaker 5: our customers there, the goods and products that they make
[39:35] Speaker 5: are kind of weather dependent. So we have a weather
[39:37] Speaker 5: customer who makes garden furniture. So we are using AI
[39:42] Speaker 5: to predict sales demand, which is based on historical trends,
[39:48] Speaker 5: effectiveness of their salespeople, plus weather patterns forward forward facing
[39:54] Speaker 5: weather patterns, so we know in you know, good weather times,
[39:57] Speaker 5: people all the more kind of garden furniture and bad
[39:59] Speaker 5: weather they don't. Now that's important because instead of buying
[40:04] Speaker 5: I don't know, to have a garden table, which is
[40:06] Speaker 5: predominantly glass, So instead of buying fifty glass sheets for
[40:10] Speaker 5: these tables because they've got fifty two orders, they buy
[40:15] Speaker 5: three hundred glass sheets because they anticipate three hundred orders,
[40:19] Speaker 5: and as we know, you buy three hundred at a
[40:21] Speaker 5: lower price per unit than you buy fifty. So it's
[40:24] Speaker 5: just unlocking margin for them with clever use of AI,
[40:27] Speaker 5: and you apply that across all of their products, all
[40:31] Speaker 5: the timelines, all the sales people. You help them incrementally
[40:35] Speaker 5: buy elements and components of their products at a lower
[40:40] Speaker 5: and lower per unit price. You also help them not
[40:44] Speaker 5: stock things that they're not going to sell, so now
[40:46] Speaker 5: they're not buying things, deploying cash, putting it in the warehouse,
[40:50] Speaker 5: paying for its storage. So you're just helping them gain
[40:53] Speaker 5: more and more margin. Very very simple but effective use
[40:57] Speaker 5: of AI and machine learning.
[40:59] Speaker 6: You've had a few successful exits, just talk like it's
[41:02] Speaker 6: just me and you feel like maybe you you how
[41:05] Speaker 6: the hell you pull us off this many times? Like
[41:07] Speaker 6: walk us through your process and can you tell us
[41:09] Speaker 6: how difficult it is to have that many exits? But
[41:12] Speaker 6: for all the aspiring entrepreneurs entrepreneurs in the building, did
[41:16] Speaker 6: you start with that end goal in mind? Or like
[41:19] Speaker 6: what was your rationale? Because like to be able to
[41:21] Speaker 6: do what you've done and be a unicorn. That's not
[41:24] Speaker 6: by accident.
[41:26] Speaker 5: Uh. Actually I always had like each project at a time,
[41:31] Speaker 5: like I was never when I was at Premiarere. I
[41:34] Speaker 5: was never thinking one day I'll be in a company
[41:37] Speaker 5: would do with the a unicorn. I was just kind
[41:39] Speaker 5: of at Premiera thinking, man, like, these people are talking
[41:42] Speaker 5: about this thing going for three hundred four hundred million,
[41:44] Speaker 5: and I've got three percent of this company that will
[41:47] Speaker 5: be like life changing. So now this still has to
[41:49] Speaker 5: get done because that's gonna And then that happened and
[41:52] Speaker 5: you go to KDS and KTS was a much smaller
[41:55] Speaker 5: company losing money. So that was a pride thing where
[41:58] Speaker 5: it was like, Okay, I've come out of the comfort
[42:01] Speaker 5: of Oracle, you know, the cachet of being in one
[42:05] Speaker 5: of the world's greatest tech companies. I'm in this kind
[42:08] Speaker 5: of startup in France. It's going badly, so now this
[42:11] Speaker 5: has to work, right, So now you're trying to make
[42:13] Speaker 5: that work. And that was very difficult. And then I
[42:15] Speaker 5: went to core Hr and I was asking myself, are
[42:20] Speaker 5: you any good? You did Primavara, you weren't the CEO.
[42:24] Speaker 5: You did KDS. Okay, you've done one. You need to
[42:27] Speaker 5: prove that you're actually good and you know what you're doing.
[42:30] Speaker 5: So that became the core HR thing. And then when
[42:32] Speaker 5: I came out of core HR and I had this opportunity. Yeah,
[42:35] Speaker 5: that's when I put the billion on it to say,
[42:38] Speaker 5: I like the sound of two billion and exit, So
[42:40] Speaker 5: this now has to be two billion. It was always is.
[42:44] Speaker 6: Here casually he says that, like it's two.
[42:49] Speaker 5: You know something and it's something I've heard you guys
[42:51] Speaker 5: talk about as well. I was very lucky, like people
[42:56] Speaker 5: broke my horizons because growing up, how I grew up,
[42:59] Speaker 5: and how long people grow up, like you cap your horizons,
[43:02] Speaker 5: you start to think that certain things are not possible,
[43:06] Speaker 5: or certain numbers just sound too big. I remember pitching
[43:09] Speaker 5: KDS to Google and we were in the hotel room
[43:12] Speaker 5: the night behind before we wanted Google to buy KDS.
[43:15] Speaker 5: So we're in the hotel room the night before. We've
[43:16] Speaker 5: had business plan and everything I said about investing in
[43:18] Speaker 5: well thought our business plan to just pulls that for
[43:21] Speaker 5: a second, because we're in the hotel room going through
[43:24] Speaker 5: the business plan, going this isn't exciting enough for them
[43:26] Speaker 5: to add a zero, add a zero to all of
[43:28] Speaker 5: these numbers, it's adding zeros, and then we're looking at
[43:30] Speaker 5: it again.
[43:30] Speaker 6: Going we've all done and when applan for a job,
[43:33] Speaker 6: that's the same thing at.
[43:34] Speaker 5: A higher level, and then we're like I steal, like
[43:37] Speaker 5: add another zero, like just get at it. So we're
[43:39] Speaker 5: just dumping numbers into this business plan and rehearsing the
[43:42] Speaker 5: business plan to say like the authority like we really
[43:45] Speaker 5: did it. And we went into Google and the guy said,
[43:49] Speaker 5: see if we achieved this business plan, what would be
[43:51] Speaker 5: our market share in those in those economies? And I
[43:55] Speaker 5: think we said, you know, we'll get up to like
[43:57] Speaker 5: fourteen fifteen percent, which isn't bad market share. And the
[44:00] Speaker 5: guy said, how do you measure market share? And we said,
[44:02] Speaker 5: so of all of the companies that would use a
[44:05] Speaker 5: product like this, will have fifteen fourteen fifteen percent of
[44:09] Speaker 5: them And he said, oh, we measure market share differently,
[44:12] Speaker 5: So I said, how do you measure it? He said
[44:13] Speaker 5: by population of the globe that have Internet connectivity.
[44:18] Speaker 4: Jesus perspective is key.
[44:21] Speaker 5: So so you're just like, all, you know that we
[44:24] Speaker 5: couldn't have put enough zeros in this thing to make it,
[44:27] Speaker 5: you know, to make it relevant. But I'm lucky I've
[44:29] Speaker 5: had those. I've had those moments where people have just blown,
[44:33] Speaker 5: you know, blown my context. I remember when we were
[44:36] Speaker 5: pitching a I think it was KDS again and we
[44:39] Speaker 5: had an offer for sixty five million, and I was
[44:42] Speaker 5: telling the then investor that it was really difficult and
[44:45] Speaker 5: maybe we should accept this offer. You know, it's good
[44:48] Speaker 5: off for sixty five million. And it was on his jet. Actually,
[44:51] Speaker 5: we sat on his private jet talking through this, talking
[44:53] Speaker 5: through this offer. And I've never seen anybody be more disappointed.
[44:57] Speaker 5: He invested four million dollars, by the way, and he
[44:59] Speaker 5: was going to get by sixty five and I've never
[45:01] Speaker 5: seen anybody more disappointed in that return profile like he.
[45:05] Speaker 5: And he said to me, I never forget it. And
[45:07] Speaker 5: I've told this story before. He said, you know what
[45:09] Speaker 5: you're going to do if we started coming from sixty
[45:11] Speaker 5: five million, you know you're going to make a bit
[45:13] Speaker 5: of money. You're going to buy a beach house, a
[45:15] Speaker 5: holiday house in the south of France, a watch and
[45:18] Speaker 5: a Porsche, and then what you're going to do?
[45:20] Speaker 4: Right, But he was telling me a truth, though, But
[45:24] Speaker 4: I was thinking, that sounds about that sounds great.
[45:29] Speaker 5: You know, you got it. I don't need to but
[45:31] Speaker 5: he was so disappointed that my aspiration for this company
[45:35] Speaker 5: was so mediocre because for him it wasn't and he
[45:39] Speaker 5: he was spending far less time in the company that
[45:42] Speaker 5: I was. So it made me think, if I'm going
[45:44] Speaker 5: to put six days a week into this like I
[45:46] Speaker 5: should get do you know what I mean? So we
[45:48] Speaker 5: have I've had those moments that have just blown my horizon.
[45:52] Speaker 5: So two billion, I know, is a lot of money,
[45:55] Speaker 5: but it's not nearly enough, like enough.
[45:58] Speaker 4: How much is enough the tractra horizons?
[46:02] Speaker 5: The number for me isn't so for Tira, we did it.
[46:05] Speaker 5: We did it a billion. I think by the time
[46:06] Speaker 5: we get done, you know, three years, four billion.
[46:09] Speaker 4: Would be a good How much is enough for you? Though?
[46:12] Speaker 5: In turn of my own my own my own personal money,
[46:17] Speaker 5: I'm okay, now.
[46:21] Speaker 4: Clap it up for that.
[46:22] Speaker 3: So before we before that's a fact, before we leave,
[46:27] Speaker 3: last question, I wanted to ask you about the wine,
[46:29] Speaker 3: Oh sparkling wine.
[46:32] Speaker 4: This is in tech, now, this is a different industry.
[46:34] Speaker 5: Yeah, you know, I've I've never invested outside of my
[46:39] Speaker 5: two comfort zones of property in tech, but I've always
[46:41] Speaker 5: been curious about our culture and our culture is But
[46:45] Speaker 5: forgive me it's kind of music, food and you know
[46:49] Speaker 5: drink to a degree, right, that's kind of our culture
[46:52] Speaker 5: when we're enjoying ourselves, when we're celebrating our successes plus
[46:56] Speaker 5: family and friends. That's really our culture. So I always
[46:58] Speaker 5: wanted to do a drink. I always kind of had
[47:01] Speaker 5: this passion to do that, but I knew I couldn't
[47:05] Speaker 5: put it in our culture. I don't have the connectivity
[47:07] Speaker 5: to you know, music and the social culture in that way,
[47:11] Speaker 5: so I never I never really committed to it. And
[47:14] Speaker 5: then by chance, Corle Loco, who's you know, chairman of
[47:18] Speaker 5: Black Seed, which is a VC investing only in black founders,
[47:22] Speaker 5: had me come and speak at an event and I
[47:24] Speaker 5: bumped into a friend of mine do Me, who I've
[47:26] Speaker 5: known a long time, but we've never really collaborated on anything,
[47:28] Speaker 5: and we're just chatting backstage. He says, what do you
[47:31] Speaker 5: think of this? He shows me the pitch deck and
[47:33] Speaker 5: it's the pitch deck for Severn, which is a sparkling wine.
[47:37] Speaker 5: And the theory behind the wine is it's a it's
[47:40] Speaker 5: an African grape, so South African Charlon, a grape that
[47:44] Speaker 5: we bring over to the UK and finished and Dumi's
[47:46] Speaker 5: thing was it's born in Africa, finished in the UK,
[47:49] Speaker 5: which is which is us. And if you if you
[47:52] Speaker 5: met do me or you know Domi's like a damon
[47:54] Speaker 5: dash like when you sit with me, like you get
[47:57] Speaker 5: tired listening to him because he's liked, you know, we
[47:58] Speaker 5: gotta do this, and culture need this, and we're gonna
[48:01] Speaker 5: make a bunch of money and we need to stop
[48:02] Speaker 5: drinking other people's drinks. And he just he was so
[48:06] Speaker 5: like passionate about it. And he managed wiz Kid, you know,
[48:10] Speaker 5: jessej Tiny Temper, so He's and many others. So his
[48:13] Speaker 5: connectivity to the culture was there. He's got amazing energy
[48:17] Speaker 5: and passion. Started in Africa, finished in the UK, which
[48:20] Speaker 5: is which is us. So I was, I was, I
[48:24] Speaker 5: was in and I think that the beautiful part of
[48:26] Speaker 5: that was he had a little bit of equity left
[48:29] Speaker 5: for investors and it wasn't enough for me because I
[48:32] Speaker 5: wanted to be a meaningful investor. So I said, you know,
[48:35] Speaker 5: is there a way for us to make it bigger?
[48:36] Speaker 5: And he was just like, yeah, we're gonna, you know,
[48:38] Speaker 5: we're going to do that because this is a thing
[48:40] Speaker 5: for us, So we want us involved in it, and
[48:43] Speaker 5: it was was kind of a beautiful moment for him
[48:45] Speaker 5: to just open the door in that way, and I'm
[48:48] Speaker 5: like excited. We got bottles backstays. We've been drinking before
[48:50] Speaker 5: we came out here, So Severn and Wines, everybody, go
[48:56] Speaker 5: check it out, and I'd love to hear what you think.
[48:57] Speaker 5: If you buy it and you like it, tell me.
[48:59] Speaker 5: If you buy it you don't like it, you can
[49:01] Speaker 5: tell me to We're trying to get it right. It's
[49:03] Speaker 5: a very very important investment for me.
[49:06] Speaker 4: So we can't wait to go backstage and shippy with you.
[49:10] Speaker 4: Ladies and gentlemen. Make some noise for thinking. Thanks you
[49:17] Speaker 4: so much.

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