Backing the Planet with Hampus Jakobsson, General Partner @ Pale Blue Dot

Today on the show we have Hampus Jacobson. Hampus is a general partner at a company called Paleblue.VC. Uh this conversation uh is to date the longest uh episode that I've had. Um it just seemed to keep going, keep flowing.

There was so much that uh Hampus was saying that I really appreciated that he he brought to light. Uh the first half of the episode is about climate tech, his perspective on that uh on their thesis on investing um how they uh judge how they make their decisions uh of different companies and things like

that. But we did get into a conversation about um you know showing up very human to your pursuits and what it means to uh uh not get in your own way. And a lot of the things that he articulates are things that I feel very deeply about. So it was a pleasure of a conversation. Uh

I expand more uh in the articles I send out uh in the newsletter. So subscribe to that information uh is in the description. Uh thank you to our partners as always Craz Friends for this beautiful production and Clean Tech Growth Lab for making this happen. Uh and with that bring you Hampus.

Oh, welcome to another episode of the Grove. Hampus, welcome. Awesome. It was nice to meet you. Oh yeah. Yeah. I was uh containing I was containing my uh my excitement for um everything that I have uh apologies uh for everything that I have um uh read uh watched consumed about um what you've

been up to. But for anyone that doesn't know yet, if you could just give a brief introduction of uh yourself and what you're building. Whoa. Yeah, that's tricky. I am I am bad with brevity uh to be honest. Um I think the very when we have time there's a good platform that yeah that's true. Uh I can like you

start by the end I can say that I I'm really passionate interested about building stuff and I really want the future to be here faster but I also want it to be uh way more humanentric. So I think that for me I think that that ends up being like you know TLDDR if you want

to put me in a like in a box. Um together with my two co-founders I run a venture fund investing in super early stage startups that are building stuff that in my mind upgrades the operative system of the planet and brings the like the future closer to us. Um I kind of view the world as like just this massive

machine and we're a bit unsure what the actual machine is built for like you know but we have the grid is the largest machine we've ever built. is like part of our whole like neural system. We have the stock exchange which is also part of like you know the whole like figuring out like what how the body is feeling.

Uh we have everything from like you know of course temperatures but we also have like logistic network that just moves the vessels around everything. We have this massive machine that humanity has built in in cooperation or sometimes like not cooperation with the rest of the physical planet like nature and stuff. And I find it super interesting.

Just think about how do we make that machine as like efficient as possible. Um, and I think it's very obvious when you look around that it's machine is super inefficient. Um, anything from just like mass amounts of waste, you know, we're digging enormous amount of copper out of the ground and we're throwing an enormous amount of copper

all the time. Um, or to the fact that, you know, the the 21st century, we can run everything in electrons that are captured by the sun or wind, which is like at the end of the day is solar energy. um instead of just like burning you know dead dinosaurs that we burn in

the ground that have been like fermenting and put like you know crunched together for millions of years and when you burn them it's super inefficient and we like you know it just feels like when you start looking at the world of a lens of like if you imagine in like you know 200 years a lot of the

stuff we do are just like going to look so ridiculous and I think pale dot's obsession is really looking at that and saying how do we upgrade like the whole the whole system and in that we don't include health tech and we don't include military tech because I that those both are for I can talk about that at length

but for different reasons. Sure. So so then um yes so before we get into uh the story about pale blue dot and your thesis and how you guys have operated and all of the things again very excited I think uh from what you guys have been doing for you personally uh there seemed to be in what I could

find a point where uh your career trajectory your personal trajectory took a turn into climate. So I'm curious um uh you know and again that's on paper. So from your uh perspective was there a point in time where it became more of a focus? Has it always been a focus and you just reached a point in your career

where you could indulge in that? Um how did that what was that timeline like? [snorts] I think it's like one of those like Hemingways things gradually and suddenly I think that you know when I was a kid my my family has like a hiking place up north of Sweden. I've always been like

you know hiking every summer skiing every winter being super close to nature. I I'm not like the typical city kid. I really enjoy like, you know, being, you know, close and part in nature. Um, when I built my first company, it was never an agenda. You know, I built the first company in 2000,

2010. It wasn't like climate change, of course, was a, you know, it was a topic then. We knew about it. But I think it was was not my agenda. I was a kid. I was in my 20s. I didn't really think about this. And then I think that after that, I got opportunity to angel invest

and started angel investing. I only invest in stuff that I wanted to exist. like you know if somebody made like a super cool casino game I was like no I don't really care I don't want to invest in this but you know a lot of it was not climate but some of it were and I mean

some of it was clearly clearly climate but it was also something I would say I didn't like allow myself to do fully to build a thesis on it and the main reason is I think that if you look at like 2010 to 2015 climate was clean techch clean tech was like you know everybody

was saying oh this is not going to work I was an angel I didn't care if I met the people I really loved or stuff I just wanted to exist, I invested in them. Some of those super successful like you know that today you look at it's like oh clearly climate tech when I

did it I didn't have a thesis I was an angel. Okay. What happened was that I was asked by a fund blueard to join when they started up the fund and they did this crazy event inaugural event when I joined them which was called uh decentralized and encrypted about like not trusting nation states and it was

like Edward Snowden was the keynote speaker like really one of those wild stuff about like you know should we how do we trust sovereigns and you know nation states and borders and and and the fiat currencies and all the conversations I think were really big around that time. on that event I I was

super impressed about like just how the fund was able to project itself 20 years into the future and then I asked like you know how that comes now so 3 months after and I like I worked with these people I was just like when is the next event and then Kieran my wonderful

colleague at the time and and GP of the fund he was just like oh like we're not event people that event was like a massive we're not going to ever do that again and I said what are you talking about that was like the most inspirational it was super super interesting I think we learned a lot

from it and he said yeah like do you want to do And I said yeah I would love to do one which is like you know about synthetic life and how do we create life from scratch and he was like that's a cool thesis. So then I built that event like an invite

only 100 people event got emier who year later got the Nobel Prize um and just like you know insane cool of just like projecting yourself 10 years into the future of can we create life and crisper and all that now it's not that strange and then when that was over it was like

okay nuclear vision and fusion and then it was like you know quantum and then it was like next next 2019 I said in January 2019 I know what I want to do as next event I want to do climate age. Kieran and Jason, the two co-founders and GPS of the fund, just went

I was like, "What do you mean?" Ooh. Like I mean like creating life from scratch and like fusion energy wasn't like weird, but they were like, "Yeah." And they were super big climate believers. I mean both of them like you know Kieran was a vegan way like I'm I'm vegetarian. He was like you know you

should stop eating this like just I just felt I mean come on climate change that's a huge thing. So starting prototyping this event in the early 2019, I felt everything I looked at like you're curing cancer or like you know anything like like you know cryptocurrencies to do XYZ. I just felt like nothing else matters than climate

change. And I don't mean that from a Jesus complex we got to save the world but from purely when you look at climate like climate tech or whatever you want to call it like the lack of it is just raw dumb like it just like it so many solutions you see them and you're like oh this is

so much this is like five times as efficient and I got so enamored at it I'm like so into it and then when this event is like you know coming coming closer and closer falling in love with these startups falling with the many like the people looking at it. Then Kieran just sat down with me and say

like I think I I can I can see we're losing you. And I was like what do you mean? I it looks like to me like you're leaving and starting your own fund. And when he said that I was like it was one of those before and after moments. First I was like oh you're firing me. And

he was like no but I mean seriously look at like you're so in passionate and in love with this. And I was like yeah but when he said it it was like one of those times when just somebody said oh I guess you're into her or into him right? I was like what? Yeah, you're right.

Uhhuh. And there was no turning back. So like mid 2019, I was like, "Okay, I'm leaving Blueard. I'm just like need to set up my own fund. I need to donate climate change." Got so gradual gradual gradual suddenly 2019 boom.

So So uh so two questions. The first one has to do with uh it sounded like so during that time period where you were doing event cool thing, incredible conversations. Uh were you simultaneously investing? Uh yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Exactly. Exactly.

Exactly. Exactly. So like at of course like my main job was like find awesome companies to invest in but I feel like I am generally one of those people I'm not an inventor. I'm an entrepreneur. Meaning that I want like I think the biggest difference is inventors can just like envision things out of nowhere and kind of create them

not knowing what they're for. I think entrepreneurs want to burn down and destroy something to create something new. And I'm that second person. I'm like oh this system is so broken. I want to fix it and burn it down and you know make something new. And I think that means for me is I have to meet a

lot of people with a lot of different problems and a lot of different solutions. So you can call that extrovert. You can just call it insanely effing curious. So creating these events for me was a way to just gather 100 of the intelligenca and just ask them like what can we do and like what's the

problem? And like you know we had like the literal founder right CC like uh David King who's like he never goes to events and like he's like the the capital TF founder of that thing and by like crazy luck he happened to be the person who came and talked for 20 minutes there were like you know 20

speakers but like he had a 20-minut talk just talking to David about like the like [clears throat] how he'd had for 10 years seeing climate change and how he saw it hitting every single part of the infrastructure and the cost for insurance companies and banks and real estate and just like sitting talking to

him when I was setting up the event was like wait a second David but wait who who who this wait who will pay for this like the insurance cost will go through the roof and he was like exactly that's what I'm saying it's like we have to set up a government body and I was like I'm not

sure if I believe in government bodies but I believe in the problem that you're saying and then the next person who was working with steel and talking about steel plants and how we're scaling steel plants massively and like how much coal to use I was like coal Oh, wait. And they said like, "Yeah, we can use

electrical arc furnaces, but it's like super complicated." And I was like, "Wait, what? This doesn't sound like why? Why not?" So, like, you know, every single person into it, you know, I always build these invite only event. So, interview people coming, you know, who I want to come. Every person I sat down with, I like hung up the video call

afterwards sitting there confused to me like this sounds like an opportunity. Mhm. Like it sounds like a crazy just like you need a million dollars and then you can start deploying that software to optimize that scrapyard but but I mean we at Beard signed one to $5 million checks and then like you know you know called

Kieran or Jason I was like hey guys should we invest in this company and every time we came to this like you know mental standstill of them being like yeah I'm not sure like you know climate tech and I was like it's not it's optimizing a scrapyard and I think the problem is like if you

go back in like early 2019 19 it was one of those mind blocks like I think that these people just I think it like longevity is there in a sense for some people now it's like some people would just be like longevity what's the business model and I don't know what the business model

is or like you know if you listen to the interviews with the AI people right now you know oh you ask Dennis or you know Sam or whatever how are you going to make money and they say I guess we're going to ask the AI and then like people are giggling a bit we don't know and I

think that's the about some of these things. I think that in front of me when sitting there 2019 in February, March, I was more like this is the largest project humanity has ever faced. I think there's going to be money on that project.

Well, so yeah. So, so from what it sounds like uh you're speaking to, which has been a topic of conversation on the podcast uh I mean extremely recently because I think it's uh it's a trend that's been happening is that uh a lot and and I would love for you to speak on

it because I feel like you're much more in the details uh than I am. But uh I I guess around that time 2019 2020 uh especially during the pandemic there was a lot of investment in companies that were just green I guess you know not Yeah. Yeah. super crappy companies.

Yeah. Exactly. And there was a lot of money flowing because of this uh idea of sustainability and climate and a lot of these companies did not make it to later stages or there was a tightening I mean especially with the economy recovering and all this stuff a tightening of investment on just climate tech

companies. So the ones that have uh survived are the ones that have proved that it's like yeah it doesn't matter whether you believe in climate you know you can give a about climate change or not. This is going to help your business. This is good financially. Uh and oh by the way it is you know better

uh overall than than the existing. So can you speak to that that that trend? Totally. Totally. So so like when we started like so 2019 I go start out to go fund raise for this fund with Heidi and my two co-founders and literally we're met by three kinds of answers.

Like 2019 we're like either climate change is not real. Like it's just like whatever you're doing this is like a hoax. Number two it's like you know climate change is absolutely real. Um it's not an investment area. We're going to lose a lot of money in it. Or three that's so nice of you. I really like

this. I would love to kind of invest maybe $50,000 in your fund. And I was like, wait, how big is like your fund of fund or endowment? Oh, it's 50 billion, but we have this philanthropy where we give small checks to stuff that we think are endearing and and cute. Like we have

initiative to for capibar us right now. And you just feel like okay. And I think that's how it started in the summer of 2019 like when I started talking to people that are September, October, I was more like I guess we're not going to do this fund, right? And then something happened during that Christmas where

some people I would say family offices in the Nordics and family office in the US and family office in Germany who were not the family office like old family office like you know I've been around for 100 years but like tech founders people built these like tech unicorns.

They were just like I'm like I'm scared about climate change. Like I have a house in Australia. I have a house in like my house in LA is burning. Whatever. They were all being like, I think this is pretty real. Uh, and [clears throat] because they were entrepreneurs, like when I talked to

them about like, we can reprogram DNA to make plants that can live in the desert and like, you know, we can make, you know, blah blah blah blah, they would just be like this is this is pretty cool. And so they ended up saying like we can join with a million and 2 million

whatever. And [snorts] then pairing up with that what happened was like we just happened to bump in a couple of endowments and like you know pension funds and others who essentially were looking and and who had burned themselves on CL on clean tech but who had promised that they would think about like ESG and I think the competition we

had were people were saying we're going to save the world we don't need to think about the bottom line we don't need to make money and suddenly we come along we had built like hide no lie whatever it is now six seven companies I've angel invest in 150 companies like you know 30

funds. So like like I'm coming to the meeting and they're like wait like you're normal people like you you're actually here like you see the the bottom line as a thing and we're like yeah and we we didn't talk in the impact lingo. We didn't say like people and profit and planet like we

didn't say hand in it. You're saying early early 2020 like January 2020. So we come in and say we think they're doing rockstar companies. We think you build insanely big business upgrade like upgrade the operating system of the planet. I think these people are just like hallelujah. So they take a bet on

us and they invest and I think that the first fund raise there I think it was very clear that the companies we saw were two kinds of companies. We saw the carbon accounting companies and everybody who's like essentially ticketing software or expense software that you know 2010 there was this wave of people who like they whip together a

thing where you can take a picture receipt and it's great for you to do expense reporting. They did that within carbon and they said this is going to change the planet because every all going to be regulated and so many companies came in with either saying regulation will just force everybody to do this or by the way everybody become

vegan. Um and I think we came in like you know of course we looked at that like we were like we were not from the future so we were like okay maybe that's it. But what we love what we loved is we met these companies where like we went on a DD call with the the customer and

the customer says I don't believe in climate change but I love this product and it saves me 20% of my cost and we're like oh that's great that's a great call right so I think we started seeing that in like during the summer of 2020 when like we saw the market diverge into like

we're going to save the world and like it doesn't matter if we make money. Okay. and the companies who were like, "Yeah, we happen to call ourselves climate tech companies, but we're a bit uncomfortable about actually the, you know, it's a bit complicated." And I think that if you look at like one of

our first companies we invested in, uh, we invested in three companies the first week. Patch, Overstory, and Fighterform. I mean, patch raced from us uh, first round and then, you know, in September, October, they raced from Andre. Then March, they raced from Ku and then like, you know, I think it was August,

September, they raced from Energize. Energize is the only fund who has any kind of climate thesis about that like energy if you call it climate thesis but I mean reason they don't have a climate thesis co they don't have a climate thesis and it was so fascinating just see like one of those first companies

just running off and raising like double digit million dollars you know from reputable funds and actually what happened is for every time their pitch deck removed burning trees like you know like it just says this is a marketplace it's a new kind of commodity like it just like it toned down the climate part

and said we think this is huge business. Where do you where do you see the the spread now? Do you see people uh abiding to this? Um because I mean like we're speaking to it's been 5 years since this since this time.

Totally. I think now I think that I would say that I would say one in aundred companies we see are like we're all going to be vegans and you know the EU will add it regulation and these are the net zero targets. But it's one in 100. I would say in 2020 it was 50%. Gota

and I think now I think what you we see now is we like we definitely see I would say 30% of the things we see are like you know massive capex upfront commodity output like we're going to build this factory and out will come natur but hey it's going to be way better

because it's like completely free of pollutants and then we look at it be like well the consumer will they pay $1 per gram. I don't think so. And then you come back to regulation. And I think that that's the thing. I think that's still the complicated part to respond back to those people and saying you have to do

10 million investment and you have commodity outputs, meaning you have to scale insane amount of capex to get this. And then they respond, yes, but look at the new blubber regulation from blah blah blah. Okay, this will be mandatory. And we're like, yep, there is back again.

Great. I am glad that you brought that up because um another theme that that's that's very common on the podcast especially with founders uh and and also people that write reg uh uh policy that regulates is uh just speak a little bit to your perspective which is where you're speaking to is is um uh building

a business model in response or underneath uh a piece of regulation because that's um you know people uh people do that you know they they go to market underneath uh underneath regulation like that. What are your thoughts on that?

I think I think for me anything any like at the end of the day I think people do stuff because of status or because they make more money like humans. I think corporates do stuff because they want to make more money or nicer risk. That's like these are the four reasons people buy. I think everything else is

lubrication. So like if there's like this regulation comes along or right now we're being shamed if we don't whatever. Um I mean look at there's so many companies where I think we saw that of course the Microsofts and Apples whatever are going to do this because they know that like going green for

example and I'm not like shouldn't proare course going more green because I think that they know that it's going to be pressure from some of their shareholders. It's going to be pressure from some of their employees. It's going to be pressure from some of their customers like you know so like I think at the end

of the day they look at it and say purely risk like do you think we can you know if we you know and also of course using less losing less material is a money-saving effort you know so like it's controlling your own supply chain and knowing more data where it comes from is a risk reduction

but of course like the lubricant that up there is that please Bob please Lisa look into this because like we're going to be in the media if we don't think about this okay But when they're bringing this up for the board or for the management team or for their boss, whatever, if they

say, "By the way, I need twice as much money to do it." They'll be like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, [laughter] no, no." So, I think at the end of the day, your budget is like, "You have this much budget extra." Um, but I mean, you probably have to be smart here. Whereas,

I think if you come in and say, "Wait a second, we can move all of our diesel trucks to electrical trucks, which means our cost of goods are going to go down quite drastically." if you oh but there's a huge upfront cost you have to buy electrical trucks if you're Amazon if you're Google if you're Apple it's

just like yeah money we have can we just lower OPEX please so I think that like so many of these large corporations for them it's like easy peasy if they just figure out that their their operating expenses goes down so so then as as a founder that is going to market that has a particular business

model what is the correct way to a think about regulation like you're saying it's it's a lubrication as far as going to market like you're saying it's you know selling into these corporations And then second, what's the what's the most effective way to speak about it when raising funds?

Yeah, I would say like it opens the door but it doesn't sign agreements. So at the end of the day, if let's say do some ISO certification on supply chains blah blah blah blah thing, you can email the people like the procurement people and saying I'm not sure if you're you know compliant to the

new ISO blah blah blah uh which is comes along now in January. Those people respond to that email. they would be like, "Yeah, you're right. Like we're we're at risk." You know, at the end of the day, if you keep like talking about this as a religion and kind of saying, "You should join Christianity or like

you should join this. This is great." They will be like, "Ah, this field preacher is a bit scary." But if you come in and say, "Do you know if you join this church, you get 10% less tax from the state." They'll be like, "Whoa, why didn't you say so? This is amazing pitch for my boss." Like,

so like you have to arm these people. Uh, and we see a lot of our startups, they're using green, climate, regulation, behavior change, you know, shareholder, employees, they use something as like getting attention. Getting into Wired magazine, getting into the newspaper, getting in front of a customer, getting on on stage, and they're not using it maliciously.

They're using it because they believe in it. Right. Right. But at the end of the day, if they're standing there touting on stage that you ought to do this and we should do this and we are better people, people will just be like zoning out and checking their phone.

Yeah. Awesome. So, bigger picture question for you. A little bit of a uh subject change. It seems like pretty much all of your experience uh has been uh angel or uh preede or seed, you know, correct me if I'm wrong. You also have a a speech that you gave I I guess around

like 10 years ago or something on angel investing. So, you've been you in the space. Why, you know, why angel investing? Why is it so important to you? Uh you know, why have you been in it for so long? Why are you not operating at, you know, at a different stage of investment, different type?

Yeah, I think it's very simple for me. It's the fact that I love the early stage when everything's possible. I just love um I think it's so exciting when you're talking to somebody and like if you and I said, "Let's maybe we should build a train company. That would be super cool." And we're like, you

know, we're jamming about how a trade company would look like. But if you and I if you like, but if you call me and say, "I'm operating this train company. I think I can improve my margins with 2% by ch figuring out how we change our waste paper baskets. I'll be like I

don't care about the 2%. But like you look at it if you're Amazon or if you're PepsiCo those improvements are insane like like I mean there are people get so passionate about them because if you look at the amount of millions of dollars that's huge for me when somebody talks about operating and improving

something with 10%. I feel like why not create something that improves something with 100%. M and I know but the thing is that if you think I don't think it's necessarily smart of me what I mean is just more like the passion for me with the unknown is so huge the known is I get so bored

I just like I know what's going to happen I know that we will have meetings every day and I I I build the companies I scale the company from six people to 180 like we just you'd have daily standups you go through the metrics you set up OKRs you have an innovation department that think like orthogonally

there's a playbook to innovation and and like you know improving stuff. Uh, it's not very exciting. I mean, bottom line, it's exciting. Dollar is exciting, everything is exciting about it. But my brain just goes into like zombie mode.

But like talking to somebody who says, "Did you know that dot dot dot?" I just go, "No, now what? Didn't I know like I want to know more, right?" So like one of the most exciting things I think we allows us to do at Pilot and we put a really high premium novelty. Like I mean if you

look at the number of times somebody asks us do you want to meet Bob or if Bob emails us and shows us a deck the biggest indicator I would say if we take a call with Bob or Lisa whoever it is who comes in are two factors well three maybe team like just looking at the team

and being like oh it's exciting team that's interesting team this is not number one two who referred being like oh interesting like this comes directly from from Janice like she's super interesting that's interesting like she sent us is number one quirkiness of idea. Like if you look at the idea and we've never seen it before, we just take

the call right away. We're like it does what? Oh, I don't know. Like what is this? We just be like book a call. I need to figure out what this is. So we've taken quite a lot of calls with really really weird that we never thought was I mean like Hindenburg's like you know

massive these like blimps durables that like monitor like autonomously monitor forests. We got that inbound and we just like I think we had a call with him the same afternoon. We were like blimps what the heck happened here right and like so many times when we look at it we like I don't really understand what this is

like we have to talk to them. So I think that that caters so much to who we are as people. Okay. That's why we're preed. So rel so related to um related to that and uh again from the video. So, you had a lot of interesting things. Well, interesting to me that I thought about

the nature of relationship uh when you're at an I mean it was specifically angel but when you're specifically at an angel stage where it's a lot more like uh a partnership you had said instead of more of a mentorship or even an investor relationship and um and so I'm I'm curious in that um and and again you you

guys do uh what what stage investing so like 500k to 2 million so so do you do you carry that that similar uh totally totally I think that we we get the weirdest calls from our founders. Wonderful weird calls. Like I mean last year I was at I think we were at four weddings, a

funeral. I think we send off baby t-shirts and stuff for five founders. We get baby pictures. We get tell we get told by the founders they're pregnant and have a good interview with them when they should tell the rest of the investor collective. Like we're extremely close with these founders.

Okay. Exactly. Can you please just reoutline if anyone I mean for anyone listening if you could just go watch the video it's really cool but if you could just go over you know whatever comes to mind as far as how you approach these relationships and how founders should think about them how angel investors

should think about them you know what's optimal I mean what you're describing is is beautiful so if you could just I think at the end of the day I mean like I want to be a friend like I sold my first company I don't need to work like I I could do whatever I want um why

would I spend the time with people I don't get energy from and why would I spend with them building stuff I don't care about. So I think for me building relationship with super ambitious people and getting to know them as people as humans is like it feels so amazing to me. I mean I don't like ignore like

money making and all just like meeting super ambitious people. I think almost everybody you remember a time you're sitting at a party at a dinner and the person next to you is like I'm this like novel kind of dentist that helps people do this and that. I think anybody goes like what or like I'm inventing this

rocket that's like what and the other person is like I'm a teacher in middle school people are like okay that's fine right it's like I think we just like it's such a privilege to be able to just talk to people that are positively crazy and I think that's number one I think that it's just like gives so much energy

I think the assessments we ask ourselves a lot of times is like number one would we want our kids to work with these people you know like when you have a call with a founder like this founder is amazing but would I be fine with like my 17-year-old kid working for them, I

would be like, I'm not sure if this person is trustworthy. They're going to print a lot of money. They're going to, you know, break a lot of eggs making these omelets. But I like, oh, and then some people you talk to and be like, yeah, this person is going to break a lot of eggs and be crazy. But this

person would actually call my kid and said, hey, I'm sorry. I don't know where you are. I can see you on fine, mate. I didn't check into the office. And they would, you know, just they're smart people. Number two is this like when New York Times, the Guardian or whatever, New York like goes the full review of

this person and everything they did, would we be like, I stand by it? Mhm. Oh, did you know that like in Yeah, yeah, we know. We know. I don't think you have the full context. They're good people. This was like, you know, it's taking a bit of context. Number three, what they're doing, not them, what

they're doing. Would you be proud of this existing independently if you're on the cap table? Like when you say yes to those three like questions, like yeah, I would love my kids to work with these people. that would be fun. Number two, like yeah, I would stand by them. And number three, I really want to exist.

You've solved lots of the investment equation. Then of course you have to figure out is the market competitive and blah blah blah stuff like that. But I think those questions are the first questions we ask ourselves. So I think I think on the on so thank you for that context from the from the

investor um perspective. on the on the flip side of it as a founder I feel like it's it's very ideal to have an intimate close mentorship like relationship with your investors but at the same time I feel like it's very difficult when you're really you're like I need to find investment and it's so difficult you

know for me to find investment for them uh not to compromise that so you know what do you say to that is it more of an idealism or is it something that's really no I think it's I I think that it's like I think it's so first I think that this divides into multiple buckets I think

not bucket number One is that we're we're so like you and I are building a company now. We're going to pitch investors. I think the first question I think we should ask ourselves. Let's go. Exactly. First question we should ask, are we building a lifestyle business, an empire business, or building exponential business? A lifestyle business is like

you and I want to be able to take vacation, work from Thailand sometimes, whatever. Don't raise money for this. You're going to destroy like your summers. Now, number two, empire business. You want to have total control on everything. Like, you know, the logo, the design, the everything, the hiring, the firing, the where we have the retail

stores, whatever. You're building a supermarket right now. Like this is this is like investors here. You have to be a bank. You have to promise them certain amount of money. That's about it like how it works. Number three, exponential.

You're going to lose control and you're going to lose your lifestyle. Okay, good. Now we're done the first. If you've done the third category, you can talk to investors. Next, now you have to figure out are you building something which is like fairly mainstream and it's like explosive growth and opeavy and it's more like you know people know this

but we're going to be the fourth scooter company or whatever or are you building something completely novel that like will be quirky and it's because you intrinsically really believe in this you're not quirky for sake you just be like I believe in this so much because I used to build train tunnels whatever like I I

have thought about this for so long if you're one of those two camps I think you can raise So like first of all make sure like you're you have an exponential potential otherwise you shouldn't talk to people and then when you've done that are you like ops like we're going to you know

out execute Olympian effort do this or are we going to do something that no one else thinks is sane and then if anything else any about these two it's probably going to be super hard for you to raise money if you're doing this like people agree it's like what investors call like legible

people look at it be like oh scooter companies I've seen a scooter company I get it I know the economics then you just have to overimpress people with metrics. Okay, you come in and say like look the first customers we have higher revenue per user than everyone else. we have higher we have lower cost of this and if you're

a certain kind of person if you like ran Uber expansion for people you know the playbook you like you're from flick bus you're from you know one of those companies you just out execute everyone else you can win number two you do something that you intrinsically believe in now your problem is that now you have to

find investors that agree with you okay this is kind of like being gay in you know two like you know 20 28 like 1980 and you should go dating most people like you kind of have to like in a this way tell them like I think I'm gay and then the person will be like okay I'm

not for you and that means they have to have a choir he high volume or you go to quoteunquote gay bars so like if you just go to a place where like really quirkies investors hang out if you go to like the hereticon for example or you go to the unruly summit or whatever everybody in the room are

like if you pitch them yet another scooter company they're going to strangle you but if you say like we think that we will have handheld fusion power by using blah blah blah they're going to be two investors be I don't know if you're good crazy or bad crazy, but I really want to talk to you.

Okay. Yeah. I think I think every country can be a steel maker. We can suck water out of if they have sea water. We can suck because energy is going to be free in the future. We agree to that. We can suck seawater out of it. There's some iron in sea water and we completely turn it into

a smelting plant and we can use the carbon in the iron. We can make our own steel. There's going to be one or two investors as this event to be like whoa wait like whoa like I guess when like how are you think about right? So I think that's the thing is that you have

to know yourself when you're investing or when you're or like when you're when you're pitching investors. And I think what people don't do I find is that they don't lean into it. So we see so many founders that are wrapping themselves into the lingo that investors want to see instead of wrapping themselves into who they truly are. Like

I mean we have companies we invested in who are category one that are like we will with Olympian effort do the best last mile delivery company on the planet or we will do a bus company with higher margins than everyone else or we will blah blah read those texts. We're like oh my god we've seen this before but

these founders are our people. We look at the first categories I told you. We're like, "Let's go on a call because I mean interesting." Or we have deck number two when we're like, "What? I want to talk to these people because the deck is so clearly weird." And then sometimes those decks, they

have like no design. They literally have like the keynote template, white and black. They just write the slides, not like AI generated fancy images. They just be like raw. This is what I believe in. Yeah, those founders tend to be like rock climbers and you know people who liked from east to west coast or whatever. You

talk to them and they're like they have a super strong will of their own and they have thought about this problem. They're so sure it exists. They built their prototype on their own. They signed their first customer or whatever.

And and sometimes when you talk to them they're like oh why are you looking to raise money? And they just say I would prefer to not raise money. I would prefer to just work on this problem on my own for 50 years but then I realized I can get there in 25 with VC.

We're all being like oh interesting. The problem is that there are quite a lot of tourists in the game, okay? People who look at what they're supposed to say, they want to tell their friends that they raised 2 million from a famous fund. They want to be in Techrunch. They want to blah blah blah. So they they

look at they they chat deep. They talk to friends. They think supply chains are hot. Maybe we need supply chain transparency. They don't know anything about it. They just try to manufacture deck. One of they find a friend who worked at Uber and one who worked at Deep Mind. They bring them in and put

them on the team slide. They pitch and they're good at pitching because they, you know, they work like at Cambridge and Stanford so they can speak really well. They come there and they pitch the VCs. They will get money. But these companies will fizzle out because they don't know what they're doing. They have

like no either they have to be Olympian on just like pushing the hours or they have to be super strong and have an internal internal thing. If they're not, it's like you throw a dart if you're lucky maybe.

Yeah. that like you never thought about this problem before. You literally just like manufactured your way to the problem. So, so with these two buckets because this visual is great. So, with these two buckets and then and then I guess a third bucket would be tourists uh in in space. This is this is the uh the sea of

uh activity that's happening. uh we're at the end of the year and a lot of different organizations and people are saying you know here's the report here's the climate report here's the different sectors that are doing this companies investor whatever all these things I want to know what what your what the hampus endear report is you know like

where do you see based on where you've spent your time uh in the last year in the last you know however many years like where where you know where do you want to speak to how you can take it wherever you'd like where is clean tech climate tech where are these different solutions that that are that are going

into 2026 what subsectors are doing well you know these types of things I would say like from two aspects I would say like I mean or three I would say first of all the ones that are doing well are ones that found customers that like get traction period that's like the only thing I believe in I think I I

believe from any other labels yes I think that food and a is really really painfully hard consumer products are really painfully hard I think that reg tech is painfully hard. But when I'm saying that, that also means that there are going to be quirky startups in that that are just like truly interesting. I

think for example, it's really hard to get grid connection for anybody who's doing anything. That is a reggg tech problem or gov techch red tech problem. I think there's going to be an amazing product and company being built on like you know utilities want to figure out a way to like you know get electrify their

grid and part of that is adding batteries by private actors. How do they decide where on the grid? How do they give them permission? It's a super gnarly problem. It's a perfect startup thing. The question is of course like how big is the market? How much do you charge that?

I think there are going to be so much in things that investors hate that are going to be quirky because you believe something else don't believe in. That's number one. So I think that I think what works is what customers are buying.

That's number one. I think number two I would say is I think that I actually am the funny business of not looking at sectors or thesises. So like generally when anybody asks like when other investors ask me oh what are things you're looking into now the way I work is I meet a ton of people and talk to a

ton of people read a ton of stuff and then suddenly I read something or see something that I'm like wait and then I'm just trying to unspool that and that means that maybe I spend six six months looking at I don't know like uh geothermal whatever like that's like obviously not what I'm

looking at now cuz is fairly mainstream. But sometimes just find something I'm just like wait a second and then I just spend my time and attention on that a lot which means that I'm actually not trying to like predict the future by reading reports or thinking that oh Europe needs to change their

manufacturing industry or oh all these data centers in the US and how will that work with energy. If everybody thinks it's interesting I actually don't think it's interesting. So like right now if somebody says oh we're building a super efficient data center I'd be like yeah there probably hundred of those right but if somebody said something really

quirky I would be like I want to talk to you like I this is super interesting I've not I haven't seen many doing this and the funny thing is that we have this fear at pay that we would like run out of things like the patent office back in the day that oh there's not going to be

more new stuff because I mean it feels like now we've done that we've done this like 55 plus% of our portfolio is manufacturing logistics and the funny thing is we end up meeting constantly new things within manufacturing and logistics that are like you know not overlapping with our current portfolio and founders. So like we just find

another company we're like oh and then we like reference our founders and they're like yeah we would use that or wait a second so they would take over after us this is interesting and it's crazy because every time it happens it's kind of fractal that we just when we learn more about it we just zoom in and

figure out there's a space between and there's a space between we couldn't have done that with like an army of analysts and associates who like map the market I think the way we think about it is that we think about it like like dating, like you know, you meet a person and you're like, I want to meet that person

again. She was really interesting. I got some energy there. I definitely want to talk to her again. People like, oh, what made you interested in her? Oh, is she good-looking? Is her salary high or blah blah. I'll be like, I don't know. I like her mind. I like the way she thinks.

Yeah, I don't really know, but I want to talk to her again. Right? It's very similar for us. We have so many calls with founders where we leave the call and we're like, we write the blurb to each other. We're like, "Anybody want to talk to this company? They do this and that." And then the responses are almost

like did you talk to them? Yes. Any energy? No. Okay. Pass for me as well. Yeah. And sometimes we meet a founder. We're like, there was insane energy, but it's not for me. Heidi or you? Do you want to talk to them? There's something there.

They're electric in some interesting way. Those are people we have a second or third call with. Do you are are there are there any I mean I I know you said uh you know you don't like to operate within sectors and stuff which I think is cool and interesting. Do you feel I mean whatever

label you want to use. Is there any I'll use sector because it's useful for me. Are there any sectors necessarily that are more um primed for unique quirky ideas that you've seen or anything like that? I think the thing is like what I like are like I personally like brutally unsexy stuff like long distance

transportation, cold storage. Um yeah, there's like coordination of electric grids and like stuff when you start looking at them you just go, "Oh my god, that's so bad." It's like this is so boring. The funniest thing is when we go into those industries.

I love this thing that happens like I remember this so clearly when I talked to Tom at first data machines where we invested. He explained like how steel plans operates, how it works and everything. And he was like, you know, oh, and Tom is like wonderful and lovely and he was like talking about, oh yeah,

this happens and this happens and like everything. And I was like, wait, wait, Tom, I just got to ask, sorry, this was a super cool like, you know, I loved your 10-minute rant about this, but how does it work like now now?

And he's like, sorry. And I was like, I mean, what you talked about now was obviously like the 20th century. Uh, but like now how does a steel print operate? Like, you know, 2024. And he was like, I just told you. And I was just staring at him like, but that's like super insanely dumb. And he was

like, that's what I told you. And I was like, wait a second. So wait, if I guess what you do, you're just like not dumb. And he says, that's my pitch. [laughter] I'm just like, "Wait, so like you mean the status quo is so it's then what?" And he's like, "Yeah." And I think that I would say if you look

around in the real world, like the real tech, not startup stuff, like you know, stuff that like the big big big companies do, if you look at I would say 50% of all businesses you see on the planet, you look at them with clear open eyes and you're like, "Are you insane?" Mhm.

Um but like if you look the problem is like a lot of startup founders they come from having worked at Stripe or like at Google or at Meta or Apple whatever if they come from those companies and like you know what do you think Apple could improve? I mean Apple is full of super

modern people that use super modern tools. Does anybody use a massive excavator and blow up valleys? No. So what are the things you can innovate on? It would be great to have homed delivered highquality food. Yeah, that would be nice, right? It would be super super nice if we got that made by a

chef. They would come to your house on a bike. Super cute. But if you have somebody mining, they'll be like, "Do you know what it is to go down and mine?" They were like, "No, I'll show you." And you can see if you feel comfortable after that.

Uh like or you go to farm and you look at like how farmers run and you're like, "Wait a second. So you buy all this super expensive equipment, use them like 30 days a year." They're like, "Yep." And weather makes this really, really hard. Yep. And then you pay insane amount up front. Yeah. And you have

commodity out. Wait, this is like how is this? Why do we Oh, we need food. That's why we do it. And the crazy thing is there's so many businesses when you start talking to them, you're like forest management. You start talking to those people and they're like, you walk around the forest with like a stick and

like look at trees to figure out how big they are. Why aren't why isn't drones doing this? And they're like, I don't know. But you're like, but that just sounds really strange. M and like and and so many industries you started looking at them and you're like wait a second like I think 15 20 years ago I sat next to a

founder and and uh 20 years ago and I asked like what do you do and he said what I do is really simple I fly very small planes at top very large cities and I film them constantly and then what happens is as soon as the police something big crime happens the police immediately pings me and I take

the pictures and I take the I have the picture data stored on a server So what happens is that you they tell me the address where the crime happened. H they figure out what car it is because you know they can get some of the info. I now scroll back in time and you know

fairly simple and sometimes computer visioned go where the car came from you know from where where it came from originally where it parked which means that that's where the layer that's where the bad guy is. Let's go. And I was like that sounds super simple.

He's like it's fairly simple. And I said but wait do you have competitors? Nobody like nobody nobody does this. And I was like that sounds so simple. Yeah, but you should do how dumb it is now. Like when the police calls, they have no idea where the car came from. How would they

figure it out? They go through cameras, surveillance cameras to the whole city. I just have the aerial view of the whole city. It's like super simple. So So if you So if you were speaking to a group of people that said, "I want to start a company. I want to start a company." You would just say, "Open your

eyes. Open your ears. Just start asking questions, learning about I mean these ideas are everywhere." This is what I mean. They're absolutely everywhere. And I think the coolest thing is that the strangest thing is that I I would advise so many young people to go and work for a startup and like figure out what it

feels like when you just like you just cram innovation in and you're doing stuff that no one else can do and you have this go get it mentality which is amazing, right? I think it opens people's ambitious and possibilities.

One of the things I always tell myself whenever I'm thinking about like should do something is just be unstoppable. And I think that's because 20 plus years of, you know, startup creating and stuff and and then founding and everything, just realize like if you realize, oh I need to get a doctor's like thing to be

able to travel to the just do it. Like don't complain. Don't just go fix it, right? And I think that mentality comes from having seen startups. But the problem is like if you're 20 years old now and you go and work for a startup, you get you learn all those tools, but the problems you perceive every day

is stuff like how would be video conferencing in stereo would be super cool or how do you make conference rooms or how do you get takeaway meals better whereas like if you take one year stint at like agriculture or mining or real estate or any industry which has been around for 100 plus years, you walk

around in that and be like do this on pen and And they go, "Yep." And they're like, "But but but what but but but but why?" And they're like, "That's what they teach you in school." And they're like, "We can just have an app." What?

Yeah. And I think so I think that the best thing I would do if I was 20 is I would like go and do the startup journey, but then I would work like one year as a fake journalist and like do a podcast about like insanely old industries and go as deep as I can into

the mines and go out on the oil rigs and you know be on the longhaul transportation trains and if you're if you're doing those things you will just stand there and be like I have hundred ideas. Mhm. So these ideas are everywhere and you need to be unstoppable and anybody can be unstoppable.

Anybody can be unstoppable and the weird thing is that your uncle or aunt probably works at a company which is really really old. Right. Right. And the thing is you just ask them but what do you do when this happens?

And the thing is this this is not only in climate right I think that is everywhere like if you talk to your aunt who's an auditor you just ask her like I just get it like end of the year you do this why don't like and she just explains a normal day for you.

Yeah. Be like but this must be like you could probably just OCR this automatically and it would do this for you. And of course you have to proofread and she'll be like yeah we can't we're not allowed to use those things but you're like but why?

Sure. [laughter] And I think that's the thing. They're just ideas everywhere. Yeah. Oh, this this is so I'm I'm so excited by this. I mean, that's just that's a cool way of putting that. Um al along this I've three final questions for you. The first one just came up.

It's related to what you said. It's something I love to ask is that you know you're speaking if I was 20 again. If I was 20 again for you personally, you know what if you're speaking to yourself back then uh given you know everything you've experienced and everything you believe now. I think what you just said

is perfect. But is there anything um you know else that comes to mind as far as uh inspiring you know leading whatever advice to the younger version of yourself? I think I was extremely lucky when I was when I was younger to be among like first of all I was completely restless and I was unstoppable as a person like

just like you know 15 years of that training when I was a kid and I loved to think deeply about stuff. So like I was like insanely running fast thinking really deep and just like unstoppable in ways that got me into trouble constantly. Mhm.

I think the thing that I failed on early on were a couple of things. I wish I would have gone further in early on to go where absurdly ambitious people are to just like meet insanely ambitious people. If you go to like go to a startup event in Paris, in San Francisco, in New York, in London,

whatever. If you go to that event and start Philadelphia, like you start talking to these like insanely impressive founders and you just get to like somehow mingle yourself in, I think that you just figure out like what like insane ambition means. Like you just meet them and you're like, "Oh my god, I thought my dad who's a CFO is

really ambitious, but I realize now that this like is something else." Like it's insane. It's like completely crazy. And sometimes you can do it by meeting like PhDs or whatever. You just meet people who are so into their thing that they you can't figure out if they're good crazy or bad crazy. That is I wish I did earlier. I

didn't do that. I started a company because I happened to be super super into rendering like run graphics through the screen. I had five friends who were all crazy about that. We started a company. We happened to right hit the verge of mobile phones and the scale that the out of that company.

We were the most ambitious people. And I think the problem is like when you're most ambitious people or smartest people or whatever you want to the most est people in the world that then around you you should be in new rooms. The second you're the smartest person in the room change room.

Mhm. And I think there's so many people that was like I was like of course insecure thinking ah it's comfortable to finally be the most ambitious person in the room. I don't have to have imposter syndrome and feel anxious anymore and compare myself. I wish I would have been like okay too bad let's change room. I

think that's one. I think the other one I think I wish I would have given myself permission to be more obnoxious. So I was like I'm super polite. I'm super kind. I'm like really considered and thoughtful which are like you know super cute of me when I was 30ish and I like sold my first company. I want to figure

out my second company idea. I was more like because then 10 years of just you know startup mentality coming in and scaled the company and got self-confidence of like nobody nobody knows what they're doing but some are just winging it more confidently. That's kind of what I learned this 10 years like okay so like okay nobody knows what

they're doing then I just set up I think I've done I think I've done 40 podcasts and what I mean by that is like I pinged like a mining expert on LinkedIn and I said hey I'm doing an podcast about mining safety and security um and I would love to interview because you come uh really

recommended this person responds to me right away oh that's amazing you should like I'm like yeah like of of course of course it 10 interviews with different people in mining about mining security. After the 10th interview, I was like, I can't feel the startup idea there. Sold this thing. Emiled all didn't have a

startup. I had a fake podcast. Emmailed all of those 10 people like Bob, Janet, Ross, and saying like, I'm really sorry. It seems really tricky to get this podcast to the ground. They're like, it's fine. It was amazing talking to you.

Did the next thing, Edte, how do you build technology like widgets and get and like trinkets to kind of get kids to learn how to code into like the Googles and the Facebook and everybody who's in that. They were all went on that podcast. They love talking. They have all the experts who work on edtech. Talk

to them. I did like eight episodes, meaning like deep interviews. The cool thing when you're doing a podcast is you can literally say when they say, "Oh, what people don't understand about PFAS 200 is that." I'm like, "Oh, just for the listeners, Roger, PFAS 200, could you explain that? I have no idea what

this person is talking about." And this person be like, "Oh, of course, of course." And they just, you know, they tell me everything about it. And for context [snorts] here, why is that so important? and they think I know what I'm talking about because I mean I'm doing a podcast about it but they

understand that not all listeners so they're super nice in explaining it and and if you would simplify that like if you talk to retirement home how would you explain this and they would say like oh it's kind of like you go into mine without a helmet and I was like that's a great explanation I have still no idea

what they're talking about but now I have so much more interesting stuff to say and then I end the interview by saying Roger's got to ask if you got to ask three hard questions to people in mining what would you ask them and like oh the three hard questions What did I just get? Three amazing

questions for my next podcast interview. Which means when I come to that like interview and I say one of these questions, they're like, "Yeah, it's obvious you know what you're talking about. That's one of the key questions in this industry." And I think it's a hard one and like super fun conversation, right? And like I've done

I think I did 30 plus of those, right? And I've actually turned out I think I did six, seven, whatever podcasts that I actually end up publishing and doing stuff about that had not it was just a hobby I want to interview.

This took me 10 years to discover. The fact that I didn't do this when I was like 20 is insane. Like it's so stupid. It took me 10 years to realize. Then so many times I've sent emails to people saying I'm a journalist or I'm a student or I do this thesis project or I'm doing a interview for my

boss whatever. Everybody's like of course I have time for you and like academical journal like I'm thinking about doing a PhD in your subject and I'm not tricking them. They get a lot of attention. They love the interview and sometimes it does get published.

But the funny thing is I have met co-founders, customers. I have met like deep deep intros that gave me great insights. I've made a lot of friends. It's been amazing and it took me 10 years to realize. So I wish I was like even if I felt I'm unstoppable, I think I g would have wish

and I gave myself permission to just like be a bit obnoxious and be like, "Okay, I'll call this person." Yeah. Well, I Well, thank you for I I've been telling everybody in my network about this because this this literally this podcast right here, I mean, you're a great example has changed my life and

so you know, you're the ability that you're speaking to. I think so many more people should take advantage of. I mean it is it is wonderful. So thank you for highlighting that. I think that's awesome. Uh second for you what at the moment the biggest hurdle for you? How is it also an opportunity?

Um okay that's interesting. The biggest hurdle for me is that an opportunity. Um okay I'm trying to think about that in a good way. So the thing is that I have just like something fairly personal um which I'm not sure if it answers to your question. I just I was in this like

absolutely insane crazy somatic traum trauma camp. I I wouldn't consider myself a person who had trauma like capital T trauma. Um but I think that if you have imposter syndrome if you're overachiever if you're empty inbox every evening yeah you know we're talking about all of the listeners including you. I think we have

something that's like maybe we call it not capital D trauma but some kind of thing that just makes us feel and something and I was at this camp it was like silent like it was crazy in many ways. I realized that just how much more potential uh I have in me that I just didn't fully

allow myself to have because of all these things that I end up telling myself. And I'm one of those people where when people say, "Oh, you seemed like you have, you know, little limits." No, but there are thousands of things I don't tell people.

Like I like after this camp, I called like three or four of my best friends and said, "Hey, I just want to say a thing. I love you." And this friend was like, "Whoa, where did this come from?" It came from me realizing we've done for 20 years. And I've always said like, "Hey, buddy." And

like, "I truly love you. Like, you mean so much to me." And the person was like, "Oh, thank you. That's really nice." And like so many times I think that gone through that camp had made me realize also when I meet a founder I can just see through all their now I was just on

I've done a whole day bored off site the co started telling something I dropped him 5 minutes in and said you don't need to pitch to us we are bored just tell us what you're scared of now instead and he looked at me and said like is that everybody who came with that and

the whole board was like yeah yeah sure whatever and he said this is what I'm scared about everything we prepped for that board offsite. All the agenda was out. We had the three most things he was scared about. We spent the whole day together, 8 hours, figuring out a plan for next year for those three items. He

left the board meeting fairly teary eyed and saying, I've never felt so much support in my life and this is amazing. And we all felt, I want to invest more in this company. That came from me just starting to listen in the five first minutes, I just felt, I know what he's going to say.

I've read the board material. I've seen the slides. We've all seen the slides. We know what he's going to do. And I just saw in him something because thanks to this camp, this thing I was at, I could just see him in a way I wouldn't be able to see him cuz otherwise I would

been in my mind. I would have been like, "Oh, is the margins this or that and whatever." Or I've been started to think about emails and zone out cuz it's a bit boring. Now I just like I saw him and I was like, "Stop this crap. Just tell us what you're scared of." So I think that

the biggest hurdle is an opportunity for me is going deeper in that thing, learning to be not as much in my mind, being more in my body, and then allowing the people I talk to to be in their body when I talk to them to just be like, I know there's a fancy pitch here. Tell me

why you're doing this company. And we say, like the thing is Heidi and I, we say that thing now, but I say it with like 200 words per minute and like the podcast dialed up to 1.7, which means that they end up being in their mind.

But if I slow down and look at them and saying, "Why are you actually doing this? You're a super smart person, super ambitious person. You never have to raise money for this. You can do this on your own money.

Why are you doing this?" if you do it that way, some people just say, "Yeah, so I'll tell you the truth." And I was like, "What the fuck?" Like, finally, you know, it comes out. So, I think that's the thing that I'm trying to come back to constantly, and it's my it's definitely the greatest opportunity.

All right. Well, you said at the very beginning of that, you said, uh, uh, I don't know if this answers question. I think that, uh, and I', so I've been, uh, doing this podcast. Now, this is around the 20th episode. The one I did beforehand was about 80. episodes around a hundred, you know, individual uh

episodes I've done, which is great. I mean, that's crazy to say. And, uh, I personally believe, you know, like, you know, off camera with all my my circle, I'm very lucky. A lot of these types of conversations happen, but, you know, given my age, we're working through a lot of these things.

Um, I I've been asking that question pretty much every interview, and there are a decent amount of people that get into it, but that is the most honest answer that I feel like I've gotten. And I really appreciate that because uh I I I would like more of that conversation to be more uh in the normal discourse. I

think it is an extremely powerful thing that you're speaking to and it is a massive hurdle if we're talking about hurdles you know other than like oh I can't get past the objection from a customer you know uh it is a massive hurdle and because it's such a massive hurdle it is a massive opportunity uh to

be able to look within yourself think uh you know really be present about the things you tell yourself and then unlock the potential. So thank you so much. I would I would say to that is the thing is the weird thing is that also I have practiced this philosophy un not unlocked but previously and thought I

had this forever. So the most common thing I said when I was doing my second company I you know was talking to customer using our product I was like okay Angelie I got to ask a question if this product rolls out who would and this pilot is successful who would be promoted who would be promoted and

Angelie would say I guess it's I guess I guess I would be the one promoted then I'll be like hey Angelie I really like you I'd love to get you promoted can we do this together I've just recruited the best like you know person on the other side and that's because not I played

tricks because I genuinely liked her she seemed like an person I would get to work with her for 3 months and we just like scale it from the company but instead of me asking I was like you know I would love to make this work for you I had customers where I wanted to sign when I called them and

said hey it's 4 days left of the quarter as everyone you know I will [snorts] have a quarterly review with my board coming up in a couple of months is there any way you could signed this quarter. I know like you're reviewing this and everything, but I mean 4 days. Could you do it in four days? I would I would just

be super super happy. I had I would say 30% of customers would just be like thunder with a docu sign. Like we're kind of done. I'm sorry. I didn't want to screw up. I get it. Like let's make it this quarter, man. Let's have a good board meeting. And there's crazy like I

asked them as humanto human because they know I will have a board meeting and I know they know what it means. So they're like, yeah, stop for I'm sorry I around. Like let's just sign it this week. So like there's so many times I've practiced this just being a human with person just slowing down for a second

and seeing them where they are and they'll be like, "Yeah, let's do this." I had a founder the other day. We had a call and like we joined the call. It's the middle of the night here. They're in West Coast US. Join the call. I'm supposed to talk about his product. He's my co-founder is in love with this

company and wants to invest. I'm supposed to go on this call and figure everything about them. I join the call and he has a picture here on the wall behind him, a photograph. I look at it and say, "I'm really sorry. I don't want to ruin this call, but is that Iceland?

Is that a vetan in Iceland?" He was like, "Yeah, it is. It is Afatan. Are you are you are you serious? Like, how do you know?" And I was like, "Wait a second." Went to my Google photos, found the picture that I took when I was there hiked in the middle of Iceland and like

in a 4-day crazy hike. Shared screen, shared the picture with him. And he was like, "Oh my god, same picture." And I was like, "Yeah, it's like like I'm not in the picture as like you're in your picture." He was like, "That's insane." We spent an hour in the middle of the night talking about hiking, nature, you

know, like semi-religious experience when you've hiked for 3 days. He ended up like and then we tried to squeeze in about the product, but it was like midnight. My brain was melting. I woke up in the morning. I got a text from the guy saying, "I would so much want to work with you." I took a

screenshot of that picture and sent it to my co-founder. I say, "I'm sorry I never asked about the product, but like I guess I guess the guy likes us now." I now went in an update call with him a couple of days ago. Same vibe. I'm just like, I really want to work with this

guy. And he says, I really want to work with you guys. People say, how did you win the term sheets? How did like I just saw him as human. I was just like, have you been to Iceland to hike that after?

And he was like, yeah. He never shared a deck. He never talked about the product. We just we just felt I want to work with you. And I think that I wish more people just slowed down for a second and actually thought the opposite, which is I don't want to work with this guy.

And just stop wasting time. Stop having associate to run around to kind of events and meet hundreds of startups to pitch to their own management. Just be like, take the calls yourself the first five minutes. Do you want to work with them? No.

But then just say, I think we're not for you. I'm sorry. And I think there's so much to that. Um, yeah. I don't think I'm I'm there's no introduction to this question. I'm just curious because all of this uh does it for me, but with all of this for you, what inspires you?

I think like I think that like ambition inspires me insanely, but I would also say that there's something really weird with I felt like kids of a certain age inspire me insanely. And what I mean by that is not like, oh, kids are really cute when they're seven and say cute stuff. There are cute and say stuff. But

the thing is that people that are like 15 to 20, I know they're not kids, like you know what you want to call them. But these people, they inspire me so insanely. Like when I meet a person who's like 16, and they show me something and the way they're using chat or whatever, I just

feel like whoa. Like it's just super cool. Like I have a like a uh every quarter I oneshot a game. I open one of the tools and I try to just see how complicated game can I oneshot and create this year or this quarter. Like now you can oneshot a flight simulator. I [snorts] showed that

to a friend. He was like ah yeah that's that's weird. Didn't say anything about it. Then his kid contacted me that same evening and said now I've played your flight simulator for a bit. It's really funny. Can you send me the prompt? And I was like yeah sure man I posted the prompt. I was like, you know, send it

the prompt. And then he got back to me and said like, hey, here's the link. I clicked it. He had made another Flight Simulator game. And I played it for a bit. We chatted along. I met his dad completely randomly a couple days later.

And I was like, oh, I played like his like Flight Simulator. He was like, Flight Simulator? I was like, wait, I've bonded pretty closely with your kid now. H, haven't you? Yeah. Yeah. Like, it's insane. I showed another friend's kid, Strudel. Strudel is a programming language for music. And like I'm so in love with it. I'm constantly

trying to build like you know syns and stuff in it. I showed it to this like friend. His kid is like what is he 17? He sent me a in the evening and I clicked play and I'm like whoa this is super cool. His his mom who's my friend never seen it. Doesn't care what it is.

I think that's the thing that could be so inspired with like 15 to 20 year olds. They just go let's try. Let's try man. Yeah. Instead of being like I don't have time. You have as much time as you want. Mhm.

Like that's also the thing that I think people misunderstand is one of the weird things is that we don't have time. Like the thing about time, which is so weird, is because time is like the fabric of life. It isn't like it isn't the river we swim in. It's not like it's not a resource. You don't run out of

time. You don't have much time or little time. It's like it isn't the river. We are the river. like now exists now and now that's gone. So the cool thing is like when people say I don't really have time what they're saying is I'm not really here or it's not priority. So the cool thing

is if you just change that to realize what do I want to do now and what's my priority you can learn how to code today you can set up a podcast today but you can do whatever you want today and I think most grown-ups have just become so sclerotic and so stale and so afraid

about being different and weird that they're really bored as [snorts] a well I guess very quickly then this is uh something because it's very uh uh important in the discourse in u my group of friends is that time aspect and that priority aspect so if you can just summarize that of what you had just

said. So it's not that you don't have time. It's it's it's about what you're choosing to prioritize at any given moment. Yeah, it is. And it's so weird. I think that like people think time is a resource. Like money is a resource. Like you can run out of it. You can stuff.

Time is literally like time just happens. Like it's just like you you are the river of time. And if you chose to chance your change your sample rate like you can just be like let's just be more in each part of this moment that means you see people more or you can tell yourself I right now

want to direct all my attention to this thing you can do that like time doesn't pass like just you are the thing that age constantly and I think the thing is that I think people kind of misunderstand that you can save time or you know like or or like postpone something. The thing is

you're not you're not the same person tomorrow. Like if you don't want to do it then don't do it. Like I think it's so strange that people are oh I'll do this when I'm 30. You don't know if you want to do it when you're 30.

That's right. Either just stop saying that expression. Say I don't want to do it. It's just like don't don't make yourself don't give yourself like excuses. You don't there's no optionality like either you do it now or you don't do it now.

That's like exactly what you can choose. And I think there's so many people that create these like oh I would love to go over the past retreat. I think I'll do it in a couple years when I have time.

Do you [clears throat] think you will have time in a couple years? So the answer is either saying I don't want to do it now or I want to do it now. That's about it is I have a friend who who did this really funny thing. We had this conversation 5 years ago and he so

agreed with me and he got back to me and said I'm writing a [clears throat] a list of things I will never do in life and I [snorts] misinterpreted him as like oh things you want to avoid. He was like no you don't get it things that are like I would love to rent a car in San

Francisco and drive to New York but I don't want that on my to-do list because I don't I won't do it. I get it too afraid and thoughtful when I think about it. So I add it to my list of things I don't have to think about because I'm never going to do them. But

whenever I'm think maybe I should do this, I just look and it's already on my not to-do list which means I'm never going to do them so I don't have to think about it anymore. And I thought this is such a funny concept because like you know stuff that you think oh I

want to do this but you don't want to do them so just stop thinking about them. It's interesting like you know students that are in uni and they say oh I wish I took a gap year and like worked in Bolivia.

Yeah. Well next year is coming up. Either do it then or don't do it. Like it's just like Yeah. Just like just like stop saying I'm I think I will. Just do or don't. I mean, Yoda, there is no try.

Mhm. Just do it or don't do it. And I think that's the thing about grown-up people is they're so boring because they have so many I ought to do or I can't do or like I'm not really like don't talk to me about that. Well, speaking of time, speaking of priorities, speaking of

doing it. Thank you tremendously for giving uh, you know, an hour, a huge chunk of your evening to talk about all these things. Extremely grounding conversation, extremely inspirational, energizing for me. Uh, if anyone else felt the same, what's the best way to follow along with your story or get in touch?

Email me. It's probably the easiest. Email me or I used to say follow me on Twitter, but I think nowadays Twitter is like, you know, filled with trolls mostly, right? I think that I haven't had the energy to build a personality there. I think LinkedIn, sure. I don't don't connect with you on LinkedIn that

feels manufactured. Just just like, you know, email me. Just email me and say, "Hey, like want to talk and we'll figure out a time to talk." That's right. Don't think about it. Don't put it on the list of things you'll never do. Actually, email campus.

He will respond. This is the thing which is so weird. I Every year I speak for students in different kind of universities. I always tell people just email if you want anything and seriously because I've been here anyway and like and I say a couple of things criteria. I say like you know

if you're asking me to review your thesis don't do it. If you want to read your own startups like but if you like and I just say like but I'd say like any of these five things just like ping me and I might just respond. I respond but I respond really quickly. The funny

thing is of a class of like 500 plus I get two emails. Tragic. And it's so crazy. There are like 690 people who'd be like, "Oh, he doesn't have time for me." Or or they think I don't I can't help them. Which might be completely legit, right? But it's just sent an email. I I got an

email just the other day from a person asked a very specific question about plastics. I forwarded to the person I know in the world who knows most about plastics. He responded saying, "I'd love to have a call with them. I they're they're completely wrong about this, but I want to have a call with them if you

want to." I connected them and said, "This is Christian. funnest people in the world about plastics. And the student goes on the call with like probably the best person they ever can speak in the world. Took me 3 minutes and I build a relationship to Christian because like I like him now. He you know

he will remember me slightly more because I you know got so like it networking is good. I don't understand. There are probably 50 people in that task who thought oh I wish he could connect with somebody who does that. I'll be like just email me.

Yeah. Well, the short then short of the story, just just do it. Email. Just do it. Yeah. I mean, you emailed me out of nowhere. Like your email is like, "Can we do a podcast?" I read your email. I was like, "Short and sweet." I was like, "Sure.

Absolutely. Let's go." Well, and and you know, to be fair, I think that those are all I you know, I get a lot of these responses from my friends when they say things, they're like, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't reach out.

Maybe I shouldn't f I emailed one time. They didn't get back. Shouldn't follow up." Things like that, you know. But you won't ever know if you don't have time. You know, you would have told me, I guess, or you just would said I would have said love to Blake but I can't do

it or sometimes like my like an EA would respond saying Mr. Johnson can't make it right now or it's completely silent. Yeah, that did that cost you money or pain? Not at all. Right. So, it doesn't matter. Well, I'm glad it worked out the way it did because this was awesome. So, thank

you so much. I'm excited to stay in touch, see where you go. Um yeah, that that's it. There's so much happened. Thank you so much, Hampus. Thanks for reading this book.