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Peter Higgins 00:17
Hello, and welcome to the Investing Matters podcast. My name is Peter Higgins. And today I have the huge privilege and honour of speaking with Suranga Chandratillake, the founder and former CEO of video technology firm Blinkx, entrepreneur and general partner of the venture capital firm Balderton Capital.
Hello Suranga, how are you today?
Suranga Chandratillake 00:38
Really good. Thank you. Good to be here.
Peter Higgins 00:40
Thank you ever so much for joining me. I feel absolutely blessed to have somebody of your technology expertise on this podcast with me. So thank you for joining me.
Suranga Chandratillake 00:47
That's very kind of you.
Peter Higgins 00:48
Now Saranga, you grew up in Manchester, which is not far away from where I was brought up as well, before you were 10 years of age? If my research is correct, you're writing computer code? What triggered your interest? And what did you dream of achieving back then?
Suranga Chandratillake 01:02
Yeah, it's quite simple, really. But my dad brought a computer home, there was one at his office at his place of work. And he basically asked them, if he could borrow it overnight, when it wasn't being used, and bring it home. And at first, of course, like anyone else, I wanted to play games on it, because I'd heard that you could do that.
But my dad sort of said, no, that there aren't any games on it. And they're expensive. So we're not, I'm not going to buy you one.
Unless you can show me that you can do something useful with it first. So that's basically what got me started on writing code. And at least in those days, honestly, games were not that good. So when I did finally get a game, it wasn't that exciting or that compelling or that engaging. And so I ended up realising that programming itself was more interesting than the playing of games. But different these days games have come a long way in the last 35 years.
Peter Higgins 01:45
Indeed, they have, now you went on to attain your Masters in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge, looking back at your time at Cambridge, what did you gain? Most aside from the MA from your scholarly environment?
Suranga Chandratillake 01:59
That's a great question. Honestly, I think the biggest skill that I gained at Cambridge was just the juggling of everything. So one of the reasons I read computer science was that I enjoyed programming and like software.
The other reason I did it was because I knew that I already had done a lot of the work that was required, because it had been a hobby for many years by that point. And I knew that that would let me experience the university and university in general, in a broader way, I wasn't going to be sort of locked up in my room having to revise all the time. And I really used that.
I mean, I did lots of lots of extracurricular things, I made lots of friends. I tried starting a company when I was there, and really learning how to juggle all of that at high speed, prioritising constantly, every day, every week, it was a great time to do that, because it was sort of fun, I had a lot of energy to do it. And really, things couldn't go that badly wrong, right, everything was sort of fairly limited in its downside.
So it was a great environment in place to do that. The other big thing, honestly, that university gave me was just a level of kind of confidence about where I could go and what I could do. I wasn't like a shrinking violet before that.
But Cambridge is definitely a place where if you're fortunate enough to be able to go, it's the sort of place where you go. And you say, well, actually, people have gone on from here and done all kinds of amazing things.
So I shouldn't put any kind of barrier in my mind about what I can do and how far I can go. Many people who've been to have gone a lot further than I have. But it definitely left the door open wide on sort of where you might want to take your career, which is great.
Peter Higgins 03:24
Brilliant, thank you for that reply. Really appreciate it. Now, you spoke of confidence there Suranga and enthusiastic computer science fellow armed with your Masters qualification, just readying yourself to take on the world.
What is your thinking and thought, if you can recall, around the time of the tech boom, and busts, which was going on ‘99-2000? You're just finishing your Master's in 2000. At that time?
Suranga Chandratillake 03:48
Yeah. So it was really interesting, actually. I mean, I, when I got into programming, computers were a sort of slightly weird offshoot industry and hobby very, very unusual thing to be into, which seems crazy now. And then obviously, when I was at uni, sort of ‘97 to 2000, it really took off as an industry.
And there were people who were my age, or maybe just two, three years older, leaving early dropping out starting companies becoming multimillionaires. And it was just very exciting. It was this, beyond just the money and the sort of financial success.
It was this idea that these things that we've worked on, some of us for many years, was suddenly becoming really relevant to the whole world. And actually, that made me really, really optimistic and enthusiastic and ambitious about what I could do next, I'd been on a sort of path to go to the city and become a financial analyst. And I had a fantastic offer from a very, very well-known bulge bracket US firm that wanted me to do that. And amazingly, at the last minute, I decided not to sign on for that job and instead join a software company. And that was very much part of the frenzy in the energy of tech at the time.
So it was a really brilliant time to be studying that subject and to be sort of graduating it was sort of one of those periods where you felt like anything was possible.
Peter Higgins 04:53
Brilliant, and that’s interesting you said you you almost joined the finance industry. I didn't know that. So thank you for sharing that with me.
Now I've Your initial jobs in the sector, tech wise, you eventually ended up as the US Chief Technology Officer for HP Autonomy, which I find absolutely amazing.
After a couple of years, you were doing that you spent a significant amount of time in California and Silicon Valley, from your own experience of having worked in both the Silicon Valley and our golden tech triangle of Cambridge, Oxford and London, what are your thoughts on each of them? And how would you improve both for entrepreneurs and startups?
Suranga Chandratillake 05:29
Yeah, first of all, you mentioned it as an aside there, but I was really lucky to be able to sort of climb the ranks very quickly at Autonomy. And actually, that happened for two reasons. One is that it was a very entrepreneurial company, which lets younger people basically take a risk with their career. But the other reason, which I think is sort of relevant for right now, when we're in a bit of a tech slowdown is that actually sometimes slowdowns can be brilliant for your personal career, because there was a dotcom crash shortly after I graduated, which I was hit by as well, I was laid off from my first job.
The nice thing was that actually, if you were willing to sort of do anything, you could actually rise very rapidly, because a lot of people have left the industry and I sort of see that same thing, right now, people are sort of a bit depressed with where tech jobs are.
But actually, it could be a great time to lean into it if you're from a personal career point of view.
But anyway, that's a different point, regarding the differences between Silicon Valley or the Bay Area, and the triangle here in the UK, I think there are lots of similarities, there are more similarities than there are differences, the most important ones being the sheer talent that's available.
So there are just a lot of smart, ambitious people of all different ages and levels of experience.
There's a sort of financial requirement that Silicon Valley has, that we have a lot more of today in the UK that we didn't have, certainly 20 years ago, which is just venture capital investors, angel investors, that can really back these companies.
And then also, there's a need for I would describe it as kind of the broader ecosystem. So not just the founders, and the sort of executive teams, but all of the other people that make these companies have success, the lawyers, the bankers, the accountants, and everything else, the media people, etc, etc.
There's just a very, very well established ecosystem of all of those people in the Bay Area. And when I was building my company there, and even working for Autonomy there, it really was visible.
I mean, you know, if you had a problem, they were just always people, you could ask, and you could ask them very easily.
Whereas here in Europe, even today, even in the UK, in the Golden Triangle, it's just a bit harder to find people. And when you do find people they've probably had a little bit less experienced, doesn't mean they aren't brilliant, and they aren't as good fundamentally, but they just haven't been through as much experience. And so that makes it harder or just a bit slower, I think, to build the company in Europe.
But the good news is, we're catching up fast. And I think the reality today in Cambridge, there's so much better than 23 years ago, when I graduated from Cambridge, just a completely different night and day reality for founders. We can go further and we should go further.
But it's got a lot better. But one big thing that we haven't really fixed in my mind, is the public market situation. So the reality is that the FTSE 100 exchanges is a great exchange for various things.
But it really hasn't been a great place. For tech companies, it has a few of them, it's always had a few of them. It's never been a really happy destination for most of those companies. And I don't think I think a lot of those companies have always felt they were undervalued by it.
I think that's a little bit unfair. I mean, I was a London based public CEO for a while. And there were plenty of good things about it. But I think they're right that NASDAQ in particular, but even the New York Stock Exchange, are great places to be as a public tech company. And that's something we've got to fix somehow. Because if we don't, then I worry that the LSE will become less and less relevant over time.
Peter Higgins 08:35
Yeah, that discussion with a few technologists and fund managers and people that have worked in the ecosystem. And it's a recurring problem, really, and the argument that's been had of late regarding Arm listing, where should it list, how should it list, etc, etc.
It all stems from the fact that we allowed it to be sold in the first place, which we shouldn't have done it, we should have kept our champions technology champions, and now we're fighting to seize and try and get them to list here. So very unfortunate.
Suranga Chandratillake 09:01
Even looking at the Arm thing, obviously, one way of stopping that happening would have been to blocked it.
The other way of stopping it, which is almost one I would have preferred as if Arm had been on a market that fully appreciated its value, then it would have been attractive for them to stay public.
But the reality was that when it came down to that position, the board said, well, versus this public reality, and this exit reality, we're going to do the second and it's a shame that we're in that position.
You know, if you think about it, there are lots of US public companies that could have sold earlier, but they didn't, because they were happy being public on NASDAQ, or the New York Stock Exchange, and they've continued to grow and grow and grow and become more and more relevant and accrue value to that country as a result.
Peter Higgins 09:38
Absolutely. This recurring issue with our tech companies, and the fact they're never allowed to grow to their full potential, they get halfway and they're offered a 20-30% premium. And the board and the other institutional investors go we'll take that and it seems very short-termist to me Suranga. I'm not sure if you'd agree with me or not?
Suranga Chandratillake 09:57
Yeah, I mean, it really is. So you know, today I'm a Venture Capitalist.
So I work for a firm called Balderton. We are a London based Pan-European Venture Capital firm, we've been doing it for about 20 to 23 years now, I've been there for eight years, and we invest everywhere from seed all the way through to sort of IPO level, always in private tech companies.
And as we are often an early stage investor, the model that we pursue a financial model is that we will make a number of investments that highly risky, many of them will not work out and end up going to zero.
That's just the nature of highly speculative cutting edge technology. That's okay, failure is not necessarily a bad thing. But we need one or two of those companies to do incredibly well. And that's kind of what allows us to produce overall, the returns that our investors expect.
And so we absolutely want to hold on to our winners, you know, we don't want to sell at 350, or 400, or even a billion dollars, we'd rather hold until they get to 10, or 20, or 30. And we have some of those in our portfolio. And it's because of that, that we've been able to be successful as a firm.
But you're right, there's a lot of pressure on those companies to sell out earlier. And there are different reasons for that some of it is cultural, I think that's less and less of an issue.
Honestly, at the moment, I think there's a new breed of or generation of entrepreneurs, I don't mean that they're necessarily young, there's people who became entrepreneurs in the last 10 years, and see how big things can be.
But the other reason is the lack of late stage capital, we do growth investing, but there aren't that many late stage VC firms in Europe.
And as a result, if you're sat there and you need 50, or $100 million to go from the sort of $350-$500 million stage to the multibillion dollar stage, you don't have as many options as you probably need. And at that point, if it's hard to raise money, if for some reason you can't attract US capital or Asian capital.
At that point, you can see why a founder might say, You know what, maybe I should just exit, I don't want to hit the wall. So it's sad, and we need to fix that. But there's a lot of people trying to fix that problem. And I think it's a known problem. And it's one that a lot of people's interest to fix it, it's just going to take time.
Peter Higgins 11:50
Brilliant, I appreciate that reply. Now, I'm going to go back a little bit, if I may, because I missed out a really important part of your journey here. And that's going back to 2005, when shortly after leaving HP Autonomy, you started what was essentially I've got described here as a toolbar for web search, specialising in video, and you call the company Blinkx.
But within what less than two years of starting the company, it attracted the attention of Microsoft, Suranga, I don't know how you do these things. And they wanted to jump on board, and utilise the technology within Blinkx. And you had a relationship and investment from them using your technology.
How did you do that within two years, because that's what must inspire a lot of technology companies and entrepreneurs that are attracted to you and what you've done historically?
Suranga Chandratillake 12:36
Yeah, so the story behind Blinkx is that it started off as a project within Autonomy.
So when I was still there, we would work on side projects, like in many tech companies, and one of the side projects we worked on, ended up becoming Blinkx, we were looking at a whole bunch of different applications for search, but in the consumer domain.
So historically, Autonomy had always been a very enterprise focused company selling software to other businesses. And we were sort of said, well, could you take some of his tech and apply it to normal people instead? And what would that look like? And that led to lots of interesting ideas, it led to ultimately the spinning out of that team from Autonomy into its own company.
And that's what became Blinkx. So to be fair, that technology took a lot longer than just two years to build, it was already standing on the shoulders of Autonomy’s giants, as it were, but also we'd had some time at Autonomy to sort of work on it.
The reason why I think we got a lot of attention. And in those early years, we signed up, you know, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL, who were a big search player at the time, Ask Jeeves and other big search player at the time, yeah, exactly, the butler, we had everyone who was really allowed searching except for Google, that was the only one we'd never got.
And the reason we got them was because at that point on video was exploding. So this is the very beginning of what now seems obvious, but at that time, it was quite hard to stream video. And so sites like YouTube, and iPlayer, and Hulu, were just getting started. And Hulu was the predecessor really to things like Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime Video, and so on.
And anyway, there was a real problem around searching this content, there was a lot of content, it was exploding everywhere. But you couldn't find what you wanted to watch very easily. And so we built a very specialist search engine that could do that. And for everybody who was big in search, they needed to offer that to their end users.
But they had no way of technically building it themselves, certainly not quickly and efficiently. And so we were able to do deals there. And you know, we had a number of conversations with some of these companies to sell the whole company. And I think we could have easily sold it for about $200 million. At that point. In fact, one of our competitors sold their company for about 150, I think at the time to AOL, but we really felt like we wanted to go for it. And so we stuck to our to our original plan to be an independent business and ultimately sign them all up as partners made revenue from it and use that to build a larger and larger company.
Peter Higgins 14:50
Brilliant. I love the fact that you decided to just not necessary go it alone, but go the way of growth and steady growth. So you're the founder of Blinkx, you stayed with the company until 2012. Which stage it got bought out.
That's got to be your greatest success, you're going to share that with us that journey from taking it from part of Autonomy, you went through the IPO process as well, you listed it, and then you sold it.
Can you share some of that journey with us?
Suranga Chandratillake 15:17
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, it was a long journey. Right. So actually, the company was merged in the end, so it kept going. And so actually, I stayed on the board for another few years. So all in all, my Blinkx journey was over 10 years. And you know, most of it as CEO, but a chunk of it as a board member, rather than the CEO.
Look, it was an amazing journey. And I think when I reflect on it now, it was one of those things where you just learn a lot, in incredibly short, intense period of time, there are downsides to that it's incredibly painful, you can only learn that much by making a lot of mistakes, and seeing a lot of things go wrong, some of which you've caused, some of which other people have caused.
And so there were many, many moments that were moments of utter despair, frankly, and I went through definitely the hardest points of my life in that journey. And there were many times when I really thought I couldn't keep going, and we couldn't keep going and that sucked, right?
I mean, it was very hard to have a terrible holiday in that 10 years, without constantly thinking about what was going on with the company, it was very hard to get through any year without having these moments where it really felt like things could really topple, especially in an area like video search, which was of such strategic interest to so many big companies.
So we were always slaved to Google saying something or Microsoft doing something. And even if these things didn't have an immediate impact, everyone would assume they would, and it would affect your overall business, with the share price if you are public, and so on.
On the other hand, the upsides of that are when you did achieve things, I think it made them feel all the more special. I mean, it's a team wasn't just me, as a team of us, you know, we went through this journey together, and we did succeed.
Despite all these negative odds, it felt absolutely amazing. And there are moments like when we first went public, the moment when we first went through a billion dollar valuation, the moments when we signed certain particular customers, that just felt really amazing.
Absolutely amazing and so those achievements, I think, some of the proudest achievements of my life as well.
So it's a weird mix, right? You have your lowest of lows, but your highest of highs. And then for me, like looking at it longer-term, career wise, what it really did was just put me through an incredible school, everything you can learn and everything you need to do.
And that's the beauty of it from the point of view of my current job, right?
I mean, today, the first half of my job is finding and investing in great companies.
The second half of my job is helping those companies grow. And the good news is, I wouldn't have been through everything that those companies are going to go through.
But I've been through many similar things. And so I can hopefully sit there on the board and with the teams and empathise, first of all, and kind of share the pain that they're in at any given moment in time, but also come up with ideas and be a sounding board for those things. And that I think it may have been painful to learn those lessons, but it's valuable that I learned them.
Peter Higgins 17:46
Brilliant, thank you for that. But I want to talk about balance a bit later on, if I may. But I think it's very important to touch on that because as an entrepreneur, and founders and CEOs of businesses are juggling so many tasks and responsibilities that we need to be mindful that we look after ourselves as well. So I'll be talking about that a bit later.
I want to talk now a little bit about Balderton Capital.
But I want to talk first and ask you if you'd be so kind because our global Investing Matters audience and encompasses private investors, professional investors, institutional investors, ultra-high net worth individuals, fund managers, etc. What is your definition surrender of a venture capitalist? And what does it encompass? We'll start there to give somebody a bit of an overview as to what it entails.
Suranga Chandratillake 18:29
Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, it means different things to different people. But for me, I refer to what I call the classic Silicon Valley venture capital model. And that is institutional investors.
So we're professionals, who raise capital from external institutional investors who are limited partners, who invest in a closed end fund that then goes and invests in technology driven businesses.
So either fundamental technology, or a company that's using technology to sort of drive faster than usual growth level. And you do that very early stage, you acquire minority stakes. And then you hold those stakes for a very long period of time, 7,8,9,10 years.
And in that time, you're hopefully instrumental in helping that company exploit that technology opportunity to build a very large business over a relatively short period of time. And as I mentioned earlier, because of the nature of when we're investing and the kinds of things we're investing in, the reality is the failure rate is very, very high.
So unlike many other types of investing, we can expect 25 to 30% of the companies we invest in to go to zero, and that's no one's fault. The founders had a brilliant idea. We loved it for all the right reasons.
It just didn't work. But the hope is that if you look at the remaining two thirds that do make it or the remaining three quarters that do make it, you know, some will be a reasonable success, and that's absolutely fine. And that's great. But one or two will be outlier successes, and it's those companies that then deliver the sort of outsized returns that people expect from our sector.
Peter Higgins 19:56
Brilliant, we’ll touch on some of the outliers as well later on. Now, Suranga, you are a general partner at one of Europe's largest venture capital firms, which is, as we've said, Balderton Capital, and what is the business’s philosophy? And please, can you give us a global viewpoint overview of the sheer size and scale of Balderton and the tech ecosystem it works in?
Suranga Chandratillake 20:22
Yeah, absolutely. So look, we, like I said earlier, venture capital firm based in London, making pan European investments, our key driving belief is that the best way to change the world is to start a company.
And really everything we do comes from that quite simple statement, we think that you know, what gets us excited, the reason that we get out of bed every day and go to work is that we think we're living in a sort of unique moment in time with regard to the ability of information technology, so stuff to do with computers, being able to really change the direction and the pace of human development in all kinds of ways, whether it's at home, whether it's at work, whether it's in our families, or whatever else, when you have that kind of opportunity, the best way to have some kind of impact or change on the world that you think is important is to do it using a company that has at the heart of it, some of that technology.
And our job is to find those people who are making those businesses and making those companies help them by providing capital, but also help them with the really complicated, long, often painful journey that I described earlier of actually achieving that. And in return for it, of course, you know, enjoying the financial returns that come from being in that kind of investment journey. So that's the heart of what we do.
The world we live in is, I guess, private technology industry. In Europe, there are many different measures of that. But basically, there's somewhere between five and 6000, new European technology companies started every year, as I said before, many of them don't really get very far. But every year, there are somewhere between five and 20, that become multibillion dollar outcomes.
Eventually, Europe has produced iconic companies like UiPath, like Revolut, like Spotify, and so on.
And our job is to find a few of those every year or every two, three years, and invest in them. That's the essence of what we do. The interesting thing about our industry that I think makes it quite different from a lot of others is that we are very hands on as investors.
So on the one hand, we are absolutely a financial services firm, we're regulated that way. And we make financial investments on behalf of our own investors. But because of the nature of what we're investing in, unlike, say, being a public market investor, we can't just buy shares, and then sit back and just look at the how the company's doing and make decisions based on that, we sort of have to get involved.
And that's what we do. We sit on the boards were involved much, much more than that every day, every week if we have to be. And our firms have these large platform teams that help in lots of different ways with the marketing and the talent requirements, the legal and the financial requirements of these companies.
So it's a very sort of hands on operational job. In some ways. It's quite entrepreneurial. But on the other hand, it's also very much a financial investing job as well.
Peter Higgins 22:57
Brilliant. Thank you. Now, I wanted to ask you this question, because you haven't touched on it, Balderton Capital have actually got a unique equal partnership structure. And I think that's extremely beneficial for the portfolio companies. Please, can you expand on that for us, please?
Suranga Chandratillake 23:12
Yeah, so in the end, the way that a lot of venture capital firms are set up is as partnerships, you know, a small number of people who essentially own the firm and who ultimately decide what investments to make. And for lots of historical reasons, many of those partnerships are on equal.
So person who started the firm will probably be the more senior partner, they might own more of the firm, they will get more of the profits, they might have a bigger say in the positions, we decided, when we were founded.
And this is before my time, then we were going to have this concept of an equal partnership, where essentially, when you become a partner of Balderton, you're an equal partner, you're an equal owner in the business, if companies do well, and we make profits from that, that profit is shared evenly, regardless of whether you are the one who spotted that particular company or spent time with them.
And then also from decision making process, we have votes, and every time we vote, every vote is equal, no one has a bigger say, or a higher say than anybody else.
We really like this, it means that we're able to have a very sort of diverse set of people in that partnership, and they can all have an equal voice.
And it also means from the point of view of the companies and the founders, that when we invest, you might have spent a lot of time talking to me, I might be the person on your board.
But actually all of my partners are equally incentivized for you to be a success. And so if for some reason you need Rana, or you need Rob to help on those companies or your business because they have a particular specialist network or piece of knowledge that I don't have, then you can always ask them, they're going to want to give it to you as much as I would, because you know that your success is as important to them as it is to me.
Peter Higgins 24:38
But that's precisely the answer I was looking for. And that's the reason I was asking you I think the beauty of it is is that you have variation of 1,3,4 or 5 different individuals that have got all different specialism or different skills, and that entrepreneur that founder can tap into Balderton, wholly, not just Suranga and that's a beautiful way of going about it and supporting companies going forward.
Now I think we're going back to about November 2021, Suranga and Balderton had the one of the largest races, if not the largest race, and transitioned a little bit or a lot actually, from being a leading Series A investor to multi-stage fund, giving it more firepower and stability. Now, for those that don't understand, please, could you explain the nuances between pre-seed, seed, Series A, and going further up into late stage, please?
Suranga Chandratillake 25:26
Yeah, absolutely. So as I said, a couple of times, you know, we're backing these companies that start with, you know, one or two or three people. And if they're really successful end up with 1000s of people at the end when they go public, or a solid perhaps.
So during that journey, you will probably raise money more than once. And in our little weird world of venture, we give names to each of those moments at which you raise money, and we call them rounds or series.
So the very first series is usually called pre-seed, that's usually when you've just got some people together, they've got an idea, they haven't got anything else.
So it's, you know, at that point, they can only raise a very small amount of capital at very low valuation effectively, obviously, how much they can raise and at what valuation will depend on who they are, are they really compelling entrepreneurs for some reason, and what they're trying to build is what they're building, so exciting and so interesting, and so potentially valuable. But nevertheless, that's the first stage, then you have what's known as seed investment.
Typically, at that point, that team has been together for anywhere from six months to a year, they've built a first initial version of the product, they've got it out there, you can sort of see it in your hands and get a feel for it, but haven't really got a lot of traction yet, they haven't really got it in many customers hands, people aren't really using it properly. Yet, it's still a bit of a theory. It's just it's now instantiated in real life.
That takes you to Series A, which usually happens about a year or two later. At that point, you can probably raise if pre-seed was raising 50 to $200,000.
Series A is probably anywhere from four to maybe about $15 million. At most, at this point, you've got real traction, you've got people using your product, or you've got customers paying for it, you might have a million or $2 million worth of revenue every year on a run rate basis going through, but you're still small, right?
It's still 25-30 people, there's still a lot to prove, you're probably just in one market, you've probably just got one product, and then you keep going right Series B, Series C, and so on.
Some companies will raise series E's or F’s at some point, they get profitable, they don't need to keep raising money, or they go public, and they start raising money on the public markets instead.
So just to go back to your initial question about how the firm changed. In the early days of Balderton’s history, for the first almost 20 years, we were primarily a seed and series A investor. So we only invest in those very early parts of the journey.
And then what happened a few years ago was that we built a whole new team, we added two new partners, my partner's Rana and David, who joined the firm, and they built a whole new offering to do growth stage investing. So that means Series C, D, E, and so on. So now we have capital to help you really almost whatever stage of the journey you're at, while you're still a private tech company.
Peter Higgins 27:55
Brilliant and more scope to actually nurture companies across Europe as well. So that's really fantastic.
Now you've previously described Balderton Capital, as a low frequency, high conviction investor that spends a lot of time dedicated to his portfolio companies, without giving away the Balderton secret formula, what are the successful investing traits and essential criteria that you're looking for in a team, in an entrepreneur, or in a concept before Balderton are going to give that company a stamp of approval and back them with the hard earned cash, and give them the financial and strategic support they need going forward?
Suranga Chandratillake 28:32
Yeah, I mean, we've done a lot of analysis on what we've done before, what's worked and what hasn't worked.
As I said, you can't get away from some level of risk, right? So you're going to make mistakes, and to be okay with that.
But when you look at what has worked, generally, the companies that we've backed that have ended up doing really well, are almost always in the same market that they were in, start off with, it sounds obvious, but some of these very early companies sometimes completely change what market they're in. But actually, the ones that do change rarely succeed.
Usually, there's a reason why they're in focus on one particular market. And that continues to be the market that matters.
The second thing that tends to be static, through the successful companies is the founding team. So maybe not everybody, but usually, there's still one or two of the founders, the original people who started the business still there at the end.
And I think that's because those people have just such a singular focus on solving this problem. They have such a massive ownership, about solving the problem and building the business that they are very, very focused on that. And so they have a level of energy and kind of passion for it.
That's hard to hire from someone else. Interestingly, what changes a lot between the time when we invest and the outcome is the exact product that they're selling.
So you might be in the same general market, we might be solving quite a different problem, but it'll be the same people. And so that's what we care about. We look at the market and we look at the people we actually care less about exactly what you're building right now.
We care a little bit less about exactly how many customers you have now exactly how much revenue you have now, those things are important.
They tell us about what's working, what's not working. If things aren't working or are working that tells us about how you react as a team and so on, what we really do is spend time saying, look, is the general market these people are focused on actually massive?
Is it one that we get excited about because of the sheer size of it?
And the fact that it feels like change is going to happen in the next 10 years?
If the answer to that is yes, then we returned to the team and say, look, is this a team we trust to navigate that reality, because we know that what they're building now, despite what they think and say, is not what's going to make the most money in the end, they've got to be smart enough to realise when it's not working, and they got to be smart enough to change what they're doing, and go through what's known as the pivot, you know, if necessary, which is where you change direction.
And if you believe in the team that way, then that's the kind of team we back and the nature of the personalities and the skills and the experiences that can give us confidence that these people could do that are quite different, right?
Some people are very quiet, very intelligent, you know, real experts in their area. And that's why we think they can navigate it.
Other people just have a lot of passion for the problem they're solving, they have so much energy, that they will just run through walls, and they have so much extrovert power, that they can just convince everyone to turn to their cause.
So the success is going to be very different, right?
I mean, I always give the example of different very successful founders, you know, if you were to compare Bill Gates and his personality to Steve Jobs, and his personality, compare both of them to Larry Ellison and his personality, or to the Google founders, they're very, very different people, every single one of them Mark Zuckerberg different again. And they're all successful in very, very different ways.
So, it's not there's no one type, or whatever we have, we've had successes of every type of personality, every colour, every gender, everything else, it's about spending time with them early on and say is this someone who, for whatever reason, is going to really go for it and figure out this problem and really find something big. And when we get there, then we get very excited. And we make one of those high conviction low frequency investments that I talked about.
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Peter Higgins 32:12
Now, please, can you share with us you've touched on a couple already, but I want you to go into a bit more granular detail, some of the notable and significant successes that Balderton have achieved so far?
Suranga Chandratillake 32:21
Yeah, I mean, look, they've been many, one of the very early companies that we invested in, that really put us on the map was MySQL, you know, open source database company that today is still used by millions of people worldwide. And it's sort of really changed the nature of the accessibility of database technology.
That was quickly followed by a company called Yoox, which was a ecommerce platform that still alive today who bought Net-a-Porter a few years ago.
And it provides the sort of back end for a lot of high fashion brands, Milan based company and public in Milan, and other companies like Betfair, and so on.
But then more recently, in the more recent generation, some of our really big outcomes have been companies like Aircall, which is a large French software company that provides us telephony API Contentful in Berlin, which is the world's largest circle, headless content management service company based in Berlin.
But now a global business Revolut, which many people have heard of, which is obviously a neobank that we were the first institutional investor in. And then even more recently, companies like Zego, revolutionary company in the insurance tech space, or a company like Dream Games, which is a gaming business based out of Turkey that has a game that is either one or two in the gaming charts, generally, most weeks in the UK in the US.
So it's a very, very wide variety of companies, some consumer, some gaming, some deep tech, some software, and also from lots of different countries, right, Italy, the UK, Germany, Sweden, and so on.
But it's been great to see I mean, and the nice thing is that Europe seems to be continuing to be successful, like over time, we get more and more of these companies all the time.
Peter Higgins 33:54
Brilliant, you touched on I'm going to go back to MySQL and Sun Microsystems, which going back then was for a significant chunk of change, you know, one billion.
So that's a, like you say that put you and Balderton on the map. But you've got some fantastic companies, you mentioned Revolut, the Fintech company, that seems to be going from strength to strength. And hopefully, depending on what happens with that will list in the UK, I'm just putting a thumbs up there and hope, because we need some really good companies that are been raised and nurtured here to remain listed on here, will stay private and just continue to grow.
Suranga Chandratillake 34:27
Yeah, I mean, look, I, of course, unfair for me to put pressure on one particular company, but you're right. You know, the UK has always had, say the same is true for the rest of Europe, too, to be honest.
But the UK has always had absolutely brilliant, innovative science and technology. And it still does today, you know, we still really punch above our weight in many ways. And we do an increasingly good job of taking that technology and convert it into product and sort of early businesses.
And that's changed a lot from when I was graduating and when I was coming into the workforce, but we need to then keep supporting them all the way through that journey and right now we're a bit weaker as they get bigger, and certainly were weak when they decided to go public. And that's a shame because the second you start to lose them to investors abroad, then, you know, the focus shifts, the management team ends up relocating. And before you know it, a lot of the value is lost somewhere else. And that's a shame. So we need to make that happen somehow.
Peter Higgins 35:18
Yeah, it's important point you made there, but losing that talent pool, when things get merged or taken away, or moved out into different locations.
Now, I need to raise this with you because I think it's a fantastic point you've made here Suranga. And you touched on previously about, you know, you're involved in the IPO process with Blinkx.
However, you've said, for entrepreneurs, an IPO is not a goal, or exit or an endpoint. And I find that such a powerful and stimulating statement. Please can you contextualise that for our listeners, please?
Suranga Chandratillake 35:45
Yeah, I mean, look, the reality is IPOs are, well, first of all, the hint is in the name, right?
It's an Initial Public Offering, it's just a start of something new. It is just another funding round, in many ways. So I talked earlier about seed and pre seed and series A and B and C.
Well, to me IPO is just series IPO or series public, where you suddenly take the company public, it is a great moment in time to reflect on what's been achieved, because the bar to entry to be a public company is so high, you have to have a business of a certain scale, certain level of success, and certainly one that can withstand a lot of rigorous challenge and analysis and audit.
So it's a really amazing moment to be as a founding team or as an executive, because you are even just an employee, you're a part of a company that's got that big, and it's not that important. But really, the primary purpose of an IPO is to raise a bunch more capital to grow yet more, right, because you've got some belief that you can build something even bigger.
And in that sense, it's just the beginning of the journey. So many of the companies that we've invested in a company that I founded a company that some of my other partners have founded, you know, stay public for many, many years and had many interesting things happen post going public, including being worth a lot more in the end. And they were when they first went public. So in that sense, it is just another day in the life, obviously, for different people different moments of the exit, you know, we have founders who leave very early on for one reason or another.
And we have other founders who leave at the IPO or just before it. And then we have others who stay with the company for many, many years. So it's completely up to them.
One of our other portfolio companies, but it's been in the news a bit recently is The Hub Group up in Manchester. And that's a great example of one where the founder, this is what Matt does.
I mean, I don't think he's ever going to leave that company. While it's still there, you know, he and he's built it in his image, and with his vision and his energy from day one. And you know, for him, the IPO is just another step really, and in that journey.
So it depends a lot on the individual. And I just always when I talk to or work with CEOs who are going through that change, I just sort of always say, look, you just need to know that it doesn't have to be the end. And you should you should think about it, you know, however is right for you and for the company and decide what you want to do with that.
Peter Higgins 37:45
Thank you for that. Now, Suranga, the US, UK, Europe, and potentially the whole global tech ecosystem are currently experiencing one of their biggest financial crunch slash headaches, if you want to call it that way.
Suranga Chandratillake 37:57
It’s definitely a migraine more than a headache. Yeah.
Peter Higgins 38:01
Yeah. You know what I was going with this Silicon Valley Bank collapse as a thought leader in the tech space, what has been the impact you've seen in the tech ecosystem? And the consequence of this banking failure?
Suranga Chandratillake 38:12
Yeah, I mean, Silicon Valley Bank, actually, in many ways, I think, is a bit of a distraction.
So I mean, it's very sad that it's happened. It could have been disastrous, obviously. But the reality is, the US and the UK government authorities moved incredibly quickly, and did a fantastic job of managing the risk. And the downside challenge there, which is, you know, all credit to them did an amazing job. And I'm really impressed. And you know, it's one of those things where it's easy and fashionable to complain about government and people a lot of people do all the time many of us do, I'm sure, certainly at home, over the table.
But every now and again, they do things that make you remember why they're there, right, and how well they can work. And that was a great example of that sort of thing.
So in that sense, I think the Silicon Valley Bank issue itself is not a major issue. I think the problem is Silicon Valley Bank is that it's exposed a general concern level around banks in general, not every bank, but obviously certain banks that look more risky than others.
And we will see that play out over the next few weeks. Hopefully, Credit Suisse is the last one that has serious issues, we don't know and enough of those have challenges or fall, then obviously, you could trigger something a bit like what happened in 2008, and 2009.
And that will be a big fear, because that even though it's a banking problem, it would affect everybody in everything. The bigger issue, I think has been the sort of tech downturn, if you want to call it that, of 2022. And that's sort of good and bad.
I think that actually if you look at what happened, interest rates started to rise again, that made capital more expensive.
That meant that the idea of using a lot of capital in these high growth companies, which had a chance of growing suddenly less interesting, right?
I mean, it's definitely something you still can grow money faster and successful startups and you can't anywhere else, but the risk part of that has raised that obviously means that multiples come down, that means evaluations come down.
I don't think that any of that is necessarily a terrible thing. Reality is that multiples if you look at them now on the public markets, I don't think they've overcorrected.
You know, many of them are actually sort of historic ish levels, every now and again, there's a bad month or a good month.
But I think that's normal, I think you always get this reversion to mean, over time, I'm sure we will have, you know, better times in the future, I'm sure we'll have worse times in the future. And actually, in our experience, and certainly my experience, personally, I was a CEO during the last during the 08/09 downturn, if you survive that kind of period, as a company, you end up being more resilient, you're a much healthier business in the end, really.
So that's kind of what we're at and where we're in. And I think it's hard because, you know, we've had a bull market for so long, that there's a whole generation of companies that really have never lived through a difficult period. So adjusting expectations, adjusting kind of what matters and what you focus on. And what you work on is just hard organisations have to shift their focus from one thing to another, or at least change it slightly, that's just difficult to do.
Even if everyone kind of gets it, it's just difficult to change, there's level of inertia in any organisation. And it's also really hard for certain specific types of companies, right.
So if you're a software business, and you're medium sized, and you hit a point where you think, oh, I can't raise money at the valuation that I thought I could, that's okay, if you've got enough cash, you can probably slow growth a little bit, and take a little bit of money out of marketing and advertising and certainly drift towards profitability, and you'll be fine, you'll be able to keep most of your team and pay for them.
And it might be a slightly slower growing business, but you're still a healthy business.
If you are a deep tech company, for example, that's working on incredible technical work, that maybe he's achieving a lot of incredible technical breakthroughs, but simply is too far from revenue, then there's no way for you to be able to generate enough money to be able to pay for your expenses. And so you have to keep raising money.
And so for companies like that this sort of market is really tough, right?
Because suddenly, the number of people who are willing to write those cheques is just a small number, and it's shrunk. And so I do worry about certain sectors like deep tech, but others, I think we'll be fine. And actually, many of those companies were better for it.
Peter Higgins 41:55
With saying that regarding the deep tech and also other areas of technology, in this downturn in previous downturns. Do you often see more consolidations then of companies actually merging together joining together going together and forming collaborations?
Suranga Chandratillake 42:10
Yeah, we do. I mean, both people just selling the business right to something much larger.
So we've had a number of exits to large tech companies over the last 12 months. And then you also get absolutely mergers.
And you know, you've got a market where they're going to be three or four startups are highly competitive.
Sometimes it makes more sense to be part of one and you know, really sort of focus efforts.
So we'll see a lot of that I think a lot of it didn't happen last year, because it takes time for these kind of downturns to wash through right, a lot of companies have raised money in 2021, they had plenty of cash, they didn't really have to do anything in 22.
I think 23 will still be a tough year, certainly all the signs are pointing that way right now. If that's the case, more of them will have to start to think seriously about what happens next.
So I think we will see mergers and acquisitions, we will see some shutdowns and so on. And look, these are all healthy, normal things, right. And I think the key is to do it the right way to treat employees and founders with respect, make sure that where you can, you know, investors are able to benefit from what they can benefit from, and so on and so forth. That's just the nature of the game.
Peter Higgins 43:08
Indeed it is. And now I'm going to ask you quite a personal question now regarding the challenges faced by tech entrepreneurs and life in general, what has been your biggest main lesson, you've learned so far from your journey from being a software engineer, doing your M.A. at Cambridge, all the way through now, as a partner, General Partner at Balderton?
Suranga Chandratillake 43:29
That's a really hard question. You know, it's one of those ones that you wish you could sort of think for a bit longer to sort of figure it out.
Look, I think what I've found is that, in the end, I'm motivated by doing things that interests me, if I have a job to do that I'm not that interested in, then, you know, I for a while I can keep doing it, because I know it's the right thing to do.
We all have chores that we know we need to do.
But I won't do as good a job of it as I could do. And I'll do it as quickly as I can. And if I can get out of it, I'll get out of it.
And for me, at least life is sort of wasted if you do that with your job.
But the reality of most of us is that most of us will spend a big, pretty big chunk of our lives in work of one sort or another.
So really, if you can, I think you owe it to yourself to find something that you're genuinely excited about, doesn't mean you will always be excited about it.
As I said earlier, you know, many of the most exciting things involve sort of gut wrenching moments.
If you didn't care, then it wouldn't hurt, right? It hurts because you care, that's kind of these things come together.
But if you can find things like that, then I think it's just very rewarding. And really, the interesting thing about the nature of that rewarding is that it's not just financially rewarding, which is important, obviously, but also it's rewarding because of a sense of achievement.
And even if the financial outcome isn't great, even if the final outcome isn't great, if you've learned stuff and you enjoy the journey, and you've done it with people that you like and respect and care for, then you'll still look back fondly on those times in the industry that I'm in, many things go wrong.
In fact, a lot of companies go wrong. But we're still friends with most of the founders whose companies didn't work out. And I still love bumping into them and having a beer with them and remembering the good times and the bad times because we all learned so much from the journey that we wouldn't take it away or anything.
So I think trying to find something like that, that really is something that energises you because again, you're going to spend a lot of time working, you might as well do it in something that you care about.
Peter Higgins 45:09
Indeed, and you touched on about giving, and having more than just financial reward here. And what resonates with me regarding what you've done historically, and continue to do is your passion for giving back. You're a passionate advocate for continual learning.
And you've visited lots and lots of schools and universities, and spoken to many students in many educational environments. Have you noticed over the years, I'm asking this question Suranga because you're a board member of Diversity VC?
Have you noticed over the years, an increasing female and black technologist and other ethnic minorities within the space since you've been in this space yourself?
Suranga Chandratillake 45:41
Yeah, so two things, first of all, the number of people who are interested in starting a company at all has exploded all types.
So that's great. I mean, the fact that more and more people want to be entrepreneurs, or try it for part of their life, and I don't mean necessarily build billion dollar companies that are technology companies.
So lots different kinds of entrepreneurship, right. And the fact that I think people are open to that is exciting. And then yes, as part of that, there's clearly been a trend towards more diversity in that story.
Interestingly, there are groups of people who've always been quite entrepreneurial women have often been quite entrepreneurial, because they haven't always been allowed to do jobs, they wanted to do, quite frankly.
So there is a history of female entrepreneurs, that is often forgotten and hidden and kind of ignored.
But actually, there are a lot of women who've done small things in their spare time, at home, around family and so on, because that was the only way they can get a job equally, people of colour, and immigrants of all types have also often been business people, because again, if you're coming into a new place, and you don't have the sort of social capital, to be able to get a great professional job.
For example, then one way of making ends meet is to be a business person, you know, you see this classic immigrant curve where people turn up on the shores of Britain, they forget their background and do something in business, because that's the best way for them to make money.
But they immediately pay for their kids to go to a great school and get a great education, and then hopefully become professionals and become established.
And so funnily enough, there's a history of all of that anyway. But we're seeing more and more of it in particularly my area, that sort of high tech, high value entrepreneurship.
But it's not enough still today. It's a it's a dismal percentage of companies are founded by women, and even more dismal potential than that are funded by institutional firms like mine.
Same with people of colour, you know, we're underrepresented across the board. And so there's a lot more work to do, it's definitely got a lot better, which I think is reason for hope, you know, it's important not to be too pessimistic and too negative in my opinion on these things. But at the same time, we can't stop now, it's a lot more work to do on it, unfortunately.
Peter Higgins 47:33
Brilliant, thank you for that reply. Now, you touched on the charitable side of it. But I want to focus now and drill down on what your charitable causes are, and what you're passionate about supporting, and what is it you've been doing in the community or elsewhere for charities and going forward?
Suranga Chandratillake 47:48
Yeah, I mean, my wife and I do a number of charitable things, most of which we do fairly anonymously.
But the, I think, for us are two key things that we care about. The two key words are local, and children.
So you know, I think children are the future for all of us. And so giving as many children as possible, as many opportunities as possible, is so important, in my opinion. And we think local is really important, it's going to always very easy to look from afar, and sort of cast judgement on others.
My wife and I have both had very international lives. And part of that is involved living in other countries and in different places. And you realise that your perspective changes when you change position, and when you move to a new place. And so rather than sort of try to solve problems a long way away, we sort of very much look around and say, well, what's happening in our town that could be better, and especially what to do with children.
That's kind of what we support. And we're huge believers in that. And we're huge believers in that across the board.
Right. So, you know, I think, again, we're both massive benefactors from the state education system. In the UK, we both went to state school throughout, we went to a state funded university, and we both be able to have amazing careers as a result of all of that.
So keeping those sorts of paths open and wakening the optimism and the ambition in every child, not necessarily to do what I did or what she did. But whatever they want to do is critical. And anything that goes the other direction of that, I think is a missed opportunity. Really sad for that individual person, of course, but also really sad for the country.
I mean, if you're patriotic, you should want every person in this country to do as well as possible, because that's how we will get ahead in the end. So that's the sort of thing that we care about a lot.
Peter Higgins 49:17
Brilliant. Love that reply. Thank you ever so much. Now, we've touched on it earlier, and I'm going back to it now. And you said you mentioned it earlier. And I think it's extremely important here. You're a very busy man, busy family, got many commitments and responsibilities. Please could you share with us, it's quite an important thing to talk about here. Now. How you manage to find balance in your life, work, health, family, and your personal well-being What's your secret Suranga?
Suranga Chandratillake 49:42
I don't have a secret. But what I will say is I think balance is really, really important.
I've definitely lived parts of my life completely imbalanced, especially when I was a CEO. So I understand how it can happen and why it can happen. And it was bad. You know, I mean, on the one hand, it wasn't great from a family point of view.
And secondly, I was alone. When I was relatively young, so family was less of a feature of my life at the time, but it wasn't good.
And also, from a health point of view, you know, I was in terrible shape when I was a CEO. And you know, stopping being CEO allowed me to get into much better shape and be a much healthier person.
And also, luckily, my family came along at around that same time. And so I've been able to spend a lot more time with them than I would have been had, I still been doing the job that I was doing before the way I was doing it before. I think it's really short sighted. In the end, you can't give 110%, which the sort of thing a lot of people will say to you.
Because if you give 110%, that means you're giving more than you have, which means that you're fundamentally deteriorating, right?
And if you do that for long enough, there won't be any of you left. In the end. It's a sort of simple truth of maths. So I think you have to accept that your job is to do what you can with what you have.
And that actually having balance allows you to do it for longer and in a more sustainable, more long term way.
And particularly when it comes to things like investing in technology companies like I do, or building technology companies, like the founders, we back to, it's a marathon, it's not a sprint.
So it's completely, completely counterproductive, to try to sort of kill yourself for a year or two, because you have to be there for year three, and four, and five, and six, and 10 and 12, as well.
So if you burn out, you're not really helping yourself at all anyway, there's real culture of that in some parts of the tech industry.
And I think it's a bit immature and a bit old fashioned.
I think that increasingly, people are realising that this need for balance doesn't mean you don't work hard, doesn't mean that balance, you know, means that you only work half the time or whatever.
And it doesn't mean that there are periods where you work harder than you probably should, it just means that you accept and realise that the psychology and the physical reality of of this job is a very long-term one, and you've got to make sure you're in shape to be able to do it over that long-term. I look a lot at other industries on this.
I mean, I think, you know, sport is a really fascinating kids, professional sports people do not constantly run as fast as they can all the time, they're very, very smart about understanding how to run their season, how to time when they have to perform as a footballer that you need to be perfect, but those 90 minutes, you know, and you have to do a lot of things, including nothing in between those 90 minutes didn't in order to be in position to do that.
Again, tech CEOs are generally not very good at thinking that way.
So as a firm, we're working quite hard on that, you know, we do it, a lot of it's behind the scenes. But when we invest in companies, we try to work with people to figure out how we can make sure that they can be in charge of this company for a long time and not just sprint really well for a couple of years, and then have to give it up.
Peter Higgins 52:27
Brilliant. Thank you for that response. Now going back to Balderton Capital and yourself, what are your current thoughts and views regarding current trends, including generative AI, which seems to be getting a lot of press currently? What are your thoughts on those fascinating sort of developments we've got?
Suranga Chandratillake 52:42
Yeah, I mean, we do a lot of research on thematic areas and trends, but we don't invest based on them.
So what we do really is, you know, I would describe as a sort of founder centric investors, we look for fantastic teams work in interesting areas.
So going back to what I said before, generative AI, potentially opens up a huge new market of tasks that are done by humans today, that could perhaps be done by computers, or at least enhanced or, or optimised by computers, that creates a lot of value.
Because today, those tasks are often boring, often repetitive, and very expensive to do manually. And that's a huge market opportunity.
And then what we look for beyond that is really people who we think can really navigate that and generative AI is a great example of this. I think, no one really knows where the value is going to be captured. Is it going to be in the platform?
Is it going to be in the applications, we all have theories, and I have one, but really, I mean, I don't think any of those theories are worth much yet, we'll have to wait and see how it happens.
So what you want to do is back founders who you think, understand the technology understand the direction it's going in, and also have a kind of level of commercial mouse and resilience really to be able to figure that out, catch tiger by its tail, hold on to it, while it kind of twists and turns. And once it stopped moving, figure out quickly how to build the right business at that point in time.
Peter Higgins 53:51
I love that analogy. Thank you for that. I've seen the likes of Google to name but two and Adobe going all in for that sort of space. It looks absolutely huge. And I think they say it's going to be lots of tasks that can be able to be done by computers going forward.
Now, I've got one final fun question. Unless there's anything that I've not covered here that you'd love to share, before I share my question with this Suranga.
Suranga Chandratillake 54:14
No, you've been very thorough Peter.
Peter Higgins 54:17
Thank you. you very much. Now, this is a fun question.
So I'll let you just go with the flow with this one. Suranga given all of your vast business leadership, venture capital and investing experiences you've attained since starting out as a software engineer in 1996. If a book was written about your life up to this point today, what are the first words that spring to mind? Is there an appropriate title for said book, encapsulate your experiences and journey to this point today, and why?
Suranga Chandratillake 54:45
Okay, first words that spring to mind are for a title is 'It worked out well…in The end.'
Peter Higgins 54:51
Okay, expand?
Suranga Chandratillake 54:53
Yeah, I mean, just because I think I'm very happy with today looking back at all the things I've been able to be part of it's been a lot of fun. I've met a lot of amazing people. It's been inspiring.
And as I said, very instructive, you know, I've learned a lot from my journey.
But there have been many, many times throughout that journey, where it was felt like it was all about to go completely wrong.
And that's the sort of thing I would go back in time I remind myself at some of those moments and say, look, don't worry, it's looking bad right now, but it'll be it'll end to end.
Well, and I think that a lot of life is like that, you know, and you sort of have to balance I think, on the one hand, genuine concern and fear, because those are good things, they drive you right?
But at the same time, know that if you surround yourself with the right people, if you try your best, etc, etc, you know, it'll work out, you know, it'll work out one way or another. So that's my first stab at it.
Peter Higgins 55:42
That's a brilliant stab at it. That's a wonderful reply. And I think it's about the beauty of you Suranga and I've read and I've looked at you and all over the place, historically, you're a man built on the foundations of humility, you know, so I think you've done extremely well.
I think there's lots more you're going to do have not touched on the questions of the fact that you've got lots of patents that still haven't been used out there somewhere.
So I know there's going to be a lot more coming from you.
Suranga Chandratillake, a general partner of Balderton Capital. It's been absolutely fantastic to have you on this Investing Matters podcast.
Thank you for sharing your insights, knowledge and wisdom with our global audience and it's been a delight speaking with you, sir.
Take care and God bless.
Suranga Chandratillake 56:21
Thank you, Peter. It's been a real pleasure. Really, really enjoyed the hour. Thank you, bye bye.
Peter Higgins 56:25
Thank you very much Sir.
LSE 56:35
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