085: Money Talks #13: Finn Murphy - Seed Investing in Ireland

0:10 Hey there this is Pete Townsend from New Avengers and welcome to money. Never sleeps podcast that looks inside the head of entrepreneurs and what makes them do what they do this episode of money. Never sleeps is kindly sponsored by Ireland, fintech and financial services recruitment specialist. Top-tier recruitment. If your colleague need help, attracting retaining great talent for your fintech, a financial services company. It is highly advisable that you build Relationship the team at top-tier recruitment, you can find them at top-tier Recruitment.com and tell them Ascension this week. We talked to Finn Murphy for Frontline. Ventures a dublin-based B2B SAS Venture firm investing in Europe and the US in a country of 5 million people like Ireland. The Venture Capital Community is about the size you would expect relatively modest. However the multinational Finance pharmaceutical Medtech and broader tech companies.

0:55 All progressively choosing Ireland for the European operations, going back to the 1980s and Well educated work force to boot is a much larger Talent base in Ireland that you would expect for a country of five million people. So what happens with the risk-takers with a few years under their belts and these multinationals get that entrepreneurial itch. Well, although there are definitely other factors. I've always pointed to these quasi spinouts for multinationals. There are sometimes no more than one woman, or one man saying I found a problem we're solving and I think this is a big enough market for it. So I'll give it a shot Ireland. Definitely has a larger startup ecosystem than you'd expect. Spec for a country of 5 million people like any startup ecosystem, it eats seed funding. So in a roundabout way that brings us back to Finn Murphy from Frontline Ventures.

1:38 C-SPAN quite transparent about what he looks for in precede stage companies specifically in the specialty of B2B SAS, which is business to business software as a service. Specifically with one of his blogs. In 2019 we covered his framework for Founder's on what to expect from VCS investing at the precede level in episode 68. So I thought was a good idea to go. A bit deeper with fin on this week's episode of money, never sleeps. Here we go again. Welcome to money, never sleeps. Recording today from the home studio and we're on with Finn Murphy. Principal at Frontline. Ventures here in Dublin, Venture Capital firm backing B2B SAS companies with International Ambitions investing in seed stage European startups.

2:24 As well as growth stage. Us companies coming to Europe in addition to their Dublin HQ Frontline also have a presence in San Francisco and in London and they've invested in the likes of pointy which was recently acquired by Google currency, Fair fin. Born and clear bank just to name a few that are going to be Important to our listeners, that actually have a fintech mindset fin recently. Had his two-year anniversary with Frontline and is a board member or Observer on Frontline. Investments, such as Pathfinder on MacLeod Smith, modules, swag, and ever Vault, amongst others Beyond Venture investing. There's a lot more to Finn Murphy but we'll get into that in a minute. So, after that long intro, finally. Welcome to the show. Finn great.

3:04 Thanks so much for having me on Petes, I'm back. Yeah, strange to be on the show. Our previous show, covered a piece of content that I wrote. I know. I know like you said at the time it was a bit meta and our, you know, our listeners will know that, you know, we already did that show covering your blog post and the the teardown of it of what you think about the precede Investments. And you know, we did that because it was like reading some of my own thoughts aloud that we could talk about a little bit later on and that one came together a bit at the last minute. As my co-host. I want Fitzgerald, he was supposed to join. Me for that episode. And we recorded that it had stuff, which is right across from your HQ. They're in town, but he couldn't make it at the last minute.

3:47 So that was my first and hopefully, only monologue monologue episode and our producer Conan Brophy. He stuck in some like massage music in the background there you know, just to to ease it for the listeners but as it turns out I just checked the stats on chargeable. It is the second most downloaded money never sleeps episode out of the 80 plus we've done. In 2018. Oh well, I don't know. Maybe you should monologue more often P. I'm thinking about it. We'll see. But that one was a hard one to do. I think, I, it took 20 minutes of recorded content that I narrowed down to like ten minutes. Just because, you know, lots of stops and starts in there. Anyway, let's dig right into your backstory. Yeah, tell us about that.

4:31 Your back story. And how you got to this point of doing what you're doing today? Yeah, yeah, sure thing. So I probably started Started when I went to University to study engineering study, General engineering, like a little bit of computer, electronic mechanical civil and then probably focused on focus on mechanical. I just prefer it like, to be honest with you, I'd like was not the biggest fan of Computer Engineering and coding so I was like, okay, Mechanicals, the stuff I'm interested in. And it turns out like I kind of realized when I was in like kind of third year sophomore year that, you know, most mechanical Narrows end up being McKinsey Consultants or investment bankers. I kind of was like, okay maybe that'll be fun and applied to like a BCG internship.

5:19 I think like three times and never got even to the first interview. So I was like, okay maybe this, I maybe I do not have the certain writing style or skill set to actually go into one of those jobs. So I kind of ended up getting it. I was doing a bit of side work on the side. I was organizing events like parties He's kind of trying to make cash while you're in college and one of the ended up doing some work for web Summit and I kind of some of it was volunteered. Some of it was paid, but you just kind of end up getting exposed to that sort of attack world and like, at the time Venture world, but like in reality, I didn't even know what Venture was. I was just really like talking to you.

6:00 I was talking to people running companies and it's like, oh, I what you guys are doing, seems pretty cool. And that's at a set me down a path of like, okay. Well like, you know, if all these people can do, White and I and, you know, tried a couple of different start-up ideas and college eventually managed to get one of them funded by the university. And we kind of built that business as with the college. We were attending as our first customer spawn that I raised a little bit of money and ran that for about a year. After we graduated until we kind of came to the point of realizing that we had absolutely like no idea what we were doing or okay, any any idea about me and Protect me in particular. I'd like no idea how to actually run a business. So that was an interesting kind of realization where I think you think, you know, it's like that moment of sort of realization when you realize how little you actually know you, you know, you thought you knew so much and then you realize how little you actually know about anything.

6:59 And that was that was probably like one of them turning point in like kind of my entrepreneurship Journey was like, okay, maybe now Like maybe I need a little bit more like experience or time under my belt before. I'm like, really ready to do something. Do something interesting here and that kind of led me to, we ended up doing a deal with another fintech business called plank to basically kind of Aqua hire, me and my whole team like there were only who's me and five friends from computer science and in Trinity and we then all join plank at the same time where I am when they were raising their series, a okay. That was great like that. We Had a great time but, you know, we kind of learned hard and Father's again.

7:43 So many things that like at the time seemed seemed so sensible and so normal. And like now having been in Venture for two years, I'm like, oh my God, I can't believe we, like, I actually can't believe some of that shit happened and that, that all ended up kind of going sideways. And, you know, Matt like met some really interesting people and like, had some makes him like good friendships while we were working there. But, you know, it came to the point where that business just like totally sideways. I had to jump out and that coincidentally time time perfectly with when Frontline, we're looking to hire a new member of the investment team. And they were actually at the time, they were just hiring an analyst and I was like, like, fuck it, why not? I might as well, throw in an application and that was yeah, that was about two years ago to around two years ago today. Wow, wow.

8:31 And that the spin-off that you had out of the Trinity digital ID, right? That was that was ideally or Italy, how do you say? Say it. Oh yeah. Ideally again, like, I need to, I think like another lesson again. You learn is like don't try to be clever with the name of your startup. Like we were like ha ha. It's like ideally and then like literally every single person we spoke to ever was like idly systems, mirror God. Yeah. No, no, no, you got it right on the fact that you only use four letters right, which, which is a good one, but that and I didn't know about the plank side of things because that's really interesting. I saw plank on your LinkedIn profile but didn't really make the connection there. I've met Charles a couple of times and I kind of know what he's up to today but we'll leave that for another conversation. So it was the Analyst job that you went for. You got it obviously.

9:25 But what how did the conversations go that built that bridge for you from? Okay. You know what I would call in the u.s. we run from a double major in math and and engineering To doing a bit with, you know, being a start-up founder doing the deal to make that part of Plank and then, okay, then analysts in a venture firm. Tell me about that kind of that kind of bridge. Yeah, like I really had. No. I like, I still I'm like question at times whether I have any idea what I actually want to do. Yeah. And you know, I'd applied for a ton of different jobs, you know, there was when I was when I was leaving plank there was Option to go like work in a as a like consultant for a ton of different interesting blockchain and cryptocurrency projects.

10:18 I was like interviewing for our product manager role at HubSpot. I was talking to funnily enough pointy about taking on kind of going in there. Had a growth was leaving and they were looking to get someone to replace him and I've been doing growth of plank. So I was kind of looking to step into that sort of like looking to step into that sort of role and like All of those things were kind of in the pipe before I ended up getting the offer from front lawn and like, I've had a pretty hard time trying to decide which is because like, I had no idea really anything about venture or like what the job would be. I'd like some interactions with Frontline and some interactions would be seized while I was running. You know, while I was running my company and then to a lesser extent when we were playing.

11:02 But I just didn't have the I didn't have enough knowledge to know that it was like, okay what is this actually. Is it a career? Is it an interesting job? And then I kind of I called a bunch of different people. And on my finder friends were like, let you know like base, he's a lot of shit like don't ya don't go to the dark side, you're going to be you know you're going to lose your operators Edge and you're just not going to be able to come back to start-up land and then I spoke to a couple of more kind of senior people who've been around the block. And you know, one of them asked me, they were like, you know, what's the and at the time, you know, this was what I was. Like, the only thing I kind of had in my head, they were like, you know, what do you want to do? What do you actually want to do in the future?

11:42 Like, what do you want to do after this? It's like, you know, probably want to start my own company and I want that looks like, but like I think I'd probably do want to try to build something at some point in the future and one of the one of my mentors, who's a general partner at another kind of one of the larger funds in the UK said, look when you're, when you were finder, it's that, it's not like you watch the movie, it's like, you're the producer the set designer, the Actors. Like, you know, you're the director and you pull everything together, and you get that like, really rich experience from like, seeing how it's all put together, but at the same time, like you only get to see one, you know, you only get to do that on one movie.

12:25 While he kind of said, the thing with Venture is, you know, you might not get to be the director, you might not get to be the actor. You might not actually get to, like, really get involved in that many companies, but you get to see so many. Yeah. The DOT Breaths that breadth of experience, we'll just like suit. Like if you do decide to start another company, not only helping you an operating that company, but also deciding what the, you know, picking the right thing to work on. And that to me was kind of more clenched it in terms of going to the taking the job in based taking the job in d.c. after that fairly you know kind of Meandering path along the way I get it, I get it, I mean with anybody if you're good at something you know there's a set of instincts In you, that really kind of act as your grounding in business in anything in life, right?

13:16 So if that's there and, you know, I kind of sense that in you a bit. And this is just from reading your blog post in The Limited interactions that we've had Finn, that there is something there from a business mindedness perspective. I don't think you're going to lose your Edge so hopefully no I get it, I get it and know and I do agree with you know, that concept. Out of the more you see in the more reps you get with looking at different companies, the more you're able to then present what you think you're going to do next or now really in a better light, right? And more concisely in a more compelling way. So yeah there's a there's a big benefit to doing this. Hmm.

13:57 No. Absolutely. And I think, I think that's the type of the thing would be C and like it's kind of annoying for anyone who's thinking of like, getting into VC, is like this, like to the only two types of people. People I've ever seen get into it. Are people who are, like, absolutely like a dedicated to becoming be seized and they pour their heart and soul, and they make it like, they make it a part of their lives or there's people who are so close to Startup world or like so close to being a Founder that they do want to say, fall into it because like they're still steps involved in getting there but like yeehaw, you know, it's like in order to end up in this position, I happened to be in in like a place that I didn't realize was so tangentially close to what I'm doing now, but it enabled me to kind of like slide into slide into this other row without really having to go through that much of a long rigmarole of applying to a lot of different funds or like trying to figure out even if I wanted, you know, I didn't have to decide even if I wanted to do the job until after I got the offer which is a pretty, it's a pretty nice position to be in. Yeah, absolutely yeah no I get that and with me like Talking about before we went on air.

15:10 I mean it's been a journey for me but it's been more of a side path that this is going to happen eventually. And I'm nearly there into Venture and have made a lot of steps in that direction. But I feel like it's more of going to be an outcome of the process that I'm doing. Anyway, right. Which is like you're saying being that close to startups and being that close to almost being a founder, or being a Founder for that for that matter. So I get that, I get that. That tell me about your approach with Frontline, right? Both in terms of how the firm it is investing in startups. But also how that's become part of your modus operandi or your modus operandi, to begin with, write your place in the middle of that all.

15:57 Yeah, like I suppose Frontline was founded about seven years ago to bring a more u.s. style of venture to Europe you know. That was, you know, that was the experience of the GPS, a previous films that worked in Europe. Was that, you know, it was still like seven years ago, European bedroom was just, like, completely different gravy to what it is today. Like, it was still, like, I think we still, we still lack the u.s. in some ways. But like we're mutt, we like them by like 12 months instead of by like, you know, for years. Yeah, I think that's like the style front line of generally tried to. You know, we don't make any bones about it where, you know, we're only Trusted in backing fenders, with really large Ambitions, you know, and it's why they kind of the u.s., you know, there was the front line, you start this joke, internally that like you just find any of the founders who'd gone and tried to raise money from u.s. funds and write them a check because if I gave you a good Benchmark on the scale of their ambition, so that it's, you know that but that's really where we started, you know? It's like looking for people who have that like world-beating, you know, Be I might be here in Ireland. I might be here in Denmark and might be here in the UK, but like I have just as much of a shot other than anyone is building one of these wheels like, you know, breakout breakout companies.

17:19 Yeah. And you know, that's probably why we're, you know why we receive investor is like we're closer we're much closer as a fund in terms of our DNA, when we're like, you know, we feel much more comfortable when we are assessing people and we're assessing like high-level markets, then when we're like tearing apart Financial models Yes, and I think that's the, you know, doesn't there's an element of like perceptive kind of like, you don't want to Pat, you're not trying to pattern match. But like you're trying to like see the world today, like really clear as clearly as you possibly can. And then look for people who recognize, you know, I've recognized something that everyone else is missed and then back them to go and chase, you know, go and Chase that opportunity.

18:06 So, you know, there for us, like, you know, that's investing. And From like 250 K into a free product. Like you know one one man, shop two two person you know you know to take like 20 person company doing a billiard about a million dollars in annual revenue writing like a 10 million euro check. So like that's kind of the range in which we operate but we've always taken this fact, you know, people Centric approach, you know, like for us, you know, it's like even like people always ask me this question about evaluation so it's like how should I value my business? I'm like, Well, how much money do you need to be successful? Like at this that you know, what is success. It's like you know if success is getting the cash flow Breakeven then you know your business probably isn't for us if it's getting too strong growth metrics or a strong product, but, you know, product proposition that enables you to raise another round of financing at a markup at a pretty significant might, you know, it kind of like a 2 to 3 x markup. That's like okay how much capital is required for you to do that and whatever that is like, that's That's what drives the valuation it's going to be, you know, we don't really want to own more than 25% of a business like, it's not in, aren't you know, it's just not in our interest to do so and we want to make sure that management teams are properly incentivized and that, you know, if these businesses are successful in the future that they don't require like big management re-ups because they've been, you know, then like absolutely like dilated engine nothing because in the end, you know, that just hurts you on the far side that just hurt you on the far.

19:37 Side is an early stage investors. Well, yep. Yep. No, I get that. Being very realistic about things. We had a viola Jordan off on, from 7% Ventures, back about seven eight episodes ago and he was talking about his Benchmark of a billion, right? And saying, can this be a billion dollar company and using your framework that we that we looked at? You can kind of walk back into, you know, going out, get going five years back, right? We need to get to today. You can kind of start to get your head around, what that It might look like in terms of the market size as well, but just talking about your blog post. You did one more recently in February where you were talking about the next decade of Iris.

20:19 Start us will look nothing like the last. Do you think that covid-19 is been a bump in the road or potentially an accelerator to some of this? What are some of the observations from last six to eight weeks or so, in terms of all this? Yeah, I think covid will Yeah, it's very tough to know like, you know, I think of it will pass. It's the long-term economic damage. That's the thing that's really gonna there will be less, moderately successful companies like guarantee. They'll be a lot. I think there will be a lot less moderately successful companies but I think they will be the same number of breakout companies as they would have been before. And I think that was my, you know, it's like we made this joke.

21:03 I was talking to another venture capitalist and like, You know, there's only been 1 billion dollar software, I like, you know, it's not even an outcome yet there's only been 1 billion dollar valuation in software in Ireland, in the last like eight years, you know, in the last eight, nine years and then yeah, that's intercom. Like that's not good enough to be. No, to be an invite like, you know, as an investor. If you're just investing in Ireland that means you have to be getting that like old-school style ownership like you know, you need to be owning like Twenty-five, thirty percent of these companies if they're not exiting for big, you know, if the outcomes aren't sufficiently large. So I think like my view was, you know, it's really hard to be what you can see.

21:47 And like, I think progressively as the world's become more globalized and like, you know, this like secrets of Sand Hills secrets of Silicon Valley, like stuff kind of starts to permeate more beyond the Bay Area and, you know, even the talent that is required to build these companies. Also permeates out whether that's, you know, like, you know, DocuSign having their security team based in Dublin, whether it's Zenda is coming their mobile engineering team, whether it's, you know, HubSpot having their growth product team, you know, all of those things, you know even so like there's a Londo have their data science like their whole data science. Org is like then opposite Google in Grand Canal dock you know it's a really simple prediction to get right because I got these three they're going to be different. There's just like you know technology has moved on business models have moved on but I think The difference that I see is all of the ingredients are there to produce five intercoms and it's partly, you know, the only thing rate-limiting that is those companies access to Capital, which I think is a problem that's been solved by opening up with International, you know, planetary planner, Greylock axle, index and Sequoia. All did their first, you know, early stage, Irish investments in the last 12 months like that, you know, you can take that as Like once off or you can take it as I go, they've looked at once and that means they're going to start looking here again. So I think the capital problem is solved the like problem. The next problem is like talents. I can these companies actually hire enough high-quality people in Dublin or do they end up

23:20 having to shift operation? Do they? You know, eventually get to a scale and they have to move to San Francisco where they have to move to London where they help to move to Berlin. I don't think I've been to a certain extent like provided the companies, or well, for a moment, which I think the I like The breakout performance will be, I think it it can be, you know, there will there will be opportunities to hire really good people who are becoming available because their jobs are kind of either have been made redundant or, you know, are not necessary or companies. They're working for shutdown in other sector, you know, and other parts of the kind of Technology industry. Yeah, I get that, I get that. And, you know, that next wave happening to continuing to develop here in Ireland, right?

24:03 And, you know, I always say that are And punches above its weight and number of areas compared to its population, especially in the financial services sector where I'm from. But so much of that Financial Services sector that is International Financial Services. They really don't know what's going on at the early stage seen here. They just don't see it because it's not that prevalent and it's not that readily available to see right in front of them. But it's like any small country, we are 5 million people. Write this startup ecosystem that we have here is a small part of the overall economy, a small part of the overall working world.

24:43 And I think it's just it's going to take time for that to develop even more. Now, that all the pieces are here, it's just going to take some time to get there. Do you see anything? In terms of how those companies, you know, stay in Ireland and do grow as an Irish company versus growing as a US company or as a UK company? Yeah, I like I think there's, you know, there's There's going to be no choice for a lot of these companies, like, you will have to open, you are sales offices. If you know, you may have to offer a open the UK sales office, I think it's more like, you know, whether the, the beating heart, so, to speak of the company can stay in Ireland, long enough. And, you know, you can bring in exact, you can bring an exact layer that can help build the company. I'd like, I would say, the only thing, the biggest rate limiting factor on, you know, scale up staying in Ireland, is there were like A decent amount of people in Ireland who know how to operate and run a business that's going from say 1 to 10. You know, going from 1 to 10 million dollars in annual revenue.

25:46 There were very, very few who know what the, you know, had a take a business from 10 to 100 and they were basically none who know how to take a business 402, a billion. And I think like that, where you end up running the into the rate limiting factor of like actual talent and expertise And operators that know how to cover those areas. So, like, you know, it's eventually companies will come to. It's like having a VP Market, you know, had group having a great sauce. VP marketing is just almost none who have actually done it in Ireland and you can take a chance on people, but like, you know, even the in terms of mentorship, there's not even, there's no one in the local geography close as people are in London. Most of the people are in New York or San Francisco. And I think, like, this is why this duration of Irish startups, you know, that's either a problem that continues ad infinitum, or you eventually get a generation that kind of take those chances and bring in those exact sand bike train, either train them here or move them to Ireland. But it's if you know that is a very like I think that's the hardest thing to overcome in terms of these companies eventually moving their center of gravity to the US and you know the tax incentive like you.

27:04 You can it's it comes down to things like tax incentives or comes in things like housing. It comes to things like schooling, like, you know, is it easier for you to convince these incredible people to move their entire lives to a different country? Or is it easier for you to move your company, decision-making apparatus to the US and often it's the law either. Yeah, yeah, but I mean, the thing is, does, you know, this new normal, and I don't know what that new normal is going to look like right now, but it's going to be different though. Does that mean that more companies can stay put? Or is it still going to be? You need to have that physical in-your-face presence, especially in something like B2B SAS where you know that there is still an element, obviously of Enterprise sales that's involved with all this D, you know, are we, do you think we're going to go back to that or will any of this, these big new massive efforts for people to virtualize their sales process over?

28:04 Last couple of months. Yeah. Will that start to change things a bit? Yeah, like I think, you know those, the thing is if you talk to any remote, like fully remote business, like so many of them will say it's like God, I wish we could get more face time with decision-makers on our team and I think like, yeah, absolutely, this is going to make it more likely that people like look at remote models but I think like when it comes to running like these massive businesses, it's Gail, you know, there's gitlab have shown, you can do it as if you have shown, you could do it. But I think a lot of companies will still want their exact, you know, their exact decision-making teams to be in the same geography, or, you know, they will want them to have a co-located office. And I click, I can see it becoming easier to do remote. You know, it can be easier to spin up a remote sales team. It can be easier to spin up remote engineering, but, you know, I I'm yet to be fully on board with the idea that the Brain Trust of a company can get by purely interacting over video conference.

29:16 That's what's not from experience of like talking to companies that do that right now. You know, that do that right now and they find it they say like you can absolutely do it and it's fine but then you get everyone in the room together and, you know, you end up having what was like a month's worth of discussion over videoconferencing? Parents in like two days. True. Yeah, I know one of the one of the boards that I'm on. We do. What feels like monthly check-ins with that, that's all video, but quarterly were together and though you do get so much more done when it's face-to-face when you're actually in the same room, what do you think are some of the personality traits of yours that have made this work for you while you're still doing it? After a couple of years trades?

30:02 Have been helpful to you. Yeah. Gosh personality traits for me, I'm probably like prone to Imagining the future. So you know it's I was playing chess with someone yesterday and it's quite funny. I kind of like imagine what I would like to happen. Like 556 moves ahead and you know it's like okay when this happens I'm going to do really well and then completely botched the current move and yeah weirdly that is actually not a terrible thing and then Mature. Like, you know, you kind of have to like, all of these. All of these companies is millions of reasons why they could fail.

30:43 And if you don't have that kind of like optimism and Imagination to think about like, okay, well like what if it all, you know, what, if it all goes right? Like what could this be if every like, you know, if all the cards fall in their favor, I think like that kind of like imagination and like the sort of positive imagination. If occasionally, it's to my detriment in the short term, yes useful in Venture because it's generally a long-term game and you can afford to make small you know, you can afford to make small mistakes in the short term provided you know the bats that you get away and the vision that you can kind of share with these entrepreneurs come playoff I suppose. I'm like yeah I just I like talking to like talking to people and I'd say A, I'm probably fiercely coming from a family that's like, fiercely competitive, like, you need, you have to want to win, you know, in a lot of these deals. Like sometimes sometimes there's, you know, the entrepreneurs are talking to anyone else and you get to just like, spend a lot of time, like imagining what the future looks like with them.

31:54 Like, you know, quizzing them on their goals. Like quizzing them on their team was in their plans and, you know, you can get really comfortable and you can just decide to do a deal together and there's no competitive nature of it at all. Another times you're like, slogging it out with, you know, 10 of the other, like, smartest people you've ever come across working for a bunch of different funds with different brands different, like portfolios, you know, different areas special to are areas of specialty. Like, you know, if you're not willing to get on a book like this was I supposed to pay me off now. Would like it used to be like if you weren't willing to get on a plane and fly to some like random city in Europe, like 24 hours, notice to go have coffee and beer with the finder to convince them that your money. Is better than someone else's money that, you know, you have to walk yet.

32:40 You have to like really want it to actually be up for, you know, to be up for doing that. Because most of the time you lose and you're like, God, that was a complete fucking waste of time. Oh yeah, yeah. And you're like, oh, well yeah, I would say probably, I'll caveat that with like you know you're like oh that was a waste of time. And then you're like, okay well actually I know it's on more but that industry from I used to have a pretty good relationship with an entrepreneur who decided to go with someone else. But So now that entrepreneur, I'm like hopefully if they're successful, you know, maybe they'll have people who work for them and start companies in the future, you know, they'll set, they'll send them my way, but it's, yeah, it's a job of I'd say, like the thing, the personality trait in mind that like is the least suited to.

33:22 This is the constant feeling that, like, 90% of your work output is not like, you know, non-productive. Yeah. Yeah, I know, I know it's Repetition, it's just got to keep it coming in. You got to keep looking at things, it fueling that I kind of hear it from you a bit and that fueling that optimism and feeling that imagination comes from talking to people all the time, right? You just got to keep doing it right to get these ideas. Yeah, I'm like and you gotta listen to like tons of nonsense to hear like you know, a couple of good ideas but you know every every finder has a good reason for starting their business. I'm like you know, but not every business is well suited to venture.

34:05 And you know sometimes the first time you have a call with someone is like the second time they've ever spoken to an investor and you're just like oh my God, this like you know I feel for you but like you probably shouldn't have made your like second investor call the VC. And I think that, you know, it is not like you just have to keep you have to keep talking to people because if you don't, you don't have any Benchmark against which to measure the last person you spoke to. So like, you know, when we need a mat You know, when you meet an amazing entrepreneur, you have to be able to recognize it and you have to be able to recognize it like within 30 minutes. As you know, the first 30 minutes of speaking to them. And that's only possible with like tons and tons of effort, like, experience and time.

34:53 And just like, really having this knowledge of like, okay, does this person remind me? Do they have any of the same traits of any of the other great entrepreneurs who have come across in the past? I got you, I got you. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah. And you know, like we were saying earlier being in the same room and somebody adds that little bit more oomph your ability to read somebody and when you see the I don't know not you're not that you're getting that close to them but where you see the hairs on their arm, start to stand up when you say something specifically to them, or you can see their eyes move a bit, can always see that on camera that makes a big difference in terms of in terms of venture overall with doing all of these things, talking to so many people looking at so many decks. Having so many conversations about investing in doing deals, sometimes you can kind of get lost in it a bit, but when you step back to kind of get a different perspective on things who do you lean on?

35:46 Yeah, I suppose, like I'm quite lucky in front line where we were pretty. You know, we have a good team of people with varied backgrounds and experiences but like, you know, often it's like all even just talk to other kind of young be seized. I'll talk to friends of mine who are founders and, you know, it's like I think the thing is For anyone outside the like startup Venture ecosystem. Like you know, I'd like I remember sitting with a bunch of friends and I was talking about like the Uber IPO and the numbers and they're just like man shut up, you know shut up like nobody cares about tech. Yeah. And I could say, I think this the thing that like tech people like sometimes have a you can see it on Twitter where it's like there's like an unbelievable sense of self-importance because it's like well you know the five most companies in the S&P 500 OR tech companies, I'm like yeah like that. Doesn't necessarily mean that people give a shit about like our Network and fast bike, you know, Network infrastructure seed Investments and I think that's the thing. Like when you're leaning on people you kind of have to lean on people within the industry because it is like, you know, it's niche and it's like finding people. I think if you if you don't talk to people who are also as in it or like is involved in the disease, you are it can be, you know, people just be like this is complete like gibberish and nonsense so I try to focus on, you know, it's Keep like your work, taking a have like the group of people who you can rely on to talk about work and like talk about like what you think is interesting, what you think is not, you know, what you think is not interesting?

37:16 Like, who would be, you know, who the best entrepreneurs you've met recently but then like kind of separate that from, you know, General life? Because the one thing I kind of been that was child like, you know, DC is one of those professions that like becomes a part of like, you know, it becomes like part of your personality where it's like, oh yeah. Yeah they were BC or like you know oh yeah they're a lawyer or you're there and I can't even investment banker. And I think like he want to be able to have that network of people. You can lean on for work stuff with that, kind of making it all consuming and have like every social conversation and interaction, you have being a bad. Like what do you think about Quantum Computing? Yeah. I know what you mean?

37:56 I got it. I got a good friend that the industry that he's in. I am working with startups that are going to completely revolutionize. Eyes that industry, right? He doesn't even want to hear about it. He just doesn't care. He likes doing business with people. He doesn't care about the tech side of things or the you know, things like transformation. And so you know what we talked about sushi, right? Just bring it back to Sushi Sushi and beer man. So you know I say things I could bounce off on but it's just like, you know, let's not even bother. So I lean on them for other things, right? Finn. Look at your LinkedIn profile. I learned a bunch of Stuff that I didn't know about you and I'm not even sure if you know that some of that stuff is all out there and I'm not going to go through it, but tell us just to wrap up.

38:42 What's one thing that people wouldn't expect to know about Finn Murphy? What would they not expect in our Barracks? You know, it's retrospectively. You know, it's big but you'd look at my LinkedIn you'd be like, oh, this is like a kind of like obvious path for a fat, you know, this is like, you know, obviously he was like wanted to get into startup, some like wanted to do this and, you know, wanted to be a VC or be offender whatever. I like in reality like I have no like like very little interest in like obviously, like I like he's my computer a lot. Did a little bit of coding played a ton of Xbox but like, I wasn't like interested in Tech until like two thing. I kind of like watch The Social Network and I was like, oh Mark Zuckerberg is a billionaire Facebook?

39:26 Oh, I'll do that and then I was on a pub crawl, working for web Summit. Likely I was, I was organizing like, you know, 10 euro in on the door student. Of nights. Like this was not like, Tech the height of Entrepreneurship. I keep like, you know, I basically like you were going out so often that you basically be like, well, I need to take up a hobby. So, you'd like fluctuate between drinking and smoking and like, standing on the door. And, you know, then I was doing that one night with a bunch of VCS and CEOs and like, I was just talking the Manos. Like, you people are all really normal and apparently you're on billionaires. So like, obviously, this isn't that hard so like which like, right respectively. Now that I'm in it so I'm like okay that's that. I was I was probably wrong there but yeah I think that was the thing.

40:11 Like I wasn't like it was external factors that like retrospectively seem kind of silly and obvious that like steered me towards making a series of small decisions that got me to where I am and, you know, I think that's that that's something that like, you know, for very little push, either way, I can be doing something. Completely different. Like I can be a guy sitting on like a like, I want to tell you. It was a point in time when I wanted to be like a ocean sailor. Yeah man. I went to be a BCG consultant this point in time. I think when I was like two, I wanted to be a tractor and it's like, you know, this is like, but I think the thing that I found is like over time, you make all these small decisions.

41:00 Some like, once they start, you know, it's like once they start layering in and come Landing on each other, it really does start to pay a dividend. So I think that was, yeah, that would be the thing like, yeah, up until I'd say, yeah, up until I was 21. I probably had no interest in doing a start-up or like starting and I didn't even have a really, that much of an interest in starting a business. Yeah. No, I hear you. I hear you. I mean, I myself went from copped FBI, agent. Architect to astronaut to baseball player to stockbroker. GE and wherever the heck I've ended up these days, right? So I think at some point you just kind of like we're saying the beginning that intrinsic Persona of you lead, you down a certain path in your life and you find that right mix of personal professional.

41:50 That makes sense. But listen, it's been a pleasure talking to you about this fin. Really interesting to get to know you after covering one of your, your blog post on an episode. So thank you so much for coming out to the show. And, you know, once this is All over. Let's try to find some time to grab that elusive pint. Yeah hopefully hopefully it won't be too long way. Thanks so much for having me on the show Peter really appreciate it. Great thanks. Vince that does it for this week folks and thanks to fan for opening up his mind to help us figure out why he does. What he does links. And show notes for this episode or on money. Never sleeps that IE. So check us out online.

42:32 Remember, if you were a colleague need help attracting retaining Great talent for your fintech for financial services company. It is highly advisable that you build a relationship with the team at top-tier. Recruitment, is a really know their stuff. You can find them at top-tier recruitment.com. Also, thanks to Conan Brophy from create sound for editing this podcast. As for me, I increase the odds of startup success. Get in touch with the contact page on or adventures.com. You can check out what Owen Fitzgerald is up to these days on Twitter at 0 and Fitzgerald nine finally till next time, thanks for listening. See you Great talent for your fintech for financial services company. It is highly advisable that you build a relationship with the team at top-tier. Recruitment, is a really know their stuff. You can find them at top-tier recruitment.com. Also, thanks to Conan Brophy from create sound for editing this podcast. As for me, I increase the odds of startup success. Get in touch with the contact page on or adventures.com. You can check out what Owen Fitzgerald is up to these days on Twitter at 0 and Fitzgerald nine finally till next time, thanks for listening. See you