The One Search Podcast
One Search is the original global Infrastructure search firm, and the One Search Podcast is the group's platform for interviewing special guests, as well as discussing key themes in the sector and sharing compensation data from time to time.
The One Search Podcast
Episode 13: Alex Macdonald
This week we are joined by serial entrepreneur Alex Macdonald who first came into the public eye when he co-founded Velocity Black with Zia Yusuf and sold it for a reported $500mm. Since then he has gone on a mission to back the founders who want to advance humanity.
So mate, I'm in I'm in dress down today in honor of you know meeting a a tech founder slash tech investor. How do you describe yourself?
SPEAKER_02Look, I still consider myself a founder, yeah. And look, I've you know, with what I do now with SQL, I I think I've got the best of both worlds because we are building a company at the end of the day with a platform. And I do have an engineering team. Um, but you know, the core of our business is investing, right? So I get the best of both worlds, which is what I've always enjoyed doing, which is yeah, building a company, but at the same time investing in really talented people, finding really talented people, um, you know, creating the future, trying to advance humanity in various different ways and uh and investing in those people. So yeah, I'm I'd still consider myself a founder, um, even if a lot of people think of me as an investor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, look, we'll get into that. And I'm really keen to hear about SQL. Um, you know, the background to this, and I've been trying to get you on the podcast for a while, so thank you for coming and doing it. Um, I know you're a super busy guy and a you know, a very much a global jet set, so I can never keep up with where you are or even where you live. Um you're you're one of the many great people that I've met at the All In Summit, which I was at. I know you couldn't come to this most recent one, but uh met you there a few years back, still got very fond memories of that.
SPEAKER_02It was a great, it was a great, it was a great few days, wasn't it? Yeah. Look at look, I've you've got a lot, a lot of like-minded people there. Um, and I think a lot of the relationships you build around the main event and and outside of it are probably the ones that uh you know will stay with you and are probably the most interesting conversations rather than just what's on stage. Um, so yeah, it's been what three years since we had, or was it two years?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well no, we met in 23. It was believe about three years ago. Three years. Wow, yeah. Um that was when Bill Gurley did that famous, what became quite a famous um sort of speech um presentation on regulatory capture, and he was, I don't know if you've seen it, but he was there again this year. Um and I thought he even potentially raised the bar with his presentation.
SPEAKER_02I haven't seen the one this year, but the regulatory capture speech was great. And obviously, you know, perhaps we didn't see it at the time, but is more relevant now than it perhaps was back then, you know, with what's happening, particularly with AI and the way some of the kind of frontier labs are behaving at the moment. So, yeah, uh definitely an evergreen speech there, which is still very useful to listen to today.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so look, so that was great, and and that's where you and I got to know each other, and I thought I knew your background pretty well. And you know, it centered a lot at the time around Velocity Black, and I want to just cover that. But you've done a lot since Velocity Black. Um, but what I didn't know, it's amazing when you start when you start grokking people and finding out uh you know in preparation for meeting them on a podcast. I never knew you were a turnaround CEO, and and there's before you tell me about that, the uh if it's true, unless Brock hallucinated it, um but but that there's several ways, you know. My kind of thing um as a day job is very much around infrastructure, energy, the energy transition. You've probably seen that we've been doing a ton of stuff where um the tech world has now converged with infrastructure finance, the work we've done with OpenAI uh that you know that we've we've been talking about uh with Sarah Fryer. Uh I noticed at the All-In Summit this year, more and more infrastructure people that work for infrastructure investors. So those two areas are converging. And I think having been a turnaround CEO in industrials is another potential crossover for our audience. So I'm just keen to hear about that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, sure, yeah. So I started, you know, I started my career as yeah in turnaround. Um I went, I actually studied languages at university, and uh it was while I was um studying abroad in Paris that I had a friend who worked for an industrial group called AIAC, um, who you know based in in the US, and they just bought a company in Paris and they asked for a translator to help them with a negotiation. So I went and, you know, I was meant to be studying, but I went and worked with them for a couple of days. And um, I, you know, I think uh back then I was definitely overconfident and uh perhaps a little bit arrogant, but you know, a translator is quite a powerful position, and I ended up kind of taking over some of those negotiations, so they offered me a job. Um, and I think it was the first time they'd hired someone with my particular background. Typically they go for you know business majors, etc. Um, and I had an offer from them and I had an offer from Accenture to go into consulting, um, but which would have been a much safer job. Um, but I felt like there was a lot more room for growth with AIEC. So I took, I accepted that offer, went and did some debt restructuring with them on one of their companies they bought in Spain, um, some interesting stories around that in Venezuela and various places. And then uh yeah, at the age of like 23, they gave me my first company to run as a CEO. Um, and uh yeah, I had an amazing experience. I worked for just over four years with them, um, was a real kind of uh real life MBA, is the way I describe it, had to teach myself a lot of things around finance, you know, uh became a qualified accountant and stuff as as a part of that job, um, and traveled all around the world. I was in Singapore, France, Germany, Spain, um, Mexico, the US. Um, and I pretty much spent those four years. Uh, I'd every single month I'd be roughly one week in North America, one or two weeks in Europe, one week in Asia. So I was on a plane constantly. Uh, and I think my I used to I totted out one year and I'd done more air miles than the Secretary of State at the time, which was Hillary Clinton. So um, so yeah, it was uh super, super interesting, but it was definitely uh definitely tiring. I think I I struggled to do that amount of travel right now, um, at right old age. But uh yeah, it was uh it was a lot of fun, amazing learning experience, and like obviously very thankful because they gave me a huge amount of responsibility at a very young age. You know, I was managing you know a 2,000-person company at the age of 24.
SPEAKER_00I was just gonna ask how big it was. I mean, so put some numbers up. I mean, what was the theory?
SPEAKER_02We were buying, we were buying, we were buying like, so it was an industrial group, we were buying um struggling uh manufacturing companies in all sorts of sectors, so uh automotive, uh, we did some medical, uh, we did aerospace, and we would, you know, typically they'd be corporate carve outs. So we'd buy like a part of Boeing, um, or we'd part uh buy a part of a uh European automotive OEM or part of their supply chain. And that, you know, that division would be struggling. It would require a number of things as part of the restructuring, typically some adjustments to headcount and negotiations with the unions, diversifying the customer base beyond the original kind of customer or parent that that division had, and obviously putting in place like a long-term management team to start turning it around. So the range, you know, the first company they gave me to run had about a 10 million euro, you know, very small uh business, and then all the way through to sort of 250 million dollar like revenue turnover businesses, um, and as a group, you know, several billion in turnover, um, and you know, I think roughly 10,000 employees as a group. So I would be going on these individual projects where we'd buy a company. Sometimes uh towards the end, I'd be helping source those deals, negotiate the acquisition, and then actually doing the turnaround work post-acquisition, so getting in and restructuring the company for anywhere between sort of three months to a year, depending on how complicated it was or how distressed it was. And um, yeah, and uh, you know, the the kind of the biggest one certainly by the end that was running had certain just under 2,000 employees, and um yeah, it was a lot of responsibility, a lot of fun. I do think they're a little bit crazy to give me that much responsibility with the literal experience.
SPEAKER_01What you've just described is you know would be a big challenge for someone experienced who's in their 40s.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, it was definitely a big challenge. I made some mistakes for sure. Um, but uh equally enough things went went right where you know we had we had some success. Um it was really fun.
SPEAKER_01So look, I would so because when I met you, I think you just sold Velocity Black, and I think we just died. That was such a store, a great story, and I was just keen to find out about that. So I I just thought that was where the story really began. So that's that's been boneless information, you know, this this prior life as a as a as a as a turnaround guy.
SPEAKER_02Grok was right, you know. Groc had the right information.
SPEAKER_01Grok has been a big help to me in running this podcast, I can tell you. So, but then look, Velocity Black was a huge uh formative part of the rest of your life and your career. I think you knew Zia Yusuf from school, if I remember right.
SPEAKER_02Correct. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I went to school with Zia. Um, he was like certainly the brightest uh kid in our year um when we were at school. And um, you know, I was when I was a when I was a kid, I was obsessed with software and and games, uh, in particular. I think even in my primary school yearbook, which when I was 11 was literally the the original dot-com bubble, right? And and my yearbook page that year says when I'm older, I want to run a big computer software company and and make lots of money was the was the thing I put on my 11-year-old yearbook page. Um, so so uh well, maybe I was 12. Um, but uh but yeah, I I'd always been obsessed with software and games. When I'd you know, throughout that kind of AIC journey, I'd seen the kind of app economy exploding. So companies like Uber and Airbnb kind of really going through their early growth sputs um and had always thought I'd want to start my own business. So after four years of AIC, got to a point where I felt like my learning was limited. I'd really had to scratch that itch and go and start my own thing, and uh left, you know, thought of a few different ideas, and my first phone call was to Zier. I spent two weeks by myself skiing alone uh to figure out what the right idea was to work on. And yeah, my first phone call was to Zier to convince him to leave Goldman Sachs and come and join me. And we started, yeah, what became Velocity Black.
SPEAKER_01So, and and look, for people who don't know what Velocity Black is, I'm sure people who are watching this podcast will be will now be, if they don't know, they'll they'll now be uh looking into that. But what's the what's the quick version and and how much are you prepared to tell us about? I know you made a lot of money from selling it, and well done, you deserve it. Uh, how much are you prepared to talk about that?
SPEAKER_02Sure, yeah. Look, we uh Velocity Black and uh was and still is a uh digital concierge using AI to kind of automate the um concierge experience for High Network, so helping people put um restaurants, travel experiences, um, you know, gifting for their friends and family. Uh, we were the first company to use, and I still have the I mean I was granted the first patent to use agents, machine learning, language models to uh to automate concierge. Um this is back in you know we started the company in 2014 and we applied for the patent in I think 2018 we started the patent process, but this is a long time before language models and agents were a thing. We were real, uh we were very early to that. But look in our space, being being early is also the same as being wrong. Um but we look, we had uh we raised uh some venture capital from you know some investors here in in the UK and then also uh in the US from some VCs. Um we pivoted a little bit at first, we had a few different products, and then we figured out which one had product market fit, which was this digital concierge focused on affluent or high net worth individuals, and um that's when the business really started making sense in terms of revenue and profitability. And uh we scaled it, um, you know, we scaled it through challenging times, even through COVID, and the world was locked down, and travel was a big part of what we did. But um we we, you know, we actually grew that year and we became profitable for the first time that year. And then we had uh, you know, we had an enterprise side of the business where we white-labeled the platform for large corporates, so think banks, credit card companies. Um we even white-labeled it for Rolls-Royce, the car uh manufacturer. Anyone who got a Rolls-Royce car would have a white-label version of Velocity Black platform under the Rolls-Royce brand. And uh through those enterprise contracts, we started getting approaches about people investing us or acquiring us, and one of those was Capital One, the US bank and credit card company who we had originally had a partnership with to power one of their new cards that they were launching. You know, they thought we were quite a unique asset. First, they tried to invest in us um because we were buffed them because we didn't need any money at the time. And uh and then they they you know made stronger and stronger kind of approaches to try and buy us, and eventually, yeah, we accepted an offer for them to acquire us um you know for of a reported just over $300 million. Um and that was roughly eight and a half years into the journey. So we reluctantly and perhaps too early, um agreed to the sale, and um they said Velocity Black is now now part of Capital One uh three years later, and they're still running it.
SPEAKER_01But um and I don't think that then do you regret that? Do you think you sold too soon?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. We sold to soon.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What would it have been worth if you'd if you'd kept on going for a year or two?
SPEAKER_02Look, it was still it was growing very strongly when we sold it, and we were generating positive cash flow. We didn't need any external cash. Um so I think we just needed to let it compound for a few more years. I think, you know, the things that weighed against us were we are first-time founders, we'd just gone through, and we weren't like, you know, it's not like we had millions ourselves saved up in bank accounts, right? We were first-time founders. Um, you know, I wouldn't say we're uncomfortable, but we were, you know, not kind of generationally wealthy. Um and we'd just been through COVID, which was a very challenging time. And, you know, we thought, well, what if that happens again? You know, there are various events that are outside of your control, even as a founder in the wider world. And we thought, what if something like that happens again, which really negatively impacts the business? And if we say no to this offer, you know, we have our all of our team as shareholders in the company. We have a bunch of VCs and investors who also uh invest in the company. We say no to this offer, you know, and something bad happens to the business, I don't think we'll ever forgive ourselves, right? And um, and so yeah, so look, we we reluctantly accepted it. I still have a chip on my shoulder about it. I think we could have probably continued growing the business. Um, but um, but yeah, look, we I think our investors and our team are happy with the with the outcome, even if me and Zia still think we solved a little bit too early.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, he so a couple of things off the back of that. I mean, um, for what it's worth, I I think most of people would hear that story and say, you know what, I would have made the same decision that you did. And um, you know, take a big chunk of money off the table, be able to go on as you are now and do tons of other interesting things, including, you know, you're the you're the chairman of a can I say a relatively similar business to Velocity Black.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, look, I think I given I had the chip on my shoulder, and I think there were some advances in terms of language models and stuff since we sold the company, which I felt there was still an opportunity to build something a little bit different in that space, and so helped incubate a company called Aurora, which is an AI native concierge targeting similar customers, slightly higher end, focused on a higher price point. But um, but yeah, that's going well. Um, so yeah, still still like invested in the space and still believe there's there's big opportunities there. But um but yeah, I think I still think you know perhaps we should should have just held on for a couple more years.
SPEAKER_01Look, if you hadn't sold out then, Zia wouldn't have teamed up with Nigel Farage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and we'll we'll yet to see if that's a good thing.
SPEAKER_00But we're not gonna talk about politics on the months of the podcast.
SPEAKER_02We've looked at that. I'm joking. Look, I obviously very, very look, I'm very proud, uh, whatever I believe about their politics. I'm very proud of Zia for having the courage to and you know to be to go into politics and to really sacrifice a lot of things in terms of your personal life, in terms of business opportunities, uh, to go and serve his country in the way that he thought he could serve his country, right? I'm very um proud of him having the courage to do that. Um and so yeah, I obviously wish him the best. I still speak to him.
SPEAKER_01Is he a future prime minister?
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah. And and if you spoke to anyone at our school, everyone would have given the same answer. Was that in his yearbook? Who's most I think it must be in our yearbook somewhere? Who's most likely to be future prime minister?
SPEAKER_01Everyone would have said to you. Um so look, before we get into Sequel, there's that one other thing. You mentioned COVID, you told uh um Velocity Black quite quickly after COVID. I think you and I bonded over COVID in the Nabella over a couple of cocktails. We had some, we both had some personal reasons to be aggrieved about the whole um, you know, uh uh, I guess, policy, um, government policies uh in re in reaction to COVID. Um so yeah, it was, you know, when I think of you, COVID very quickly comes into my mind, and I think I had a controversial Pfizer-based t-shirt that you that you noticed at the time. Um how much are you prepared to talk about that? I don't want to drag you into the political gutter, but I think it's an it's like an important theme in our relationship, and I think for a lot of people for various different reasons.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, look, um I think I think you know, there's a I I think uh it's definitely a dark time in a lot of people's lives. And I think the first time I was in the UK at the time, and I still remember being very surprised about lockdowns and and suddenly having your freedom taken away, and you know, with the illusion of safety. Uh, you know, and I think there's that famous quote, I can't remember which ex-president, maybe it's Jefferson or someone, you know, those who would give up freedom uh for uh or liberty for a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety, right? And um it's the first time in my life I was very, you know, first time I felt like I had a you know, I was mentally very struggling with that with that situation, with suddenly having our freedom taken away, and seemingly, you know, without much good reason uh for doing so, or without much evidence that we we should have our freedom taken away. And that lasted for quite a long period of time, particularly in the UK, if you remember, it was a number of months, and we had multiple lockdowns. And so that you know, so the I felt like um I felt suddenly quite alone in the world. And whilst I'd always thought I was a contrarian, I was like, wow, what you know, I was kind of tearing my hair out. How does no one else have why is there not a revolt around people having their freedom taken away? So that was definitely one of the issues, and then you know, obviously there was there was a lot of um, I think, I think in some ways, you know, it's great that people want to try and solve these things by developing vaccines, etc., and and solutions to the problem. I do feel that those solutions were rushed out too quickly and were imposed upon people of you know all backgrounds, ages, and health conditions without necessarily um enough safety testing, without enough consideration of the cost-benefit analysis, particularly for young, healthy people who you know had already potentially had COVID and had natural immunity. Um, I felt that was a little rushed, a lot of the policy decisions there. And I think a lot of people have, including some people very close to me, have have suffered like long-term consequences from that decision to rush that out. Um I don't I know those decisions are very tough for politicians and they're feeling, you know, they're in a tough place where they want to get the economy back on track, they want to give people confidence that they can go out and enjoy themselves, and and they felt like vaccines were the were the quickest way to do that. So I get it's a tough decision, but I feel like ultimately the wrong decision was made there to rush those out and and impose them upon people of all ages, all health conditions, all backgrounds. And um, I think some people have have have now going to be suffering for from long-term consequences from that decision.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, look, I I would go into how much I agree with all of the above, but anyone who knows me or or watches this podcast knows how much I agree with all of the above anyway. I just think for me, it was very sad that it became political and it became like a which political camp you sit in dictated what your views are on some of those policy decisions, as opposed to you know, um the evident really making those decisions based on you know your your your health. Um exactly. Okay, so look, some some so moving on to to sequel, and based on what you said about the regret uh potentially of around around selling Velocity Black too soon, this was that part of the name. This was the sequel to that, or am I looking into this too deeply?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, uh it that wasn't actually the origin of the name, but it does it does work nicely as a story. Um but yeah, look, I'm not the I like to say we're not the main characters at SQL, and certainly I'm not the main character, so I didn't name the company after my sequel. It was more about so SQL is a digital family office. Our clients are predominantly professional athletes. We also deal with artists and exted founders, and you know, those groups of people tend to have relatively short initial careers and they need to think about what comes next, right? If you think about professional athlete, you know, that most of them are retiring in their early 30s, or if they're lucky in their late 30s. Um, and they have to think about what comes next, right, after their initial career in sport. They might have earned a lot of money, they might have built a good network, but you know, you don't want to be sitting there twiddling your thumbs for 50 or 60 years the rest of your life, you may end up with some bad habits. You may find yourself with a lack of purpose in your life. So we started SQL to help our clients who predominantly are very successful, high, you know, high influence, high net worths, help them invest their money well, but also their time well. We help them build a network outside of sports or outside of Hollywood or outside their existing kind of bubble. We help them understand the fundamentals of investing. We empower them with education, with events, and with access, the very best investments in venture to help them, you know, whatever they want to do in their SQL, whether they want to invest full-time, whether they want to start their own company, whether they want to join another business, to help them achieve that, right? And if they have the right knowledge network and they've kind of learned about how startups and the world of entrepreneurship works through, you know, making great investments alongside us and alongside some of the best funds in the world, they should be in a great position to do whatever they want to do in their C core. So that's the origin of the name, it's definitely about them rather than about us. Amazing.
SPEAKER_01And it's going well from what I hear. And Grok tells me that you you forexed your AUM during 2025. And we'll see if you'll tell me in a second whether Grok got that right or not. But I was I I think that's right, yeah. But I think to be specific 4.4x. But so it was it was kind of um interesting to see that because I was with you. I think I was with you in a in an Uber uh in LA in 2023 when this was just this was your concept that you were kind of still pulling together and trying to get off the ground, and now to see that in a relatively short space of time.
SPEAKER_02I think we must have been making like our very first investments when I was when I was with you in LA and in uh three years ago. And so, yeah, we've been investing for three years now. We have uh well, we've just hit a milestone, we've invested in just in 50 companies now, um, everywhere from kind of pre-seed very inception stage businesses through to some companies now approaching IPO. So a wide range. Um, you know, we're very talent-driven with our investing, and so yeah, we have just over 300 clients across sport, um, entertainment, and also and also entrepreneurship. And those first 50 investments, we've just hit that milestone. We're actually publishing a book to celebrate the founders that we've been investing in. So that's coming out next week. And um yeah, so far it's going very well. We should we should grow our AUM hopefully again by around 4x this year as well. So back to back 4X growth. And uh and next year, potentially by even more. So um, so yeah, it's going very well. Um, and the portfolio is doing very well. You know, the founders we're invested in, you know, I actually like to say they're the main characters rather than us. You know, it's they're the ones who are writing, you know, writing what the future holds, and it's everything from programmable, you know, cures for cancer to autonomous ocean drones, um, to foundational AI models, to robotics, to enterprise fintech, to consumer. We're very generalist in our approach. We're just looking to invest in the very best founders, and uh yeah, they're growing phenomenally. Um, we have some real breakouts in the portfolio already, so well, well within the top decel of performance and inventure.
SPEAKER_01Amazing. And this is you you've already led us into the the um you know an area that's particularly interesting for me. Um, as you know, I'm an infrastructure energy transition guy, uh, and certainly in my background as an executive search professional, that's my focus. And and so the question is how is Alex relevant? How are uh tech investors relevant? What is this convergence with infrastructure? And I I've got a strong conviction that that is increasingly there's increasing overlap. Uh I was keen to ask you about a gamma, uh, which is one of your investments I think will be of real interest to to people in in my network. Um but then when you talk about, you know, that's obviously space-based, um, keen to hear about that. But you talk about autonomous ocean drones. I mean, there are several of the areas that you're looking at that I think people would say are very relevant to the infrastructure investing world.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so look, I what we're increasingly seeing is infrastructure and and uh and the world of tech from an investment perspective are converging. A lot of that is being driven by AI at the end of the day. Like AI is going to have a huge impact across every sector of the economy from you know areas like healthcare and energy and biotech and life sciences to um you know, obviously productivity in companies and the workplace and financial services, and eventually into consumer applications, although that's really yet to come to fruition. And the real bottlenecks uh on that, you know, if you look at the past few years as different parts of the kind of supply chain, so to speak, of technology, which have been the bottlenecks and on AI adoption. And right now, you know, the real bottlenecks are around data centers, energy, you know, the minerals and mining and the and the various parts of the ultimately the chip supply chain, right? And so you're seeing a lot of tech investors, you know, realizing in order to unleash the real power of AI, uh, you have to invest in in unlocking some of those uh those bottlenecks, right? And and so they're applying capital to to parts of, I guess, that that long supply chain that they might not have previously considered, because there are, for the first time in a while, you know, there are venture level returns to be had in some of those earlier parts of that uh um, you know, that that supply chain, which typically would have been funded, which typically would be firstly would be low growth, right? And now you're gonna see explosive growth in those areas, and therefore typically would have been funded by more traditional, you know, later stage private market investments or credit funds. And uh and now venture is actually starting to get involved in some of those bottlenecks. And the found founders, founders are looking to solve them, right? Founders are coming up with new ideas for, you know, whether it's Travis Camelnik with atoms, you know, trying to solve autonomous mining of minerals, right, to free up that part of the supply chain, or you're seeing a number of people in the energy space who got fuse in the UK, um, and you've got, you know, you've got Michael Delston in the US, who started a company base, um, trying to solve some of the bottlenecks from an energy perspective. Obviously, various projects under Elon as well trying to do that. And so, so yeah, there's a number of entrepreneurs now focusing on this kind of physical infrastructure, which previously would not have grabbed their attention. And a lot of that is all kind of downstream from you know, AI is going to revolutionize every sector of the economy. And and those are the bottlenecks now, um, and the kind of hurdles that we need to overcome for us to achieve that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, the um so one of one of my one of the things I one of the reasons I think you're a really interesting person, and we've already covered one or two views that you have um that might be uh, you know, some people would consider to be brave, um, to say publicly, maybe that's easier, easier to be that brave when you've solved Velocity Black. Um, but the you know, there's there's a couple of things. So I just want to give you both of them and then and and then sort of see what you make of it. So, on one hand, you've got views on net zero that some people who um are in this world of climate, uh, you know, the climate crisis uh uh and investing to solve the climate crisis, which a lot of the people that are in my network are are true believers in you know the fight against net zero. Um, but at the same time, and you've just demonstrated it there, you've got a real passionate belief in the climate problem being solved by startups and giving us some solid examples of of how, and um and you're getting behind that, and you clearly are passionate about solving that problem. So, um, how do you reconcile those two things? And tell us what are your views on net zero?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, okay, so that I I think um these are very nuanced things, and it's and it's sometimes hard for people to separate these various different things, you know. Net zero as a an ideology, and in some cases a political ideology, which is funded by actually by by enemies of Western civilization in many cases. I think it's sometimes hard for people to understand that that can be the case, um, and that could be my belief that that is the case. But I can also believe that the planet is very special, that there are issues that we need to do deal with in terms of climate, that we need to um, you know, protect wildlife, we need to protect our oceans, we need to reduce pollution. Those are all beliefs that I have. But I also believe that net zero and the ideology behind it is holding back um mankind and holding back Western civilization. And, you know, all of the kind of degrowth initiatives, the anti-energy initiatives that you see in the UK, in Western Europe, and sometimes, you know, the past decade in the US, although less so now, um, a lot of those kind of initiatives are actually funded by extreme kind of Marxist organizations. And in some cases, the funding, if you look at the anti-nuclear movement in Germany as an example, a lot of the funding from that of that movement was um actually tied back to Russia and by many investigative journalists. So I think the whole concept of net zero uh you know needs to be considered as a political ideology. At the same time, you can hold in your head that the planet is very special and you know we need to we need to invest in making sure that um you know we solve problems like pollution, that we stop, you know, that we hopefully stop warming our oceans, that we protect wildlife. You can hold both of those two thoughts in your head, hopefully, and understand the nuance between those two things. And for me, yeah, look, it's very critical. The way we solve a lot of those problems with the planet is by investing in technology and innovation, you know, and and um also in smart policy, but really, you know, government needs to get out the way, enable entrepreneurs to solve some of these problems, which there are some amazing companies that are focused both on energy, right, and creating you know sustainable energy solutions for the world in the future, whether it's nuclear fusion companies that are now emerging both in Europe and the US, which hopefully will provide almost free, abundant energy for mankind at some point in the future, or whether it's companies solving you know problems like pollution in our oceans or in the air, there are so many um fantastic entrepreneurs focused on those problems now. And I think the approach to solving, you know, whether you call it climate change or some of the challenges that we have from an environmental perspective on the planet, I think the approach to solving those shouldn't be to reduce our energy consumption, which ultimately increases inequality, puts more people in poverty, um, and and holds back, you know, holds back uh various sectors of the economy, right? It prevents us from manufacturing, it prevents us from doing lots of interesting things which would solve problems in healthcare. You know, that that for me is not the approach to solving various challenges with the climate and with pollution in our oceans. The approach should be to encourage innovation to solve those problems, right? And um, there are many companies doing that. And so, yeah, I can both believe that we need to protect our planet. I saw this recent interview where, you know, a lot of astronauts who come back from space, right? The one thing that nearly all of them say is how amazing the kind of diversity of wildlife and how amazing our planet is, and how that how that's something they miss when they were out in space and they realized how special that is, right? Because you're in the cold, dark, lonely space with no life, right? And they come back and they realize that's something we need to protect and invest in. I wholeheartedly agree with that. But you can have that belief, and also believe that you know, some of the ideology around net zero and how we approach it by effectively restricting energy use, driving up the cost of energy, um, you know, that is not the right approach to solving you know those problems and protecting protecting the planet and the amazing diversity of wildlife that we have here and the climate, obviously.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and look, I think most people in in my network, and just most right-minded people, would listen to that uh explanation of where you stand and and and agree with 90% of it at least. And but again, it's almost like a government policy area, is the area where there's met there might be some disagreement going back to COVID as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I think like this this ideology has infected many institutions from universities through to lobbying groups through to and it's quite easy for that to happen, right? It's very small amounts of money you need to impact the the various institutions that that um you know affect our government and policy in in Europe and in and America. So yeah, it's it's uh it's been fairly easy for that to kind of infect various parts of the apparatus which decide you know on these matters. And you know, I think the the US has been the first to kind of go the opposite way. And ultimately, whatever anyone says, the rest of the world really is culturally downstream of the US, right? And I think we're gonna see that movement come to Europe very soon. I think people here are fed up. People are gonna realize that actually all this talk of billionaires is nonsense. The real driver of increasing in poverty or inequality are things like energy bills going up, which impact obviously the poorest people the most, right? Um there's no impact really on you or me, Dan, but like people who are struggling to feed their families, energy bills rising by several hundred percent in a few years has a massive impact on their quality of life. And I think people are starting to realize that actually, you know, a lot of this net zero policy is one of the drivers of inequality and poverty. Um and I think that they're gonna realize that it's a driver, it's actually limiting economic growth, right? It's the reason you know a lot of industry and and manufacturing has shut down completely in the UK, it's because of the cost of energy that we have here, right? And so that leads to loss of jobs, it leads to loss of economic opportunity, it leads to GDP contraction. And so I think people are starting to realize this in Europe, they've already realized it in America and they've taken the opposite route, um, which is embracing energy abundance, right, and which is what we need to do here. Um, and if we do approach things from an energy abundance perspective, firstly, I think we'll be able to unlock a lot of those innovative solutions to climate change and various other things, right? Like it will enable entrepreneurs and industry to you know actually build those solutions, right? Um, whereas right now the cost of energy is prohibitive in doing a lot of those things. So, and it should bring down inequality, it should enable people to have a higher quality of life and be able to have more, you know, spending money and and you know, enjoy enjoy their lives more with their families. So I think that movement is coming. US is typically culturally first on this stuff, and Europe typically takes a few years to catch up, but it's definitely coming.
SPEAKER_01Okay, got it. And and look, you you took us into space with the the astronauts um uh uh you know anecdote. I think that'd be a fitting place to end this. Um I'm keen to we we've both got um investments in space. I I was I was look lucky enough to get the chance to to to invest in vast space um and went in uh their their uh module at the All-In Summit, which is great. But you've invested in Gamma. Tell us about that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so that's been a really interesting journey. Um fantastic, entrepreneur Andrew. Um, and what they've done, like they started off actually doing solar sales and deep space navigation systems, right? So they would be able to, they'd have a launch system which would, you know, they go up on a, and in fact, like it is awesome to see a company you're invested in go up on a Falcon 9 rocket and launch into space. That is a cool experience. And if you can invest in a company that has a company to do that, you should absolutely do it. Um, but there, you know, they originally had probes that were going up with solar sail deep space navigation systems. The idea is that you could go further, much more cheaply and much more quickly, right? Actually, the the limitations on on speed are much uh, you know, you can basically travel much faster than any rocket with a solar sail. And so that was the original product they have. They've now um kind of pivoted and they're doing, you know, there's a big problem right now, which is the amount of debris um that we have in orbit around uh planet Earth. And it's actually limiting and limiting the number of satellites and potential applications that we can have for space, right? And and you know, the space economy is is limited effectively by the amount of space debris that we have in orbit. And so their latest product is helping clear up that space debris that we have in orbit and hopefully therefore unlock a lot of economic potential for new opportunities for us to send satellites and things up into orbit, um, which is a real risk right now. If you send something into orbit, you know there's a there's a chance that it's gonna get damaged by some space debris. So, yeah, very cool company, and definitely, yeah, if you have a chance to invest in something which you can see going up on a rocket, that's a very cool experience.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean look, I completely agree. And um, look, I uh from my side, I think that's been a whirlwind 40 minutes. Um, we'll we we'll we'll leave it at that because we don't want to overload uh people with information, but that is there's been a lot covered there, Alex, and really grateful to you for coming and doing this.
SPEAKER_02No problem. Thanks, Dan. Really good to chat.