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In this week’s episode of all about business, James Reed is joined by venture capitalist Sasha Kaletsky. Sasha Kaletsky is the co-founder of investment firm Creator Ventures which he started with his cousin Caspar Lee. They have injected millions of dollars into digital tech companies in six short years.
In this episode, they explore how to craft the perfect pitch, how social media is shaping our economy and how you can use simple AI tools to scale your business quickly.
About Sasha
Sasha Kaletsky is the Co-founder and Managing Partner at Creator Ventures, a firm that invests early in technologies shaping the digital landscape and internet culture. Before founding Creator Ventures, Sasha gained extensive experience in the fields of private equity, technology, and consulting. He started at Bridgepoint in private equity, contributed to the launch and expansion of Uber and worked as a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group.
Timestamps
01:58 introduction
02:31 Creator Ventures
17:37 setting up in the United States
18:48 CEOs becoming creators
20:35 building companies with AI
25:51 the future social landscape
29:28 Uber
31:12 the network effect
34:04 the secret behind a 5-Star passenger rating
35:09 what makes a good pitch
39:18 how Sasha determines future markets
41:12 presenting to VCs
42:39 due diligence
43:20 how to pitch to Sasha
43:53 family business
47:06 when due diligence fails
49:15 how companies can make better use of AI
54:53 interview round
Send Sasha your pitch: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasha-kaletsky-48a10378/
Check out Creator Venture’s investments: https://www.creator.ventures/
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chairmanjames/
James: [00:00:00] Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership.
What should you do if you have a brilliant business idea but don't have the funds to bring it to life? In today's episode of all about business venture capitalist, Sasha Ksky reveals all. Sasha Ksky is the co-founder of Investment Firm Creator Ventures. Which he started with his cousin, Casper Lee.
They've injected millions of dollars into digital tech companies in just six short years. Sasha explains how to craft the perfect pitch, how social media is shaping our economy, and how you can use simple AI tools to scale your business quickly. Well today on all About business, I'm really delighted to welcome Sasha Ksky, who's traveled to talk to us today from New York.
So thank you for making the journey, Sasha. You [00:01:00] have a really interesting business that I only sort of partially understand. Which I know is growing fast and um, is making waves. So I'm really looking forward to talking to you to find out more about what you're doing and to get a better understanding of where the future may be headed.
I think you're doing a lot in the tech, social media, AI space, and that's, um, of great interest to me and I know many of. Listeners, so your company is called Creator Ventures. You were the co-founder of Creator Ventures with your cousin Casper Lee. Mm-hmm. You started out in London, and now you are based in New York.
You began with a fund, I believe, of 20 million. Explain what you do, please. So, first of all, it's great to be here. We've known each other
Sasha: a very long time in more than 20 years now. So yeah, it's great to be, it's great to be here on the show. I mean, creative Ventures, we're an early stage venture capital fund.
We invest usually in the first round of companies, sometimes in the second round in consumer businesses. So those are companies that app-based businesses, consumer ai. Sometimes we do physical [00:02:00] consumer product, but generally we're focused on consumer technology. And yeah, we try to lead or co-lead rounds.
We offer a fund one of $20 million. We recently announced a fund two of $45 million. Uh, yeah, we just, we love what we do and we're gonna
James: keep doing it. So it's going great. Guns, I mean, obviously your second fund is twice as large. You started out in London and I've been looking at some of the things that you've invested in some of these companies.
I mean, they're fabulous. I mean, there's Bird Buddy for instance. Yeah. Explain what Bird Buddy does because I think it, it, it creates a picture that is very helpful for people listening.
Sasha: So Bird Buddy is, uh, is an. AI bird feeder, if you can believe that. That's a thing. So, well, I found it hard to believe that's a thing.
So others of AI feeder work? Well, I mean, who thought of this said, what does it do? It's a bird feeder that is kind of, has a nice, nice looking bird house you can put in your garden, but buried in the bird house, which a bird would not be able to tell is there is a camera and attached to the camera is an app and there's, and some AI happening in the background such that the camera can [00:03:00] recognize.
When a bird comes to feed at the station and takes a video of it, so you on your app can see all the birds that have come to your bird feeder and it can, you can collect birds or you can just watch them on your phone. You can watch them on your phone. So you get, and you get a notification when if a new species comes or if you wanna get a notification every 10 minutes, you can, if you can tell that I've
James: become a bit of a bird myself.
You see? Yeah. So you can see the goldfinch, you know, just going to Yeah, exactly. And you collect the different burden. The only problem, the
Sasha: biggest bus issue for the business is squirrels. Yeah. 'cause the squirrels come and also sometimes set off the ai, so you have to, I got my mother one and she's filtered out squirrels, some nice squirrels.
She doesn't, well, you know, the squirrels, it's very, they're annoying, but it's really close up images with the kind of fish eye wide angle lens of like a, a squirrels face really kind of zoomed in. And so you don't necessarily want, want that when you're having breakfast. But yeah, the business is actually surprisingly going incredibly well.
I'm not surprised at all. I want one of these. Yeah,
James: yeah. 'cause I watch the birds from afar and I think it's a really, and you [00:04:00] can then look at them on your phone when you're on the Tube gonna work or whatever. Yeah.
Sasha: And it's like a classic example in a, you know, venture capital you have, you have to sometimes invest in companies that don't even sound like that's a real category if you ask what's the bi, what's the market size of ai?
Bird feeders. Yeah. You know, before this company was zero, there was basically no market for ai, bird feeders. But if you think about the number of people who are interested in birding, which actually is surprisingly a lot, millions around the world, you say Surprisingly, I'm not surprised. It's a fantastic thing to do.
Yeah. Pretty wonderful. A lot of people over the age of 50, surprisingly if you're under age 50, that's true. And the older. Older, I've gotten more
James: interested. I've become, that's what I've heard, that's for young people. Listen, incredible. But for all people, it's
Sasha: perfectly. And then if you multiply the number of people, the millions of people in the world that are interested in birding by, you know, $300, which is the price they end up paying for this bird feeder.
You can generate a lot of revenue. You generate very, very, very big business.
James: Yeah. And so, so did you find the entrepreneur who'd set this up? Or how did you meet, how did that, how did that become a business
Sasha: journey? Yeah, it's an amazing team. Oh yeah. One ex snap engineer [00:05:00] and, uh, one, um, marketing guy. Yeah.
As well as a hard consumer hardware person. So it was a perfect blend. And this is what we really like to see, is they combined the marketing. The engineering and the hardware all into one business of founding team. They're actually based in Slovenia, between Slovenia and the Eastern United States. And yeah, they, they were just perfect team for this and they've executed it superbly.
This
James: is a business that's only
Sasha: become possible.
James: Really recently. Yeah, absolutely. In terms of this connectivity
Sasha: and Yeah. Yeah, technology, that's something you really want to see in companies. Like that's a question that's almost become like a truism or something's really obvious within, it was almost overstated sometimes with a venture capital, but this is why now question, right?
Which is like, what's the reason why now is the moment for there to be a billion dollar company built if something's been possible to do for already 30 years and there's no billion dollar companies doing it already. It's probably not a very good idea. No, not for you. Yeah, I can
James: see the logic of that. So there's another one that I looked on your website.
Uh, this is on the Creator Venture [00:06:00] site, if anyone's interested, which was just called Feels. And I clicked on that and it was made very clear to me that this was only for people under 30. And it looked like a dating site. And it reminded me years ago when I worked in advertising, I worked on club 18 to 30 holidays, which is all about getting this audience in.
And it had the brilliant, it had the brilliant insight on fields, your business site that you only had 628 weeks of your life between 18 and 30. And I say, I wish I'd thought of that line back in the 1980s, but. We were trying to get people to go on 18 to 30 holidays, but it seems to be catering for exactly the same audience, uh, uh, in, in a new contemporary way.
What does Fields do?
Sasha: Well, first of all, I'm happily, I'm happily engaged. I'm maybe married by the time this goes out, so I definitely would not be, but I'm actually not. Customer
James: feels you're an investor. Yeah, exactly.
Sasha: So not a customer, and I'm, I'm too old. Anyway, that's the other thing. Okay. Um, but basically, you know, then the number one Gen Z dating app in France and Germany, and they're starting to expand elsewhere around the world.
They've built a pretty, pretty good business out of [00:07:00] it. But basically, yeah, it's that idea of when you make something exclusive or you make some people feel like only a certain number of people are, are able to join, it can, it can help with the, the marketing and make them go viral on TikTok and it can help, it's, it becomes more emotive when you almost restrict it.
But I think what's really good about their business is, is the, again, the team have done an incredible job making the product fun to use. So it's all video. As it using. No, I was gonna say, 'cause dating apps are not new, are they? No. Dating apps not. So this one's got something different about it, which is all, it's all video.
So it's like a top. Exactly. It's TikTok. You scroll through and it's kind of fun. You, you have people not just for themselves, you know, doing the peace sign in front of the Eiffel Tower or whatever people put on Tinder. That's outta date. Yeah, exactly. That's, and so people are more doing themselves doing, you know, like windsurfing in some really impressive way, or bungee jumping, or just things that you would kind of send your friends on Snapchat.
That's what they've done is it's really, it's really working well. So the third business
James: I'm gonna ask you about Okay. Before we get into the sort of how all this works from your point of view. Yeah. On your site was called Lotti, which is the other end of life. Yeah, yeah. [00:08:00] Um, it was all about care homes I saw and how to choose a care home.
That looked pretty interesting because, you know, I, I think lots of people, you know, with older parents would be thinking, how do I go about that? And it seemed to be delivering that offer in a new way again. Explain what Lotti is and does.
Sasha: Yeah. It's funny that the, the, the companies, people decide to, uh, the people, people would decide people's eyes are drawn to within the website.
And so clearly you like the pink, uh, the pink. I,
James: yeah. Pink. I like pink. I think that's probably,
Sasha: I think that's probably what drew you to it. Um, yeah. They've built both a marketplace to find a care home for your loved ones. They're mostly targeting actually, that the children of the old people, 'cause the old people don't usually, um, no, they
James: don't wanna go to care homes,
Sasha: I'm assume they don't wanna go to care homes and they also want to search on Google to, to find the best one.
But it's basically a marketplace to help you find the best one for your parents. And they also have, that's how they started. They've now built a, uh, software as a service platform for the care homes to manage their operations internally and to manage billing and all this kind of stuff. But again, it's a great, it's a great team of people who've, and they've, they've raised now I [00:09:00] think, you know, we did their seed round.
They've now raised about, I. $35 million or something like that. So since,
James: is that, is it an advertising business model or a subscription business model, do you know?
Sasha: Yeah, it's, it's a cross between the two. They have basically an affiliate, effectively what is structured effect. It's actually been more complicated for regulatory and legal in healthcare reasons and stuff.
But basically it's an affiliate model on the one side. Yeah, which the marketplace where they get. Effectively they've managed to monetize some of the leads that they send to Care Homes, and then they also have a product for the care homes where they charge an A subscription monthly for use of their, you know, care software.
James: Yeah. It looked really easy to, you know, see where these places were, what they were like, yeah. And importantly what they cost per week. Yeah. Per month or whatever. And I thought that was really helpful. Yeah. I really enjoyed going for a browse around your side. Yeah. Well that's the good thing about consumer is that every, it's very much everyone feels, yeah, I might try this.
Yeah.
Sasha: Whereas if you're a kind of infrastructure tools, you know, developer tools, AI company, you probably wouldn't, and you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't necessarily understand the words on the website and what they know, or you might, but [00:10:00] others, others wouldn't. That's kind of you to say that. Maybe not, but I think
James: what, what's great is you can, um, you can see these businesses.
So why did you decide to go into this space? How, how did your business journey begin?
Sasha: So we started as an investment club. We is who? Um, so creative ventures. Started as an investment club. So in 2019 I was working at a job in private equity doing consumer and tech investments at a firm called Bridgepoint.
And I'd previously worked in various startups. That's a big firm. Very big firm. It's 60 billion a u, it's, it's a great, great place. And they've had, you know, great, great track record in like large. That's a m you mean assets under, as a, under management. So they've
James: invested 60 billion.
Sasha: Yeah, they, yeah, they managed 60 billion.
So it's a huge firm. So yeah, I was doing consumer and technology investing there, but I had. You know, previously worked in startups and had that kind of early stage passion, so I was actually doing as many people who work in finance and other jobs. I was doing some angel investing on the side. But the way I was doing it was with my co-founder and, but now co-founder at the time.
Just investment buddy. Yeah. Um, [00:11:00] his name's Casper Lee, who's my cousin. He was originally a YouTuber. He was quite a successful YouTube, very successful YouTuber. Yeah. And he's, but he's also great entrepreneur. He co-founded a company called influencer.com. Right. Which is, which is a big business now. I mean, they've got about 150 employees, right?
Tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Very profitable. It's a, it's a, it's a big, so they help people become influencers. They actually, they've helped big enterprise brands find influencers, find influencers and pay them. So they're like an agency for Yeah, there's a tech enabled agency basically. So. He had the founder thing, he had the creator thing, and we get on really well.
And so we started investing together in startups and we, we created an investment club in 2019 where other people could invest with us as well. A lot of people respect Casper and thought he has a lot of friends who were also creators and they want, they've respected the business journey he's been on, and so they wanted to get exposure to some of the companies he was investing in with me.
And, um, yeah, we started investing in startups. And So is he older or younger than you? He's two years younger than me.
James: So he's, because I noticed you are the, the general manager [00:12:00] or what was it? Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he's, no, he's got lots
Sasha: of different other things as well. So he's got influencers.
So you're, you're full-time on this. And he's, I'm fulltime on this. And he has, he has, he has other things as well. Exactly. Which actually works really well for us. Mm-hmm. 'cause he's right on the pulse with what's happening in the influencer world. He also has a management company called mv, which is.
Co-owned by WME, big agency group. So he's got, and a pro, he's, he's got lots of different things going on, so. That can often help our founders with what's like on the pulse of marketing. Keeps keep connected. Exactly. It keeps us connect. So we started that in 2019. Did that for three years. Luckily got some good results in there and one of a couple of our companies sold and things have gone well with that.
And so that allowed us to raise our fund one which we raised at the end of 21. We actually started investing and closed at the beginning of 2022. So we raised our fund one at a time when there was an incredible surge of excitement to invest in venture capital. We raised our fund. I dunno if likely unconnected, but the, the whole market completely crashed.
There was a
James: bit of a, yeah. Change in the mood or remember. Yeah. There was a real change in the
Sasha: mood. It's not, it wasn't our fault, but they just happened to coincide. [00:13:00] Nothing to do with you s Now I accept that. Yeah. Yeah. So basically, so then what happened? So then, then we started investing when it was much more of a trough.
So we got very lucky with the timing. Mm. We've invested its amazing. Companies. Companies you mentioned, but also a company called Beehive, another company, which is. Done very well. Another company called, um, 11 Labs and Practica and various others that have really kind of done, done super well and raised lots of money and stuff.
And so that, you know, we were showing that we kind of could, could sustainably create returns. We had a couple of exits and so that was the track record we used to raise our fund to, which is a $45 million fund. So that's kinda like where we're at in the journey so far.
James: So I have to ask you this, um, you, you said we've known each other a while.
I know that 'cause you grew up in our neighborhood, but now you've moved to America. Your first one you raised here, your second one, it sounds like you moved to America. I mean, this is what we call the brain drain, isn't it, in England? I mean, so why did you go to America? What was it, what were you not getting here that made you think, I want to go there?
Sasha: Yeah, so I have a, I have a joke that pretty much all of my friends who are about my age. Or [00:14:00] either in, in London or either moving to New York or having a baby. And I haven't had a baby yet, so I guess I had to do, I had to do the New York move. But no, the, the, the brain drain I thing is, I think it, there, there, there is something happening.
Um, a lot of people have talked about the tax stuff and the non-op stuff, and that, that's, that's all happening, I'm sure of it. It's, it's not, it's not something that I'm an expert in, obviously. I think that's more of what's happening for the more older people who've already made lots of money. So I, I really, I don't, I dunno much about that, but I understand that is also happening for my generation of people who, you know, aren't m doms and don't have to worry too much about their tax bills.
Uh, yet most people sort of under the age of 40, I do think a lot of people are moving to the US. Especially entrepreneurs because in many cases there is a greater entrepreneurial energy In the United States, it's, there's often more talent. You can hire talent more easily who have worked in great startups before.
There is a great scene in London, but maybe there's not quite the same depth of, um, of talent who've kind of seen the journey before. I think that obviously investment. Is often easier to, to, to, to get in the US and you're kind of just [00:15:00] surrounded by people all the time who are like, you know, more ambitious and driven.
And I don't wanna make this an anti UK thing.
James: No, no. I'm trying to, I I was hoping by sharing some of your thoughts, you might help us in the UK become, you know, more attractive. Yeah, yeah. Not that, you know, I don't feel you're beating up on the UK at all. Yeah. But these are the things you're looking for as a, an entrepreneur with a dynamic startup.
Yeah. And I do think that we could have more of here.
Sasha: I agree. And I do think that tone has shifted too far against. The UK and too far against Europe. I mean, if you go to, in America, the Europe is treated like, it's kind of like a museum or something, which is obviously not at all the case. Um, so people have taken it way too far.
But I do think there are things the UK needs to be doing a bit better to, to keep up with the US on the entrepreneurship stuff. Yeah. Well that's, that's interesting to hear. Well, and the other thing is for the UK is people, the kind of trodden path is to start in the uk. Raise your, you know, seed round in the uk, then move to the US and then as soon as you get hit by a massive tax bill because you sold your company, you're long in the US by then.
So the UK is almost in this trap where it's getting these companies funded these amazing entrepreneurs and [00:16:00] educating them and all this kind of stuff. By the time the tax bill hits 90% of the time they're paying in
James: the UK. Exactly. So we need to be, we need to be stickier as a country for entrepreneurs so that we get the benefits of their great success as well, you know, in tax terms.
Yeah, yeah. You've set up, set up in, in, in the states now, but just as a thought, if you, if you want to go as a British person to the States, if you're starting a business, you have to employ people, don't you, to be able to move there and become a sort of resident. Is that how it works?
Sasha: Yeah, well there's various different types of visas.
I do it if you have, if you have $5 million, you can get the new golden visa. You have $5 million. That's all, only the $5 million. You know what? What do you have
James: to do with the 5 million?
Sasha: Invest it in the us. No, so this new gold, well, this new Golden introduce this new golden visa where you can give $5 million basically to the US government, and you get.
The right to live in the US and not get taxed on your overseas income, which is pretty incredible. I mean, it's pretty crazy that they've done really? Yeah. Yeah. It's like kind of inspired by these, um, Eastern countries, right? This is a new, this is a new policy, but in any case, that's not causing, this is a [00:17:00] Trump era apology.
That's a Trump era apology. I is. Why you pay
James: 5 billion in tax and then you can live there. Um,
Sasha: yeah, you can live there. Or trouble, if that's the right word. Exactly. And apparently it's had a huge inflow, but no, that, I think that's not how the entrepreneurs and, and, and investors, well, they wouldn't draw them necessarily.
So I think there's various ways you can move there. You know, you can either sponsor yourself, you can apply for various kind of merit based visas. There is also investor visas. There's various, there's various ways you can do it, but they are
James: actively encouraging entrepreneurs to come and set up in the states.
Yeah, I mean, they have been the way they do that. Yeah, they
Sasha: have been, I dunno what the update is on 2025. I, you know, I moved before the current administration, but uh, I'm not sure what the latest. Yeah, I think, I think even the Republican party's a little bit. Divided on that policy.
James: So you have, in, in your business sort of approach.
You, you, you have this idea that CEOs can become creators or you are interested in, can you explain what you mean? I mean, what sort of opportunities are you looking for in this space? Well, I mean, and why, you know, well, looking, well, doing a podcast here, but this
Sasha: is this, but that really is actually, this is actually what it, what it is, [00:18:00] is CEOs doing podcasts and talking about their business.
I mean, you've done, you've been doing it before the social media age. Things like being in the ads and personalizing the brand. I think as humans we do, we do like to, to personalize things. I mean, reader's a good example of a company that's got the name on the door, and I think that's the reason people have been doing that for.
You know, hundreds of years calling their companies after themselves because it, it's, it's, um, it engages people's minds to think about a human and to personalize it. This is a person. Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is the next, the CEO side is the next, the next layer of this, I mean, what people have started to do is building in public.
So, you know, people will be on Twitter and talk about, you know, the revenue this month and why they were behind and almost treat the, the social media world almost like it's a board. That they're informing about how their business is going and it works incredibly well when the business is going great.
And then usually, yeah, no, I think I've been around long enough to
James: know it's not always going great. Yeah. Usually it, it's be quite
Sasha: painful usually as soon as the numbers get down there decelerate, but, um, I can
James: imagine that. Yeah.
Sasha: But yeah, [00:19:00] and I, I do think that the stuff like the podcasting and things like that, it just, it, it does help with recruiting, which obviously is your line of work, but it also helps with, you know, investment and all the different bits of running business.
It can help.
James: I mean, 'cause it's interesting you're saying personalized, you know, someone's name and, uh, being above the door, that's a long way from sort of ai. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Or it feels a long way from ai, but you are in a way combining or looking for ways to combine the two. Is that, is that right?
Absolutely. Yeah. So how does that, how, how can we. Exploit that.
Sasha: Yeah, so I mean I do, I think, you know, there's a huge opportunity to build companies using AI both in the product you're selling, but also you know, in terms of your internal operations and stuff. But I don't think that takes away from how important connecting with the leadership team and you know, personalizing the company and stuff.
You can definitely have both. And if anything, some of these AI companies, you almost need that human trust more. People really care who people care about. The daily workings of Sam Altman and all these people [00:20:00] addicted almost to here and you know, the CEO of Perplexity and anthropic and all these come, you know, the, the, the big enterprise customers are daily tracking what these guys are doing.
So I think it's more so they're living
James: their life entirely in the open. Are they? When you say they're tracking what they're doing, I mean, well, I mean, yeah. Are they on sort of find my friend Yeah. What's going on?
Sasha: Yeah. What? Explain. Well, I mean, yeah, they, they're, they're, they're all constantly posting on, on Twitter and LinkedIn and everything like that.
The CEOs of those companies, often those posts are model updates or saying, okay, we've built this new product. And often it's kinda shipping updates to show all the amazing things they've built. But some of them will blend into personal as well. Right. So yeah, tech companies are much more, um. Much more forward about, uh, the create the CEOs being creators.
But
James: that's, that, that's an always on sort of approach. Yeah. That puts a lot of emphasis on the leader, doesn't it? Yeah. And they've gotta really sort of
Sasha: be on it and they can't have a down day, can they? Yeah, no, absolutely not. Yeah, it's hard. And yeah, like I say, when, when the [00:21:00] numbers start to look, go move against you, it becomes even more depressing than it otherwise would be.
'cause everybody knows your revenue was X and when it goes to, you know, X divided by two, that's doesn't feel good.
James: No. Um,
Sasha: it might have sort of wider ramifications. Yeah. If you've
James: got investors or saying, what hell's going on here, incidentally,
Sasha: podcasts are the best, uh, best thing to the best medium for this, um, for this point because nobody actually knows how many views your po This is the very underrated point about podcasts.
Nobody knows how many views you get. It's one of the only forms of social media where. It's not Oh, right. And there's no way to track it. Right. So it's, there's no, there's much less shame, which is why people feel more comfortable just starting, because it's not embarrassing 'cause your friend got more than you or anything like that.
James: I'm very pleased to say we get quite a good audience. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, yeah, I'd like it to be larger, so. Yeah. Yeah. But I think podcasts are very interesting because it, I enjoy them personally because I'm always learning, you know, I'm learning from every conversation I have. Yeah. And uh, and you get to sit with someone for an hour and talk to people you wouldn't necessarily get to sit with, talk to [00:22:00] for an hour.
Yeah. And it's a different kind of conversation. Mm-hmm. You know, I've done media for years and if you get interviewed on the radio, you get three or four questions if you're lucky. Yeah. And you've gotta make sure you nail your answers to make your point or whatever. This is a more exploratory, and I think therefore more interesting.
Medium. So you, you, you know a lot about media. I mean, you just talked because that's where you invest. What's going on in that landscape, you know, at the moment that people should be paying attention to in particular?
Sasha: Uh, I mean, there's so much, it's, it's, it's really blending into the, the, the rest of the world.
It's really becoming the same. I mean, you can see how. Even just everything, even everything from politics and the tariffs being announced on social media one day and then the next day it's changed and it's, it's all happening live on social media, everything. It's become almost like a form of theater.
But from a business perspective, I. Yeah, I mean, there's just, there's new stuff every day. There's tiktoks gonna be banned and it's gonna be un banned, and now it's gonna be maybe banned again because of the China's all, you know, this is in the US but I'm [00:23:00] sure there'd be global ramifications too. There's Elon Musk renaming Twitter to X and all that stuff.
Um, do you see any
James: new sort of channels emerging that you think, uh, well big for the future as TikTok did most recently, I suppose?
Sasha: Yeah, and definitely yes. I mean, if TikTok is banned. In the US it is gonna cause an incredible new, um, emergence of social media companies. If you went, if you in, in India, TikTok was banned in India in 2020 and, you know.
A good chunk of those users just went to Snapchat and Instagram and Facebook and all other places, but a good chunk didn't. And so that made this incredible unlocking of basically screen time for new apps to, to dominate that. So it a gaming version of TikTok content. These are live streaming local Indian companies.
Right. And it's just like the, the, the social media landscape is much more distributed in India than anywhere else because of this. So. Same thing will definitely happen in the rest of world. I didn't know. So why did they [00:24:00] ban it in India those five years ago? It was because the same reason, it was tensions between India and um, China.
Oh, they had that incident in the Himalayas, I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they, and that, what was the cause that was why they banned it. It was 'cause, yeah, they didn't want this Chinese owned social media app in their country.
James: Right.
Sasha: And it created a whole new landscape. It created a whole new landscape.
Yeah.
James: So you could see that
Sasha: happening. Oh, this, that will definitely happen.
James: But the, there is a sense though, isn't it, that these really dominant social media apps, brands have crowded out everything else. You know, they're big beasts, so they Instagram and Facebook. Yeah. You know, X so. Is, is that what we're gonna is unless the, the governments get involved and ban things or smash things up?
Is that how the landscape looks set, do you think? Yeah. Or do you think it will change?
Sasha: I think, I think I agree with what you just said. I think the landscape is becoming more and more, um, apart from a tiktoks band, uh, which will cause a brief resetting maybe a, a decade or so. [00:25:00] Generally, the, the theme is towards more and more concentration in bigger and bigger apps, just because there are network effects.
Yes, and especially in this TikTok world and the Instagram reels world and how where social media's moving to a feed-based system that's algorithmic as opposed. So you don't get content from people you follow. Instead, you could get content from anyone in the whole world that's both. There's AI basically roots you the right content.
There's a huge incumbent advantage from having an extra a hundred million days. So AI knows
James: that. I like watching. Goldfinches
Sasha: and we'll send it
James: more,
Sasha: more fees from
James: ERs. Is that what's going on? And that's a good
Sasha: example because it is, because it is so niche. And so you, if you try to start a new social media app and yeah, you've got lots about F1 and you know you are interested in football, but you've got the F1 and coffee and whatever, which you're not interested in and it's nothing about goldfinches.
You are gonna end up getting more addicted to the one that has your, the long tail of content about goldfish.
James: You used the word addicted. I mean, that's what's going on here, isn't it? It's getting us all hooked. They, they are getting us
Sasha: hooked and like the old form of social media was, they would, [00:26:00] you know, you would be addicted to you, an old YouTube og, YouTube, you would be very addicted to seeing your favorite YouTube.
And every, you know, Thursday, whenever they uploaded you get a notification you would be addicted to that creator. Whereas in this new form of social media, you actually get addicted to the feed itself. You're not actually addicted to a specific creator. No. You just look at Instagram, whatever. 'cause you wanna see more videos of whatever.
Exactly. So it's, it's more, the feed itself is the addictive part versus the following relationship. Hence why it's more concentrated. Yes. And it's also bad for creators because you, you'd much rather, you'd much rather have an actual loyal audience of your own versus just appear in a feed next to a hundred other people.
'cause the problem with appearing in a feed is as soon as you. Become less relevant, or as soon as you stop being quite as good at making addictive content, uh, algorithmic, um, content, you just drop off and no one even notices. Yes. So that's a, that's a tough environment for
James: creators. It is, yeah. It's a very tough environment for creators.
So, so does that mean that they should become CEOs? Yeah.
Sasha: What's the
James: story here?
Sasha: Yeah. So that's [00:27:00] the other
James: way. Is this
Sasha: the become ceo? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Yeah. And that can be, I should go back to my day job, right? That's, yeah. So the creators to CEO, um, path can be, can be a, a really good one. I mean.
Often it's best when a creator does, and we don't invest in that many companies founded by creators. We invest in a lot of companies where the CEO EO becomes a creator. Our name Creator Ventures actually, just because we're really interested in social media and we think we can help a lot with that, and the creator world is, is kind of, um, tangential to what we do, but it's not like we invest in companies founded by creators or anything like that.
But to the extent that, um, creators do found companies often, it's not necessarily always best for them to be the CEO itself. Sometimes they would be a co-founder that focuses on the growth and the marketing, and you'll have somebody who's like a technologist or somebody who's got a ton of experience building companies before I.
To be the CEO usually. So,
James: uh,
Sasha: again,
James: that's about creating a a, a good team, isn't that? Yeah. Where, where people play to their different strengths. Now I happen to know, um, that you worked on [00:28:00] establishing Uber
Sasha: mm-hmm.
James: Quite a long time ago. I think it was in Stoke on trend.
Sasha: Yeah, it was.
James: That's right, that's right.
Isn't it Sasha? Yeah. And I remember thinking how interesting this was because you went to Stoke on Trent, I think. As a relatively young employee. Mm-hmm. Was it Bridgepoint or Uber directly?
Sasha: Uh, it was, it was, it was. Uber was first. Yeah. Uber was very young. Yeah. Uber joined as the bottom of the hierarchy.
Yeah.
James: So you were sort of foot soldier at Uber. Yeah, exactly. And they send you to Stoke on Trent and said, get us going there please. Which is good entrepreneurial training. What do you do? What do you have to do? Because I, I want you to share this story. I think it's really interesting.
Sasha: Yeah. So I started at Uber, um, as an operations coordinator.
In 2015, which is the bottom of the bottom of the hierarchy. And um, Silicon Trend was not my first city 'cause I wasn't trusted at the time to launch a new city. I actually, um, moved to Birmingham, so I had two choices basically when I joined Uber, they say you can either work in the operations team in London and.
Manage a process. You know, for example, drivers onboarding, driving [00:29:00] license checks, something like that. Or we all
James: know what Uber is now, but Right. People didn't then, didn't
Sasha: they? Yeah, exactly. Well, that, and that was option one or option two, was move to Birmingham and help them launch the city. And so I chose, and I, I'd not spent much time outside of, of, of, of London and the areas around it, but I decided to move to Birmingham and I got really excited by this idea of launching cities and at the time.
After, after Birmingham, obviously there lots more cities to launch. Birmingham's the second biggest city in the uk and then the final one to launch was Stoke. And the reason I got so passionate about Stoke is because it, I actually moved there. It was the city I launched, you know, myself hired the team there and everything like that, but also because it was the last city.
Pretty much it was the last city to launch in the whole UK because at the point that we launched Stoke, you know, Stokes population is not, it's not one of the, it's not a huge cities, it's 500,000 or something like that. Yeah. It was one of the smaller plays. It was quite a symbolic moment when we launched Stoke.
So now, now we've dominated the uk, you know, we're not gonna go smaller than
James: Stoke. We had to do Stoke to keep for, for pride reasons. Yeah, exactly. But the, [00:30:00] the, the interesting thing you, you use the phrase network effect. As I recall, you had to sort of get what were then mini cab drivers and taxi drivers to join Uber, and then you had to get people who would normally ring a mini cab firm to use Uber.
I mean, they're both networks you have to build. How did you do that? What was the way, what was, what was the strategy? Because anyone starting out in a new venture has that challenge.
Sasha: Absolutely. So the, the supply side is, is the most important for reasons, I'll say in a second, but. This, the supply is, it's all about getting supply.
So that's the drivers. That's the drivers, yeah. So you've gotta. A lot of it is real kind of hustle. You gotta, you know, you do something that the old CEO Travis Kalik used to call s Slanging, which was like kind of, you know, almost drug dealer talk for kind of, uh, un un for mini cab drivers. Yeah, exactly.
So you had
James: to go to a mini cab rank in Stokes Exactly. Many cab or do some S Slanging. S slanging. Yeah. So what do
Sasha: you. So Slanging is, well, how did you get away with that? Yeah, it was the kind of dark [00:31:00] arts. It was basically What did you to go into cabs? Take cabs place. I mean, obviously you need to take a lot of cabs when you're living in a city if you don't have a car.
So you would naturally find yourself taking a lot of cabs and you're pitching the driver to join Uber while you are in the mini cab. Right? Um, that's one, that's one form. Or you can just go to the mini cab rank and start. Oh, so you're traveling
James: around, so and so, what was the pitch?
Sasha: It is because of your point about network effects, it's very hard to convince somebody to join because they're not, they're not gonna be demand yet,
James: or no one else is in it.
No one else is in it. So,
Sasha: so the way Uber fixed that, and this is why the launch job was so interesting, is you had to give people additional drivers, additional incentives to drive. So you could either give them a trip based incentive, which is they get additional money for every trip, but the real beginning, they're probably not gonna be any trips.
And so you have to, you basically pay them by the hour. But you have to be, so you have to
James: pay them by the hour,
Sasha: but
James: you
Sasha: have to be really careful. Be available for you. But yes, but you have to be really careful to, 'cause there are some times when it's really busy. For example, Friday, Saturday night. Mm-hmm.
And there are some times when nobody wants to work. This is nobody's that wants to hire a cab. Like for example, Thursday [00:32:00] afternoon. Problem is all the drivers wanna work Thursday afternoons. If you ask the driver, where would you rather work Thursday afternoon or Friday night, they're gonna tell you th Thursday afternoon, but all the businesses on Friday night.
So you have to really carefully create this incentives structure for drivers to want to drive at the times when it's gonna be busy. You stress supply side because, because on the demand side, you, um, you know, this is the, the good thing about being a kind of somewhat well-known brand, the demand side was much easier because you could just, the eng get the engineers to look at everybody who's opened the app within that geofence in the last five years or basically since it started.
And email them all on launch day. Right. And they'll look at, they'll all open the app. Problem is there'll be no cars, so they'll probably be disappointed. Because then you don't have that network effect liquidity in the system yet. We used to give people vouchers and things like that. Still do that. Yeah,
James: they still do a little bit of that, but, um, feel, I don't use Uber.
I get something sort of try and encourage me to switch it on again. Really? Even now. Yeah. But yeah, the, the, I'm very proud of the fact that I've got a five star rating as a passenger. [00:33:00] No, you, you don't. I do. 5.0. Yeah. Seriously I have. I think that's quite
Sasha: rare.
James: Okay, so I'll tell you this. This is, this is, I'm showing off
Sasha: now, but I'm
James: quite pleased with that.
So this is the fact that
Sasha: that many people, that not many people know, actually I don't think it's been talked about much publicly. I actually did this analysis myself when I was working there. The number one reason for people to get low ratings as passengers. As passengers, yeah. Is actually is not being rude or, although if you are rude or unpleasant, you will get a bad rating so that you've proven that you're not rude and unpleasant.
I've tried not to be, but the main thing is actually being punctual and not making them wait. Right. That is what guarantees a low rating because that's actually their time that you're wasting. Therefore, their money, they're, and no
James: one likes to have their time wasted. Yeah. So you clearly are. I've worked, I've worked out in my life.
Yeah. I try to be, don't like other people to be as well. It's good practice in business. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting. I didn't know that. Thank you for sharing that. Now the other thing you did is obviously raised. These funds. Mm-hmm. I guess you also had to raise some funds to finance your business as a startup.
I'm interested in what I might call the, the [00:34:00] pitch question. Mm-hmm. What makes a good pitch? You know, when you go out and present your plans to investors or people who might come into the fund. I mean, I'm just thinking for other entrepreneurs who might want to get some support from others, but it's friends or family round or it's, you know, series A investment.
Yeah. What do you think is really important to get right?
Sasha: Yeah, so it's like, um, I mean there's the, there's the, there's a pitching, a venture capital fund and there's also pitching a startup to a fund. I mean, yeah. Which one would you like to start with? Yeah, maybe I'll, I'll start with the fund, get the fund over with quickly.
'cause that's probably a smaller audience of people who are interested in that. Yeah. But I'll do that quickly. I mean, it really depends on, a lot of, it's very, it's quite technical. You've gotta make sure you've got your strategy and your fund size matches your, what you, who you are and, and your background and stuff.
It also very depends on somebody getting anchor investors early. And then other investors, maybe family office people at will more follow the more institutional investors who lead it and things like that. But, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's not completely different. I think on and in our fund, one we was, our fund one investors were much less professional.
We're more kind [00:35:00] of high net worth and family office type people. Our fund two investors are much more institutional. Very professional, mostly American investors. In terms of, um, raising from VCs, it's a, you know, obviously it's a question I get asked a lot around like, what's the best way to pitch VCs? And it's, it's hard.
It's a bit like, it's a bit like asking, um, I. How to have a good conversation or how to, you know, how to make a friend. It really just depends so much on the context, but I think people can overcomplicate it a lot. I think VCs really just want it, and most investors in companies just wanna understand two things.
One of them is, how credible are you as a founder? Do you have the skills it takes? Do you have the determination, the drive? Do you, um, can you bring on people, on board? All that kind of stuff. And that's number one. And number two is how attractive is the market that you are, you're trying to build in? Have there been multiple companies that are large in it?
Um, is it really, is there some reason why now is the moment it's gonna take off? Um, and I think just building it around those two, so the founder
James: and the market, those are the [00:36:00] two things. Those are the two things you look for first.
Sasha: Yes, exactly. I mean, the, that's, so what'd you
James: look for in a, when you say how credible you are as a founder, what gives the founder credibility in your view?
Sasha: Well, so we have a saying which is like, we like to invest in companies where the founder is, seems like he was, or he or she was rock chiseled by, or an almighty power to do exactly that startup. So what we really like is where there's somebody who just has an incredibly clear reason why they are the best person in the entire world to do that business.
Rock chiseled. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. As if like you, God has, has, has, uh, has determined
James: this is this person that destiny. Exactly. They're gonna go and
Sasha: do it. That's what you look for. Exactly. So like, there's some reason I, but what do
James: they do? How do, how do you. Decide they're rock chiseled. I mean, so it's basically how, how does one present as rock chiseled?
So I've heard this expression, I wanna know how to
Sasha: do it. So some examples is like, for example, um, one of our companies, beehive is a newsletter company, an email newsletter company. Yes. And the entire team had previously built the tech stack [00:37:00] between a co behind a company called Morning Brew. Where, which made email software, but they, they were just one customer morning.
They basically built the tech stack for morning brew, but shared it with everybody else, and that was beehive. Right. And so they knew exactly what they needed to do on day one. They could come out the gate with a lot of it ready and meant. That's true of many of our companies. Mm. Is people who've come and done something very similar already and know exactly what the plan is.
It doesn't have to, that doesn't always have to be the case. Sometimes you could be a kind of much younger person or a college dropout, something like that. Who has incredible, but then in that case, you need to have 10 out, 10 determination or, you know, exceptional intelligence or you need to be a kind of eye goal.
Yeah. We've spoken to people
James: on, on the podcast entrepreneurs who've come out school with few qualifications. Yeah. And they've sort of worked their way up and they've shown themselves to be Yeah. Have those sort of qualities. And
Sasha: usually they will, I'm sure you probably get it out of them and, and when you, when you get to know them.
But usually there's remarkable, and, and by the way, usually they've, even if they've, they're dropouts from school, university, which obviously many of the best founders in history are. [00:38:00] Usually they've done something in the past where even if it's competitive video games or selling magic cards on the weekend or whatever, it's usually they'll have done something entrepreneurial in the past.
James: O often a series of things I've, I've found. But the other point, the market, I mean, we just discussed sort ai, bird feeders. Mm-hmm. And there was a zero market you said yourself? Yeah. So, I mean, but you still went invested in it. Yeah. So, but how do you ascertain this is a market of the future? Yes.
Potentially. As opposed to a market that exists now. 'cause in a way they're more interesting, aren't they?
Sasha: Yes. So the market of the future is the, is what is exactly what you want. And you know, it's the, it's that analysis of working out, not what the current, you know, if you ask a, you know, management consultant or an investment bank, what the current market size, they'll give you a number, which is the amount of people who'd last year.
Spent money on this thing. What you want is to find out the people who you know in 10 years will be spending money on this thing, which is much better calculated by just the number of people that would benefit from this thing and the amount of money they would each be able [00:39:00] to pay for it, not the among people who are currently buying it or using it.
If you see what I mean. Right. I do, but I mean, that's quite speculative. That's very speculative. Yeah. That's, that's, that's the, that's the game. That's the risk.
James: Yeah. That's the risk you take. Yeah. But uh, and you've gotta try and gauge that. And I suppose the more of this you do. And the more experience you gain the.
Better you'll be Well,
Sasha: that's a really funny part of it. Or is that not the case? Well, I don't know. I mean, the, the, it's too soon to say it's, it's actually, I, it's, it's really un it seems to be really uncorrelated how long you do venture capital for and, and your return, you know? Right. It's obviously there's a lot of confounding variables, but, um, it's actually really funny how little correlation there seems to be between how long you do VC and how well you do.
So what does that tell us? I dunno. Yeah. I dunno. Not nothing. Nothing Good's. Not luck involved.
James: Nothing
Sasha: good.
James: Well it might be, I dunno. Yeah. So it tells us that everyone can have a go in a way. Yeah, that's true. So is there anything else that someone pitching for venture capital funds should think about? I mean, in terms of the PI mean, what do you, do you get people to give you formal presentations?
[00:40:00] If so, how long do they last? What do you expect 'em to leave behind? That sort of thing.
Sasha: Yeah, I mean, we usually. I usually schedule a 30 minute call with somebody first, just because I don't wanna waste their time or mine. But then obviously we'll go over if it's, if it's something that's, you know, worth speaking up.
So that, so what was, what would you ask them? I, I don't have a set question. Some people have set questions, you know, that they ask, and I don't do that at all. The only question I always ask is just like to ask them the story of the business. Yeah. Like how they started, like what you asked me actually.
Yeah. The story of how they, how they started it. Usually, I don't need to ask it because that's the natural thing that usually Yeah, they won't tell you that. So, so, so I don't really have any set questions at all, but it's, yeah, it's really just understanding. This, you know, how they got going and why the team, the capabilities that, that's the way we spent the majority of the call.
James: So you have 30 minutes and then after that you and your partner might chat about it and then you decide what you might go and visit them after that, or what's the next
Sasha: step? Yeah, we'll often meet them in person before, but we don't need to. 'cause you know, we, part of our advantage of, you know, being such a small team is [00:41:00] we, we can make decisions extremely quickly.
Yeah. Which is obviously much better than a much more institutional firm that takes long to side. Um, and founders really appreciate early commitments. Like almost, almost to the point where it's the most important factor is how quickly you can decide. How quickly would you
James: decide on average then?
Sasha: It can be anything.
That's a competitive
James: advantage you've got in a sense. Yes, it is. Yeah.
Sasha: I mean it can, you know, the longest summer we'll know founders for years before we actually invest in their company. But in other cases it'll be in the matter of days, you know, or a weekend, uh, where we can just cram it all in. We can.
So what you do next
James: in terms of due diligence then?
Sasha: Yeah, so it would be. Getting to know them in the first call. Usually that the first call lasts more than 30 minutes. If, if we were really digging, unless somebody has a hard stop or something, usually it'll, it'll go on and then it'll be looking at their backgrounds, trying to do references, you know, on the back door, um, with them, but also looking at their numbers, seeing if there's having early, early signs of product market fit as well.
And, um, yeah, and just getting to know them better. But these are businesses that already [00:42:00] have customers typically. It really depends. Uh, it really depends. We can do pre all customers, right? Or we can do, you know, we can do after customers. Uh, it just depends. So
James: if someone's got an exciting business that they wanna pitch to, how do they find you?
Sasha?
Sasha: I guess LinkedIn. I have, my LinkedIn and Twitter dms are, are open. Right. And, and we'll put your
James: details in the show notes. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. But you are obviously looking, you've got this new fund, which is fantastic. Yeah. Yeah. Who's it gonna be looking for? Looking for lots of opportunities to invest in.
That's absolutely right. Yeah. And, and we want to encourage entrepreneurs. Yeah. So that, that's, that's brilliant. You work with your cousin Casper. Is that, is it, is the fact that he's a cousin important? I mean, quite interesting in sort of family dynamics here because we've had siblings on the podcast and I've had someone who works with their brother and is that a good bottle, do you think?
Sasha: I think it's fantastic. Uh, you, I mean, you know about family business, uh, so you've seen this firsthand, but there's a certain level of trust that you can't screw each other. That just makes. Decisions so much quicker to make. 'cause you're [00:43:00] not worried about the other person. Yeah. Not worrying about not having to have your guard up can just make your entire life so much smoother and, and easier.
Um, and I think that's why family business can be so successful. Yeah, I think at the beginning it was really important 'cause we created this investment club with other creators in Casper's orbit and so. But I was running it basically. And so they could tell that I was trustworthy by the fact that I was related to Casper and he trusted me.
So that helped them to, those were basically our first, you know, um, people investing alongside us. So they, they almost trusted me because they trusted Casper.
James: So trust is so important in, in. Business in all sorts of ways, but you just said something, it speeds things up, which I find very interesting because that's my experience as well.
I mean, if you don't have to put everything through a team of lawyers Yeah, exactly. It happens more quickly. It's incredible. Yeah. So finding people you trust, so how are you gonna do that as you grow, you've got a bigger business, it's gonna become bigger again. I'm, I'm sure. What are you, [00:44:00] what are you gonna, how are you gonna make sure you find colleagues that you trust?
Sasha: Well, I think we'll definitely remain lean. I dunno, we'll remain exactly as lean. But yeah, I mean, we have $65 million under management and with, you know, it's me full-time, um, Caspers part-time, and we have. An assistant, uh, who's who's great, but how ambitious are you for the amount under management? Well, the amazing part, the reason I mention that is because it's, there actually is very little to no correlation between how much money you actually manage and how many people you need in the team.
And we could scale, uh, a lot. Uh, with our team size as it happens, we shouldn't scale a lot, but for reasons you, but you putting in bigger,
James: bigger investments, I suppose you can bigger but in bridgepoint I asked employ quite a few people. Well, so yeah. So, so that's the other end of the spectrum. Yeah. So, so,
Sasha: so private equity, you do need more people 'cause you need bodies to, to like me, to execute the actual due diligence on the company.
Right. Whereas my philosophy for venture capital. Is, it's very important for it to be the same person doing the due [00:45:00] diligence as making the investment decision. So you, you know, you, you, I'm sure you have I many, how many layers does Reed have? How many like. How many layers is it? Uh, that's a good question.
Six eight. Six eight. Okay. So every layer of those six, eight, you know, the information fidelity, you know, very slightly reduces. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so you probably want to, you know, you, it's a massive company, so you need to have enough layers, but the, the fewer you can have, obviously, the better you can make decisions at the top.
Yes. And so we have, you know, our, we've taken that to an extreme where we have zero layers. We just have the people making the decision, being the people themselves looking at the company.
James: So that's, that's a, a limiting factor in a sense. But it might be your, your USP It is. Or secret Source in a way.
Sasha: It definitely is.
'cause it means you
James: can, you've found that so far. Yeah, for sure. And that's part of the speed. So your own diligence, if you're gonna make an investment is your sort of, you have to do your own diligence. Yeah,
Sasha: absolutely. Um,
James: yeah,
Sasha: because otherwise it is back
James: to trust. What, what, what are the things that you look for that would put you off,
Sasha: you know,
James: when you're looking under the bonnet?
Sasha: I think probably the biggest one is [00:46:00] like getting the feeling you can't trust somebody. Back to trust. Yes. Uh, but you know, it's like if you feel like somebody's maybe exaggerating when it's okay to be a bit sales sales, like that's often good. Founders are, but if you get the sense that that something's right, yeah.
Enthusiasm
James: goes to too much exaggeration. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That can be a bit offputting because, you know,
Sasha: they are long term relationships and you can't, if you can't really feel like you can truly trust somebody, that's definitely the, probably the biggest red flag. Um, I think there's, you know, it's, it's so case dependent, but you know, in terms of like, um, a lot of people.
One red flag that founders should be careful not to do is they, they'll throw in like buzzwords. That don't necessarily actually relate to their business. Oh, right. So that's quite a tactical point. But actually you'd be shocked by how many people do that. Why do they do that? Because they want to be the ai, you know, for example, right now, companies that aren't really that much ai, they'll describe themselves, AI powered.
Oh, right. Or they'll change their URL to ai and it's got, it's gone on to the ai, which. That sounds like a detailed point, but you'd be shocked by incredible number of people that do that. And [00:47:00] it's just a bit of a Well, and when they're not
James: actually in it. 'cause one of your business practica is a language is is ai.
Isn't that? Yes, that is ai. So that, that's, but it is AI driven language learning. That's, I mean, you are, you are, you are getting to English by an
Sasha: avatar. Right. So you learn English with a ai. So
James: that makes sense when it's AI to flag it as such. Yes. But you are saying don't put AI on if it's just your regular business, is what you're saying.
Yes. That what
Sasha: people started
James: to do. Well that goes back
Sasha: to trust again. I mean it's 'cause it's not ai. Yeah, that's right. It's mis describing. So, and it's, that's just the AI silly example, but there's like people used to do that with, um. You know, crypto and creators, people just find the thing today. Yeah.
That will help them. Money lot trade was a big deal. Wasn't exactly. Everyone was talking about that
James: at one point. Yes. And so
Sasha: they'll just jump onto the, you know, the current thing. Mm-hmm. And position it as that's what they're interested in. And that's a big red flag. Right. So you've gotta be real. You gotta be real.
You gotta be
James: real. Yeah. You gotta be. So, I mean, just to sort of probe a little further into AI, because it is, it seems to be this year's big deal [00:48:00] in 2025, everyone seems to be talking about it. Um, you know, how, how, how can companies make better use of AI from what seen, I mean, 'cause obviously you've seen all these interesting examples.
What, what, is there any sort of. General advice you might give businesses who are thinking about, I better do something with ai. What should I do? What should they be looking at?
Sasha: Yeah. So, so more and more companies have started writing these memos to their employees about, we're an AI first company. The first one to do it was, um, Toby from shop CEO of Shopify wrote an entire, um, memo to his entire company saying, we are now AI first any job.
All job offerings will be reviewed. Uh, but to see if they can be replaced by ai and then to hire somebody who can be the ai, who can use the ai. And then the CEO of um, Duolingo came out with the same thing. And more and more CEOs say, so they're
James: just saying to their
Sasha: team, prioritize AI in every way.
Exactly. [00:49:00] Prioritize, see what the maximum you can do with, with ai. Um, and, you know, how's that going? It seems I, what's the result of that? Well, well, yeah, we'll see. But it is, it is, I do think a lot of it is just about agency and just having, being, trying to think about what you can use AI for. 'cause sometimes you'd be surprised by how much you actually can get done, even just with chat.
Bt So where does it leave jobs? Well, so I actually have a, I have a view that you are, and it's, I'm not just saying this because I'm talking to you, but I, I. Believe that this is good for employment. I really do. I genuinely believe that. And you're not saying that just 'cause you're talking to me. I, I I promise you I'm not That's very kind of you, but promise you actually music's my ears.
Why do you think that? No, I, I do think that because it's
James: important. I think jobs are important. That's, yeah. Jobs.
Sasha: Yeah. Jobs are definitely important, especially for you. But, um, no, I think it will actually be good for the job market because I think what people sometimes forget is that the job market is not a static system.
It's a dynamic system. So if one company has ai. And can get more leverage out of their employees, then they're gonna start doing more with that leverage [00:50:00] and building more stuff and, and becoming more competitive. Their competitors' gonna need to do the same thing, so they're gonna need to hire more people to actually, so it's like the market for, for example, web designers.
Sasha (2): Mm-hmm.
Sasha: It's become a hundred times easier to design a website in the last 20 years. And the market for web designs is 20 times what it's ever been. Mm. It's been making financial models. It's become quite literally a thousand times easier than it was and more complicated. But what did that lead to? And they made the investment banks just make more complicated financial models and have their people more people away.
Yeah. Interesting. And so I believe that the leverage the AI gives actually will just make more output per employee. So what do you do? You hire more employees, it's more output. And so I just, I don't believe people who, and there will be some reshuffling of, of people and Yeah. But, but I think the actual number of raw people hired.
Will not drop at all.
James: Well, that's been the history of technology up until now. Yeah. It seems to have created more jobs. Yeah. Um, but I, I mean, I think work is important for all sorts of reasons, but particularly. Our personal [00:51:00] wellbeing actually. So that's, that's, that's, that's good to hear. And we had a guest on the podcast, he was talking about the, the philosopher, British philosopher Per and Russell had a negative view of a factory where new technology was introduced and he thought they'd either, you know, they'd half the workforce or make half the people work twice as long.
I said, no, they won't, they'll just double output. Yeah, yeah. You look quite right. You didn't think of this, but that's exactly what you've just said is that it will make us. Produce more and become more productive, hopefully.
Sasha: And actually that is my biggest fear with it. Of all the fears, I mean people, some people worry about catastrophe and AI taking over.
My biggest fear is it's gonna result in people working too hard, too much work.
James: Well, I think some of those CEOs are always on.
Sasha: Yes. Where does it go? Yes. Is that what you mean? Yes. That, that and, and even as a CEO or as a, as a, as somebody who's ambitious and pushing hard. There's actually no excuse not to be hacking on some AI thing or working or using AI to somehow improve yourself or get smarter or do your job better.
It's be, it's become, because it now is work from home as well. Yeah. So there's no reason [00:52:00] why, if you're ambitious, you shouldn't just be permanently working. And that's what leads to a very sad culture where it's six day weeks, seven day weeks, just grinding all the time just to keep up with everybody else.
So that's actually my, my biggest fear. So that's, you think that's a danger? That's interesting. I think that's the world we are starting to move towards. If you look well, you see that
James: in America? Yeah. Do you? Yeah. More Silicon Valley companies. It's not obvious to me here. Yeah. So that
Sasha: might be coming. Yeah, it's interesting.
James: No, but maybe it's different. I
Sasha: mean, you've heard of, have you heard of 9, 9 6 in China? Yes. Yeah. 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM six days a week. That type of culture. There's some Silicon Valley companies have started doing six to eight weeks. They're usually AI companies.
James: They've, they've, we had a guest who runs a business in Turkey, so they work six days a week in Turkey.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, people here are talking about a four day week. Yeah. Yeah. But you are saying some AI companies in America have moved back to a six day week, six day week. Yeah, because, interesting. My father started this company on the 7th of May, 1960, which was a Saturday. Okay. Really? We used to work on Saturdays in England.
Really? Yeah. So that's interesting. It was, it was a six day, or a five and a half day week in the early 1960s. [00:53:00] Interesting. So it's not a given, is it? There's a five day week or a four day week. Could be a six day week. Yeah. And that's, that's your concern. I think that would be, I wouldn't want to go to that Chinese system either.
No, we need leisure. Yeah. No, I think it's important. One, we'd need to have a, you know, a fulfilled life with Includes a lot of different activities. Yeah. Some of them work and others related to or beyond it.
Sasha (2): Mm-hmm.
James: So, thanks for coming in to talk to me, Sasha. Is there anything else you wanna say about Creative Ventures before I ask you my two concluding questions?
Sasha: Um, no. It's been, no, it's been great to chat. I think we've covered a lot and um, yeah, thanks for having me. I think it's
James: really exciting what you're doing and, and I would urge our listeners to have a look at some of those businesses on your site 'cause they're really interesting. So my first question of the last two is, is there's a clue on the wall is, is what gets you
Sasha: up on a Monday morning so you'll know this.
'cause again, we've known each other for a long time, but I am, I'm not a morning person, so I start, you know, I, I generally, well you don't get up on a Monday afternoon. Do [00:54:00] well. So I, this will be a first our podcast. You get UK time? Yes. New York. I get up. Predictably about five minutes before my first meeting, my, 'cause I usually have a Zoom meeting.
Yeah. 9:00 AM And so it's a mad dash, you know, 8:55 AM to get to the zoom meeting on time. So actually my, like if you are, if I give you a literal answer to the question, it's a complete disaster every Monday morning. I'm completely, I feel terrible by my Well that's very
James: reassuring. Yeah. That you can do well and.
Yeah, I've been in bed at eight 50. Yeah.
Sasha: So, so that's good. So yeah, that's the real answer. That's the, that's the literal answer. But this, uh, spiritual answer is that I, yeah, I really, I really love what I do and it is really important once you've, you know, had the first 9:00 AM call, you've had a cup of coffee to really look forward to your, to your week.
So you say, I've definitely.
James: Follow up question. Does that mean you
Sasha: go to bed really late? I mean, you do, you work at night. So I'm one of those biologically disadvantaged people, and I can tell you're the opposite of this, but I, I actually need sleep, unfortunately. Right? And it's a real disadvantage. And by the way, there's [00:55:00] no, there seem to be no evolutionary advantages to com compensate for it.
Anyone can be able to tell. It's been
James: good for your brain.
Sasha: I, I dunno, I dunno, nothing's been proven so. I, so, yeah, it's just, I need, I need, you know, I really struggle without getting eight hours of sleep. Right. Uh, which means I still can go to bed at, you know, midnight or so, and it's still tough.
James: Yeah. Well, people are encouraged to, to sleep healthily, which is eight hours, so That's good.
Yeah. So my last question, um, and it's a question from my interview book, why You is, where do you see yourself in five years time?
Sasha: Yeah. So, um, doing the same thing, uh, you know, we'll. Our business is a very long-term business. You know, these funds have a life of 10 years. So when you, when you know, we started the bus, when we started the fund in 2022, beginning of 2022, we were making a 10 year promise to our investors.
So that's, that fund one was a 10 year promise to end in 2032, right? We just, you know, we just closed fund two and that's gonna end in 2035. You know, by five years time we'll probably have a next fund that'll have another 10 year life on it. So. You're making these incredibly long-term commitments [00:56:00] to both your investors and the founders that you're investing in, and obviously your, your co-founder and everything like that, so.
My answer is definitely doing the same thing, and I'll be very, I'll be very happy as long as I'm allowed to do it.
James: So you're in this for the long haul. Very much so. Yeah. I wish you every success now. I hope you'll come back and talk to me again. Yes, and we can see how some of these ideas have developed.
I'll be fascinating. Thanks Sasha. It's been, it's really interesting to talk to you much. Yes. Thanks for having me all the way from New York.
Sasha: Yeah,
James: thanks a
Sasha: lot.
James: Thanks.
Sasha: Bye.
James: Thank you, Sasha, for joining me on all about business. I'm your host, James Reed, chairman and CEO of Reed, a family run recruitment and philanthropy company.
If you'd like to find out more about Reed, Sasha, or Creative Ventures, all the links are in the show notes. See you next time.
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