Cracking the Code of Music Tech Investments and Startups

The work we need to do, those of us that do sit in this sort of intersection of this space, is trying to figure out, like, what are these models? Like, what are the ways we do get funding? Because if everyone spends their time chasing, like, venture money that they're never going to get, there's a lot of wasted time, energy, effort, etc. Fundamentally, you need to understand how do you get your customer to pay you, right? Like, how do you design a business where it's actually going to work for the intended purpose that you want to do, etc., right? Okay, if you start up in the music tech space, this is an episode you must listen to.

Me and Gareth talk about so many things with investors, the market, how to approach investors, why music might have a lot of potential. And Gareth, in this investor episode, shares his wisdom through years and years and years of experience. Hey, guys, and welcome back to the Style Connections podcast. Gareth, welcome. Hey, nice to be here. I've been excited about this, Gareth. You are a very interesting person. Sometimes it's really hard to understand what you do because you do so much. But when you do something very consistently in the startup and investor space within music tech, and that's sort of where you build a very strong profile.

So this is where it's going to happen and talk about today. So it's a part of the investor series. So we're going to talk about investment in music tech, your experience as an investor, or being surrounded by companies and investors for many different years. But Gareth, to the people who don't know you, who are you and what do you do? Very good. Well, you just summed up my challenge, right? So let's see how well I do it. I've maybe had a bit more practice, but I do a few things. So, yeah, so I'm Gareth, they can, like, I, I'm 20, nearly 25 years in music at this point.

But I, I spend most of my time split, basically doing two things. On one hand, I run a consultancy business called Sonorous that is focused on music tech and music startups and helping entrepreneurs, particularly early stage companies with business development strategy and marketing. I basically help them grow their business, right? And establish their businesses. And then, uh, also strategy and work in terms of that, like, I guess it's, it's directly related or correlated, like the work done with startups over the last decade.

So that's basically how long I've been doing that piece, um, has definitely led into doing work for larger music companies in terms of like, kind of looking into that and figuring out strategy and, and how to engage or how to do things. So do much that. And then on the other side, I spend my time on, um, projects related to startup ecosystem. So I'm a mentor for a number of, um, startup incubators, accelerators, et cetera. So including Abbey Red, which I've done that for like seven or eight years. Um, I helped set up music tech UK, uh, which is a trade network for music tech companies.

Um, I'm a member of Nordic music tech and Stockholm music city. I'm part of the team there. Uh, and yeah, I generally get involved in a lot of different, like ecosystem based projects. Um, and I guess we'll get into some of that and my perspective on that and why that's kind of a big driver. But, um, I spend a lot of time working like kind of elbow deep in startups and music tech and entrepreneurship. Um, and, uh, yeah, that's, that's basically me. Amazing.

It's very timely that we talk about this topic today because there's a lot of things happening in music tech right now or in music or startups. And, uh, I've, I've only really been sort of deep into this environment for five years, but only already for that five years, I've seen a lot of things happen. Um, that's what's the consensus I get from all over the place, but, but just to set the scene before we figure out what's happening right now, could you, um, sort of lead us through how has music tech investment been lost? I think 15 years, what, what happened, you know, 15 years ago and how's that developed into now?

It's really nice to have an overview. Yeah. Um, I think this will be more like, like oral history, my point of view than like, uh, like hugely facts, figures, numbers driven. But, um, I think, uh, like over the, over the last 15 years, you're right. Like some fundamental things have changed at, and I think it is timely and interesting right now. Cause I think there's some big shifts that have happened that have laid a foundation for an interesting shift in what's happening.

Um, and that goes to the heart of, I guess, like the core conversation that like we're probably largely going to have is around like, how do you fund like innovation, right? Like what, what is it that, that funds and drives sustainable innovation? And, um, but I think on the, you know, kind of surface of it, like if I go back to when I was at, like, I was at sending music for 10 years, I left to, to spin out and set up working in, in startups. I think the general thread there was a lot of the stops I would bump into where you would see more regularly where either marketing or consumer focused, like very much at that end, because that was sort of the visible end of the music industry, you know, 15 years ago was basically, you know, bands, et cetera, et cetera.

So like, you know, people's interface or entrepreneurs interfaces into the music industry, especially around music tech companies or people from outside the music industry looking to kind of build things, do things was nearly always at the point that was visible. It makes sense in hindsight. So they'd work with the labels and the marketing teams in labels and, um, or they'd be building the, you know, the next Spotify. And, um, the, the challenge a little with that was like, there were issues around like sustainably doing those type of deals that when you deal with the marketing team in a label, certainly 15 years ago, it's like, if you know, rinse, repeat, doing the same thing for lots of artists is not necessarily what those teams kind of want.

But the, the big shift has then been, I think as digital music has really embedded into the business and we've had this shift, you know, definitely, you know, maybe talk about my background, but like been there through the whole shift from like, you know, watching physical like kind of creep and digital kind of like, kind of like, like slowly like transition everything across. I think the notable thing for me is it relates to like the topic of how that's changed the landscape for like technology and innovation and startups is sort of unbundled the value chain.

Right. Like, so I think an awful lot of things and the big difference, if I was to bookend it would be early days of Abbey Road, everything was like, you know, a new streaming service or something, or those sorts that start things you would go to, um, and very consumer focused right the way through now to where it's unbundled so much stuff within the value chain that you've got people building things with experience from like deep in the actual experience of like a lot of the end to end of like how music gets delivered.

Um, and so you've got like, you know, rights problems and other things that were like kind of known, but invisible in terms of the mechanics of how they work, or it wasn't possible for someone even from in one of those companies that could see a problem to spin out, go set up a startup, fix that problem that they could see and observe. And I think, you know, both the transition of music to be digital, like pretty much fully like everything is digital and the way technology outside of music and software has changed to allow for people to be, you know, much more friction free to be able to build software products to solve problems.

You've ended up with this thing where like that's a plethora and a real like broad, interesting spread of companies right across the value chain building things. So we have B2B, we have, um, uh, stuff that's very deep in operations and, you know, royalties, how do you pay artists? And, and what's fascinating when you like zoom out 30,000 fee is how like correlated these things are, you know, like the debate that, you know, or a topic conversation about that, you know, how do you build a sustainable digital music, certainly recorded music industry where, you know, the amount of volume of creators that are coming in can get paid, et cetera, et cetera, directly correlates to like, well, how do you solve this problem of like the leaky pipes in the money that flows through rights owners or delays in revenue being paid out and money's being collected in a global business from a digital and consumer point of view, but not necessarily a global business from a structure in terms of how the music industry was always set up historically.

And you've got these really fascinating tensions. And then I think it's cyclical, right? It comes back. So, you know, you started again now to get more consumer focused. I find this fascinating, like there's more consumer focused platforms, apps, services, and it's feels like less of the, you know, everyone's consensus is like it's one and done, you know, Spotify is the only platform. No one else can build anything in the consumer end. There's a wave of consumer facing products and consumer behaviors have changed, right?

It's much more nuanced probably than it ever was, or as it always was, we were just slow to pick up on building things for a very nuanced audience. So I think there's just this fascinating array of like what's actually happening in technology and people are building, regardless of how challenging it is to do that, right? And raise capital, all those sorts of things in this sector. So yeah, it's, it, it has changed and then it's sort of come back, if that makes sense. So it's, it's different than it was. I don't know. It's like, it's like radically, you know, radically, radically different.

It's just like, I think it's expanded, evolved, uh, and changed. Amazing. I've already gained new perspective. So, so basically what you're saying is also, you said a lot of things, but one of the things that I really noticed is the amount of businesses that you, you possibly can start now is much more than it used to be because it's about valuing being opened. Like what, what am I, I'll say one of my, my biggest focuses and passion within the music industry is more like underlying technology than it is for actual confusing, saving technology.

But, and sometimes I'm confused about like, why are not more people addressing some of these things? But it makes sense if there's been a history of doing, you know, starts in one way, it takes some time for them, for the start of community entrepreneurs to also attach onto the possibilities of say underlying technologies or, you know, systems as opposed to empower other systems, which I, I believe is the most interesting. So, yeah. I was just going to add on that. I think that point you made about that point, it's not an uncommon perspective, right?

It plays out in different ways, right? There's a whole other conversation we could have about like the idea of like how receptive the music industry has been to people from outside looking to solve problems, right? Um, but I, I think that view of like being newer to the industry or looking and trying to figure out why things like that, you know, a very, if you spend time in other startup ecosystems, they're very self-evident, right? Like, like it, you know, certainly when talking with people who build software and, and that type of mindset for solving problems, it is challenging with the music industry.

But I think two things stand out to me, uh, on one is for the most part, when we talk about the music industry, really what everyone talks about is the recorded music industry, right? Which actually isn't the music industry when you think of it at large, right? Like, but it is a hugely dominant part of it. And I think, you know, the way like copyright works, digital licensing works, music rights management works and stuff, there is a lot of complexity or like one of my legal friends prefers me to refer to it as like, it's sophisticated and it's complex.

I'd say it's complex and that, you know, it's not necessarily easy to understand how that works and the mechanics of how that works in order to be able to solve for some of those problems, right? So it's quite a nuanced problem to try and solve of like, why does, um, you know, why is it the fact that, you know, X amount of revenue goes into like, you know, passes through, but doesn't seem to reach like artists and or creators. And it's, you know, it requires quite a deep knowledge of the mechanics of like how things work to be able to then unpack and solve that problem.

And while the challenges of the way, you know, we build companies generally or companies get built certainly in a music tech point of view, there is a disconnect between like how much you need to learn to be able to do that stuff. And, and like just effectively, it's not even a break, break things, you know, type mentality or be disruptive or all that type of stuff. Some of it is just like actually fundamentally, you need to understand how do you get your customer to pay you, right? Like how do you design a business where it's actually going to work for the intended purpose that you want to do, et cetera, et cetera. Right. And I, and I think that's not a trivial challenge.

So one of the changes has been, I think the music industry has had interesting tension between there is a benefit now to starting to unpack and help people understand that to help more people solve problems within the industry. And at the same time, there is a tension in the sense that like, actually the music industry has done pretty well out of basically that being like not necessarily as transparent as it could be in terms of how those things work. Right. So, so I think that is, you know, kind of fascinating to see like kind of how that tension is, is kind of playing out, but it's complex, right?

Like I think from the outside in, you know, those sorts of questions, like why is no one, you know, building or has not built these things to solve these things? Why does no one tackle these kinds of problems or hasn't historically is a really, really good question, right? Like it's a really, really good and important question. I think it's one of the key questions of now and when start thinking about, well, how do you, how do you promote, fund, create environments that, uh, will drive sustainable innovation in our sector moving forward?

One of the premises for building most, uh, tech startups or startups in general, it is capital and music has, has a reputation of maybe not being the easiest place to raise capital. Can you break that down for me? Why, why are people saying this? Yeah. I mean, there's a, there's a couple of problems. Um, one, one's controversial and it always gets me trouble. Uh, and the other is historical. So let's do the historical first building controversial that, um, the, you know, there, there are a VC friend of mine.

Actually, she's, she, she now runs it like a, and she's ex-VC now runs a, so she did, she ran a, runs a very successful seed, like seed to pre-series a fund. Like generally likes to do early checks, but like, or did that now has moved and there's basically an angel first check run like a VC. And I asked her that very question, uh, a few years ago. And, um, she laid it out in a really interesting way. She was like, it's basically, there's, there's a handful of problems. You have structural issues and historical issues, right?

So there are some fundamental structural issues that, that make the music industry more challenging. Um, there are some historical issues. So those, which relate to, you know, there, there's just not a, a raft of successful stories and, you know, like exit success stories and just not like very evident. Right. Um, typically, you know, acquisitions that happen in space. So I guess it also helps just to backtrack slightly and give context in case anyone doesn't understand like kind of the framing, because I think the big takeaway when I, I spent a long time just talking to the venture community, I think the music industry thinks about the music industry.

And when you build something in the music industry, you think about the music industry. And I think what very few people do when they approach thinking about or looking for investment, they don't go and sit on the other side of the table, right? They don't, they don't, they don't flip the scripts and like kind of see it for the other way. So if I'm a VC and I'm looking at an investing in a music stub, I'm also probably looking at a whole bunch of other investments, nothing to do with music. And the reality is this like gaming thing or health thing or whatever other thing I'm looking at is probably going to be, uh, easier for me to understand.

Cause I don't have to, to the point we made about how complex sometimes portions of the industry is. There's no education needed. Like I don't need to be educated on how this industry works. Um, there's probably a better, like opportunity, like, like the markets bigger, right? Cause that's one of the other challenges. This is a relatively small market despite all its current growth and stuff compared to other markets in terms of total, total size. Um, uh, and then there's the exit profile, right? So the exit thing is relevant because like, really, if I'm a VC, I'm looking at right.

I'm going to deploy this money. It's not my money. It's money my fund has raised based on agreements it made with the people that gave us the money that we will give them a return over a, like, you know, five to seven year horizon. Like most people don't realize most funds are like 10 year funds. Distributions happen like, you know, three to five years, like by the time you get five to seven, you're getting to the tail end of those distributions. And if I'm, if I'm trying to make a decision about where's the smart or easiest bet to make that, that music is on the back foot somewhat.

And the challenge becomes historically, it's a real problem. Structure is a problem. Like historically, like while it has changed enormously, we talked about like kind of the unbundling of like the, like, like kind of the value chain, the rest of it. And I'm, I worked at a major for 10 years, right? Like I think major bashing, like he's like, uh, like overdone. Um, there's all sorts of like systemic things that are problematic in the way the business has worked, but like everyone's a rational actor.

There's not like full of like pantomime villains, like out to like rob artists generally in my experience, but the, um, but the problem does become the specter of that looms quite large. So in the other thing in mind is like, basically, you know, here's an oligopoly, right? Like here's a handful of companies that own everything, extract all the value for everything. Why would I put, put myself in to this? And I think the bit that really looms large and is the unpopular part out of this. So if you take the narrative that's very, very common, and this ties into us talking about the music industry as the, you know, being only the recorded music industry.

Um, there's always a lot of conversation about 70%, you know, like we're roughly 70%, like the majority of revenue goes to rights owners, right? That is co-opted with that money that goes to rights owners goes to artists. So when the argument is like artists are being done in by technology or people are trying to abuse, blah, blah. It's always like, you know, rights owner, it's the artist, et cetera, but rights owners aren't necessarily artists, right? They're the various intermediaries that collect money on behalf of artists. And we touched a little bit on where there's inefficiencies and ways technology can and starts are helping those companies make that better.

Um, but I think when it comes to raising capital, if I was to sell you, here's this industry, it's not that big. It's not as big as other industries. 70% of all the revenue goes basically to this, mostly this collection of three companies. So that leaves this pot of money. That's about like 30% for everyone to play around with. Uh, do you want to invest? And most people are going to go, no. Um, and I think that's part of the challenge. And I think the, the silver lining in it is essentially, I don't think that is the true picture of what this industry is or is becoming and how big and where the opportunities sit.

It just makes it very challenging. If you completely divorce IP from all of your considerations or you completely divorce, um, uh, other sectors of what is basically the music industry from an artist, a manager, a fan's point of view. So if you exclude live ticketing, you know, other types of events or experiences, other, you know, the growing B2B kind of slice of the industry that's working to service, um, independent creators, or even the, you know, the stuff that, you know, Mark Mulligan and Midia talk about, you know, this bifurcation, you know, like the, the fact that actually music production and music consumption have been, you know, sort of becoming closer and closer tethered.

And I think that's, you know, I think that's a, you know, that's a, that's a whole other thing, right? Like that's, that's a whole other, you know, slice of the industry and, and it opens up all these opportunities. So I think, you know, these sort of historical structural problems become a challenge when you want to try and go to, if you see, if I'm a founder, you know, ultimately I, I have to either educate them about what the industry is, or I have to work twice as hard to demonstrate where the opportunity lies.

And I think it's much tougher if you're in a very thin slice of like what that industry looks like. So the, the more niche you get, like the realities of like, you know, you know, how much capital can you actually raise, um, becomes, becomes a challenge. I have so many thoughts about this because the narrative that you're presenting here is also the one that I've, I've heard a lot, uh, been sent both directly from investors or. You talked with me against professionals and founders, and I was trying to sort of be doing my own thoughts on it. Like, fair enough.

I, you know, I, I think all of those points are valid. It is a small market, uh, the way that it's structured and the amount of money available is also limited. So, so what are the, the things that have succeeded in music and what are some of the common denominators? That's sort of what I've been looking at. Uh, I have some initial foundings. I think we've reached a target last time we weren't called together, but which I think is really interesting. And I'm not quite sure, a hundred percent sure if it holds true, but I've been testing out and see to be true. And that is music tech companies make the mistake of trying to play the same game as other tech companies.

And other tech companies, let's say at least in, especially in America is I want to build a union. And I need this amount of money to make it happen. And oftentimes that's double digits, millions of American dollars and all getting great. But, but the market is too small. And the examples of, you know, building unicorns in the music industry is almost non-existent. So, so what is, what is the, what is the things that actually work? So what, what I have figured out through its views of research is there seems to be, uh, a good amount of acquisitions in the music industry, uh, consolidation.

And what normally happens is it's three to seven years into a startup journey and they have become small to medium sized startups compared to the tech industry. But they often sell from between, you know, everything between 10 to 50 million years. Also, these startups tend to get in less, less capital at lower valuations. So, basically what I'm thinking about, okay, it's lower valuations, it's low, it's less capital, but it get acquired relatively fast or relatively often.

So what is the attractive thing about that? Well, it's multiples in a portfolio thinking. So what does that mean? And so I know I'm speaking, but this is, we talked about, was talking about this last time, which I thought was incredibly interesting is if you look from an investor's perspective that might have, let's say 10 or 20 tickets available for startup investments on an angel or super angel or family office level, what they're looking for is a diverse portfolio that has different, um, attractant levels or, um, industries to them.

And you can say, here you have a company, a music tech company, you come into a lower valuation, uh, we need a lower amount of capital. We might not sell as a unicorn, but we might sell faster and with a high probability than some of the other industries. And then suddenly in a context of a portfolio of investors that becomes enough, you know, that's almost called an alternative investment. It's a different type of investment compared to other tickets. And I believe if you contextualize music tech that way, then it can be, um, interesting.

Um, what do you think about that? Yeah, no, a hundred percent. Um, so I've got lots of thoughts here. Um, the thing that really stands out, right? Like a lot of this is about framing, right? Like it's almost basic marketing stuff, right? It's like reframe the problem and the problem goes away. Right. But like, I spend a lot of time talking with founders. You made a really good point right at the top of your comment, which was around the, you know, kind of unicorn type, you know, investor version.

I think the same is problematic with startups, right? Like, so like the exported and accepted worldview is essentially one of like the way you fund startups is basically a Silicon Valley export of like how venture works largely. Right. And, um, that's a wild, gross oversimplification where a whole bunch of friends in venture like beat me with big sticks. But like, um, but I think the reality becomes like, it just doesn't necessarily like in a traditional sense, in most cases, it doesn't work in this, in this sense, right?

Like, so, or in this industry, like this time. So I think you have to think clever. So the risk for startups or startup founders is in an ecosystem. So this touches on a pressure point for me in an ecosystem that's less developed because traditionally startup ecosystems develop directly correlated to the investment funds that come into those sectors, right? So music is limited. It's why things like universal music, like kind of like continuing to push Abbey Road Red. Abbey Road Red was originally set up when Warner was Warner and owned Abbey Road Studios, but like, um, continue to push that.

It's why those sorts of initiatives are so critical. Um, we can get to other challenges in that type of stuff in terms of investment into the sector, but like, um, you need people that are going to invest, like in inverted commas or like put effort into or resources into helping to build this ecosystem because, um, it's has, there is a lack of support, a lack of education, a lack of other things. Like this very topic you discussed, this for me is about like piece of advice to give to startup founders all the time.

It's like reframe how you are thinking about funding and investment, right? And that largely starts with thinking about the end that is in mind, right? When you're absolutely right. Like most funds, you know, again, oversimplification, but like any investment they're going to make, they want to return the fund. Right. So one of the simple things you tell people is like, how, like who's on your VC, like hit list. And they rail out all these people. And like half the time they pick people with like the biggest, like, kind of like, like fun. They've just raised, you know, 250 million. And it's like, Oh, you understand. That means if they were to invest in you realistically, like most basic of basic looks is like, they need to think that you're going to return 250 million and like an exit to them, uh, point in five to seven years.

And it's like, and like, could you justify that? And the answer is probably no. Right. And it's like, so don't go talk to them, go talk to someone that's like a smaller, more specialist fund. And then you need more smaller, more specialist funds. They don't necessarily exist that have an understanding in music. So the dream is, you know, people that understand music or enough of music, uh, have, you know, like a fund or a thesis that like somehow fits. And then what you get is like, you know, there's a, there's just a supply demand challenge. You made a really good point, which was that, that notion of like, this is like, you know, the, you know, everyone's mindset is unicorns and Facebook and the fang and all these like, you know, sort of dream start type, like fiction stories.

Um, but the, like, or the, the legend of what like started, like all the, all the, the oral tradition stuff, flashy stuff, the stories that, that pass between us. Um, but I think the reality becomes, you know, not all investors are the same, right? Family offices, angels, et cetera. The challenge becomes, and the music industries are really fascinating. Like example of this, it's like the equivalent of like, it's relatively easy to go find who's you need to talk to about a major label artist, right? Whether they'll talk to you or not, it's a different thing going and talk to independence, right?

It's quite challenging. You'd still find the one person for an artist, but like increasingly with the way the industry has changed on an indie. So it's just so many people, right? Like, how do you find them? They're really diffuse. And the similar thing is with angels, family offices, et cetera. And again, comes back to this point about why I'm so interested in like kind of the ecosystem building side of things. It's like, how do you build, and there's lots of people doing interesting stuff in this space. How do you build platforms or environments that allow more people to come in? You have artists now and management companies that have made multiple check investments into like music tech companies, specifically about music tech companies.

They do that largely without any of the knowledge and or understanding of what like venture the finance side of what that looks like. On the flip side, you wheel it the other way. You've got people deeply, deeply. The owners of Fabric Nightclub in London also run a micro VC fund that, you know, invests in technology. It doesn't invest in music, but they own like one of the biggest nightclubs like in the world and deeply entrenched in the cultural electronic music, right? They're an amazing hybrid of this kind of challenge. And it's, so I think that's the work we all need to do, right?

The work we need to do, those of us that do sit in this sort of intersection of this space is trying to figure out, like, what are these models? Like, what are the ways we do get funding? Because if everyone spends their time chasing, like, venture money that they're never going to get, there's a lot of wasted time, energy, effort, etc. I mean, that said, VCs are great at being able to point you in the right direction. The right people, there are VCs out there that do want to invest in this space. I think it's just that there's an education exercise to do with a lot of startups about, like, how that gets approached.

How do you do that? And I think your point, Cor, about, like, thinking more broadly about, like, what does this mean? And, like, does the, you know, the sort of general received wisdom of, like, this very, you know, kind of through the last decade, 15 years of, like, ventures, massive returns outside, does that apply in our industry? And I guess the last two things I'd add is, like, you know, if a large chunk of the revenue model is about IP, so, like, it's largely about music and, like, things that aren't necessarily technology, I think you also have to broaden the frame a little bit when we talk about entrepreneurship.

If we make it super now and it's just about music tech, a little bit part of the challenge becomes is I think our industry is broader than that. So, like, also it's thinking about the definition of entrepreneurship and innovation, right? Like, there is innovation that happens that creates new forms of content. You could think of things like Boiler Room as being an innovative use case for, like, how do you build, you know, a brand that basically monetizes stuff and music, et cetera. It doesn't necessarily involve technology directly as part of the core IP. But, you know, like, that's, you know, that's an entrepreneurial business.

There are numerous other examples where there's, you know, IP and technology and a bunch of other things baked in. So, I think the other thing becomes about, like, actually, how do we actually think realistically about, like, what is this business? Like, you know, how big is it? Actually, you know, where is this critical mass of, like, innovation, entrepreneurship and the potential people that would invest in it? And how do we build things that basically bring more in? Like, how do we, you know, basically innovate there?

But the music industry and entrepreneurship perspective when it comes to different types of entrepreneurs, it's also incredibly complex. I have a lot of friends that does a lot of different things in the music industry. And I was talking to one of them who has been quite successful with a promotional company. They run festivals and big concerts. And they got acquired. But sort of the general rule of thumb within promotional companies in the music industry is 4 to 7x top line revenue, which for an investor is not attractive.

So, there's really, you know, it seems like there's some models that are just not possible to getting capital. You need to trap them or spin them out of sort of other companies or have a long, long journey of building up your reputation and team sort of just step by step, which, so there's many different complexities to that. But I've been working on some things that, you know, I would love to get your thoughts on as well. I haven't said it many times on the broadcast. I have a master's in music technology, but now I'm finishing up a master's in music business on the side of my way to busy life.

Basically, I'm taking the opportunity to research music tech investment from non-domain expertise investors. And I'm sort of trying to find common denominators between them. And one of the things, there's many things I've found, but one of the things is the aspect of education. But there's also the right type of education, which also means lowering the barrier of feeling like investors are educated. So, at the end of the day, especially for like early stage investments, we trust a founder and the confidence that the investor believes that they can do somewhat due diligence on the idea is essential.

And oftentimes when founders, when I speak with, talk about the music startups, it's so music focused that, you know, no investor would have any chance of feeling like they can do due diligence on this. I don't know whether or not your statements are correct or not correct. I have no way of navigating this space. So, personally, sort of what we've done with the 11 companies that we own, where we've got an investment in some of them, is trying to find the common denominators. And I've sort of been working with what the concept I've done in CapCoin that I call parallel narratives, which is taking your company idea and framing it in a way of where the investor has their due diligence expertise.

So, if you're talking with a person from finance, you need to do a very big effort of talking pretty much only that narrative for your music startup. And sort of what that has made is now we have a sort of, we have 20 investors in our portfolio and we have a deal source group of 55 people that I have educated. And that's sort of what I'm trying to do now. So, every single time we start a new project or launch a new product, we basically have investors from day one because some of the investors might not have invested in some of our other ventures, but because they're consistently informed about the value of music in different ways, the narrative, whenever they see something that's down their alley, they can quickly do their own emotional due diligence.

And I think to some degree, that is what I hope can be done on a global level within the music industry. Like, can we find a way to help startups talk about their companies differently? Everything from acquisition amounts, multiples, valuation, the amount of capital we get. Are you building a part of an ecosystem or building a ecosystem? All these kind of points that seems to be wise ways of approaching investors and making that something that's really accessible for founders to be educated in to then increase the chances statistically.

So, that's sort of the experiments I'm doing. But the educational aspect, and this is where I want to ask your opinion, is that where you see a lot of investors choosing to opt out of deals? Like, they don't know how to do due diligence. Yeah, I think it's more basic than that, but yes, principally. Like, I think there's a couple of things in what you kind of made out that I think were worth picking up from my point of view, right?

And again, come down to advice over the years, kind of things I've observed like again and again, like with founders and startups and often you then pass across. Like, I think dealing with it kind of in, I guess, in reverse order and I think yes, like I think people fall out at that due diligence point because they can't do the necessary due diligence, right? And I think the fundamental problem there becomes like there's no way for them to write like a supporting thesis to something they cannot understand, right?

The second thing, which is why I say it's more basic than that, is like, if it looks like it's going to take you six months to educate me on what it is, like the industry and the rest of it, as an investor or a VC or whatever, I'm going to go. There are other things more profitable, more straightforward, more sensible for me to go spend my time on, I'm going to go and do that, right? And I think realistically that becomes the crux of it, right? There is just lower friction pathways to the same outcome elsewhere, so things gravitate towards that, right? And I think the onus is on us as an industry to improve that.

There's a principal at a VC called Best Nights, and Lorraine talks about this quite a lot. Like, you know, there is a job to do to get like finance and music talking like each other's language, right? And, you know, like how do you get music talking finance and finance talking music, and that correlates down, that correlates to like all the things we've been discussing, right?

Like different types of classes of investors, like how do you get a manager, like support managers that might be possible, think about angel investing or an artist or others. And the same with like, how do you get VCs to your point, like in a point where due diligence is easier, like, and I think it has got better. I think certainly on the IP side of stuff, you can see it, like there is better sources of data around the recorded music industry and publishing recording because of the amount of private equity money that's come in to like basically acquire music catalogs, right?

And that's an amazing data source for startups that do want to touch on that to actually find really good quality data, but by sources that like investors and other people outside the industry will look at and go, okay, yeah, like that's someone I can like kind of like trust what they say. But we have very little of that. I mean, if you go to, there's a plethora of platforms that data scrape data on startups and companies, and I've trialed a few over the years. And again, it's the same symptomatic kind of problem.

You get to music tech and like the amount of times I have to hit the button going, can you refresh this? Or like, here's a link to a story that tells you they've already raised more money. Can you like update this? Because it's out of date because essentially the focus isn't there, right? So like, how do we do that? And I think some of those things I think will come over time. But I think the rest are down to basically my bet is the most effective way to do that is again to facilitate environments where you're able to bring these types of people together.

And then that's the most impactful way to do things. And whether that's through, you know, like content and media, podcasts, like a conversation that we're having, or whether that's like events, conferences, et cetera, et cetera, that have a more broad focus. And I think that becomes like a large part of the work, right? And then there's more, and you can see things improving. It's just how we do it at quantum that really starts to make effective change. And then the last, sorry, the only thing I was going to say was I think you made one other really, really good point, which was just like, again, framing, right?

Like I think the other piece of advice is always like a tangible piece of advice. There's like, you know, startups listening here. It's like, stop thinking about your decks, like pitch decks and the positioning you put in your pitch decks about like, this is all the stuff I want you to understand about my company. I want to tell you all this stuff. You need to understand my worldview, my vision, my mission, all this stuff, right? Like, frankly, I don't think anyone really cares. It's a much more sensible way to really, really treat that deck is like, if it's the first deck you're sending someone, its job is to get you that first meeting.

That's all you needed to do. So build it on the basis that like there is someone on the other side that needs to see a series of things in order to go, yes, it's worth me talking to you. And build it for that purpose. The rest of it, that overarching, like I need to like get all this like kind of stuff across to you, et cetera, that happens over time. These conversations are not like one and done. And I think, you know, you find it again and again with startups, they're in like broadcast mode with all this stuff. And like they had massively over-index on all the things that don't really matter to the audience they're trying to talk to.

And I think that's the thing that, you know, like is really easy for people to change. And I think the strike rate goes up the moment you do that, right? I have a question that's sort of touching point on your comment about information with music tech raising by data scraping. Because what I've been doing, my research for our companies, which I really love doing, obviously you also want to look at what has been previous successes in this space. You know, where has the acquisitions been? And oftentimes you can find the acquisitions, but very, very rarely you can find the amount of money it was sold for, cash, stocks.

And I get it, you know, a lot of these things are controversial for strategic reasons and that happens in other industries. So it's not so much a question about how to change it. But like, for example, there's one company that I know really well, I know the founders really well. And they sold their company and I know the amount and amazing. And then I talk with other founders, they're like, oh yeah, and this company sold and like, and then they say, yeah, I heard they sold for X amount. And I'm like, no, it was much more. But if that was available for the environment around them to know that, I think that could motivate more founders.

Like it can help them tell narratives to investors like this company that you would know that is not too far away from you did this, but they can't refer to it because none of the information is public. And they were all under, you know, agreements that they can't make this public. Like, so is this also part of the problem? Because they're so, the industry is so small and obviously, you know, comparable to that, I believe there's a lot of acquisitions, but compared to other industries when it comes to numbers, there's not that many. So the lack of information of the successful stories might hinder the great stories that other founders can inspire investors with.

Question more. Yeah, no, it's a really, it's a really, really good point. So I'll give you one that's in the public realm, right? Like, I don't think we celebrate the successes enough, right? Like, so someone like a company like Duetti, right? Has raised like a significant amount of money, right? I think the last round was like 19 million, right? Like, yes, it got like music business worldwide, like front page, et cetera, et cetera. But like, I don't see, and I don't know why, right? Maybe there's just like, we don't have like the network or there isn't enough on Starbs or other stuff.

But like, I don't see people pick up and run with that as being a really good signal and indicator of like, look, there is money, capital and opportunity in this sector, right? And so I think your point generally about like, there isn't enough happening at that end to like have the halo effect of bringing more people in. Like, we definitely do not sing about those success stories on the raising end. I think the challenge with the exit point is partly down to the historical challenges, right? Like, I guess it's one of the really, really big problems, right?

Like, our biggest issue is history, right? So if all the decision making is being done on historical data and historical things, it's basically only ever going to be an increment of improvement, never a step change of improvement, because it's based on stuff that we've all addressed and understand was like not a great environment for various reasons. You know, too much influence of like a very small, like an oligopoly of companies, not enough space for innovation, too much of the economic rents going to a handful of people, hard to reach or back into valuations historically.

You know, and that's a real problem. And actually, that's a fundamental problem. The problem with a lot of the exit stories, even the exits that do exist and have publicly available data or the big ones, you know, often exited having not backed into the valuations they were raising against, which is a significant, like, red flag for investors. It's actually a loss to some degree. Yeah. So I think one of the problems we have is like we have like a startup mortality problem, right? Like not enough of the amazing companies we're seeing because there is so many more companies being built, technology, all the things we've talked about, the addressable problems.

And that's really exciting. However, I don't think what's coronating is like how many get into series A for all the reasons we discussed, education, starting out with the wrong end in mind, what's it, you know, reframing what success means, all this stuff. And I think so. Therefore, for me, if I was honest, it's less about focusing on the exit story and more of focusing on the early stake raising story that helps improve the exit story, right? Like, so if we could really start to dig into like supporting those early stage companies, really start like the raises that are happening up to series A and companies like Duetti and others.

And like the more we can like really sound on for like what those opportunities mean and do more to bring in more of the investment community from the back of that, whoever they may be, or build the networks and infrastructure for people to be able to invest. That's how I think we improve the downstream problem that exists because you can't really like, I have no idea who said it, but in reality, like the past and future do not exist. The only thing that genuinely exists is the present. So the thing we can actually affect change over right now is the thing that drives change in the future.

So I think, you know, you really have to start thinking about how we do that. But your point about the lack of information around that is like super valid, right? Like, and I think, you know, if I was to be critical about our industry and I don't blame anyone within it, I think for, um, the lack of platforms for that type of stuff is if you look at most events that support music, startups, et cetera, realistically, the audience's music record labels can like music industry people, et cetera, et cetera.

So really what those platforms, those, those events, conferences, and the rest are there to do is like to bring people in to buy pay tickets, to come see stuff and see the new technologies and all the rest of it. That doesn't actually solve any of the problems we're talking about, right? There are relatively few, again, coming back to like conferences and platforms and things that actually built for investors, startups, people in the ecosystem really focused on the problems we're talking about. And I think therefore it's not to like, say those, all the other events don't have, you know, value or that approach doesn't have value or isn't important. It absolutely is.

It's just, there's a gap, right? And that gap is like with these platforms where we, you know, are able to really talk about this stuff, like why it's so damn hard. Like, how do you make it better? Where are the success stories? Unpit exit stories. I mean, from an exit point of view, yeah, I mean, you know, like I yesterday spoke to a startup who's technology, all technology, right? All technology doing really, really well, bringing in loads of stuff, has all, like still has challenges, like, like any of these companies do for things they want to try and do and solve. But they're bootstrapping that business and they don't want any external investment at this point in time.

And they don't want any in the near future or horizon. And they're a rarity, but entirely possible, right? They're an interesting case study for approaching this stuff and thinking, and they always had from the beginning that's what they were going to go and do and that's what they've gone and done, right? And it's like, again, no one's going to talk about any of that, right? Like, there's no, when it comes to the exits, my own person, I mean, I was part of a, see, it always seems silly talking about as an early AI music company when it was like 2018 to 2021, 22, but like early AI music company. I think early defined as it was bloody hard to do anything because no one really wants to talk to you properly about it is probably more realistic.

But we sold that to Apple, right? And that was a success story, right? And was it the success story that everyone had in their mind when they started on that journey? Probably not, right? But it was a success story and everyone's happy and everyone came out of that like, well, but that doesn't get publicized. I mean, that's largely because Apple wouldn't ever talk about any of that stuff, right? But on the other side of stuff, a lot of the exits where you have undisclosed amounts, because basically they're relatively small, depending on those founders and those teams, those founders and teams probably still life changing, right?

And you made a really, really interesting point, which is like, I think as a founder mindset thing, there is a really important thing about like actually understanding the industry you're in, cutting your cloth accordingly. And having a vision for like exit that then works with what you do, like venture capital and raising money from investors is not an ATM. It's not the same as going to the bank to get a mortgage or something else. And I think the challenge often is most people think about it a little bit like that, like some reason VCOs the money, right?

And, and I think that mindset doesn't, again, doesn't, doesn't really help and needs a, like a reshift and, and really, I think one of the things working in startups for nearly 10 years now, it definitely calibrates your concept of failure and success to be something very different. Otherwise you just get mad, right? I think so. This is why also we, we sort of now, well, we've had like three exit series on the podcast before, we do some more sort of to demystify this process.

Like one of the things that I'm very bullish on, and I'm going to contradict myself a bit on this actually, is that if you build a startup for the purpose of the financial gain that you wish to have in the end, that generally speaking is a very bad motivator. Just because the statistical significance of you actually succeeding is very small, but also it's not a great external motivator for you. It's not been sustained over time and things get very rough, but the people around you, your support system, family and friends, they might not understand your internal motivation that well.

And can easily attach themselves to an external motivation, which means if you don't have things to show to an external motivation, like these companies have done this, with this and this change, this father's life. And, and you don't, if you don't have the statistical awareness of this, I think it's difficult for your support system around you to fully grasp what that, why you're doing this. And the reason why I'm saying this is because most final journeys are much longer than you would think. And that incremental change of support and understanding around you does make a difference when it comes to the longevity that the founders can put into this.

The resilience they can have to is directly correlated to your surrounding support. So, so there's just so many factors and layers of the music industry, not providing this data point to provide incentives all around the founders to consistently be resilient because a lot of the founders that I speak with in need to connect, you know, they, most of them fail, obviously, but they could start a new venture with their learnings, which, you know, I've done. Yeah. But if the incentive is not there in the ecosystem around them, the couple you want.

Yeah, no, yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I was, um, like schooling, so I was an art student originally, right? And the two lessons that I think I took away most from, from art school was like one day one, then being into us that pretty much literally that like, there's no such thing as an original idea, right? The second thing is, um, was you, you spent a lot of time every week, you basically justify whatever work you've done to your peers and your peers would tell you to piece it.

And then you sit down and you do it to all your peers and like, that was your friends. And it was brutal. And he did it week in week out. And, but the thing is you learn, right? Like, I mean, and, and the weird thing is like, I don't know if that, that education taught me how to think or how to feel or some version of two in between. But the, um, the thing I find interesting is that point about learning some failure, right? And, and we, we don't have, and this is a cultural thing, right? Which I think it then comes back to like kind of the hero's journey type stories of like startup founders and all this other stuff that like, you know, kind of like, like take up most of the oxygen and, and people's vision for what this stuff is.

And it leads to all sorts of like woolly thinking, right? Like I'm going to build this company and sell it in three years. No, you're not. You're going to be doing this thing for 10 years and you need to start at the beginning with like a vision that you're going to do this thing in 10 years. And you're probably not going to return like, you know, X, Y, Z, what you think you're going to do straight off. You need a plan A and you need to live in plan B and you know, you need to think about like how you want to raise stuff. And the other one I find all the time is someone will come to you with the amount of money they want to raise. And it's like big ass amount of money that they basically can't justify.

And it's like, it's really obvious, even without any, I'm like doing any research. I said, you go like, why do you want to raise that sort of money? It's good. Because I don't want to keep raising. And it's just like, no, like, like who's going to give you money because you don't want, like, no, like it's not going to work that way. It could never work that way. Cut your cloth much smaller. Understand that you are going to keep having to raise capital money at achievable milestones and go after achievable milestones. Um, and I think it becomes, you know, it's, it's hard to do like, like people like romanticize all this stuff and it's not, it's hard.

It's difficult. It's exciting. It's, it's one of the most interesting spaces I've ever been in. And it's hugely challenging. But like you say, you have to have a growth kind of mindset to this stuff and a sense around failure. Um, but I think really important is not that you have to get everything right at the beginning. And I don't know, I can frame this in like the perfect piece of advice, but you have to have thought enough or be open enough to the, like where you want to go and what that means for now. Because the risk I find, the saddest thing I find quite regularly is someone who got terrible advice at the beginning or didn't really kind of understand this stuff or think it through at the beginning.

And like, you can see structural things they did right at day one, like not bringing co-founders, not doing other stuff that trap them at year three, year four, when they're trying to raise. Because it's like, now they're trying to raise money because they've realized they need to bring someone in to help them do X, Y, and Z, or they need to, um, you know, bring a co-founder in because like they can't do like BD and technical stuff at the same time. And it's like, and it's like, and it's really hard to do because no one's going to give you money to do that thing that you didn't do. Right. It's like, you know, like they will give you the money to do the things you need to do to get to the next milestone.

But if there's like an immediate, like hurdle, it's much, much harder because they've really got to believe, right? They've really got to see like that risk is assailable. Um, and that's, that's super, super challenging. Yeah. So, Gareth, you're, uh, involved in Amsterdam, gas event, uh, the start of environment and sort of the best investor efforts there as well as, um, music tech UK. If you were to put yourself in the shoes of an investor, I know you're also an investor yourself, that would find interesting opportunities right now.

What would you be the most interested in? What type of business, what type of narrative, what type of problem would they be attacking? Genite speaking. Oh, that's a really big question. Um, I think. I, let's do, let's do within, let's do within like pieces, like, so like something like what we're building at ADE, like very much touches on the themes we've been talking about, right? We're trying to build, you know, the big, the big vision, the overall idea is like, how do you build, you know, a meeting place?

How do you, you know, build an environment where like it services more the audience of, you know, the ecosystem as opposed to the music industry at large? One is still interested in the music industry and bring more of those people to get there. In an ideal world, I will put, you know, VCs and investors with an interest in music that cannot invest in music for whatever reason, and artists and managers that do it through passion or could be interested in a room together and just bring more of both, right? Like that would be my, my ideal vision. And what brings them? I don't think it's any one type of company.

I think, you know, at the moment, I think some of it is about showcasing this breadth we're talking about, like actually that there is just so much innovation happening and there are many, many great teams and many great founders. So I think that's how that kind of works when it comes to something like music tech UK, from an investment point of view, I think there's a genuine, you know, the UK, like we speak specifically about regional stuff, because this is, I guess, the other tension that exists in music, you know, music is digital, music is global, inherently like just global.

And increasingly so with the way, you know, like kind of different music genres from different parts of the world or like kind of like kind of just how fast things travel, right? The music industry structured wise is like historically quite like regional, right? And then similarly, when it comes to like tech and investment, so we start talking about venture, but also like government and innovation funding and all those sort of things, they're super regional because there is like a bit of a, you know, geopolitical gain about like, how do we bring more companies to the UK or London or a city or the US?

Or New York, whatever it might be. And so like there's a kind of competition going on with all that type of stuff that you plug into and startup ecosystems plug into. So I think when you get there, the thing music UK is interested in is being, you know, some ways on the investment side is being that hub, right? Like, so like, how do you do something that helps you build more awareness and the rest? And we're very lucky in the UK, we have like bodies like Innovate UK, Digital Catapult, we've done a whole bunch of things with them.

On all kinds of different leanings of, whether it's, we have a thing called the Creative Catalyst, we have, which is about creative industry businesses, not specifically music, but music is a big part. You have Bridge AI, which is an AI, like kind of innovation concept that had a music segment to it this year. But principally, you know, the opportunity side is music. Music for the UK is like a massive export, right? Like it's like, you know, the world renowned, our artists are known. So that leans into being something where you can start to lean into where the sort of ecosystem and development stuff is.

So like music tech UK, when it comes to investment side of stuff, it's like, well, how do we maximize that opportunity? Like, how do we make that as big a target as possible? I think me personally, oh, that's really interesting. I think angel investing is sort of different. I don't have rules. Like I haven't raised money from a bunch of people that I have to follow a strict series of rules. Like if I invest in a company that's going to believe in the team, I can help them. I can do things that like can materially impact on what they do. And I don't write big checks and I don't write lots and lots of checks. But I think it definitely becomes more about team and passion and an opportunity that you can see to realize that return.

My profile is very different for that type of return. It needs to be, it still needs to tick those kind of boxes. I think that's one of the bits that gets challenging when you're in an industry like ours that's relatively small. I need to do the age investment stuff and you work with these companies like the difficult truth in all of this is, and no one wants to hear their baby is ugly, but like not everything deserves to be funded and not everything deserves to succeed. Right. And it's like, it's just true. Right. And there is also probably a statistical reality of like the size of our industry compared to others and actually in any industry, like the, the mortality rate of stops and success rate stops is tiny, but what captures the mind again is the, you know, the hero's journey of these founders, et cetera.

No one talks about like all the thousands of others that like, you know, fall by the wayside and the rest of it. And I, and I think that's, you know, like, I don't think that's unique to music, but it, but it's just true. Right. Like there's a whole bunch of things that are like, you know, you know, it'd be nice that they got funded, et cetera. But in reality, like, you know, kind of for varying reasons, you can see very early on this, you know, they're not going to be able to do it. Um, or, or they just have, it's less that they can't do it more than they just, it's your gut tells you or numbers tell you like they've got some unassailable problems they have to solve or seemingly unassailable problems first.

They have to solve and can they solve those? And the moment you get to that, it's like, yeah, well, keep talking to me, come back later. Right. But like, you know, um, even if I, if I look at myself, because, you know, uh, I believe, you know, I've been on a career for 12 years and full time for five years. I believe through my own arrogance that I'm a great founder profile, but I also know that a lot of these successes I have had has been somewhat coincidental. I also believe that a lot of the, the failures I've had and the, the way to get myself out of shit has also been, you know, almost coincidental.

So either, either in my own self belief, I would say there wouldn't have been several scenarios where this would not have happened. And my ideas might've been the same and the premise is the same, but that quote coincidental thing with that person I knew that, you know, saved my ass at that time was there. And therefore I'm still here. Um, so, so even if you have the right, to be in the right team and they got to go through those problems, they got to go through those accidents and doubtfuls. And, and it's not maybe that the person in the company doesn't deserve it.

It's just like not viable for me to statistically trust that this is a good investigation yet. Yeah. So there's so many new answers to it. Yeah. No, completely. But I mean, your models, it like interesting, right? Like, so I think this ties into this, like part into this idea of like, kind of, um, like new models, right. Or other models, right. So like, you know, there's more than just, and, and again, it comes down to ecosystem development and education. And this isn't education of investors, this is education of startups, right? Like there are other models, right. There are other ways to like kind of look at or raise capital or, you know, whether it's like the people are doing it before the, you know, bootstrapping from day one.

Right. Or it's, um, yeah, there's a venture studio type model. Um, like some, there's a venture studio out there. They've got a similar worldview to you. They've got money they'll deploy, but like that comes with them being part of the team and, and ownership of the company is just a different mindset. It's not your, you know, Silicon Valley hero's journey kind of exit story, but it's like, go and build this thing, solve the problem, be the entrepreneur you want to be and have a successful exit story. Um, uh, ideally, right. I'll like go do what you want to do.

And I think, I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure if financial literacy is the problem, but like some version of, right. Like, I just don't think we, we just don't have enough of the conversations around these types of things to help some of these companies. I think another problem becomes, uh, again, not, not wanting to throw shade on anyone, but one of the problems with our industry, we over index on how to deal with our industry. So a lot of like startup advice or advice you get as a first time founder in the music industry over indexes on like, how do you do digital rights or licensing?

The rest of it being really Frank, while all that stuff's important, it's got nothing to do with growing a successful business, right? Like it's like the, it's like this big, right? Like it's hugely important. You understand this industry, but if you spend all your time and energy, understanding how to do that thing for the majority of companies in this space, you're going to run out of runway. Because you haven't spent all your time thinking about how do you build a business? How do you do this? How do you do the other things that you need to do? Um, and I think that's, that's a real problem, right? Like that's a real solvable problem for, for people in this space. Uh, it's kind of like how I think about a lot of the value.

Like I kind of adds like, yeah, I'm a music industry guy. I'm not going to tell you I can go do your digital rights licensing, I'll hand you off to someone who's much more expert at that. Like, but I'm a styled guy who gets music, right? And, and that's where I've lived and I, and I, I love the intersection of this space for all of the challenges and problems it has, but it's, you know, it's fraught with issues and challenges. But like the principal thing I think I've learned over 10 years is if I spend time with a startup founder, they need to get five times out of the, out of it, more out of it than I do every single time.

Because the pressure for them is all the time they spend with me is time they spend not doing something else. And the issue is not, can you raise money? The issue is not how much money can you raise or the rest of it. The issue is how little time can you waste on things that aren't getting to where you go? And that shakes out in different ways from like, how quickly can you discern something's not working? How agile can you be like all this sort of stuff? The longer you take doing all that stuff, the higher your chance of just never getting to where you want to go, rises, right?

And so I think, you know, I always think about when you're on a slight divergent, but when like on my side of the table, like helping companies and stuff, like that's the framing, right? It's like, it's my responsibility not to waste your time, right? And I think one of the challenges becomes when it all becomes about how do you deal with labels or all this sort of stuff is a little bit where that takes so much like kind of, of the sort of like oxygen in the room, a little bit. The problem becomes everyone spends too much time on that stuff and not enough time on some of the business stuff or assumes being more honest.

And because I don't think anyone does it disingenuously that, you know, people are getting support in that space, et cetera, et cetera. And it's just, it's just, it, that, that bit is very, very hard, I think. So I think, yeah, I think it's, yeah, it's, I think there's just a real, yeah, it's just, I mean, it's challenging, right? I don't know any different. I never worked like, I mean, I have worked in other startup ecosystems, but like you only know your perspective, right? That's your limitation, but the, yeah, it's, you know, it's fun, but it's challenging, right?

I think, I think that's a terrific way to use it up and quote this talk. It's, it's fun, but it's challenging. I think that's any startup journey. And when you throw the mixture of music in it, it definitely rings true. Gareth, you will also be at New Visions with me and Flynn. Yes. I think this podcast will be out right before then. I'm looking forward to having a coffee, maybe a beer, just music and some great comments with you. I'm up for that. Thanks ever so much for a chat.

It's been, you were right. It's, it's been really interesting. So I really enjoyed it. Thanks, man. Great. That's it. Take care. Cheers. Bye.