What a time to be live. The main thing happening today is the European Commission's homegrown Teams replacement. Here's your Order of Play, plus an Op-Ed from Ronan on the philosopher behind Peter Thiel's "competition is for losers”.
12:15 - Hussein Kanji, Founder & Managing Partner at Hoxton Ventures
13:00 - Daniel Dippold, Co-Founder & CEO at EWOR
13:30 - Azeem Azhar, Founder at Exponential View
13:45 - Siadhal Magos, Co-Founder & CEO at Metaview
What’s Happening Today
The European Commission has built itself a backup for Microsoft Teams.
Over the summer, the Commission quietly rolled out Element Pro as a "sovereign back-up to Teams", according to an internal memo seen by Politico. The idea is that if Washington ever pulls the plug on US tech, Brussels can keep communication going.
The reviews from officials on the internal message board have been brutal. One called it "absolute s***". Another said that if the US ever switched off its technology, it would "instantly win the war".
Element's CEO Matthew Hodgson put it down to teething problems and buttons being in different places, adding that the UN and NATO already use it.
Brussels isn't the only one trying as France is moving millions of civil servants off Teams and Zoom by 2027, and Austria's military ditched Microsoft Office for LibreOffice last year.
We’re getting into all of it in todays show at 12 BST.
Daily Op-Ed — Thiel, Girard, and the Monoculture
This is why Peter Thiel was so successful. One of his biggest inspirations was the French philosopher René Girard for his work on mimetic desire (and it's consequences) - here's how it links to @shaunmmaguire's points:
"I left Silicon Valley... Because it's a monoculture... The most extreme group think of any place on the planet."
Girard's central thesis was basically: humans don't desire things autonomously, they copy the desire of others.
People fiercely defend the belief that their desires are individual/authentic (according to Girard "romantic illusion") when in reality they subtly train each other to want the exact same thing (in this particular monoculture it would be status associated with being a tech founder - ARR metrics, raise sizes, valuations, "frontier" ideas etc).
"So what do they do? They start stack-ranking each other... founder of co $100B market cap > founder of co with $50B market cap..."
Girard believed that when actors are in close status, they become mimetic rivals. Everyone is competing for the same narrow definition of success within the same tight ecosystem. They end up trapped in an ordered hierarchy where minute differences in status ($100B vs. $50B drive some sort of psychological rivalry).
"Pure toxicity that nerfs creativity... Reject this nonsense. Stay weird. Think independently."
Girard believes that intense mimetic competition creates homogeneity, sheep like or heard like behaviour. Instead of thinking about how can I create novel technology (a Facebook, a SpaceX, an AirBnB) new entrants focus on "how do i beet my peers at the game?"
This was probably the most dangerous part of a monoculture made up of mimetic rivals (from an investors point of view) - because theres no real alpha left - the competition just competes it all away. Everyones fighting over the same piece of the pie.
Where do you think he got his "competition is for losers" line from?
He got it from Girard.
Founders Fund was basically Thiel's vehicle to invest in anti-memetic ideas that Silicon Valley actively ignored.
1. Palantir: defence was taboo + governments were the anti-thesis of any start-ups philosophy
2. SapceX: Manufacturing and CapEx intense businesses were to be avoided - light scalable software was better
3. FB: Literally a real world social graph built around mimetic cultures (here i guess he was like ok we can profit of mimetic cultures lol).
Everyone should go study René Girard and then go look at all of Thiel's conference talks - it's the same lines over and over again.
Pretty cool!
P.S. This is not exclusive to SF - it's exclusive to humans.
— Ronan
etn. Insight
On Wednesday, the boys had the pleasure of speaking with Legora CEO Max Junestrand who told us he was gaming the system long before he started building AI for lawyers.
At university, he hacked the admissions system to attend an engineering school and a business school at the same time. "It worked out exceptionally well during COVID because there were no real presence requirements."
He finished one degree and still has a master's thesis to write for the other, which turns out to be handy. "When I talk to my potential future in-laws, I finished my degree. When I speak to investors, I'm a dropout."
The bar has been set. Chief of Staff Alex’s reaction on X: "You did one degree? Only? I did 2. And I run a 200M ARR company. Oh, also, I have a girlfriend."
Watch the full clip below.
Continental Breakfast
