🌐 Imagine a world where you’re seamlessly connected to the internet, not through screens and keyboards, but directly through your brain.

Our minds are already a marvel of evolution, with three layers:

1. Reptilian Brain: The ancient core responsible for keeping us alive by regulating basic functions like breathing.
2. Mammalian (Limbic) Brain: The “monkey brain,” managing emotions like fear and excitement.
3. Neocortex: Our human layer, dedicated to logic, reason, and creativity.

✨ Enter the Exocortex—a revolutionary fourth layer. Soon, we’ll be able to read and write information directly to our brains, allowing seamless integration with the internet. 🧠

Imagine this: You’re able to remember scenes from a movie you've never seen before because your Exocortex looked it up and now it feels as real as any personal memory.

🎥 Your imagination becomes your reality.

📚 Forgot what you read in a book? Your Exocortex retrieves it in an instant.

🌍 Curious about global events? The Exocortex brings you firsthand insights as if you were there.

The boundaries between “you” and the world’s knowledge will blur. The Exocortex won’t just connect us to the internet; it will be the internet.

The future isn’t just at our fingertips—it’s in our minds.

🔌 Are you ready for the Exocortex era?

#Exocortex #FutureOfHumanity #NeuralInterface #Neurotech #Innovation #DigitalTransformation

That’s the big idea of David Helgason, the founder of Unity Technologies, one of the world’s two largest game engine companies, who is now a prominent climate investor through his fund Foobar.

David spoke to us last autumn about the advancements he’s seeing in sustainability and his journey as a founder and investor. David Helgason is the Founder of Unity Technologies, one of the world’s two largest game engine companies.

That’s the big prediction of  BaseImmune’s Ariane Gomes, who says that in the future vaccines will be so good that viruses and other pathogens will not make people sick. 

We spoke with Ariane last autumn about her background as a ​​PhD in Clinical Medicine from Oxford focused on immunology and vaccine development with 11 years of experience in basic and translational medical research. She is the co-founder of Baseimmune, a company specialising in antigen discovery for vaccine development.

Listen to the full episode for more about Ariane, BaseImmune and the future of vaccine development. 

We spoke to King’s Riccardo Zacconi about his ‘crazy’ prediction for the future, and he said that we are going to have the opposite problem. 

He believes that big problem in the near future is that, with an ageing population, we are not going to have enough workers.

He believes unemployment rates will effectively be at zero for many areas as demographic make it hard to find enough young people to do certain jobs. 

Do you agree?

Riccardo co-founded King in March 2003 and was its CEO from the start, overseeing the company's rapid growth in the global mobile gaming sector to over 500 million monthly players, the company's IPO on NYSE and its $6bn sale to Activision Blizzard in 2016.

Nothing’s CEO and co-founder Carl Pei’s ‘crazy’ prediction for the future is that nothing will displace the smartphone. Last fall at an FF event, we discussed the trend-driven nature of tech where fads come and go as Carl used VR, AR and drones as examples. But he predicts that 10 years from now, we’ll still be scrolling on our smartphones. 

In 20 years, he sees technology becoming more seamless and fading into our everyday lives. This is also his mission for Nothing: “crafting intuitive, flawlessly connected products that improve our lives without getting in the way”.

In the future, technology will be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, emulating that feeling of …nothing. 

Jim was a cofounder and now board member of Block (the $50bn fintech formerly known as Square) also is also chairman of the St. Louis Federal Reserve and founder of Invisibly, a startup backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

At the FF event in Scotland last autumn, we spoke with Dan Widmaier the CEO and co-founder of Bolt Threads about his ‘crazy’ idea for the future. 

Dan originally trained as a scientist at UCSF where he holds a PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology. With that degree, he went on to create Bolt Threads, a sustainable material solutions company. He and his co-founder, David Breslauer, grew Bolt Threads from a couple of scientists and a box full of live spiders to a category-leading biomaterials platform company that has commercialised two materials, Mylo™ and b-silk™, with greater than $1B in addressable market each.

From spiders to cows, Dan’s crazy idea for the future is that we will no longer be farming cows in 20 years. Due to advancements in agriculture and science such as the work Bolt Threads is doing, the cost of cow by-products such as leather, meat and dairy will become more expensive than their vegan counterparts making the sustainable options more popular.  

Many European cities have already passed legislation to reduce traffic — from London’s congestion charges to Paris making every first Sunday of the month car-free.

The move to ban all private car use would provide major environmental and social benefits from a reduction in noise and environmental pollution to a rise in safety. 

Markus hopes bolt will help make this change happen. He founded Bolt in 2013 as a competitor to Uber. Bolt has since become the first European mobility super-app operating in over 45 countries with over 100 million users.

Now imagine if that commute looked more like a relaxing session in a first-class airport lounge than a dull and stressful experience in a cramped seat. 🚗🧘

As the automotive industry and EV technology advances, the thought of self-driving cars becomes more of a reality and less of an abstract futuristic concept. CEO and co-founder of Aurora, Chris Urmson believes self-driving vehicles will displace driving and vehicles as we know them will be used solely for pleasure. During our chat in Scotland at one of FF’s events, Chris draws a parallel between the shift from horse transport to motor vehicles to the shift he sees unfolding.  

Aurora is an American self-driving vehicle technology company. Its flagship product, the Aurora Driver, is a platform that brings together software, hardware, and data services, to operate passenger vehicles autonomously, light commercial vehicles, and heavy-duty trucks. Aurora is partnered with industry leaders across the transportation ecosystem including Toyota, Uber, Volvo, FedEx, and PACCAR. 

* according to a 2022 Statista report https://www.statista.com/chart/25129/gcs-how-the-world-commutes/ 

We spoke with cybersecurity software Darktrace’s CEO, Poppy Gustafsson, at an FF event last year about her predictions that cyberattacks will use deep fakes in live videos. The craziest thing is, these attacks will be happening in the near future as they are already happening over audio. 

She also discusses the fact that it’s difficult to actually predict the future of technology and that’s one of the things she loves about working in the industry and at Darktrace. Under her leadership, the company has experienced significant growth and global expansion and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2021. She was named CEO of the Year at the 2021 Digital Masters Awards and Tech CEO of the Year at the UK Tech Awards 2021 so if anyone can help keep us safe against these threats, it’s Poppy! 

Physical coins have been around for 28 centuries. But that is all coming to an end in the next decades. During a chat at FF’s event in autumn, Cyril Chiche predicted that cash will no longer exist in the next few decades. He has seen this trend of moving away from cash for digital alternatives accelerated by Covid.

Cyril is CEO and co-founder of Lydia, a Paris-based fast-growing mobile financial services platform with over 4 Million users and a 30% market share among French Millennials, who use its brand as a verb. 

Co-founded by Antoine Porte and Cyril Chiche, Lydia launched in 2013. It is one of the most successful French B2C fintech having raised over $160 million in funding from investors such as Tencent, XAnge, New Alpha, Groupe Duval, and Founders Future. He has seen this trend of moving away from cash for digital alternatives accelerated by Covid. 

From cashless to contactless, what’s next? 

What does she mean by real cost?

At the moment, the price of products and services do not take into account their wider environmental and social impact. Ludomila gives the example of a t-shirt. Traditionally, elements which contribute to the final value of the garment include materials, production, transportation and distribution (to name a few). But we also need to consider ethical elements such as if the cotton fields are using environmentally friendly substances or the factory’s conditions for the workers.

Jordanova co-founded Plan A to do just that: help businesses achieve net-zero with their SaaS platform for carbon accounting, decarbonisation and ESG reporting. All in the hopes of helping these brands identify these ‘real’ costs.  

In this episode, Lubomila talks about challenges around pricing environmental costs and ESG reporting, her advice for starting a new venture in the climate tech sector and why ESG is important from a financial perspective. 

• If you're in the UK, you can join the Levels waitlist here: levels.link/CRAZYUNTILITSNOT 
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In conversation with Pam Kostka, Julia shares her secrets on how she stays kind and positive throughout the founding journey in this special edition of my firstminute alongside Pam Kostka from July 14th 2020. 

Pam was the CEO of All Raise whose mission is to amplify female voices, accelerate their success, and create a tech culture where women are leading, shaping, and funding the future. She is now Operator In Residence & Limited Partner at Operator Collective, which brings together 200+ of tech’s most exceptional executives from diverse backgrounds to invest in and supercharge the next generation of enterprise tech.

Joining Pam is Julia, the founder of Planet FWD, the regenerative food company focussed on reversing global warming through sustainable food production. Previously, Julia co-founded Zume Pizza, helping the SoftBank-backed robotics company raise $423 million before she stepped down in 2018.

During the session, they covered everything from their experiences of founding, funding and building VC-backed startups as well as discussing the importance of what needs to happen now to meaningfully increase diversity and inclusion in the founder-funder ecosystem.

Both of our guests are exceptional leaders with a passion for diversity and inclusion in the tech / VC space, making for an insightful and inspiring conversation!

My firstminute talked to some of the world’s top investors, founders and thought-leaders about the first minutes of their careers, some of the battles they’ve overcome and their advice on navigating the world today. When discussing ‘the world today’, many guests addressed the effects of Covid-19 as this series was recorded in the height of the pandemic. Each episode concludes with a Q&A with fellow entrepreneurs.

Today’s episode (originally recorded in March 2021) features Sequoia investor extraordinaire, Roelof Botha, known for his investments in Instagram, YouTube, MongoDB, Unity, Eventbrite, Square, 23andMe, Bird, Evernote, BridgeBio and many more; alongside Grammy Award-winning musician, producer, and two-time entrepreneur, Ben Lovett. 

They discuss how entrepreneurship and creativity are intrinsically linked to one another and the role that luck and humility played in their careers.  

Listen to the advice that Roelof and Ben give to budding entrepreneurs alongside how he tests for authenticity in founders and how to spot a good opportunity. 

David Sacks started his career in the ‘PayPal Mafia’ as one of the company’s earliest members as COO and product lead. During his time as COO in 2001, payment volume grew from 0 to $3.5 billion per year and revenue saw equally tremendous growth from 0 to $100 million. 

After a stint as a film producer on Thank You For Smoking which was nominated for Best Picture at the 2006 Golden Globes, David founded and was CEO of Yammer, the first Enterprise Social Network. Yammer pioneered bottom-up SaaS by adapting consumer tactics for enterprise sales. In July 2012, it was acquired by Microsoft for $1.2 billion as a core part of its cloud/social strategy.

Throughout his career, he was always an avid angel investor. After leaving Yammer, he turned his investing into a new venture with the creation of Craft Ventures. The fund is an early-stage and growth fund based in San Francisco. 

This episode from 2020 follows David’s career and his journey from entrepreneur to investor. We cover the lessons he’s learned along the way and his advice to entrepreneurs and investors. 

We asked former CEO and Chairman of General Electric, Jeff Immelt in June 2020. 

Jeff Immelt is the former Chairman and CEO of General Electric, which he stepped down from in 2017 after 16 years. Jeff was the 9th Chairman of GE, and has been named one of the ""World's Best CEOs"" three times by Barron's, and GE has been named ""America's Most Admired Company"" by Fortune magazine and one of ""The World's Most Respected Companies"" in polls by Barron's and Financial Times. 

He now serves as a Venture Partner with our friends at NEA, sitting on the boards of several healthcare companies. 

Spencer spoke with Jeff about the earliest days of his career, his leadership lessons from running a company of General Electric's magnitude, and his views on healthcare, the pandemic and US/China relations. Spencer also explored the challenges that Jeff faced as a leader, and how he now supports the next generation of entrepreneurs, operators and investors.

How do you make marketplace economics work? 🔂

We dig into all this as well as the future of commerce, contrarian ideas, COVID tailwinds, how to make marketplace economics work with Niraj Shah, Co-founder, Co-Chairman & CEO of Wayfair. 

Niraj co-founded the company with Steve Conine back in 2002 and the pair rapidly grew the business to become one of the largest online destinations for home furnishings, housewares, home improvement goods and more, generating around $14 billion in revenue.

During the session from Friday 26th June 2020, we explored the many aspects of Niraj's journey as well as, e-com defensibility and the role of private label brands, and finally, why a US company should or shouldn’t expand internationally.

Jess Lee knows both sides well having been co-founder and former CEO of Polyvore and currently a Partner at Sequoia Capital. 

Over her illustrious career, Jess has spent time working as Product Manager at Google, as CEO at Polyvore, and most recently as Partner at Sequoia Capital, where she became the youngest partner as well as the firm's first female Partner in the United States. We spent time exploring the many aspects of Jess' journey, her focus on consumer and community, and her outlook for the future of venture and startups in this episode from June 2020.

Is the future of the entertainment industry equity based? 

How do you become a better leader?

These are just a few of the questions Jeremy Zimmer answers in his episode of my firstminute from June 2020. 

Jeremy Zimmer is the Chief Executive Officer and a co-founder of UTA. One of the industry’s leading agents for decades, he has been instrumental in establishing UTA as one of the world’s pre-eminent talent agencies with a reputation for its artist-first focus. He oversees more than 1,200 agents, executives and employees globally.

After rising through the ranks as a talent agent, Zimmer co-founded UTA in 1991 and was named CEO in 2012. Since then, he’s led the company’s remarkable evolution into one of the world’s leading talent and entertainment companies through a series of ambitious acquisitions and expansions across news, speakers, content creation, music, esports, digital talent and sports spaces.

From fabled Hollywood family to super-agent to multi-hyphenate entertainment leader, Zimmer has helped guide the careers of some of the most influential names in entertainment today and personally represents artists such as Bryan Cranston, Chance the Rapper, DJ Khaled, Chelsea Handler, Kevin Hart, Anthony Hopkins, Don Cheadle, Tyra Banks, Ryan Seacrest, Noah Baumbach, Brian Robbins, and YG.

During the session, we explored everything from how Jeremy got started in his career, to his leadership advice in times of crisis, to his passion for the Arts, to his views on the future of media, entertainment and more.

• Nurture relational curiosity 
• VC is a youthful business 
• Business logic doesn’t age well but human nature does 

There are just a few of the things he discusses with us in this episode of my firstminute from June 2020. 

Peter became a General Partner at Benchmark a little more than a decade ago after graduating from Stanford, part of the famous class of 1994 (which included the likes of Brian Acton, the founder of WhatsApp, and David Sacks, the C.E.O. of Zenefits). Peter was an early investor in Twitter, back when it had 25 employees and sat on the board until 2017.

Peter's current investments include EngineYard, Lithium, New Relic, Pentaho, Polyvore, Terracotta, Yelp and Zendesk. He also sits on a number of boards including Yelp, Docker, Zuora and many more.

Dr Hermann Hauser tells his story of how he co-founded Acorn back in 1978 with £50 of his own money. The computer company went on to become the “British Apple”. He was also co-founder of ARM ($31bn acquisition by Softbank), co-founder of Amadeus Capital, Fellow of the Institute of Physics and the Royal Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and an Honorary Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge.

Dr Hermann Hauser is a science-based innovator and serial entrepreneur who has successfully developed and financed over 100 high-tech companies whilst offering inspiration and mentorship to the next generation of entrepreneurs.

In this episode from May 2020, firstminute co-founder and General Partner, Spencer Crawley sat down and spoke with Dr Hauser about his firstminute of his career and what he sees are the next big trends. Of the top 4 macro technological trends he’s spotted, he goes in depth into Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning and the positive impact they will have on how … and how much individuals work. 

Spencer is Co-founder & former CEO of Zillow, Board Advisor at Tripadvisor, Co-founder & Executive Chairman of dot.LA, Co-founder Hotwire.com and Co-author of the New York Times' bestseller "Zillow Talk: The New Rules of Real Estate". 

We dived into Spencer's career as an investor, entrepreneur and company leader who has co-founded two businesses that became household names, Zillow ($8bn market cap) and Hotwire.com ($663m acquisition by IAC). Early this year, he also launched, dot.LA, a media and journalism company dedicated to covering and bringing together L.A.’s startup world.

An example is that most people are either Greek or Roman. 

Greeks are great thinkers, philosophers and architects. 🏛

Romans are road builders, executors and operators. 🔨

Finding the combination of greek and roman in one individual is very rare but not impossible. An example is Elon Musk, said Kevin Hartz, Co-Founder & Chairman at Eventbrite.

During the session from May 2020, Kevin and Spencer Crawley, Co-founder and General Partner at firstminute capital, discussed the high and low points Kevin experienced with founding and growing Eventbrite and Xoom. They also covered his transition into the world of investing, the key criteria that he looks for as part of his investment process, and the advice he is currently employing with his own team and portfolio companies. Some of Kevin's early/seed investments include: Airbnb (Seed, Series A), Uber (Series B), Pinterest (Seed, Series A), and PayPal (Seed).

Many say an investor-founder relationship is like a marriage. That includes David Helgason and Bing Gordon.

In this episode of myfirstminute from May 2020, we covered everything from the earliest days of their careers, as founder and CEO of Unity Technologies for David and Chief Creative Officer at EA for Bing, to how they now enjoy helping and backing founders. David is a founding Partner at Nordics Makers, a group of ten top Nordic angels, and also has his private vehicle, Foobar.vc. As for Bing, he joined Kleiner Perkins in 2008 and serves as Chief Product Officer for the firm. He also leads Kleiner Perkins' Fund, the investment initiative to fund and build applications and services that deliver on the promise of the social web. 

Cristina Fonseca (Talkdesk  [$1bn private valuation] and Venture Partner at Indico Capital Partners)

Fabrice Grinda (Co-founder & Co-CEO OLX [acquired by Naspers], Founding Partner FJ Labs)

Paul Forster (Co-founder & former CEO Indeed.com [$1bn acquisition by Recruit])

They discussed a variety of topics that are personal to them but also topics for anyone looking to start a business. These ranged from struggling with imposter syndrome as a founder, acquiring initial market share in countries, lessons learned from successful but mainly, less-successful startups and their shared transitions to investors following booming exits. 

In this episode of myfirsminute podcast, we spoke with Rio Ferdinand (Former England and Manchester United Captain) and Michael Acton Smith OBE (Co-founder & CEO of Calm) in May 2020. 

This discussion ranged in focus, starting with Rio's journey from West Ham's youth team to playing professionally for Manchester United and as part of England's World Cup squads, leading on to his life and career post-football and his current interest in technology and investment. This was complimented by the exploration of Michael Acton Smith's journey in Founding Firebox.com, Mind Candy and most recently Calm ($1bn private valuation). Two exceptional leaders with a passion for health and technology, make for an insightful and inspiring conversation!

Nico Rosberg became Formula 1 World Champion in 2016 with Mercedes AMG Petronas and has since embarked on a career as a sustainability entrepreneur and investor in green technologies.

Nico Rosberg's drive as an entrepreneur is fuelled by the will to drive positive change for society and mankind. He pursues this approach not only in his business activities, but also as an ambassador for sustainable change in mobility through technological innovation. Rosberg has invested in numerous successful start-ups such as Lilium, Volocopter, What3Words, Tier and Lyft. He is also an investor and shareholder of the all-electric racing series Formula E. Rosberg is also a co-owner of the German vehicle technology company TRE GmbH, one of the leading companies in the field of chassis development.

In 2019, Nico co-founded the GREENTECH Festival, a global platform for innovative and pioneering green technologies, which attracted almost 40,000 visitors at its premiere.

Nico remains linked to Formula One through his commentary for the German TV channels SKY & RTL, his Rosberg Racing young driver’s academy and his engineering company TRE. He continues his work as an ambassador for many outstanding brands such as Rolex, Deutsche Bahn, Kempinski Hotels and Heineken.

In this episode of myfirstminute from May 2020, Nico talks about his racing career and how he’s driving the sustainability movement with GREENTECH Festival. 

Sir Martin Sorrell discusses data and emotions from the point of view of how to harness both in advertising.

In May 2020, we hosted Sir Martin Sorrell, Executive Chairman of S4 Capital and Founder of WPP. Sir Martin Sorrell remained its CEO for 33 years, building it from a £1 million “shell” company in 1985 into the world’s largest advertising and marketing services company. 

Sir Martin Sorrell shared stories about his earliest business days and how he overcame some of his toughest challenges, as well as how he sees the future and how he now enjoys supporting the next generation.

Rent the Runway was co-founded in 2009 by Fleiss and Jenn Hyman. In 2009, they disrupted the trillion-dollar fashion industry and changed how women get dressed forever by pioneering the ‘Closet in the Cloud’: a dream closet filled with an infinite selection of designer styles to rent, wear and return. 

In this episode from May 2020, we explored the earliest days of Jenny's career, starting in financial services, the subsequent journey which resulted in co-founding her businesses as well as her time spent with Torch Capital, a brand-focused venture fund, where she advises early-stage companies. 

We’ll give you a clue, Matt Mullenweg, the founder and CEO of Automattic ($3bn private valuation; makers of WordPress and Tumblr). 

During the episode of myfirstminute from the 20th of May 2020, Sam Endacott, Partner at firstminute capital, covered Matt's journey of founding and growing Automattic, including the story behind developing WordPress, the Open Source software used by over 31% of the web. Sam also explored Matt's depth of experience in operating during a financial crisis as well as his outlook on a post-lockdown world.

So what exactly is the recipe for creating a successful game? 

King co-founder, Riccardo Zacconi discussed the secret recipe behind the success of Candy Crush and how to create stickiness in games (pun intended). 

We also delved into Riccardo's depth of experience in running King during a major financial downturn and explored how he now enjoys helping and backing founders in this episode from April 2020.

Riccardo Zacconi's biography:

Riccardo was a co-founder of King and continues to serve as company Chairman, having served as CEO from 2003 until 2019.

Riccardo grew up in Italy, worked in management consulting at LEK and BCG before transitioning into tech at the start of the dotcom boom. In 1999, Riccardo joined Swedish online startup Spray to build its business in Germany. After the sale of Spray to Lycos Europe he moved to the UK as an Entrepreneur in Residence for Benchmark Capital. In 2002 Riccardo joined uk online dating startup uDate as VP of European sales and marketing. After the sale of uDate to IAC/Match.com, Riccardo co-founded King in March 2003 and was its CEO from the start, overseeing the company's rapid growth in the global mobile gaming sector to over 500 million monthly players, the company's IPO on NYSE and its $6bn sale to Activision Blizzard in 2016.

In December 2016 Riccardo was knighted by the Italian President with the title of Commendatore dell'Ordine della Stella d'Italia. Riccardo is also the founder of the PTEN Research Foundation for rare genetic diseases.

The answer: 2-3 years. 

Ross Mason took 6 years to reach product-market fit with MuleSoft but it was worth the wait when he sold the company to Salesforce for $6.5bn.

Ross discusses his journey as Founder of MuleSoft. From the search for product-market fit to the changes in his confidence between 10 million and 2 million in revenue. Ross is the co-founder of MuleSoft and Founder and Managing Partner of Dig Ventures. 

In this episode from April 2020, we covered everything from scaling MuleSoft in a recession through to being bought by Salesforce for $6.5bn, to how we use the Coronavirus to come out stronger, to how to go about fundraising in those times, to how to know who is essential in your team, to how do Enterprise SaaS customers respond to a crisis like this.