Saul Klein

Now, the UK has some of the most exciting and innovative startups on the planet, but many of them continue to find it difficult to scale without either accepting US investment or just shifting operations across the pond entirely.

Can this be fixed? One man who may have the answer is serial investor Saul Klein, managing partner at venture capital firm Phoenix Corp.

Thanks very much for, for coming in, Saul.

I wonder if you could just articulate, first of all, the scale of the, the challenge facing, um, some startups, including p- possibly, you know, some, some of the ones you know personally through your portfolio.

So, um, they came later actually.

My first investor was Saul Klein at Local Globe, who I just think is amazing, and it was Saul Klein who introduced me to Danny Rimer.

He took Danny to a beauty sta- pop-up we did, and Danny's amazing.

Like, I, I, I feel so lucky with the mentors and leaders and bosses that I've had.

Welcome to part two of our conversation with Saul Klein.

This has been a really interesting deep dive into how he thinks and how he runs his business.

So I really recommend you check out part one.

I'm doing most of my thinking out loud on Substack.

Okay.

So look up Saul Klein on Substack.

Otherwise,

you know, follow us on Phoenix Court.

... could be in life sciences, could be in advanced manufacturing, but we just need more of them, um, outside of, of London.

Um, because, um, our friends at Phoenix Court, remember Saul Klein came on-

Yeah

...

My guest today is Saul Klein.

Saul is an entrepreneur, operator and investor with over 30 years at the coalface of European tech.

He's probably best known nowadays as the co-founder of Phoenix Court Group, which comprises three funds, Local Globe, Latitude and Solar.

Phoenix Court Group is also an LP in over 80 emerging fund managers through its fund-to-fund strategy Basecamp.

And Local Globe itself is ranked in the top 15 seed investors globally, according to Deal Room.

Soil has backed many companies, including Olix, Clio, Monzo, Wyze, Mistral, Figma, and many more.

So the question I wanted to launch into, so in 2002, you launched Video Island.

There was this real thing called Blockbuster on the high streets.

So plenty of different reasons why the continent is underperforming compared to the US.

One of the things you suggest, well, it's related to an article, an argument from an investor named Saul Klein, that Europe shouldn't try to, as he puts it, out-Google Google.

It should build tech that's profitable and innovative, but actually good for society, sort of on the theory that values can become a competitive advantage.

And for me, that sounds good in theory, but I got to wonder if there's any solid evidence that a values-driven model can do anything but kind of make people feel better about themselves, but not necessarily compete in a marketplace that is so just relentlessly driven by the bottom line.