April 10, 2024 • 34 mins
In the latest episode of The Startup to Scale-Up Game Plan, host Gary Reeman invites Mark Beeston, Founding Partner at Illuminate Financial, to share his career journey, investment strategies, and insights into the fluid dynamics of the financial market. Illuminate Financial is a venture capital firm known for its expertise in investing in enterprise software companies catering to financial services businesses.
We go over how Mark leveraged significant changes he had observed in the financial markets to build Illuminate Financial. A noteworthy suggestion from Mark is the centrality of charisma, energy, and being coachable for startup teams. He accentuates that being coachable does not merely imply following directives, but it signifies being receptive to constructive dialogues about shared experiences and potential risks.
We delve into Illuminate Financial's collaborative engagements with JP Morgan, Barclays, and other major banks supporting the portfolio. These collaborations primarily focus on solving problems, catering to clients' needs, investing in resolutions, acquiring potential enterprises, and remaining updated with innovation opportunities. Mark underscores the importance of these symbiotic relationships, which revolve around a culture of persistent and progressive change.
Mark reveals his reflections on the past decade by drawing upon profound insights into the venture capitalist environment. These reflections provide start-ups and other investors with valuable perspectives. Learn from Mark's experiences as he discloses the essential lessons from his journey for example the significance of fostering long-lasting business relationships.
In the latter part of the conversation, we probe into the abundant potential of financial markets and portfolio companies in the coming decade. Mark lays out some exciting opportunities posed by the institutional adoption of advanced technology and blockchain rails. The episode winds down with a personal anecdote about Mark's love for cars and his approach to striking a work-life balance.
In this insightful episode, uncover the complexities of business partnerships, financial entrepreneurship, and venture capitalism from Mark Beeston’s expert viewpoint.
For additional insights into Illuminate Financial check out https://www.illuminatefinancial.com/ and for advice on hiring senior executives into enterprise software ventures head over to https://alpinasearch.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The Startup to Scale-Up Game Plan is brought to you by Alpina Search,
Europe's premier talent search firm dedicated to helping technology startups
and scale-ups recruit high-impact executives.
Now, over to your host, Gary Rieman.
So, I'm delighted to welcome Mark Beeston to today's episode.
(00:24):
Mark's the founding partner at Illuminate Financial, A global VC investing in
enterprise software companies serving the needs of financial services businesses.
So Illuminate Financial is backed by some of the world's largest financial institutions,
including the NY Mellon, J.P.
(00:45):
Morgan, S&P Global, Barclays and Citi. So, Mark, welcome to the Startup to Scale
Up game plan and congratulations on the 10-year anniversary of you launching the fund.
Thank you very much, Gary. Great to be here and great to both be here on your
podcast and still in business 10 years later, as you kindly mentioned.
(01:07):
Exactly. So tell me about your journey into the world of venture capital.
What got you started? Yeah, sure. So I guess we founded the business as noted 10 years ago.
The journey to that was really, that's the fourth thing I've done in my career.
I've been in financial markets for 30 years. I was fortunate to join Deutsche
(01:31):
Bank before Deutsche Bank started its real trading ascendancy in the 90s.
And so I spent 13 years there as a fixed income derivative trader,
manager of global trading desks, chief operating officer of their global rates
and global credit trading businesses.
A really fantastic journey, built my first industry network there,
(01:52):
a rising tide, floats all boats, so better lucky than smart as the trading adage has it.
But one of the things that that really gave me was the benefit of getting to
sit on the boards of what we would now perhaps define as consortia industry fintech.
So that was my first exposure to the fintech world as we now call it,
(02:14):
although even 10 years ago, we were barely calling it fintech.
I left Deutsche in 2005 to go and solve an industry problem around credit default
swap post-trade processing.
And I joined the ex-co of an inter-dealer broker called CreditX to do that at
the same time that TA Associates invested in them.
So that became my first exposure to the world of the financial sponsor.
(02:38):
We became the market standard in our space.
That led to an acquisition of CreditX Group by Intercontinental Exchange,
which was a great thing to be part of.
But along the way, I kind of learned, I think, what I think are the two most
important lessons of my career, and certainly what underpins the foundational DNA of Illuminate.
And those two lessons are pretty simple.
(03:00):
The first one is a horrible moment of self-realization, politely defined as,
oh, my goodness, was it really this difficult to sell me something I desperately
needed when I was a managing director at a bank?
And the answer to that is, unfortunately, yes. And it still is.
It's still quite difficult.
The thing that actually made us successful was, importantly,
(03:22):
again, nothing to do with the over-the-horizon technologies that banks,
CTOs love talking about, and everything to do with having a technology that was fit for purpose,
but actually also having an industry network that you can take your technology
to with warmth and credibility to give it a chance of actually becoming an adopted solution.
(03:43):
That, of course, being the difference between a potentially valuable solution
and just a white elephant.
We'll come to Illuminate, no doubt, but that really became,
as I say, foundational DNA for our approach to industry partnership and how
we could perhaps help companies come to market and our partners adopt companies
(04:06):
in a way that's beneficial for the whole ecosystem.
Post the ICE acquisition, I was asked to go and work at ICAP with one of my
old bosses who was chief operating officer at the time.
And so I ended up on the EXCO at ICAP running the post-trade and information
division, which was 35% of the bottom line.
Did a couple of transactions for them early on.
(04:28):
We did a first round investment in a tiny company called Acacia Soft,
which the London Stock Exchange acquired last year for around $700 billion.
And I did the acquisition of another company called TriOptima,
which is now the market standard in derivative trade compression and reconciliation,
was chairman of that for four years.
And along the way, I hired a gentleman and set up ICAP's own corporate venture
(04:51):
unit before one day in 2013, hearing myself say for the nth time,
and I've said it thousands, literally thousands of times since,
we'd hit a moment of generational change in financial markets its infrastructure.
And the need for change was really driven by the macro operating environment of financial markets.
So huge industry deleveraging post the financial crisis, massive multi-jurisdictional
(05:16):
regulation, and last but not least, the whole industry almost sleepwalking into
a zero tolerance compliance environment.
And that came with a whole set of sort of business needs for solutions.
And invariably, the solutions to that are technology.
Technology but again it's all about problem solving rather than technology for
technology's sake and i'm a big believer that if you hear yourself change your story multiple times.
(05:42):
Saying the same stories over and again you should really work out the why is
it a nuance or is it or is it a fundamental change and if it's a fundamental
change should work out what does that mean and what are you doing about it and
for me what that meant was there is a generational opportunity.
And that is the opportunity I have effectively bet my career on with the founding
(06:03):
of Illuminate 10 years ago.
You talked about warmth and credibility.
Intrigued by that, in terms of you evaluating companies to invest in or founding
teams to invest in, is this one of the things you're looking for,
warmth and credibility?
And how can aspirational or CEOs
(06:24):
and founders develop those traits or demonstrate they have those traits.
So actually, when I use the expression warmth and credibility,
it's more about the idea of how do you transport the idea or the new product
of a company out to a broad industry network rather than just cold calling.
(06:46):
One way that obviously an enterprise-focused fintech could do that would be
through taking investment from Illuminate, where hopefully we believe we have
a pretty strong industry network to help get some engagement.
But that is obviously just one of a number of potential channels, right?
One way to do it would be to partner with an incumbent, right?
(07:07):
So literally last week, one of our fund two companies, Baton Systems,
who are an FX payment versus payment platform, they've settled $8 trillion of FX under their own name.
They actually announced a long-term partnership with Ostra, a very,
very well-known post-trade platform in the capital market space.
(07:28):
They have the entire industry network in FX, right? And so that partnership
effectively brings Ostra distribution relationship credibility to the management
of the settlement rulebook that sits within BATON, with BATON providing the technology.
And that allows BATON to bring their platform to a much broader industry network
with warmth and credibility, right? So that's the channel side of it.
(07:52):
When we're looking at a team, what we're actually looking for is,
I think, a slightly different set.
I mean, obviously, the product matters, the addressable market opportunity matters.
But what really does matter is team. And when it comes to team,
it's charisma, it's energy, and it's coachability.
Some combination of those things is really what matters to us.
(08:15):
Charisma is what's going to
help when you make those warm introductions for people to latch onto it.
It's also going to help drive the team that you built behind you through the
landscape of opportunity.
And we all like to think that these scale-ups are all about starting bottom
left and going top right, but we all know that is not a straight line or a beautiful curve.
(08:37):
It is a very, very jagged and rocky path. And so having the energy to drive your product vision,
to drive your team, to do the 10th meeting with the same energy when you've
just had nine rejections,
to be as excited about the opportunity and carry your team with you when you've
spent nine months without selling a contract, those are the things that matter.
(08:59):
And coachability for us, just to be clear, if I say, I want you to be coachable,
it doesn't mean I want you to do what we say.
It's not shouting from the touchlines, right? So we want to be able to have a conversation.
Maybe many, many things that we're incorrect about. There may be many things
that you disagree with us about.
But we want to be able to have a conversation with you about pattern recognition
(09:21):
that we've seen as we try to traverse this landscape.
Have you thought about that? What are we doing here?
Ultimately, you're the CEO. It's your business, but we want to be able to share
some of our experience and have a good conversation around it and hopefully
avoid some potholes along the way together.
That idea of you supporting the founding team, supporting the CEO,
(09:45):
do you ever run into challenges that they prefer a more hands-off relationship with their investors?
They want more freedom and independence, whereas you want to be kind of coaching,
guiding them more or indeed the other way round.
Do you ever have challenges in terms of the level of support that's needed and
(10:08):
wanted and that you're thinking of providing?
I mean, certainly, I go back to the earlier statement about,
again, it's not all bottom left to top right. And it's a portfolio.
In any portfolio, you're going to have performers and non-performers.
And it's very easy to say that and assume that people mean revenue.
(10:30):
But you're also going to have ones that work with you better and ones that work
with you less well, right?
You're going to have the ones that struggle to get beyond founder-led sales
and to put put in place truly scalable sales machines or that they do,
but then that sales machine doesn't manage to quite plug into the benefit of your network, right?
(10:50):
And by the way, I mean, there's no pride of authorship or ownership here, right?
If a company could go from bottom left to top right and we don't have to lift
a finger, that's really not a problem.
So we're never going to complain about good outcomes where we didn't get as
involved as we potentially could have been.
You will have people that, it turns out, actually need a little bit too much
(11:13):
hand-holding. You'll have people
that don't see the value of the connectivity or don't want to engage.
At the same time, we also think our value really is sort of maximized in a window.
In our first three funds, the three that we have today, we're a Series A or late seed investor.
We're highly likely to be the first institutional capital that you've had.
(11:37):
And if we do a good job together, or if you do a good job without us,
24 months hence, there's probably somebody else coming in to invest.
And they might well be a different stage of investor that come with a different
set of resources that can help in a different way.
And maybe at that point, you should be relying on them more than you're relying
(11:58):
on us. That's totally fine. That's totally fine as well. We love that.
It's a journey and it's a portfolio. And there's always going to be a distribution
of outcomes and relationships.
Now, you've got some enormous banks backing you, the likes of JP Morgan and Barclays.
How do these banks support both Illuminate Financial and your portfolio beyond,
(12:21):
of course, the money that they've put in to your funds?
We are genuinely blessed and massively appreciative of the industry support that we've had,
you know, not just from the banks, but, you know, all three of our funds to
date have been anchored by Deutsche Börse and S&P Global as well.
(12:41):
I think it's really kind of important, or the best way to actually answer the
question perhaps is to kind of say, well, like, why are they doing that?
Why are they partnering with us? And I think it's pretty simple.
I'd love to be able to tell you that we're having financial outcomes that are
going to move JP Morgan's share price.
But realistically, I think that is highly unlikely.
But if you are an industry strategic, there are really only five things that
(13:05):
you could could want to achieve out of this space, engaging with innovation,
engaging with fintech that are outside of the purely financial.
The first one is you want to solve your problems, right? You want to find solutions to your problems.
You have a huge business, many, many touch points, many jurisdictions,
compliance challenges, business efficiency challenges, distribution to clients,
(13:30):
et cetera, et cetera. So you want to solve your problem.
The second is you want to solve your client's problem.
Of channeling emerging solutions to meet the needs of your client.
The third is you might want to invest in the companies that are doing those things.
The fourth is that you might want to acquire the companies that are doing those things.
(13:52):
And last but not least, if you don't want to use a company to do any of those
things, you might just want to be aware of the art of the possible.
And so we think of those as being the five things that our strategic partners engage with us for.
We have 22 people across three global financial markets locations, partner led out of each.
(14:16):
Amazingly, we've seen nearly 7,500 companies to invest in 40.
So the opportunity for our partners is not about our portfolio,
although we're always delighted to introduce our portfolio to anybody that will
listen. not just our partners.
But the opportunity for our partners is to engage with the Illuminate team as
we survey that landscape.
(14:37):
And we can develop our own theses on the various macro trends that matter in
the space and share those with our partners.
We can share the pipeline that we've seen against those opportunities.
Only yesterday, one of my deal team members was hosting a the multi-party call,
all of our strategic partners are welcome on the subject of embedded finance, right?
(15:00):
We share half an hour of what does Illuminate think about the embedded finance space.
And by the way, here are two companies that we think are highly interesting
that you might want to engage with as just one example.
Neither of those companies, for what it's worth, are Illuminate portfolio companies, right?
It's just giving exposure and education, again, sort of mutually beneficial
(15:23):
way to all of our partners and to these companies that hopefully,
again, benefits the ecosystem.
So it's those kinds of things. We partner culturally.
It's a marathon, not a sprint. change you know
does not happen overnight and actually change in large
organizations is actually enabled by a
(15:44):
relatively small number of people around the organization and so
we're very big believers that culture is a key driver of that so whether that
is turning up and presenting to the board of one of our partners or the ex-co
of a division of one of our partners or a cto on-site or a client event or a
graduate trainee program.
(16:05):
Senior leadership conference, just kind of partnering around the change agenda
is really important for us in a kind of long-term, non-transactional way. It raises our profile.
It gives us more network nodes. And more network nodes equals more opportunities
to plug the right solutions in at the moment that they come along.
(16:26):
Long so it's a very very symbiotic relationship i'm
sure it's been a phenomenal learning experience
for you and your colleagues over the last decade or
so what are some of the key lessons you've learned during
these last 10 years wow how
long have you got i think it's it's a
journey right there's a whole bunch of lessons that you know we learned either
(16:51):
prior to illuminate or have of relearned along the way that we've made a really
good effort to enshrine and to illuminate cultural values.
It sounds very West Coast and hippie-ish almost, but being really,
(17:12):
really long-term relationship people, being non-transactional in our interactions,
karma are actually relatively key.
Because when you help people with their problems, when you don't have something to sell them.
They remember you and you're creating the bedrock of the long-term relationships
that actually may well be very leverageable way, way, way off in the future, right?
(17:36):
So we put a lot of time into the network that isn't actually about our portfolio today.
And we spend a lot of time talking to people when they're in job transitions, right?
Helping them out. Oh, I'm leaving this bank. You know, I was,
you know, or I'm ready to leave this bank is one conversation.
And this bank has decided they're ready for me to leave is another.
And helping people, you know, in those moments becomes a very good long-term
(18:01):
source of really valuable relationships. relationships.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Again,
there's no new news there, but sometimes you will invest in portfolios.
You'll try to make connections.
It won't always work out. Sometimes you'll work with partners and you'll have
the same problems, right?
Again, our own journey is also not bottom left to top, right?
(18:23):
I see people, I've just come back from an industry conference and people see
you and say, oh, congratulations, saw your 10-year post.
Great to see your success. And I always say, say, thank you very much for your kind words,
but you're 100% complimenting me on seeing the swan gliding across the path
rather than the furious kicking or potential drowning that's going on underneath the surface.
(18:45):
Well, hopefully you're feeling pretty buoyant today, at least.
Now, you mentioned when we were speaking offline that you're launching a Series
B fund soon, so love to hear more about that.
So it's kind of interesting. I say we've launched three Series A and late seed
funds all around the same sort of investment theses, generational refresh of
(19:08):
capital markets infrastructure,
then the institutionalization of digital assets, which really started with Fund 2 in 2019.
2019, ESG and the carbon transition, massively important to financial services,
alternative markets, infrastructure, wealth, the wealth transition, private markets, etc.
And then, of course, this sort of more horizontal sleeve of enterprise tech
(19:30):
that targets financial services.
And our models work very well across the Series A and late seed landscape.
But we actually identified as early as 2018 that the Series B space was equally
valid across that same set of investment theses and the same partnership user base that we work with.
(19:53):
It wasn't the right time to launch it then.
We actually had to carve out in our fund two documents to allow us to launch such a fund.
But of course, 2019, coming off the back of 2019, you were into Brexit,
then into COVID, then into markets that were really starting to price in a somewhat nonsensical way.
(20:15):
So you find ourselves in 2024, what's changed? Well, market price has normalized,
not corrected, normalized.
We've got a return to pricing differentiation, which is healthy.
The venture tourists, the growth companies, the private equity companies that
were coming into venture have backed off, and so a lot of capital has left the sector.
(20:41):
Series B has probably been more impacted by that withdrawal than any other,
probably 50% reduction in capital that's targeting the sector.
The financial institutions themselves, particularly in the US,
are becoming very Basel III aware.
So I think their own benchmark for where to invest institutional capital is getting higher.
(21:05):
But the thing about a company at Series B is that actually it's much closer
to an institutional adoption inflection point.
If you're a company that's got $5, $6, $7 million of revenue,
if you're already being used by one, two, three, four major financial institutions,
If you've already got a SOC 2 compliance certificate or are well on your way to it,
(21:25):
you're just that much more close to what we call the institutional adoption inflection point.
And the industry rhetoric around innovation over the last decade has really
become, it's gone from what I would call ivory tower innovation theater to applied innovation.
It became so much more digitization. people just
(21:48):
want the rubber to hit the road now right and we think
that series b stage is where it really happens
and there's just a lot of beautiful moments in
time starting to kind of converge to make a really interesting opportunity so
what excites you most about the prospects for your market and for your portfolio
companies over the next say five to ten years that's a really really, really great question.
(22:15):
And I think it's actually, it's drawing together a bunch of things that I've probably already said.
The reality is I was excited about this opportunity enough 10 years ago to bet my career on it.
And that was really about just that generational change in financial markets infrastructure.
But interestingly, when you're fundraising for your first fund and you say,
(22:35):
that's my thesis, professional investors say, well, that's great,
Mark. mark, how long is that thesis actually good for?
If I'm going to back you as an emerging market, an emerging manager to go after
that, are you going to solve all the industry problems in one fund,
which is a 10-year cycle?
Because if you are, I probably don't want to invest because if I'm going to
(22:56):
back you as an emerging manager and you're going to be successful,
I want to back the next six to 10 funds, not just one.
So there are two things that are really exciting. The first one is that actually,
Because we are such a slow adopter of cutting-edge technology,
for good reasons, we're highly regulated,
mission-critical, compliance-driven, 100% uptime.
(23:17):
We have to be adopting things that are hugely resilient.
We're not adopting at the speed of consumer fintech.
I sat down this week, actually, with the head of financial services at one of
the big three cloud providers and said, hey, I tell people I don't think we're
20% of the way along the cloud adoption journey.
(23:37):
I think that's conservative. What do you think? He said, I thought it was inappropriately conservative.
We aren't in double digits yet. So one of the things that's actually exciting
is that even with this set of technologies that we can now say are very,
very battle-tested, institutionally, are we 10%?
Are we 15% of the way into that journey? You then overlay that actually the
(24:00):
opportunity of the addressable market within financial services isn't just about
the infrastructure refresh that is fixed income, foreign exchange settlement, collateral,
all of those kinds of things we set the company up around.
It is this new wave of what is going to end up on blockchain rails,
the institutionalization of digital assets. That is coming.
(24:20):
The central bank digital currency conversation gets louder every day.
The tokenization conversation gets louder every day. So there's that massive opportunity.
The consumer really recognizes that financial services have a key role to play
in the carbon transition, right? That's a massive generational opportunity.
(24:40):
The wealth transition, as I touched on very briefly, that is a once-in-a-generation
thing that is happening as this wealth cascades down a generation.
Every one of those things is something that you could raise an individual fund
around that we choose to have as just ever larger addressable market and opportunity
(25:00):
for us against this financial services space that spends more on technology than any other sector.
That is exciting.
Somebody told me this week, the addressable market just for cloud-enableable, i.e.
The potential cloud spend for financial service institutions, $240 billion.
(25:25):
I'm very excited. And who are the people that have inspired you over the years?
Who are the technology or business or financial gurus who you really look up
to and respect and their ideas, their vision, their achievements have really inspired you?
You? I have to start by going slightly off-piste and giving a shout out to my father.
(25:50):
He's not a financial man. He worked for Everest, which if people are listening
outside of the UK, that was a large replacement window company.
He was a carpenter by trade.
One day, the teachers at my school said to my parents, parents evening,
you should consider sending Mark to a fee-paying school.
I don't think my parents actually knew that fee-paying schools existed.
(26:13):
And the only way that my parents were going to be able to afford to send me
to a fee-paying school would be if my father managed to internalize some of
the value of what he was doing for other people.
So he actually took a leap of faith when I was about 10 years old and set up his own business.
That was my first window to entrepreneurship. He never scaled it into a massive enterprise.
(26:38):
But it paid for my education. It paid for my family's quality of life.
We were talking about your holidays in the Canaries earlier before we started this.
But that's where the value of entrepreneurship, the value of being your own
boss, really, really comes from. I have an incredible respect for the risk that
both my parents took in that journey.
(27:00):
And I think that really, really defined how much I value being my own boss.
I've been then very fortunate to surround myself or have ringside seats for
just watching other incredible entrepreneurs within financial services.
I was very fortunate to be a board member back in probably 2002-2005 of a very small company in St.
(27:27):
Albans called Market, which Lance Ugler founded and ran and have followed that
journey all the way through to them becoming our anchor investors in Fund One,
a relationship that continues to this day.
So seeing how Lance and his partners dealt with large financial institutions,
(27:48):
delivering value to them, while simultaneously managing to kind of carve out
their own sense of entrepreneurial destiny was really invaluable.
I've been part of the Expo for Michael Spencer, who's created immense value
within ICAP and its related set of companies, met many others along the way.
(28:12):
So I've been very fortunate to see other people's entrepreneurial journeys and
assimilate some some of their lessons, learn a few of my own along the way as well.
And you are the sum of the people that you surround yourself with at the end
of the day. And I've been very fortunate to have some really interesting ringside seats.
Indeed. And now you're running a global business, global portfolio, global partners.
(28:36):
Your working days must be truly hectic and your spare time must be so precious.
How do you relax and switch off?
That's a really good question. You have to really proactively choose to.
I think when I decided to set this business up, my wife, who effectively runs
her own business as well, Michelle
(28:56):
said to me, are you sure you want to do this? You will never be off.
I think she was very right.
I think setting some boundary conditions is really clear.
Not to say, actually, I don't want to work.
You are going to be thinking about your business 24-7, but you actually need
the brain space to think productively.
(29:18):
There's a reason that people say, my best idea
comes to me when i'm in the shower or in the bath or
or when i'm swimming or whatever and you know it's very easy
to think that's about water it is about water but
it's not about i don't think it's about a primal thing about water it's because
historically your work didn't follow your paperwork didn't follow you into the
(29:40):
shower your device doesn't follow you into the shower it can follow you into
the bath right so so actually i think choosing to be disconnected is really really important.
It's as simple as living here. I'm fortunate time zone-wise and weather-wise. I'm in Miami.
I can walk the dog before I start work.
(30:00):
Choosing to actually do that where you're not multitasking.
Sometimes I find myself picking my phone up and looking at a WhatsApp or a Slack
or an email and I chastise myself and put the phone back in my pocket.
When I'm out walking the dog.
I'm not listening to a podcast, sorry.
Podcasts are great. By the way, comedy is great. Music is great.
(30:22):
Magazines are great. But sometimes you literally just need to let your brain roam free.
So it's finding the quiet moments. That's one that I try to respect.
Try to read. I actually try to also... I really, really greatly enjoy biographies.
I really, really greatly enjoy business histories.
But I also try to just just read stuff
(30:45):
that is nothing to do with that so you know
my sort of dirty secret is you know enjoying the
sort of the jack reacher type novel you know
you know the xsas type novel you know
kind of pulp fiction type stuff that just
really kind of gives you a brain reset and then and then my
great passion in life is everyone that knows me knows
i'm a real car guy cars are my my
(31:08):
really really great passion in life and so just spending the time
on car websites reading around the subject
occasionally getting the chance to drive that is really
my great my great reset what's the best car or the most memorable car you've
ever driven well the best car the most memorable car ever driven i was fortunate
to own a mclaren f1 which is a road car not another formula one car car when we sold CreditX in 2009.
(31:36):
I took some of my ill-gotten gains and invested in an ex-Le Mans race car that
had been reconverted back to the road.
I always say to people, people often ask me what my dream car is.
I say, look, I've actually been fortunate enough to own my dream car,
which is that, which I bought in 2009.
I sold at the end of 2016 when it became more of a financial financial asset
(31:58):
than a car. So it's now become my dream car again.
But the other question I get, what car are you most excited to drive next?
And the answer is simply the next one, right? I'm not a car snob.
I'm a guy that I will happily drive a truck or a van or a minivan that I've
never driven before because that excites me as much as the latest whiz-bang hypercar.
(32:23):
It's nice to hear. Well, Mark, thanks so much for joining me on today's episode
and for walking me through the Illuminate journey and your vision for the future.
And hopefully, I know you've got to jump in the car soon and go off to a meeting.
Hopefully, you'll have a nice, safe and within speed limits drive to your next
(32:45):
meeting. Well, thank you very much for having me.
If I say one thing on that point, because I think I always like to try and tie
my passion for my work and my passion for my hobby together.
As much as I love cars, I already referenced the fact that my father was a carpenter by trade.
I was brought up in a family that teaches you, you always have to use the right tool for the job.
(33:07):
And I'm afraid that on a Friday in Miami during spring break week to get to
your next external meeting,
the right tool for a job is an uber and i'll
get some i'll get some work done in the half an hour on the way up and
i get some work done on the half an hour on the way back that is the right tool
for the job but it's important to remember to always use that one and you'll
(33:28):
arrive at your meeting nice and relaxed which is also important exactly but
thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you today gary it's always
it's always a pleasure and i look forward to being able to share the output.
This episode of the Startup to Scale Up game plan was brought to you by Alpina Search.
Head over to www.alpinasearch.com for advice on scaling your technology startup
(33:53):
and recruiting high impact senior talent.
Music.
The Startup to Scale-Up Game Plan is brought to you by Alpina Search,
Europe's premier talent search firm dedicated to helping technology startups
and scale-ups recruit high-impact executives.
Now, over to your host, Gary Rieman.
So, I'm delighted to welcome Mark Beeston to today's episode.
(00:24):
Mark's the founding partner at Illuminate Financial, A global VC investing in
enterprise software companies serving the needs of financial services businesses.
So Illuminate Financial is backed by some of the world's largest financial institutions,
including the NY Mellon, J.P.
(00:45):
Morgan, S&P Global, Barclays and Citi. So, Mark, welcome to the Startup to Scale
Up game plan and congratulations on the 10-year anniversary of you launching the fund.
Thank you very much, Gary. Great to be here and great to both be here on your
podcast and still in business 10 years later, as you kindly mentioned.
(01:07):
Exactly. So tell me about your journey into the world of venture capital.
What got you started? Yeah, sure. So I guess we founded the business as noted 10 years ago.
The journey to that was really, that's the fourth thing I've done in my career.
I've been in financial markets for 30 years. I was fortunate to join Deutsche
(01:31):
Bank before Deutsche Bank started its real trading ascendancy in the 90s.
And so I spent 13 years there as a fixed income derivative trader,
manager of global trading desks, chief operating officer of their global rates
and global credit trading businesses.
A really fantastic journey, built my first industry network there,
(01:52):
a rising tide, floats all boats, so better lucky than smart as the trading adage has it.
But one of the things that that really gave me was the benefit of getting to
sit on the boards of what we would now perhaps define as consortia industry fintech.
So that was my first exposure to the fintech world as we now call it,
(02:14):
although even 10 years ago, we were barely calling it fintech.
I left Deutsche in 2005 to go and solve an industry problem around credit default
swap post-trade processing.
And I joined the ex-co of an inter-dealer broker called CreditX to do that at
the same time that TA Associates invested in them.
So that became my first exposure to the world of the financial sponsor.
(02:38):
We became the market standard in our space.
That led to an acquisition of CreditX Group by Intercontinental Exchange,
which was a great thing to be part of.
But along the way, I kind of learned, I think, what I think are the two most
important lessons of my career, and certainly what underpins the foundational DNA of Illuminate.
And those two lessons are pretty simple.
(03:00):
The first one is a horrible moment of self-realization, politely defined as,
oh, my goodness, was it really this difficult to sell me something I desperately
needed when I was a managing director at a bank?
And the answer to that is, unfortunately, yes. And it still is.
It's still quite difficult.
The thing that actually made us successful was, importantly,
(03:22):
again, nothing to do with the over-the-horizon technologies that banks,
CTOs love talking about, and everything to do with having a technology that was fit for purpose,
but actually also having an industry network that you can take your technology
to with warmth and credibility to give it a chance of actually becoming an adopted solution.
(03:43):
That, of course, being the difference between a potentially valuable solution
and just a white elephant.
We'll come to Illuminate, no doubt, but that really became,
as I say, foundational DNA for our approach to industry partnership and how
we could perhaps help companies come to market and our partners adopt companies
(04:06):
in a way that's beneficial for the whole ecosystem.
Post the ICE acquisition, I was asked to go and work at ICAP with one of my
old bosses who was chief operating officer at the time.
And so I ended up on the EXCO at ICAP running the post-trade and information
division, which was 35% of the bottom line.
Did a couple of transactions for them early on.
(04:28):
We did a first round investment in a tiny company called Acacia Soft,
which the London Stock Exchange acquired last year for around $700 billion.
And I did the acquisition of another company called TriOptima,
which is now the market standard in derivative trade compression and reconciliation,
was chairman of that for four years.
And along the way, I hired a gentleman and set up ICAP's own corporate venture
(04:51):
unit before one day in 2013, hearing myself say for the nth time,
and I've said it thousands, literally thousands of times since,
we'd hit a moment of generational change in financial markets its infrastructure.
And the need for change was really driven by the macro operating environment of financial markets.
So huge industry deleveraging post the financial crisis, massive multi-jurisdictional
(05:16):
regulation, and last but not least, the whole industry almost sleepwalking into
a zero tolerance compliance environment.
And that came with a whole set of sort of business needs for solutions.
And invariably, the solutions to that are technology.
Technology but again it's all about problem solving rather than technology for
technology's sake and i'm a big believer that if you hear yourself change your story multiple times.
(05:42):
Saying the same stories over and again you should really work out the why is
it a nuance or is it or is it a fundamental change and if it's a fundamental
change should work out what does that mean and what are you doing about it and
for me what that meant was there is a generational opportunity.
And that is the opportunity I have effectively bet my career on with the founding
(06:03):
of Illuminate 10 years ago.
You talked about warmth and credibility.
Intrigued by that, in terms of you evaluating companies to invest in or founding
teams to invest in, is this one of the things you're looking for,
warmth and credibility?
And how can aspirational or CEOs
(06:24):
and founders develop those traits or demonstrate they have those traits.
So actually, when I use the expression warmth and credibility,
it's more about the idea of how do you transport the idea or the new product
of a company out to a broad industry network rather than just cold calling.
(06:46):
One way that obviously an enterprise-focused fintech could do that would be
through taking investment from Illuminate, where hopefully we believe we have
a pretty strong industry network to help get some engagement.
But that is obviously just one of a number of potential channels, right?
One way to do it would be to partner with an incumbent, right?
(07:07):
So literally last week, one of our fund two companies, Baton Systems,
who are an FX payment versus payment platform, they've settled $8 trillion of FX under their own name.
They actually announced a long-term partnership with Ostra, a very,
very well-known post-trade platform in the capital market space.
(07:28):
They have the entire industry network in FX, right? And so that partnership
effectively brings Ostra distribution relationship credibility to the management
of the settlement rulebook that sits within BATON, with BATON providing the technology.
And that allows BATON to bring their platform to a much broader industry network
with warmth and credibility, right? So that's the channel side of it.
(07:52):
When we're looking at a team, what we're actually looking for is,
I think, a slightly different set.
I mean, obviously, the product matters, the addressable market opportunity matters.
But what really does matter is team. And when it comes to team,
it's charisma, it's energy, and it's coachability.
Some combination of those things is really what matters to us.
(08:15):
Charisma is what's going to
help when you make those warm introductions for people to latch onto it.
It's also going to help drive the team that you built behind you through the
landscape of opportunity.
And we all like to think that these scale-ups are all about starting bottom
left and going top right, but we all know that is not a straight line or a beautiful curve.
(08:37):
It is a very, very jagged and rocky path. And so having the energy to drive your product vision,
to drive your team, to do the 10th meeting with the same energy when you've
just had nine rejections,
to be as excited about the opportunity and carry your team with you when you've
spent nine months without selling a contract, those are the things that matter.
(08:59):
And coachability for us, just to be clear, if I say, I want you to be coachable,
it doesn't mean I want you to do what we say.
It's not shouting from the touchlines, right? So we want to be able to have a conversation.
Maybe many, many things that we're incorrect about. There may be many things
that you disagree with us about.
But we want to be able to have a conversation with you about pattern recognition
(09:21):
that we've seen as we try to traverse this landscape.
Have you thought about that? What are we doing here?
Ultimately, you're the CEO. It's your business, but we want to be able to share
some of our experience and have a good conversation around it and hopefully
avoid some potholes along the way together.
That idea of you supporting the founding team, supporting the CEO,
(09:45):
do you ever run into challenges that they prefer a more hands-off relationship with their investors?
They want more freedom and independence, whereas you want to be kind of coaching,
guiding them more or indeed the other way round.
Do you ever have challenges in terms of the level of support that's needed and
(10:08):
wanted and that you're thinking of providing?
I mean, certainly, I go back to the earlier statement about,
again, it's not all bottom left to top right. And it's a portfolio.
In any portfolio, you're going to have performers and non-performers.
And it's very easy to say that and assume that people mean revenue.
(10:30):
But you're also going to have ones that work with you better and ones that work
with you less well, right?
You're going to have the ones that struggle to get beyond founder-led sales
and to put put in place truly scalable sales machines or that they do,
but then that sales machine doesn't manage to quite plug into the benefit of your network, right?
(10:50):
And by the way, I mean, there's no pride of authorship or ownership here, right?
If a company could go from bottom left to top right and we don't have to lift
a finger, that's really not a problem.
So we're never going to complain about good outcomes where we didn't get as
involved as we potentially could have been.
You will have people that, it turns out, actually need a little bit too much
(11:13):
hand-holding. You'll have people
that don't see the value of the connectivity or don't want to engage.
At the same time, we also think our value really is sort of maximized in a window.
In our first three funds, the three that we have today, we're a Series A or late seed investor.
We're highly likely to be the first institutional capital that you've had.
(11:37):
And if we do a good job together, or if you do a good job without us,
24 months hence, there's probably somebody else coming in to invest.
And they might well be a different stage of investor that come with a different
set of resources that can help in a different way.
And maybe at that point, you should be relying on them more than you're relying
(11:58):
on us. That's totally fine. That's totally fine as well. We love that.
It's a journey and it's a portfolio. And there's always going to be a distribution
of outcomes and relationships.
Now, you've got some enormous banks backing you, the likes of JP Morgan and Barclays.
How do these banks support both Illuminate Financial and your portfolio beyond,
(12:21):
of course, the money that they've put in to your funds?
We are genuinely blessed and massively appreciative of the industry support that we've had,
you know, not just from the banks, but, you know, all three of our funds to
date have been anchored by Deutsche Börse and S&P Global as well.
(12:41):
I think it's really kind of important, or the best way to actually answer the
question perhaps is to kind of say, well, like, why are they doing that?
Why are they partnering with us? And I think it's pretty simple.
I'd love to be able to tell you that we're having financial outcomes that are
going to move JP Morgan's share price.
But realistically, I think that is highly unlikely.
But if you are an industry strategic, there are really only five things that
(13:05):
you could could want to achieve out of this space, engaging with innovation,
engaging with fintech that are outside of the purely financial.
The first one is you want to solve your problems, right? You want to find solutions to your problems.
You have a huge business, many, many touch points, many jurisdictions,
compliance challenges, business efficiency challenges, distribution to clients,
(13:30):
et cetera, et cetera. So you want to solve your problem.
The second is you want to solve your client's problem.
Of channeling emerging solutions to meet the needs of your client.
The third is you might want to invest in the companies that are doing those things.
The fourth is that you might want to acquire the companies that are doing those things.
(13:52):
And last but not least, if you don't want to use a company to do any of those
things, you might just want to be aware of the art of the possible.
And so we think of those as being the five things that our strategic partners engage with us for.
We have 22 people across three global financial markets locations, partner led out of each.
(14:16):
Amazingly, we've seen nearly 7,500 companies to invest in 40.
So the opportunity for our partners is not about our portfolio,
although we're always delighted to introduce our portfolio to anybody that will
listen. not just our partners.
But the opportunity for our partners is to engage with the Illuminate team as
we survey that landscape.
(14:37):
And we can develop our own theses on the various macro trends that matter in
the space and share those with our partners.
We can share the pipeline that we've seen against those opportunities.
Only yesterday, one of my deal team members was hosting a the multi-party call,
all of our strategic partners are welcome on the subject of embedded finance, right?
(15:00):
We share half an hour of what does Illuminate think about the embedded finance space.
And by the way, here are two companies that we think are highly interesting
that you might want to engage with as just one example.
Neither of those companies, for what it's worth, are Illuminate portfolio companies, right?
It's just giving exposure and education, again, sort of mutually beneficial
(15:23):
way to all of our partners and to these companies that hopefully,
again, benefits the ecosystem.
So it's those kinds of things. We partner culturally.
It's a marathon, not a sprint. change you know
does not happen overnight and actually change in large
organizations is actually enabled by a
(15:44):
relatively small number of people around the organization and so
we're very big believers that culture is a key driver of that so whether that
is turning up and presenting to the board of one of our partners or the ex-co
of a division of one of our partners or a cto on-site or a client event or a
graduate trainee program.
(16:05):
Senior leadership conference, just kind of partnering around the change agenda
is really important for us in a kind of long-term, non-transactional way. It raises our profile.
It gives us more network nodes. And more network nodes equals more opportunities
to plug the right solutions in at the moment that they come along.
(16:26):
Long so it's a very very symbiotic relationship i'm
sure it's been a phenomenal learning experience
for you and your colleagues over the last decade or
so what are some of the key lessons you've learned during
these last 10 years wow how
long have you got i think it's it's a
journey right there's a whole bunch of lessons that you know we learned either
(16:51):
prior to illuminate or have of relearned along the way that we've made a really
good effort to enshrine and to illuminate cultural values.
It sounds very West Coast and hippie-ish almost, but being really,
(17:12):
really long-term relationship people, being non-transactional in our interactions,
karma are actually relatively key.
Because when you help people with their problems, when you don't have something to sell them.
They remember you and you're creating the bedrock of the long-term relationships
that actually may well be very leverageable way, way, way off in the future, right?
(17:36):
So we put a lot of time into the network that isn't actually about our portfolio today.
And we spend a lot of time talking to people when they're in job transitions, right?
Helping them out. Oh, I'm leaving this bank. You know, I was,
you know, or I'm ready to leave this bank is one conversation.
And this bank has decided they're ready for me to leave is another.
And helping people, you know, in those moments becomes a very good long-term
(18:01):
source of really valuable relationships. relationships.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Again,
there's no new news there, but sometimes you will invest in portfolios.
You'll try to make connections.
It won't always work out. Sometimes you'll work with partners and you'll have
the same problems, right?
Again, our own journey is also not bottom left to top, right?
(18:23):
I see people, I've just come back from an industry conference and people see
you and say, oh, congratulations, saw your 10-year post.
Great to see your success. And I always say, say, thank you very much for your kind words,
but you're 100% complimenting me on seeing the swan gliding across the path
rather than the furious kicking or potential drowning that's going on underneath the surface.
(18:45):
Well, hopefully you're feeling pretty buoyant today, at least.
Now, you mentioned when we were speaking offline that you're launching a Series
B fund soon, so love to hear more about that.
So it's kind of interesting. I say we've launched three Series A and late seed
funds all around the same sort of investment theses, generational refresh of
(19:08):
capital markets infrastructure,
then the institutionalization of digital assets, which really started with Fund 2 in 2019.
2019, ESG and the carbon transition, massively important to financial services,
alternative markets, infrastructure, wealth, the wealth transition, private markets, etc.
And then, of course, this sort of more horizontal sleeve of enterprise tech
(19:30):
that targets financial services.
And our models work very well across the Series A and late seed landscape.
But we actually identified as early as 2018 that the Series B space was equally
valid across that same set of investment theses and the same partnership user base that we work with.
(19:53):
It wasn't the right time to launch it then.
We actually had to carve out in our fund two documents to allow us to launch such a fund.
But of course, 2019, coming off the back of 2019, you were into Brexit,
then into COVID, then into markets that were really starting to price in a somewhat nonsensical way.
(20:15):
So you find ourselves in 2024, what's changed? Well, market price has normalized,
not corrected, normalized.
We've got a return to pricing differentiation, which is healthy.
The venture tourists, the growth companies, the private equity companies that
were coming into venture have backed off, and so a lot of capital has left the sector.
(20:41):
Series B has probably been more impacted by that withdrawal than any other,
probably 50% reduction in capital that's targeting the sector.
The financial institutions themselves, particularly in the US,
are becoming very Basel III aware.
So I think their own benchmark for where to invest institutional capital is getting higher.
(21:05):
But the thing about a company at Series B is that actually it's much closer
to an institutional adoption inflection point.
If you're a company that's got $5, $6, $7 million of revenue,
if you're already being used by one, two, three, four major financial institutions,
If you've already got a SOC 2 compliance certificate or are well on your way to it,
(21:25):
you're just that much more close to what we call the institutional adoption inflection point.
And the industry rhetoric around innovation over the last decade has really
become, it's gone from what I would call ivory tower innovation theater to applied innovation.
It became so much more digitization. people just
(21:48):
want the rubber to hit the road now right and we think
that series b stage is where it really happens
and there's just a lot of beautiful moments in
time starting to kind of converge to make a really interesting opportunity so
what excites you most about the prospects for your market and for your portfolio
companies over the next say five to ten years that's a really really, really great question.
(22:15):
And I think it's actually, it's drawing together a bunch of things that I've probably already said.
The reality is I was excited about this opportunity enough 10 years ago to bet my career on it.
And that was really about just that generational change in financial markets infrastructure.
But interestingly, when you're fundraising for your first fund and you say,
(22:35):
that's my thesis, professional investors say, well, that's great,
Mark. mark, how long is that thesis actually good for?
If I'm going to back you as an emerging market, an emerging manager to go after
that, are you going to solve all the industry problems in one fund,
which is a 10-year cycle?
Because if you are, I probably don't want to invest because if I'm going to
(22:56):
back you as an emerging manager and you're going to be successful,
I want to back the next six to 10 funds, not just one.
So there are two things that are really exciting. The first one is that actually,
Because we are such a slow adopter of cutting-edge technology,
for good reasons, we're highly regulated,
mission-critical, compliance-driven, 100% uptime.
(23:17):
We have to be adopting things that are hugely resilient.
We're not adopting at the speed of consumer fintech.
I sat down this week, actually, with the head of financial services at one of
the big three cloud providers and said, hey, I tell people I don't think we're
20% of the way along the cloud adoption journey.
(23:37):
I think that's conservative. What do you think? He said, I thought it was inappropriately conservative.
We aren't in double digits yet. So one of the things that's actually exciting
is that even with this set of technologies that we can now say are very,
very battle-tested, institutionally, are we 10%?
Are we 15% of the way into that journey? You then overlay that actually the
(24:00):
opportunity of the addressable market within financial services isn't just about
the infrastructure refresh that is fixed income, foreign exchange settlement, collateral,
all of those kinds of things we set the company up around.
It is this new wave of what is going to end up on blockchain rails,
the institutionalization of digital assets. That is coming.
(24:20):
The central bank digital currency conversation gets louder every day.
The tokenization conversation gets louder every day. So there's that massive opportunity.
The consumer really recognizes that financial services have a key role to play
in the carbon transition, right? That's a massive generational opportunity.
(24:40):
The wealth transition, as I touched on very briefly, that is a once-in-a-generation
thing that is happening as this wealth cascades down a generation.
Every one of those things is something that you could raise an individual fund
around that we choose to have as just ever larger addressable market and opportunity
(25:00):
for us against this financial services space that spends more on technology than any other sector.
That is exciting.
Somebody told me this week, the addressable market just for cloud-enableable, i.e.
The potential cloud spend for financial service institutions, $240 billion.
(25:25):
I'm very excited. And who are the people that have inspired you over the years?
Who are the technology or business or financial gurus who you really look up
to and respect and their ideas, their vision, their achievements have really inspired you?
You? I have to start by going slightly off-piste and giving a shout out to my father.
(25:50):
He's not a financial man. He worked for Everest, which if people are listening
outside of the UK, that was a large replacement window company.
He was a carpenter by trade.
One day, the teachers at my school said to my parents, parents evening,
you should consider sending Mark to a fee-paying school.
I don't think my parents actually knew that fee-paying schools existed.
(26:13):
And the only way that my parents were going to be able to afford to send me
to a fee-paying school would be if my father managed to internalize some of
the value of what he was doing for other people.
So he actually took a leap of faith when I was about 10 years old and set up his own business.
That was my first window to entrepreneurship. He never scaled it into a massive enterprise.
(26:38):
But it paid for my education. It paid for my family's quality of life.
We were talking about your holidays in the Canaries earlier before we started this.
But that's where the value of entrepreneurship, the value of being your own
boss, really, really comes from. I have an incredible respect for the risk that
both my parents took in that journey.
(27:00):
And I think that really, really defined how much I value being my own boss.
I've been then very fortunate to surround myself or have ringside seats for
just watching other incredible entrepreneurs within financial services.
I was very fortunate to be a board member back in probably 2002-2005 of a very small company in St.
(27:27):
Albans called Market, which Lance Ugler founded and ran and have followed that
journey all the way through to them becoming our anchor investors in Fund One,
a relationship that continues to this day.
So seeing how Lance and his partners dealt with large financial institutions,
(27:48):
delivering value to them, while simultaneously managing to kind of carve out
their own sense of entrepreneurial destiny was really invaluable.
I've been part of the Expo for Michael Spencer, who's created immense value
within ICAP and its related set of companies, met many others along the way.
(28:12):
So I've been very fortunate to see other people's entrepreneurial journeys and
assimilate some some of their lessons, learn a few of my own along the way as well.
And you are the sum of the people that you surround yourself with at the end
of the day. And I've been very fortunate to have some really interesting ringside seats.
Indeed. And now you're running a global business, global portfolio, global partners.
(28:36):
Your working days must be truly hectic and your spare time must be so precious.
How do you relax and switch off?
That's a really good question. You have to really proactively choose to.
I think when I decided to set this business up, my wife, who effectively runs
her own business as well, Michelle
(28:56):
said to me, are you sure you want to do this? You will never be off.
I think she was very right.
I think setting some boundary conditions is really clear.
Not to say, actually, I don't want to work.
You are going to be thinking about your business 24-7, but you actually need
the brain space to think productively.
(29:18):
There's a reason that people say, my best idea
comes to me when i'm in the shower or in the bath or
or when i'm swimming or whatever and you know it's very easy
to think that's about water it is about water but
it's not about i don't think it's about a primal thing about water it's because
historically your work didn't follow your paperwork didn't follow you into the
(29:40):
shower your device doesn't follow you into the shower it can follow you into
the bath right so so actually i think choosing to be disconnected is really really important.
It's as simple as living here. I'm fortunate time zone-wise and weather-wise. I'm in Miami.
I can walk the dog before I start work.
(30:00):
Choosing to actually do that where you're not multitasking.
Sometimes I find myself picking my phone up and looking at a WhatsApp or a Slack
or an email and I chastise myself and put the phone back in my pocket.
When I'm out walking the dog.
I'm not listening to a podcast, sorry.
Podcasts are great. By the way, comedy is great. Music is great.
(30:22):
Magazines are great. But sometimes you literally just need to let your brain roam free.
So it's finding the quiet moments. That's one that I try to respect.
Try to read. I actually try to also... I really, really greatly enjoy biographies.
I really, really greatly enjoy business histories.
But I also try to just just read stuff
(30:45):
that is nothing to do with that so you know
my sort of dirty secret is you know enjoying the
sort of the jack reacher type novel you know
you know the xsas type novel you know
kind of pulp fiction type stuff that just
really kind of gives you a brain reset and then and then my
great passion in life is everyone that knows me knows
i'm a real car guy cars are my my
(31:08):
really really great passion in life and so just spending the time
on car websites reading around the subject
occasionally getting the chance to drive that is really
my great my great reset what's the best car or the most memorable car you've
ever driven well the best car the most memorable car ever driven i was fortunate
to own a mclaren f1 which is a road car not another formula one car car when we sold CreditX in 2009.
(31:36):
I took some of my ill-gotten gains and invested in an ex-Le Mans race car that
had been reconverted back to the road.
I always say to people, people often ask me what my dream car is.
I say, look, I've actually been fortunate enough to own my dream car,
which is that, which I bought in 2009.
I sold at the end of 2016 when it became more of a financial financial asset
(31:58):
than a car. So it's now become my dream car again.
But the other question I get, what car are you most excited to drive next?
And the answer is simply the next one, right? I'm not a car snob.
I'm a guy that I will happily drive a truck or a van or a minivan that I've
never driven before because that excites me as much as the latest whiz-bang hypercar.
(32:23):
It's nice to hear. Well, Mark, thanks so much for joining me on today's episode
and for walking me through the Illuminate journey and your vision for the future.
And hopefully, I know you've got to jump in the car soon and go off to a meeting.
Hopefully, you'll have a nice, safe and within speed limits drive to your next
(32:45):
meeting. Well, thank you very much for having me.
If I say one thing on that point, because I think I always like to try and tie
my passion for my work and my passion for my hobby together.
As much as I love cars, I already referenced the fact that my father was a carpenter by trade.
I was brought up in a family that teaches you, you always have to use the right tool for the job.
(33:07):
And I'm afraid that on a Friday in Miami during spring break week to get to
your next external meeting,
the right tool for a job is an uber and i'll
get some i'll get some work done in the half an hour on the way up and
i get some work done on the half an hour on the way back that is the right tool
for the job but it's important to remember to always use that one and you'll
(33:28):
arrive at your meeting nice and relaxed which is also important exactly but
thank you very much for the opportunity to talk to you today gary it's always
it's always a pleasure and i look forward to being able to share the output.
This episode of the Startup to Scale Up game plan was brought to you by Alpina Search.
Head over to www.alpinasearch.com for advice on scaling your technology startup
(33:53):
and recruiting high impact senior talent.
Music.
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