Paul Miller

Paul Miller (LinkedIn, personal website)  is Managing Partner and CEO of Bethnal Green Ventures, which is "Europe’s leading early-stage tech for good VC".

Note that at about 33 minutes there are some pauses because our internet connection went down.

Our conversation covers how to run a 'Tech for Good' VC, including having a selection process that works, and investing in ambitious, leading-edge companies.

Some specifics:
-Some of the Venture Capital (VC) jargon, like: 'early stage', 'managing partner', 'general partner', and 'limited partner'.
-The structure of funds in a VC firm.
-BGV's role in the start of Fairphone, an Amsterdam-based electronics company which is 'changing how our devices are built and produced'.
-BGV's role in the start of Aparito, accelerating healthcare by digitising clinic trials.
-How valuable campaigning skills are to a start-up CEO, as there is need to keep on storying telling your route to success.
-The value in having a 'pointy' experience of the problem they are trying to address. Not a generic appreciation, but a deeper explanation which gets into the detail of what it is like for those facing the problem.
-BGV's own process innovation of how it invites and selects the organisation it backs: an open call, followed by structured evaluation by a diverse spread of experts (which helps avoid the trap of solving problems for white dudes who all went to Ivy League universities).
-The biggest challenge for a small VC firm is to raise the capital, mirroring the experience of the start-up founders. There are some improvements, such as the British Business Bank, and Big Society Capital.
-Paul believes that the government needs to put some actual force behind institutional investors to invest in innovations, so that the pension funds are not just reaping the rewards of past innovation, but also investing in the innovations which will pay the pensions of the future.

This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Oh

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:07

hello. This is one of several interviews for the students studying in the MSc in sustainable resources at UCL. My name is David bent, and I'm an honorary lecturer at the UCL Institute for Sustainable resources, and CO lead for the module on innovation and business and sustainability. Most of the course gives people the latest academic theory and insight, these 30 minute interviews with practitioners to give some of the grit under the fingernails of innovating for sustainability today. And I'm delighted to say we're joined by Paul Miller, who is one of the managing partners of Bethnal Green ventures, which is a Tech for Good venture capital firm. Hello, Paul. Hello, really good to see you, too. So, first off, what is your role and organisation?

Paul Miller: 0:51

Well, my role is managing partner and CEO of a company called Bethnal Green ventures. And what we do at BGV is invest in early stage companies, often just ideas, to be honest, that are trying to have a positive impact using technology. So we call ourselves a tech for good VC firm. Cool.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 1:14

And so there's a little bit of non literature we need to unpack for people, early stage. So there's often people talking about to precede and like unpack that piece of jargon. First, what is early stage?

Paul Miller: 1:27

Venture capital is a area prone to jargon, let's put it that way. When I say early stage, I basically mean, yeah, things that are a bit more than an idea. But they're usually a team of two or three people who come to us with, I would say, a prototype of something. So they might have built something that shows the promise of a particular kind of technology to solve a particular problem. And I think that's something we'll come back to is that how do you how do you think how do we think about problems? Because that's quite an important thing. But yeah, so it's typically a team of two or three people it might be just in the process of setting up a company, they might have thought a bit about what the business model is, who the who the customers are, and things like that, they almost certainly won't be making any money yet. They almost certainly won't have any employees beyond themselves yet. All those kinds of things. So, in, in VC jargon, yeah, we're a precede investor.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 2:29

And then, so help unpack for us, what does it mean to be a managing partner? So what's your role in the organisation?

Paul Miller: 2:38

I mean, it's my fault, I think. I helped BGV. But ultimately, in venture capital firms, you have a small number of people who are ultimately responsible for the investment, so or the performance of the investment. So we are the people who Financial Conduct Authority checks in on whether we're the people that our investors check in on so whether it's a bit like the directors of a company, if you're talking about just a normal company, but most venture capital firms are actually structured with partnerships. So hence, the managing partner rather than kind of managing director.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 3:21

And there's, I mean, I feel like I should know this, but limited partner, general partner, there's an extra layer of jargon there to unpack around VC funds. So help us understand that.

Paul Miller: 3:31

Yeah, so limited partners are the investors in venture capital funds, so that could be company or sort of high net worth individual or in the case of big venture capital firms could be pension funds, insurance firms, all those kinds of people. So they're the limited partners, they don't have any say in the day to day decisions of that fund. So they don't actually decide what is investment, they just agreed to provide capital with a particular investment mandate, strategy, if you like for investing, but they don't get involved in the individual decisions. The general partner is usually that's usually either a person or a company that is the coordinator, if you like, of the, of the, of the venture capital firm, and they are they are responsible for decisions. managing partners is more of a fluid term, to be honest, it's not a legal term. But often the people who work for the general partner company are often the senior people that are often known as managing partners.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 4:36

Sure. And that also points to another part of the legal structure here that there's a company called Bethnal Green ventures and you have funds and that an investor is putting money into a fund which you control. Is that the right way to understand it?

Paul Miller: 4:49

Yes, exactly. And they, we have multiple funds going at once as well. So we've had So we've run a whole bunch of funds, and they tend to invest for a period. So usually a few years. And then once the once the initial investments are made, they move into a different phase, and you'll probably start another fund that will start making initial investments. So and then it could be that those two funds have different investors in them. In fact, it's quite, it's quite common that you have different investors in different funds, because, you know, people want to invest the different times so. So yeah, so that's the way it tends to work. So you have what are often known as vintages. So you have a 2012, vintage fund, 2016 Vintage fund, or whatever it might be. And we as a firm, we manage all those, those funds, but we probably have a different role based on how old that fund is, and what stage of its life it's in. And

David Bent-Hazelwood: 5:49

potentially each fund has a different mandate or thesis about what its focus is as well. Yes,

Paul Miller: 5:55

that's true. In our case, that's it, we don't every fund that we've run has had exactly the same thesis, which is around Tech for Good. So we believe that by investing in technology, businesses that have a positive impact, will be backing the most successful firms in the future. Because we think that, you know, being able to demonstrate that you had a positive impact, social environmental impact is going to become more and more important for the most successful firms. And so, by getting in there early, and investing early, we believe we can achieve superior returns by by doing that, and that's always been our thesis.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 6:29

Great. Natalie dismissed on to the next question, how is sustainability framed in Bethnal Green ventures? What does it mean to have a positive impact from your point of view?

Paul Miller: 6:38

Yeah, it's a it's the way we think about it is that the having a positive impact, you've got to be intentional about it. So you've got to actually set out to do it, you can't do it accidentally.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 6:54

It's not enough that you are having accidental. Exactly.

Paul Miller: 6:58

And for us, that's so when we're when we're looking at founders coming to us, we're, we're sort of, we're asking them, okay, what are you trying to achieve? What's what's the impact you're trying to achieve? And then we want to know, well, how are you going to know whether you've achieved it? So that's, that comes to measurement. So for us, the two key words are it's going to be intentional and measurable. Now, there are lots of different things that you can be intentional about solving, what impact you can have, we're a bit more agnostic about what that is we, you know, for us, we have three large themes, if you like, which are a sustainable planet, and inclusive society and healthy lives. They're quite general, to be honest. But what we find is that founders tend to come to us with a much more specific problem, and then be able to tell us, and we'll know if we've solved the hair, or we'll know if we've improved that situation by that by this. So that tends to be the way it works. And then, yeah, in terms of the measurability, they often have very different measurements as well. So you know, something that's trying to increase biodiversity will have a very different measurement from something that's trying to reduce diabetes, you know, and, again, that's fine by us, we don't try and measure the impact of the whole lot in one number, we just report back to our investors, what's the impact each individual startup has had? We don't try to aggregate it in any way, really. So yeah, it's fine for us for the for the ventures to choose their own way of measuring their impact. We tried to make sure that that's solid and like, you know, it's an it's something that people will understand. But we don't try and aggregate it all together into one number, which some funds do. But that's just not our approach or PDB.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 8:46

And I mean, what is what makes really good enough impact, and so people have intention. It's measurable. There's a broad sense of sustainable climate, inclusive economy and healthy lives. There are lots of things which might do a bit of those things. But are you also are you looking at do we look for a threshold where somebody has to be having a degree of impact, which is more than just small?

Paul Miller: 9:11

Yeah. We I don't, I wouldn't say that we define that threshold. But we've set up a system that tries to ensure it, which is essentially it is it's competitive. So we have hundreds of people approaching us each time, we open up for applications, and we choose roughly speaking the top 10 every six months. So essentially, we're going to be picking what we think are potentially the 10 most impactful ventures so so if you come along with an idea where it's only got a sort of marginal impact, you're probably up against people who have gone idea of something that has larger or potentially a larger impact, which is that so so the incentives are essentially to come to us with with ventures that you do belief can have like a really, really big impact. So I wouldn't say there's a threshold. But there is a competitive system built in. That means that we're trying to make sure we select the most impactful ventures in the long run. Right.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 10:13

Thank you. So let's move on, to framing which is needed for us. And then there's, it's trying to see if we can get you to tell a story of a good example of your work with Can you tell us a story? Perhaps it's over investment, or one of the things that you've been doing?

Paul Miller: 10:29

Well, we've invested in well over 150 companies now. So stories, yes,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 10:34

we don't need 150 stories, perhaps two or three is plenty? Yeah, well,

Paul Miller: 10:41

I'll give you I'll give you one that I think illustrates something. So it's actually quite an early investment for us. I think there's often a bit of tension in the investments that we make, that go on to be successful. And that's either a attention with, like the way that things are done now, or potentially attention, like in a particular industry. And this was, this was way back when in, I think 2012, when a small team came to us and said, like, you know how bad things are in the consumer electronics industry in terms of, you know, essentially, sort of really bad conditions in the mines in, in Africa, where the minerals come from poor working conditions in the factories in China, where much of the Consumer Electronics has made, and phones are made. And they're terrible from a sustainability point of view, because there's sort of almost built in obsolescence whereby everybody, like just gets rid of their phone after a year. And they said, Well, we were campaigners, we've been trying to change this by talking to the firm's talking to the regulators, all that kind of thing. Actually, we've come to the conclusion that nobody really wants to change it. So we think we're going to have to build our own phone company. And we said, okay, at the time, it was, you know, the word no other manufacturers really other than Apple, Samsung, Nokia remember them? And we thought, okay, well, you know, we, our first investment is 15,000 pounds, that doesn't sound quite like quite enough. And they said, Yes, we know. But actually, we, you know, we think there might be a way around that as well. So I went and asked people and sort of friends and colleagues who had knew about the mobile phone industry, and they said, Yeah, that's mad, there's no way that there's going to be like a New Entrant A new ethical entrant into the, into the phone company, and, but it felt like when I when I asked people, if they would buy a fairer mobile phone, this became known as Fairphone. Lots of people said, yes. Okay, there's something here, there's like, there's a consumer demand, but maybe not a, like, an industry acknowledgement. So we back them. And they basically soon came to the, the, the idea of crowdfunding for pre sales. So basically, seller phone before they've made it. And that was super successful, and they sold like, well over 10 million euros worth of phones, like, you know, in the first in the first few days, and they use that money to then invest in like, making sure that they could they can produce better or that was Fairphone. One, which I think was launched in 2014 2013 2014. Now, like, really successful company, just just released Fairphone, five, they, you know, with each phone, they've improved, the kind of ethical approach and the sustainability approach particularly. So they've, they've gone from a team of like, two or three people with not even a prototype in their case, to be honest, to being like a very large company. And we know they've had an impact on the wider industry, as well as they've really been noticed by the larger companies, basically, clogged, Langone, like we need to be, we need to be able to show that our supply chain is better as well. So yeah, that's, that's just one example of the kinds of investments that we'd like to make.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 14:09

Cool. And that story reminds me of, sort of like a cafe Direct, which even if they disappeared tomorrow, the effect they've had on the what counts as normal practices in the rest of the coffee industry is now so different from where it was, and setting up a competitive rival, which seems to be stealing customers, in a way in that sense, is the most successful campaign you can have people. Exactly. And

Paul Miller: 14:36

yeah, I there's, there's several founders in our portfolio who are former campaigners. It's, you know, it's quite interesting, like the sort of, I think there's your campaigning is really, really valuable, but actually, maybe it has changed a bit and actually, like, you know, potentially demonstrating things practically, has become a valid way of campaigning. As much as sort of lobbying and media work and so on yesterday, so yeah, it's an interesting change. And I

David Bent-Hazelwood: 15:07

think there's also an overlap in skill sets in that, if you're going to be a successful startup CEO, you need to be selling your thing, your your business, and whatever it's gonna be able to sell to potential investors, and not just for the next round, but be able to picture what the whole of that sale all of that journey is to a point of being a successful business. So you would think so, yeah, keep going. And being a campaigner who knows how to get people excited about big, abstract, long term goals is probably a very important skill set. Yeah,

Paul Miller: 15:39

I think that the storytelling side of it is, is it's something that we look for in founders is like, Can this can this person, like, tell a story over a long time, because, you know, startups aren't quick. I mean, I know they have this, they have this reputation of, like, it's all like, super, super fast. And like, there's all these overnight successes, the truth is that, you know, overnight successes tend to be a decade in the making. And it's like that, that, that ability to, to tell a consistent story and to adapt it and to change it and to like, improve it over time is something that we look for in founders, because I think it's a really important part of the role.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 16:26

That's great. And then the interesting thing for me as well, Fairphone is that's a hardware story. But I would imagine that most of your investments are much more on the software, app kind of side, that's where I take for granted. So do you have a another, an example from that software side?

Paul Miller: 16:43

Yeah, so another example would, would be accurate, which most, you know, most of your listeners won't, won't have heard of, they're a little bit in the background, but they were actually started by a former nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital. And she was working with, with kids obviously. And they, one of the things that she would be would be part of a job was to, to have kids who are part of clinical trials. So it's an important part of clinical trials that you check that they are they work, like, you know, with, with children as well, and all that kind stuff. And she just basically noticed they were terrible. Like the the way that these clinical trials were run was awful. Yeah, asking your kid to fill in a questionnaire, or, you know, just just didn't really make sense. And she was cheap, essentially, as you know, has a normal time. She's an athlete, she, she thought, played rugby for Wales, and rotors rode across the Atlantic and things like that. So she was super aware of things like wearables. And she was like, Well, I'm sure we can capture this data, like using technology, and then essentially, like, kind of process it. And so she said about purrito, to be essentially a technology that helps collect data, particularly around children, when when people aren't in hospital, and feed that into clinical trials. And that's, that's a really important development, it actually turns out like that, that means that more clinical trials can be completed, that you actually get to the threshold of successful data more often. And that has particular relevance for slightly for rare, rare diseases, where there's a smaller number of people who can actually be part of the clinical trial, full stop. Yeah. So yeah, so so they are not a hardware business, they just use standard wearables to collect it to collect the data. And actually cameras as well now as as well. But there's the software that they created, basically collects that data formats it in the way that is used is needed for for clinical trials, and helps those pharmaceutical companies or, or the people who are running clinical trials to to data more effectively. So yeah, that's much more of a software business. And then, you know, they they sell big contracts to companies that are creating new medical interventions,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 19:10

who also actually think about how, in a way thinking about for a better phrase, the extreme user can help you to create something which is so broadly applicable that it opens up many more uses than you perhaps were imagining when you just focus on that one extreme user type.

Paul Miller: 19:27

Yeah, I think so. And certainly one another thing that we look for in founders is like, it's quite a pointy experience of the problem. So we want people who come to us with a quite a generic explanation of the problem and more sort of societal level. We're like, okay, but what's the what's the what's the problem as it fades as people face it? They that again, that for us, like if people can explain that to us or explain their insight on that to us. That again is more promising from our point of view around the product and the venture that we're trying to build. So, again, it's something that we look for is do people have? Like, can they teach us something about the problem that people that people face that we don't know, because you all of us can read the research reports about diabetes. But if you can, like sort of teach us something about the problems that people who are either pre diabetic or have diabetes face, then that's interesting.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 20:28

Yeah. And so there's something, something about having that pointy explanation which you're more likely to be able to generate a business from because it is more closer to the consumer insight, or the user or client wherever the right level of it is.

Paul Miller: 20:43

I'm not I'm not sure point is a technical

David Bent-Hazelwood: 20:48

language back to you. And often that will come from a person it doesn't have to, but often comes from a personal experience, which is why there's often a story of entrepreneurs founding a business to scratch the itch that they had, and nobody else was, was scratching for them. Exactly.

Paul Miller: 21:03

And I think either having that experience, personally, or through family or through or professionally, again, that's that direct or like written nearly direct experiences is a good is a good sign for. Cool.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 21:18

So let's move on into methods and practices. So what are the methods and practices you use to, to support your work to enter and decide what what to invest in decide what to do next, what's, what's the method you use.

Paul Miller: 21:36

And so the way that we invest is quite unusual for a venture capital firm. So we run an open call for applications every six months. And that's, that's not the way that normal VC firms, they tend to be a lot more kind of, sort of behind the scenes really. And like, it's quite closed process. Whereas we're completely open about it. We're like, hey, go, we're, we're open for applications. If you've got if you've got an idea or a business that you think we should be backing, then then please apply here. We then have this process where everybody who applies online, we use our community of existing founders and mentors and our team to try and shortlist those down to make sure that we're just looking at the ones that fit our criteria around Tech for Good. And then to score them around a few different dimensions, which are essentially the importance of the problem. The ingenuity of the solution, essentially, like does it is it's something new, and the quality of a team. And then we have to view the top 50 ish of those of the people who apply, or the top ventures that apply. And we select the the top 10 to 12 ways to make investments into after an interview. Sorry, I should say the shortlisting goes to an interview, which then goes to making the choice of 10 to 12 Ventures every six months.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 23:09

And you've spoken a little bit about the decision point and criteria you're looking for there. I mean, being an open call, sidesteps, one of the problems but exclusivity for a lot of VCs, like part of the test is can you get a good introduction, because for some VCs, they use that to see how entrepreneurial you are. But of course, that tends to bias towards white men who went to Oxford, frankly. Or MIT. How, how do you form those judgments at those key moments? So you've got like, the different people involved in them? Or they're scoring against a very narrow assessment sheet? Or are people bringing in their intuition? And how do you deal with biases and all of that process?

Paul Miller: 23:56

Yeah, so I wouldn't describe it as a narrow set of criteria is it there is a set your scoring system if you like, which everybody signs up to use. But the people who are ranking teams, so every every application will be scored by at least five people usually usually more to be honest. And we're deliberately trying to choose people from quite diverse backgrounds to help score teams so you're getting various different perspectives on on this one idea in that process. I think that's important. And certainly like we I mean, we have a bit of a like, no warm, intros rule in that, you know, even if somebody does get a warm intro to us, they still go through that process. Like there's no there's no way around that process. We haven't yet managed to do it in a way that is kind of blind for want of a better word in terms of we tried to minimise all of the sort of Signs of background and so on in our application process, but because the founders are such an important part of the, you know, the application as it were, we haven't managed to completely sort of take them out. Whereas, you know, when we're doing recruitment, for example, we do use a blind application system for, you know, people applying for jobs. We haven't quite managed to work out how to do that for ventures after that. Yeah. Yeah, but I think what we've ended up with is a much more diverse portfolio than most venture capital firms in Europe. So basically, 40%, female, founded businesses, like nearly a third from ethnic minorities, good percentage from people with disabilities, and so on. So, like, our, our portfolios ended up being much, much more diverse than most venture capital firms. And that's, that is pretty deliberate on our point of view, because we think, actually, to solve a diverse set of social and environmental problems, you need a diverse set of people. So it's been quite deliberate on our, from our point of view, to make sure that we're trying to reach founders from very different backgrounds. And yeah, I went to our system is perfect, but it's, it's, it's turned, the outcome has been pretty good. What

David Bent-Hazelwood: 26:18

and also, to go back in a little bit in our conversation, a more diverse set of people are more likely to have had those pointy experiences and to have been direct or adjacent to the challenges that they're trying to solve. Yeah,

Paul Miller: 26:31

I mean, I mean, there was a lot of criticism of Silicon Valley in a particular year, a few years ago, and like, basically, every startup was solving the problems of people who worked in Silicon Valley, who were all like, you know, white dudes who gone to Ivy League schools. So yeah, it's, it's no, there's definitely a correlation between, like having diversity of backgrounds with diversity of like, social and environmental challenges that we're addressing,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 27:00

and potentially of going after markets and opportunities, which are being ignored by others, and therefore, you can stand a chance of getting a higher return from because there's less competition.

Paul Miller: 27:10

Yeah, I mean, we, we, we avoid competition from investors quite a lot anyway, because we go so early. So we're very unusual to get to invest like at that stage. And, but it does mean that sometimes we have to, like help teams to prove that as a business here, as they go on to raise further capital. And I think that's something that we've we've ended up like, getting better over the years as well as sort of, you know, I mean, to be honest, when we first started investing in kind of health stuff, the VC world was very sceptical. And that's completely changed now. And obviously, COVID completely, like blew that myth out of the water, the idea that you know, that you couldn't build large businesses that would be important in that space. But yeah, I think we found ourselves having to convince the rest of the investment world that particular problems are sort of business worthy, if you like, quite often,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 28:06

who, moving on to our next question, what's the biggest challenge you challenges you face? And how have you overcome them?

Paul Miller: 28:15

They, to be honest, the biggest challenge that you face as a sort of small venture capital firm is raising the capital to put into startups in the first place. So raising the funds on our side. And there's a few, there's a few issues with it to be honest, one is that, yeah, that the investment world is basically made upon very, very huge numbers. So if you're the black rocks, or the, you know, those those kinds of organisations of the world you're managing, well, I think now trillions. And, you know, say putting a few million to work in a fund like ours just doesn't make any sense. So there's quite a big disconnect between the world of big finance and what we do. And in some ways, we're not really part of the financial services sector, we're, we're like, little tiny adjunct, somewhere along the line. And so that, that disconnect between institutional investors and what we do as a, as a small venture capital firm focused on impact is that's as big and, and so that, that does make our job of raising capital, which means we have to be super entrepreneurial, actually, in terms of how we raise capital and who we raise it from. And that, to be honest, I'd like I wish it didn't take up quite so much of our time, because we could put all that time into like, you know, supporting the ventures. But the truth is that running a small VC firm, you have to put a lot of resources into actually making sure you've got the capital to invest in the startups in the first place.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 29:41

And in that way, your experience mirrors those of your founders that you're investing in, yeah. And where I mean, typically where we're, who are who is investing in you if it's the large institutional investors, effectively you're not even a rounding error, so they can't even find you to give you any money. Who is who is giving you money, investing in your other

Paul Miller: 30:00

So, having said all that, I do think it is changing. And I think they, they, they think that in the future, the kind of thing that we do, particularly the impact side of what we do is going to be a bigger part of what they do. And so they're willing to innovate around the edges. So they're willing to, like, bend the rules a little bit when it comes to, like, you know, I won't say dipping their toe in the water is a tow for them. But it's like, yeah, it's a really significant amount of money for us. So so we do have some, some, some of the big players are invested in our funds. The actually, we, throughout our history, we have also raised money from essentially public and quasi public sources of funding as well. And that's, that's not unusual for venture capital in the UK, the largest single investor in UK venture capital funds is the British British business bank. And then we've also raised capital from Big Society Capital, which was created from dormant bank account money, actually, so the money that nobody has claimed, that just sits there, and the well actually Labour government, and then the Conservative government created Big Society Capital to try and like do something good with that money, whilst it's just sitting there. And Big Society Capital was one of the outcomes of that. And then we did also accidents and capital from their cabinet office, in our early days, which helped when we were subscale, if you like, which helped cover some of the costs of supporting the startups as well. So So yeah, we've it's been a mixture of public and quasi public money. And then we're now moving, I would say, more and more towards large private sector investors, investing in our funds. And I think that's probably the direction that things will continue.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 31:52

Great. If there's one thing policymakers could do that would make your work significantly easier, what would it be?

Paul Miller: 32:01

And so there is, there are these large pools of capital, who, but at the moment, don't have the incentive to really invest in innovation, they the most, the most sort of high profile at the moment is the pension funds. And I think, actually, government has clogged this, but they haven't yet, like really done anything about it, they're sort of then gently chipping the pension world towards, like, putting more money into innovation effectively. Because, I mean, if I was being mean about it, I'd say essentially, the pension funds just reap the benefits of other people funding innovation at the moment, because they don't fund anything that's early stage, they just sit in public markets and, and bonds. And so like all of the innovation that is going to create those companies in the future, they sort of leave to other people. And to some extent, the argument in government and various other places is, well hang on a minute, like, you know, you need to contribute to this as well. And you, you just

David Bent-Hazelwood: 33:21

saying, Sir, our internet connection has gone a little bit, I might have to edit this part out. You were saying? You said and and then remember, last year, these things happened.

Paul Miller: 33:37

I was sorry. And they so far, they haven't forced them to do anything about it. But I think the government probably does need to put some, you know, actual force behind the desk fashions

David Bent-Hazelwood: 34:02

for some force behind the discussion, so the pension funds are not just reaping the rewards of past innovation, but also investing in the innovations which will pay the pensions of the future. Exactly.

Paul Miller: 34:14

And then, you know, they should have a timeframe of frame of 2550 years. Yeah. And, yeah, my experience of them so far is that so I think we're gonna get to a position where yeah, they, they, government probably will need to change the pension system, the pensions, architecture, if you like, to force that to happen. Great. And

David Bent-Hazelwood: 34:41

then last question is about the future. What are your organization's priorities on innovation going forward and why?

Paul Miller: 34:49

So for us, it's all about encouraging more and more talented people to go into Tech for Good entrepreneurship and and to create startups. I think that the priority for us is like to both help to encourage people who maybe didn't think of themselves as potential founders to do that. And then to support them when they do. And that first step, I think, is a super important part of the innovation ecosystem, wherever you want to call it, I think, you know, there are all kinds of difficulties in creating startups that solve social and environmental problems. But it is actually a much better time than it ever has been in the past in terms of the amount of capital the amount of support and advice and, and the, the appetite on the part of employees and customers and so on, than we've ever had before. So I think it's a great time, but we do need to make sure that there are like, really good people who, who are taking that path. Right.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 35:51

And I also think, I wonder whether the, the ability like this, the technology itself is more accessible to people with not very much capital. There's more technology around that you can start a business with from scratch.

Paul Miller: 36:09

Absolutely. Yeah, I think there's the cost of, I would say trying things out is is much, much lower than it used to be. And, and the tools that are available are much, much more accessible. So that also adds to the almost like the ease of starting. But you still there's lots of other things that you need, other than just that, those tools, but But yeah, it is much, it's much, much easier, technically now to try things out than it was even even five years ago. Wonderful.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 36:41

Well, it's been fantastic speaking to you, Paul, thank you very much on the note of trying to have as many people as possible and joining in starting new businesses to address those important social environmental problems. If people do have an experience that they want to turn into a business then got an open call on their Bethnal Green ventures website, and try that. Thanks very much, Paul. Thanks for having me.