The Innovation Fans — JamesAnderson & Morgan Samet

JamesAnderson & Morgan Samet — Behind the Balance Sheet Podcast #54, December 2025

Context. Recorded live at Italian Tech Week, Anderson and his Lingotto partner Morgan Samet discuss AI infrastructure spending (with Anderson drawing parallels to the dot-com vendor-financing cycle of Lucent and Nortel), the autonomous vehicle opportunity (Samet, recently returned from China, identifies Pony AI and Waymo as leaders), China's battery and manufacturing dominance (CATL and BYD), and the multi-stage investment philosophy at Lingotto. Anderson expresses cautious concern about AI valuation jumps while Samet is more optimistic about the transformational potential.

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Leaders today rely on properly vetted, deeply considered trustworthy analysis to make the right investment and corporate strategy decisions, which means they need extremely high confidence in the output of any AI model. As with all of our solutions, deep research combines premium content with thoughtful integration specifically designed for business and financial workflows, as well as complete traceability. Deep research does days or even weeks of work in minutes. For every prompt, deep research runs 50 or more searches and reads hundreds of documents. Here it's creating a plan for how it's going to tackle the research task that I've given it. Once it's done thinking, it formats and delivers its analysis. Whether you're in finance or corporate strategy, deep research formats information in a way that makes it readily available for decision making, creating outputs like industry primers, investment memos and competitive landscapes automatically. And because AlphaSense always provides links to sources, you can trust that the information you're getting is accurate and actionable. It's not just about fast answers, but comprehensive, strategic analysis you can trust. You may have noticed this podcast is shorter than usual. It's not because of a lack of quality content far from it. Rather, it was recorded live at Italian Tech Week and I was limited to 45 minutes.

And tech problems meant we started late, so we had already eaten into that time.

It's a shame because I had several other areas I wanted to explore, but nevertheless we had an interesting discussion. My guest this month are James Anderson, the former senior partner at Bailey Gifford. He worked with recent guest Tom Slater on the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust, the largest closed-end equity fund in the UK. James now manages the Lingotto Innovation Strategy with my other guest, Morgan Samet. The geography here is complicated. James works in Edinburgh, Morgan in New York, while the Lingotto HQ is in London. Lingotto is the main asset management arm of Exor, the Italian family holding company run by John Elkhan, which is headquartered in Amsterdam. The innovation strategy has recently been expanded to include venture capital investments, so Morgan and James do everything from seed to Nvidia globally. We talked about AI, of course. We discussed the parallels between Nvidia's relationship with open AI and the vendor financing practices of the dot-com era. Spoiler, James, who has invested in Nvidia didn't dismiss the analogy. Of course we discussed the hyperscalers capex. We talked AVs and Morgan, recently returned from China, is very positive about this opportunity and has identified a couple of quoted companies which are leaders in the space.

The team is also bullish in China, which is racing ahead in a number of tech areas and where they still see the risk reward as positive.

I asked them how they manage a fund which straddles public and private markets globally, early-stage, late-stage, and they see it as essential to ensure they pick up the biggest winners. The Lingotto philosophy is to be curious, courageous, humble and patient, and all of that is on display in this conversation. I bet you'll wish it was longer. Welcome. I always start with the same question, which is, how did you both get into investing? Well, I think I didn't directly always know that I wanted to be investor. I always knew that I wanted to be building businesses and an entrepreneur, which is why it's also interesting that we are building this strategy and this platform for the future. But it translated pretty quickly in my early adulthood into wanting to be an investor because so many of the business ideas that I had and had built as a kid, as early as seven years old, meant that I couldn't just pick one and that I was fascinated by the idea of invention and the idea of building things and being able to select amongst those. And so being an investor allowed me the sort of intellectual curiosity and creativity to be able to express that the best. I started investing at 18 in college. I, along with some other students, helped start a public markets fund, which actually still exists today and I'm on an advisory board for it. And so the bug hit me pretty early. Oh, cool. James.

I can't claim any of that.

Like most people of my generation, particularly British people, Steve, I thought university was for enjoying yourself and educating yourself more broadly than choosing a career. What I did have was a lot of curiosity. I thought about becoming a journalist on that basis. Little did I know at the time that the financial repercussions of becoming an investment manager rather than journalists would turn out as they have been. Well, it's definitely a more profitable endeavour as I'm trying to persuade my older son, but seven years old, what was it, a lemonade stand or? Actually, it was a candy reselling business. Oh, a candy reseller. Was some margin on my allowance for doing chores and being able to resell it at a higher profit for the other kids who weren't allowed to go to the store. But I was the youngest of four children and had a lot more autonomy. So. Oh, cool. Business cards, the car, an entire model. My mom still keeps these keepsakes. So listen, AI. We're here at Italian Tech Week. Every second badge has got an AI summoning on it. What are you thinking about AI? I think and, you know, I thereby worry about giving one sentence answers that it's very, very much more nuanced and complicated than people wish to pervade as. In the long run, I think the importance of AI, Steve, is about solving very deep, very serious questions.

That, to my mind, is almost the opposite of where we're going in the short run with LLMs.

I think we've talked before about some of the intellectual influences that I admire and have impact one of those over the course of time. It's very much been the people, the brilliant people at the Santa Fe Institute. And I was chatting to David Krakow, the president of the Santa Fe Institute quite recently, and his response was that AI is actually the opposite of intelligence. On the basis that if any of us had a friend who we asked a question to of any level, and their immediate response was, I don't know the answer and I can't think it through, but I can go and look it up in a library. We wouldn't think that person was desperately intelligent. But that is effectively what it's doing at the moment. Now, that's not to say that it may not lead anywhere. And there are certain areas and above all, I would say in healthcare where both the scale of the data we need and the ability to solve problems is absolutely profound. But that is a matter of at least 10 years, probably more than that. And I think that there is a danger that we get exaggerate and carry through at the moment because the expenditure levels, as we know, are enormous. I'll touch on what James said and then I'll give a little bit more context. So I agree with him.

I think the way that AI architectures are structured today isn't likely to lead to scientific breakthroughs by the very nature of the reason for why it scales.

You know, when you or I learn something, it mostly stays with us beyond a few people that we're able to teach that lesson to. But when AI or robotics learn something, that learning is immediately uploaded into the cloud and the entire system learns it and builds off of one another. So the concept of having original thinking or first principle slot is actually like the antithesis of what or the reason for why AI scales. And so if you're going to have breakthroughs in infusion or longevity or things that we haven't even been able to think of, you're going to need a new architecture. That being said, I don't think we need AGI to get massive changes in the way that we live our lives, some of them positive, some of them negative with we don't manage them as a as a society. And so because of the scale, I think it is going to be most one of the most transformational, you know, things that happen in our lifetime. I think we are in a different type of capital cycle and world. It has sort of it has markers of the Industrial Revolution in terms of the atoms, but also has markers of, you know, the Internet Revolution in terms of the bits. And they're both happening in parallel, probably even faster because you've got the the atoms of the semiconductor and infrastructure stack, the bits of the digital economy.

And then atoms again, this feedback loop with autonomous vehicles and robotics on top that actually move faster than than old capex cycles have.

And I think it's in that latter category where you actually will have some of the really big improvements in in human quality of life and happy to talk more about what I think that is. And we'll go on to that in a moment. But just, you know, there's a it's a big subject. We could talk about the wider world and improvements, but just talking about investment, there's hundreds of billions of dollars changing hands. I mean, how do you make sense of this? I look at the hundred billion dollar investment by NVIDIA and Open AI and the three hundred billion dollars that Open AI is investing with Oracle, some of which is going back to NVIDIA. And I see a circle and it reminds me of the dot com era. It reminds me of Lucent and Nortile and lending your customers money so they can buy stuff from you. But how do you make sense of the the money that's changing hands? So as at least a semi-trained historian, I'm always a bit skeptical about historical analogies, but actually I'm not trying to be disagreeable here, because I think this no, this this one does seem to me reasonably haphazide, not because NVIDIA can't afford it, whereas it was quite questionable with the Lucent and Nortile. Yes, later turned out could afford it. But because I think the main danger for this is that there is excessive investment in the short run that has relatively minor in the short run impacts.

Now, that doesn't mean that investment to carry on the analogy isn't eventually turned to useful outcomes.

But I think you can have a down draft from that point of view. And I think that one always ought to be worried by the circularity. And I think, you know, to me, this is something that's changed quite badly of just over the last few months. I would add in another part of anxiety of that. I think when you see the type of sudden leaps in valuation, you know, you wake up one morning, you think it's pretty remarkable that opening is being valued at three hundred billion. You know, that your eyes next morning, it's worth five hundred billion. Now, something a bit strange is going on when you see those types of developments, you know, the angle of a cent is is often worrying from that point of view. And I think the other one that I would worry about. So you visit, I think there is, as you say, too much attention on this topic directly and not about the broader innovations that our society deeply needs. So it's when it becomes monomaniacal that it bothers me. I'm not saying that there's not going to be a lot of interest over the next 20 years, but am I relaxed about what you identify there? No, I'm not relaxed about what you identify there. I mean, the question that raises in my mind when you've got hundreds of billions of dollars changing hands assumes a rate of a cent that's very, very steep. And it seems to me that there is infrastructure bottlenecks all the way along the chain.

I remember very early on in my career reading Ellie Goldrat's book, The Goal, which I think Jeff Bezos used to instruct his senior employees to read. It's all about bottlenecks. There seem to be huge numbers of bottlenecks. Can can all this cash actually be deployed? Well, it counts. And, you know, I'm very keen to hear Morgan's on the horn more upbeat take on it. But I think one thing that's important that I should say is that I very much dislike in the investment industry the search for certainty and still more that search for certainty when it's expressed in to three decimal points, the presumptions about earnings and the multiples you should apply from the hence market capitalizations. So, you know, this is all about probabilities and pay off. Now, if if if we were to see the type of up pick in both productivity figures and GDP that we are promised, then arguably we should be spending much more even than we are at the moment. Now, I think that that is a comparatively difficult cause. I might give it a 10 percent probability charge over the next five to 10 years. But that that's what it's about. And that's why I am cautious, because I don't think you're being at the current valuations paid to take the same degree of bet on the original outcomes that you were even even at the beginning of this year. There's definitely so James sort of pointing this out.

I am I am a little bit more optimistic. I think there's definitely risks.

The valuation jumps, you know, as an investor or are definitely, you know, alarming and how quick and how drastic they can be. And, you know, that's another reason for why it's great that we have the long term structure that we have the continual capital. It's a huge duration is a massive advantage is with an investor and an operator to be able to see through those that kind of volatility, as long as you believe that these industries for this potential will be this large long term and that the players that you are backing will have a role in a seat there. You know, where I think it's different than in prior cycles is because of this sort of not just atoms, but bits on top of atoms and atoms on top of bits, again, sort of cycle and flywheel, you know, these are very cash rich tech companies that are more cloud based and agile and intelligent with data modes, scale modes, distribution modes. So it's different than, you know, the players in sort of the dot com era. I think they are basically funding this in this entire cycle. And so they're kind of are also gambling that they will be able to capture a lot of the value that they're creating just for the ecosystem.

You know, we talked about the article that came out in the Financial Times today about Jensen and he is notorious for sort of being a rainmaker and a kingmaker and investing in his ecosystem, whether it's in, you know, biotech or robotics or in traditional AI to make sure that those industries can can absolutely absolutely thrive. And so they're they're sort of funding. I think the benefits are that what you do see in a lot of countries and companies is bureaucracy, bureaucracy, squashes, innovation in so many different ways. And so you now have an ability to speed and scale in a way that's never been seen. And so I think if I'm if I'm the founder of a startup, I'm happy that they're they're funding lists for me to be able to build, you know, really interesting applications on top of this infrastructure. And so that's exciting. The the risk here, and this is a societal risk that needs to be addressed is with great power comes great responsibility. And everything, you know, strengths when taken to the extreme to become weaknesses and risks. And so a lot of this, these companies have even more power law characteristics, which is our border industrial strategy than in prior periods. And so if in the wrong hands, that is a danger to society.

And we need to think through and make sure that the decision makers and the system and the structure is set up to, you know, support less than the best interests of of society and humanity.

I'm a believer that we will figure that out and have ideas. But it is it's definitely a concern and should be on people's minds. The hyperscalers, all this capital expenditure, are you confident that that money will get returned? I mean, are you invested in any of the hyperscalers? To a small extent, Steve, but, you know, we're certainly not major investors in the in the hyperscalers. You know, I like to talk it back. I mean, carry run forward, your original analysis, analogy of the loosens and northerners and world comms and the like of this. But what then happened, as those of our age will recall, was that that capacity was so exaggerated that the price fell. Yeah. And when the price fell, you could have useful bias. Now, if I go back 18 months, even when we were talking to a lot of, for instance, the health care companies or autonomous driving companies that can solve problems. Their main complaint at that point. Was that AI capacity was just much too expensive. Now, do we have a golden opportunity is that if your contention is right about the hyperscalers, then that's actually a very good world for the users of this technology. And there's the recently retired boss of AWS said, and perhaps he retired party because of his disagreement on these scores.

We will see that, you know, that the right companies to investing in 99 2000 were not the Cisco's of this world, even if they didn't go bankrupt.

And the one analogies that you were talking about, but it was the next generation of companies who use that capacity like Amazon itself. And the point he was making is that we don't know who those companies are as yet. But I think actually that's what excites me more more than about the last 12 months is that we've got some hints as to who's winning in certain of these areas. And, you know, to me, investment is about trying to find those very small numbers of 100 times plus winners. Your odds of doing that are much easier if you're starting as a few brilliant rather than a few hundreds. No, absolutely. Are you a professional investor? How many 10 Ks and annual reports do you look at in a year? Ever wish you could cut through the noise and process them faster and more effectively? We run a forensic accounting course for larger institutional clients in their offices and for smaller investment funds and even individuals. We also do them in person in London and New York and over Zoom. Email us at info at behind the balance sheet.com for more details. As an investor, gaining an edge means having the right tools. And one platform leading the way is Alpha Sense. It's trusted by 75 percent of the world's top hedge funds.

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And if you're a professional investor, we run a forensic accounting course for institutional clients and soon a cohort based course for serious amateurs email us at info at behindthebalagy.com. What should we be looking at when we're looking at the autonomous vehicle area? Well, first, I do want to touch on a few things that James that James said that I think is important. We have this infrastructure layer that we've talked about, but there's also all these applications on top of it, of which some are some are unknown. That's that's why reason for us extending our strategy to go even earlier. That's why we've brought on innovation council members to expand our network to be able to understand and think through where those applications and those use cases will most grow. And because that's it's both relevant from a an investment perspective in the early stages, and but it's also relevant for information for our later stage companies to say, you know, who's still going to be here? Like I think we are going to see the largest change in Fortune 500 companies in the next 10 years, then we will see or have seen in any 10 year period in the last century. I think autonomous vehicles in particular is it's almost maddening how little money has been dedicated to something that is so impactful when the technology is indisputably here.

I mean, you can talk to, you know, anybody in tech and investing or anyone on the street and I don't think there's sort of any doubt that that it's here and it's it's ready for deployment. Yet, you know, of a multi-trillion dollar opportunity, the valuations in aggregate of the players that are clear leaders right now is like massively pales in comparison. And I think it's, you know, it does take longer to deploy because there's physical assets at work. And I think there's just like there's a view that it's just OK, you know, cars without drivers and that's a little bit cheaper. I think that misses the entire point of the massive amount of change to which this is going to create. I think, you know, in China, you're already seeing that these are now moving spaces. They're not cars, right? They're moving offices, they're moving hotel rooms, they're moving entertainment centers. It's not just about costs, it's about additional revenue. And then when you start getting into passenger vehicles, it's also about additional time. Traffic is a function of human interactions. What's interesting is if you actually look out and zoom into highways, 90 percent of it is empty at any given time. And so you can get massive amounts of throughput first with HOV lanes becoming AV lanes. And then eventually you can have far stacks such that you get everywhere in half the time.

It means that people can live further away with far more convenience along the way as well as as well as faster.

You know, real estate prices have gone up forex incomes during during my my existence. And so now people will be able to afford homes in different places with backyards that, you know, are cheaper. Kids can probably play outside again and hopefully get away from their screens that will be run by agents and bots and already sort of are. And it's the safest thing that we can do in one of the most dangerous activities that humans do on a daily basis. And I think there's other things that we haven't even thought of, you know, energy storage, balancing the grid, being able to make money off of your vehicle by having it run off and do errands, you know, for you or for other people. I think we haven't even scratched the surface of what this means for society and how we live our lives. So when? As soon as possible. I mean, Waymo Aurora Pony AI out of China, the technologies here, you know, Pony AI in China, for example, I think insurers under under right risk better than anybody and the insurance costs are a quarter of that of a human driver. So that tells you how safe it is. And the cars currently are about thirty thousand dollars for a robot taxi in terms of in terms of cost base. And so the economics are extremely clear. So the thirty thousand dollars is using just cameras, no LiDAR. No LiDAR. So how come it's so cheap? Because the Waymo cars are more than 10, 15 times that, right?

It's not that much higher. It's more on the hundred plus hundred K plus.

So meaningfully, in China, LiDAR is a tenth of a cost. And it's the price is declining rapidly. You can get, you know, cheap LiDAR for a couple hundred dollars. And that's because of China's manufacturing prowess. And I believe their their innovation capabilities as well. I mean, I spent a few weeks in China recently and, you know, UID cars, they're like 10 K for something that, you know, you would get in the U.S. for for multiples more. And so the ability to drive on a cost base because of that is is absolutely it's incredible. How many drivers of this cars are there in China now? For Pony, it's I mean, it's going to be in the low thousands. They're not there yet. Baidu has around that. And so it is, you know, it will take some time to deploy. As context, the CEO of Pony was the chief architect of the Baidu and the CTO is the most credentialized computer engineer in all of China, which is which is absolutely saying something. He's he's he's definitely a legend. But there's ways for that to scale faster by partnering with fleet operators. The average cars only, as I said, utilize five percent of the time. But when you're driving 24 seven, no cars will turn over in a five year period. And so those fleet operators are going to be refreshing quickly. And I think you're going to start to see like a Mitsuyo ramp up and roll out of those robot taxis and eventually personal vehicles.

I really would caution Steve of.

Any analysis based on the fact that there are only a few thousands at the moment five years ago, the notion that China will be the world's dominant car manufacturer was not something that people even willingly considered, let alone that we got there much, much, much quicker than any forecast I know. But it's been stunning. I mean, the Chinese car manufacturing industry has been just incredible because I can remember going to China in 2007, 2008 and being stunned by how bad the quality was. And you certainly don't see any problem with the quality today. I mean, China is in lead, isn't it? I mean, in almost everything. Not sure it goes far as almost everything. But, you know, I fundamentally agree with you that their leadership is both staggering and focused on many of these technologies that the world does need for the future. You know, I think perhaps the strongest example of that is related to the car industry, but not quite the car industry, which is the battery industry where, you know, BYD and above all, CATL have between them 50 percent of the world market approximately and where it's been very difficult for other people to catch up. You know, I was in the past an investor in Northfield in Sweden and I thought that was a team of people, both good Swedish technologies and many ex-Tesla employees, as well as many Asian battery experts. But they couldn't make it work.

And I think the challenge is quite enormous, but we desperately need the energy abundance that we're talking about. I mean, for the AI sums to work out, you need that to be an ingredient. Absolutely. I was quite interested. I was reading. I was on the plane yesterday, so I actually read the whole financial time, so I don't normally do. And there was an article about the CATL sending two to three thousand engineers to Spain to build a new battery factory. For Stellantis. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this is a disaster for Europe, isn't it? We just we'll never catch up. I think it's going to be extraordinarily difficult to do so. Yeah. So what would I see as signs of hope? I would see as signs of hope that some of the brands appear to be not dying, but adapting. You know, we can pick our own individual candidates from that. But, you know, I think some of them may come forward. But, you know, I I personally and I'm sure there will be many different views of this within the audience and with within Lingoto. But I think it's going to be an enormous challenge. And personally, I would rather have seen the European companies or at least some of the European companies say that instead of trying to put it off the adaption that they should fully embrace the change. And I think in the long run, though challenging for short term economics, that would have been a better direction to go in. Yeah.

Morgan's American, so we mustn't leave her out because. Martin.

Oh, I think Americans are far too often heard, sir. I would leave her. Well, the thing is, I was at the FT weekend festival a couple of weeks ago and Martin Wolfe, the FT economics commentator, I don't usually agree with. But he said something quite interesting. He said that the current administration's approach to science almost guaranteed that the US wouldn't be creating the big tech companies of 2050. Do you agree? I would say that is my number one concern that I have. I think I fundamentally believe in attracting the best talent and finding and creating the incentives to have them build the most interesting technologies and change the world. I mean, that's why I am an investor in innovation and clearly, clearly believe in that, you know, and we've we've a team of academics, you know, that also invest. And so we really, really highly value that. And that is that's a frustration and that's a fear that I have. And I think I also come of the belief that being in this kind of relates to what James saying about Europe as well and cooperation versus competition with China. I don't think you can be successful being obstructionist in anything that you do. I think it's a dam that will inevitably break. And so the only way to change the future is to create a better one first.

And so the US has one of the most valuable assets in the world, and that is a melting pot that has been attractive to the world's best talent.

And it's something that we would be very it would be very sad and very unfortunate and leave us behind if if we give that up. Well, there was a presenter this morning here at Tatao and Tech Week from Open AI, who is involved in partnering with with European investors. And she said that the EU is in the lead in STEM graduates per capita looking at Europe versus the US and versus China, which I thought was nonsense. But I can believe that it might be in the lead against the United States. I could just about believe that but nowhere near the level of engineering graduates in China. Last number I recall reading was about a million graduates a year. So I mean, if we assume that China has got a technological lead, how do you take advantage of that? Do you feel comfortable investing in China? Is there a cap on how much exposure you'll have? We've had the experience very recently of Russia having its asset sees that put a lot of people out of China. What what's your view from an investment perspective? Again, one has to consider it in the risk in relation to the rewards that potentially help there. And certainly, although the situation has changed somewhat in the last few months, certainly the start of this year, you were being paid to take that risk. And I think the upside compensated for you with that. But you had to think and, you know, I appreciate your balance on this.

I think you had to think about how much of the overall portfolio you could therefore have from that that point of view in the area. We we still do think about that. What I would want to emphasize is that as individual companies over the decades, I've had some fantastically good experience with the entrepreneurs there who I think have proven to be not just talented and serious in the way that you've already described, but also deeply supportive and loyal with their investors. And that is something that weighs quite hard in my own mind. And I I prefer to try and trust the individual companies and entrepreneurs. There are forms of disaster and corruption in every society of the world, as you know. But it's not it's not in their control, though, is it? I mean, if the Chinese government decides that foreigners are undesirable investors, though, find a way to squeeze the foreigners out. Well, I don't know. I think the the sentence you've just talked is relevant in a lot of societies. And sadly, it's not becoming easier in many of those societies. I do think, though, I not trying to escape answering it by blaming everybody on this score. I I do most seriously think that we need to think quite hard and rethink quite hard what the overall experience has been in China. Now, there are obviously those very big Jack Ma type moments that got some people's minds.

But on those, I would say, hmm, it's not all together clear with me and I was an investor in Alibaba, so, you know, I suffered from it. Not all together clear of me that metting your digital companies escape. All notion of society responsibility has been a good thing in the West. And also, I would say that I think there is a certain revenge here that going on, because I think the Chinese government is itself extremely aware in the current circumstances that actually they desperately badly need their technology companies and, above all, their serious deep technology, deep science companies at this score. So, you know, do I feel that we're bound for another moment of what we've had with Alibaba and the like might? I think it's become less likely rather than more likely. No, you're probably right. It is less likely would just talk a little bit about how it works, how you manage the Lingoto innovation strategy. But you've got it's a very complicated thing, right? Because you've got global, you've got public, you've got private and you've now got everything from VC to what? Series A, series B or a later stage. So how do you think about this? I mean, you can't just divide it up and say 10% here, 10% there. How do you manage it? Shall I start? So I think one of the features of fund management, which has gone profoundly, and I mean profoundly and deeply wrong in the world.

Is that we way over complicate our task and it carries on through geography, it carries on whether you're sitting in New York or in Edinburgh is to try and find those small numbers of companies that produce the power law returns over decades. And if you take out everything of trying to talk through the preoccupation of markets from day to day and the short term horizons on profitability, then actually you're in a much better position and I sometimes think in all honesty that putting a little bit of grit in the system, whereby it's not that easy to communicate about everything on every day basis is a very good rather than a bad outcome from our voice. So I am entirely relaxed about it from that point of view. What I would hate is if we got sucked in to have it to respond to every single moment of doubt and moments of challenge and issues that the FTO will be full of tomorrow. I mean, what I would add is that there are very few firms that are truly multi stage from seed all the way through to publics with the same team, you know, managing the entire strategy. And I think there's just arbitrary silence within investing that creates misaligned incentives. So by stage, by sector, by duration, duration again, is the biggest advantage you can have by being long term.

And as a result, they're not able to or not incentivize to like step back and see the you know, the handful of companies that truly matter and the handful of themes, the one percent of information that really matters.

And by being able to be multi stage, we also never miss it. You just you can get it. You can get it at a later stage and size it in a different way and manage your portfolio in a different way. And I think that's also valuable to to founders because they have, you know, more continuity of capital and more thought leadership of understanding mature businesses, which is increasingly, you know, which can be rare at the earlier stages. And the same thing for early stage companies. What's going on in innovation? What are we missing? What are we not paying attention to? And the reality is that the world's best investors are all generalists. And I think it's the industry that sets up these arbitrary sort of silos. But I mean, it's a very complicated strategy. Do you have to hold a lot of cash, for example, because you don't know when the next founder is going to walk through your door and need a need a check? And in practical terms, it's very different from what you both have been just running in the past. So and it's kind of a new thing. So there aren't there isn't a model. So just talk. I mean, I don't want to know exactly what percentage of your funds in cash, but just talk us through how you think about those sorts of issues. I think it stems from what we've just been discussing.

That in fact, although it can seem as though it is on a day to day basis, the markets are either going down or going up, either painful to have too much cash or great to have too much cash.

In fact, what matters is, as you say, being able to fund the great entrepreneurs at the moment when it is useful to do so. So I think the logical corollary is that you should have some cash. And I I don't know. You say it's very different in my own case. Very often the past had the ability to borrow money. I'm not convinced that's a good thing to do overall. So I'm quite happy with the situation as it is. And I try to keep those very specific what we're trying to do principles in mind. And I mean, I would add that you know, I've been doing both public and private investing for the last 20 years. And, you know, most recently, like for almost an entire decade in a combined fund similar to what it is, a very long term oriented strategy. And so similar to how we we think about the world today. And so I actually think it's a huge differentiator versus, you know, other structures. And what's your ambition for this strategy? I mean, where would you like it to be in five years time? And will you still be a will you still be working on it, James? Well, we all find the course of our personal lives difficult to be precise about. So I don't want to give any exact answers. But what I can answer is that actually my dream of it is about having a group of younger, very impressive colleagues who cannot just invest in the way that I've tried to can push that forward.

And, you know, the ideal course would be that it would be better for everybody if I was no longer there.

The course why colleagues were doing such a splendid job of developing it in such a fantastic way. That they can build something for the next 50 years. Because, you know, they'll never be able to retire because, you know, such for the conditions of both longevity and lack of in COVID the world just have to carry on anyhow, Steve. He's being very kind. I think, you know, what we want to build is something that that matters and is impacted. And he goes back to, you know, the business as I was starting as a as a kid, which is sort of the creativity to be understanding how a variety of different things work and to be able to have an impact to moving those forward. And so we we want to be thought leaders and we want to be a safe haven, honestly, for founders and leaders who truly want to build something multi-generational and where the incentives and the construct of other strategies don't allow them to do that. And so we want to be able to drive that, you know, with what it is that we do. Listen, it's been a great pleasure talking to you, Morgan Samet, James Hansen. Thank you very much. Thank you. I really enjoyed talking to Morgan and James and I could easily have gone on for much longer. Perhaps I'll be able to persuade them to come back on, although I get the impression that they'd rather spend their time investing than talking about it.

No question that James is not only one of the most successful investors around, but also one of the most thoughtful.

Morgan, too, displays that intellectual curiosity, which is the hallmark of so many of the guests on this podcast. I think she may also take the price of being the guest with the youngest entrepreneurial start at just seven years old. Thanks to Lingotto for inviting me to Italian Tech Week, which I find fascinating, in which I've written up in my sub-stack. If you aren't subscribed, you're really missing out. And hey, it's free. As always, thanks for listening.