Geopolitics in European venture

"We have a mission that we set for ourselves, which is simply described as sort of industrial resilience and security and how we can manage the critical Western alliances between the US and Europe and defend liberal democracy well into the future. And to do so, we have to rethink and rebuild our critical industries, our defense, our economies."

"Amplifier was a solo GP fund largely. And if you want to scale, or certainly for me to scale, I needed some new partners. And it takes time to find a partner. It's a little bit like getting married. You got to sort of do the dance and find somebody who really aligns with your mission, complements your skill set."

"The last 30, 40 years of Pax Americana, of this unipolar world with a single superpower, the post-Bretton Woods rules-based system that was established after the Second World War, is ultimately what it is in historical terms, an anomaly. These periods are very rare in history, and they come around when you have a single dominant power."

"We anticipate the necessity of returning to greater domestic resilience and sovereignty in certain areas of either critical technology or supply chain. This probably will amount to somewhere between three to five, best 10% of total global supply chains…. Here in the UK, a very topical example would be the steel industry. If you wish to maintain any significant military defense capability, the capacity to produce virgin steel is critical."

"Often behind them sits an operating business…. whether their background may be in shipping or automotive or defense or manufacturing…. One is, of course, first and foremost, delivering great returns. But there's also the fact that what you're driving is a huge amount of intelligence and feedback into these family offices and therefore into their operating companies about the state of technology."

"You can vibe your way through a seed and series A round and get your 15 mil post, two and a half, three X that, raise your series A, pull 15, 20 million through the door. But the series B is a totally different game…. The way you try to solve for that is you can be patient…. government and R&D programs that you can plug into…. if you need to build a first manufacturing facility, look to leverage some debt fund financing."