Giant Ideas Giant Ventures

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, co-founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. This episode was recorded live at an event we hosted with McKinsey for Europe’s top 100 climate leaders. Asking the questions for us here is Pilita Clark, an editor and columnist at The Financial Times. 
Today on the show, we are joined by Greg Jackson, founder and CEO of Octopus Energy. You might think of Octopus as the UK’s leading green energy retailer. And you’d be right, Octopus has leapfrogged deep-pocketed legacy companies to become the UK’s second biggest energy supplier, having scaled to almost 8M households in just 9 years. They have also acquired nine energy companies across Europe and the US. 
...But you’d only be half right. Octopus is much more than an energy retailer. It’s one of the most ambitious climate tech companies globally. Octopus is in 15 countries, they offer electric car leasing, electric car charging, heat pump manufacturing, and licences its internal operating system, Kraken, to enable other green energy retailers to support over 54M customers around the world. Based in London, Octopus is now worth almost $8 billion. It’s a huge climate success story touching many of the foundational parts of the clean energy stack. 
Alongside our institutional investors, Giant is very fortunate to be backed by a group of successful technology founders, including Greg. He’s an amazing guy with an amazing life story. He was raised by a single mum in the north of England who struggled with every energy bill and Greg left school at 16 to earn money as a programmer. He’s built businesses ever since, culminating in the creation of Octopus.
They talk about the origins of the startup, the grand vision, why he believes oil companies days’ are numbered, and when Octopus might go public. 
Enjoy the episode!
Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.
Read more about Giant Ventures here.

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Today on the podcast we have Tom Blomfield - founder of not one but two UK unicorns - Monzo and GoCardless.
We asked Tom on the show to give the inside story on what it takes to found a multi-billion dollar business - the character traits but also the sacrifices. Are there consistent characteristics that unite leading founders, and ultimately is the struggle worth it?
To say scaling Monzo has been challenging would be an understatement. From its messy origin emerging from a competitor, to convincing regulators to allow a 29 year old run to a bank, to dealing with the highs and lows of an intrusive British Press, forging Monzo from nothing has been extremely tough.
Tom is incredibly open about the toll Monzo took on his mental health. He ultimately left in 2021 to become a prolific angel investor - seeing entrepreneurship from the other side of the table. We co-invest with Tom regularly and have loved working with him as a product-focused board member for our portfolio company Kapu. He recently moved to San Francisco to join Y Combinator as a Group Partner. There are a few people in the world better positioned than Tom Blomfield to identify what it takes to create a technology giant from scratch.

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Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, co-founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good. 
Today we bring you an interview with the founder of Calm, Michael Acton Smith.
With over 100m downloads, Calm has become one of the most influential mental wellness products in the world. As proud investors in the company, we were thrilled to welcome Michael to Giant Ideas in conversation with Wilfred Frost from Sky News to explore why it is still Day 1 for mental health. They talk about why Calm’s domain name was so important, the role of AI in expanding mental health support, and the potential for psychedelics to reduce suffering.
Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.
Read more about Giant Ventures here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, co-founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good. 
Today on the podcast we have a conversation on the future of climate tech between Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett, and OVO founder Stephen Fitzpatrick.
In little over a decade Stephen has built OVO into one of the UK’s largest utilities, providing clean energy to 4.5 million customers. 
As if OVO wasn’t enough to keep him busy, Stephen is also the founder of Vertical Aerospace, which aims to decarbonise air travel with electrically powered vertical take-off and landing aircrafts.
In this conversation, Stephen discusses why he thinks flying taxis will change how we move between cities, whether he thinks small modular reactors can play a big role in the energy mix, and why he thinks the last 5% of getting net zero will be the most painful.
Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.
Building or investing in purpose driven companies? Read more about Giant Ventures here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good. 
Today we bring you John Delaney - former Congressman, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, and the Founder and Executive Chairman of Forbright Bank - a mission-driven commercial bank committed to financing sustainable businesses and clean energy projects for a low carbon economy. 
In this conversation, FT columnist and author Gillian Tett asks John about America’s unprecedented Inflation Reduction Act - and whether it could be repealed by a republican administration. They also talk about how to build a pioneering US climate economy, without dependence on Chinese supply chains, and whether the US or Europe is a better environment for climate tech founders to build.
Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.
Building or investing in purpose driven companies? Read more about Giant Ventures here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Giant Ventures is a multi stage venture fund, founded by Cameron McLain and Tommy Stadlen. We recorded these first episodes at our live Giant Ideas summit, held at London’s Tate Modern. The Giant Ideas summit brings together 200 founders, CEOs, heads of state and other leaders to explore how we can harness cutting edge technology as a force for good. 
Today we bring you an interview with Nathan Blecharczyk, the co-founder of Airbnb. Airbnb is one of the biggest technology success stories of the last 20 years and, at the time of recording, they have a market cap of 90 billion dollars.
Airbnb is the ultimate ‘Giant Idea’: when they started the idea of staying in a stranger’s home was unthinkable, and 14 years later they’ve had over a billion stays. But it didn’t begin with a grand vision and there were plenty of false starts. 
In this interview, Nathan talks about the power of purpose, and specifically how Airbnb’s values helped them survive a series of crises including a racism scandal involving hosts, guests trashing apartments, and losing 80% of their revenue in 8 weeks during the pandemic. Asking the questions here at the Giant Ideas summit was CNBC and Sky News anchor, Wilfred Frost.
Music credits: Bubble King written and produced by Cameron McLain and Stevan Cablayan aka Vector_XING.
Building or investing in purpose driven companies? Read more about Giant Ventures here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.