Trying to get back to the basics of great products power comes from sharing information. I try to convince people to slow down Hello, hello listeners and viewers welcome back to the soaked by slush podcast my name is William from that pollen with me in the studio Issa krautio. Hi William. Hello. Hello today. We're in for yet another interesting chat We have from molten. We have Nicola McClefford in James Clark. Welcome to the podcast. Great to have you Thank you very much. Thanks guys for having us Do you want to start off by telling the listeners and viewers who you are and what you do? Yeah, sure. I'm happy to happy to do that. So I'm great to be here. Thanks a million for having us James and I are from molten ventures or the artist formerly known as draper spree As we sort of recently announced our our new rebrand So we're a London base, but pan European focused venture capital firm We invest in early-stage and high-growth technology companies across Europe really our our goal is to back sort of future European European leaders and global champions we invest typically from kind of Series a series be onwards We're generalist in our approach So we invest sort of across the technology spectrum from consumer through the software through the deep tech and hardware Space tech digital health. So so a pretty broad remit And I think the thing probably worth mentioning as well We're pretty different looking to many other venture capital firms in that we're a publicly listed company And so our focus is very much on Building a funding platform for entrepreneurs that is focused on patient long-term capital You know, many of us have been around this industry for a long time So we know that actually to build and scale global companies from Europe requires patience and flexibility So we invest from our balance sheet, which is an evergreen An evergreen funding model I'm a partner in the firm I run our consumer business and largely sit across both sort of consumer and software investing I have a background in in venture capital. I started my first Roland VC in 2006 in London and and I also set up and ran an e-commerce business for five years So I come from an operator background as well I saw that business in 2015 to ASOS It was a business in the pre-owned fashion luxury fashion space And then I came back to venture capital and joined Dreyprosbury in 2017 or Molten Ventures in 2017 And my name is my name is James Clark. I'm the marketing director here at Molten Ventures It's been sort of my my pleasure and my my sort of my role for the last year plus to bring the rebrand to life It was something that I did not long after joining Molten Ventures in April last year in the midst of lockdown Prior to joining Molten Ventures, I worked at London Stock Exchange for four years where my job was head of tech listing So therefore a publicly listed VC firm is something that's very close to my heart It was also I was the person who hosted the ceremony when then Dreyprosbury Did its own IPO in 2016 so it's sort of there's a lot of connection within this But I'm sort of the first half of my career is as an advertising and marketing professional Roughly 10 years of doing that and then the second half of my career has been sort of digging ever deeper into the sort of the tech and venture capital industry So it's sort of a combination of my two sets of experience the role that I have today Great, that's interesting. Nice to meet you both The rebranding is probably the central central topic of this episode And we're probably going to go into a lot of like how to rebrand and everything But it'd be interesting to start with you like what what has changed How did you identify the need to do this or the the wish to do this the How did you approach that? How did you begin approaching that? I think look My my first instinct as a marketing person is is typically won't rebrand It's it's there's a very specific set of circumstances where companies should consider doing so And you know, you have to be very clear about why you do it in the first place And a lot of times a rebrand is approached by companies who Or especially unfortunately marketing practitioners who feel that sort of They're a little bit bored with what they've got and they want to do something interesting And I think that's not a good place to start a rebrand I think from from the perspective of when we were draperous free and this is something We started discussing probably someone last year was that The the the feeling that we had was that the existing brand was very well respected Very well liked a lot of people understood Who we as a team were and what we did But the brand itself probably didn't convey the what what what we were as as well as it possibly could And I think that the thought was You know The company has come a long way in the last five years since listing And it has a very different set of audiences to a typical venture capital firm And you know being publicly listed puts a special responsibility on on us as a business You know, we're trying to explain venture capital to a public market's audience And we're trying to explain, you know public markets to a venture capital and tech entrepreneur audience And we needed a brand that would help us to be able to Tell that story on both sides of those audiences And we felt that the the the the brand that we had had taken us as far as it could And our our team has evolved a great deal I mean just the size of teams almost doubled in the last year alone And so therefore we really needed a brand that was able to Express this new potential of where we thought the business was going But maintain a sort of a respect and a good regard for for what had gotten this this far I mean draper esprit is a 15 year old business at this point So there's a lot of things that we needed to be able to do and a rebrand felt very much within the team As the right way to do that, but we had to be very deliberate and careful about how we went about doing it Yeah, that makes makes total sense and we've we discussed quite a lot We've discussed Europe and the coming of the US venture firms also to Europe and The increasing competition here and and also maybe why why it's Europe's time to shine now But is it how do you view it Nicola? How do you position position yourself in this Environment and also maybe is there is the rebrand party targeted at that also? To be able to to compete and position yourself again Yeah, I know I look for sure we're operating in in a market certainly over the last kind of 18 months two years that has has Never been a sort of vibrant and dynamic by way of sort of availability of capital To European entrepreneurs and you know particularly given both new entrants into the venture space So so kind of type investors that weren't sort of typically VC investors, you know the the hedge funds the public market crossover funds All of whom are now looking at sort of early stage tech or high growth tech as a very meaningful asset class And are are kind of directly investing now in the private markets Very broadly, you know, it's worth saying this is a hugely positive thing for Europe You know this sheer availability of capital Europe and European entrepreneurs has been underserved by way of Meaningful growth capital. It's come a long way over the last few years certainly since I first started out in European ventures So 15 years ago It looks incredibly different But but even the evolution over the last two to three years and the presence of International capital us capital It's it's a net huge positive for for the local market here in terms of giving European entrepreneurs the availability and the breadth of capital required to build global scale companies So I think it's that that's just a really important point. We're starting to level the playing field to the amount of capital That's been that's deployed into us companies and allowing European companies to compete at that level. So it's a very much a net positive But of course that means that it gets more competitive For local investors on the ground including us There's more capital chasing sort of the same deals the the top entrepreneurs have a lot of choice and a lot of options in the market And that requires, you know us and every other investor really to to be really clear On on who we are what we are and how we can work with companies and this again. This is a really positive thing, right? ultimately money and capital is Is the single greatest commodity we have and and we all have a tendency as bc's to Sort of talk about our value add and talk about, you know, the help we can give And frankly our industry has historically been really poor at areas like communication and branding and very few Financial industry right at our core historically terrible at branding and communication and and also open ventures in a way No exception to that. So While I wouldn't say the rebrand was in any way driven by Sort of competition and changes in the market because touching on what james talked about earlier on Driving a rebrand or a decision to do that due to sort of external factors Or what might be happening in the market around you isn't necessarily the right place Uh to come at a rebrand for us It's got to be linked to our our core purpose our mission and and also as a business and regardless of you know What's happening with the macro markets and other investors, you know that that wouldn't change What it does do though is sort of give us very clear opportunity To properly put the conversation and be able to communicate us Our value our scale our purpose and how we can work with companies And again, we're uniquely positioned given the patient capital model and this rebrand is really part of an effort for us to say Well, there's been a lot of change How do we make sure that we're capturing that transformation and communicating that to entrepreneurs now? Will that help when it comes to us being able to you know, hopefully get an opportunity to work with some of the best european entrepreneurs for sure, we would hope so James you said um It's very interesting. You said you usually shouldn't rebrand which is supposed to make sense on paper too And I think the flip side of that what that means is the reasons to rebrand need to be very Well motivated well justified I guess I mean branding is about Storytelling I guess to a big extent so I would assume that the methods or the sort of the the criteria to rebrand are mostly qualitative But do you have any like do you have a checklist like a do you have any What is your methodology there and like is there any Quant stuff that goes into a a big operation like that in the wire So yeah, so one of the things that we that we did internally as we were considering this was We sort of framed it as you know, how well does our does our team understand what our brand is and what our purpose and what we stand for And if you're getting disagreement internally or you're getting Not sort of not a lack of alignment internally about what that is Then obviously it means when you're talking to the wider market that becomes ever more more fragmented And so the yeah once you realize internally that that some of that that sort of that actual purpose or the messaging can be a little Bit confused that becomes one of the reasons you need to start to talk about that rebranding process And you need to start thinking about it very carefully and that's sort of the bit that follows from that is You know if you do kick off a rebranding process you need to be you know really clear that but Most when most people think about a rebranding they think about names and colors and logos and And and look and feel and all that sort of stuff and and to be honest with you that that part is important But for me as a professional doing this Literally 75 of the process is actually really getting to a common and good understanding of who you are You know that as a start of the process end of summer last year We're about 35 40 odd people and we first asked everybody You know the the question of what do you think? Yeah, what does this company mean to you? What do you think is special about us? We did a huge amount of diligence internally to try and find those common areas of understanding to try and bring together a common thought about what we stand for and who we are and that that sort of I guess you call the strategic understanding of what the brand is Was sort of about three or four months of work last year to really bring that together to get to a common understanding To come up with a positioning for that for for the company that we could really you know gather behind and and It's a sort of thing that shouldn't be a surprise to people when you when you wouldn't bring it out to them It shouldn't be I didn't really think of that at all It should be actually that was that's probably something I had on the tip of my tongue But I never thought to express it and so for us this this positioning that we came up with of make more possible was was very much a sort of a Sort of a distillation Of all these things about the company that made it meaningful for the people who work there And therefore if it's that sort of a distillation and that that sort of meaningful thing to the rest of the team Then it becomes easier for the creative work that flows out the back of it to make more sense. And so You know, we sort of got to a point towards the end of last year where you know Very much in consultation with the team in consultation of the board Actually in consultation with small numbers of our portfolio and other sorts of people We got to this positioning make more possible We felt very strongly behind the meaning of it And at that point we could start to do the creative work But it is very qualitative But you can do certain sorts of exercises along the way to really sense check yourself To make sure as a marketing person, you're not just going off on some, you know, some random flight of fancy that suits you You have to be you have to be coordinated with What the people in the company are feeling because if you don't do that Anything you produce on the back of it is not going to is not going to gel with the people who are supposed to actually You know live it and believe it And just add to that. I mean more more than just the people in the company I mean that was certainly where a lot of our core focus was but you know, james Touched on some of the external stakeholders and this is of course true You know, I sit across a lot of our consumer business and actually doesn't matter if you're a consumer business or a Software business as you're thinking about something like this Data and insights from your customers and your consumers or your sort of stakeholder All of your stakeholders is sort of fundamentally what need to underpin How you think about your how you think about any form of rebrand sometimes that's a name change It isn't always a name change. It could simply be around positioning and messaging And so james said, you know, we talked to to some of the portfolio obviously everybody internally was was very involved but You know, it was important that we understood the external perception too and you know for us. That's everything from public markets through to You know, even more importantly the the the entrepreneurs that we work with those that are within our portfolio those even some who who aren't within our portfolio and other vcs Other people we we both compete with we collaborate with we sit on boards with so You know, so we we had a sort of a select group of some externals as well And all of that needs to come in to inform how you think about both the internal and external perception Of us in our brand and also how we can use that To better meet those end goals and I mean any any company going through this will do the same thing I mean having insights from you know, not only your internal team and led by sort of a marketing team but Really the customers the people you're selling to your partners. Um, and so, you know, we took a similar approach to that Yeah, yeah, and I think I think that's so important. It's oftentimes you'll you'll you'll seek the documentation around a process about this and it's sort of A handful of people have locked themselves in a room and kind of come up with this and when they come back When they sort of present something it's like ta-da and everyone's like what the hell is that and I think I'm not kidding. It does happen and it's sort of big and this is what I mean The re-brand becomes sort of a sort of a personal challenge for a handful of people rather than Something that is actually a business need. I mean there has to be a business purpose behind how you do it And we we've tried incredibly hard to to do that throughout the process And yeah, it is about asking everybody. It's about checking the audience as we're you know, a venture capital firm We're now about sort of sort of 60 70 old people But as I mentioned at the time we're about 30 or 40 We're small enough organization to be able to ask literally everybody To gather the kind of feedback and also go out to those other stakeholders and make that manageable Now, obviously if you're a company of hundreds or thousands of people It does become different and and different and sort of you have to execute in a different way But the core thing should be is does this thing feel believable to these key audiences that we have to work with? Because if it doesn't feel believable Then it's not going to land and and I think one of the I guess one of the payoffs that we've had is The feedback we've had from our portfolio from other people in the industry from In my case from from professional marketers that I know that actually have nothing to do with our industry go To come back and say actually this makes a lot of sense for you for what you are trying to do Yeah, before we dive into the the more particular choices you may be interested to hear kind of What you ended up with with from these interviews But one thing that comes spontaneously to mind here is that If branding is something that should reflect the values and reflect the the the story of the company When is the right time for a startup to start thinking about brand because quite often I hear early stage vcs Investing in brand But then if you don't have like your pre revenue or your very early stage You can have obviously can have values and you can have something you want to solve But can you really talk about having a believable brand at that stage or it's or it's something that rather should evolve You know in the first few years of the company and then maybe be set in stone it Nicky, I mean you'll you'll have opinions on this but just From a marketers perspective Yeah, your brand is your brand is a collection of attributes that exist in the mind of your audience Right, you can't you know a brand is yes There's logos and colors and and all that sort of stuff But a brand exists in the mind of the audience So therefore you can't there's only so much you can do but everything you do can influence it in some sort of way Either explicitly or implicitly So everything from the way your your service team answers answers customer requests to yes Your logo to the way that you interact with the media all these sorts of things as a startup Are some sort of way of expressing your brand? So yes, you should be quite explicit about how you think about it But you should also sort of realize that the the the sort of the the manifestations of your brand You know the the the marketing exercises the the expensive part of it can be done in different ways And I'm you know Nicola has lived through this so I'm sure she has you know She can sort of talk through how she applied it when she was when she was sort of managing her business Yeah It's you know James said it a brand is a living breathing thing And it so it evolves right you can't you can you can state your brand principles early on you for sure As any entrepreneur should have a vision for your brand But ultimately the success of that or the evolution of the brand Depends on how you live and breathe that And that happens over time You know you don't a brand is not something that's underpinned by a transactional relationship It's underpinned by an emotional relationship. And I think you know a lot of businesses You know you get into this world of and you know, you may not even be in the consumer space This is also true of of B2B companies too And where it's all about you know transaction transaction and volume and your brand is sort of something that happens to Sort of sit alongside that and and maybe for sort of some types of businesses It's a bit more important to others but ultimately your brand is the emotional connection that you make To your stakeholders. That's not something that happens quickly and early So your question about when and how should a startup be thinking about branding, you know Also brand and name are also kind of two different things too. So sort of let's be clear about that I've seen a lot of companies go through a rebrand that doesn't necessarily mean they change their name in our case You know we did but a rebrand doesn't necessarily mean a name change Plenty of early stage companies changed their name Google's first name was back rub if you'd believe it and and so there's a list There's a list of companies you just need to google best and worst rebrands and renames Come up with a really interesting list of sort of brands household names and sort of the names that they started out with And it sort of talks to You realize that some of those companies early on sort of realize that actually look our name You know doesn't actually reflect what we are as a business and so look if you're going to Renaming is harder and so putting some thought into the name early on is sort of worth doing That's not to say you can't rename your company at some point for sure Little harder if you're operating in a pure consumer space and you've put a huge amount of investment behind a brand By way of recognition. I think when you're a VC firm you kind of get away with it a little bit more But but aside from the name piece In a way, it's never too late to do a rebranding exercise If you feel that you need to take a step back and better understand your positioning Better understand your customers and the nature of the relationship you have with your customers How those customers might stay with you Over the long term beyond the immediate transactional relationship That's an exercise that every company should be doing almost on an ongoing basis And when you feel that that connection has been broken, you know, that might be a moment to have a think about Okay, well, you know, do we need to do a little bit more work around our narrative our story our value Our positioning in the market and that that might be the the moment to do it So look it's you've got to do it early because you know You used to set your stall in the business that you're building and the brand you're building But it's an iterative process and it's something that will evolve as any We all know how much change startups go through But don't lose sight of the importance of that, you know The emotional connection and perception of your brand alongside everything else you're doing on a pure sort of transactional level Uh You said something interesting that the the brand is a living breathing thing. Does that also mean, um How much is there this death of the artist Phenomenon in in branding like how much like when you when you put it out there You sort of lose a part of its control like if you imagine a word in any language Like we can all picture a word that meant something 50 years ago. It means another thing today I'm not sure it's a hundred percent the same with branding, but is there this phenomenon where you kind of lose a part of the Part of control over how people interpret it and then you have to live with that if you want to be a genuine brand Well, that's I mean look this this is it bring your companies to companies don't own brands The the the audience their customers the stakeholders they own the brand And as a marketer or as a company you can try and influence that you can try You know your your job is to try and be as consistent as possible in projecting What that brand means in the minds of of your audience, but you don't own it, right? It is it is it is possessed by the people Who who who who interact with it and so therefore? Yeah, then look there is there is a bit a bit of a death of an artist I feel a great deal of sympathy. There was a venture capital firm based out of oxford called isis ventures a few years ago And obviously, you know with sort of the situation they had with terrors It was it was you know isis is a river, you know what the tens river comes because is when it goes past oxford Nothing you can do about that. It's I have a huge amount of sympathy. It's the sort of thing that happens but I think you know it Ultimately, you know these because these things do exist in people's minds. They can make that separation You know what all you can do is you can try and be as directly influential as you can around How your audience precede your brand? I mean we're going to be people in our industry who who we are It'll take time for them to get used to molten ventures and it is our job to try and give them A consistency of experience That makes them realize that what we're talking about with molten ventures is very similar to what we what we offer them with draperous pre but with a few extra additions and that that takes time and you know You have to be willing to be patient to to bring that that change along with people But ultimately if if it feels natural to your audience The pickup is going to be much quicker if you're trying to do something that is a rapid big change from where you came from Not so much in names and colors and whatever else but Experientially is very different from where you were you'll find it harder and so I think from our perspective as I say We tried to distill and capture what we thought was the essence of our company and then turn it into the brand If you get that part right you should find the experience more straightforward Yeah, what about then using external help to do the rebranding process? How do you view that you mentioned that you did some research Internally and with your stakeholders and you have in-house competencies, but Where could you benefit from using some external help? So so look I I would you know If you have the resources to it and look there are there, you know, there are there are Expert agencies at many different price points. Yeah, we went out and we quoted with a range of different agencies We quoted with where we got quotes back at different price points and we selected a partner named Koto Now we sort of we knew of Koto They'd sort of become there we referred to us by one of our portfolio companies That actually worked with some other vcs and they had very good credentials But you know, it's it's one of those sorts of things where we've sought the advice of people that we know Who we respected and to see the work that they'd done and they made referrals and we would do the same thing I I think that there is a lot of expertise out there in the industry and you can get it a range of price points So I think it is definitely good to work with external parties. Just because you won't have strategic necessary strategic marketing or strategic branding people internally You won't have the right kind of design expertise internally You know, this is a sort of a six month 12 month or sometimes three month sort of process And so therefore it makes sense to work with external agencies to do this Provided you understand how to manage the process internally And I think that that's sort of, you know, the role of the marketer in this particular case is to act as the go between between the creative agency and that the needs of the business internally And that that that can be where you sort of find things a bit difficult because I've been doing this for more than 20 years and and brand marketing is my hinterland So therefore it I found and I found this difficult So it's sort of it's it's the sort of thing where expertise really does make a difference to have that part internally Or if not to have a trust like a consultant or a party you can trust that can help you mediate that part of the relationship And that part of the process Yeah, the operational side of rebranding. Let's talk about that a little bit. That's interesting So let's say now you have an idea like we were a draper's spree and now we have Molten Ventures great name. Let's do this. And so what do you do is do you like do you I can tell you it looked nothing like that Swear jar whenever anyone says draper's spree you have to put a quarter in the no, no, no, no So we spent probably a month or two Doing the research part of we called it an immersion session We did the research Within our team within our sort of our stakeholders to understand where we stood and what our differentiation was We then spent a few months of refining that to get ourselves to you know What we call it a market our brand strategy and that's you know, what is the vision of the company? What are the goals? What is the positioning? What is the personality? What are the values, you know, that's sort of every Yeah, every different brand agency will have a slightly different model But they all kind of do the same thing We then once we'd sort of agreed that strategy You can then move into the creative phase of the process and at that point we knew that we wanted to change the name So you're running kind of two parallel tracks. One of them is around the creative development around, you know What is the brand idea and all these other sorts of things? But the other part is the name now I should sort of say something specific about names As a very large tech company discovered recently if you don't trademark things properly you can get yourself into trouble And because the trademarking process can take six to six three to six months Depending on which jurisdictions you're operating Europe versus the US You do kind of need to run those two things in parallel And so you're often going to be submitting multiple names in for trademarking while you're still trying to develop the other brand assets And hopefully they come together at the other end and you have a choice of names So that that part of the process probably took about sort of three four five months To get all those sorts of things together And and then sort of obviously once you've sort of got the name agreed and once you have the sort of the rest of the The visuals of the brand agreed you go into a an execution phase Which is in our case has taken us about two or three months of you know We were had to rebuild our website from scratch in fact We built two websites from scratch because one of them was sort of is focused on entrepreneurs and sort of the tech industry The other is focused on our public market investors are incredibly important and the people Operator or using that website have a very different use case to people who want to learn more about ourselves us as investors And so we had to build two websites. We had to build Swag like the out to create swag like this We had to do a whole huge range of visual assets You know the video that that you would have seen on our twitter profile all those things Took a number of months to come together. So It is a if you if I believe you do it properly it takes quite a long time It's a bit longer because we're sort of a more mature company Because we have a sort of a wider stakeholder group those things add to the complication But sort of those steps along the way become quite important and and sort of Making sure you've ticked all those boxes and done things properly and got your name trademarked and and being through that process Is actually quite involved But but I I have to laugh. I mean james james Sort of skimmed over the you know, we do all that the creative piece and once that agreed Here's the operational the the once that once that was agreed You move past very quickly and let's be clear. I mean, that's not an easy process right getting getting alignment. So And and as you would expect to come back to you know brand being an emotional thing this this this work You know does need to go through and believe me. You don't get to consensus And and maybe you shouldn't and that's to be expected too. So The process of even getting to sort of agreement and alignment across the team I mean we're we're lucky I think we ended up in a place where everybody's incredibly aligned and agreed but that takes time to get there too and what was really important to us is that You know design I've been through some branding work previously as well rebranding work previously both with my own company and with another business that I was in and designed by committee And sort of constant debate across a huge group Honestly, you never really end up in in the best place. It's sort of lowest common denominator wins out in the end And we were very mindful of that and getting the balance between making sure that Everybody in the firm felt that they had a role and input which is critically important But also that we sort of had a forum which we could in a way sort of centralized some of the key decision making as well To make sure it was there was the right level of focused discussion and debate. And so we did have a working group internally that was made up of There was a kind of five or six of us on it But really what was most important was that it was really representative of the whole firm And that means that you know, that group was made up of people who were Had been with the business for you know, four or five six years plus people who'd been with the business much more recently More recent joiners. They have a different relationship with the old name and the old brand if you're in the door six months versus somebody who's lived and breathed it for years You know, there's obviously we we've a team of investors But we've got a huge, you know, we've a huge business of people who aren't sort of investing day to day as well And to making sure we had proper representation across the whole firm by way of functions Whether you're in an investment role or not Um that we had good diversity across the group between, you know, male female input other levels of diversity So to us it was getting a core group of people that were just representative across the firm That had been put into that process, but you know, and you have interesting debates as you should Um, you know, something's kind of maybe not right with the brand if everybody's sprayed away just says It's good tip that people get emotionally involved with the name because it just means you you test You challenge you push You you challenge each other's opinions. Um, and and that in itself, you know, James sort of said once that was agreed I was just it's important to note that takes time. Um And I think it was You know, I'm really proud of how we how we did that as a group I think it was a really it was a good way to do it. We had great input for everybody and ultimately when it came to You know talking about the brand internally and kind of talking about the new name Everybody was fully on board because you know, the process was understood the representation was understood and and you know It felt that it it translated across the whole the whole company pretty successfully.  We long listed. We were working with the agency koto We long listed 50 something names That was shortlisted down to 10 or 15 and that was even shorter listed down to about seven or eight We then ran a scorecard. I mean, this is a very sort of deliberative process And then the top three of those names went off to be to be sort of checked through trademark and through one of the most, you know Very unusual and very pleasant coincidences in, you know, I've ever come across as a marketer The the highest scoring name was both the easiest to trademark and the easiest to find URLs And that was that's really unusual. We really got lucky with that. Yeah For sure. Yeah, and brand discussions are are never easy. They're fun I've had quite a few one with one of our producers on this show as well. Samuel He probably regrets some of those some of those yet still But it's it's fun. Yeah, it's really interesting to talk about because I mean we use words Are you use words like not consensus but aligned and like it's like it's trying to hit that space of like Of like defining something that collectively exists, but doesn't make sense yet Yeah, yeah, and that's true. And you know, you are you are there is a very deliberate creative tension involved because Because that that creative tension leads to better results And I look I've had many discussions with Nikki and other members of the team about specific creative aspects of Of the new brand and and yeah, it took weeks and it was hard and there was some really difficult conversations But ultimately what what ended up happening is the assets that we do have are better for it, you know, they are they are far better for it and and you know, you know, we we have a brand that That has an idea which underpins it We have a look and feel which is a better expression Of what the brand is what the brand stands for and where it wants to go and whatever else we have A name that is expressive of what we you know What the actual underpinning of the name of the idea isn't and all these things come together But it was it was weeks of very very difficult conversations to get us to this point Yeah And you also have a new motto to to to go with the brand. So do I elaborate on make more possible? Yeah, look, I mean, it's interesting We we landed upon make more possible as our positioning back in towards the end of last year and You know make more possible is this idea that you know your position or positioning should be the thing that the bit of Marketing or branding territory that you alone can own, you know This company alone should be able to own that idea and look any any venture capitalists can say well We make more possible for entrepreneurs because we invest in them and they you know, they they they build these things But the thing about you know, molten ventures particularly because we're a publicly listed firm Not only do we make more possible for the entrepreneurs who we invest in But because anyone on a public anyone who can buy shares on a public market, which is literally anyone can invest in us And hopefully we perform well and and make returns for them Therefore we make we make more possible for those investors as well And through that collective action of a sort of a democratised version of venture capital We believe that makes more possible for our wider society because we you know more people are able to access venture capital More people can see those returns. So make more possible as a positioning Really really sort of was something that we felt we could own and believe it And the more we thought about it and you know venture capitalists don't typically have mottos or Don't don't express those sorts of things in their marketing communications The more we thought about it the more we realized that actually This was something we wanted to talk more publicly about Because again, it was something that helped differentiate us. It was something that helped we helped you know It helped us to be able to own it but it's it really speaks to what we think is our purpose Which is why we get up in the morning and why we seek out those companies and why we try and invest in those great businesses Because make more possible is something that is genuinely what we believe is the the the thing we bring to To our industry and and sort of to the wider economy in the world. So that was you know It became something quite special to us the more we started to talk about it Yeah, makes sense. Maybe to round off then Nikola, do you think um the heightened competition will push more vcs to consider rebranding? Or is it maybe not that that's maybe not the most central central part of Still to to stand out in the competition Yeah, like I honestly think if you think that just slapping a new name or something on on, you know, your On your website is the right way to compete in a more competitive market It's just the wrong reason to think about a rebrand. Um, I do think it's fair to say that the whole Venture ecosystem is an asset class is evolving And that will absolutely need to push firms to more critically look at themselves And better understand their role and they're in in two entrepreneurs In the broader context of the investment ecosystem. So for sure as the ecosystem is evolving Other firms will probably sort of take take a look and really understand or try to figure out what they're doing That doesn't necessarily or shouldn't necessarily automatically lead to a rebrand But really just sort of better articulating or better delivering on the value that you bring as a firm So it will focus the mind I think for people but not necessarily if people are choosing to rebrand or relabel Then that's sort of coming from a different place than than than just competition. So um I do think You know over a longer time. I mean the competitive more looking at the competitive market is quite a short term way of looking at things as well Uh, and obviously any rebrand or reposition is a very much a long-term saying So fair to say many will be in the context of long-term evolution of our industry really looking at their positioning And how they better communicate that and I do think you'll see Other firms we've just seen, you know, sequoia make a pretty transformational change with how they operate their fund model That's not a rebrand necessarily like it's it's it's clearly not a rebrand Um, but it is sort of a repositioning of them how they operate The value that they bring to entrepreneurs and to the to the investor ecosystem more generally how they work with LPs So I do suspect that you know with that change us having gone public that didn't come going public Didn't come you know, didn't come hand in hand with a rebrand at the point that we went public But it was sort of a how are we evolving our purpose our mission and our you know, our business model For kind of the the next five 10 20 30 years of this ecosystem So I do think many firms will be thinking about that and looking at that But that's not necessarily going to be tied to a whole load of renames and rebrands And I think if you do see three names and rebrands, it's possibly for the wrong reasons Yeah, look, I've I've to agree with that. I think that you know Capital is quite possibly one of the most commoditized things possible Uh, and and you know, you you start to see this how you'll you start to see more of these sorts of moves because I guess venture capital in the last 10 years has gone from being Kind of a cottage industry to being actually very commoditized and incredibly incredibly competitive But the thing that underlies most of that is that the model for for most vcs is incredibly similar to each other And I think so therefore it becomes very hard for them to differentiate On their their their structure or it becomes hard for them to differentiate on sort of other more sort of fundamental parts of the business So yeah, maybe they will look at marketing and branding as a way to do that But unless they have a unique positioning within that it's going to be very hard for them to to make that branding work stick And I think that's look ultimately the thing that the drove us to to consider a rebranding is we have a fundamentally different model It has an offering that goes to entrepreneurs and an offering that goes to the widest the wider community That is very different to most vcs And so therefore a rebranding to be able to talk about that makes sense So yeah, unless you're going to consider what is the fundamental nature of your model It's going to be hard to really make a brand exercise stick But look, you know best of luck to everybody. It's it's a fascinating thing as a market Or I think it's like you know venture capital is in a bit of a potential golden age because In many ways our industry is starting to apply the the marketing lessons that have been that have existed in Other industries for the last half, you know, half a century, you know This sort of stuff has been happening in shoes or cars or Yeah packaged goods for the last, you know, since the 1960s And venture capital is starting to wake up to this mainly because it's starting to become so much more competitive And so much more commoditized and you need to get better at this sort of thing to be able to differentiate Because as as nico was saying it's a you know, despite the fact that A decision to work with the vc can be a very rational thing you have to think about a lot of Different very commercial very realistic aspects of working with a particular vc You might be working with them for 10 or 15 years And so ultimately that decision over which vc you choose to work with Comes down to an emotional decision and so therefore being able to Help express our brand a bit more clearly to enable entrepreneurs to understand us that a little bit better Can hopefully mean to you know that we'll that we'll be able to work with many better entrepreneurs because they'll be able to understand that a little bit better Exactly. Yeah, we'll make sure to keep our eyes open for for those potential rebrands and see see how they go Happy to come on. Yeah, it's been great. Great having you on the show It's been very informational and very hands-on also for our audience. I think so. Thanks for taking the time to join Thank you very much We can't wait to see everybody at slush Well next month. It's gonna be very soon. We're sponsoring Founders day, so we look forward to seeing everybody on november the 30th. Yeah, fantastic Perfect. Yeah, I look forward to to meeting you in person as well and seeing you in in hopefully not too snowy or slushy Helsinki Yeah It's part of the brand I think so, yeah Yeah, and thanks See you in the next one. Bye. Bye You


Everybody forced here ripping 2022 Prism World Cup soccer hobby three bucks number four random team style check out the results right here Thanks for joining everybody and good luck. There is a link in chat for these results. Also I want to see another big SSP answer Yeah, all it says in the box is ultra rare on the checklist of demons say what's case it and what's not The national landmarks we haven't seen color. We haven't seen we've only seen one manga We've only seen one of the national pride as well. Yeah, the national pride are shorter printed to That's got a pretty good checklist In my opinion a better checklist in the manga Is surprising the mongos were hot in football Tysado Graven birch got a silver a thorgon azar at Belgium whales team logo You think it would be a whale not a dragon, huh? court uh red mojo Canada mark anthony k You go Canada 13 out of 99 Connections messy and de Maria. That's a cool one messy Maria. Yeah, my buddy Vaughn Grissom Gosens got hyper Aiden hazard Belgium got thorgon and and Eden. We're actually playing golf together. Uh, I think next He works out at the same place. I do that too Griezmann Jota Aronson silver or guay lucas terrera Vaughn literally used to like live in my house growing up Kind of crazy It's crazy. I mean, you know a lot of guys from around here though. Yeah This this area is just kind of stacked pot up inesias silver rookie come on being still the mana for Ghana I have a gold of his from uh merlin actually really his gold rookie from merlin. Yeah, so The gold actually It was uh, I don't I forget his club team, but as a club team, this is merlin. You got something here. What do we got? So national landmarks, what is this? National landmarks Let's go let's haro martinez Argentina That is sick. Those are super clean. Those are so sweet. Wow. I love that. Yeah, number one in the set Let's haro martinez national landmarks Let's go that's the one in the preview photo for the national landmarks. That's the one in the preview Yeah, wow, so we only have seen the one that we've already seen Yeah, we haven't seen anything. I was getting new This was the one in the preview. Like who to the checklist is the one they show you That's funny. We get that one mag break. Congrats, argentina. This one's going out to tekeshi There we go red marquinhos brazil 359 to 399 I don't know much about argentina, but i'm sure people who do would be able to tell me all about the silver sclores Vincent to bubacar for uh Was that a cameroon? Yeah, oh, they got the they got the steak with like this with like the green sauce on top Yeah, that's right. Some churrasco. Yeah Hyper whales erin ramsey they're like a son with like empanadas around it Pecan pecan steak is that what it's called? Dang dude, that is so cool Al jairos, we got a cracked ice tunisia slitsi slitsi slitsi slitsi There we go. Yeah, we pulled up so first case today had a manga and a uh, sweet in a landmark So maybe they're like case hits together. I'm not sure ultra rare. Well, I guess we'll have to see how many come out Yeah, one of each except for the color wheel. Yeah red switzerland. Nico al vetti Three 59 at 399. So this case so far without the last two boxes going The only Rare answer we haven't seen will be a color wheel. I think those are going to be the rarest though It's only a 10 card set and it's like a big big name. So those might end up being like the bigger chase. Who knows who knows National landmarks is pretty fire Dude, that's silver rookie Kaminsky Poland It's awesome Yeah, that that that was I was going to say table so One of case on those got a messy base Also, there's just that's just not there's like a scratching. Yeah pink, uh christian erits in danmark None numbered on the pink Yeah, country's logos are doing pretty well anything silver higher or definitely top load in those And usa kelina costa auto number uh 67 of 99 Blue for cameroon eric maximan shupa moting 271 out of 299 Silver global reach costates for Serbia Oh, I didn't know that national prize only one would mess in ronaldo I thought color wheel had messy in ronaldo Color wheel one of every two cases and you're saying the other insert the ultra rares are Two per case I can make sense. We've seen two per case this case We've seen won't be seen three actually If you want to count the uh national pride silver germany leroi sanay national prize actually shoot many rookie Uh, thilo, uh, carat germany red 30 of 399 calvo sar hyper rookie, um shuichi gonda japan It's a good take I like that take Everyone's saying that though. It's not even a hot take everyone says that now like Everyone's all in on can Canada's like favored now apparently silver brazilvich for Croatia Canada probably has a better every I've had like four people say that today that canna's go move out of the group stage It's the only team people are hot taking on It's one of those hot takes that you can say I'm for sure rune free. I'm room for all the north american teams for sure You got an alice on brazil cracked ice Yeah, well now they are mike now they are Trust me Yeah, i'm going for all the north american teams usa Mexico, canada when I see moan purple for spain 14 out of 199 CR7 insert scores club Qatar has been one of all you guys silver tibocortua belgium gundawan Not gundawan was turkish Yeah Maybe turkish just sent. Yeah, I think the last name probably is blue from oraco romain sayis 204 of 299 silver scores club gabriel jesus brazil Is the scores club have um Color like could you get could you pull like colored scores club? Not sure hyper rookie tywin b can in canada because I like to look at the car Do all the turkish go and play in uh in germany? Oh, that's crazy. Oh, I'm not sure. Yeah, that's yeah a good point I don't think I'll play for turkey. They can make a pretty good score Max silver empadu for wales. I guess when it comes down to like a world cup. It's like Yeah, I think I'd uh, yeah, I'd rather go with the germ. I'll begin with that Now it's turkey. Do they play in uh europe or do they play in asia? That's a good question. That's a good question. Are they in the euros? I don't know Is russia's euro Okay, but so there is numbered sweet Pink is malasar senegal non numbered. I'd love to see a numbered scores club korea The logo as you can make the german club yet Oh, yeah for sure if you can you will a morocco Kim zeech auto. I don't see any issues with the card It was a little stuff Probably just from the sticker on the auto. Yeah, uh zeech morocco base auto non numbered Don't see anything though And a maroon Yeah maroon 13 of 22 spain rodri Oh, that's sweet maroon. That's fire kind of a cool color match too. It would be like the guitar Color number to 22 for a world cup. That is sick. There you go spain Oh, okay, number to 22 Yeah, that's fire. Those would be cool parallels silver germany phenomenon florian verts Florian verts not having a base card is interesting Because he's like the best young german He's one of the best young players in the world. Yeah, he's gonna be a terror Yeah, so your uh, yes table Turkey's wave. Okay. Gotcha Auto first pack here if they're a goffy rookie Wow Silver auto shabby her nandes 19 of 99 spain Spain crushing it Dude, spain is the team of the day so far. I'd say fidel tea was spain Yeah, spain. It's got a lot of good young players Wow, man, that's probably the biggest auto we pulled today Purple yon vertongan for belgium 140 or 40 of 199 Uh, silver jonathan david global reach for canada That's probably the biggest auto we pulled today Over name are Just as a number Oh, the silvers are numbered. Oh, some of them are some of them are all right. Wow, that's sweet. I think it depends on the set And I think it depends on the player jocke and salo silver shaka switzerland Yeah, so road to the world cup. They had a lot of teams that weren't because like obviously if it any wants to have italy and a lot of products because Italy is easily as far as like all things consider one of the best countries in the world for, you know, collectibility red anna valencia ecuador the ecuador captain 367 or 399 Yep, this is only all 32 world cup nations. No more. No less road to anymore hyper rookie korea matayemi germany So I finally get some some canada love you get like senegal. You get all none of the african teams are in any of the World Cup stuff really? Yeah None. That's another team from egypt, man. Mo salah Salah, holland's lot. I mean slot times older. He wouldn't have made a huge impact But holland and and salah would have made a huge impact in the world cup silver rookie cameroon collins fine Gabriel martinelli rookie It's only because I think those guys have a lot of autos table. I think that's the big thing I think that this world cup in cards is gonna get a lot of people into it portugal pink brunardo silva Yep, it's simple. Just be born in a better soccer country I want to know the requirements for like being able to like where you get to play, you know, like Like what if I wanted to play a blue pollin to rookie? Uh, casper kuzlowski 60 of 299 Silver new era rish james for england. He just got rolled out of the world cup actually which is a big blow for england Probably they're starting uh, is it right back or left back? I always I always get it mixed up, but yeah That's a big one for england Big loss right back Red museala for germany nice 305 out of 399. It's not better than kyle walker though. Is he It's right now. I'd say he is Me personally, but Yeah, I don't know maybe it's because kyle walker never gets tested at man's city right now because they're always they always have a Was all offense Silver yon pedinari Taa baby. Yeah taa is he plays right back as well Yeah, pretty pretty much He doesn't play a lot. He has to do a lot of defending, but Yeah, he's like dangerous at the ball Ronaldo base he had an inform card that was a center back that was nasty hyper carlo suller spain Yeah, I wonder what what is england doing at center back?  I think I run fashion harry maguire He's huge though Got that going for him Got a rookie cracked ice. Felix torres ecuador Trippie is really good. He's super underrated He he's more reliable. He's more dependable taa is the better like Makes some highlight real gold but also makes some bad defending mistake But trippie is very well rounded Where is he gonna go after new castle the no way he stays there that long right no way Trippier I should say trippier. It's not trippier. It's trippier. It's trippier. Oh, I thought it was trippier I've said trippier for the longest time. That's how it's spelled, right? Yeah, it looks like that. I ER. Yeah Um, kind of like the year last name. Yeah Uh red muscella blue koslowski red anna valencia maroon road three to 22. That's a cool one for spain Blue saiz red elvedi red ilo carer Uh, blue is uh, troppo moting red marquinhos red mojo mark anthony k Autos were akim zee etch silver 1099 kellona costa USA A silver autos avi hernandez in 99 spain And national landmarks argentina lataro martinez That's sick a little chimichurri on the stake There we go. That'll do it six boxers coming up


Good morning Cybertraders! Welcome back everybody. Good to see you all. Welcome on the first day of December, a new pay period of the month and the last month of the year. Good to see you all, everybody. Good, good, good, good. All right, everybody. First of all, I'll just do a quick little announcement. I know some of you noticed that we've just launched the new version of the chat room. Oops, hold on one second. All right, sorry about that guys. I didn't have my mic on in the other room, but good to see you all. Welcome back everybody. Good, good, good. All right, so anyway, what is today? Today is the first day of the pay period. It is the last month of the year. We are 24 days away until Christmas, so it looks like it's going to be an exciting one for everybody. I'm very excited at this time of the year, because at this time of the year, we got about another two weeks and then to finish out the year, it's been a hell of a roller coaster though. We had some really good, some stocks that made some really big moves today. Hopefully a lot of you are going to learn it, evaluate what you did for the end of the year and start fresh. But listen, we're always out there and learning. Now, just to make a quick announcement, I know some of you here on YouTube probably don't see this, but we did launch our new trading room and our new app today. So hopefully everybody's going to get the opportunity to go out there and download it. Hopefully you liked the new layout. You could see the font is bigger. We're going to be able to share multiple screens. We'll be able to actually do a live video broadcast on the app just as an alert. So if I see something, if Josh sees something, we'll be able to do a quick video immediately live. So we put a lot of time, a lot of effort. We spent a lot of money into it. We want to make you guys to have the greatest experience and also learn the fastest way of doing it. So really excited about that. So with that said, everybody, hopefully everybody's enjoying it. If you're still a little confused about it, remember you could always do your private coaching. Just remember, please, I see a lot of you guys asking questions, a little concern about like this. What is this work? How does that work? Please talk to your IT education advisor at Cybertrain University and they'll be able to help you out with that. Let's just keep this into a trading room. So anyway, a couple of things that are moving. Let's get right into what happened yesterday. So yesterday was a couple of interesting stocks that did make some moves. It was a little bit of a bumpy start in the beginning and then things started going south. We saw what happened. The market took a big, big correction. There were a lot of good shorts yesterday. There really wasn't that many big longs out there, but there were a couple of stocks that did make some pretty good moves. And we'll talk a little bit about them. TOMBZ, one thing had a great push, but then she crashed right at the, you know, in pre-market. Let me just bring this up here. And you could see it here. Here's the two-day chart. So you could see how it had a really nice move in the middle of the day and then it gapped up pretty big. So again, this morning, I'm not really a fan of it because it's got major resistance levels around September. So, you know, trying to trade it again today, I probably would probably like to see what happens when it gets around support levels about $1.60. Another stock that we traded yesterday for some of you missed out, we had this MEIP. This stock had a really nice push over the course of the day. You could see how the stock just literally started right around $8.30 had a big push, went up. It wasn't a big mover. It wasn't a fast mover. That was the only issue about it. It looks a lot better on the chart, but overall, you know, it was like pulling teeth. It really was. It wasn't what we like, you know, as in a little bit more of a volatility goes of a stock. You just had to be a little patient on that. CPIX, another one, gapped up pretty big and right here at the open, but it was nasty. Look at all these nasty shakes. And then at $10.30, he had this big pop from $4.40, shot up all the way to $5.40, came right back down. So, this stock, hopefully a lot of you guys learned a little bit about it, that when you trade a stock like these, you got to keep in mind that we're always trying to take a profit. That's the big deal that we want to look at. All right? Can't go broke, take a profit. So, don't look at the big run-ups.  Now, let's talk about some stocks that are moving this morning. Now, by the stock market being the first day of the pay period, I am not a super fan of being aggressive. I told you this yesterday, and I lost a little money yesterday.  I lost a few hundred bucks, but I was actually down a lot. I got caught in a couple of stocks that made some big runs, and they reversed on me like I was trading. I mean, with the market running, I traded a couple of the brand name stocks, didn't really work out for me that well, and I had to make it back a little by little. So, I basically made half of the back.  It's the worst when you're digging yourself out of a hole. And we talk about that in class. I know Josh today is doing phase 3. He's going to continue to talk about level 3 again, so make sure everybody's in that class at 10.30.  We cover that up. So, the mark was down yesterday. Today's the first day to pay period. I'm also not going to be very aggressive as much as I was. I started getting a little aggressive yesterday. I broke one of my rules. It happens. You got to learn from it not to make those same mistakes. So, you got this stock VBIV that's moving this morning. You could see nice spread, 11 million shares. When we look over here on level 4, I'm not seeing that many orders out there as much as I like. So, not too crazy about what I got right here. But overall, it's got a nice little push. I mean, it's got a nice trend. I had a nice mover on that 7 o'clock in the morning, ran from like $3 to 360. But it's been holding here for a while. We'll see how she opens up. If you look what happened in September right here, she had some major resistance levels, and that explains it why that is. But I'm not seeing the same resistance that would happen in September and also in March. I'm not seeing those orders out there. So, that could be a good thing. GMVD also made the watch list. It stocks up 11%, 400,000 shares. Not terrible. Got some good volume, but not super sold on it. This stock just took off and just now it's starting to tank. Wow, we just had a really good pop on this CNTX. It ran from like 750 up to 950. Now she's coming crashing down. That's going back on the B list. Here's another one that had a big gap up pretty big. This one just ran from $7 to $11. And now she came back down to 9. Extremely volatile. New IPO yesterday. Be very, very careful. We know how IPOs trade, so don't get too nuts on these things. All right? So, I'm not really a big fan of those, but you've got to be really, really conservative. Be really careful on which ones you trade. Like this one here, another one. The stock that gap up, SLHG. Stock got really beat up. Went from $350 down to $1.50 first day up. It's a cheap stock, level one stock. You could trade a lot of shares of it. Don't discourage and think that you can't trade an expensive stock. You could do it on this one. So, I don't know. It's got resistance levels right here on 250. We'll see how she opens up. Now, what does this all end up to look like? It doesn't look like a good day. It does so far. The pre-market does not look good as it seems in previous. Now, when you look at the watch list over here, you've got a lot of good moves. You've seen a lot of greens on the brand names and stuff like that. But overall, not really sold. Not really getting a good list. I mean, it's the first day of the pay period. Exactly what I expect. Alex has a question here. Yesterday was down big yesterday in the LGVN. Popped for me and saved my day. Yeah, I mean, listen, Alex, I know you're here for onsite. We had trading stocks like that, but you've got to be really careful. Stock is pretty damn volatile. But you know what? You said it yourself. You probably got lucky.  You just want to make sure. You just don't want to get yourself in that situation. So hopefully you learned from it and not make that same mistake again. John's saying the VBIV is seeing more orders on level three on book map. Yeah, I'm seeing orders. I'm not seeing a lot. Okay, John, I'm not seeing a lot. I do like it. It's starting to build a little bit of a foul still flag. She's not up huge. 11 million shares in pre-market is a lot. VBI, whatever the company is, VBIV, we'll see how it translates. But overall, if you look long-term, it really doesn't look like the most trending type of stock. But I'm not completely sold. I'm not completely sold. So anything I'm missing, I did not call out. I think I found the most I can, but I'm not completely sold on what's going on. Listen, I'm going to give everyone a heads up right now. If you've been here for a while, you'll know this. Be careful about the market. The market is up today. Oil took a huge hit, made a big comeback. It's up about $2, $3 now. But oil dropped down to the 60s. We were at the 80s, extremely volatile. We're up about $1.80. Markets up about $300. We're at $3,400. You can see it right here. If you look at the overall market, be careful on your swing trades. I'm not a fan of buying stocks because I'll tell you what's going to happen. You're going to buy it. You're going to get shaken out. Market's going to go down. You're going to sell it. You're going to buy it up. You're just going to keep blowing money. All right? Be careful of doing any swing trades. Focus on your day trades. And don't get greedy. Don't get cocky. Be patient. Wait until we find those big run-ups and just learn how to make the days pay. But most, most important, make sure you're in class. All right, guys. But I might be doing a lot more watching today than anything because it is the first day of December. So don't want to get too crazy on it. All right? Guys, good luck today. Happy trade. Enjoy class. Enjoy the new features. Make sure you download the app. You can see it up on your window on the top-hand side right here. You can see this mobile app right there. Just make sure you download the app. And so you can make sure you get all the alerts. And remember, there are two of them. There's the pre-market here. Oops, what did I do here? You can get the pre-markets, which is right here. We got the alerts. And then we got the trading room. So if you're a student at Cybertrain University, make sure you get that. So you're always in contact with us and something changes. Something happens. At least you know what's going on. Good luck, everyone. Happy trading. We'll start commentary when the market opens up and we'll see you in class at 10.30. Happy trading. We'll see you at 2.30, everyone on YouTube, Facebook Live. Okay? Enjoy the rest of your day.


Many people both inside and outside the tech industry often get confused with exactly what the different data roles mean and the job that they actually do. This can make it quite difficult for someone looking to break into the field to know exactly which role they should go for. So in this video I'm going to go over the key differences between a data scientist, a data engineer and a data analyst. Hopefully at the end of the video you have a better understanding of the various data roles and you'll have more of an idea of which one you best want to do. Let's get into it. Before we dive in into explaining exactly the tools and requirements you need behind those three data roles, it's really important to gain an over-understanding of how data generally flows within an organisation. This diagram on screen shows this process and obviously this is not concrete and different companies will have kind of different approaches to this but this is kind of what I've seen in my general career and from what I viewed online. So the first step is obviously collecting the data. This can be done through API calls, logging and getting information from your products or your websites. After we have collected the data we then need to store it which can be done in multiple ways like databases on cloud computing servers like S3 buckets or even basic CSV files on your local servers. Even though we've now stored the data it may not be in a nice usable format. This is why we perform transformations to make it cleaner and more accessible to the end stakeholders. After the data is nice and clean we could then do some basic analysis to gain some insight and help the business. Finally the last pinnacle of the data flow process is to optimise decision-making in the business through predictive modelling and testing. Now different roles will control different aspects of this data flow. For example data engineers are mainly responsible for the collecting and storing stage. Data analysts are mainly responsible for the analysis part and data scientists typically look after the optimisation step. I do want to stress that even though some of these roles are more suited to certain steps in this data flow process it is not a concrete barrier between where one role starts and another one ends. It's more fluid than that. A data scientist may find themselves doing analytical work now and then. Likewise a data analyst may find themselves doing more of the storing part depending on the data thereafter. It really depends on the organisation and the way the company is structured. For example at bigger companies you'll typically be a lot more of a specialist. However at smaller companies like startups you're more expected to be like a jack of all trades and you may even own the whole data flow process end to end. And there's one more key thing to be aware of which is that different companies will have different names for these data roles. So a data scientist at one company may be a data analyst at another company or vice versa. So it's really important that you read the job descriptions to really understand what you're applying for and what your responsibilities and day-to-day tasks will look like. Anyway let's now break down exactly the key requirements and tools you need for each role. As we just discussed data engineers are kind of like the foundation behind the whole data ecosystem because they're the ones who basically acquire and store the data which is needed for the analysts and data scientists to do their work. The overall goal of a data engineer is to build sustainable and robust data pipelines that serve the business which can be anyone from the data team, tech team or even stakeholders. To be a data engineer you need to have coding skills in Python and SQL and things like Java are or no SQL also help. Obviously a big part of the role is being able to store data so you need to know things about databases, data lakes, data warehouses, cloud computing and just all the various ways you can store data using CSV files, Parquet files or Delta files. Like any tech profession it's really important that you're proficient in the command line so you can edit files, execute scripts and no basic bashing ZShell scripting. A common tool used by data engineers is called ETL which stands for extract, transform and load. The most common one is a patching airflow but there are also others out there so being familiar with one of these frameworks is very useful. Finally most companies particularly tech companies nowadays use a form of cloud computing so learning something like AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud will be very handy. This is not an exhaustive list as data engineers, tools and requirements will vary between companies. Now I myself am not a data engineer so I will refer you to this article on screen here which is also linked in the description below which is a Coursera article explaining exactly how you can become a data engineer if this is the role that interests you the most. A data analyst's main role is to pull and extract meaningful insight from data to help business decision making. As an analyst you'll typically be a lot more closer to the business side of things than a data engineer so having good domain knowledge is really important. You also need to be proficient in a SQL because well it's a language of data. Things like Python also help but it's not an essential requirement particularly for entry-level roles. As well as SQL you also need to know Excel I mean Microsoft Excel needs no introduction it's pretty much used by nearly every profession out there and it's a really good analysis tool for pretty much anything you want to do. As an analyst you'll typically present your data to stakeholders and to do this you will need some sort of visualization system and the best way to do this is through dashboards using platforms like Power BI and Tableau. Depending on the structure of the organization you may be required to do some experimentation such as AB testing so it's quite important that you have decent skills and knowledge and statistics. Finally as an analyst you'll typically present your findings to stakeholders particularly non-technical stakeholders so it's really important that you have clear communication skills so that you can digestibly explain your findings and complex patterns in a really easy way. And again this list I just gave is non-exhaustive and different companies will may have different tools and skills that you need in order to be a data analyst there. Cosera has a great ask called detailing exactly how you become a data analyst if this role is what interests you the most. As a data scientist your main role is to create predictive and machine learning models to help the business make decisions. You may be doing forecasting, optimization or even deep learning depending on the organization you're in and the team you work with. Now to become a data scientist you need to have really good coding skills in Python and SQL. Python is required because many machine learning libraries are built with Python in mind and SQL is needed because you need to get and transform the data to build your models with. To build those models you need to have an understanding of machine learning and its various algorithms. I have a whole video explaining exactly how I would learn machine learning if I was starting again which I'll link on screen here. To really understand what the machine learning algorithms are doing you need to have a really good intuition behind the underlying maths and stats things like calculus linear algebra and basis theorem. Again I've also done a whole video explaining exactly the maths and stats you need for the entry level data scientists which I'll link on screen here. A lot of machine learning algorithms are deployed on cloud systems so being familiar with AWS, Azure or Google Cloud is very useful. Data scientists often work quite closely with production code so having a really good understanding of the command line through bash, z shell, editing files and running commands is also very useful. Finally as a data scientist you'll frequently communicate your results to non-technical stakeholders so having clear communication skills is a must. Now as a data scientist myself I've written loads of articles and made several videos on exactly how you go about breaking into the field. I will link these articles and videos in the description below for you to check out. So the grand old question is which data role should you pick? Well it really depends on your skills, previous experience and basically what you're most interested in. If you really like maths and stats then the data scientist role is probably best suited to you. However if you're more driven by the technical encoding aspects then a data engineer role would probably be ideal and if you really enjoy the business aspect of things then a data analyst is probably the way to go. Now matter which one you choose it's really important to remember that the roles and responsibilities will vary between companies irrespective of the title of the job. So make sure you thoroughly read the job descriptions to really understand exactly what you'll be doing day to day. If you are keen on the data scientist role then you might be interested in a newsletter that I run called Dish in the Data which is all about becoming a better data scientist and my personal experience from a practitioner in the field. It's linked in the description below in case you want to check it out. If you enjoyed this video make sure you click the like and subscribe button and I'll see you in the next one.


Good morning, Hank, it's Tuesday. Although you wouldn't know it from watching the last month of Vlogbrothers videos, there are actually books other than the Anthropocene-reviewed book, and today I'd like to tell you about my two favorite books so far this year, both of which, as it happens, come out today. But first, disclosure, I know both these authors, I know a lot of authors, and I don't think that knowing someone affects my opinion of their books much, but I do think it should be acknowledged. Okay, let's begin with How the Word is Past by Clint Smith, who some of you know from Crash Course Black American History. This is a book about how the U.S. does and doesn't reckon with the history of slavery, but it's also very much a book about the present because Smith is looking at history through present tense visits to tourist sites. From a visit to Thomas Jefferson's estate Monticello, where Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people to a walking tour of sites in New York City associated with the slave trade, Smith shows us how profoundly the present is shaped by the past. But he also explores how the choices we make today about where to center historical narratives end up shaping our understanding of slavery and race and poverty and much more. Part of what makes this book so brilliant is its both-endedness, like it is both a searching historical work and a journalistic account of how these historic sites operate today. It's both carefully researched and lyrical, I mean Smith is a poet, and the sentences in this book just are piercingly alive. And it's both extremely personal, it is the author's story, and extraordinarily sweeping, it amplifies lots of other voices both past and present. One such person is Yvonne Holden, who works at a plantation that centers its tours around the experiences of enslaved people, and she notes in the book that legacies are quote, not just the things we choose, a lot of them are things we don't choose. How the word is past is about those legacies and how they are at work today, and what happens when we grapple openly with them. But it is also about what happens when we construct false historical narratives to avoid having to confront those legacies. Reading it, I kept thinking about that great Alice Walker line, all history is current. My other favorite book this year is Ashley C. Ford's Somebody's Daughter. Some of you will know Ashley from her guest hosting of Dear Hank and John, or from her magazine writing, but this is her first book, and wow. It's customary to describe books by genre, this is a memoir, and then by plot, this is the story of a young black girl living through abuse and yearning for the presence of her incarcerated father. But I feel like those descriptions sort of objectify or depersonalize the pain and love and particularity of this book. Somebody's Daughter is so much more than any summary of it could be, so much more wrenching and haunting and beautiful and damning and loving, and everything else a book can be. The writing seers and sores, the granularity of Ford's memories and her ability to share them make for a reading experience I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Roxane Gay wrote of Ford's ability to quote, see people for who they are without looking away, and I think that gift for characterization is a big part of what makes this book so incredible. But like all my favorite books, it is also about big themes seen through an individual lens. It's about trauma and family and race, and also about how big systems affect human lives, including the ways that poverty and racism harm children. But honestly, there is nothing simple about somebody's daughter, and I really think that any attempt to summarize it or even to tell you what I love about it only essentializes the unessentializable. What I can tell you is that the moment I finished it, I turned back to the first page and started rereading it. I am 43 years old, and I have spent a big chunk of those years reading, and I don't think I have ever immediately reread a book before. Both these books are so special, I cannot believe they come out on the same day. If you've read them, let me know in comments what you thought of them. If you're reading something else, let us know in comments what it is, whether you like it. Because I'm looking for book recommendations, it's a big priority of mine at the moment, as it says on my 2021 vision board, read more books. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.