Charlie Songhurst

Because if you look at what really destroys investment returns, it's geopolitical conflict.

If you look at the collapse of European wealth in World War I, World War II, it's just absolutely epic.

And I think that may be an underpriced benefit of Europe.

I think the other much more cheerful and practical one is

There are countries whose institutions weren't developed enough to build a Google.

Arguably, that's every other country apart from the US.

But I think it is certainly true of very small European countries because they just don't have the complexity of legal system.

They don't, obviously, have the means of coming to the public.

They don't have the institutional norms or the depth of financing or anything like that.

But now I see so many companies come out of Europe that are Delaware corporations that

LLCs that have, say, West Coast U investors, their legal documents by Wilson Sonsini or some other US firm.

And you have this amazing mix of Soviet quality education, which is very high in math and logic, post-Soviet GDP per head, which basically means your capital goes very far when hiring a labor force, but with

U.S.

high trust institutions acting to sort of scale it as a corporation.

And that unique coming together feels special.

Almost an even mix between US, UK, continental Europe would account for 90% with the remaining 10 scattered between Asia, Africa, Latin America with a particular hub in Singapore because of an incubator called Entrepreneurs First that I invest with a great deal.

is completely Matt's IP, which was, it's very interesting to think where talented people go as a framework.

And so if you go back and go the other way and say, what can you learn from investing when you look at history?

It's interesting to think is an underestimated cause of the decline of some institution, not all the stuff people think about when they wrote about it, but just that very talented people who are young chose to go a different direction.

So, there was a time when you're a young man and you could choose, do I go and do an administration of a Roman province, or do I join the early Christian church?