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Torsten Reil

👤 Person
639 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

When we started Helsing in March 2021, we actually put one of our slides that we thought there were going to be two galvanizing events. One of them was going to be an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the other one an invasion of Taiwan by China. There is a big wave coming towards us. It is autonomy and software in defense, and it's unstoppable.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

When we started Helsing in March 2021, we actually put one of our slides that we thought there were going to be two galvanizing events. One of them was going to be an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the other one an invasion of Taiwan by China. There is a big wave coming towards us. It is autonomy and software in defense, and it's unstoppable.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

When we started Helsing in March 2021, we actually put one of our slides that we thought there were going to be two galvanizing events. One of them was going to be an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the other one an invasion of Taiwan by China. There is a big wave coming towards us. It is autonomy and software in defense, and it's unstoppable.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

The thing that we have to avoid is the Tesla moment for the defense sector. If we collectively, including the primes, don't understand that and don't adapt, the same thing is going to happen to defense as happened to the car industry. Where are we in three years with Russia-Ukraine? What happens in China and Taiwan? Again, I think it's plausible that there will be...

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

The thing that we have to avoid is the Tesla moment for the defense sector. If we collectively, including the primes, don't understand that and don't adapt, the same thing is going to happen to defense as happened to the car industry. Where are we in three years with Russia-Ukraine? What happens in China and Taiwan? Again, I think it's plausible that there will be...

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

The thing that we have to avoid is the Tesla moment for the defense sector. If we collectively, including the primes, don't understand that and don't adapt, the same thing is going to happen to defense as happened to the car industry. Where are we in three years with Russia-Ukraine? What happens in China and Taiwan? Again, I think it's plausible that there will be...

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

It was a long journey. Natural Motion started as a spin-out out of university, out of Oxford, and we were trying to create physically simulated creatures controlled by neural networks, which was a crazy idea at the time. This was the time, I think, of the Pentium processor or something.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

It was a long journey. Natural Motion started as a spin-out out of university, out of Oxford, and we were trying to create physically simulated creatures controlled by neural networks, which was a crazy idea at the time. This was the time, I think, of the Pentium processor or something.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

It was a long journey. Natural Motion started as a spin-out out of university, out of Oxford, and we were trying to create physically simulated creatures controlled by neural networks, which was a crazy idea at the time. This was the time, I think, of the Pentium processor or something.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

It's hard to do computationally, but it worked quite well, and we ended up using it and licensing it for visual effects in big Hollywood movies like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, then for big video games like GTA IV, GTA V. That worked quite well, but it only worked, I would say, okay in terms of revenues.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

It's hard to do computationally, but it worked quite well, and we ended up using it and licensing it for visual effects in big Hollywood movies like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, then for big video games like GTA IV, GTA V. That worked quite well, but it only worked, I would say, okay in terms of revenues.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

It's hard to do computationally, but it worked quite well, and we ended up using it and licensing it for visual effects in big Hollywood movies like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, then for big video games like GTA IV, GTA V. That worked quite well, but it only worked, I would say, okay in terms of revenues.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

As a founder, you want to get to a hockey stick movement eventually, and that wasn't the case with the technology business. It was growing, but it was growing reasonably slowly. I think one of the things that we did do well was that we recognized that growth wasn't as strong as we wanted to, and we took a big risk and pivoted the company to doing games ourselves.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

As a founder, you want to get to a hockey stick movement eventually, and that wasn't the case with the technology business. It was growing, but it was growing reasonably slowly. I think one of the things that we did do well was that we recognized that growth wasn't as strong as we wanted to, and we took a big risk and pivoted the company to doing games ourselves.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

As a founder, you want to get to a hockey stick movement eventually, and that wasn't the case with the technology business. It was growing, but it was growing reasonably slowly. I think one of the things that we did do well was that we recognized that growth wasn't as strong as we wanted to, and we took a big risk and pivoted the company to doing games ourselves.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

So you know how people say, focus, focus, focus. We did focus, but only up to a point. At one point, we said, this isn't working the way we want it to, so let's pivot to actually making games ourselves. And we were very naive about how easy it was going to be. We watched Rockstar work, and we were big fans of Rockstar games.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

So you know how people say, focus, focus, focus. We did focus, but only up to a point. At one point, we said, this isn't working the way we want it to, so let's pivot to actually making games ourselves. And we were very naive about how easy it was going to be. We watched Rockstar work, and we were big fans of Rockstar games.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

So you know how people say, focus, focus, focus. We did focus, but only up to a point. At one point, we said, this isn't working the way we want it to, so let's pivot to actually making games ourselves. And we were very naive about how easy it was going to be. We watched Rockstar work, and we were big fans of Rockstar games.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

And we thought, well, we should give it a go as well and ended up making games for iPhone, which worked out very well. We got a lot of support from Apple, ended up creating CSR Racing, which was one of the largest iPhone games at the time.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: The Future of War: Are We Ready & What Needs to Be Done | China, Russia and Trump: What Happens Now | Raising $828M to Build the Defence Champion of Europe | Torsten Reil, Co-Founder @ Helsing

And we thought, well, we should give it a go as well and ended up making games for iPhone, which worked out very well. We got a lot of support from Apple, ended up creating CSR Racing, which was one of the largest iPhone games at the time.

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