Victor Riparbelli
speaker
267 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Victor Riparbelli’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
They think less like that, right? As you of course know, like stock options in Europe, people still view it as like a random lottery ticket, not really as part of their compensation because no one in Europe knows anyone who got rich off working in a startup because we don't have that many successes here. Are you seeing that attitude change? I am seeing the attitude change a little bit.
It's going to take a long time to change because the way, no matter what I tell people who work at Synthesia, no matter how much they can kind of read the news and see all this stuff, what people care about is like, do they know someone? Do they have a cousin who made $2 million of being early in a startup?
In the US, especially in the Valley, everybody knows someone who made $2 million of working in a startup, and they know several of them. That makes you feel like you can do it as well, right? Here, it's very kind of abstract, like, oh, yeah, people, these companies made.
But before we really see that, and that just requires, like, a bigger ecosystem with more exits, more big companies, and so on, I think it'll get there, but it'll take a long time. But what I think you get in Europe is you get more loyalty in the sense that people care a lot about, like, working a place that they like working, working on interesting problems, having great colleagues.
And I think that's a pro that's, like, less spoken about. Do you think people work as hard? Honestly, I don't really have a strong sense that people work way harder in the Valley. I know a couple of great friends who've moved over there and opened offices. I have not heard from any of them that, wow, people just work so insanely hard.
There's probably a percentage of people there that work really, really hard, but I think we have those people here as well. I think that's more like a personality trait that's dispersed all across the world. But I don't think if you take an average software engineer in the Valley that they work harder than we do in Europe.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's kind of interesting to see what the new government is going to do, right? I think they have a lot of great cards on their hand. Like we have a lot of great companies that are actually building here. And I think what's important or what we're seeing in the London ecosystem is that
We're actually building global leaders, not just regional winners of expense management or something like that. You have Eleven Labs, who are leading in voice. You have us, which is leading in enterprise AI video. We have Wave, which is definitely doing self-drive. We have a lot of great companies that actually become global leaders.
I think it's really important that the incoming government doesn't screw this up. How could they screw it up? I think they could screw it up by over-taxation, all the kind of usual things that I think everyone is talking about, right? I think what they can do to make it better, I think the UK has a brand problem. What do you mean?
I think we disagree on this, but I actually think the UK is a pretty good place to build in general. I come from Denmark, right? That would have been a terrible place to build a company. That would have been impossible, basically. I think with SEIS, EIS... I think there's a lot of good things that have happened in the ecosystem. You have all the talent.
I think the venture ecosystem has gotten better, even though it's still very PE-centric. I still think it has gotten better. There's also still a lot of ways to screw it up, right? And I see a lot of people who are leaving, especially after the recent administration. My phone.
The obvious things like corporate tax, entrepreneurs relief, all those things make it really attractive to build here because we are in stark contrast to Europe, which in many places are terrible. I think it's different because you're from here. You're British, right? I'm from Denmark. I think we always, wherever we're from, we're much more negative.
I moved here and I've seen a lot of the positives around it. But I think don't screw up the fundamentals, right? Don't raise the taxes too much. Make sure we still have great relief schemes for people who great jobs, great economic productivity, and those sort of things.
On the brand problem, that of course starts with the fundamentals like crimes on the rise, living costs, all those things that I think you've also been very vocal about. Those are big, but those are big problems, right? Sorry. But what I actually would say though is that
No, I agree. I totally agree on that. And I think that comes a bit back to the brand problem because I actually do think that as much as we have a lot of people who want to leave to the US, one of my learnings has been that actually a lot of people want to come to London as well, especially from the US.
In our journey, I've seen that it's actually easier to move people from the Valley to London than from the Valley to New York, which feels kind of counterintuitive. But a lot of people, want to come and experience the European lifestyle, right? They like the cultural heritage. They like the fact that London is a cultural melting pot.
All the things I also love about London on a personal level, right? If you worked a bit more on the brand, I just think you could attract a lot of great people to also come here and build. But of course, it starts with the fundamentals, right? Now, if you look at California versus London in terms of like taxation and things like that,
I'm not sure you can say that there's like a massive difference, right? California is also like- Super high taxes. It's very high taxes and pretty rough. So I wouldn't over-index on that, but I think definitely a case of like double down, right? There's a lot of good things happening in the UK.
And I think if we don't screw it up, we just need one or two companies to become plus $10 billion companies headquartered in the UK. Then I think we'll really start to see the ecosystem grow.
No, but it's a joke. I mean, the London Stock Exchange, like... They need to fix that. They need to put some liquidity in the system. I don't know. I'm not a financier, so I don't know what they need to do to fix it. But, I mean, that is a disaster, right? And I think we've seen, unfortunately, great companies really suffer under that. 100% you have done. Yeah, it's not very attractive.
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