What to do about Steve Bartlett? SVB | IWD
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If you are new here, my name is Jimmy McLoughlin, a former Downing Street adviser turned podcaster. I write this notebook on the most interesting things I have seen on the future of work, jobs, technology and politics.
🏦Silicon Valley Bank: Twitter space tomorrow
🐉 What do we do about Steven Bartlett?
✍️ Creator Corner: Marc Andreessen
🔥 IWD: Alex Depledge | Sophie Adelman | Tessa Clarke | Izzy Obeng
😂 Be more Frank
🏦 Silicon Valley Bank
The situation is moving at rapid pace. The last time there was a run on a major bank, was in a pre social media age, and it is making a big difference to the speed of information and misinformation flying around.
We'll assess the situation tomorrow with Graham Ruddick of the
substack and I will be hosting a live Twitter audio space at 1330 tomorrow.We’ll be joined by Dom Hallas of start up lobby COADEC and Alex Depledge of Resi.
You can join through this tweet below.
🐉 What do we do about Steven Bartlett?
Two issues ago, I wrote about how the social media battle royale would play out. It became one of our most read and engaged pieces we have ever written.
That piece is here.
I finished with the question, how would Steven Bartlett respond?
He came out with a lengthy response that very same Sunday afternoon, on all his platforms, including on his private messaging apps Telegram and Discord.
The views continued to rack up on the original tweet sent by Tim Armoo, surpassing a million views (although interestingly it only has 400 Retweets and less than 2,000 likes - it is a noteworthy that Elon Musk has brought the impressions number much more to the fore in Twitter).
Privately in the business and entrepreneurial chattering classes (for want of a better phrase) people have been discussing this story a lot, some people have speculated will the BBC drop him from Dragons Den?
On Valentine’s day, James Hurley of The Times wrote the definitive piece here.
Two points to note, Bartlett has filed a legal complaint against The Times about the piece.
The Times are now using the piece as marketing on Instagram which is an intriguing subplot to the story.
I am not here to estimate how much money Bartlett has made from Social Chain. I want to look at the story from a more cultural perspective.
I have met Steven fleetingly on a couple of occasions and found him to be a good natured individual.
I am always interested in how people describe themselves, it is often done through our jobs, and what particularly struck me about Steven is how he describes himself as one Europe’s leading entrepreneurs and philosophical thinkers. That second half has always really stood out for me because it isn’t something you hear very often. Plato, Aristotle, Bartlett ….
What does a philosophical thinker actually mean?
The New Statesmen said in a piece last year titled Steven Bartlett’s self help guide to helping himself,
‘his eagerness to be treated more like a celebrity than a guiding voice in business shines through’.
But here is the thing, what if Bartlett does want to be more of a celebrity? Why is that a bad thing? Branson and Sugar are the UK’s two most famous entrepreneurs of the last half a century, they cultivated that through the media too.
But is it all just narcissism? A narcissist is defined as
‘a person who has an excessive interest in or admiration of themselves’
Most entrepreneurs, most politicians, in fact most people have a little bit of a narcissist streak. Just this week, William Hague wrote a brilliant piece about ‘an aversion to risk is holding Britain back’.
I particularly enjoyed this line in Hague’s piece and it rather sums up the thrust of it:
If you are trying to make nuclear fusion work, you might get nowhere for many years. You might fail completely. Or you might rescue the entire planet. You are not going to succeed if you are audited as if you are building a hospital car park.
To achieve this mindset shift as Hague calls for, the British people are going to need to have a bit more admiration for themselves.
It is oft quoted that entrepreneurs need resilience and grit above all else, the lines between, resilience, grit, admiration for oneself, self belief and narcissism are all rather thin.
At the end of the day, if you create a podcast, you are likely to like the sound of your own voice, some people go as far as putting their names in the title …
Ultimately, a man from a BME background built a multi million pound business in his 20s.
That is flipping impressive, even if it is single digit millions rather than triple. It is still more successful than most entrepreneurs achieve in a lifetime, let alone in their formative years.
I also think it says a lot about the UK too, that a young person can do that when coming from a poor background.
He has used it as a launchpad, to propel himself into a media star and use that to build and fund more businesses. It is exactly this flywheel process that needs to be encouraged if the UK is going to continue going up the entrepreneurial escalator, as we approach our 4th cycle.
Furthermore, I would much rather young people are consuming Bartlett’s content, than Andrew Tate.
Someone senior in the business world who I respect a great deal said to me the other day, ‘the thing is Steve needs to decide if he wants to be an entrepreneur, a media star, an investor or self help guru’.
But why does he? He seems to be doing all four things pretty well, he is only 30, why does he need to put all his chips in one basket?
I think it represents the way that modern careers are going in terms of that squiggly career that will come to dominate 21st Century career paths.
So whilst it is crucial that his claims have been scrutinised by his peers and the media. My overall view is that he is still a special talent, that the UK is lucky to have him.
Ultimately, the UK needs more Steven Bartlett’s not fewer.
🔥 IWD: Alex Depledge | Sophie Adelman | Tessa Clarke | Izzy Obeng
We put out a big call on LinkedIn for some more female guests, we still get 10x the amount of male pitches than we do females.
We got a great response here (as a rule of thumb best way to generally pitch people is to hit reply to these emails)
There has been some interesting news on some Jimmy’s Jobs Alum in the last few weeks, it just so happens the four most exciting news stories all happen to be females.
Sophie Adelman, co-founder of Multiverse, and The Garden has announced that the latter is to be acquired by Saga. Story here.
Alex Depledge of RESI has announced a £3million investment from ITV AdVentures Invest. A very interesting deal, which will see RESI appearing a lot more on our TV screens (and hopefully Alex too if I can persuade her 🙂) Story here.
ITV has done the same with what3words and mens brand Spoke (of which makes up about half of my wardrobe!) It is a really interesting development in UK technology / entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Both Tessa Clarke, founder of Olio and Izzy Obeng, founder of Foundervine has been nominated in Veuve Clique awards - story in the Independent
Tessa has also given a TedTalk which has got 30k plus views in just 10 days
At this rate, I’ll need to be putting out a call for male alumni of Jimmy’s Jobs who have got good news stories to share!
✍️ Creator Corner: Marc Andreessen
I always like to. promote other new substackers / creators, well a chap called Marc Andreessen has just launched a substack (and it’s daily!) he also happens to be one of the worlds top venture capitalists.
He’s written an interesting piece on AI / unemployment / pricing / regulated industries.
😂 Be more Frank
Good spot by James Heale at the Spectator on my old boss’ reaction to a Bill Cash speech.
I don’t remember her doing this in any of my briefings - although I am sure she felt like it at points …
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