Hermann Hauser in Seven

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1: What area of tech do you currently find most exciting?

Probably the single largest new tool that we have is this machine-learning tool and AI – which cuts across all tech businesses. We’ve made many investments in that space. Probably the most talent-laden AI company in Britain is Prowler.io here in Cambridge with AI superstar, Carl Rasmussen, its chairman. 

2: What are the three most important things you look for in a business when you decide whether or not to invest in them?

One: size and growth rate of the market. Unless there’s a big market or potential market, it’s not worth doing. Two: the quality of the team. I’m looking for at least one star because once you’ve got one star, especially a global star, you can build the team around them. Three: defensible technology – patents or know-how – if the thing finally works, then people can’t just copy.

3: What is the single most important attribute you need to be an entrepreneur and why?

Passion. If they are really passionate about what they are doing, then they will learn the business sense and they will be able to survive all the ups and downs and inevitable crises.

4: You have worked with government on business innovation and skills. How would you rank the UK in this and do politicians understand entrepreneurialism?

There is a huge difference between the understanding of business and the requirements. Sadly, at the moment, we seem to have a ‘loony right’ that don’t think they need to talk to business. They are dogmatic and just not evidence-based. However, Greg Clarke [Secretary of State for business, energy and industrial strategy] does have a reasonable understanding of what’s needed. And maybe Phil Hammond [Chancellor of the Exchequer] too, but they are two adults in the kindergarten.

5: What do you think of education in the UK around STEM and computing?

It’s bad. Britain is falling behind lots of Asian countries. We have a number of initiatives – the coding initiative, physics in school, we’ve just introduced the computer curriculum. These are all good initiatives but we need to pull our socks up because other countries are snapping at our heels. The salary level of teachers is certainly an issue and then it’s a cultural one. Teachers aren’t held in as high esteem as they are in Finland for example. That’s why Finland is always among the top nations when it comes to the STEM subjects.

6: Why didn’t you approve of Softbank’s purchase of ARM? 

It was very sad that we were losing the last globally relevant technology company in the UK to the Japanese. And there was no reason to sell: we had $1billion in the bank, so there wasn’t any cash crisis and we had – and fortunately still have – a management team to die for. Having said that, Softbank, out of all potential acquirers, is probably the best one can hope for – especially with Masa [Masayoshi Son, its CEO]. As long as he still runs Softbank we’ll be fine and he’s doing what he said he’d do, which is very supportive of Arm, keeping the management team, and building the R&D strategy. And we’re hiring 1,000 people in Cambridge at the moment. However, he’s retired once already and if he retires again, what will happen to Arm then?

7: How will Brexit affect the UK tech market?

Very negatively. It’s the most ridiculous thing to happen. The first reason is the freedom of movement. How, in our age, you can try and create barriers where there were none before is totally incomprehensible to me. Eight out of the 12 early stage companies we’re supporting here at Amadeus have CEOs that came from outside the UK. And this is true in every country; this is not peculiar to Britain – more than half of the founding CEOs in Silicon Valley are not American born, and the same thing is true on the continent. 

The second problem is the freedom of being part of a larger market. There are really only three markets in the world that are worth pursuing: American, Europe and Canada. Britain will find out, sadly the hard way, how difficult it is to be a market of just 60 million people. It is just irrelevant. Once it becomes clear – as it is to anyone with half a brain – that Brexit is clearly going to be very bad economically for Britain, hopefully people will change their minds and we’ll have another referendum.