How to build a world-leading UK technology company
Since founding Invoke Capital in 2012, Mike Lynch has invested in and supported a series of world-beating AI and machine learning companies, including technology unicorn and cyber defence experts, Darktrace, market-leading AI platform for lawyers, Luminance, and Featurespace, the world’s leading provider of AI for fraud prevention.
In this video, Mike discusses his career from scientist and academic to entrepreneur and investor, and how Invoke is helping to turn incredible ideas from some of our best UK institutions into successful businesses on the global stage.
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What was your vision for Invoke Capital when you set up the company in 2012?
I had a long period of being an academic and then setting up various technology businesses. When I started in the UK there were no start-ups, no one knew about the mysteries of marketing or selling. We just wanted to make the world’s best mouse trap, and then we were horrified when, once we had it, no one beat the path to our door. And then we learnt that you have to sell and market and support the customers and all that sort of stuff. And I’d walk around universities and see amazing things in the UK because were second to none in a lot of these areas, but we weren’t turning them into businesses.
But do I really want my 23-year-old genius up in the University of Manchester to have to learn how to run a salesforce, or deal with an expense claim of one of the sales people, no. Do they know how to do that? Do you know how to set up a customer support line? No. I want them doing what they’re good at. So, what we did with Invoke is we took all of the wonderful people that, through the companies we’ve done, we had trained to do all of those things, and we said ‘right, not only will we give you the money, but we’ll give also you the person that will set up your customer support, we’ll give you someone who can write your product manuals. You go away and do the clever bit.’ And that’s a way of pump priming the UK because in Silicon Valley, if you find someone that’s done the clever bit, within half an hour you can hire a marketing director that knows about that. We’re a bit behind that in the UK, but those people are there now, and you can pull them together.
And of course, what then has happened is the people we had in Invoke have gone and joined those businesses because they love them, and they’ve become incredibly successful. For example, Darktrace has gone from start-up to multibillion business employing thousands and thousands of people – they’re all getting trained now. I shouldn’t say this being a Darktrace investor, but one day they’re all going to leave and set up businesses, and that will be great. And that’s what we’re doing, because we realise the UK has the clever bit, you just need to add the not so clever bit. Many other parts of the world, even Silicon Valley, what’s missing is the clever bit a lot of the time, and they have the not so clever bit.
One of the things we often forget about Silicon Valley is their dead go very quietly buried. For every Silicon Valley success, there are many many failures. Many of those don’t have the clever bit. The bit we have in the UK is usually the clever bit and what’s been happening is that has been taken overseas when it comes to the point to make money. Invoke was a mechanism that allows those amazing companies to be here and that’s been a wonderful thing to do.