Hiten Patel: Thank you for joining us on the Innovators Exchange, and I'm delighted to have with me today Christian Nentwich, founder and board member of Duco. Welcome to the show, Christian.
Christian Nentwich: Glad to be here.
Hiten: So always like to start the top of the show with just a brief intro to you individually, and then the company that you're absolutely involved with.
Christian: Yeah, absolutely. So, I'm Christian. I'm, you know, I guess what you would call a technologist at heart. You know, I was born and raised in Vienna, in Austria for the first sort of 18 years of my life. Then had to do a little time out in the army like we do over there, and then got on a plane to go to university in the UK, and studied computer science at UCL in London. Went for a sort of a Phd. And then went on a journey of setting up a couple of tech businesses right? That have actually turned out quite well. And so I'm still on that journey. And I'm a really passionate technologist. I think it's a magical thing, right? What you can do with technology without much, by the way of resource, actually. And yeah, that's me.
Hiten: Before we get into Duco, and where you are now, just probe a little bit that kind of life as a technologist. Quite a few listeners are at the early stage of their career or completing their studies, making those transitions. It'll be good just to, kind of, just probe a little bit more. Like what kind of triggered the instinct or that ability to take what you were doing in academia give you the confidence and visibility to develop products and solutions. Right? Talk to us a little bit more about that.
Christian: Yeah, I mean, I think the magic thing about technology, right, and software in particular is that you can go and do great things without really any capital at all, right. But you know, all you really need is, is your brain, right? And you can solve problems that without technology would be impossible to solve. So you know, as the human race, in the last 50 years we've created something that has never existed before that has given us a lot of power. And so I grew up programming. You know, I am a self-taught programmer, right? I started this when I was sort of 10, 11 years old, and my first experience of this was sort of summer jobs when I was 15, 16. And I was writing sort of credit card processing systems for people running Internet companies and stuff like that. Right? And so that first experience where you sort of see a problem, and people have no idea how to solve it. But for you, you're thinking, actually, it's not actually that difficult. If it does this, this, and this right and sort of getting the look on people's face where they go "Wow! How did you do that?", right? So you know, it's almost like it's magic, right? So I think that's a great thing. So it's obviously not for everybody, right? You know that world of programming, but if you're leaning that way, I think it's a very rewarding, it's a very rewarding thing to be doing. You know I did think on my journey I thought I wanted to go down the research routes, right? So I went to UCL. I was dead set on like doing a Phd on real time computer graphics, because I was also like really into games and met my professor Anthony Finkelstein, who luckily talked me out of this. So he he said, you know this is all nice and sexy, but I've got some real world problems for you that you need to solve. So he convinced me to do a Phd more in the software engineering area on complex data validation. And so everything that happened after that, selling into financial services, sort of becoming somebody who's really at the deep end of understanding data accidentally started from that conversation, right? And I ended up not going into academia because I went through that cycle of publishing papers and speaking at conferences. And I really enjoyed that. But the rest of Academia, I think, was a bit too slow for me, and you know it's obviously a very slow and methodical world, and I'm very impatient. It's one of my core attributes, is I'm very impatient. So it wasn't for me.
Hiten: Let me go back to what you said there earlier. I guess that trade off between the sexy and exciting stuff and the real world problems. Right? So, I think, you know, as an individual, you can get drawn into like computer game graphics for those who are interested in that space. That sounds really exciting, really compelling. We'll come onto it in a moment. But, like some of the data management, reconciliation type processes you guys have ended up being involved with would probably be when I was starting out the furthest thing if I could think about being exciting. You've definitely put some glamour into it since. But like, talk to me about that trade off around leaning into real world problems versus what's kind of shiny and sparkly, and how you kind of trade off against that.
Christian: Yeah, I mean, I think real world problems have their own appeal. Right? I mean, for me. And everybody is, I guess, motivated by different things, right, in their careers, you know. Obviously, for some people, you know, it's money, you know, for some people it's some sense of how they're regarded in the eyes of others, right, when they're successful. Right? For me it was always problem solving, right? And where? Where is a problem that is non obvious. That is difficult, that is going to, you know, occupy, you know, that's really going to occupy my head for a long time, that I can dedicate myself to.
Christian: And the interesting problems are often sort of cross disciplinary. They're hidden somewhere, right? They're in industries or in parts of industries where technology hasn't made much of a difference yet and the secret very often is to be very good at something like computer science. But to also understand some business in great detail. Right? So what I've ended up doing has only worked out well, because I've also then understood financial services in great detail, right? I randomly ended up in financial services, because my supervisor, one of my Phd supervisors, Wolfgang Emmerich, he was invited by ISDA to chair one of the working groups for the standardization of OTC [Over-the-counter] derivatives. At the time this was in 2002, where you know, everything was on paper. Right?
Christian: And ISDA wanted to create the first electronic standard. And they said, look, we have a real problem with validation of this data. Right? So you know, there are many ways to represent an interest rate swap, or a credit default swap, right? What's the correct way? And he said, I'm busy, but I've got this Phd student. And me, I didn't know anything about this. Nothing, no idea what an interest rate swap was, or a credit default swap. So I said, I'll do it and then ran and bought, you know, options, futures, and other derivatives. Read the thing cover to cover very quickly. Right? You know what the hell is this stuff, right? How does it work? How is it priced?
Hiten: Yeah.
Christian: And I ended up chairing one of the working groups for FpML [one of a series of initiatives led by ISDA to promote standardization and create efficiencies in derivatives market] for ISDA for 3 years. And then suddenly from not having anything to do in financial services within 2 years, I am giving strategic advice on data strategy to Tier 1 banks, right.
Hiten: I mean that is, that's fascinating for me, that bridging the gap that you talk about from having that technologist mindset, the sector knowledge and understanding is the key. I remember trying to start my own career right in the late 2000s, just in the run up to the crisis, and just after people saying, well, you don't get much disruption, particularly in capital markets, because everybody who knows the space is quite esoteric, is employed like, particularly by the banks, right? And then, actually, what happened is the throwing out of a, you know, as mass layoffs post-GFC [Global Financial Crisis], you ended up with lots of people who now sat outside the industry, who know how it works, and can go out and kind of disrupt and innovate. And so, hearing you bridge that knowledge gap helps bring to life how you plug that gap so do powerful. So if I just move us on just more widely. Why don't you talk about Duco? How it came about from the, is to see the journey. You've played a bunch of roles at the company. And now founder and board member, I'd love to, kind of, you know, hear your story there.
Christian: Yeah. So my first entrepreneurial journey was actually a company called System Wire, which I co-founded, it was a university spin up, right. So the university took a stake in it. You know, we took my Phd research and some other work, and we set up a company and I won't get into that journey. But we built that company, merged it with another company, sold it. It got sold to one of the big financial services tech firms in the end. Right? So Duco was then sort of version number two, and sort of the starting point for Duco was, look, I've thought about things like, why is it so difficult to do things like dealing with different data formats and transforming data and working with it. I've seen all these processes where people every time they want to do something to get one system to talk to another, they would have to write a word document, and the word document is then given to a technologist, and the technologist uses some ETL tool, and they don't understand what the data is. They have to go back to the business and sort of billions and billions of dollars spent on these projects. And I've also seen some sort of other problems, like this reconciliation problem that you've already mentioned, where you know, a lot of trading is done electronically. And then a lot of the stuff that happens afterwards is done on spreadsheets where sort of people sit around, and they compare different versions of trades, right.
Hiten: And just spell it out just for some of the listeners, who are probably not living and breathing reconciliations. Things like, just spell out kind of in Layman's terms. What's going on in a reconciliation process? Why is it so important? Why is it so complex from a data process?
Christian: Yeah, yeah. I mean, maybe in Layman's terms, right? If I sort of, let's just take an example, right? Because, so first of all, every business in the world reconciles something, because every business in the world has a bank account where their bills get paid, and then they probably have an accounting system that records their accounting transactions, right? And so you have to make sure that your accounting system reflects what is going on in your bank account, right? Otherwise, there's a possibility for fraud, or for losing money, or so on. So everybody has to do that. Now, that's a relatively straightforward one, because if you're a small business, your accounting package will just do that for you, right. But if you're a big business and you can't run your business on one system, you probably have 2,000 systems. You have a trading system. You have an accounting system, you know. You have these like reporting systems, you know, and your information is replicated everywhere, right? And if the version of the truth that's in the accounting system is not the same as in the, you know, the trading system, or some of these middle office systems, if they, some of them get out of sync, you know, especially in a bank or in a big asset manager, you could suddenly have a very big problem. Right? You know, you can fail to detect insider trading. You can lose money, because you're not valuing your trades correctly. So somebody has to compare this stuff, or something has to compare this stuff. Now, for a lot of the, sort of, the processes that sit at the very bottom of a bank, right, like do we have the cash in the right account? There's been systems for that for a long time but for everything sort of where people come up with new products, right? Or they acquire another company. So let's say, oh, I've got a new financial product that I'm releasing like a structured loan. There's no system that will handle that.
Christian: And so what do you do? Well, you get some people to look at the systems every day, and they log in, and they put stuff in a spreadsheet, and they compare it, and they make sure that it's correct. And so we've got this sort of, you know, iceberg effect, right, where you see the top of it, where you know people, front office is trading. Blah! Blah! It's all automated. And then below that, there's hundreds of thousands of people still today, right, in the financial services industry. Often in offshore locations. That then make sure everything is fine, right? And they sort of show up to work every day, and they tick things, sometimes even with highlight pens. And they make sure everything is fine. Yeah, that's the problem. Right?
Hiten: Amazing, amazing! And what particularly drew you, you know, because what drew you to that with with Duco? What drew you to do things differently, because sometimes we've got founders on here where things have, there's not a solution in place at all right, and it's almost like a first order attempt at saying. Hey? Let's bridge that gap. But there were, I guess, rightly or wrongly, in my head I view you guys a little bit like a second generation. You were like a new, better version was coming along like, what? What drew you to go in? Look at that point and say, hey? It's already yeah, it could be done. It could be done better or differently.
Christian: Yeah. I mean, first of all, if you see this right especially as a technologist, you go "But this can't be". I think the first reaction is, you sort of go through the stages of grief here. Right? So the first one is like denial, right? So like this copyright, right, like this is the firm I'm talking to is just an especially bad firm. This is like, I'm sure this is solved right. And then you look around and you go "Oh, my God, this is actually, there are actually hundreds of thousands of people sitting around doing this". The next thing is, well, it makes no sense to me, because all it is it's actually a data integrity problem where data is stored in different formats in different places. So if we could just like, overcome that problem, that the data is stored in different formats and use machine learning, whatever, it is right to bring it together and compare it. You will not do any of this, right. And so I think our conclusion was, people have just looked at this problem the wrong way, right. When you say reconciliation to somebody in the bank, they think about making sure cash is in the right bank account right?
Christian: When we think about it, we think data has been replicated in multiple areas. And how do we make sure the data remains consistent? Right? So we've just reframed the problem right now? If so, and if you treat it as a data problem, you suddenly see that problem everywhere. And it's actually a much bigger problem, right, than making sure that the cash is in the right bank account. Right? So, you're right. It's, it was an existing problem. We're not making a new thing that has never existed before. But here's the good thing, and from a business perspective, I think there's always money for this, right? Because a financial services institution has to reconcile, right? You can't stop. It has to either pay people to do it, or it can give us the money, but they, but it can't stop right, because it gets shut down, right.
Hiten: Let's go there. I mean, just recap one thing you just told earlier, your reframing of the problem about it being the data. It was interesting. I was on a panel last night around just broader regulatory technology and transaction reporting. And the guest said, you know, it's the data stupid. It kind of, there's a recurring theme here about reorienting and looking at that. But you were going there next around, you know the scale of some of the funding and the resources inside these financial institutions. How mission critical is this. The bit that fascinates me, particularly when I was growing up and younger in my career, I would look at the banks. There's a lot of technologists, they are very, very well paid and very capable. Why is it that this solution in your mind gets developed outside by a provider and the technologists in the bank themselves, you know, similar. Probably similar education profiles, as yourself, you know, probably got similar kind of backgrounds and the technology knowledge. Why is there some of this stuff happens? The innovation, the relooking? Why does it pop up outside of the banks rather than inside?
Christian: Yeah, I mean, first of all, nowadays, obviously, there's extremely clever technologists in financial services. Right? Now, the nature of the problem we're discussing here is such that every firm has the same problem. Right? So it is a scale problem. It's not a proprietary problem that only one bank has, right. You know, nowadays solving a second order problem like this, which is a sort of a middle and back office problem. It's really, there's not that many banks that have the amount of tech money to spend that they can afford to build this themselves, right? You know, most banks nowadays have to be careful to spend their tech budgets on differentiating, you know, value creating technology. If you look at the very top of the heap, then, of course, they've actually will build their own in-house solutions for this, right? There is a big difference, though, I think, between building in house and being an innovator on the outside, which is if you are inside, you're not, you know, you solve the problem that your operations team tells you about and you move on, and you don't have that long term product mindset. Right. A product company on the outside needs to be very good at understanding commonalities between all firms and saying "no", you know, 10 times more often than saying "yes" to feature requests, right, because we cannot afford to build a proprietary system that only works for one firm. Now, if you build it yourself in that firm, that's what you do. Because that's your problem set, right. Ours is to get economies of scale and sell this to thousands of firms, potentially. So, we need to simplify, find a common ground, right? And in my experience technologists who work inside have less of a need for that product mindset, and also don't have that product mindset, right?
Hiten: No, that's a fascinating and very helpful, very helpful distinction. And actually, when we observe some of those, what often distinguishes between some of the third party vendors who do well and those who do less well is, I think, that discipline that you mentioned about this is my product, and I'm not going to say "yes" to every request. I think sometimes we see some institutions that are customer-first and trying to make sure they're doing everything they ask, and you end up with endless variants of products. I think the discipline you described is probably not an easy one to uphold in the short term, but it probably rewards you in the long term, I imagine.
Christian: It does. And you know, I think there are examples of this, that sort of illustrate this, right? So attempts to take technology out of banks and then build product companies that sell across the market have generally not worked, right.
Hiten: I've been involved in a few of those, and none of them said, yeah, I agree with you, your characterisation. I'm going to move us on a little bit in the conversation. There's one of the favorite buzzwords out there at the moment, and not a hardcore technologists myself, but you know, one of the ones that really is getting captured by a wider audience. This whole "low-code, no-code" movement. Great to kind of like, share your views on kind of like. What is it? Why is it capturing the imagination? Why is it kind of something that people are seeing potentially as a bit of a Holy Grail to help fix a whole whole bunch of issues?
Christian: Yeah, I mean, it's really, this is actually a really important subject to me, right? Because it was so important to the founding of this company, right? It's funny, right? Because everybody says "low-code, no-code". And the fact that there's two words in there already tells you that something's already gone pretty wrong there. Right? You know, so what's the point? Right? The point is, there are some things you can get people who are not technologists to do themselves. And I love that, because especially now in our in our area, where it's all about data, there's a group of people who understand how the data in a business works. And it's usually the operational people, right? So they can pull any data set and say, you know, I know what's going on here. I know where this is missing, you know. Blah blah. So you know, our goal was, how do we empower these people to sort of transform the data, validate it, reconcile it themselves. Right? So they don't have to ask for help from anybody, right? But they're not technologists and I think the idea is brilliant, you need to, you need to be quite, sort of, far ahead of the curve in terms of creating languages where people can express themselves, without being technologists. So that means no esoteric syntax. But it also means people aren't used to reasoning in a structured, formal way, right. Generally, right, unless they're trained mathematicians or computer scientists. So how can you let them express themselves, but without forcing them down that path where they need to be basically trained and in sort of rigorous system thinking. It is really hard. Right? You know, the Duco answer was, well, let's let them write fragments of English, right? And, you know, and take that to a certain point. That means you can't do everything in Duco, because if you can do everything now, it's a programming language again. Right? So what's the most meaningful subset we can give people so they can express themselves. And I think there are other companies that have succeeded in that. But then there's a really long tail of command. This is the low-code part, right? So no-code is what it's supposed to be. The low-code part is where people then started sticking it on as a marketing label. And you've got these systems where you're doing stuff. And then suddenly, there's a dropdown, and a Javascript window appears, and you're writing some horrible scripting language. And are you programming? Actually, I would say, you are, right. And it's BS, right. So who's really done the work here, right, to figure out what, how simplified the problem has become, and what sort of person can now use this, right.
Hiten: So, hearing you talk, I think for me it feels like the power behind it is more systematically bridging that gap so that you don't need to have a technologist to hand when you're solving some of those operational challenges, and probably more systematically making sure those people that are handling those data operations, can almost have the power of a technology built in and embedded. Feels like that unlocks a big, big gain.
Christian: Yeah, I think that's right. But you also have to limit the power, right? Because you want to give them enough power to solve their problem, but because they're probably not a trained technologist, we don't want to give them so much power that they can start to, you know, build too much and build a spaghetti mess, and, you know, that's nobody will understand. And then you have key person dependencies, and so, you know, trying to thread that needle a little bit, right.
Hiten: Just want to move you on a little bit, and you've had a fascinating journey, and I'd love to kind of hear from you about some of the transitions in your roles from, you know, budding academic researcher, guided by your supervisor, spin out from University. Then, you know, founding Duco, and then even the transitions within Duco, right. Changes in ownership, CEO support, like, you know, I think very privileged seat, right? A lot of, you know, you've gone very far and gone through many of those changes. I think people would love to hear your reflections on some of those key transitions. What changes as you go through those, what triggers those changes? What are people, what should people know about as you know you've learned along that way?
Christian: Thanks. I think, I mean, I think it's hard to overstate how difficult that journey of reinvention is actually. It's not something I was aware of, right. So when I started, you know, with 10 people and sitting in a room writing code, I was one of them writing lots of code, right? And the first time I became aware of this, I think we got up to maybe in the early days, like 30, 35 people at Duco, and it was a sort of time where, you know, I had more and more of these discussions with my board members and investors going like, you know, why are you spending time on this? You shouldn't be spending time on this, right. You should be doing that, right. And this sort of got more confrontational and heated. And 6 months later, so this, I realized that I actually missed an inflection point here, like it sort of like, I still remember this moment, it really hit me. It's like crap, this isn't the same thing anymore. Right? I have to really do things very differently now, right? And I sort of changed what I spent my time on, and you know, I'd sort of, there was a lot of frustration that there's no explicit articulation of strategy. What's your strategy? What's your strategy? I'm like, what do you want? Strategy? I'm just trying to call people and sell them stuff, right? Because we have no money. Right? So what stop talking about strategy? We need to sell stuff, right?
Hiten: Survival.
Christian: So I overlooked it. I sort of, I did it 6 months too late, I think. When it then happened again was when we sort of were 100 people, right? And with a hundred people and global offices at that point. So we were in New York, right? We had somebody in Luxembourg, you know. We, you know, we were already tinkering with Poland. So informal communication doesn't work anymore in that setting, right. You know, you can't tap people on the shoulder if your people are across the globe, you have to formally communicate, you have to communicate five times more than you think you should be communicating. That time, I didn't miss the transition, because I'd become more aware that, you know, there are going to be these inflection points, and I also had, I would say, two really good mentors at that point, right, who I talked to a lot. And I had developed more of a willingness to change, right? To sort of say, okay, maybe I'm wrong, right? Maybe I need to change now quite rapidly, right.
Hiten: And was that different groups, you talked earlier about some of the research advisers who'd guide you on the product side and problems to focus on? Was this a different kind of expertise and mentorship who are guiding you through this part of your journey?
Christian: Yeah, I mean, I've been very fortunate, right? I mean, I had as our first chairman and our first investor. We had Steve Gibson and Mark Beeston, who were sort of running a sort of VC and ICAP at the time, but then I had Chris Conde, who was the CEO of SunGard for a long period of time, is a very active tech investor, and you know I'm fortunate also to have, say, Spencer Lake, who has lots of banking experience and investment from inside partners in New York. And sort of this group of people, had, they definitely knew how to run things at scale, right? But also they just treated me very well as a person, and they were very supportive of me as a person, right? And so, and because they have been in operator seats very respectful of the stress, and contradictions, and things you have to live with, right.
Hiten: Yeah. Let me probe on that. There's a bit of noise out there at the moment around this whole concept of founder mode that people like. Tell us how you navigate that balance between that's a lot of expertise and advice that, you know, from various angles versus that single mindedness to kind of yeah, all the contrarian thinking, how do you kind of triage and kind of work out where to be responsive and where to take nudges, versus, where do you bloody mind it? Or where, you know, where do you have to be? Just self realization? How do you navigate that?
Christian: But I mean, if the fundamental question is, when do you listen? And when do you follow your your heart and your gut? And you sort of, and your vision, right? You know, I mean, that is hard, right? In my, I think you have to sort of think hard about what are your strengths and weaknesses, and be just brutally honest at all times, right? So you know, I'd started this company. I had never had a job, right? Think about that. Right? So, and I've never worked in a large business, which means I had no management training and that has consequences. Right? I mean, that means you know what? When I started, I had no idea how to do a performance review and like, why would anybody ever want a promotion? Who cares? Right? We're all just here for the mission.
Christian: So like, this is where I started right. So I had to learn it inside Duco, and so I was much more inclined to listen to people when it came to company structure and, you know, what is important to people, and systems, and so on. And less inclined to listen when it came to how should we position in the market and what should the product be? Because, actually to be fair to them, they wouldn't have wanted to tell me that either, because they don't know. Right? My job is to figure out how to, where the company's supposed to be going, right. And now that I'm also an investor and I appear in a lot of funds, and I talk to a lot of founders that's so hard spotting the people who, like the line between determination and stubbornness is very thin, and stubbornness will cap your journey very rapidly. Right? So I mean, you never get anywhere if you can't change, and you're just stubborn rather than determined, right.
Hiten: That's some neat, neat, and helpful delineation. Actually, your description of kind of the roles you take counsel on, and where you, and that's helpful. Just closing this bit up, like any particular lessons that you've learned, that you'd want to articulate and emphasize for the listeners here? Is there any singular point, or any kind of takeaways that lived experience that you'd want to give back?
Christian: Yeah, I mean, I think that could be a very long conversation. Maybe a couple of things. So, I've become in my journeys, I've become very passionate about positioning. The importance of positioning your company correctly and, you know, which is, I guess, a classical product marketing thing. Right? But who are you? What problem do you solve? And for who? And almost nobody, I mean, there's a reason why not many companies succeed. Almost nobody gets that right at the outset, right? So every company, especially technically founded companies, they go through the same journey right? It starts with a pitch that is super technical, right? Like, I'll give you an example right to go. Oh, you know, we're this new system with a brand new fuzzy matching algorithm that could eliminate the needs to bring different data together. And blah, blah, right? And if you look at it now, and Duco talks about saving operations people, 90% of the time that they spend on manual tasks. Right? And you can see, you get this change between this completely inward focused, you know. Here are these great features we have, to this is what we're going to do for you. Right? And every day we're going to wake up thinking about how we can save you time, right, in operations. That journey is hard, right, and figuring it out. And it's super, it always sounds great afterwards. Rather like, yeah, Christian, why didn't you just say that on day two, right. It's very hard to find the right positioning, and you only do it by talking to customers.
Hiten: I think what you say also particularly resonates, not just at the founding and the inception. You can have large scale companies that lose their way a little bit, right, over that period, and that, I guess, when you describe at the start of your journey, as I said earlier. It's like quite dull. You have to figure it out, or you just don't exist. I think, with the larger scale companies, I think there is those same questions and realignment need to happen. But you don't have the same bluntness. You know, the weight and the scale protects them a little bit. But yeah, it's interesting hearing you.
Christian: I think you're right. I think when people have to do product number two, or when the market they're in is stagnating. And now they've got a real identity crisis, you know. Who are we now? Then you have to go back to basics, right?
Hiten: It's like that second album, being a musician, overseeing those businesses that you've got to. We've got to have a bit more time, guys. We've kind of tapped out here. Let's try and write that second album. Look, as we bring things to a close, like to move beyond work, and would love to hear from you around what you do outside your professional sphere? What do you that enables you to achieve and do everything you've done in the day job, and any kind of hobbies or interests that kind of round out who Christian is?
Christian: Yeah, I know. First of all, I do believe that you have to keep yourself sort of in reasonable physical shape on entrepreneurial journeys that go on for a long time. Right? It's exhausting. I, you know, I did a lot of flying, right? So I think that's sort of the basis. Right? So, what else do I do? I play classical piano. I, sort of, I've always had one or two activities that make it impossible to think about work at the same time. So previously, you know, I've done a lot of martial arts in my life. So that's great, cause when somebody's punching you in the face, you're definitely not thinking about, you know, reconciliation problems, different type of reconciliation problems. Piano. I started sailing recently, so 18 months ago. So I'm actually going tomorrow, I'm gonna drive to the South Coast and head out on the water. And yeah, so that's about it. But music's always been a thing for me. And I'm otherwise quite active.
Hiten: That framing is particularly powerful for me, that it means that you're mentally distracted from the, you know, the day job and work. I think that's quite an important distinction. I found myself you could be watching football or whatever these days. But you'd still be. It doesn't mentally preoccupy versus. I'm not particularly a good cook, but I'm following some kind of basic recipes. I just can't compute anything else. The mind is so fully engaged with kind of following, you know, Jamie's 20 min meal that takes an hour. That you, it's fulfilling the obligation you said, right? You're distracted. You're engaged with something else. It's giving you the break.
Christian: Well, the only thing I would say is, I actually, the only thing I wouldn't agree with is the word distracted, because I think all of us have too much of a habit of distracting ourselves. Right? And so, and I'm not a fan of escapism actually, right. How do I escape from the world. I'm sort of like, how do I? How do I become alert and aware, and rededicate myself to what's in front of me? And so music is good for me that way, right, rather than a distraction.
Hiten: Yeah, that's a good distinction. That's a good distinction. Wrapping up final question, which we ask all guests, so great to hear from you around - is there an individual or a company that you'd want to throw the spotlight on? That's doing something impressive, interesting right now that you'd want other listeners to be paying attention to, or looking up?
Christian: Now, I've been thinking about this and I mean, maybe people want to hear about some company they've never heard of. But actually, I suppose I throw the spotlight on Microsoft. Right? I think it's easy to underestimate what an amazing job these guys have done in the last few years. Right? You know, technology is brutal. Right? You sort of, you come and you go, and whatever you're doing is superseded by the next cycle. And you're dead, right? And I think building companies that last decades is very, very difficult. And if you think about the Microsoft from 15 years ago versus what Satya Nadella has done in the last years, right? The previous management wouldn't have bought GitHub, right. Everybody's coding with co-pilots. They've got a stake in OpenAI. The core business is going well. The club business is going well. This is really, really difficult, right, to sort of maintain that relevance and be at the cutting edge. So I'm super impressed by Microsoft, right? I have a lot of respect for them.
Hiten: It's interesting. It's interesting hearing your view like in the news, but the understanding of what they've achieved it's interesting in your frame. You're actually not the, you're not the first guest who's thrown the spotlight on them. So they must be amongst you technologists who understand it better. There's a deeper appreciation, understanding. Look, Christian, thank you so much for being so generous for your time, so generous for your thoughts and sharing your experiences. It's been a delight to have you on the show, so thank you for coming on.
Christian: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
