The king of Europe, Harry Stebbings. Harry sent a nice note on the timeline yesterday. He's been super supportive. I was DMing him a little bit and I'm sure he's going to be in the waiting room any second. He was saying he listens to the show and I think we finally made a show that's long enough for his marathon walks because the guy's putting up 40,000 steps a day. How many steps have you racked up today?
50,000 now. So every round of like two and a half hours and I listen to you on the walk. It's fantastic. We got to just let us know when we need to go from three to four hours because we want to pace with your walking, your steps. Honestly, I walk with my mother on the weekends. If we could do weekend editions also, it would save me having to talk for six hours with her.
I love it. It's awesome to see your relationship with your mom. Sometimes it makes me feel like a bad son because I don't walk for that many hours with my mother. But I was just saying you had a nice message yesterday on the timeline. Thank you for it. It's interesting, you know, the shows that we really respect, all of them are highly ephemeral, right? Like they're shows that aren't really oriented around the news, are oriented around individuals, people, companies, etc. And ours is the exact opposite, right? Like it would be kind of crazy to go back and listen to. Sometimes we'll talk about a story that maybe is more evergreen, but you've built up this sort of crazy catalog of some of the most amazing investors in venture ever. I wanted to have you on for a few reasons, but really to give you an opportunity to talk about Project Europe. We joked on the show that until you guys came out with this new program, Project Europe, that most VCs thought about was planning their sort of trips to St. Tropez over the summer, but you guys are taking it back.
Do you know what? We're taking it back. We also have Paul Graham. And fundamentally, the world has decided that Europe has lost innovation. We've lost entrepreneurs. And I meet great founders every day. And do you know what they're told? You got to move to the Valley. And I'm like, you don't have to move to the Valley. You can build a massive company here. And I think bluntly, we need to change the vibes. Vibes is everything. Elon, you like him or you don't. The guy knows how to master vibes. And for us now, we've told our young entrepreneurs that you should leave, that you should build a company elsewhere. There's a guy Gary Stevenson who is blowing up in the UK who tells young people that bluntly it's the system's fault. It's not your fault and there's nothing you can do about it. There is. I was, guys, 10 years ago I had no money. I was a kid in a bedroom. Today we manage over $750 million. The show and the media company is multi-millions because of the internet. I'm not doing that as a me. It's the internet and the empowering nature of it. I DM'd Mark Benioff 53 times before he came on the show.
We, by the way, sometimes we'll message a friend about coming on the show and they don't get back right away and I'm like, I got to channel Harry right now. I got to hit him up again. And it's important to share those. A lot of people would just have the temptation to make it look easy and say, 'Oh, yeah. I just messaged Mark Benioff and he just popped on. It was easy.' But it's important to remind people that persistence is what creates success.
Totally. I mean, Logan Bartlett's the same way. I think he DM'd, he said he emailed SBF like 15 times to try and get him on the show. And I was like, I don't know how you could do that. It feels so awkward to me. But you've clearly broken it down and it's paid off massively. But you know what? You've got to get innovative. I use Suno.ai to write songs about people and then I send them to them. So I'm like, write me a song asking John in a male folk guitarist tone about the future of M&A and then I'll send it to them. I promise you, you're the only one who's going to do that.
Yeah. I mean, it's so important in like fundraising, sales, and even growing a podcast. It's all the same thing.
Oh my god. Totally the same thing. But on Project Europe, yeah, it was like the doom loop was just pervasive. And I have so many friends in the US who are just like, 'Europe, dude. Like, why are you still there?' And it's just not true.
But the timing seems incredible. You've been banging the European drum for a while now. But it does seem like even in the last month almost, there's been this sort of shift. And that's sort of potentially coming from this, you know, the US is getting into trade wars with our neighbors, some of our closest allies. This is just sort of like nationalism happening around Western Europe kind of waking up. People are talking about what is going to be the new role of Europe. I'm sure you're looking at some of these companies, but the timing seemed great.
I think we're going through this intense period of deglobalization. And what happens in intense periods of deglobalization is intense patriotism. And I think we're at the start of that now where absolutely we're starting to see Europe once again get a little bit more patriotic. It's funny you said there about the new role of Europe. It's Helsing. And my favorite thing is when you see defense funds and you're like, no, no, I don't quite know if defense is quite the category. It's more like Anduril and Helsing, like very cool. Do you, I'm curious. You run your fund. You run the media business. Do you LP into other European funds? So you're trying to kind of create a sort of like, I imagine one of the benefits, no, but one of the things here in America is great if I've got a buddy who's raising a pre-seed round. I talk to them, I'm like, okay, I know 30 people that could lead this pre-seed round. Like don't worry if any one person says no, you're going to get a yes, talk to a bunch of people. But I imagine when there's probably not 30 London pre-seed funds that you kind of at the moment, but maybe there should be or maybe there are.
I mean, I don't actually LP really into other funds just because with the network from the show, if I LP'd into one, I'd have to LP into all of them. And so I find it easier to say just like, I'm sorry, I can't do LP checks. Otherwise you end up being Marc Andreessen where like I don't know a fund that Marc Andreessen is not in. I've been pitched so many funds where Marc is an investor. And so listen, he has more money than me and can afford to do that. I couldn't do a hundred funds.
Can you tell us a little bit about the patriotism in Europe? Are there layers to this where a Spanish company will only want to raise from Spanish investors and say, hey, get this British guy out of here? Or is Europe kind of solidified in the same way that the United States is kind of a block, even though obviously there's a difference between Florida and New York and California?
I would say that Europe has solidified completely. There's definitely not this kind of isolationist element of like, oh, Spanish versus Italian versus whatever. And Jesus, even the English and the French are getting on these days. That goes to show just how much of a united front it is. And I think especially in the wake of the divide that's growing between the US and Europe, that becomes ever stronger, that unified country element of Europe. And so I don't see that at all. And Europe really stands as a block. And I think you see that in how people have responded to Project Europe. And we've had thousands of applications. I started with 25 founders that I was like, hey, I'll go get 25 founders that are amazing and they will write a check into this vehicle to back the next gen. Literally went to 150 in 3 days. We've had another 300 to 400 requests to be in. There's a legal cap of 250, so we can't actually do it. It was amazing.
Talk about when you were an early investor in Lovable. They've seen ridiculous growth. It's one of those charts that's not really a line. It's more like a wall. Was that, talk about that round, how that came together. Are you getting these companies like weeks earlier than American investors that would want a shot at it? Is it months? Talk about your edge in Europe on the ground.
