Faces of disruption – Outliers

good morning Sarah good to see you and thank you for being here I look forward to the conversation thank you MIM it's great to be here so tell us a bit more about outliers outliers is an early stage Venture Capital fund we invest in outlier Founders in the Middle East and the United States and you mentioned outlier Founders and I know that is very important to you so what is an outlier founder by definition outlier is an exception so it's very difficult to have a list or like a checklist of what an outlier means another point to this is what what does it mean to have an outlier team and I think that's also something that we think about a lot and constantly at outliers the definition of an outlier team irrespective of the individual co-founders is a team that has exceptional diversity in a way that allows the founding team to have a superior decision making very interesting now thinking a bit about the landscape the last 12 to 18 month uh in this space has been quite challenging to say the least so what's your view on the landscape a lot of things changed and I think Founders will continue to build the question is do the founders today have the agility to cope with the different market dynamics do they have the like a toolkit of skill sets that they can uh extract from do they have a team that relates to the mission in a way that allows them to navigate the market dynamics in a way that uh allows a company to adapt to the changing uh macro environment and you you mentioned the word adapt did you adapt in any way or form because of this on a day-to-day basis of course it changed what we look at what we track how we talked to our Founders in terms of the advice that we're giving the founders uh what didn't change though is our philosophy and how we're operating so um fundamentally from a thesis perspective we're the same but from a day-to-day perspective we're constantly looking for what are the new data points are informing our decision and can inform our Founders uh in a way that can help them build better companies and uh what is your the role of uh the VC and what is the relationship between a VC and a founder and what is your your role in these Dynamics our role is uh basically to be partner we often uh almost never say we're investors in the company we're partners with the founders we back companies we support them the one question that I have now is uh about thinking of this part of the world there's a lot of potential people are thinking it's the Golden Age of the Middle East how do you see this happening in the sector that you're playing how attractive is the market here what we're super excited about today is that there's a lot of Bottoms Up thinkers and product driven Founders that are building for the region specifically using insights the minia region is very special and it's very different uh so building for Saudi is very different than building for the UAE and it's extremely different than building for Egypt so we think there's a lot of interesting things can enable further potential if uh there are cross Regional uh collaboration activities that can enable companies to build across the region very interesting so you know my last question on having a magic wand so so if you had one and you can use it here to uh fix one of those uh blockers that you mentioned what would that be we genuinely believe that long-term thinking is required for the ecosystem to actually be sustainable so there's a lot of quick fixes that can enable growth and I think there's a lot of those uh initiatives that are already changing how the ecosystem is growing and scaling but I think some things are just not forcible by a magic wand or so so I think one of the pillars of the e system moving forward is potentially going to be the existence of presidents so for instance things along the lines of uh other successful exits inter Regional exits uh more IPOs uh by technology companies um more examples of failures as well because all of those uh anecdotes collectively enable some sort of like institutional knowledge in a way that allows future Founders to know what to do and what not to do in a way that's organic and sustainable for the long term interesting there are a lot of people that are listening to us at this moment that are considering whether they want to be Founders or not what would you want to tell them so should they be Founders or or not both being a founder and being VC is extremely humbling because uh failure is basically built in into the system um so I guess my biggest advice is if there's an inkling of curiosity about building a company that's a good sign but then there needs to be a very high level of conviction about the problem you're solving in a way that gives the founder a constant stream of resilience and a constant stream of curiosity to continue and to want to continue building that company because it's not an easy Journey but it's extremely worthwhile Sarah thank you very much for being with us today thank you Mimo

Channel: McKinsey & Company

Views: 1,165,423

Keywords: business, leadership, McKinsey, McKinsey & Company

Id: e3goDGomtXg

Length: 4min 49sec (289 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 29 2024