I have started thinking more and more about obsession, especially in relation to hiring and looking for founders. Having a deep and passionate obsession about something demonstrates curiosity and the ability to really dive into the details and go beyond the surface level. Have you ever noticed the way someone comes alive when they talk about what they are truly passionate about? Their body language changes, their eyes light up, and automatically you are more engaged with what they're saying because of the passion it projects.

I think that is one of the main things we should all be looking for in founders and prospective team members. To survive ups and downs, you have to be passionate about the business you're founding or working for, with an inspired vision for the future. Without that, bit by bit, people will likely fall victim to a deep sense of ennui, fizzling any spark that might have been there to begin with.

In a world where AI is democratising knowledge and tools, we have to start searching for what can give us an edge. Unsurprisingly, I believe that edge will be, and is, human. It is about how we show up in our relationships, how we look after our health to be firing on all cylinders, and what material and content we interact with to make our perceptions and minds richer. We have to become obsessed with the details, the small things: remembering an investor's last holiday and the names of their children, remembering how a founder pitched and the moment their eyes lit up. People won't remember what you wrote on LinkedIn, they will remember how you made them feel, because a machine cannot do that. 

All of this poses the question, how do we become obsessed? Is it nurtured or are we born with it? I think it's a combination of discipline and curiosity, two of the most important traits for success. It is the discipline to not give up or lose sight of the goals linked to your obsession, and having the curiosity to dig deeper and deeper into that topic.

This mindset has an insane number of parallels with that of an athlete, something I have written about previously. In an EY article, "Why female athletes make winning entrepreneurs," Michelle Brooke-Marchiniak, professional basketball player and entrepreneur, says: "For me personally, there was a perfectionism, an obsession with the details, with not cutting corners," she explains. "I always had to rewind the film 20 times, touch every line while running sprints and hit one extra shot before I left the gym. I don't know if that's obsessive, but that's the drive that I have." That is exactly the mindset you have to have in this day and age to find an edge, unwavering focus and determination.

Given the value of an athlete mindset in business, it is perhaps no surprise that we are seeing more and more overlap between sport and entrepreneurship. From the likes of the Players Fund, to Alastair Brownlee and Sir Andy Murray becoming advisors to Redrice VC, business is rightly realising that the mindset sport cultivates in someone is a rare intangible asset that cannot be easily incubated in an accelerator programme. It is the result of years and years of sacrifice and single-mindedness to achieve dreams and goals.

I want to acknowledge that, like with everything, there is a toxic flip side to obsession that comes in the form of excessive control and burnout, both of which can be detrimental to end results. In the context of sport that could be injury, for musicians that could be a lost voice, and in VC that could be a lack of creativity and clarity of thought from burnout.

I would challenge the Harry Stebbings claim that working seven days a week is essential to securing the momentum required to win. I fully appreciate that you have to show extreme grit and hustle to succeed but overwork should not be glorified this way if we do not know how to reset. I would challenge Stebbings to reframe his statement; perhaps actually there is no such thing as overwork, just insufficient rest. Instead of focusing on the input at all costs, there should be more focus on knowing what recharges your batteries to be able to pull the big shifts, sustainably, that are needed from builders, grafters and shapers. In the context of obsession, this means building nuance into the discipline component to know that sometimes it is about the discipline of self-protection to pull back slightly to later get ahead.

All of this pondering has resulted in more than just this blog. It was the genesis of the theme of our next London Live event, "The Human Edge." In a world where AI raises the floor, what separates the best from the rest is irreducibly human. We have to start thinking about this more seriously, from where we find those 1% gains to be that tiny bit better, to the moat we can build around a company underpinned by professional relationships.

This next event will dive into exactly that. We will look to uncover what a human edge means in the context of founding a business, tied together with a fireside chat with Tour de France winner - Geraint Thomas about what it actually takes to perform at the outer edge of human capability. Framed as a mirror for how investors and founders can think about their own edge. Given this event is set to be a sell out, it is invite only at this point but if you got this far, you deserve the chance to hear more. Sign up here. 

The founders building this layer aren't asking anyone to download an app. Complyfirst, Round Treasury and Ralio all sell to other businesses, all solve a problem that's expensive and tedious  rather than exciting and visible, and all become harder to remove the longer they sit inside a client's operations. That's arguably a better business than another neobank chasing the same current account switchers they have already fought over for a decade.

We have previously backed the neobanks and payments networks that made the last decade of Fintech visible. This decade's version is less photogenic - reporting dashboards and treasury dashboards rather than sleek banking apps but it's where we're putting our attention, and in Round's case, our cash too. If the last wave of UK Fintech was about proving people would trust software with their money, this one is about proving software can be trusted to run the money without anyone watching at all.

We'll keep backing the compliance layer, the treasury layer and the payments rails underneath every visible Fintech success story, because that's where the switching costs sit once a client is live. Complyfirst, Round Treasury and Ralio are three bets on that thesis, and we're actively looking for more of the same.

We'll keep backing the compliance layer, the treasury layer and the payments rails underneath every visible Fintech success story, because that's where the switching costs sit once a client is live. It's the plainest version of our own thesis: back the founders propelling UK productivity.

A compliance team no longer re-keying the same numbers into ten report formats, or a finance director who's stopped thinking about cash sweeps altogether, gets that time back for work that really grows the business. Complyfirst, Round Treasury and Ralio are three bets on that idea. If you're building innovative products in financial infrastructure, or know someone who is, please get in touch with our investment team, we’d love to meet you!