Suranga Chandratillake OBE, Professional Investor, why being “A low frequency high conviction investor” leads to greater success, Investing Matters Podcast - Episode 38

Investing Matters

Welcome to this brand-new investing podcast from the London South East. My name is Peter Higgins, you can find me on Twitter @conkers3 and I will be your host for this series of Investing Matters podcasts.

What can you expect from the Investing Matters podcasts? A great question. You will find long form interviews with noteworthy veterans and experts from the investment and fund management industry. During these interviews each interviewee will share and impart their knowledge, learning and insights on what aspects of Investing truly matters to them and what in their view should matter to investors. We hope this knowledge exchange benefits all and enables all those accessing and listening to these podcasts to achieve even greater investing success.

With that in mind, welcome to episode thirty-eight, which is with the founder of and former CEO of video technology firm Blinkx, entrepreneur and General Partner of Venture Capital firm Balderton Capital, technologist Suranga Chandratillake OBE.

Suranga joined Balderton Capital as a General Partner in 2014. He was previously an entrepreneur and engineer. Suranga founded blinkx, the intelligent search engine for video and audio content in Cambridge in 2004. He led the company for eight years as CEO through its journey of moving to San Francisco, building a profitable business and going public in London where it achieved a peak market capitalisation in excess of $1Bn. Before founding blinkx, Suranga was an early employee at Autonomy Corporation - joining as an engineer in the Cambridge R&D team and ultimately serving as the company's US Chief Technology Officer in San Francisco

Suranga has a MA in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge. He holds patents in the area of video discovery and online video advertising and was awarded the Royal Academy of Engineering’s annual Silver Medal for his work in the field. He was also elected a Fellow of the Academy in 2012 and was chosen as one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders in 2009.

In 2017, Suranga joined the UK Government's Council for Science and Technology. Suranga was granted an OBE for services to technology and engineering in the 2018 UK New Year's Honours.

Due to his technology acumen, innovative know-how, entrepreneurial flair and expertise, Suranga has travelled the world as a serial entrepreneur, businessman, professional investor and tech leader. He currently sits on the Board of several companies.

In this Investing Matters interview, Suranga gives an overview of Balderton Capital, their unique partnership structure, how they back Europe's startups /founders from Seed to IPO. Why being “A low frequency high conviction investor” leads to greater success. We discuss some of Balderton’s major investment successes and why some did not achieve their full potential. Why an IPO is not a goal or exit or an end point? His experiences of the dot com boom and bust. Starting Blinkx and quickly garnering and attaining the attention of some of the largest tech companies of its day. His main/ biggest lessons learnt, why he is a passionate advocate for continual learning and the charitable causes he supports. We discuss generative AI, its huge opportunities and where investors should focus for the potential of long-term investing outperformance.

We hope you enjoy this podcast, and we look forward to hearing your feedback.

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