275: 5 Founder Lessons From the JP Morgan Tech Conference

What separates founders who make it from those who stall out?

After spending two days surrounded by billion-dollar CEOs and investors at JP Morgan’s Tech Investor Conference in London, Sophia Matveeva discovered that the conversations happening in those rooms reveal far more than market gossip.

They hold the blueprint for building resilient, fundable tech companies.

Whether you’re preparing to fundraise, expand internationally, or simply sharpen your strategy, this episode gives you a rare look at how top leaders think and how you can apply those insights to your own company’s next move.

In this episode, you will hear:

• Why AI adoption has shifted from hype to hard-nosed cost-cutting and how that affects startup strategy
• How to lead investors with confidence by defining your own market story
• What separates founders from hired executives when pitching and performing under pressure
• The mindset principle that football legend Thierry Henry shared that every founder should apply

Resources from this Episode

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TRANSCRIPT (Unedited)

Sophia Matveeva  

I just spent two days surrounded by billion dollar CEOs, investors and bankers at JP Morgan's tech investor conference in London, and the way they talk about technology growth and storytelling is exactly what earlier stage founders should be learning but almost never do. So in this episode, I'm bringing you five key lessons that will sharpen your strategy and help you stand out in the market.

Sophia Matveeva  00:32

Hello and welcome to the tech for non techie podcast. I'm your host, Sophia Matveeva, if you're a non technical founder, building a tech product or adding AI to your business, you're in the right place. Each week, you'll get practical strategies, step by step, playbooks and real world case studies to help you launch and scale a tech business without learning to code. And this is not another startup show full of jargon venture capital theater or tech bro bravado. Here we focus on building useful products that make money without height and without code. I've written for the Harvard Business Review and lectured at Oxford, London Business School and Chicago Booth, so you are in safe hands. I've also helped hundreds of founders go from concept to scalable product, and now it's your turn. So let's dive in. Hello, smart people. How are you today? I am recovering from spending two days at the JP Morgan tech investor conference in London. I don't know why conferences are so tiring. It's literally in the same city I live in. Anyway, in this episode, I want to share lessons that are useful for founders from this big investor conference. So let me tell you what it is first and why it's useful for you to know what's talked about at events like this. So when an investment bank puts together an event like this, it's because they want to be the bank that companies choose when they list on the stock exchange, or if they do mergers and acquisitions, which is basically when one company buys another company, or when a company is going to raise money from private investors. So basically, a bank like JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs, they would make money if a company like, say, Revolut decides to go public, as in, list their shares in the Stock Exchange, or buy another company, or do another private fundraise. And so if they do that, and they use JP Morgan as their bankers, JP Morgan would make loads of money. And so they're very happy about it. That's why they have these events. So in general, the people presenting at the conferences. They're the founders and the hired leadership teams of tech companies that are fairly late stage, because if you're not really like that close to doing a major transaction, the investment bank is not going to put you in front of public markets investors and the audience that basically what I just said, they're public markets investors. So they are people from pension funds or hedge funds or ham or family offices or just basically some very rich people who would just invest as a very wealthy individual. And so the aim of these events is for the investors in the audience to get to know the companies and their leadership teams. So when a company like Revolut announces their IPO, the investors already know the business and they already want to invest. And if there's demand, then that means that the share price at the listing would be high, which would make the founders and the venture capitalists and basically anybody who's got equity rich, and so that would make them happy. Anyway, investment banks do these conferences for all sorts of sectors, and I went to the one on the tech sector earlier this week. So you might be an earlier stage founder. Maybe you're just working on your first idea, or maybe you already have a team and you have a working product, but you are nowhere near IPO, so you're thinking, Well, shall I skip this episode? Well, no, don't, because whatever business you run, you're operating in a wider context, so you might be competing with large listed businesses. So you need to know what pressure your competitors are facing from investors. This could be really useful information, or your business might be acquired by a larger company. So you need to know what's happening at the helm of these larger companies and how they think. Because when you are a founder, you have to exist in two worlds at the same time. So the first world is today's tactic. So what are you going to do today? Like when you open your computer, what are you going to do? And what do you need to achieve this week? So maybe you're testing new features, or maybe you're interviewing somebody for your product team, or you're pitching to investor or customer, and you have to be really deep. In the day to day tactics, you have to see what's working and what's not. You also have to occupy this second world, and that's the wider context and your vision. So what are you building for the long term? What is your vision for the next five to 10 years time? What market are you disrupting, and what are the big trends that are supporting you or that are against you or against your competitors in that market? And so you have to occupy these two worlds, and you have to go in between the tactics and the vision. And going in between tactics and vision is tough, because honestly, as a founder, your to do list is always longer than your day, right? So basically lifting your head up above the parapet and looking around at the wider context, it can feel like a distraction, and honestly, it is a distraction if you do it too much, but doing it occasionally, having the broader context of your industry and the what the big players are thinking and how investors are responding to the tech company leadership, it's vital if you want to go far. So this episode is really to help you understand that second world. And a lot of our episodes are for you to understand that first one. So we're combining the two so you can be really successful. And also because it's interesting, right? We want some intellectual stimulation. Okay? So I'm going to share five trends that you as a founder, need to know from the JP Morgan tech investor conference. So number one, AI is everywhere, but companies now are mostly using it as a cost cutting measure, not something that's driving growth or really big innovation, with some exceptions. So AI came up on every single panel, like literally every company leader, every founder, was asked, okay, how has AI changed their business? And they all, well, actually, no, the majority, not all, said the same thing. AI has been a fantastic tool for internal productivity, for automation, for customer service, and basically for cutting costs in our internal systems. But it's not yet something where we are really creating new products that are AI product, and we're not really yet unlocking massive revenue streams with it just yet. So this AI hype, it was definitely there, but investors are now, you know, really asking about the numbers. So how does investment in AI really affect the money? This reminds me of the crypto blockchain hype that we had a few years ago. I mean, it's still here, but not as crazy it was a few years ago. And so Jamie diamond, the CEO of JP, Morgan, he was at the conference, and he talked, you know, he was asked about Bitcoin and blockchain, and he said that he is not interested in Bitcoin, as in the, you know, the actual coin, and he's not investing in it, and he doesn't see it as a real asset. But he says that JP Morgan is investing in blockchain because there are genuine use cases for blockchain. And this is a really good reminder, basically, for you not to give into the hype and for you to focus on a specific problem, because blockchain has problems that it solves Bitcoin, well, Jamie diamond was saying that the problems that it solves are not problems that he wants to be involved in, basically, you know, dodgy people sending money to each other. So let's get back to AI. AI is getting all the buts, but just like blockchain, it only creates value when it solves a real problem. So as a founder, ask yourself, Where is the friction in my product? What's slowing down my team, what's confusing my users? Where is their friction, and can I use AI as a solution? Is AI the best solution, because you don't really want to be trend hopping. So basically, don't chase trends. Invest in infrastructure. That's what Jamie diamond is doing. That solves a

Sophia Matveeva  09:10

real problem. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, the GCC is a growth market for a lot of companies. So the GCC, it stands for Gulf Cooperation Council, I believe basically it's the Gulf states. So United Arab Emirates, where Dubai is located, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, when we've done a lot of work Qatar, all that entire region. So I saw one company after another literally saying we're expanding. This is a key growth market for us. This was actually really unexpected. I expected it from some companies, but not as much, like not as many. So the chairman of Revolut, which is, you know, huge fintech. I think it's valued at $150 billion now. So the chairman of Revolut said that launching. In the UAE and Saudi Arabia are top priorities for the team. And in fact, the founder, or the co founder, Nikolai staronsky, he has just announced that he himself is moving to Dubai. And, you know, as an aside, we're actually doing the same attacking so I've literally just opened a company in the UAE. We've already hired a new operations person based in Dubai. So this is something that we are also seeing ourselves, because we're seeing so much growth there. But what I want to tell you is that this is a new phenomenon, because there was a panel on the GCC region, and there was one of the founders of a really successful company in the region called Yasa. And he said that when he was starting his company in the GCC, his friends in Silicon Valley said, Well, hang on a second. Why don't you come here? Why don't you come to Silicon Valley? This is where all the growth is. You should be in our region, like you should be in Silicon Valley growing your thing. You shouldn't be in the Gulf. He didn't listen to them, and now those very people who basically told him he was crazy are asking if they can invest. So this is an example of where founders lead and investors follow. But more on that later. If you're in early stages of building a venture and you're based in the US, then honestly, just stick to that market, because it's big, it's rich, it's beautiful. You've got lots of variety there. You can really, really build something very successful focusing on that market. But when you get to the next stage, and you're thinking about global vision and expansion, I want you to know that the GCC is a key market, and the general investor sentiment that I saw at JP Morgan was that Europe is basically no longer really an exciting market for various reasons, you know, economic growth or lack thereof, and regulation and so on. But the GCC is a market that is really exciting investors right now. So go to France on vacation, but open your first international office in Dubai. So that's point two. Now point three for you from the conference, I saw that investors kept on asking about your total addressable market, which basically is the term. So if you hear people talking about the term, that's your total addressable market. And it's interesting that essentially they were asking, how do you as a leader, as a founder, how do you think about Tam, which shows that the founder is the one who's leading the investors, not the other way around. So the investors are not saying, This is what I think your market size is. It's the founder who is saying this is what our market size is. And obviously every single fan was like, our market size is massive anyway. You know, this reminds me of a conversation I had with the CEO of a publicly listed company, and he literally said to me, equity analysts think what you tell them to think so. Basically that means that you, as the founder, you need to have the knowledge and the confidence to lead that conversation with them, not to have it be led by them, because if it's led by them, it's probably not going to be to your advantage. So my advice for you is, don't just Google the market size that. Don't just use chat GPT and paste it into your deck if you're speaking to investors. Learn how to build your own Tam. Like, learn how to build that your own logic. So go from bottom up, which is how many users are there, what's going to be the price, and that's going to be your market share. But do not spend ages on this, because, honestly, in the early stages calculating your Tam, it's kind of a business school exercise, like it's interesting to do, but it's all very, very theoretical. Generally in the earlier stages, you're not having the same detailed discussions about tam as you do in the later stages. The main point that I want you to see from this is that you as the innovator, as the leader, it's up to you to be the expert in your space, because just as much as equity analysts and equity investors need to essentially be led in how big the market is, it is the same with private capital. So if you don't lead the story, somebody else will, and that will make you poorer. Investors want to be led, so lead them. Which leads me to my next point, point number four from the JP Morgan tech investor conference. I noticed that the founders on stage outperformed the hired execs by miles. I mean, it was really, really remarkable. So at this conference, some of the companies were represented by the founders, and other times they were represented by people from their board or their leadership team, like maybe the chief financial officer or the chairman. And I just noticed that the founders were higher caliber. They shared the most interesting insights. They were more interesting to listen to. They tended to be better storytellers. They also really knew their company and their industry as if it was their own body part. I mean, really, it was very interesting to listen to them because they were more knowledgeable and, frankly, more charismatic. But don't think that this is something that they were just born with, because, you know, if you're going to be the chairman of a company that's about to IPO, you're also really clever, right? So, you know, in terms of natural abilities, they all probably had the same starting line. But to be a founder who is presenting to a bunch of public markets investors on the stage at JP Morgan. You need to have gone through so much hell. You need to have gone through multiple rounds of fundraising, which is never fun. You need to have spoken to lots of press. You might have had some bad press. You have definitely had lots of failure, probably co founder drama. You've definitely had a lot of like, horrible drama. And you somehow got through it. You chose to learn from it, rather than let it get you down. So that charisma, that knowledge, that confidence that these people have, it comes from basically overcoming really, really unpleasant situations. And you know, it comes from years and even decades of hard work. So basically, the founders put in more work and suffer more than everybody else, and when you actually see them on the stage, it shows because, you know, they are higher caliber, like they are Higher Performers because they've suffered more. So my advice to you here is to practice your presentation and storytelling skills. Because honestly, the people you know the best founders, the founders there, they were really good presenters. They were really good storytellers. And just, and don't think, oh yes, it's a soft skill and, you know, I can just wing it like these people had clearly gone through a lot of practice to get there, but also just know that when the proverbial poo hits the fan, that's the thing that actually gives you that confidence to speak, you know, to essentially be a better performer on this, like very, very high performance stage in the first place,

Sophia Matveeva  17:24

which takes me to my fifth and final point, which actually I got from Thierry Henry. And that is, you are your biggest competitor. Your biggest competitor is yourself. It's not Google, it's not chat, GPT, it's not Revolut. So Thierry Henry was the closing speaker. And he is that football legend for the Americans as the soccer legend. And my God, he's really good, looking, totally irrelevant, but gave me lots of joy. Anyway, he gave, he was giving a really kind of insightful Q, a, and he said, Your biggest enemy is yourself. It's you against you. And also he said, you know when you're lying like you know when you can push yourself a bit more and when you can't, the only person who really knows that is you. And the thing is, as founders, as innovators, it's tempting to look at competitors, to look at investors, to look at what everybody else is doing, to look at your market share, but honestly, your biggest battle is inside your own mind. This is why, in the last episode, last week, I made an episode for you on mindset hacks for non technical founders, and I have noticed that the people who succeed in our programs, they combine the tactics, they combine the vision with the mindset, because this journey is really, really difficult, and honestly, I can give you all the tactics and AI tools to use, which we do in our programs, But if you don't believe in your ability to succeed in the first place, it doesn't matter what tactics I give you. This is why you have to essentially focus on both of these two things. And you're the one who knows whether you'll push yourself past the hard bit. You're the one who knows what you are going to do and how you're going to react when an investor goes to because that will probably happen, or when your biggest customer decides to delay their contract, or maybe cancel their contracts, because this is the kind of stuff that happened, and, you know, and you still have payroll, the joy, like, I have definitely been there. And what you then need to do is you need to calm yourself down and remember that you are. The strategy business for you is personal, so your belief in your abilities, that's your unfair advantage. So my first question for this point is, what are you doing to work on your founder mindset? Are you doing anything? Because if you're not doing anything, then I suggest you start literally today, because this is something to take seriously. You know. Jerry Henry is a very successful man. He was probably paid an absolute fortune to speak to us right by an investment bank like this is not a volunteer commitment. And if he is saying It's you versus you, then it's worth taking seriously. So my advice to you is listen to last week's episode on this topic, and also learn the difference between your thoughts and your circumstances, because the circumstance is something that is basically just external. You can't change it. So maybe a circumstance is my biggest customer has just canceled their contract. You know, if you take this sentence to a court of law, they will agree that, yes, this is true. This is a circumstance. Your thought might be, oh my god, we're totally screwed. But if you're thinking that, if you're thinking, oh my god, we're totally screwed, how are you going to behave? Are you going to behave sensibly? Are you going to make good strategic decisions? Are you going to run around like a headless chicken, probably like a headless chicken. So you need to differentiate between circumstances and thoughts and try to find more helpful thoughts. Like, okay, this has happened, but this frees us up to go after bigger opportunities. So that is a more helpful thought, and even if your brain is going to the oh my god, we're totally screwed. You have to keep on redirecting yourself. That is you versus you, like what Thierry Henry was saying. So before I wrap up this episode, I want to leave you with a note of caution, because I've been talking about investors, I've been talking about IPOs, and you have to be careful, because with audiences like this, fundraising and going public, they're seen as successes, and you do feel a pressure to do it. So, you know, I get invited to various events by companies that basically make lots of money if you either sell your shares or list in the stock exchange. So for example, I was recently invited to a dinner by EY, which was for entrepreneurs, and they had some of the intrapreneurs whom they had helped with their IPOs. And you know, the IPO entrepreneurs were talking about, you know, how great life was. And so that gets you thinking, Oh, my God, maybe I should do it too, and then I'm going to be on the stage, and people are going to say, I'm amazing, but stop yourself. Do you actually really want to do that? Do you really want to have investors? Because giving up invest, or rather having investors, means that you're giving up some independence, and that can be very, very frustrating. Maybe that's not what you want, and some of the world's best founders have kept their companies private and have kept their companies entirely independent. An example of that is James Dyson. You know, the Dyson vacuums, the Dyson hair dryers, like we all know Dyson. And Dyson is a multi, multi billionaire, and he's kept his company private. And you know, he actually talks about how staying private and not having investors on board has been really, really key driver for him. And also, you know, it also cost him like he had. He was really, really close to going completely broke because of that decision, but he stuck to it. So having said that it is useful to know what investors think, it's useful to know what venture capitalists think, it's useful to know what public investors think. But it doesn't mean that fundraising is a success in itself. It doesn't mean that you need to dream of going for an IPO. So please don't take this episode as Okay, I need to go fundraise, because that's the way that a company grows. There are lots and lots of extremely successful companies with very wealthy founders at the helm who have never gone public and have no intention of doing so. Okay. Now, I hope you found this episode useful and interesting and thought provoking. And if this idea, if this episode, has sparked ideas for you, which I hope it has, then don't just let them sit in your notebook. Let's start doing something. So I've made a free training that shows you how to turn your idea into something real that you can actually show people using AI so without without writing a single line of code. So if you just go to tech for non techies.co, forward slash AI class, you are going to learn how to take your idea and use AI to turn it into something you can show people and get their feedback. And honestly, just one insight from this free class could save you at least $10,000 and months of frustration, and this course is free, so I don't know why you're not doing it. It's at Tech one, and tech is dot here for slash AI class, or just click the link on the show notes, and on that note, have a wonderful day, and I shall be back in your delight. Full smart news next week. Ciao!