David Semmens is the Chief Investment Officer at leading UK digital wealth management service, Wealthify. David has experience working across a number of industries covering banking, insurance and asset management and has worked for world renowned financial institutions such HSBC Asset Management, Euler Hermes and Standard Chartered Bank. David has gained a reputation as the go-to person for anyone looking to improve their financial literacy and become an investor.
The multi-asset investment strategist sat down with James and Hector to discuss a number of topics ranging from the continued digitalisation of wealth management, to his own experiences of working abroad and how startups differ from bigger corporations.
Make sure to like and subscribe to the Riding Unicorns podcast to never miss an episode. Also don't forget to give Riding Unicorns a follow on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep on top of the latest developments.
David Semmens is the Chief Investment Officer at leading UK digital wealth management service, Wealthify. David has experience working across a number of industries covering banking, insurance and asset management and has worked for world renowned financial institutions such HSBC Asset Management, Euler Hermes and Standard Chartered Bank. David has gained a reputation as the go-to person for anyone looking to improve their financial literacy and become an investor.
The multi-asset investment strategist sat down with James and Hector to discuss a number of topics ranging from the continued digitalisation of wealth management, to his own experiences of working abroad and how startups differ from bigger corporations.
Make sure to like and subscribe to the Riding Unicorns podcast to never miss an episode. Also don't forget to give Riding Unicorns a follow on Twitter and LinkedIn to keep on top of the latest developments.
[00:00:00] James: Welcome to season two, episode 10 of riding unicorns. This week, we have David Semmens chief investment officer at Wealthify on it's going to be a great episode. Uh, so what are you excited about learning about.
[00:00:26] Hector: I'm looking forward to hearing, just about the kind of robo-advising landscape and they've built a great business around it.
[00:00:33] And dot sort of acquisitions happening in space. And loads of people wanting to find a place to put their money to make more than a hub they're doing NICE's. So it's going to be great hearing from someone who makes big decisions
[00:00:47] And, looking forward to hearing how those decisions are made and what he's excited.
[00:00:52] James: Yeah, absolutely. Well fine now owned by a beaver. So they've kind of been through that process, but also this week, [00:01:00] nutmeg were acquired by JP Morgan. So it's hot on the heels of that news. So without further ado, let's bring them in.
[00:01:06] Quick disclaimer, to say we did experience some sound issues whilst recording this episode. There is this sort of ticking noise that comes in intermittently. Uh, we hope it's not too distracting because the content is really good, but we do apologize and we hope to not have this as a problem in any future episodes, thanks.
[00:01:27] David Semmens: welcome
[00:01:27] Hector: to riding unicorns, David. Thanks very much for joining us.
[00:01:31] David Semmens: Great. Thanks for having me, Jen.
[00:01:33] Hector: Cool. So David, we always like to start by getting a background on people's career and how you ended up at wildfire.
[00:01:40] David Semmens: Um, bachelor's and master's in economics. Left and joined started charted get the graduate rotation scheme for two years after that, I went to New York and worked as a New York economist for four years.
[00:01:53] I agreed to go just before the financial crisis started and four years in New York, which were like dog years. That was [00:02:00] fantastic. Came back to London and was again, single country economist covering the us out of Europe because our comments were in Asia and Europe and USA is a better time zone. Then I worked in France for a year.
[00:02:13] I unfortunately don't speak French. My wife doesn't speak French and found it quite difficult to set it. During this time, I studied an executive MBA at Cambridge during the CFA. The FRMs are the various professional qualifications people typically do in asset management. Came back from France. I was working for HSBC in London for a couple of years.
[00:02:31] I made the decision to move up to Edinburgh because it's a beautiful city and I've always moved for work rather than for fun. We made the decision to move for fun. And if someone were that we really liked. The employment market in Edinburgh is perhaps less strong than we were hoping for. So actually started looking really all over the country, but it places that you can to from Edinburgh, because it was a fairly straightforward thing that we were going to be doing, that it can be quite a lot of people in Edinburgh, commute to London or commute to Paris or commute to Dublin.
[00:02:56] And actually I got a job in Cardiff with our fight, so that's how [00:03:00] I kind of ended up here. So I've been in London, New York, Paris Cardiff, and now I've been working from home. It had been bred for about 15 months.
[00:03:07] Hector: Great. Well, you've, you've been all over. You've come from a sort of traditional financial services backgrounds? What was it like? The difference between working in a big corporation like that, and then going somewhere like.
[00:03:19] David Semmens: I think one of the key differences is one, the number of people you have to sign off on a decision and you don't have to go through quite so many layers if essentially to get something signed off.
[00:03:27] Well fight. I would then would still now just ask my immediate boss and pretty much everything would just get signed off very easily. Whereas in the bigger corporations, obviously it can take a lot longer to get things signed off. And also there's much more discussion around that, but also there's a much more, well, how are we going?
[00:03:44] It's done. It's a much leaner operation, as you can imagine. So well flat, maybe we've got around 70 people. When I joined, we were just Ava, 25, actually the teams that I've worked in, in, in the banks and in the insurers. And then the asset managers have been high to mid teens, at [00:04:00] least if not hundreds of people.
[00:04:01] So you're going from a team of. Quite a large number of people working in a family that's quite small, but then also everyone knows what they need to be doing. They've got very defined specialist roles. I also think it helps because as a startup, you need to be very focused on what you're doing, because if everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing, everyone's pulling in the right direction and it works very well.
[00:04:21] And that's one of the things I've really enjoyed about wealth funds.
[00:04:25] Hector: So, so with something like, well, how do you build trust with consumers? Because to me, it seems like that's been one of the big blockers to disruption. and so how have you guys
[00:04:34] David Semmens: gone about that? So we're very open about our performance. We put out all of our performance data on the website.
[00:04:41] We've got good Trustpilot rating, which reflects. All of the customer feedback that you get and people are very quick to complain as you, as you can imagine. So when you look at Trustpilot, those companies that have got a good score are doing very well. We're obviously not alone in this, but I think when you look at those companies that focus on customer service [00:05:00] and getting a good answer, that's very important because for us taking people to be from savers, to being investors. A lot of people are quite nervous about that and you have to really get them comfortable with it. So you'll have people who are maybe putting in a small amount. They see that the system works well. They see that the funds are appearing in their account. I think some people are just very nervous about making that change from a high street bank where they know that they're going to have a hundred pounds today and there'll be a hundred pounds tomorrow, there'll be a hundred pounds there probably in three years because obviously interest rates are so low. Whereas with us, they'll see the fluctuations and you just need to get people comfortable with that. There's a big education piece that really needs to be done with consumers and is still ongoing. Getting them comfortable with the fluctuations and getting people to recognize that investing is very much a long-term thing. And that's the difference between investing and speculation, the difference between gambling and investing is that you're ideally doing investments for a five to ten year horizon, whereas if you're speculating, which is a lot more about hope rather than fundamental analysis, then your time horizon could be much, much shorter.
[00:05:58] Hector: What has your [00:06:00] role as CIO been, has it been growing out teams of analysts or, um, yeah. Talk, talk to us a little bit about what exactly you'd be doing at wildfire.
[00:06:09] David Semmens: Sure.
[00:06:09] So I joined the, as the head of investment strategy just Ava, three years ago. And I came in and it was adding to the rigor that was there in the investment process. So when I joined the investment team was essentially two and a half people. Then we had freedom of people, but we are incredibly focused on investments.
[00:06:26] And there's the communication around what you're doing with customers, but it's also building the processes, but it's also not trying to over-complicate things. So all of the decisions we make need to be communicated to our customers. And so it's being able to do that and working with marketing teams so that what we're saying, we're doing almost has three layers.
[00:06:43] So it's the discussion we'll have internally. And then you move from that to the discussions that you'll be putting out to customers in a, in a longer form email. And you also have just the sorts of the short little bullet points that you'll have in terms of the. And so again, it's building things out like that.
[00:06:58] It's also building the [00:07:00] models, building the systems internally. So we've got four people in the investment team now, which doesn't sound like a lot compared to a lot of other firms, but we also very focused on building a lot of algorithms, automating anything that can be automated.
[00:07:15] Everyone is very happy when markets are going up, but you're always having to worry about, well, what could go wrong at this point?
[00:07:20] And not get complacent. And I think that's, again, it's being part of a small team. We're constantly challenging each other to say, well, what else could go, could go wrong here?
[00:07:28] We got seven people around investment committee. Some of them got over 30 years of experience. They're very happy raising their hand and putting their ideas forward, but you don't have so many people that it just gets lost amongst all the voices.
[00:07:41] Hector: Yeah. And then how much is the kind of financial inclusion and education part of what you guys are trying to achieve
[00:07:48] David Semmens: at work? Yeah, so that's a huge part. So we let people invest from a pound. So a lot of people are, are reluctant to invest because they're concerned about the downside associated with it.
[00:07:59] [00:08:00] But if people want to just put it in a pound and go through the journey, they can do that with us. And there are not many firms that you could invest from a pound from, you have to take suitability questionnaire. So you will need to have say around three months worth of savings. But it's very much helping people get from being a saver, to being an investor and
[00:08:19] if we can get everyone doing this, it decided to do it well, then obviously that that's great. But if the country as a whole will benefit, if they decide to do that and go with someone else, Yeah.
[00:08:28] Hector: I don't know if you're able to discuss this, but last week, and by the time this comes out, it'll be a few weeks. There was a big acquisition in the market announced with not Meg, uh, reportedly being acquired by JP Morgan. How do you see that playing out? And is that a positive signal for you guys in the long run?
[00:08:45] David Semmens: So I think it's a signal that there's this certainly faith in the industry. And I think not wanting to get too much into the specifics of the transaction or anything, but it shows the attractiveness of these propositions this time, last year, we were acquired by [00:09:00] Eva Hurley or having them being majority stakeholder before. And I think it's that, that patient capital that allows these companies to really be able to focus on doing what's right for the customer and having a great proposition and build these propositions out.
[00:09:14] So when I joined, we were in the process of putting together our ethical proposition and instead of rushing to get out to market and yeah. Doing it in sort of six weeks, they could put, we could put a lot of thought into it and make sure that it was right. And it was what people wanted and having, a patient partner and a partner with that sort of financial backing does allow you the time to make sure you're getting it correct.
[00:09:35] And what we've seen with customers around the ethical side of things is people like what we're doing. We've got four exclusions that we've got weapons, gambling, and tobacco. And they're quite strict, we're amongst the strictest in the industry on that. But then again, you can, someone can do that from the pound.
[00:09:53] So you'll have people who are thinking, well, I want to have an ethical portfolio. How do I get started doing? I think again, it's that sort [00:10:00] of offering. And from our perspective, you can see more people coming into market. There are obviously much more specialist offering. That you've got on the robo advice side of things.
[00:10:12] And obviously people necessarily like being called robo advisors, but it's, unfortunately one of the terms it's sort of stuck, but again, people are going to be hopefully saving more, not less going forward. You've also got a lot of people who have had for savings during the pandemic, because they haven't been able to go out so much.
[00:10:29] They've been able to work from home. And there's been a big shift over the last 15, 16 months towards people being interested in that you see much more on social media, around that you see a lot more in the press. It's just making sure that this is done sensibly and responsibly going forward, which is again, we take all of the decisions.
[00:10:53] We help people towards what risk level we think they should be. And again, that's, that's a nice proposition. It allows [00:11:00] them to focus on what they're good at what we focus on. What we're good at
[00:11:03] Hector: said no plans for meme, stock investing anytime soon.
[00:11:07] David Semmens: I always say, never say never, but at the moment I would, I would say we don't plan to do that.
[00:11:12] We don't have Bitcoin in our portfolios, which is a question that comes up every time you see Bitcoin rush up. We always get asked about that and then we'll see when it comes away. We're glad that we didn't do it. And I think it's very difficult as an asset, whereas the currency. Or as a crypto asset, whatever you want to call that it's very difficult to value it on a fundamental basis.
[00:11:36] And that's the real problem that we have. So when you're looking at companies and you're looking at the cash flows, you're going from your bonds against your expectation for interest rates, you can have a range of values backed by fundamental analysis and where you think it should be. Whereas at least based on traditional financial theory, it's very difficult to evaluate you think that Bitcoin.
[00:11:58] It should be. And that's the key hurdle that [00:12:00] we have.
[00:12:01] Hector: Interesting. And I'm curious to hear, whether you guys have taken the traditional. Wealth management industry and create a digital version of it. Or whether by being digital, that's opened new opportunities. And what being digital means you can do that.
[00:12:19] Traditional stockbrokers wealth managers card.
[00:12:22] David Semmens: So I think one of the key things is if you've got an app on your phone, you can see what the price is doing every day, if you want to. And because we use. Unit trusts the fund prices don't change more than a day. There any daily price funds. Whereas if you're with a traditional wealth manager, if they've got a website set up, then obviously you can log on to that and check how your portfolio is doing.
[00:12:42] But people once upon a time, particularly 10 plus years ago would just wait for their quarterly six monthly or annual statement to see how their portfolios were doing. So there's much more engagement with people around that. There's also. A wealth of blogs, what based on the internet, but also specifically on our apps.
[00:12:58] So people understand what we're doing. [00:13:00] So when we make changes to the portfolios, our customers understand why we're making these changes and they understand very quickly because it's. Sending them an email, maybe at the end of the quarter or at the end of the month, we can communicate them with them much quicker.
[00:13:13] And I think that's probably one of the key things is you've, you've got much more immediacy with that communication.
[00:13:19] Hector: I can definitely testify to that. I have tons of finance apps on my phone and digital. Stop products and things. And I just kind of get into a loop of death where I look at like all five of them, about 10 times a day.
[00:13:31] And it's a massive setup on time. So I guess it's a blessing and a curse. , but yeah, it's certainly useful and I guess good for, creating touch points with the consumer and other
[00:13:39] David Semmens: things. We would encourage people not to look every every day. Academic research shows that actually the less you look, if you're responsible for the trading, that the less you learn.
[00:13:49] And, and worry about it. The best of you will do, because unless the fundamentals change, you shouldn't be tweaking too much and you lose lots of your, your trading costs. So we don't trade [00:14:00] daily by any stretch of the imagination. We won't be making changes constantly because you don't want to be overtrading for people.
[00:14:05] We are very much long running, investing, not looking towards the main, the main stocks. I guess that's
[00:14:12] Hector: a good segue on to the sort of trading point and the frequency of trading. Do you see a place for AI and what you're doing and, do you see that potentially as the next sort of wave of disruption in this sector?
[00:14:24] David Semmens: So I think when you look at what you can do with AI or machine learning, some of the very simple parts of that is simply just regressions to help you make better decisions. And I think the way that we're using it. AI and programming in general is it's just taking a vast amount of information and stripping out the noise.
[00:14:39] So I think we're quite a far away way from having, uh, an AI system making our investment decisions. And I appreciate it. They're all well more on the hedge fund side of companies that will do that, but we do absorb an awful amount of information using those systems and it just helps you focus. So I think from, from our perspective, All of those ideas were always interesting.
[00:14:59] Even if you, [00:15:00] you see an idea and you think, oh, I don't quite understand why I would want that. And if someone is pitching it to you, it's, it's often quite interesting, but it's much more about the augmentation rather than the replacement. So that's what, again, that's why we've got, we've got four people and we can get so much done because you've got technology helping you rather than replacing the roles.
[00:15:18] I think that's very much. So 20 years ago, people would, would maybe think, well, this is a part of my job that I want to keep as part of my role. Whereas now they're happy to automate it away and they can focus on the interesting thing. So they realize that they're not going to be getting replaced or, or removed, I guess, gonna be able to focus on the more interesting value parts of their roles.
[00:15:35] Hector: Yeah, it makes sense. That's quite a lot of restrictions in the UK at the moment. Pension funds and big institutional investors investing into venture. How do you see that? And do you think we might see a change in that regard? And do you think we might see some non-listed or private market assets start appearing on more of the kind of traditional wealth?
[00:15:57] David Semmens: So one of the things for us is we need to [00:16:00] have daily liquidity funds. So if you had invested with us. A couple of weeks ago. And then you said, actually I want my money back. If you've got a GIA or an ISO of us, you can get your money back pretty quickly. And if you've got, you mentioned, you wanted to transfer it away, that also happen quite quickly.
[00:16:17] And that's very much something that retail investors are incredibly focused on having that daily liquidity with a venture fund, you might need to lock your money into for. Eight to 10 years, which is perfectly understandable. And again, it comes back to that patient capsule point.
[00:16:31] There is going to be at some point, people who will bring a, almost an investment trust route, I feel where they have investment trusts set up, which is what you're seeing in the VCT trusts. The larger VCT trusts, which you've got fairly exceptable liquidity, but again, there's all the tax benefits. Around that, but I think that's perhaps baby, the way you could see pension funds going on that sort of side to marry the two, because the retail investor wants a daily liquidity, pension funds are [00:17:00] happy, leaving things locked up for longer, but in order to get out to the mass market, unfortunately, most people are not going to tolerate that, that loss of liquidity, even for the added expected benefits.
[00:17:09] But it, it's definitely something that we're paying attention to, but until someone brings us one, let's go daily liquidity. We just start looking at it because that's something that we've committed to. And that's something that we've noticed that people do want, and they do place importance on what excites
[00:17:23] Hector: you most about digital wealth and the future of it?
[00:17:26] David Semmens: The thing that excites me most is going to be the.
[00:17:29] Specific personalization, which is going to allow people really to refine their choices, to what they want. So at the moment we offer an original portfolio, which is essentially a failure that doesn't have our ethical screens or an ethical portfolio. And then we put the various risk components, but going forward, there's going to be a lot more funds that are going to be offered because there's an increasing focus on ethical investing.
[00:17:53] But if it's going to allow people to pick it based on their religious basis, what matters to them on a personal level [00:18:00] exclusion. So, as I mentioned, we've got these four exclusions, but you're going to be able to make those much more specific and much tighter. And then there's also going to be investments that allow you to look at the impact that you're creating.
[00:18:10] So when you're excluding things, people feel slightly negative. But it's, it's a good way to set things up that people understand and you're committing to keeping things out of their portfolio, but the next. Real wave is going to be well, what can I have a positive impact on? So I'm excluding these things that we see as being bad for society, even for people or for the environment or for animals, but how can I also have a positive impact?
[00:18:33] And I think that's going to be the part that really comes through over the next 18 to 24 months. And you're seeing a lot of fund managers. Three on that. And that's because that's what people want and that's what institutional investors want. That's what pension funds want. And I think if you can make that accessible to people, then they're going to be quite excited about that.
[00:18:50] And it doesn't sound like a massive shift, but if you can have it so that you can allow someone who is for instance of Eden at the moment, there is one or two vegan [00:19:00] ETS in the world that they can invest. They should have more choice. They shouldn't just be forced into a big, an ETF that is entirely invested in equities because that might not be suitable for them.
[00:19:09] So I think that that's the part that is exciting from the product side of things, but it's also going to be exciting for people because then if people have been reluctant to invest because they don't feel their values are aligned to this. And I think that will bring people so into the market and make them quite passionate about what their investments are doing as well from that's the other pies.
[00:19:30] There's much more data around what a company is doing. What impact is my portfolio? And again, that's something that I think people will be very focused on over the next 12, 18 months, 24 months, perhaps.
[00:19:43] Hector: I just got a quick question on that. I think it's, it's a really interesting discussion. We've seen. The generalist, products like free trade and Robin hood and others, crop up, which leaves the decision making to the consumer largely. And then we've seen companies like climate data, they just raised some [00:20:00] money and a whole bunch of others doing similar to them.
[00:20:03] And basically people carving out niches, serving specific customer needs and preferences. And what's struck me is that no one has yet. To build the sort of umbrella brand to serve all. And so I I'm, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on whether you think that is possible or whether you think, consumers just have an affinity to a brand who they really closely identify with, and we'll always pick them over a generalist, provider.
[00:20:31] David Semmens: I think as people are looking for that, their niche in order to capture customers, the people that you mentioned were quite specific niches, whereas ours, more broad focused and which we think is as a, as an appealing market, but it's also, so people go in the niches that we've seen over the last five years, and then they will expand that and say, if you look at the challenger banks, which have moved from just being.
[00:20:56] Personal account. They don't bring you a business account. Uh, they're looking at it [00:21:00] at investments. And I think that that's the thing is people start with one thing and then they broaden out. And I think that's, what's interesting is seeing how much competition there is in the market. And again, competition can only really be good for consumers, and there's a lot more people interested in this, but if you look at people who are offering the.
[00:21:19] Daily trading of stocks at any point in time, it's offering a very different outlet to what, what, we're, what we're looking for. And we're not looking to offer that sort of high turnover trading route. It's very different. And the spectrum from, from what we're looking at and it attracts a very different customer.
[00:21:37] And I think that that's the thing is that there's a broader market and people will look for different things. So there's also. When you look at it across the board, people are going to have their pension or their savings with someone like us. And then people will have their, their high turnover portfolio with someone else because we don't offer that.
[00:21:54] And you could think, well, would we be looking to offer that at the moment that that's not on our immediate [00:22:00] roadmap, because it's not what we do. It's not what we do well at the moment, what we do well in offering long run investment solutions for people too. And we are education pieces around encouraging people to invest for the longer term.
[00:22:15] So then if we were to offer daily, daily trading of equities, that would be a very different message from what we've been saying consistent. Yeah,
[00:22:25] Hector: I think that's small because there are some fintechs that are racing to be the FinTech super. And that will be difficult. , but they haven't gone with a, purpose of slower long-term investing so that they can be a bit more cavalier and how they unlock different verticals.
[00:22:42] And the Hector. And I can talk about this with you for hours, cause we're both interested in wealth. But if we take it back to you a little bit more, you've had a pretty amazing career. What, what would you say is sort of one thing or one experience that served you well that you look back on and go, I'm glad I learned that back then.[00:23:00]
[00:23:00] David Semmens: Well, I think probably, I mean, the biggest question that I had was what do, what do you want to do? Where do you want to go? And this is when I was coming to the end of the graduate scheme and I was talking to the head of research and I said, I'd like to go to New York and. I can make that happen. And Andrew did.
[00:23:18] And it's one of those moments that has completely changed the path ever since from the journey in 2007, my wife that I learnt an awful lot about the us economy completely different. I've been there for a week previously. So I was not that familiar with the U S I mean, just people seeing it on TV, but it's a completely different experience, but again, I had the opportunities to do that.
[00:23:43] and it was, there's an element of luck and there always is. But I think it's more, when you look at what sort of what's available today at sea, it's quite difficult because there was the, we're all working from home. It's quite difficult to relocate. But it's still possible if you really want to do it.
[00:23:57] I do have some friends who've relocated countries [00:24:00] during COVID. It's not easy, but they did it because they put their mind to it. And I think it's one conversation where that, that came out of it. It's just completely changed everything. And for the better, obviously I think you can be completely if you were, if I was unlucky, it could have gone terribly, but it went incredibly well.
[00:24:15] Could
[00:24:16] Hector: you have ever predicted and the up in a startup.
[00:24:19] David Semmens: I think it's probably the sort of thing that 20 years ago when I started university, this was just the tail end of the.com bubble. And so then, no, not necessarily. I think now when you look at how financial firms are, you, you've got the big established players and then you have. The fintechs, but the fintechs now becoming big established players very quickly.
[00:24:45] So there's been a few companies that caught my eye who increased their valuations significantly, just in a couple of years. And I think that's the thing. You, people can pick a niche, focus on that and do incredibly well very quick.[00:25:00] You always need a bit of luck, but they've, they've got people who were very small focusing on those ideas.
[00:25:05] And the fact that it's a small company, let's say 10, 15, 20 people that makes it make sense to start something. But by the time you're worth say 500 million. Are you still a start up? Scaling. And I think it's the, the size of the companies now and how quickly they grow. That is what is really interesting and that's what attractive to graduate.
[00:25:28] So I was at, this is pre COVID at a dinner back at Cambridge, and that all of the people who I was talking to were all going to work for a startup or have their own thing. They weren't interested in a traditional finance. It was quite an interesting revelation because for me, that's what I found interesting.
[00:25:49] And I enjoyed it, but they had completely dismissed that as a root and it wasn't just one or two of them. It was all of them. And I think people are far happier taking the [00:26:00] risks with that as well.
[00:26:01] I think people look at it and think, well, this, this is the time to make those decisions and do that. I think you're doing it straight from university or even during the university as much more possible. Yep.
[00:26:13] Hector: And David you've rubbed shoulders with the founders. Would you ever be tempted to be a founder or do you.
[00:26:19] That's not for me. Well, I,
[00:26:22] David Semmens: I, well, for five is one of those ideas that I think, well, if I, if I'd had the idea and there were various other startups, so, transfer wise or wise as it is now is one of those ideas that I had done something similar, but just refrains where I would S I would send them the dollars in the states and there can be pounds, but I never thought just to scale that up.
[00:26:40] So at least for me, If I have an idea that I thought was unique enough and worth backing, then at some point in the future, then that, that would be, it would be great. But I think it's, it's having, it's having those ideas. Maybe you need to always back yourself, but you also need to calculate it better than that.
[00:26:55] So I think for that recently, I haven't worked quite properly previously, but I'm not going anywhere. [00:27:00]
[00:27:00] Hector: we've covered a lot of ground there. If you were to go for lunch for three people and spend an hour with them and talk about whatever you'd like to talk about, who would those people
[00:27:08] David Semmens: be?
[00:27:09] So I would pick Freud as the first one. How much were revolutionary think Curry's is massively underrated. If you look at the environment that he came in, see the ideas that he put forward, it's a very conservative society and the ideas that he were putting out there were really revolutionary.
[00:27:23] Someone who was very determined also to get his ideas out there, they didn't catch hold straight away. Also very passionate about arguing and discourse. I think he'd be a very interesting guests. David Swinson. So got to have at least one investment person. So the, the endowment fund managers who was just phenomenal yeah.
[00:27:40] Successful. And again, someone who was happy to do something different and it all looks very obvious when you look back on it. So 30 odd years ago, five years ago, people weren't investing PA and VC the way that they do now. And then the final person would be Dr. Todd say the author. So she writes, [00:28:00] secret history, but she only puts a book out every 10 years, roughly.
[00:28:04] And. They sell phenomenally. Well, they're incredibly, well-researched, they're very involved books. She's also friends with Bret Easton Ellis. So she probably had some fairly interesting stories about him, but she also doesn't like to do interviews very often. So it would be nice to get a bit of insight in, into her.
[00:28:20] And so that would be a bit, a bit of a cheat. She might say that she didn't want to come, but I think she'd be a great third.
[00:28:27] Hector: Yeah, I thought we might get an author with that impressive book collection you've got behind you. So that's great.
[00:28:38] That's really interesting three great guests. It'd be interesting to be a fly on the wall to listen to what you guys discussed. David, thank you so much again for coming on and telling us about your writing unicorn story and, going on a illustrious career through the financial services world, and then ending up at wealth of fire.
[00:28:55] We wish you all the best of it going forward. And thanks for taking the time to do a recording with us. [00:29:00]
[00:29:00] David Semmens: No problem. Thanks for inviting me. Thanks, David.
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