Building Billion-Pound Outcomes with Jack Edmondson

[00:00:01] Susannah de Jager: Welcome to Oxford+. The podcast series for innovators and investors brought to you in partnership with Mishcon de Reya.

My guest today is Jack Edmondson. Jack joined Oxford Science Enterprises as CIO in September 2023, bringing over 20 years experience in investment management. Jack previously spent 15 years at Oxford University Endowment Management as Deputy CIO.

He has deep experience within the Oxford ecosystem. In his role, Jack was integral to growing the endowment from 600 million to 6 billion and invested across areas of technology and innovation. Prior to this, Jack held investment roles at Exponent Private Equity, McKinsey and Merrill Lynch.

Jack has an MBA from the University of Oxford, a BA from Durham University, and is a CFA Charter Holder. He is also an associate fellow at the Oxford Saïd Business School and a Fellow in practice at the Blavatnik School of Government.

Jack, thank you so much for joining today.

[00:00:57] Jack Edmondson: Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. I've been listening avidly to the podcast and I was waiting for the invite to come through with my fingers crossed and here we are. So thanks very much.

[00:01:06] Susannah de Jager: Well, it's such a pleasure to have you.

You're now about 17 months into your role at Oxford Science Enterprises, OSE, and I really want to just hear the update of how it's all going. But before we kind of launch into the broader spectrum of things. You were the first CIO and it was the first time the role was split between Ed Bussey taking on CEO and you taking on CIO.

I'd love to know, from your perspective, why that decision was taken and hear a bit more about the shape of those roles.

[00:01:39] Jack Edmondson: Yeah, sure. I mean, it's a huge honor to be the first CIO and a fantastic challenge for me, but also, a fantastic thing to be doing, and the first thing to say is I'm absolutely loving it. We've got a lot of things to do. We've got a lot of things we've gotta get right, but I feel really good about, what we've got and I'm really energized. OSE is a fantastic place. It was built out of nothing almost 10 years ago. It has a fantastic team. It's had a lot of success already in terms of how it's integrated with the ecosystem. Found a number of incredible companies and built an investment team and a broader organization, which is really doing well. But the way I think about it is that, we've gotta get OSE from kind of 2.0 to 3.0, and I think the difference of thatis making it a truly institutional international grade investor.

Now, I'd be the last person to say that OSE needs me. I have quite a curious mental model of this. We have, unbelievable investors within the team. We have four team heads who are doing an unbelievable job in the sourcing, diligence, and value creation in businesses. But what OSE didn't have is one person thinking overall across those teams. What's our unified approach to risk and return? What's our unified approach to capital allocation? How do we make the most efficient decisions we can across all of those sectors? And I see it as my job really to provide those things and then also provide the best environment I can for these unbelievable investors to flourish.

So I spend, let's say around 30% of my time thinking about investment process and how can we be better investors across all those things, finding things, diligencing things, making decisions, value creation, and also how do we push these businesses to ultimate value realization and exit. I then spend around 30% of my time on some of our biggest opportunities and making sure we've got exactly the right resource and exactly the right thinking to really propel those forward. And then a really fun part is I spend some of my time on our biggest problems and how can we, you know, fix those in the portfolio. And then finally, of course, I do a bit of dealing with stakeholders and talking more externally about what we're doing.

So, like I say, I have that model of, do they need me? They'd be fine without me. But, you know, do we need someone who can try and bring those wonderful organic teams together and really provide some consistency and think about how we can push things forward.

[00:04:18] Susannah de Jager: I'm sure they do need you, Jack, for what it's worth. But that's a very nice description. Just diving into some of what you outlined there.

It'd be great for anyone listening that's maybe not familiar with OSE to understand what those four team heads are focused on and what their respective areas are.

[00:04:34] Jack Edmondson: Yeah, so overall, OSE has around 55 people totally dedicated on the ground to Oxford. We've got an unbelievable amount of intellectual resource, focused on the Oxford opportunity. Within that, we have four investment teams. We have Life Sciences, run by Catia Ghina. She has, around 10 people with a range of backgrounds from deep scientific backgrounds, to investment backgrounds, to people who have spent time within commercial pharmaceuticals and they're looking at finding very interesting drug discovery and other aspects of life sciences from the university and commercialising those, building them into businesses and hopefully producing knockout results. Which will, both positively impact the human world, but also create some returns for our shareholders.

We then have Health Tech which is all the non sort of drug, non-vaccine and non other aspects of healthcare,and a technology lens on that. So it would be anything from AI in healthcare, aspects of diagnostics, digital patient management and other aspects. That's run by Heather Roxborough who is fantastic and she has a team of around nine or 10 who again have that sort of profile of people who are investors, who have incredible scientific and technology backgroundsand then finally for the sector teams, we have Deep Tech, which is run by, Sam Harmon.

And Deep Tech is a slightly wider collection, where we have everything from next generation compute, to agritech, to climate solutions, even aspects of mining technology, and also what we call Industry 4.0. So industry processes, new materials, specialist metals, all sorts of aspects like that.

And then we also have what we call our independence team run by Nick Dixon-Clegg and because we deal with a large number of companies when we have companies that reach a degree of independence from OSE.

Nick will deal more broadly with those companies and he's a corporate finance expert background and has three or four people that deal with that.

[00:06:34] Susannah de Jager: Super, thank you.

You are, as I said, up top 17 months in. What are the positives, the surprises, the challenges that perhaps have emerged and what are your hopes going forward?

[00:06:46] Jack Edmondson: Of course I would say this, wouldn't I? But I am just blown away by the quality of people that we have in OSE and I really mean that hand on heart. I was really excited about taking the role. But I knew within a couple of days that we had some really special people.

And not only do we have people who are brilliant at their jobs, but they're passionate about their jobs. They're passionate about creating value, but they're passionate about doing that in the right way in the ecosystem.Passionate about getting this science out there in a commercial way that's gonna make great returns for our shareholders. But in a way that's gonna change the world, and we really believe that and it can be a cliche. People running around saying they're gonna change the world.

But we have quantum computing, we have oncolytic viruses, we haveall sorts of approaches to curing all sorts of, so far, undruggable problems and diseases in the human body. If we can get this right we're gonna make a huge difference.

So we have wonderful people. The culture is really good. You can tell a culture probably within 10 minutes of entering a building, and I do genuinely remember on that first morning that I turned up that also I felt really good about the atmosphere in the office, the productivity, the focus and the passion.

What else do I feel really good about? I feel really good about the optionality we have in the portfolio and the number of shots on goal that we have. We have a very large number of businesses that I think over the next couple of years are going to get to some really good tangible proof points and value creation points. Which are really exciting.

The question that you would be itching to push me on is what am I worried about and what, what are the things that we could do better? Well look, any person or any organization can do things better. So let's have a think about this.

I think the thing which I have been conscious of in my career, having been in Oxford for, I think, it's 15 years now. Is that to work within an ecosystem which is very delicate and has a number of different stakeholders in all rightly doing what they should be doing and all marching forward in broadly the right direction, but we'll have different incentives and different needs and different things they want to do.

It's entirely obvious that if you are a world leading academic, that what you want to focus on is producing success in world leading academia and research, and our aim around commercializing bits of research and creating returns of that will be highly adjacent to that. But there'll be some people who might not be interested.

There'll be other bits, other aspects, which isn't entirely adjacent to us and you need to find a way of operating in this careful ecosystem with all these different things going on and making sure you can do that in a highly collaborative way and that takes daily effort. It takes daily effort of nurturing relationships, proving the sorts of people you are and proving your value to the ecosystem. So that's always hard work.

I'm always struck by the example isif you are a Global VC and you're based in San Francisco and you fancy doing a deal in Berlin, and for whatever reason, it doesn't go well. You can never go through Berlin again, and that's fine. OSE is constantly, every day, interacting with hundreds and thousands of people in Oxford and its reputation and it's,mode of action is very important. You know, that takes a lot of work. We are in a unique position. It's one of our competitive advantages. But we need to be nurturing that all the time.

The second aspect is in venture capital businesses can fail at any time. It's not just that things will fail early. I mean, of course the model is that if you think something's going to fail, it's better to fail quickly and early.

But you know, we have a portfolio of things which, as I said before, I feel exceptionally good about. But we will also have businesses that will have challenges over time and it might be businesses we've been with that have challenges even after four or five or six years. We care about that and we need to spend a lot of time seeing if we can help those businesses get back on the right path and get to the right place.

So, we have a lot to do. Every venture capitalist has a lot to do. But we have a privileged position, but we have a position that needs a lot of nurturing. We are nearly 10 years in. We've got aspects to prove. I feel really good about it. But there's a lot of hard work to get it right.

[00:11:04] Susannah de Jager: Yeah, and I think what you say really resonates with my experience within the ecosystem. Which is that I've heard people that are your biggest cheerleaders, but you are undeniably very subject to those people who have quite frankly had a bad outcome that may be totally unrelated to you being involved. But it can be quite easy for people to infer that it wouldn't have happened if they'd had a different kind of dynamic.

So I think that what you acknowledge there is observable. both the positive and the negative of it.

[00:11:34] Jack Edmondson: The thing just to say about that is that in any type of operational business or organization, to get the right decisions, you're not always gonna please everyone all of the time. And in fact, I had an old boss who said this to me once, is that, you know, to be a really good leader, one of the first tests is, you are not pleasing people all of the time because it'd be very unlikely you're doing the right thing if that's the case.

What I talk to Ed quite a lot about is that if we have a reputation for being straightforward, open, transparent, and decent, and we are very happy to talk publicly about all the decisions that we make at any one time. Overall, that will win out over time. If people know they're dealing with straightforward, decent people and we produce the right value over the long term then that will be the ultimate test.

[00:12:18] Susannah de Jager: I think that's called the Daily Mail test. If you saw your

email or your kind of meeting publicized, how would you feel? And I think that's a very good premise to live by in many spheres.

So just coming back, you've spoken through the teams and their focus, but I'd love to hear a little bit about the shape of your portfolio at the moment.

How many companies you're invested in, what your kind of average annual outgoings are. Because again, for anyone that's not familiar, or indeed those who think they are familiar, I think those numbers are really, really interesting.

[00:12:47] Jack Edmondson: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. So we have at the moment around 50, what we call, core companies and the core companies are where we are spending a very decent amount of time with those companies trying to get them to the next proof points and helping them be the best they can be. It so happens today that there's around 20 in Deep Tech. There's very roughly around 20 in Life Sciences, and there's around 10 in Health Tech. Without getting lost in this, OSC made a decision to, to make Health Tech its own separate focus, a couple of years ago, which was exactly the right thing and so by virtue of history, it has a slightly fewer number of companies in. And also by the nature of what Health Tech does. It's a huge opportunity, but it's very specific things that they're looking for. So I think that balance is,is roughly right.

The university can be volatile over time. But on average would spin out maybe around 30 companies a yearand our run rate of investing in spin outs, or creating spin outs. So we work hand in glove with OUI and we think incredibly highly of OUI and we work with them, daily. They will find and work with a number of spin outs, but we will also go out ourselves and create spin outs and create the opportunity.

So thinking about that mass, that sort of Venn diagram together, we are doing around nine or 10, new spin outs a year, and then in terms of the number of transactions we'll do a year in terms of follow on rounds and other things. I think last year the number was even around 50. So we will have companies at all sorts of different levels of seed series A, B, C, et cetera.

[00:14:24] Susannah de Jager: Within those three primary teams and portfolio sectors, are there any themes that are emerging really loudly at the moment for you?

[00:14:34] Jack Edmondson: There's a number of different ways that new company creation will happen. I mean, you will have an academic organically saying, I've got an incredible idea.They'll sort of come out of nowhere and we'll, we'll work with them on whether there's something to do with that and we're always interested in that. And, you know, some of our biggest successes so far have been to do with that.

But of course what we do is think very granularly within the teams around what themes are we most interested in, and also in particular, can we go out and create something around that. And a slight segue to this is actually increasingly we are using what we call the entrepreneur in residence model, where we willask or invite people to come to Oxford and sit in one of those teams where they've got a particular background in an industry, or an area, and we will get them to really look forsome science in Oxford that they think is gonna solve a really big problem from their point of view. We had Nate Notwell, who has over 20 years experience in consumer health, mostly at J&J. He has been with us for a year and we've been delighted to fund the spin out, which he's leading, called Marley Health, which is actually in areas of animal health and pet care. Which is really exciting. That's an example of the sorts of things we do there.

But specifically on themes, I mean, there's a number of different themes across the sectors. Within deep tech, one of the biggest areas we are excited about, we already have a company, linked to this at the moment, Fractile, but it's an area of more research is high throughput semiconductors. So how can we get chips to operate you know, 50, a hundred, a thousand x more efficiency. Because of all the things that are going on in the demands of compute around artificial intelligence and large language models. Another one, has been a theme for a long time is next generation batteries. Because we all know that if you can push power sources further away from the center and out to the periphery. In many areas that's highly efficient and helps with clean energy and so on and if you can, again, supercharge the efficiency of aspects of batteries, then there's a hell of a lot, to do there. So we, we've got focus on that.

A really exciting one is robotics and the next generation of robotics. So robotics is already making incredible leaps and bounds but if we can get robotics to really leap forward and also blend with aspects of artificial intelligence and compute. We're gonna get to unbelievable positions and things. So robots at the moment are very, very good at doing specific tasks. They're very good at doing very accurate tasks. You can have robotic surgery and it's highly, highly, highly trustworthy and maybe even more reliable than a human surgeon. But if you throw, a robot into a situation where you don't know what the terrain's going to be, you don't know exactly what it's looking for. Can it cope with the fact that suddenly there's a huge hole in the ground where it didn't expect to be or it needs to start to make decisions itself. That's extremely difficult in highly complex environments. So there's lots of things we're looking at around that. And you're, you know, if you start to think that through, the sorts of things that opens for industry and the human race is just extraordinary. In health tech, a lot of it is around AI in healthcare. We have a number of things at the moment. You had the wonderful, Lionel Tarassenko, I have to say Lord Tarassenko, he's a, friend of mine, so I always make a point of calling him Lord, when I bump into him in the street. He's a wonderful guy. He knows all this backwards. He's a world leader in this. But looking at AI and healthcare and diagnostics will always be a theme that will be strong with us.

Other things that we are looking at is around healthcare efficiency. How can you use digital patient management at home or aspects of AI, to make sure that we don't have people blocking up hospitals for days and weeks? How can we have that at home? We have a fantastic company at the moment, called New Health that does this in aspects of Alzheimer's,carefully monitoring people at home and looking after them.But there's lots more to do around that.

Life sciences in Oxford, with the medical school, is just a wonderful, wonderful, hotbed of innovation. Of course, it's not just the medical school, it's all sorts of areas of research outside of medicine as well in chemistry and other areas where there's always something to do. The hottest areas at the moment would be aspects around CNS the central nervous system. We're starting to understand a lot more about how we could get, you know, sort of drug and molecular approaches to Alzheimer's and Dementia and specific aspects around that.

Immunology and Autoimmune aspects, are very exciting for us.It's really interesting how autoimmune responses in the body can actually cause all sorts of problems, and if you can get to closing off that response,that can make a huge difference.

And then a lot of what we look at is also how can we have new approaches to undruggable targets. So we know what the target is, we know what the problem is, but we're finding it very, very difficult to get the right drug to the right place and there are various sort of ancillary bits of technology and drugs that we can use to unlock those.

That's only the surface actually of the sorts of things we discuss in the office each day. If you're an investor in OSE, you have a wonderful touchpoint in all of these things, and you are wonderfully,you know, sort of diversified across all these different areas that could heat up and be a success.

So it is exciting.

[00:19:49] Susannah de Jager: There's so many amazing things going on, so it's exciting.

You talked there about investors and one of the things that you and I have discussed in the past is kind of co-investment, scale up capital, how it all fits in.

I'd love to understand a bit of the shape of your existing pool of investors and how that feeds into potential for follow on capitals for your companies, both from yourselves but also co-investors, and just a little bit more about that side of things.

[00:20:18] Jack Edmondson: Yeah, absolutely. This is hugely important for us. We are a hundred percent clear that we want to work with a large number of co-investors that can add an enormous amount to our companies. We want other talent and brains to come in and help us lift these exciting, but complex challenges and also because we are investing in deep science, 99% of the time there's a huge capital lift involved. So, we are just absolutely delighted to work with other people on these opportunities.

There's a couple of different lenses. We have a wonderful set of investors in OSE. Many of them want to invest in OSE and they're very happy with that. Some of them will want to invest in OSE and then also have a look at some of the companies as well. and so, we have very powerful long-term pools of capital which are doing that, and that works as a very successful model, and they bring a lot to our companies.

We also have, within OSE, at least three people who work pretty much full time on helping our businesses and companies attract global capital, from around the world, with world-leading co-investors. And for us, a huge mark of success is if a company attracts world leading co-investors with them. We're just delighted to do that. I could list off all sorts of examples, but one that immediately springs to mind. Snow Fox, natural hydrogen discovery. You know, we had BP and Rio Tinto come in and lead the Series A of that.

You know, huge validation for an exploration business. Couldn't be happier. Wonderful to work with them. and, you know, huge success story from creating that business a couple of years ago.

I think, since OSE has been created, I think 2 billion pounds has been brought to the ecosystem from over 300 different investment organizations over time. So I think for the ecosystem in general it's been a huge aspect of success as well. So look,this is part of the model for us. Can we find interesting science? Can we, create those businesses? Can we push them forward? We're doing everything we can to help them, the right human capital, the right strategy, the right commercial operations. But the right capital base is really important and we spend a lot of time on that.

[00:22:26] Susannah de Jager: Clearly within what you are doing, there's an enormous amount of opportunity and you've got brilliant co-investors, but there's also limitations both to your capital that you have available in any given year and to your bandwidth as a team.

I know from feedback I've had directly from yourself, but also from others, that the portfolio doesn't want things that conflict or that it sit in exactly the same place. So I'd love to hear for those listening just a little bit about the journey of a company that perhaps you don't fund, because I think there's often a misconception that that's a bit of a black mark in that company's corner, and it can be quite hard for them to then get rid of that sense that they weren't picked.

But there are obviously lots of forces at play when perhaps you don't invest in a company, and I'd love to hear that from your perspective.

[00:23:14] Jack Edmondson: Yeah, it's a really good question.Back to my earlier comments about being, you know, straightforward and creating a reputation for beingdecent and trustworthy. The easiest ways to talk openly about this, of course, we can't invest in everything.

If you said right, I'm gonna invest in everything, of every idea that everyone has in Oxford, that would probably be quite a scary thing to do actually.

And we all know that the way venture capital works is this power law that, you know, regrettably, there are very, very few businesses that ultimately succeed. And, A for the UK, B for Oxford, C for OSE shareholders, it would be entirely the wrong strategy to just say, Right, everything's gonna work, we're gonna go all in.

Now there's a very obvious problem which you've identified, and it goes back to my aspect of our somewhat unique problem of operating in a very small ecosystem is that of course you're gonna get reverberations around that.

We spend half our time saying, Come and see us with your most fantastic ideas, and we really want to support you and we are uniquelyset up to support you. But then we also have to say no to some people, and any venture capitalist has this, and you live quite a schizophrenic life actually, where half the time you're gazing at the stars and then the other half of the time you're having to say, unfortunately no to people. Or actually, the really tough one is when something's failing, actually. It's not necessarily saying no at the start, but failing later on.

The last thing I would want anyone to think is that if OSE happened not to invest in the business, it was a black mark. There's a number of different things to say about this. First of all, and we're absolutely delighted for this to happen, and it's exactly how it should happen to be a flourishing ecosystem is things will get funded by other people, and that's fantastic. Boston wasn't built by one set of capital sitting there and saying yes or no to people. We love the fact that people will, go and find funding in a lot of different places. If we can help them, great, and if it's not a fit, no problem. If we do say no to things. What we will do is be very, very helpful and supportive to businesses over time, and I've just got a million examples of this.

So, the people I mentioned earlier, working on co-investors. If we don't invest, we'll still help people all the time, and we'll help people in the ecosystem where we're not invested. I remember a couple of months ago I had a call from, a founder who was in a particular problem. He said, look, we haven't done much together, but I've got this problem. Can you help? We pulled a couple of people together and we tried to solve the problem.

There are a couple of examples where we've invested later on.Nothing gives me greater pleasure than, for a founder to say, look, we've actually got this proof point. Can we talk to you again? Fantastic. Brilliant. Well done.

[00:25:50] Susannah de Jager: I love that. I always think that's the test of a very good investor when they can not quite admit that they missed something or kind of made a mistake. But when they can come in later or a bigger test is whether somebody can divest and then reinvest. But I've yet to see that very often, Jack. Somehow, psychologically, I think that's difficult for people.

Thank you. That's really good to understand and I think it is one of those things that it's good to sort of address. So I appreciate your candor on it.

Just going back to some of the capital and the pathways of companies, you've got co-investors there, but in terms of things that you yourselves are subject to. I'd love to understand a little bit more about the broader context in the UK and how you see opportunities for your companies.

It's obviously really highly documented at the moment. It's in the press all the time talking about the listing environment not being great here, domestic capital, how do you see those things for your portfolio companies? Clearly you're thinking about their objectives and you're thinking about your shareholder outcomes, kind of how are you advising companies to navigate these things?

[00:26:49] Jack Edmondson: I mean, the first thing to say, again, straight talking is that I think it is a bit of a challenge in the UK. You need really good ideas, you need really good talent, and you need the capital base. We are in an unbelievable position on good ideas. We do an enormous amount of work at bringing great talent in, and we're really getting there on that. And then the capital base needs work. Now, I think everyone's trying their best with the capital base. There are a number of strong initiatives. There are a number of players in the ecosystem, which are, which are very helpful, and the government is spending a lot of time thinking about this.

I'll give you what my view is. The one way this changes is we get a couple of billion pound outcomes, okay? That's the way capital will flood to the UK. If we get a unicorn coming out of here in a really successful way, that will break the cycle of everyone saying, oh gosh, is it really gonna happen in the UK? And we've got this problem, we've got that problem. The number of people that I'm connected to on LinkedIn in this area, every day I get a story of someone bemoaning what the problem is, what the policy problem is, what can we do to fix it, can we do this with taxation, can we do this with pension holders money?

I'm a free markets guy and the market will decide. There are things you can push and pull around that, but the thing we've gotta focus on is getting a really, really, really high quality set of results, and that is what will change things, and policy will help around the sides. But that's the task we're on, and if the small part that I can play on that is to get one of these outcomes happening, or a number of these outcomes happening, that's the role I can play. So,we could talk about various intricacies of policy and things that you could do. But I think really it's about getting those hard proof points and then the capital will flow.

[00:28:36] Susannah de Jager: I'm intrigued that you. Are still such a free marketeer because the world is becoming increasingly sovereign focused and protectionist, and particularly as we look at the US government led by Trump especially so, and I therefore often feel that the UK government is a bit too free market leaning. Perhaps less so the Labor government than the preceding Conservative one in that it slightly belies the international competitive landscape in which we sit.

[00:29:08] Jack Edmondson: I'd very happily go on record to say that we have very, very good interactions with government at all sorts of different levels. who are spending really good time on this and have a number of very smart people thinking about ways that we can tackle and change this.

Let's force rank the number of things that could happen to make sure that we have an enormous amount of capital coming to the UK. Is it that we're gonna change by a couple of percentage points pension fund money coming into some sort of structure for money to filter down. Okay, maybe that make a bit of a difference. What can we do about entrepreneurs tax relief? Okay, well maybe that seems sort of quite interesting. What can we do with the free flow of labor? Yes, that's quite important. If I told you that in 2030 we would have five unicorns across at least three sectors that we could shout about globally, I'll tell you now that it's that one that's gonna, that's gonna make everyone come. You know, that's what we need to focus on.

We've got a wonderful venture capital base in talent in the UK both around, University IP, but also much more broadly. There's a number of fantastic, you know, highly intelligent venture capitalists and strong venture capital groups in the UK, either independent or linked to international groups. The key point to get this to the next inflection point is to have something that where you and I are talking about in four or five years time, not what's the policy solution, but isn't it amazing that that set of founders that got the unicorn have now done four other, spin outs and have done X, Y, Z, and et cetera, et cetera.

[00:30:38] Susannah de Jager: No, and when you describe it like that, I wholeheartedly agree and even if I were to take your point and push it further. What nobody wants is that pension money is put into these things and there are not success stories because then everyone will say the experiment failed and that pension money was lost.

[00:30:57] Jack Edmondson: No, I want to be really careful. I'm absolutely delighted with the focus that government has at the moment on all of this. In my spare time I teach private finance at the Blavatnik School of Government. I talk about how it's not necessarily always the right answer, but markets will decide the flow of money and like you, you know, I do worry a little bit that if you just say, I mean, it's the definition of financial repression that you force people to put their money in a certain place. Is if you force people to put their money somewhere, and it doesn't work out, you are really gonna have a big problem.

What you want is some people who are mavericks and are gonna give this a go, and when they turn round and say, we told you so. This was a success. That's how the money will follow.

[00:31:39] Susannah de Jager: Just coming onto something specific that's been in the news recently and I don't think there's been any more music on it recently, but there's this discussion around Cash ISAs and Investment ISAs and I agree with what you're saying. You don't want to force people. However, we do seem to have, compared to other places, Australia and Canada would be obvious examples. But also the US actually. Much less of an investor mindset as a population.

So with your kind of lecturing hat on, but also your position, are there any thoughts you have on how that could be swiveled without strong arming people into it?

[00:32:14] Jack Edmondson: I'm all up for incentives versus strong arming. So incentives. Absolutely. I mean, if we can give people tax breaks to make it easier for, you know, being geeky, the net present value of taking the risk on getting involved in some innovation, then that's great.

If you think structurally around how this market works to get a really strong unicorn signal, it's likely that the path of that unicorn is based on an incredible idea and some incredible talent, and then some really good institutional venture and growth capital behind that to shape that business in the best way that they can. It's wonderful if we could get, you know, aspects of ISA investment into broader innovation and so on. But I think you need the concentration and focus.

So if we spray a load of capital around from a large number of people to a large number of places, I worry that you don't have the concentrated payoff. What you need is some concentrated capital, concentrated talent focused in on the best set of ideas, and that's how we will get that to work.

[00:33:23] Susannah de Jager: Yeah, and the best investors increase the probability of success both through their networks and their experience of companies and I remember Nick Mokes, who's the CIO at Welcome Trust talking about this and how you have to prove yourself a good investor before you get invited to the best tables.

[00:33:42] Jack Edmondson: You just spoke there about your teaching at the Blavatnik School of Politics. I know that you also teach at the Saïd Business School. You alluded earlier to the length of your tenure in Oxford being 15 years.

[00:33:55] Susannah de Jager: Why have you decided to dedicate so much of your time and efforts to Oxford specifically?

I'd love to hear it from a personal perspective.

[00:34:04] Jack Edmondson: Well, it's a question I ask myself every day. No, I'm joking. Gosh, I've got to the age where I've, you know, forgotten how old I am. I think I'm 48 this year. So I graduated in 99. I went to the city where I trained, at Merrill Lynch McKinsey Private Equity firm was super lucky to have the experience at all of those, was really grateful.

For me something was always slightly missing in my personal makeup and my value set. For some reason I've always liked universities and education and I could wax lyrical about, you know, education is the greatest thing that you can give your kids or one of the ways that we can make society a better place. I mean, maybe it's actually that I just like hanging around with people that are cleverer than me and it's quite a fun thing to do. But they're wonderful ecosystems, and I get a real buzz around it. I remember, I think it was in 2007. I was volunteering to teach at the business school. I'd written some case studies for them, and I heard about the endowment fund being set up at the university, under Sandra Robertson and gazing out of the train window on the way back to London. I just thought to myself in my very young thirties that this was the most unbelievable blend of using investment, which, I really enjoy. and I really enjoy the discipline of investing. But also with a broader set of outcomes and how you could make a bit of a difference in the world, and it's a bit of a cliche, but I've sometimes been struck by that bus analogy that you get hit by the bus and you know, it goes through your mind. What did I do on the planet?

[00:35:36] Susannah de Jager: And listen, that completely resonates with me when people talk to me about, so why did you set up a podcast? I said, honestly, it's just the best excuse to have really interesting conversations with people where you hear all about how brilliant they are or what they've invented.

It's really great fun and very inspiring. it's awesome and I agree. It's good to be surrounded by people that are undoubtedly clever than one.

So Jack, just finally, I'd love to know, you know, five years, hence, how would you like to imagine that OSE will have evolved?

[00:36:08] Jack Edmondson: Yeah, I think there's something very important that needs to be said. Which is we've gotta make this a financial success, and I feel really strongly that we are doing that and we will do that. OSEs had around 340 million worth of, exits so far. But we need to produce the next set of value creation and how are we going to make this a success?

How are we going to prove that this is exactly the right thing that we should be doing? And how do we make OSE flourish and how do we make the ecosystem flourish? And it's going to be about producing those next set of things.

So I could give you one answer, which is waxing lyrical about all sorts of fluffy things. But the key thing that I have to do is I have to sit in front of you in five years time and say, we did it. We had, X, Y, and Z that produced an unbelievable amount of value for our shareholders and therefore the ecosystem and therefore propelled all of this forward and

if I'm here in five years time, waving my arms around about all sorts of wonderful, fluffy things that I did, you should rightly tell me off. What I need to be doing is saying, OSE shareholders who put their capital at risk have made an unbelievable return. We've had academics that we've made very, successful commercially and we've flooded, by that proof point, a load of capital into the ecosystem, and therefore everybody has benefited. And that's the test.

[00:37:33] Susannah de Jager: And I won't ask you to name them, but do you think you can see what the likely candidates that will produce those outcomes are in the portfolio today?

[00:37:42] Jack Edmondson: Definitely a hundred percent definitely and the reason I'm excited is that I've got a large number of them and they're in a large number of different places and I think we've got just an unbelievable number of shots on goal. We gotta get it right. But we will do it.

[00:37:58] Susannah de Jager: Amazing.

Jack, thank you so much. I've really enjoyed it.

[00:38:01] Jack Edmondson: Thanks very much for having me.

[00:38:03] Susannah de Jager: Thanks for listening to this episode of Oxford+, presented by me, Susannah de Jager. If you want to stay up to date with all things Oxford+, please visit our website, oxfordplus.co.uk and sign up for our newsletter so you never miss an update. Oxford+ was made in partnership with Mishcon de Reya and is produced and edited by Story Ninety-Four.