The FTAD Masterclass: Leading & Building in a Disruptive World

[Music] good afternoon everyone um I'm very lucky today I have the privilege of uh sitting in with Lord Cameron to really focus and delve into some of his advice insights into growing a tech ecosystem um I have to say that uh the tech City initiative that happened in London during Lord Cameron's tenure is one of the initiatives that we drew inspiration of from when we built up 71 welcome Lord Cameron thank you very much it's great to great to be here um that that wonderful introduction didn't include the fact that I am a visiting Professor for New York University Abu Dhabi right here in Abu Dhabi I was teaching here in 2023 I was interrupted to be foreign secretary but I hope to be back in 25 26 and and and onwards and have always been in incredibly impressed by what you've done here appreciate that Lord Cameron and thank you also for uh visiting us a few years ago as part of that uh uh capacity um I'd like to start maybe picking your Blan a little on your views in the tech economy in general why is it important today I think it's very simple really I mean if you look at the biggest companies in the world today a lot of them didn't exist 20 or 30 years ago so if your economic strategy is simply to get behind big companies you have today you'll be successful but you won't be truly successful because of course the startup companies are going to be the ones that are going to create the jobs the investment and the wealth for for the future and uh you know I I I still like to think I'm sort of relatively young um but I became leader of the conservative party 19 years ago when I became a party leader you know the iPhone had not yet been invented um and you think what a massive change that has made to our lives so if you want to be successful in this Century you've got to get behind startups get behind Tech and design everything not just your regulatory systems but the way you run the country the way you run the government the priority you give to it it has to become a real and continual Focus as it is here in Abu Dhabi and that's what we really did with with Tech City and Tech Nation back in 2010 we we determined we were going to do everything we could to support it fantastic and that's a very fair statement when it comes to mobile phones it does it did change the way we interact with the world there are different Technologies that's Pro that are probably going to fuel that as well uh but if we talk about the rise of tech city um and especially in a place such as uh Abu Dhabi where um there are progressive Regulators what do you think were key policies that help shaped um the success of Tex I think the the first key policy is just the leadership ship that Prime Ministers can can bring to this um politicians often pick a subject talk about it and then move on with this if you really want to make a difference you've got to set your path and keep coming back to it and give everything you've got in your office uh in order to keep banging the drum and then coming up with the policies which obviously you've got to include you know the speed of your connectivity they've got to include the tax policies you have to encourage Venture uh they've got to include the way you regulate whether it's fintech or whether it's medical devices or biotech inventions all of those things combined and when I look back at at Tech City uh and Tech Nation I mean first of all it it it really was a success you know was said in the introduction we're the number two city in the world for fintech after San Francisco we went from something like 2 billion a year going into venture for fintech to 29 billion across a a 10-year period and in but one one of the things I would say though is that we didn't just sort of invent it and centrally determine it we were working with something that was already getting going the phenomenon of silicon roundabout of these startups particularly in fintech in the city um was beginning to get going what we did was get behind it and help to grow it with all the different policies we could we could bring to to bear um and I think that's that's important um you know we had I have to admit we had some advantages we had the English language we had the fact we had the city of London one of the world's great Financial Centers we had excellent universities we had a history of financing startups so lots of the elements were there it was about bringing them all together bringing consistent and determined leadership to it and then listening to the startups themselves what is it you want what sort of access to Talent do you need what sort of broadband speeds do you need what sort of space do you need how can we get big companies to help when I look back I think that was one of the things that made a big difference was getting big Banks getting Finance houses getting some of the big tech companies like Google to come and locate uh training centers and offices in the place where we were trying to create this this Tech startup um uh Hub and I think that made a difference too yeah of course and it's Testament I think it was dozens um if not more unicorns that came during that uh period of time and I think uh one of the uh points you just mentioned was just on specifically talent and the importance of talent especially when it comes to the startup scene to the Venture Capital scene um it's early stage companies don't have track records um it's really focused on people on Talent um uh obviously London is a fantastic place to go I I know a number of the audience I'm sure goes a lot including myself um what are the key initiatives that shaped um attracting and retaining talent in London especially in the VC side well I think there's two things first of all it was the Eis scheme and the seed Eis scheme you've got to have a means for people who want to take a risk to start something up to raise money uh in a way that the the treasury the finance department is always going to say but that's going to cost a lot of money that's a huge tax break for people that are investing in these startups but it does pay back many many times but you have to have that courage to put it in place and then on the talent of course we were lucky we had you know obviously the UK is a a big economy we had the access to the European market but we also had entrepreneur visas that we introduced and oddly enough you know at the same time we were trying to control overall levels of immigration with a cap on economic migration and it's perfectly possible to do that at the same time with saying but there's a particular particular bunch of people we want to attract in terms of entrepreneurs um Visas so access to Talent encouraging Talent was incredibly important there's one other thing I'd say though as well kind of looking back at at it which is if your government simply says we want to attract startups and Tech uh to our country but that is unrelated to the other things you do in government it won't work you've got to create as you're doing here create an atmosphere based on what you're doing across government at the same time was saying we want to get behind Tech City we were also transforming government to make it more digital to make sure that the online way the government worked was far better and we became I think in 2016 we were judged the best digital government in the world it's got to link to what you're trying to do in terms of your biotech uh uh Industries and are you encouraging St startups in in healthcare are you encouraging startups in other parts not just in in some chosen areas so it's the whole way your government is acting I think can help to create uh the atmosphere and I give you one one example of that which is being open about data yeah a lot of the first companies that started up uh when we got this whole initiative going were based on the fact we were releasing huge amounts of data um Health Data crime data data about you know the success or failure of public transport all that open data is incredibly valuable for creating apps and creating businesses so you can't just have a tech startup policy you've got to have a way of doing government that creates a an ecosystem that that shows you're serious about this no uh um you know um and it's a beautiful segue to what the next topic I wanted to discuss one of the challenges a big challenge we faed when when we started hub71 in 2019 was identifying that even though Abu Dhabi had great macroeconomic factors to help set up businesses it was always this educational Journey we had to make and we contined to make even though we progressed with the um government entities with corporates to showcase the importance of working with startups the important importance of eding innovation um into these companies and entities um um in terms of public private Partnerships was there anything specific you were able to unlock to get them more excited about working with startups and Innovation yeah I think the public private Partnerships were a big part of it because things like Tech City and then Tech Nation these were you know government backed but essentially you know private sector-led organizations because you need if it's just government trying to do it itself it will screw it up you need to have experts who are really really understand what makes an effective Tech Hub and Tech startup culture to be telling the government what they need so I think that public private partnership's incredibly important but it does go back to what I said about it can't be on its own if I think of some of the things that really made a difference um I mean obviously Britain has particularly excelled in fintech so I think we've got more fintech unicorns than than than anywhere else apart from America and the level of investment into fintech in in the UK is twice that in Germany three times that in France and you wouldn't be able to do that unless you were also regulating your financial services in a way that helped to enable fintech to happen so I'd say the two biggest things there were the open banking regulations uh where you're effectively saying to your Banks they have to open up their data to other users and also I think the concept of the regulatory sandbox where you can try out new ways of doing things in a permissive regulatory environment if you simply said come and start up Financial Services businesses but I'm not going to change the way I regulate the banks and they're not going to change the way they behave and I'm not going to change the way we do regulation then then it won't work so it's it's making sure you're consistent across the piece and it's those regulatory changes that are often the absolute key to the the startup uh system and one of the things I'm doing now is actually not fintech at all it's involved in healthc care where we've got this Oxford University Harrington Center for rare diseases and we want to use genomics uh to try and have 40 cures for 40 rare diseases and one of the reasons I think we'll succeed is because you know a lot of the big American companies want to come to Britain because our regulatory system they hope and we got to make sure it delivers but they think our regulatory system will be faster at licensing treatments and drugs than the European system or the American system so the regulatory system you have in place is absolutely crucial to the startup the success of your startup um Ventures fantastic so out of curiosity because something we go through so we pride ourselves on having um um agile regulatory environment you've met uh his Excellency Ahmed zabi my chairman earlier before um uh how long would it take for a new regulation that would support the startup ecosystem how long would it take for to flourish out of uh economy I mean one of the great advantages you have is the speed of getting things done here in this country is phenomenal and I saw that um I mean just this morning I'm arriving at a different Airport terminal to the one when I was here teaching two years ago um so your speed of getting things done uh the nature of your government in terms of how fast it can act uh in our country no doubt about it regulations take longer to change but if you have a clear idea about where you want to get to uh we can we can be um we can be nimble enough actually something Daniel E from Spotify said at a meeting I chaired recently really struck me because he was talking about the importance of how we regulate the big Tech platforms and how we make sure we're encouraging um the the intellectual property right owners and someone in the audience said but you know surely post brexit Britain isn't really big enough to bother with how we regulate and he said no no you're quite wrong he said Britain is small enough to be nimble but big enough to make a difference and I think that's a good um that's a good Monica for for us to to think about how we regulate in the in the modern world no definitely um the airport is indeed different though it did take a bit longer than what we originally expected but great outcome so it's a um it is a testament to i' say outcomes um and which is something I want to also spend time with you um on um what are the outcomes now that looking back during that initiative what are the outcomes that make you most proud well I think the fact that we've got you know 29 billion 30 billion a year in Venture coming into British startups the fact that you know so many jobs have been created I think that's really encouraging and it's definitely across fintech has been the biggest success story but I think if you look at um biotech if you look at Healthcare if you look at Green Tech educational technology um development something where Britain and the United Arab Emirates work very closely together is using technology to try and revolutionize the way we deliver Aid that has been a success story but I think you know we before we get too carried away there's been a big failure here which is that if you look at the biggest tech companies in the world you know they are almost all American so we have created helped to create some fantastic fintech companies like like revolute for instance uh you know now worth you know getting on for $50 billion probably more I probably got that figure wrong apologies to anyone from revolute in the audience um those are big success stories but but Europe and the United Kingdom we haven't yet managed to grow one of the absolute Giants the the metas the Googles the uh the alphabets and and and and and such like so you know we've still got our work cut off to do but I think the the success is across all that range of startups and you see it in the the jobs I think the other thing that's worked is it's it's not just London if you look at the creation of unicorns in Britain now you can see Cambridge you can see Leeds Manchester Edinburgh there's a lot of different cities with a sort of startup culture and I think we have really change the way our universities think um about startup culture I mean compared with when I was at University you know almost 40 years ago and how universities act today they are absolute hubs of Enterprise and and buying into the startup culture and also helping to scale up because I think that's another area where frankly Britain has still got lessons to learn is we create a lot of brilliant startups they get to a certain size and then they tend to get gobbled up or um uh m rather than try to go all the way um there's a great example of one that's trying to go all the way at the moment which is in the era of genomics which I have a great interest in which is Oxford nanopore that is determined to become a sort of UK based champion in in genomics fantastic um you know that speaking of the great outcomes you have and also the Lessons Learned um it's a great opportunity for me selfishly uh leading Hub 71 out of Abu zabi um to get advice and counsel from you on what should I be looking out for what are things that I can do uh differently that will allow me to shape hub71 in the best way possible I mean I think youve got so many of I mean I enjoyed my visi to hub71 and you've got lots of the natural advantages that uh Tech culture requires you know this is an incredibly successful country and economy that people want to live in uh culture is important um when I was teaching at NYU I was living on Sadat Island and there was the the Lou was built and up and running the Guggenheim was on its way the Shak Z Museum was being built um that matters the livability of the city um I think the access to to finance is incredibly important and you've got some of the most forward-looking Sovereign wealth funds and creative Sovereign wealth funds and other investors here um I think the the the region n the region you're in the growth that's taking place I think those are all incredibly important um I think the big lesson to learn is to think what else can government do that creates platforms on which Tech can build so the genomics example is a really good one where again we LED we did the first population genomics program the 100,000 genomes program that I set up sequencing children of parents with rare diseases sequencing cancer and then making that data available as an open platform for researchers to plug into look at and come up with cures and treatments and and businesses and again in Abu Dhabi in the UAE you're doing genomics population genomics on a massive scale but I think it's it's asking what else in government in terms of our you know you're not going to have energy Tech unless you have uh flexible and Progressive Energy System you're not going to have edtech unless you've got great universities and Innovation coming into your schools you know you're not going to have devtech unless you're thinking about development in in a way that isn't just simply you know giving aid from one country to another country so it goes all the way across government but in most of those areas I think uh the UAE is a is a thought leader no um a great amazing takeaways for me Big Data very very important um the role of government um um as you saw in shaping the future which we have found them um you have my commitment that next at your next visit to Abu zabi to hub71 You'll continue to see progress um thank you for insights Lord Cameron very much enjoyed the session and again privileged to have spent time with you thank you very much it certainly come back helps everyone thank you very much thanks a lot [Music] I