Crazy Until It's Not: Startups, Venture Capital & Big Ideas

🔗 Humans, Connected: The Age of the Exocortex 🌐 Imagine a world where you’re seamlessly connected to the internet, not through screens and keyboards, but directly through your brain. Our minds are already a marvel of evolution, with three layers: Reptilian Brain : The ancient core responsible for keeping us alive by regulating basic functions like breathing. Mammalian (Limbic) Brain : The “monke...

DNA is an alien programming language - that can be learned That's the mind blowing idea of Stef van Grieken , the founder of Cradle , which is unlocking the keys to human biology. What does he mean here? Well, DNA was not designed like most languages, but it evolved, and so it's hard to understand and harder to engineer.  But what if, similarly to how we have learned natural language, we...

In the global AI race, product will matter more than tech.  That's the prediction from Mehdi Ghissassi, the Head of Product & Deepmind  Check out the latest episode of "Crazy Until It's Not" to discover more about why it's the builders who bring AI tech to life that will conqueror the world. 

In the future, buildings will be grown not built That's the prediction from Tim Fu, the Generative AI architect and founder of Studio Tim Fu.  We're already well on our way, with advances in synthetic biology.  But there is so much further to go. Check out the latest episode of "Crazy Until It's Not" to discovery the future of biology. 

In the future we will be able to program biology.  That's the prediction from Dr Mark Kotter, the founder of three synth bio companies bit.bio, clock.bio and Meatable. We're already well on our way, with the ability to perform feats like turning bacteria into lightbulbs.  But there is so much further to go. Check out the latest episode of "Crazy Until It's Not" to discover...

Welcome to another episode where we plunge into the world of artificial intelligence and its rapidly growing influence on the media landscape. This podcast explores the revolutionary assertion that all media - yes, you heard that right, ALL media - will soon be AI-generated or AI-assisted. Our journey begins with a comprehensive overview of current trends in AI technologies and how they are disrup...

What’s next in Generative AI? Could it be LLM-powered implants in our skulls directing us everywhere?  That’s something that Julien Simon from Hugging Face (a platform with over 120k open-source machine learning models) expects to see in his lifetime. “A lot of tech innovation is just reading science fiction books and just inventing stuff that makes it happen…” he says. One sci-fi innovation that...

Society needs to brace itself. Tens of millions of people around the world work in call centres - but the latest advances in Generative AI and synthetic voice are set to make around 🤯🤯 🤯 80% of their jobs redundant 🤯 🤯 🤯 . That's according to Nikola Mrkšić , the founder of PolyAI , a machine learning platform that buildings chatbots or voice-based agents for call centres. In this episod...

Welcome back to Crazy Until It's Not, a podcast about big ideas and the amazing people behind them.  Every episode we bring on a new guest who has a prediction for the future, which on the face of it, sounds a little bit crazy.  I'm your host, Michael Stothard, an early-stage tech investor at firstminute capital. And today I'm joined by Jonas Andrulis, the Founder and CEO of Aleph A...

We are going to see 10 Tesla-sized companies springing up in the coming years tacking big issues in climate. That’s 10 new companies with a market cap of over $520bn 🏢💪🏻♻️ That’s the big idea of David Helgason, the founder of Unity Technologies, one of the world’s two largest game engine companies, who is now a prominent climate investor through his fund Foobar. David spoke to us last autumn ab...

Are you reading this on your smartphone? Nothing’s CEO and co-founder Carl Pei’s ‘crazy’ prediction for the future is that nothing will displace the smartphone. Last fall at an FF event, we discussed the trend-driven nature of tech where fads come and go as Carl used VR, AR and drones as examples. But he predicts that 10 years from now, we’ll still be scrolling on our smartphones.  In 20 years, he...

Are AI and automation going to lead to mass unemployment?  We spoke to King’s Riccardo Zacconi about his ‘crazy’ prediction for the future, and he said that we are going to have the opposite problem.  He believes that big problem in the near future is that, with an ageing population, we are not going to have enough workers. He believes unemployment rates will effectively be at zero for many areas...

In the future, viruses will no longer cause disease. 🦠😷 That’s the big prediction of  BaseImmune’s Ariane Gomes, who says that in the future vaccines will be so good that viruses and other pathogens will not make people sick.  We spoke with Ariane last autumn about her background as a ​​PhD in Clinical Medicine from Oxford focused on immunology and vaccine development with 11 years of experience...

A glass which is impossible to drink from, sustainable diapers and an email paywalls. Here are just some of the business ideas going through the head of Jim McKelvey, one of the most extraordinary entrepenurs we know. Jim was a cofounder and now board member of Block (the $50bn fintech formerly known as Square) also is also chairman of the St. Louis Federal Reserve and founder of Invisibly, a star...

Science is making MOOOOOOOves to eliminate cow farming!  At the FF event in Scotland last autumn, we spoke with Dan Widmaier the CEO and co-founder of Bolt Threads about his ‘crazy’ idea for the future.  Dan originally trained as a scientist at UCSF where he holds a PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology. With that degree, he went on to create Bolt Threads, a sustainable material solutions company....

In the future, there will be no private cars in cities. That’s according to Bolt’s CEO and Founder Markus Villig. Many European cities have already passed legislation to reduce traffic — from London’s congestion charges to Paris making every first Sunday of the month car-free. The move to ban all private car use would provide major environmental and social benefits from a reduction in noise and en...

Currently, 75% of the US and 62% of the UK drive to work*.  Now imagine if that commute looked more like a relaxing session in a first-class airport lounge than a dull and stressful experience in a cramped seat. 🚗🧘 As the automotive industry and EV technology advances, the thought of self-driving cars becomes more of a reality and less of an abstract futuristic concept. CEO and co-founder of Aur...

While on a video call, if you’re boss asked you to open a link, would you do it? If the answer is yes, maybe you should think again as it could be a cyberattack! 🏼🕵🏻‍♀️ We spoke with cybersecurity software Darktrace’s CEO, Poppy Gustafsson, at an FF event last year about her predictions that cyberattacks will use deep fakes in live videos. The craziest thing is, these attacks will be happening i...

Is cash really king? 💳 >💵 Physical coins have been around for 28 centuries. But that is all coming to an end in the next decades. During a chat at FF’s event in autumn, Cyril Chiche predicted that cash will no longer exist in the next few decades. He has seen this trend of moving away from cash for digital alternatives accelerated by Covid. Cyril is CEO and co-founder of Lydia, a Paris-based...

On this week’s “Crazy Until It’s Not”, Lubomila Jordanova discusses her ‘crazy’ prediction that every product and service will have a real cost.  What does she mean by real cost? At the moment, the price of products and services do not take into account their wider environmental and social impact. Ludomila gives the example of a t-shirt. Traditionally, elements which contribute to the final value...

Who wants to add Dr. to their names? Soon, we’ll become our own physicians. This is the CEO and founder of Levels, Josh Clemente’s crazy prediction. Clemente discusses his health battles and experiments he conducted while working at Space X. These all led to the founding of Levels, a monitor and service which tracks your metabolic health. So, how will we become our own physicians? Thanks to innova...

Quantum computers will solve all of chemistry (and a large part of physics).  That's the latest big prediction on the "Crazy Until It's Not" podcast, this time by Steve Brierley, the founder and CEO of the quantum computing startup Riverlane. What does Steve really mean though by "solving" chemistry? The idea, says Steve, is that we will soon be able to model on a qua...

Social media will be decentralised.  That is the big bold prediction of Esteban Ordano, the co-founder of Decentraland. How come? Well, the answer is simple: because a decentralised social media would be much better.  Find out why exactly on this podcast. Let us know what you think of this idea at michael@firstminute.capital

Soon kids as young as two-years-old will be reading. That is the big bold prediction of Mike Maples, the co-founder and partner at Floodgate (and the host of the excellent Starting Greatness podcast). How? Well, education apps have made it possible to ultra-accelerate the learning process. It's possible to do all the core bits of learning (reading, writing and arithmetic) in just a few hours...

In a few years' time, there will be more people making a living playing video games than making cars.  So more people making money from just PLAYING video games they enjoy than in making the 80m cars that are made every year. That sounds crazy! That at any rate is the big bold prediction of Robby Yung, the CEO of Animoca Brands, one of the leading blockchain gaming companies. He is talking ab...