Ignite VC: Investing in the Next Wave of AI-Driven Startups with Xan Wood | Ep147

**Xan Wood** (0:00)
If things are successful, it's very easy to attribute that success to your skill. But a lot of the time, things can be out of your control.

**Brian Bell** (0:06)
And that's what the book talks about. It talks about most people, when things go right, they'll say, hey, that was my skill. And when things go wrong, they'll go back, I had bad luck. And they actually do the opposite with other people. When they see things go right with another person, like, oh, that person's just getting lucky. And when they fail, they're like, that was their skill. And so we have this kind of double standard. And the best decision makers, and they're starting to analyze these various decision makers in the book, they're constantly looking at like, you know, how do I get better at making decisions? And how do I reduce the factor of luck in those decisions? And then be honest with myself. So one of my favorite activities is I'll go back and I'll review every scrap of material I have on past investments from two, three, four, five years ago. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the Ignite Podcast. Today, we're thrilled to have Xan Wood, a dynamic investor at Canvas Ventures, where he leads seed to Series B investments in data infrastructure, AIML, verticals like fintech and digital health. He has a rich background, spanning early stage funds, climate tech, emerging markets. Xan has a unique perspective on growth and inflection investing. So we're excited to talk to him about that. From founding Moonshine Events in Edinburgh to launching Courtyard Ventures at Berkeley, his journey is unparalleled. I'm excited to have him on the program. Thanks for coming.

**Xan Wood** (1:16)
Thanks, Brian. Excited to be here.

**Brian Bell** (1:18)
Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been kind of years in the making. Well, I'd love to kind of just start at the beginning. Tell us about who is Xan and like, how did he end up in Venture Capital?

**Xan Wood** (1:27)
Yeah, it's been a bit of a roundabout journey to venture. So originally from the UK, I went to university at Edinburgh where I build up a fairly large events business. Decided on leaving university events is the older you get, the harder it gets to keep on going out. So then that business moved out to Asia where I was involved in private equity, private credit for about seven years and had been in Asia for about seven years doing all this. And I was actually born in Singapore, so I'd nearly spent half my life in Asia by that time. And so after about that, we were there during COVID, during Hong Kong, we were like, hey, why don't we go try something else? And that something else was doing an MBA. Coming out to the US, my initial theory was maybe to get into private equity in the US but then came out to Berkeley, got involved in the ecosystem and realized that private equity in emerging markets is actually a lot more similar to venture capital in America versus private equity in America. And so realized that my skill set was probably better for this kind of like earlier stage investing.

**Brian Bell** (2:26)
Yeah. What kind of turned you off on the kind of the later stage more traditional US-based private equity versus kind of the early stage venture?

**Xan Wood** (2:33)
You know, I don't think it's like a specific turn off. I like, for me, I just love the investing side. So I love like every aspect of investing. I think more of the similarities maybe between emerging markets is, I think everything in investing is people-driven, but I think, you know, earlier stages, a bit is a lot more people-driven. I think in emerging markets, there's always problems. And so it's a lot about problem-solving. And I think venture capital is always problems. It's never up and to the right with these businesses. And so, you know, the problem-solving aspect is pretty nice, where like, I think if you're in like bulge bracket, bracket buyout, you're not like that close to the business. You know, you're more making changes on an Excel versus kind of getting really down, down to like the brass tacks of the business, which I find a lot more interesting, rewarding as well.

**Brian Bell** (3:15)
Me too. I really like the early stage stuff to, you know, to answer my own question. When I looked at the private equity stuff, it just felt like more CFA stuff for me, you know, because I had the CFA like 20 years ago, worked on Wall Street and I was like, I don't want to do more of this, like just sitting in spreadsheets and kind of looking at discounted cash flows and kind of future exit scenarios. I want to like be at the tip of the spear of what's possible.