Kreos

My friends from Industry Ventures in town for Kreos Ventures AGM - Kreos is a venture-debt firm that is now a "growth debt to high-growth companies" since nobody in Europe wants to invest in European venture anymore.  The keynote given by an older dude that I have known for some time whose presentation a bunch of cartoons describing how terrible private equity is , which manages to bore and insult everybody at the same time - no small feat. He  manages assets for wealthy individuals and families and, if he took questions, I would ask : why are you here ?

Otherwise it is a happy gathering at Sommerset House overlooking the Thames on a gorgeous early-spring morning, everything shiny.  This is one of my favorite places in London.  Sommerset House once home to the Admiralty (Churchill) and the Inland Revenue and Registrar offices before somebody realised the building too beautiful for admin.  The Courdault Art Institute here, too, which brought Sonnet and us to London, and home of one of the most efficient collections of impressionist paintings anywhere : Modigliani, Monet, Manet, Gaugin, Pissaro, van Gogh, Sauret , Degas .. .  today I see an exhibition of neo-platicists Piet Mondrian and Ben Nicholson : only 20 paintings in two galleries but, oh, so perfect to capture them at their creative peak during the Second World War.

At Kreos I bump into George, an investor in Ezoka, and we catch up on old times and people. George founded Intel Capital then opened Benchmark's European offices when I met him.  Today he invests in clean energy on behalf of Europe's largest family.  Back in the heady false dawn of the Internet, George and I drank martinis at Dukes, out to conquer the world.