Paddy Cosgrave [00:00:00] 

The United States has something I think you would call procedural democracy. People, it's correct that you have a right to put a piece of paper in a ballot box or to vote electronically, but that's it. You have no right to have your policy preferences represented by politicians in Washington. It's unless you pay money, your views don't matter.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:00:38] 

Platforms are our most elegant invention. Digital and physical spaces where strangers become collaborators, ideas find investors, and ordinary transactions compound into extraordinary networks. And unlike traditional businesses that create products, platforms orchestrate connections. Tom Goodwin, in his book Digital Darwinism, wrote that Uber is the world's largest taxi company, but owns no vehicles. Facebook is the world's most popular media owner, but creates no content. Alibaba is the most valuable retailer but has no inventory, and Airbnb, the world's largest hotel provider, owns no real estate. Now, these references might be getting a little dated, considering how platforms have continued to explode and exist everywhere, in your phone, on Wall Street, university campuses, even farmers' markets, and they all express the same law: the more participants who join, the more valuable the platform becomes for everyone. And in a similar vein, you could say that Web Summit doesn't sell a technology product. Yet catalyzes billions in startup activity and funding. In our world, platforms aren't just businesses. They're the architecture of progress itself. So to talk about his trajectory and role in some of these platforms, we're joined by a co-founder of the Olympics of tech, the CEO of Web Summit, Paddy Cosgrave. Paddy hails from County Wicklow in Ireland, and with a background in business and entrepreneurship, he has transformed Web Summit from a small Dublin gathering into a global tech phenomenon that attracts. Industry leaders, investors, and start-ups from over 170 countries. Known for his outspoken views on technology and politics, Patty has established himself as an influential figure in the global tech ecosystem. His leadership has expanded the Web Summit brand to include events across multiple continents. He's created a platform that connects the technology community worldwide. Welcome, Patty.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:02:32] 

Thank you very much.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:02:33] 

So I wanna get into what brought you to this moment a little bit, but to start off, I wanna talk a little bit about why Vancouver. And the timing of this recording, it's obviously gonna publish a little later, but the timing of this recording is interesting. In Canada, we just had the King delivering a throne speech about the mandate of the current government. I listened to that this morning. Remarkably boring, but also kind of interesting. And living in a colony become dominion, become nation like Canada. Is a fascinating thing to behold especially with invocations of monarchy at a moment like this especially on the evil Web Summit i don't think they timed it that way and it's kind of cool talking to you and frankly i've got a bit of love for anybody that's irish frankly because being from the punjabi community myself i've got an affinity for anybody that has been fucked over by the crown of england so you know common cause there even though we're just meeting for the first time So, I want to hear a little bit about... What made you think of, not just Canada, but Vancouver in particular, and bring this massive event here?

Paddy Cosgrave [00:03:41] 

That's a great question. Well, initially, our event was in the United States, and when Trump got elected, visa issues started to emerge with our event in the United States. And we used to have quite a contingent that came from Iran, for example. And suddenly, Iran's a huge country, 90 million people, lots of fantastic engineers, scientists, physicists in Iran. And suddenly, not just Iranians, but those from other countries in that region, in particular, in the kind of in the Middle East, started to have difficulty coming to our tech conference in the United States. So we initially moved it north to Toronto in, in 2019. Reached an agreement with John Torrey, who was the then mayor, former CEO, I think, of Rogers, really kind of visionary, I think, kind of politician and business person. And we really clicked. And that was the start of us hosting events in Canada. Initially, I think, I don't know if the disdain of a lot of people on social media from the United States, but it was a bit ridiculous that Web Summit was moving their event out of the United States, but you know, it really worked in Toronto. Then there was a new mayor, John Tory, who kind of stepped aside, and I think the new mayor had other priorities that weren't startups and tech. A number of Canadian and US cities then bi. Once we came to the end of our kind of contract with Toronto, you know, I think most of that's public. And in the end, I think we chose Vancouver for a range of different reasons. One, it's a very nice, beautiful city that people like to come to. So Web Summit isn't a, it is not a regional conference. There are people at Web Summit in Vancouver from more than 100 countries around the world. Um, it's on the west coast of the United States. I think it's quite helpful. It's very close to Seattle. It's not all that far from San Francisco and Los Angeles. So it's just geographically it's fantastically located. The airport has incredible connectivity to the rest of the world, including to, uh, Asia, with tons of direct flights to major cities all over the world. So all of this kind of.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:05:51] 

All the sound bites for tourism in Vancouver. It's great.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:05:53] 

Yeah. Well, so that worked. But then the other thing is, you know, when you, in our first year, we've over 15,000 attendees. And when you're doing something, sometimes kind of at that scale, with some of the types of people that are coming to the event, it's helpful if there's kind of alignment with the city, even better with the provincial government and the federal government. And in particular, with Mayor Ken Simm and Minister Bailey of BC, they were two former entrepreneurs. When we met with them and other cities were pitching us, I didn't meet with, I met with lots of politicians, but I met no other politicians who'd been entrepreneurs in their kind of day job or in their previous role. And that resonated massively. Somebody who's been working for us for a long time and just kind of diarrheaing and everything onto the floor. Casey is from Vancouver, so he's a massive kind of advocate. He's worked with Web Summit for nearly a decade, so we should. We definitely should do something in Vancouver, and all these things just kind of coalesce, and we decided, you know, okay, there are a couple of other cities in Canada offering the sun, moon and the stars, but actually maybe Vancouver works better as a destination for people to come to and unnamed other cities in Canada.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:07:10] 

Yep. No, fair enough. I mean, like Ted happens in Vancouver now. Yeah. And very much for the same reasons, right? You look around, it's a beautiful place, but it's starting to become, we hope, anyways, a bit of an epicentre of great thinking, great innovation. I wasn't actually aware of the political reasons for the shift in a Web Summit. That's interesting.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:07:31] 

Oh yeah, I mean, there are lots of attendees here from around the world who I think wouldn't have gotten into the United States. If you look at conference attendees in Vegas in the last number of months, it's just like falling off a cliff because international delegates are increasingly anxious about travelling to the United states and you know, maybe, maybe some of them are not anxious, but they're like, oh geez, I don't know, it just seems like. There's uncertainty about getting into the United States or getting a visa. And there are horror stories of people going to conferences. There was a French academic whose phone had a text message to a friend describing Trump as an idiot, I think, or an imbecile. And he was deported, which is pretty extreme. So extreme, it then tends to just ripple through the world's media. And everybody else is like, I don't really know. And so I think Canada is benefiting from that. You know, tons of Americans are coming here, and I think tons of people here to meet Americans in Canada, which is kind of fun.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:08:31] 

Yeah, it's actually pretty remarkable how their rhetoric has changed the culture entirely. Like, I had a flight to California a number of months ago, and I had friends and family who are otherwise reasonable people being like, oh, be careful. I'm like, it sounds like they have been there before. It's gonna be fine. Like it's not a thing. But yeah, it was pretty amazing how that rhetoric has trickled down. But there are a lot of kinds of happening actually with the culture of politics and technology, right? Like, you look at this is gonna be cliché almost to mention, but like, you know, Elon Musk. Could be, I think, a case study and just watching somebody's brand. Because I think what five, six years ago was almost universally lauded as somebody who was doing good for the benefit of humanity, the benefit of the planet. And it really been interesting to see how not just, I think, like his star is kind of I don't want to say fallen, but just the attitudes around him have changed so much culturally. As with I think tech at that scale in general, like the, who is he, the X? Finance minister from Greece, from way back when, Yanis Varoufakis, has this great talk he gives where he talks about this notion of like techno feudalism, right? That, in technology especially, and at these events, we like to talk about how much innovation and kind of capital creation is happening by people coming together. But he's got an almost dismissive view about it and a kind of dark where he says, actually, our version of capitalism is now kind of taking place in the front yard of techno feudalism. Which is kind of owning this whole space, right? You know, what's your perspective on that? Like, how does this sort of impact your feelings on Web Summit and what you guys are trying to do?

Paddy Cosgrave [00:10:04] 

Yeah. Well, firstly, the reputation of the leading figures within tech. So these kinds of tech billionaires have always been incredibly negative in the eyes of the average person. If you look at the kind of polling numbers of very notable figures in business, I think you could argue correctly. Most normal people perceive billionaires as dangerous. People who do not have the interests of their society at heart, for we can go into the reasons, but generally they are not perceived as good people, and that is the case in polling for, you know, many, many years. I think what's happened with Elon Musk is amongst elite opinion it's become divided because he's put his chips in one political Party Republican Party and Donald Trump as opposed to both or or possibly or possibly the other one but most billionaires are completely reviled by the average person certainly in the United States and you know I think it's a very thin line between. More of them being shot and no more of them being shot, I think. Anyway, but that's the United States; maybe it's kind of an extreme case. Just to come back to your question, just remind me of your question.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:11:37] 

Oh, just how this notion of like techno feudalism and capitalism and technology, the intersection of it. Like, is that a point of tension for you guys? Or do you feel like, for what Web Summit is doing, that it's... It's where you want it.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:11:48] 

No, I mean, we discussed it at Web Summit and for years and have platformed speakers from, you could say, like right across the political spectrum. I've invited Yanis Varoufakis many times to speak at WebSummit, but it hasn't worked out. We've had some fantastic academics who've talked in particular about tech companies and their ability to circumvent paying almost any taxes in the world, and the impact that that has. In our world. And it's not just evading taxes in the West. You've got Ireland is a notable example of a country with double tax treaties in place with countries in Africa, like Ghana, where, you know, there should be taxes paid in Ghana to, you know, help fund very basic provisions of health care and education. And those taxes essentially don't get paid. They're circumvented by these. I think quite scandalous tax treaties that allow companies to profit shift without paying taxes out of Ghana, routed through Ireland, and then it ends up in a sinkhole country, could be Bermuda or somewhere like that. And I think these are particularly corrosive and dangerous policies for the future, kind of the West is great for short-term profit maximization and all the other topics that are beyond us for a focus. Many of the writers touch on, I think, have an important place at a tech conference like Web Summit. Part of the reason is that it is a gathering of startups. It's not about creating a platform to lionize the existing. Sort of status quo companies, the mega companies of the current moment, it's about providing a space and a platform for companies that are trying to disrupt the status quo, which is something a little bit different. And as a consequence, I think we're quite comfortable platforming speakers and topics that are antagonistic to the interests of the existing sort of mega monopolies that dominate tech today.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:14:02] 

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, the line of speakers is incredibly diverse. Like personally, just because I'm a fan and I've met him on a number of occasions, really happy to see Dr. Cornel West on the panel. It'd be fantastic to have a black revolutionary academic speaking on tech panels about ethics and society, and what it means to our culture, and what collective liberation looks like in a place like that. Speaking of collective liberation, let's talk about Ireland a little bit. Um, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but. Uh, you had a rural sort of upbringing or like the

Paddy Cosgrave [00:14:35] 

Yeah, I grew up on a farm. In a farm, okay.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:14:37] 

So, I mean, does it feel like a pretty far cry from where you started to where you are now?

Paddy Cosgrave [00:14:43] 

Yeah, I mean, in certain ways, my dad was very into computers. So before I was born, there were already, you know, very early PCs, Apple One, Apple Two, Apple SE. In the early and then mid 1980s, probably had the internet before almost anyone else, early gaming consoles that my dad imported from, I guess, Japan and lots of computer magazines, like Apple users later renamed to kind of Mac user. I still have all the magazines from the eighties at home. So I grew up in a very rural setting, but, you know, I don't know, there was just a lot of it. There was a lot of tech lying around the house, and one of our neighbours was kind of the PC guy. My dad was the Apple guy, and both houses were very into gaming as well. And that provided maybe some window into a world that you might not ordinarily associate with farming. Totally. And I'm sure kind of had some influence on me. You know, by the time I got to university, I was just interested in building, you know, I guess today you might call them apps. But just building software and was involved in building really crap software for years and years. And I don't know, it's not that I ever wanted to build a business. I just kind of wanted to maybe help create some cool little things that did interesting things. And most of those kinds didn't work out, but they were instructive when it came to organizing conferences.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:16:20] 

Well, I mean, as I was kind of researching you and studying your life and thinking about what to talk about today, the themes that were emerging were this idea of platforms for sure, but then also kind of platforming. And it seems like even from your sort of earliest experiences in school, university, civic engagement, that you were pretty early on in relying on or leveraging technology, not for its own sake, but to actually build civic engagement to create some sort of political movements, you know, how did you, like, where did that interest start? Because, I mean...

Paddy Cosgrave [00:16:57] 

In my first week in university, I went to a debate, and in Trinity College in Dublin, there's now, I guess it's nearly 350-year-old debating society called the Philosophical Society that sits at the kind of heart of campus activity. You see, most universities have interesting academics, thinkers, and public intellectuals who will often speak to students. And so this debating society, you know, was a, a core part of the sort of student existence or experience within Trinity. I decided I want to get involved, got very involved, became the head of that society and so had some exposure to thinking about, okay, how do you put together an interesting debate or series of talks with people who are provocative and they need to be provocative when your audience are 19, 20 and 21 year olds because If it's not a provocative and properly interesting debate, why would a 20 year old give up their evening? They have so many other options when you're 20 years of age, and they're not mandated to go to it because of work, saying, I wish you would go to this conference.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:18:11] 

Is that Phil Speaks?

Paddy Cosgrave [00:18:12] 

Yeah, so Phil Speaks was then a program I set up to teach kind of public speaking to high schools in Ireland that didn't necessarily have access to kind of public speaking programs or debate programs that oftentimes were more limited to private schools that had more resources to teach kids skills outside of the national syllabus. So that was a program set up about 20 years ago that still exists to kind of try and broaden. Opportunities for teenagers to learn public speaking and debating. But, yeah, it just, to me, I think a lot of conferences, I don't get a lot of the content. It's just so, it's so dull. It's just CEOs talking about the latest feature or product that they've launched, which they try to dress up in engaging language and storytelling. But ultimately it's all as dull as ditch water. And I think oftentimes just making things a little bit more provocative is better. You'll notice that at Web Summit, certainly in Lisbon, there's just like, you know, stages that can fit 10,000 people outside stages. So our second, third, and fourth biggest stages fit three and 4,000 people, and you can't persuade that many people to sit down and listen to just another product announcement or tell us about your latest funding round. That's just, I mean, that's essentially just a... Spoken WordPress release, which I don't think is something people are prepared to pay money to sit through. So, where possible, we try to at least create something that's a little bit more engaging and provocative, and maybe that has some roots in doing that in university, where you know, I saw no issue at the time. I mean, some of these guys ended up in Guantanamo Bay, but I was like, oh, let's, you know, why don't we just hear out some jihadists? I mean, they want to kill people. Apparently, for the furtherance of an Islamic state in Europe or all of Europe. OK, let's just bring them to the university and, you know, see if they have any kind of compelling, coherent ideas that might seem a bit nuts to do. But, you, know, I did the same with, you know, kind of, I don't know what you call it, like, well, in the nation of Islam, some of the leaders in the United States came to speak and then you and pick every every kind of intriguing religious organization, those at the forefront of psychedelic research in the mid 2000s when it wasn't sexy. I just met Michael Pollan yesterday in California and Alexander Shulgin, somebody he would have known, who was sort of the godfather of psychedelics. I brought to Trinity when I was an undergraduate 20 years ago to speak because I think if you're a 19 or 20-year-old student, this is kind of interesting stuff. Maybe that has influenced some of the thinking behind WebSummit.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:21:15] 

I mean it seems like a lot of it actually like as I'm hearing you speak because um you kind of expressed like a fluency and comfort with political conversations and with tension right from a from an early period and I feel like the you know some of the worst of tech and some of worst of conferences is when they try to do this thing where they're quote unquote apolitical which is ridiculous to me right that's like having you know a herd of elephants in the room and you're just pretending that they don't exist um because to a large extent a lot the decisions we make are influences most of it's political actually so we should be talking about that.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:21:44] 

Yeah, I think I think the most dangerous think tanks are those that pretend to assure the reader of their about section or assure a listener at a conference that we're just, we're apolitical. We're just into good ideas. And then you kind of look at their funders and you're like,

Mo Dhaliwal [00:22:03] 

Yeah, we're unbiased, and you know, it's the data and the research. Yeah.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:22:07] 

Yeah. And we're so thankful to Charles Koch for just giving us these millions.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:22:12] 

Um, I mean, yeah, I didn't realize that, um, you know, the nature and the controversial nature of the types of speakers, um, you had, uh, invited in early o. Has there been anybody who's been kind of like on your target of who you would like to see? Like, I'm not sure how much of the programming you're doing hands-on at Web Summit these days, but there.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:22:31] 

I know there's an amazing team that, you know, are very talented, with great background in, oftentimes they're journalists, not always, sometimes former academics. So, you know, the guy used to teach political philosophy in Trinity College Dublin, you know, he's on our team. He's very good when it comes to kind of policy and academic sort of speakers. Yeah, there are lots of speakers, you know, for years I really wanted to get Noam Chomsky. And I think one of his last public talks that he gave was at Web Summit two and a half years ago, with Gary Marcus interviewing him. Kind of conversation between them really about AI and how it was all just a lot of fakery, which was, which is interesting, is provocative. I mean, it was absolutely packed. They wanted to hear from one of the true intellectual goats of our lifetimes, Noam Chomsky. And that was it.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:23:28] 

And that was his take, was that it's? Yeah.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:23:29] 

Yeah, he's fairly kind of scathing that the current systems and approaches would solve a lot of the problems that at that point kept seeming to emerge and seem to continue to, like, you know, hallucinations that, you know, a lot of AI systems now are just really, really, really good at bullshitting. They were good at bullshit two years ago. Now they're just like, fantastic. They're just so good. It's like this must be true. Um, but the same hallucinations and limitations that, uh, existed two and a half years ago, it's like, we still seem unable to solve some of these, really, what seemed like real, trivial kind of problems. And so Gary Marcus, who actually lives in Vancouver, was a professor at NYU of, um, cognitive science, will be speaking, uh, on the opening night. You know, I think as a skeptical voice in AI, which I think is because we're force-fed, not force-fed, but it's, you cannot escape the sort of mainlining of positive AI hype. And so I think it's refreshing to hear from somebody who's a scholar saying, okay, hold on a second, here's why. There's a range of issues, a range of shortcomings in all these systems. And actually, as I think you will say tonight, these can't be solved by the existing approaches, as a consequence, we're not even close to anything approximating AGI.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:25:05] 

No, there's, I mean, I've had the honour of sort of intersecting with somebody working on consciousness and AI here, Suzanne Gildert on Nirvanic systems. And it's interesting hearing that perspective because there are these weird suspicions that the everyday user has, like, oh, is it becoming alive? Is it becoming conscious? Because we're all raised on the same 80s, 90s sci-fi movies. But her perspective is very much that, that this is one area of research, one area of mathematics and theory. That is a dead end for consciousness, but it can do lots of fancy tricks, and the tricks will get ever fancier. So her work is kind of in the opposite direction, which is exploring quantum mechanics to understand where potentially consciousness and awareness are actuallychannelledd from, right? Fascinating. But I think she's like a pretty lone voice out here, right? And there are lots of, you know, and 99% of everybody else's. You know, I think that-

Paddy Cosgrave [00:25:56] 

Just interesting to find these voices that are in the hinterland of popular discourse, because if you're just consuming the same narrative or stories or ideas as everyone else, I don't think, I think you've much chance of thinking, not independently, but more originally than most other people.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:26:20] 

Do you see any part of this as a sort of like an AI tsunami coming? Like I imagine you guys have your fingers quite on the pulse of what's happening with technology and research in a number of places.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:26:27] 

Mmm

Mo Dhaliwal [00:26:28] 

But the way it kind of blew up in that fall of 2022, maybe a little bit earlier than that, but mostly then in the consumer sort of way.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:26:34] 

I remember in 2018, I did an interview with Bloomberg, and they were asking about AI. And I said, oh, you know, China's just going to win. You know, the only debate to be had is which Chinese company that doesn't yet exist is going to dominate AI in the future. And they were like, sorry, what? Does China do AI? And I was like, no, not, not really yet. But if you look at high-quality citations in AI, the kind of machine learning that is measured by, I think it's actually Springer. Um, the number of citations pumped out, high-quality citations by Chinese academics, is just like growing exponentially, and it's flat in the West. And they're now outputting, this is 2018, um, interesting novel, often novel, uh, research at, at a rate far, far exceeding that of the United States or Europe, and so probabilistically, um, in the future. More of that research will be commercialized, so utilized by entrepreneurs or startups, tech companies. And as a consequence, it's not a given. It's not like the outcome is one or zero, but the likelihood is that China in the future will just basically dominate AI. And I think my feeling is that it is already happening, and that will accelerate. And if there's to be much money made in AI. I don't know. I feel like there are compelling debates on both sides that, you know, the AI will be very much open-sourced and heavily kind of commodified, and there won't be a huge amount of money to be made in it.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:28:21] 

You don't think so?

Paddy Cosgrave [00:28:22] 

I don't think so. I think. I think it's very difficult to.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:28:24] 

We're shattering the dreams of many, many startup founders.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:28:26] 

Yeah, I think it's very difficult to make money out of a non-proprietary field of mathematics. If you're selling the shovels and the spades, maybe the spade and the buckets are, you know, possibly for some time, but I think it becomes just heavily commodified over time. So you're talking about the chips? Yeah, so you're selling, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so, I, you know, chips consultancy helping companies implement AI. In some meaningful way, internal or external. I think those people will make some money. But I don't really know if AI companies themselves will make a lot of money.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:29:06] 

Well, I mean, the comment on China is pretty fascinating because I think sometimes I dismiss those comments because I wonder if there's just some amount of like bias and xenophobia in the West. And, you know, China is kind of used as a bogeyman in so many other scenarios. But then I was reading this thing recently that was just talking about how Apple alone was investing something like 55 billion into engineering in China, and the ripple effects and sort of the exponential change that's created in engineering talent and science and research. You know, frankly, I guess on some level, the Chinese government is able to encourage, right? With that sort of internal investment. And that even with, you know, fairly innovative, progressive American administrations, they had put together a budget. I think it was the Biden administration that was like 50 billion or something over four or five years. Oh yeah, yeah, rather than just the annual 55 billion spent that Apple alone has in a place like China, right?

Paddy Cosgrave [00:30:02] 

Yeah, I don't think, you know, I'm not, I wouldn't be long in the United States. I'm definitely, I was worried for a while that Trump was genuinely distracted from his mission, that he wanted to help the United States economy. And I was like, this wasn't supposed to be why Trump got into the White House. Trump's job is just to make really, really, really rich people even richer. The point is one percent. That's all he was supposed to do. That's why all these people got behind him. And then I was like, what is Trump doing? Like, he looks like he wants to help the United States. Yeah, it's confusing. And then I saw the recent tax bill, and I was like, OK, he's back. He's delivering. Everything's just kind of pantomime and theatre and and and distraction. But for a hot minute, I was like, jeepers, creepers, this guy, this guy, Trump might not be. Just a Trojan horse for billionaires. He's something more than that. But no, he's just there to enrich the billionaire class in the United States.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:31:06] 

I think we do need to touch on that for a second, because I mean, Trump is a massive influence. And I mean, hey, Web Summit’s happening in Vancouver, tangentially because of what's happening in the US. But you know, there's been this like vacillation, I think especially in tech circles, where there are two extremes, right? Either he's just an absolute buffoon, just tripping through his administration and is only capable of one-liners on media and Fox News, and that's it. That's all he's got going on. And then there's the other side that believes there's like some grand master plan and there's some real deep thought and architecture of some redefining of the American economy that's gonna suddenly just explode for the lower middle class. Where do you land on that spectrum from what you're saying?

Paddy Cosgrave [00:31:54] 

I think the, you know, you've got, the United States is a one-party system with two sort of subsidiaries, both of whom represent the interests of the super rich, you know, and occasionally there are very marginal differences between them, but they both have to spend a lot of money. And the super rich that they actually represent have to indirectly spend a lot of money propagandizing the mass, the great mass of voters in, in the United States into thinking that these, this one party system is representative of, of their, of their interests. It's not, it's a coin-operated system. Um, the United States has something I think you would call procedural democracy. People, it's correct that you have a right to put a piece of paper in a ballot box or to vote electronically, but that's it. You have no right to have your policy preferences represented by politicians in Washington. Unless you pay money, your views don't matter. So procedurally, the United States is a democracy, but that's not a meaningful democracy in the true sense of that. Of the word and Trump, I think he's just doing what he's supposed to do, which is, you know, make the richest people in America even richer. And what happens to everybody else? I think it's a pretty secondary concern.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:33:36] 

Yeah, I think people are coming alive, hopefully, to the idea that, you know, elections are for your Psi-op to feel good about your access to social power, which might not exist. Yeah. So if you're not long in the U.S., what are you excited about? What are you long on? What is a place where-.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:33:52] 

Oh, just China. Like, you know, I met an amazing group of Irish engineers. They're about 20, 21, 22. There are about 10 of them all living in a hacker house in San Francisco. They're coming up to the conference, and they decided to spend their summer in San Francisco because they wanted to be as close to the future as possible. But to me, they're about 8,000 miles off. They need to go to Shenzhed China, or some other major Chinese city if they want a window into the future. Um, I think the future is overwhelmingly going to be shaped by Chinese innovation. Um, I don't think the U S does much innovation, uh, anymore. Um, you know, a couple of companies does not equate to an innovative, uh, economy, um, and you know where the direction of Europe, I, I don't really know. I'm not, I'm not, I'm so certain, but I am quite certain that the future. At least the rest of this century belongs overwhelmingly, not entirely, but overwhelmingly to China and the innovation that will emerge at increasing rates from China.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:35:03] 

Is that where you're headed next?

Paddy Cosgrave [00:35:06] 

Personally, I'm going back to Ireland. I've been away from my family for weeks. So that's where I'm heading next. But yeah, I'll be in China in a few months. I'd like to go there. It's just an absolutely kind of amazing place. And for anyone in the West to sort of blinker themselves and try to reduce China to some Disney narrative is an act of myopia or idiocy that I find. Difficult to comprehend, I think any responsible and thoughtful person in the West at this point has to begin to ask themselves, how is China dominating in almost every single high-tech field when they were a laggard 20 years ago? You've got a think tank, super sort of pro-US think tank in China called the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, and they track, I think it's like 65 or 67. High tech fields and they've been doing so for quite some time and you can see that 20 years ago the United States had a lead in almost every one of these high tech fields and now China has a lead and almost every single one of these high-tech fields with the exception of about seven but it'll probably be the complete set within a matter of a year or two and I think if you're serious about like trying to understand the world and you're interested in innovation. You, at the very least,t have to be open to learning how China achieves these things. And is there anything that we could learn in the West, whether that's Canada, the United States or Europe? And at the moment, I think too many people are unwilling to, I don't know the reasons, to seriously consider the policies that at least are working in China. And until we're prepared to do that, I just don't think I don't think the West can kind of reenergize itself or move kind of innovation up several notches to begin to match China's output.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:37:20] 

I mean, not to put more work on your plate, but I mean, could a Web Summit be that bridge? Like, I feel like you got such a- Yeah, yeah, no, no. I'd love to-.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:37:25] 

Yeah, no, no. I'd love to do an event in China, and hopefully lots of people will come. But I think certainly in the case of the United States, most US companies, not all, but some, might find it difficult to participate for four different reasons. We used to have an event in Hong Kong that we ran until just before the pandemic. And we weren't able to go back there until 2024. But at that point, we were launching new conferences in the Middle East and Latin America, and we decided to just kind of stick with that trajectory. Maybe in 26 or 27, we might do something in China.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:37:59] 

What else are you seeing in the world? Like, I mean, I've, you know, gutter has been growing. I mean, that's a big question, but I feel like you've got such an interesting pulse of having like these sort of tentacles on different continents and countries.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:38:10] 

Well, I think the most interesting thing is, and it'll go down as one of the great strategic failures in the West, the US thought that they could freeze China in time by some pithy export restrictions on semiconductor components and restrictions on the supply chain related to semiconductors, but now China is rapidly emerging with a sort of like full spectrum. Dominance across every component within that supply chain, from rare earths all the way up the kind of value chain. And I think that will become increasingly apparent within the West over the next year. I think one of the most interesting companies, but I've been saying this for about seven years, is Comac, which is the Chinese rival to Boeing and Airbus. And other companies. And they are building planes to compete with Boeing and Airbus, and they will eventually do it at a fraction of the cost, with greater fuel efficiency and more tech. You're already seeing that with their fighter jets, which have surpassed the capabilities of the latest American fighter jets, and this will bleed into their civil aviation fleet. Slowly. And I think it's a longer time horizon, but by 2035, maybe 10 years from now, I presume China will, as they are doing in the auto industry, begin to upend a century of dominance by Western manufacturers in aerospace.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:39:54] 

I wasn't even I think fully alive to like how much of an echo chamber I've sort of been in media wise until like the reason why I happened upon what's happening in China with aerospace and engineering, kind of a dark reason, but it was actually the Pakistan-India conflict and started reading articles and seeing headlines that like Pakistani fighter jets were doing these like advanced maneuvering, I'm like, Pakistani fighter jets, like what are you talking about? When I looked into it and actually saw the supply agreements they have with China and the type of equipment and what they're working with, you know, kind of dark. But also kind of like a fascinating, you know, window into the future because that isn't something that

Paddy Cosgrave [00:40:27] 

Yeah, they just straight-up shot down a bunch of Indian fighters with no losses. With jets that are a fraction of the price of what India was paying.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:40:38] 

It was a very economical little war.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:40:39] 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, it's good that they've paused.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:40:45] 

So, I mean, look, we've talked about Web Summit a lot. I mean, rightfully, like the openings tonight. You know, where does this sort of head next for Paddy Cosgrave? Are you going to do this till the day you die? Do you have a plan for what you want to do next? Yeah.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:40:59] 

It's a privilege, I think, to, you know, I think if you're a journalist, I think it's hard in the current environment, but a very privileged existence in that you get to continue to educate yourself by meeting and learning from really talented people across so many different areas or industries or geographies. And in my case, I'm a ticket salesman, and I, well, my team persuades really interesting people to come to our events. And I get to interact with a fraction of those people. And it's an amazing window sometimes into the future. And for me, that's a very, it's just an amazing job. And so it's an amazing job in some ways, but also like human travel sometimes, you know, can be tough. Change in time zones can be rough. We've done multiple events and many distant parts of the world, and that kind of takes its toll. Selling tickets isn't the most glamorous job at the end of the day. You know, we sell tickets. I am a ticket salesman. That is my job. It's not necessarily the greatest job in the world, but the perk is oftentimes getting to meet and interact with actually inspiring or thoughtful or dissenting voices that I might otherwise never have the opportunity to be exposed to, so.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:42:28] 

Yeah, I can imagine it would be perpetually interesting.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:42:31] 

Yeah, I mean, it is, but then, you know, a lot of the, certainly the tech bro pattern, the sort of PR sanitized total bullshittery of tech, like just like pains my ears when, and when I hear it. And I love meeting entrepreneurs. I imagine you hear a lot of it. Yeah. I lovemeetingg entrepreneurs before they've raised money. I love being bootstrapped entrepreneurs because they don't, they're, they don't tend to be sort of. Coached within an inch of their life and totally sanitized to just speak in weird media-trained soundbites. Yeah, media trained, soundbites, and so finding bootstrapped entrepreneurs who are just like, yeah, say whatever I want or finding entrepreneurs before they are sort of like neutered by their brains or kind of switched off by PR people. That's kind of thrilling. But man, it just hurts me to listen to. These sorts of trained hamsters just kind oftalkg at you. You're like, this is garbage. Like, please, can we just talk, talk, like real people? So, yeah, that's an insight.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:43:39] 

Well, thankfully, I feel like you've escaped some of that media training somehow, because on some level, Web Summit is a technology company, like there's a platform that you build all this out of, but you're continuing to, I think, say what you think, good or bad, sometimes get into some trouble for it.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:43:55] 

Yeah, yeah.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:43:56] 

And deal with it, but I think that's kind of refreshing. And I think that would be something that we could probably use a lot more of. I mean, when our agency, Skyrocket, started, we worked entirely with super early-stage startups for that authenticity, the passion, everything else. And then, you know, you get into that, the startup speak, right? And everything is just, you know, buzzwords and models and that sort of sanitized language kind of fell out of it for that reason. And I just recently kind of fell in love with it again, of being there for the passion, the commitment, the interesting breakthroughs that you're after. So it's been fun kind of finding that again. Great, great. And how's the tennis career going?

Paddy Cosgrave [00:44:33] 

I just like to play tennis as a sort of, I think, as a man, as you get into your 40s, you come to face to face with your sort of your ego, basically, and you desperately want to impress other people. So you go and play silly sports to try to show people that you're great. At least I think that's more... Is it working? I think I don't know. I just kind of like, I don't know. I just, I dunno, I enjoy it. It's like something kind of different. And I think in life, well, certainly for me, I just like, I don't know. I think by the time you get a little bit older, you begin to optimize your life so that you don't suffer so much, and you don't get, you don't fail so much. You don't lose so much because a lot of life for most people, for me It is just like you take a lot of lot of losses that you don't really, you don t really share with the world. Like, there's a lot of shitness that happens in life. And then, I don't know, I like that things have worked out well with Web Summit, and I like tennis because I end up just losing an awful lot. And I think I was like losing that in my life, that I was, you know, not challenged enough. I was like, Oh, I'll avoid taking this risk because I don't want to end up with more like egg in my face yet again and lose that again. And then I like kind of went back to tennis, and I was like, oh, I just got like absolutely destroyed by two 19-year-olds. And I can hear them, like, literally laughing at the old man on the other side of the court. And I kind of like, I found it kind of humiliating or humbling, I think. You know, like people are so humble. It's like, I don't think if you haven't been humbled, I don't know if you're humble.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:46:20] 

Mm-hmm

Paddy Cosgrave [00:46:20] 

And in tennis, I now find myself getting like, repeatedly, massively humbled. And it's OK. You know, it's kind of it's hard sometimes. Like, I really like, I get back in a car after just being crushed. And I'm just like, man, it's like I'm genuinely upset and humiliated. And I think it's a good medicine to take. You know? I think in business in life, sometimes if you get a little bit of success, it can really distort your mind. Massively, you know, massively like, you know, the more successful you are, the more your brain rots, like genuinely, I think it just rots. And I don't know, I find tennis some type of weird antidote where I come face to face with my own, like total limited ability and am regularly just not humiliated, but just like beaten badly by people who are just much better.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:47:19] 

Humility as a medicine, I think, is a great note to end on. Paddy, I know you're busy. You're kicking off this massive conference in Vancouver for the first time. So thank you so much for taking the time out and chatting with us. People can obviously find you online. You're prevalent, you're everywhere. But thanks again, really appreciate it.

Paddy Cosgrave [00:47:35] 

Thanks so much. Thank you. All right.

Mo Dhaliwal [00:47:38] 

Hopefully, we've given you a lot to think about that was High Agency, like and subscribe, and we will see you next time

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