5 Years of Ariadne Capital
By Julie Meyer
Dear Friend of Ariadne Capital,
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Five years ago today on the 8th of December 2000, I founded Ariadne Capital. Conceived the day I sold First Tuesday, when I realized that I had been unable to build First Tuesday into the European investment firm that I had always envisaged it to become, I realized I'd have to try again and under a different platform. Most people think of First Tuesday as a networking forum that scaled across Europe. Few know that the original business plan that I wrote was to build it into an investment firm similar to what Ariadne Capital is becoming.
I never really got the chance as I made some fatal corporate structure mistakes which taught me some pretty painful and valuable lessons about creating value and wealth for others. But the 'net-net' was that I was fortunate to build incredibly strong relationships with those driving the new Europe, made some cash and got Ariadne Capital up off the ground amazingly fast in the fall of 2000. There's nothing like making money for investors once in order to inspire people to back you the next time around.
Ariadne has been a "market-downturn" company. We haven't had any wind beneath our sails to make it easier. It's been very tough to sail this ship over the past 5 years as no one could have predicted how bad the economy would be. I knew I'd be building counter-cyclically - that was the point. I didn't realize it would test me like nothing else in my life had.
If founding a company is like giving birth, this has been a long labor but a beautiful baby.
If I flash back to October 1998, I was jetting off for Barcelona where I had to learn Spanish in two weeks or not graduate from INSEAD. I happened to pick up Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand at the airport en route. I had read The Fountainhead previously, which had a huge impact on me.
Atlas Shrugged is the story of one man, John Galt, who stops the motor of the world. Essentially, in protest to government which tries to stymie and control the powers of entrepreneurship, he persuades the leading business figures of the day to one-by-one disappear. This has the desired effect of grinding the economy to a standstill. Galt is convinced that the only way to make the point is through their absence.
Galt is the ultimate alpha male, and I have to admit to having the occasional fatal attraction for those that remind me of him - though he is a mere character in a book. For me he lives - somewhere. As the book says, "Who is John Galt?" I'd love to know. I've been searching for him all my life.
Atlas Shrugged informed my thinking when I left my job at NewMedia Investors to build out First Tuesday. It further drove me to build Ariadne Capital as the market was getting worse in December 2000. Call me a glutton for punishment, or a woman on a mission.
Europe has no growth story, and the politicians are looking in the wrong places to find one. All they need to do is to set the people free.
People know best how to create their own wealth and collectively nations of entrepreneurs know how to build vibrant economies. Growth stories happen when people are set free to be the best that they can be.
There have always been investment firms that have built the great companies of the day. Lazards. Rothschilds. Europe needs one for the 21st Century.
The reason I refer to Ariadne Capital as 'Atlas Shrugged in reverse' is that we are pooling [rather than persuading to disappear] the weight and impact of the leading entrepreneurs in the market to create a growth story for Europe. We are backed by more than two dozen visionary Entrepreneurs who founded the firm in order to build the leading companies of the new Millennium.
As Jerry Garcia [of the Grateful Dead] said, "You do not merely want to be considered the best of the best. You want to be considered the only ones who do what you do." I believe Ariadne Capital stands not 'out' in our peer group but alone, and that time will show that we're up to something devastatingly category-defining and incredibly valuable.
Ariadne will be behind the next generation of world-class companies coming out of Europe because we know the best entrepreneurs in the market. That's quite an asset.
Dear friends, that is the only asset worth having if you are in my business.
Julie Meyer