This is the fourth company that Rod MacGregor and Henry Nash have built together, which in and of itself is extraordinary. That's the piece that personally I got really excited about, completely separately from the technology. I mean, how many guys in their early 40s do you know that are going out in this market? They've never become gazillionaires but they've always been successful entrepreneurs. They've always made money for their shareholders. In kind of typical British style, they don't necessarily know how to take credit for it. One of the real reasons VW invested in them was the strength of the management team. They've got a tried and true team that de-risks the proposition.

How do corporate venture capital units know what to invest in these days?

It's that old Bill Joy quote, "Assume innovation occurs elsewhere." O.K., so I know it's out there, how do I bring it in? Do I have the right people for bringing it in? But then how do you integrate it back into the guys that are running R&D and procurement and things like that? U.S. companies are very good at acquiring innovation from start-ups. European companies tend to grow more organically, less by acquisition. I think that's got to change. Part of what corporate venturing needs to be about is that buy-build decision - do we invest, acquire, do we build ourselves, do we take two different bets and see which one works out? The point is you can't control innovation. It happens.

Are you finding more successful entrepreneurs now?

The line between success and failure is really blurring. You have so many people who have attempted to build new companies over the past four years, and the overwhelming number of them have not "succeeded." You have a couple of things that fall out from that. You have a group of much more well-rounded managers. And the other thing is how can you possibly blame people who failed, when it's the majority of the people out there who've not succeeded at what they set out to do?

I'm fascinated, in the European market, by people who are consistently successful as entrepreneurs. Frankly, those are the people I targeted at Ariadne to be my investors. Those are very special people here. Everybody migrates to Silicon Valley - it's probably the most competitive place on earth for that kind of talent. That's great. But in Europe, what's the growth story going to be? Is it just that we're going to keep annexing countries and become a bigger market? Who are the engines of wealth creation? You've still got a group of people that are looking for either the state to take care of them, companies to take care of them, or they're looking to certain families to provide for them. As someone said to me in Germany last week, the Germans are still too wealthy. They don't understand that they're getting more than they're putting out. We do a lot of work with Indians. Talk about a group of people that are taking the world by storm. When you're hiring people, you look for incredible amounts of energy, drive, good attitude, good work ethic - and then you consider what their skills are. Of all the people I interview for our portfolio companies for Ariadne, I'm just consistently impressed with the people coming out of India because they know what an opportunity is.

What's next?