Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Chancellor Rachel Reeves yesterday revealed her ambition to make the
Speaker 2: UK the best place in the world to be an entrepreneur.
Speaker 2: Surely she's also targeting tech entrepreneurs. The speech detailed the
Speaker 2: government's plans has tried to spur economic growth, although they
Speaker 2: are seen more as long term investments. She set out
Speaker 2: plans to work with companies based here to deliver jobs
Speaker 2: and investment in Britain. We will be hearing from Chancellor
Speaker 2: Rachel Reeves in the coming few minutes. Before we hear
Speaker 2: from her and the interview that she's giving to Bloomberg
Speaker 2: Television today, we want to get reaction to the government's
Speaker 2: plans with ronand Harris. Who is EMEA president at snap
Speaker 2: which of course is the firm behind snapchat. Ronand thank
Speaker 2: you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Good morning, Good morning.
Speaker 2: What did you make of the Chances speech yesterday? Over
Speaker 2: the summer her government acts one point three billion pounds
Speaker 2: in tech funding. Do you think that this is a
Speaker 2: pro business, pro tech administration.
Speaker 3: I thought the Chancellor's comments were very encouraging. You know,
Speaker 3: the UK has got one of the world's leading tech sectors.
Speaker 3: It contributes one hundred and fifty billion a year to
Speaker 3: the UK economy. It's got one of the largest startup
Speaker 3: sectors across the region. It's got more unicorns being made
Speaker 3: in the UK than in any other country around Europe.
Speaker 3: So it's great to see the government getting behind that,
Speaker 3: and I think infrastructure plays a really important role in it.
Speaker 3: I think are comments around regulation and making sure that
Speaker 3: regulation is balanced with the growth agenda are super encouraging.
Speaker 1: On the regulatory front, Ronning and good Morning. There have
Speaker 1: been some warnings around, of course, a constant kind of
Speaker 1: hand ringing and concerns and many of those legitimate around
Speaker 1: social media, the impacts on children and some of the
Speaker 1: content out there the technology sectually be to Carl, he's
Speaker 1: suggested that a ban on social media for the under
Speaker 1: six things could be potentially on the table. Would what
Speaker 1: would the snapchat reaction or the snap reaction be to
Speaker 1: that kind of regulatory emphasis, to what extent with that
Speaker 1: impact the business?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I think listen. Regulation is important in order
Speaker 3: to protect consumers across a whole host of different industries.
Speaker 3: I think what's important is that the government makes sure
Speaker 3: that it's efficient, it's not overlapping and that it balances
Speaker 3: that consumer needs with the need for growth. You know,
Speaker 3: at Snap, we have our platform Snapchat, which is available
Speaker 3: to you know, tens of millions of people across the
Speaker 3: UK that use it on a daily basis. We also
Speaker 3: have a very important tech investment up in Oxfordshire around
Speaker 3: the development of hardware in augmented reality, and the UK
Speaker 3: is a leading innovator in that space as well. So
Speaker 3: I think balancing the agenda around protecting consumers right across
Speaker 3: the UK, but also ensuring that these new emerging technologies
Speaker 3: in fields like augmented reality and artificial intelligence, where the
Speaker 3: UK has, as you know, incredible talent, it's got world
Speaker 3: leading research and it's now starting to see a whole
Speaker 3: flew of tech startups and spin out companies starting to
Speaker 3: emerge and the government needs to make sure that they're
Speaker 3: behind that growth.
Speaker 1: Rod are are you? Are you leading into that?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: Is Snap adding investment expanding investment in the UK? Is
Speaker 1: that part of the plan this year? And what are
Speaker 1: you doing in terms of headcount? What does that look
Speaker 1: like by the end of twenty twenty five here in
Speaker 1: the UK?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Absolutely, So we are investing. We are increasing our
Speaker 3: investment in the sales and the commercial side of the business,
Speaker 3: but very importantly on the engineering side as well. So,
Speaker 3: as I mentioned, we have a world leading research and
Speaker 3: snap on hardware around augmented reality and a lot of
Speaker 3: that is based out of our location up in Abingdon
Speaker 3: in Oxfordshire, and we're aggressively expanding that. So we believe
Speaker 3: that augmented reality is on the precipice of a kind
Speaker 3: of a paradigm shift and it's going to land in
Speaker 3: the hands of consumers over the next two or three
Speaker 3: years and we're very excited to be leading in that
Speaker 3: space and the UK is the home of that innovation
Speaker 3: and research for us.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's interesting. The issue is, though surely based in Oxford,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sure you welcome the Oxford Cambridge Arc,
Speaker 2: the issue that that has been more than twenty years
Speaker 2: under consideration, and that the kind of investment that the
Speaker 2: government is talking about will take years, maybe even decades
Speaker 2: to improve the road rail connections, to build out houses
Speaker 2: in the area. And that compared to the short term
Speaker 2: hit that the Chancellor is put onto businesses by increasing
Speaker 2: taxes on employers, you know, short term, the hit remains
Speaker 2: how optimistic can you be.
Speaker 3: Well. Listen. We know that the Chancellor's job is to
Speaker 3: balance the economy and make sure that they're covering the
Speaker 3: national core space as well as fuel and growth. And
Speaker 3: we think that the opportunity here of investing in infrastructure
Speaker 3: as these new industries grow and propagate, that there's places
Speaker 3: for people to live, they can get in and that work,
Speaker 3: but also that the infrastructure is there to be able
Speaker 3: to fuel startups and ideas that are coming out of
Speaker 3: the great academic institutions and research institutions and turning them
Speaker 3: into commercial enterprise. I think there's still work to be
Speaker 3: done about how we improve the flow of capital into
Speaker 3: some of these scale up opportunities in the UK, and
Speaker 3: I think there are things that we'd encourage government to
Speaker 3: continue to look at and see if they can accelerate.
Speaker 1: Where are we do you think rown in terms of
Speaker 1: the competition around talent, do we need to make it
Speaker 1: easier to attract talent to the UK?
Speaker 3: Listen? In some of these cutting edge fields, whether it's AI,
Speaker 3: augmented reality, it's definitely a war on talent, and globally
Speaker 3: a lot of the talent is very mobile, but the
Speaker 3: UK is already quite attractive in terms of again the
Speaker 3: quality of the institutions that we have here, the world's
Speaker 3: leading research in some of these fields, and we've got
Speaker 3: some of the world leading companies in these fields as well.
Speaker 3: So making sure that the brand around that is understood
Speaker 3: internationally I think is very important. And as and when
Speaker 3: we're finding that world's leading talent, we should be encouraging
Speaker 3: them into the UK so that we can build teams
Speaker 3: around them and build businesses around them.
Speaker 2: Is there anything in the offer from government that is
Speaker 2: going to do that? And I would add, I mean,
Speaker 2: I think our universities are fantastic too, and was educated
Speaker 2: through the UK system. Having said that, the Office for
Speaker 2: Students has previously said that forty percent of UK universities
Speaker 2: are operating at a financial deficit during the twenty twenty
Speaker 2: three to twenty four academic year. They are under enormous
Speaker 2: financial pressure. We know that probably some are going to
Speaker 2: find it immensely difficult in the coming year. There's pressure
Speaker 2: to increase fees, you know, that's what the industry is
Speaker 2: relying on, is actually a resource that is hugely under pressure.
Speaker 3: It's incredibly important that we support our academic institutions. We
Speaker 3: know I've talked about the fact that we're continuing to
Speaker 3: invest with growing our teams in the fields of augmented reality,
Speaker 3: also in the work that we do around artificial intelligence.
Speaker 3: So far we've been able to find all of the
Speaker 3: talent that we need in the UK, so we're not
Speaker 3: suffering from a shortage, but we know it's incredibly competitive
Speaker 3: out there, and I think anything we do in particular
Speaker 3: to fuel the talent flow into early stage companies and
Speaker 3: into small and medium enterprises across the UK, I think
Speaker 3: that's going to be incredibly important. One of the things
Speaker 3: that I hear from the small and medium sized businesses
Speaker 3: that we work with on the advertising front across the
Speaker 3: UK is you know they have felt pressure around a
Speaker 3: burden of regulation. They've also found increase in course of
Speaker 3: employment and finding the right talent to do some of
Speaker 3: these more advanced roles has been challenging, and we need
Speaker 3: to think about ways about how we fuel that. The
Speaker 3: education sector very important that we keep high quality and
Speaker 3: high volume of people coming out but into our industries,
Speaker 3: but I think also going out, is there international talent
Speaker 3: that we can attract into the UK as critical as well?
Speaker 1: If we just soum out of the UK and look
Speaker 1: more broadly, and particularly with an eye on the US
Speaker 1: given the pressure on TikTok now and the policy that
Speaker 1: affects potentially potentially closure of that business. Maybe in a
Speaker 1: few as sixty days, we'll see what happens in terms
Speaker 1: of the deal making around that business. Are you nap
Speaker 1: seeing any creators come moving over to your platform from TikTok?
Speaker 1: Are you're attracting creators who are kind of migrating away
Speaker 1: from a TikTok and if so, can you give us
Speaker 1: some numbers on that front.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, we're definitely seeing creators wants to diversify, But
Speaker 3: I think this has always been a path for any creator,
Speaker 3: whether whatever platform they start their career on and garner
Speaker 3: their first audience on, they very quickly want to develop
Speaker 3: audiences across multiple platforms. And He's been offline as well,
Speaker 3: going into books or traditional media as an example. On
Speaker 3: the back of the recent youths, we've definitely seen an
Speaker 3: increase in interest. There are a lot of people who
Speaker 3: are looking at developing fan based on Snapchat as well.
Speaker 3: What they're finding is the fan bases and the audience
Speaker 3: is that they're garnering on Snapchat tend to be it's
Speaker 3: a much more authentic and much more personal, much more
Speaker 3: engaging type of audience. It's a different type of content
Speaker 3: that they need to create, but they are finding that
Speaker 3: the monetization, the ability to earn an income on Snapchat
Speaker 3: tends to be significantly more stable and better than some
Speaker 3: of the other platforms they've been working on. So we're
Speaker 3: very excited about the work we've done over the last
Speaker 3: eighteen months to be able to fuel that. And who
Speaker 3: knows what happens with TikTok over in the US. I
Speaker 3: haven't heard anything happening in Europe, but we're still seeing
Speaker 3: an influx of creators in this region as well.