Dr. Bilal Baloch discussing his role in a VC firm that invests in early-stage tech. Watch the full video — free, no account needed.
This video features Dr. Bilal Baloch discussing his role in a VC firm that invests in early-stage tech startups. It covers topics like AI investments, a global AI fund, and strategies for finding founders in the deep AI vertical.
Products find their way, founders find their way to capital [music] and fundraising. These are journeys that are messy and chaotic, but you get there. Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So today we have an amazing, you know, founder turned investor. We're going to be talking about that the journey of going from one side of the table to the other and we're going to be talking about all of the good stuff too when it comes to investing and what's happening as well in the Middle East with the with the venture space too. So again, a lot of good stuff, a lot of pattern recognition, things that work, things that don't work. I think you're all going to find the conversation quite inspiring. So without further ado, let's welcome our guest today, Bilal Baloch. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me, Alejandro. So originally, you know, you were obviously with parents
that were immigrants in England and and I'd love to hear, you know, how was how was childhood and the life growing up, you know, over there? Yeah. Uh well, look, big fan of what you've been doing here and and the stories you've been pulling out and telling. So so glad to be here and and sharing this with your audience. Um so I grew up in in the UK. I grew up in East London which uh is is not too dissimilar to, you know, growing up in in Queens, New York or or Dearborn in Michigan, you know, you're around uh a sea of of the mix of immigrants from all over the world. Um and uh I grew up in a period where most of those immigrants were from you know, former colonies of the UK, um from Pakistan, South Asia generally, the Caribbean, parts of Africa. Uh and so it was an incredible place to grow up to imbibe and absorb different cultures, different foods, different languages, and also learn how
different communities think about the world, right? Anyone who has spent time in first generation immigrant communities in in the UK or the US will know you can't have you know, a meal without talking about politics or business or what's happening in the world. And so I'd say, you know, in many respects it's it's your first education, your first real education into seeing how the world works and I take some of those lessons still into to my daily life today. Now, one of the thing that I wanted to to ask you about is you it sounds like you kind of took this academics route. I mean it was a quite the collection of universities that you attended. London School of Economics, Wharton, Tufts. I mean really a spectacular. So, what got you into that you know, path and and how all of a sudden you know, you switch gears and going to consulting? Yeah, so look I think the the headline answer is just
having a chip on your shoulder. But but the more detailed answer is and it's born out of your first question about sort of growing up in an immigrant community. You know, the focus is always on on education. I think there's there's an old quote attributed to Malcolm X about you know, education is your passport into the future and that was very much something that was focused upon in my household and I think many households like it. So, you know, further study was was always something that was inevitable rather than option. I did my undergrad at the London School of Economics. I was very fortunate to have a full scholarship. I studied philosophy, logic and scientific method which is a handful. But I think especially now when I look around at the impact of AI really gave me the frameworks on how to think. And so whether I went subsequently into academia or into tech or into consulting, I
think the the sharpening of of analytic skill was something that was taught to me early. In those days I ended my my at the Fletcher School at Tufts, which was a great window into international affairs and international affairs especially from the American perspective, which um uh was really valuable especially given how foreign policy in my view today impacts the world of finance and business in in very acute ways. Uh and then I went on to do my PhD at Oxford really because I became very passionate about studying and and studying uh about crises and especially financial crises and decision-making. So my PhD at Oxford was on how governments in growth markets respond to to crises, credibility crises, which then became a book called When Ideas Matter published with Cambridge University Press. And that was my entree into teaching and so that's when I was a professor at the Lauder Institute
at the Wharton School of Business where I led the Middle East program um and had the the real pleasure of of teaching some some brilliant students who were equally as interested in business as they were international affairs. So the red thread Alejandro was is really, you know, wanting to go deeper into questions that animate me. Um always having education and further education being something that was drilled into me from a young age by parents and community etc. And then I'd say third is is um you know unlike many others, I see a very clear link between academic research and real world stuff, whether that's consulting, building a company, or today what I do which is invest in business. I think building that academic muscle can really help you in the real world even though people think you just sit there in an ivory tower sort of you know pontificating all day. So then for you,
consulting, um tell us about consulting because I think that consulting when it comes to problem-solving, it really gives you an edge on being able to grab big problems, you know, break it into smaller problems and and then, you know, being able to go um with the execution, you know, on along those lines, but how do you think it helped you to really frame problems and and to think about execution? It's an excellent question. Um so I think it's it's worth mentioning up front that I did a very specific type of consulting, which is called global macro. Uh and what you do as a global macro consultant is you're you're advising decision-makers, typically on the buy-side, uh often times CEOs, uh hedge funds, some corporates on geopolitical risk and how markets globally will interact to create openings or closures for investments and and business opportunity, right? Um and so in that world, what
becomes very important is your the depth of your expertise, especially geographic. Uh and so that was my entree into the consulting world is having an expertise in the Middle East, uh in the Gulf, in South Asia specifically, and having that expertise at a time when uh we saw India going through structural reforms, we saw a uh behemoth like Saudi Arabia awaken and start to liberalize its economy, we saw UAE institutions mature and experience what is some of the fastest uh growth in sovereign AUM in history, period. And so the demand for my expertise was really quite salient. Um so for me to to answer your question more directly, you know, the the the learning was in is in having the depth of expertise on a particular sector or country and translating that into actionable guidance for our for our customers. Um and again, I think it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a part of consulting that I
think has only grown Uh because there's a recognition today that geopolitical variables, development variables are actually intimately tied to to business and investment outcomes. And and so hopefully that continues. And then in Inquire AI, at what point does the whole idea or the itch of entrepreneurship come knocking to you? So, >> [laughter] >> there's there's two parts to that answer, right? I think one is the itch of entrepreneurship I think was always there. You know, I I grew up uh uh essentially on the floor of of um uh the markets of London, whether that's Camden Town, um Brick Lane, Aldgate East. My father was a a traditional market trader, sold everything from t-shirts to souvenirs and and other things. And so the the itch of wanting to build and sell uh I think is is in my DNA. Um the shift to entrepreneurship was really born out of uh a disruption that that me
and my colleague uh who I founded Inquire with saw firsthand, which is in that world of global macro consulting, your business is fundamentally dependent on the quality of your market intelligence, and especially your local market intelligence. I how quickly and swiftly can you get the best insights from the ground and translate them into actionable insights for your clients? And what we felt was that time taken to getting to salient market intelligence was quite frankly too long too long. And oftentimes, and this is very natural in human networks, we're we're subject to our biases and and and confirmation bias specifically when it comes to our networks. And it leads to very partisan attitudes on what's going to happen in a particular country with a an election outcome, or which way is a sovereign wealth fund likely to invest when it comes to geopolitical pressures between the US and
China. We…