Footballer and Investor: Kieran Gibbs

Fantastic. Then how's Miami nowadays, by the way?

Miami's great. I've been here for seven months and I've just never seen a place with such high energy. I've never been in a place with such high energy. They have a lot of people moving to Miami at the moment from New York, from California. I think since the pandemic, the growth here has been rapid.

But why is everybody going there? Everybody says there's good weather. Everybody says that there's great people around. But what's going on? Why Miami, for example, and not LA? Or why is everybody moving there?

Well, I think the mayor deserves probably quite a lot of credit for what he's done in inviting and opening Miami up to a lot of people that are involved in tech. He's very forward-thinking. He's very innovative. And he's spotted a trend and he's run with it. And so far, it seems that it's paying off. I think as well, the taxes help in Florida at the moment. And then since the pandemic, I think obviously people have just rethought how they want to live.

Miami's warm. It has a beach. And where people were locked up for so long, I think it's made people reconsider their lifestyle. And so it's just caused this wave of people to move here. A lot of interesting people are moving here at the moment and have done for the last year. And it's just a really interesting place to be.

But just to get an idea, can we walk you through how you started? What were the early days of football? What actually got you into football in the first place?

Yeah. I mean, football is just the biggest sport in the UK. And so as a kid, me and my twin brother were just really active. I always just loved having a ball in my hand since I can remember. And then it was always on TV. Family were big football fans. And it just kind of went from there. The minute I kicked the ball, I probably haven't stopped since. So I think it just came from the popularity of the sport in the UK.

And it was kind of all I really wanted to do. I wasn't the brightest in school. I worked hard, but I wasn't always the... I was never the smartest person in the room. But that's kind of how I like to keep it. I never like to be the smartest person in the room. That's why I'm always with you guys when I come to London, because I just learn so much. And I think the UK is so different to the US, because when you grow up in the US, you have to go through the college system.

Whereas in the UK, as an athlete, you finish school at 16, you sign a scholarship. And then your education is limited then because you're full time and focused on what you're doing. So the whole system is different from the US to the UK. So yeah, I've just always had a thirst for knowledge, really, and being surrounded by good people that are just trying to change landscapes in important areas of society. And yeah, that's kind of how I've grown to meet you guys. But yeah, football was all I knew since I can remember, really.

When you remember the early days, Kieran, what's the... what motivated you to get started in the first place? Was it your parents? Was it the environment? Was it the neighbourhood?

Good question. I think a mixture of everything. I think when you grow up kind of in a city like London, football is kind of like... it's almost a... I mean, sport in general, especially in the US as well, it's an escape. It's an escape from reality of hard work in life. And so that's kind of the way I saw it. Whenever I was on the pitch, I just felt... I felt free. I felt happy. I loved competing, testing myself against the best and pushing myself as far as I could.

I've always had that about me. So I think that that's probably what drove me into playing at the highest level that I possibly could.

And was there like a specific time, if that you remember, when you actually realised that you can compete at an international level, at a very high level?

Yeah, I think things changed for me when I started, when I signed my scholarship at 16. You move from the academy building in Hale End in North London and you go full time to London Colney, which is where you're surrounded with the first team players and the reserve players. And then that's where opportunities started to present themselves for me, to be able to train with the first team when you were 16, 17.

If the first team had a game, there would be some reserves training with the first team overs. And that was your real chance to impress the manager. And that's kind of where I took my opportunity, I would say. And then I would say that a lot of it is luck. A lot of it is luck. You don't get anywhere in life without a stroke of luck. So my debut was made when I was 17 and there were a few injuries in the first team.

And so they needed positions to be filled. So that's when I got my opportunity. And yeah, thankfully, it went well, my debut. And then I think after that was when I realised that if I knuckled down and worked hard and focused, then I would be able to give myself a real shot at playing at the highest level.

How did you decide to play left-back? Was it the initial position you started or how did you get there?

Yeah, that's a good question. I was actually a midfielder before I played full-back. And my debut, I'd never played full-back before. And that's where I played. So I think that that kind of helped me though, because I wasn't prepared for it. And sometimes if you over prepare, it can work both ways. It can go either way. I didn't really have time to think about anything and I had to just improvise almost.

I mean, it helped that I had such a great team around me that suited my style of play. And the way I learnt the game was I was surrounded by players that had the same philosophy of how the game should be played. So that helped massively. And yeah, so I made my debut without even realising that I was going to play there until the day before. And then after the game, the manager spoke to me and said that he would like me to kind of focus on learning my craft in that position. So obviously you don't disagree with someone like Arsene Wenger and you just run with it. And that's what I did from 16, 17.

How was he as a coach, Arsene Wenger, at the beginning of your career?

I mean, I didn't know any different, really, at professional level. I didn't know any different because he was my first manager and he was my manager for the best part of 10 years, almost. So it was only until I left that I realised that there was a lot of... I had England managers, but international managers are just different in the way that they work because they only get you for a certain period of time in the year.

So they work a little bit differently. But when I left, it was only until then, when I was 27, 28, that I realised that there was a lot of differences in the way managers dealt with players, the way they wanted to play the game. So, yeah, it kind of highlighted his strengths a lot when I left. But at the same time, he was like a father figure to most of the team that I came through the ranks with. What I loved most about him was his ability to give you confidence in your ability.

How much would you rely on data?

Well, it's key. It's absolutely key. And that's why I love what you guys are doing because, you know, you're curating all of that data into one place that makes it easy for people to make decisions on, okay, has this player had enough sleep? Has this player... How are this player's blood at the moment? How was their data in training? All of these things are... You can miss... If you miss by a millimeter these days, you know, that could be the difference between winning and losing.

That's how fast the game has gotten and how like high level these teams have got that you really need to like focus on extremely small details to get the best out of the team.

Exactly. And the ability, when we think about the opportunities that could be built on top of Terra, when not only on the fitness side or the nutrition or the sleep, using different health metrics, but also if you think how a player might feel before starting the game one day before starting the game and you would have different metrics that show how his feelings changed over the week, stress levels, you would see if he has anxiety, if he has any sorts of emotional problems before the game, this would give you an indication of how the performance is expected to be not only on the fitness side, but also from an emotional perspective.

Is he fit at the moment to play this game? The psychology of the player before getting into the pitch and playing the game. How important is it?

Yeah, I think you've seen like such a transition on the mental side of the game over the last, I'm going to say, six years, maybe, you know, you wouldn't, it was a lot quieter than, you know, mental health and speaking about the mental side of the game. Back when I first started, that was a niche topic, you know, no one really discussed any of these, you know, the psychology behind mental health and how it relates to performance.

But now, you know, you probably wouldn't have a team that doesn't have a psychologist now, which was abnormal probably 10 years ago. So it's been interesting to see that side of the game, not just in sport, but in all types of, in any business. It's proven to be probably the most crucial part of being able to perform at a high level.

You mentioned it last time in our last discussion. What are you doing in crypto? Are you, what kind of things are you investing in?

Well, I mean, I'm investing, I've invested 50% of my salary into Bitcoin for starters. So I think, I'm not sure if I was the first or not. I think there may be, I would say I'm the first soccer player. I'm not sure. I'm not sure I'm aware of any other players doing it. So that kind of just, you know, created a bit of hype out in this region and it makes you be able to meet people in the space and find out what these people are, what these people are doing out here and it's incredible to see, like it's not, it's actually, it's quite real.

The mayor is very crypto friendly. He wants to make this kind of like the hub of, crypto hub of the world and you're just seeing it with, you know, the basketball arena is now called the FTX arena. Our team into Miami is sponsored by XBTO, which is a crypto finance company. So you're just seeing it so much more and it's just moving very fast here.

What do you actually invest in aside of cryptocurrencies? How are you thinking of investments, investing in startups and all that? And how can people find you? It's like, if they want to be raising funds from you, what's the usual? How do you find them or how can they find you?

Yeah, well, I would say, first of all, going on kind of the trend of how, of the way I like to invest is anything that I believe can be good for the planet. Any industry that is fast growing, obviously, and anything that is good for society. So these industries, I think, are ones that I like to focus on. You guys are focusing on, you know, health and society, which is like literally something perfect for that I would love to invest in and support.

I focus a lot on, you know, I'm quite bullish on emerging markets. You know, Ralph, we spoke about the guy who introduced us, Yousef, you're both Algerian. My parents, my mum is English, my dad's from Barbados. But I've grown a fascination towards emerging markets because, you know, you have hundreds of millions of people there where smartphones are on the rise. And there's just a lot of room to help, you know, hundreds of millions of people. So I would say these are the types of things that I focus on.