Misfit Founders
Misfit Founders
The Journey of Former BP Executive, Ifty Nasir, Revolutionizing Equity Management with Vestd
In this episode, our guest, Ifty Nasir, a former bp executive turned startup visionary, unravels the complexities of equity management and the seismic shift from corporate life to the exhilarating world of entrepreneurship. As founder of Vestd, he shares an array of personal anecdotes and professional insights, guiding us through the creation of a platform revolutionizing how teams and investors approach equity distribution. From the critical moments of decision when to pivot or persevere, to the nuances of building a culture that values transparency and collective growth.
We delve into the fascinating transition from the world of established industries to the vibrant startup arena. The conversation highlights the challenges of launching a business, the influence of past experiences, and the importance of maintaining a delicate balance between family life, personal health, and technology. We peel back the layers on how remote working cultures and flat organizational structures can democratize the workplace, allowing for a culture of equality that values every team member's voice.
Wrapping up, our dialogue turns to the ethos of sharing wisdom within the business community, emphasizing the founder's dedication to enriching the ecosystem through their 'Founder Metrics' podcast. We celebrate the impact that our shared stories and insights can have on fellow entrepreneurs, fostering a community where knowledge is a currency and collaboration is the keystone.
Tune in to this episode to gain a panoramic view of the startup landscape, and perhaps be inspired to share your own journey with the world.
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Do you reckon that startup founders that come from a rich professional background they have more chances of succeeding with a business than someone that's in their early 20s and haven't had that much experience? No, I think it's In terms of your personal drive in doing this business and taking it to heights. What are your drives?
Speaker 2:One of them is to have something that adds to the world by virtue of having been on the planet. It's something that you're leaving, that's useful. Do step back. Don't put good money after bad. You have to have tenacity. You have to run with your idea, but when you can see that it's beyond you, if you know that war is not winnable, then you have to stop and you have to edit or pivot. And that's bravery. When you've sunk so much in, step back and say we need to edit.
Speaker 1:So you came from home. Basically now yeah, okay, was it is it far.
Speaker 2:So just on the cheap district line, okay, and down to Monument and then jump across to Bank and up to Old Street.
Speaker 1:You know I lived in London for eight years and you've never been to richmond. Sometimes I miss the, the public transport in in london. Sometimes, very often, I don't, but sometimes when I go to in the underground and travel from there to there, I'm like good old memories of commuting to work no, I, I guess now that we're not, we're remote, as I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 2:So it's brilliant when you do pop into sam and my. Maybe I come into town once a once a week, um, you know, four or five times a month, it's, it's fine, it's doable. But the thought of you know, getting up at seven, sorry, leaving the house at 7 30 to get into the office at a sensible time is gone.
Speaker 1:You don't need to anymore, especially businesses that are SaaS and technology and so on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we used to. As I mentioned, we had the place in Moorgate where we worked and everybody would come in. The devs would sit there with their earphones on just looking at screens. If you wanted any meeting you have to go out of the little office. So everybody would come in from yeah around and about London, take an hour, hour and a half to get in there, sit there looking at their screens and then go back. So it just felt like a pointless endeavor. When we wanted to meet up, we could. So we kept the office for a couple of years just as a facility but then realized actually we can do just about everything, including retros, remotely.
Speaker 1:So that's what we've done. Thank you for doing this with me. I know we're also exchanging podcasts, so I'll be on your podcast soon?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm looking forward to that too.
Speaker 1:I really want to hear more about the Vested story, mainly because, as you know, I've been a customer for quite a bit at Jigsaw.
Speaker 2:And we're hoping to be partners as we go forward in life.
Speaker 1:Yes, 100%, and I just loved Vested from the beginning. We'll talk a bit more about that, but maybe let's start with a quick intro and an elevator pitch of your business, vested.
Speaker 2:The elevator pitch for Vested. It's a share scheme and equity management platform. It basically takes the cost and complexity of sharing equity with your team and today's teams are not just employees, they're advisors, neds, everybody who's key to the success of the business, including the investor. Investor just makes that equity distribution straightforward and simple from the founder's perspective, but also from the recipient's perspective. Also, it makes sure that it's always done safely. So it's always done safely. Yeah, so it's always conditional. An investor you put in the money, you get the shares.
Speaker 1:If you're a team member, you put in the endeavor that you promised or committed and you get the reward and I love the expansion because when we started using it in, I think, 2021, yeah, um, it was really nice to be able to do the share options for the team and set the rules and the vesting schedule. But nowadays you've expanded with the launch programs and you can actually do a lot more, including allocating these co-founder prenups agile.
Speaker 2:How do you call it Agile?
Speaker 1:partnership, partnership, yeah, yeah, agile partnership and kind of like, really structure your um, your setups, with whoever you need either investors, and I'm excited about that. I am doing um. I'm launching a new company soon and I'm planning to set up everything through vested, including the shares of the shareholders and co-founders and investors. So it's great to have a platform and not have to scratch your head around. I need to call a lawyer to get a shareholder agreement. Oh no, I need to also call a lawyer to figure out how to structure my agreement with my co-founders and so on. So, yeah, lawyers must hate you corporate lawyers.
Speaker 2:I think there's a balance here. So what we've tried to do, biro, is make sure that even at the earliest stage of a business, you can get started safely with your equity distribution. So many people make mistakes of issuing shares, issuing options, even taking on investment, without the right documentation and structure behind it. But we're not misaligned with lawyers either. As businesses grow, the sophistication, the complexity of their legal documents do evolve. At that stage we can still handle them, we can still manage them. So they can have agreements put together by their lawyers. But they can be brought on to Vested and managed, whether it's option agreements or indeed just manage all their documents associated with investment rounds, diligence for an exit. All of that can be done on the Vested platform anyway.
Speaker 1:And what triggered? What was the trigger for you to start Fisted? What was that moment? You were like I need to solve this problem.
Speaker 2:I guess the whole notion of equity participation Everybody in the team having a piece of the pie, as it were was. I had the opportunity to have that from day one when I joined bp after uni. You know, first month you get the opportunity for for share options. Yes, you have to pay for them and the rest of it, but it's a discount and it's a great opportunity. But the, the sme, the startup world in the uk way, way behind in terms of how many people share.
Speaker 2:And it was more of an experiment to start off with because I'd come from the oil industry. I thought I knew a lot about business. But actually to really understand the startup world, which I was hoping to just invest into early stage businesses was the idea. To be able to do that sensibly, I'd have to build one of my own. It's going to be straightforward and easy. So, taking on board the stuff that I knew well, I understood equity, I understood the whole power of the ownership effect and I thought wouldn't it be good to try something around that as my learning opportunity?
Speaker 2:And I guess through that learning, what we've ended up doing is realizing actually there's a lot of people sharing money at the moment. You know money is still available even in this difficult time, but actually being able to help people reward their teams with equity was still a problem that hadn't been solved very well. We had lots of people following us since we got this kicked off, but we're now in a place where, rather than distributing or spending my money investing into lots of small businesses, what I thought is, if I focus more of my money or focus all the the funds into this venture, we can help a lot more businesses, and we do. We help thousands of businesses now, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:You know what that's made me smile? Because I've recently had the exact same thinking. Once I exited jigsaw, uh I, I started investing in a couple of startups and actually the next interview and conversation that.
Speaker 1:I'm having here is one of my investees right, and then I just got the itch again to start and do stuff and focus more, invest more in Misfit Founders and the other business that I'm starting, and I kind of fizzled out a bit, at least for now, in investing and being an angel investor. I'm like I want to just put all my energy and my budgets at the moment in these businesses and and try to help more people in the same time with the things that I do. So that's why, when you said that, do you still invest nowadays?
Speaker 2:um, a little bit. I mean the opportunity to invest.
Speaker 2:As you can imagine, you know working with startups through to smes oh yeah true, the number of fantastic ideas that you see, but if you did put all the money, you'd end up spending more time focusing on that, and I think right now I need to make sure that we build this business, because you'd be distracted. Yeah, if you're running a decent portfolio of investments, you should be engaging with them, supporting them as well. It's not just the money that they're after from you, but given the, the, the opportunity and the challenges of building your own business, this is where the focus is. There are still a few of those investments that I started off with.
Speaker 2:They're still running, and I still have those chats with the guys.
Speaker 1:But uh, this is where the focus is in building vested I kind of see a future for for vested, where maybe um, at one point, you're so well placed in the market that you can also kind of like have something like um vested ventures or this or that. Like, for example, atlassian has has recently a couple of years ago stepped into creating a ventures um program and investing in startups, because they deal with so many startups on a daily basis. Um, so yeah, maybe something like that for you in the future.
Speaker 2:I think there is a huge opportunity, although, as you say, the learning is tremendous. When we talk to people I mean, I personally have probably spoken to two and a half to 3,000 founders personally and when you're talking about your equity, when you're talking about the structure of your business personally, and when you're talking about your equity, when you're talking about the structure of your business, you can get very quickly trusted and share that. They share so much with you, yeah, and, and you'll share your thoughts, etc for them, but that, that symbiotic exchange, even though, on the one hand, we're trying to provide them with a service, for me it's very important that we provide them value, and that service is only of use if it's providing value so when did you start vested?
Speaker 1:when was this? So it wasn't that long ago not a current form.
Speaker 2:So we so we started at a vested 1.0, shall we say, back in November of 2014.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, okay.
Speaker 2:This is when I retired from the oil industry. I had a few pounds to invest and the notion was, as I said, to build a business of my own. So the money that I was investing was then wise money. Um, the thing is, as you start building a business, all things that you didn't realize were going to happen from the past. So we first got our first prototype, our mvp, of what was essentially a marketplace. Vested 1.0 was a marketplace, so equity for expertise, so helping startups turn their equity into a currency to get the help that they needed because they didn't have the cash. So that was all very good, built the MVP, but then, when we started going to the lawyers to say, okay, we need the contracts around the platform, the T's and C's, etc. Um, they said sorry, you're working with real shares or tokens or real shares. Ah, in that case you're gonna have to be regulated.
Speaker 2:So spent a few months, having spent best part of a year getting to that stage, then spent a few months trying to avoid having to get regulated, but then realize actually we're gonna have to do this.
Speaker 2:So we do it properly. And actually, in hindsight, it's a badge of honor to have, you know, gotten through the process, because this was before there was any sandbox or anything at the fca. Um, so we had to go for the full regulation. And for full regulation you have to have the the platform fully working or the legal structures have to be in place. It has to be fully test, tried and tested before you can even release it. Okay, and only then, and that that takes seven, eight months, and only then can you start testing it. And only then do you realize, gosh, this, this thing that we thought about great idea, but actually it's going to take a lot more money and a lot more time than I have. So we made a pivot in the Christmas, new year of 2016, 2017, and then decided to move from that marketplace essentially to a SaaS, serve one side of that marketplace, which is the businesses, and help those businesses distribute their equity safely, carefully, in a way, with whoever they decided they wanted to share it with.
Speaker 2:Well, now you're also regulated, right, yeah, so we already had that capability, so we can safeguard share and this is direct regulation um, you know, an authorized representative or something. This is as fully regulated ourselves and so it takes a lot of responsibility, as I say, but as a consequence, we can. We, we started working on the the business side, started with startups but again, even at that stage, vested 1.20, first customers at the end of the summer of 2017. And then we've been building since then. But we did move a little bit from the startup world to the SME world, because startups at that stage weren't able to reward us enough to keep us alive, so we had to go to a little bit more stable. But now, because we've created that stability in the business, we can now serve that smaller market a fraction of the cost, a price that they can pay and that will benefit. And that's why we've started the Light program and the support for very early stage businesses.
Speaker 1:I'm interested. You mentioned there's now a sandbox program. There is for the FCA.
Speaker 2:What does that actually mean? It means that you can play around with regulation. Essentially, a sandbox is a playground, right, so you can test, but you're not allowed to provide anything no you can, but within the sandbox structure it's essentially a safety gate within which you can play, Whereas before the sandbox was created you had to have everything ready, no experimenting. You had to have it ready to go before you could even release.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if you go and submit to release and they don't like certain things and you need to change things, oh, we built our entire platform around what we thought.
Speaker 2:That's right and that's essential. So, if you think about it, we built and spent a lot of time three years probably best part of two and a half three years, um on something that we had to pivot from and, you know, put in, you know, good chunk of cash by that stage. So when you put your own money in, yeah it's a really difficult thing to step back from.
Speaker 2:But I think one of the biggest learnings is you know, do step back, don't put good money after bad for fear of I mean, you have to have tenacity, you have to run with your idea, but when you can see that it's beyond you, if you know that war is not winnable, then you have to stop. Yeah, and you have to edit or pivot or whatever the phraseology of the day is. But you have to do that, yeah, and that's that's bravery, when you've sunk so much in, to step back and say we need to edit that is um kind of like risk management one-on-one in a sense, right being a the being able to you.
Speaker 1:It's called sunk cost right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Being able to not weigh that in as, oh, we need to continue because we sunk so much money into this, we come back down now, right, and I think that's one of the things that happen quite often. And it's also misunderstood that the concept of resilience sometimes is confused with just continuing to do the same thing without a result. Oh, it's resilience, eventually it will work. Well, no, if you don't see a progress towards your goal, resilience can also mean that you're able to pivot and restructure things and carry on and just not give up your journey, but alter it in such a way that it makes sense.
Speaker 2:I think that's spot on, absolutely spot on. Resilience is the ability to adapt. Yeah, I mean, it's evolution. Evolution is resilience. It's yeah, as the environment changes, your um, your capabilities and skill sets and talents adjust and you came from the oil industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you told me a bit about that when we had our previous chat. Did that help that experience in that industry helped you in any way, shape or form in building the business? Were there any traits that you acquired living your professional life that you translated into running a?
Speaker 2:business. I think loads. I mean, first thing, I had a great opportunity at BP, I mean when I started life as a chemist. I'm a scientist, so I put things together, oh really, and I put things together in a different way. It's always been that chemistry of looking at things in a different way and constructing them in a different way that creates a new opportunity, whether that's in business, whether it was as a chemist. But then I moved into the gas side of the business and into the upstream business.
Speaker 2:Each time horizon within the businesses I worked in at BP were two to three years, so each time you were changing and looking at totally different businesses and that in of itself gave you the ability to jump mindsets. You learn whole new skills if you're a chemist, versus when you're moving into a commercial role within the gas business through to a big geopolitical type role when you're working at state levels, whether it's in Indonesia or in the Middle East. But those skill sets and I think the most powerful one, as well as that chemistry piece about putting things together in a way that most people may not have seen, the, the other one is, um, really about that, for want of a better phrase a sales, that ability to engage with people that you learn from um, whether it's business development or um, direct sales or whatever you want to call it. I think that is one of the most powerful tools I picked up very early on and I think it's been something that I've leveraged right the way through my life. But there's many, many other leadership skills and training.
Speaker 2:One of the courses that BP put me through was a thing called Manager of the Future. Now, that's not about about, oh, one day you're going to be a manager. It's about I think you just picked up a second ago all you can manage is the future. The past is past. So whether it's sunk, cost or anything, it's done. You are here. What are you going to do about? Point forward? And that's what manager of the future was all about. It was about understanding where you are and what are the option sets, going forward and making sure that you try and assess the horizon and take the right decision for the future, rather than anchored or sunk in the past manager of the future.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, as I say, it's not that thing where one day you'll be a manager. The future is the thing that you manage.
Speaker 1:You're a futurist as in manager of the future.
Speaker 2:You can learn from the past, without doubt.
Speaker 1:Anybody who doesn't learn from history is crazy.
Speaker 2:But you shouldn't be true.
Speaker 1:Do you reckon that startup founders that how that come from a rich professional background, have some certain, some sort some level of seniority as leaders are more they're, they have more chances of succeeding with a business? That's someone that's in their early 20s and haven't had that much experience no, I think it's very much down to the individual.
Speaker 2:It's not about, I mean, the experiences that each person not necessarily the case at all. Indeed, you'll see a lot of older people trying to leverage everything that they've learned and still failing in the startup environment. I mean, there's no guarantees I would succeed. I mean, as I said when I started it to start off with, it was really just a, an experiment to see what are the biggest challenges, because whatever I may have thought when I tried to be an entrepreneur at the end of uni, the world is a different place now. Yeah, so you know to to either lean on my yeah industry career or you know experiences from 30 years previously or whatever. It's pointless, so you have to learn for now. But it didn't have to be, it didn't? It wasn't guaranteed that it was going to be a success. I mean, for several years it was tough, money was coming out of the bank account going into the business. So there's no guarantee.
Speaker 2:There's people who are relatively much younger than me who have flown from a business perspective, and I think it's more down to the risk appetite and the risk capability. So I guess when you're late teenagers through to 25, maybe even 30, your risk appetite can be massive. Oh yeah, because you've got nothing to lose Young, restless, but you've got nothing to not too much to lose, you're not too tied up in anything at that stage, so the world is your oyster. But maybe, maybe you don't have all the experience, or even maybe the resources, the cash, unless you have somebody who's back you up. So there's that risk. Then there's a period where often not always often people are risk-averse because they're starting a family, getting a mortgage, and it's only when you get out of the other end of that, maybe at 45 and thereafter that you can then take risk again. And I think that's as important as whether you're old or young or where you are. It's a risk appetite and risk capability that I think drives a lot of opportunity and entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1:Very true, but you did succeed with this. I mean, vested is now growing. Yeah, how big is the team now?
Speaker 2:The team is 70 people, so it's not a massive team. And it's interesting how you know over the last year or so, using better technology, we can actually do as much, if not more, with the team as it's growing.
Speaker 2:So we'll grow much slower in human numbers, I believe, unless we make some material step-outs, which we're exploring at the moment as well. But for the business as it currently is, and even for quite a bit of the growth that we're exploring at the moment as well, but for the business as it currently is, and even for quite a bit of the growth that we're contemplating, we don't need massive, massive growth in numbers, because we've built the systems, processes and the technology that we're deploying is and using is just helping a huge amount I want to talk a bit about that and some of the ways that you leverage technology Before that.
Speaker 1:So you're clearly out of the woods with the early stages. Where are we going to make it or not? It's a fully fledged, running, operating business with a lot of great people and so on. So saying, yes, there's. It's not the, it's not the experience per se, it's not the age or such, but what made you succeed? What were your secret ingredients, the secret sauce that helped you move on from just some sinking money into something and seeing that you know the light at the end of the tunnel I think it goes back to that determination.
Speaker 2:So when we started bested I'd put in a lot of my own money. But then, you know, just after we got the fca authorization you know you'll have everybody, will have lots of friends who say, yeah, yeah, great idea all this. So I actually asked a few of them to you know, put their money where their their mail put you you really think it's a good idea, and so they did.
Speaker 1:As in investment, as in they put in investment.
Speaker 2:It wasn't so much the need for their cash, it was more the tangible concurrence that this has legs or this has potential. Everybody can give you wisdom and positivity. But it's a very different dynamic. Changes dynamic and I think actually it was to a degree their belief in that we could make this work that kept me going it. It didn't mean that I was anchored in the first um business model or approach that we'd done, but the the need to succeed, for them right more than anything that is so important.
Speaker 1:It was much more for me as well yeah, that's so funny because I feel that, uh, I'm the exact same way.
Speaker 1:If someone keeps me accountable and if not, not necessarily keep me accountable but if I know that I have people that believed in me truly and invested in me, I'm so much more empowered and I feel that like I need to make it happen, if not for me, if I don't have although I've always had a big appetite but if I don't have, if I have days or weeks that I don't have the appetite, well, you know, I don't want to let down the people that, and that's why this might sound silly, but I started things in the past and even now that I share with the world, so that I feel accountable and I feel like it makes it a lot more tangible with me.
Speaker 1:Accountable, and I feel like it makes it a lot more tangible with me Even the company that I'm starting. Now I'm going to start posting kind of like this behind the scenes of building that company and I think that's going to motivate me even further because I know I have a lot of people watching and involved in a way. So that's one of the things that I've learned about content creation and being in front of the camera and showing your personality. People invest their time and energy in you and continue to watch you.
Speaker 2:That's the thing. That moral obligation, that commitment that somebody else had put into you is far more powerful than micromanaging anybody. I don't need anybody to stand there and watch when people get VC investment. Part of the process from a VC perspective is managing every single number that comes in, that free flow of data on a weekly, monthly basis. If they're not real-time plugged into the businesses, I'm not sure how useful ultimately that is. I think it's more. The biggest power is that selecting the right people and letting them get on with it. The micromanagement of a business is almost counterproductive because you're refocusing them in on that one thing, that one thing, and yet it might actually be appropriate to make an edit or a change. And you won't necessarily do that if you're just trying to hit a certain number that was agreed previously but is no longer relevant or plausible for the game that you may well need to edit to and was that the type of relationship that you had with your investors, as in more of a?
Speaker 1:well, they're all friends. I want to. You know you're my friend. I want to keep you up to date to stuff rather than them being, um, what's the numbers? What are the numbers? This month.
Speaker 2:Firstly, they never asked. They never asked. It was more a case of me letting them know where things were, how things were evolving, and similarly with the investors who came in in the summer of 21. Because, although we'd gotten to cash flow break-even in 2019, we thought, post-covid, if we could take on a little bit of money to just accelerate the business, which is what we did, put us in a place, but again, none of these people are overseeing what we're up to on a detailed basis. It's about trust in what we're doing as and as I say, month on month. Ever since we started back in Vested 2.0, the summer of 2017, every single month, the business has grown net.
Speaker 1:That's really good and it's really great to hear that you know what you want, the type of relationship that you want to have with your investors. A lot of people don't. The other part is the second part of this is some people would say, well, if you want that kind of relationship with your investors, then don't VC. But I disagree. I think there arec companies out there. You just have to look for the one, the team that you vibe the best and you align around, how you operate with each other and so on.
Speaker 2:It's without question there are. I've met lots and lots of great people, investors, whether they're angels, vcs, even growth equity types. It is very much down, as you say, having that rapport with people who you feel will help you on your journey rather than pushing you in directions that are maybe not appropriate for you. So it is a relationship and that's why you don't just take money from whoever will throw it at you, because, again, we've seen so many situations where people have been invested in I mean, this is real, um where partners have been divided by the investor and been sidelined, and in one case, they were life partners as well. I mean, that's a tough situation. Yeah, it is. So you have to truly believe that the relationship, especially with those early investors who can call the shots, those early VCs, will call the shots on your journey. So you need to know that there's a level of trust and respect between both parties.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that. We're extremely lucky as well with our early angel investor had such a kind of like friendship relationship support as well, with our early angel investor had such a kind of like friendship relationship support as well. And yes, we did do put a an updates type of cadence, but you know we wanted it because we wanted their support and their ideas and because they're a business like ours is also. That is extremely important. I wanted to ask a bit about your management style. How do you work with people?
Speaker 2:What we try and do is make sure we understand the nuts and bolts of the business. We also recognize that we're not the experts in that space. I'm not a top-notch developer, arthur is. I'm not the best marketer, chris is. Similarly, on customer success, we've got brilliant people led by Lynn and each of the parts of the business.
Speaker 2:What we've tried to do is have people who understand that area well, whether it's sales with Matt, even on a broader perspective, when you have a broad operational requirement, being able to connect the different pieces is making sure that people feel that they can actually run with their area of responsibility but also know that we are there, able to support them when there's there's challenges. Um, setting goals, a bit like OKRs, is, uh, one way that we try and help people. The challenge is you set things that don't come to pass, then they're almost as demotivating as anything else. But talking about that, the biggest thing that I think we have is transparency and values that we work to. So the transparency is that everybody gets to see where we are on a monthly basis. We have monthly retro reviews and retros so people see what's coming into the business, what's going out, so there's no hidden horizon where, all of a sudden people realize oh well, we've been losing money for the last two years and now we're something. Now everybody knows where we are, everybody knows their role in contributing to it and so you know everybody can play their part.
Speaker 2:The other thing I think that's important in the way that we work now, and especially now that we are remote, a lot of the time we're on calls, whether it's zoom calls, google meets, whatever everybody is a an individual box on the on the screen. Now that may seem a little impersonal, but at the same time it's very democratizing. There's nobody in a big corner office who's got different hierarchy, so when you're coming in you're already feeling subordinate. You know everybody's a square on the box. Your view is as valuable as somebody else's, your, your view is with your jurisdiction or your responsibilities in place. So we're all equal, but we all have different levels of responsibility and authorization within the organization. That's it. But I think that there is a very flat philosophical approach to the organization.
Speaker 1:I like the and I like the transfer. I like what you said about Zoom calls and being everyone, having everyone seen as equal. That's important. I do think that you could also convey that in an in-person office space Just have everyone sit on open end desks and wherever, and not have someone. That's like in an office, and I think that's one the company that I worked for before starting.
Speaker 2:Jex.
Speaker 1:I think that's one of the things that they were doing really well.
Speaker 2:You'd have open desks and you'd sit next to the CEO or founder and work right and again, it's a sort of culture that has already moved into a lot of organizations, even the larger organizations.
Speaker 2:I fully accept that and I think there are there are pros and cons to the physical everybody in the same office as well. For me, what we're trying is essentially an experiment as well Going fully remote, having gone remote first in 2018 and then over two years, basically realised actually we can do this, and then giving people the opportunity, firstly, to move a little bit outside of London. So some of that early team when we went remote first, some of them moved down to Brighton or moved out from, you know, being commutable into London. But then what happened is we were able to broaden our horizons and realize and access knowledge well beyond the london horizon. We have people up in manchester, edinburgh, you know, down as far as the west country, in exeter. Talent is across the country and what we've been able to do is um harness that. We would never have been able to half the people that we've got in the organization well, we would never have even met them, let alone have them as part of our team contributing to the game.
Speaker 1:And it's also given us the opportunity to realize actually we don't have to constrain ourselves, even just to, to the uk that's what I was thinking to ask whether you have anyone that's uh, maybe contracting overseas or anything like that.
Speaker 2:We have quite a big team out in India. We have people like Yass, who joined us here in London but then got married and moved out to Italy. He's fine, awesome, but still part of the team.
Speaker 1:Of course he's still part of the team. He's gonna appreciate the fact that he can work from anywhere and he can go back to his own country and work there.
Speaker 2:We've got team members who are able to travel around won't go into all the names but spending 2-3 weeks or a month working from ski slopes during the day, during the time that they need to be in the game, they can contribute, and then the rest of the time is is as in any case, but where do you need to be?
Speaker 1:exactly. Yeah, no, that's. That's amazing to see that, because when we started, we actually started as fully remote and we started hiring in 2019, getting contractors and so on, and we were determined to be fully remote. But there was a bit of a back then before the pandemic as we know.
Speaker 1:You know it wasn't such an established concept. Oh, you know, you have your team completely remote, and it was also a bit of a stigma in a sense. If you'd want to portray yourself as a serious business with a lot of employees and you don't have offices, there's something wrong with you. So I think now we live in a bit more of a progressed um work, uh world, where that's that's acceptable and no one's looking at you. Oh, oh, hold on, how many people do you have? How big are you? Should I work with you? That's not a thing anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, when we went into covid we were a team of about 14 when we came out of covid our first um retreat. So we do two in-person retreats each year as well everybody from the organization, so that was 40. You know, going from 14 to 40. Over the pandemic and you'd never met any of these people Must have been one hell of a party.
Speaker 1:It was amazing.
Speaker 2:We did it in the middle of the country, so we did it up in Nottingham at the De Vere Hotel on the university campus. There it was just brilliant. It's one thing seeing all these names in a box, and the funny thing was some people looked and were so totally different to what you had perceived before you met them, whether they were taller, shorter, and the other thing is, you know, without the names underneath their their box, it was interesting just how many people you just. I know you. I know your name.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, especially when it gets to to 40, 50 and so on. It's I'm I'm really bad with names. Um, it takes me a while, a while to remember people's names. And we did the same thing. Like, we started growing our team over the pandemic and we had our first get together and it was just Niki and I in UK. Everyone else was overseas and that's why you know we're working with a lot of contractors and so on. Um, for very long periods of time, and a lot of them had um, unapproved share options as, and that that's why we used vested as well, because it was so easy for us to set up all of the unapproved um stuff, um, and not have to scratch our heads. Um, but we had our first team get together in September 2022. And this was like a few months before we got acquired, so we had one single get together before getting acquired. But, again, it was so funny to see everyone in person.
Speaker 2:How many was there at that stage?
Speaker 1:We had 10 teammates.
Speaker 2:Brilliant.
Speaker 1:So everyone came from Brazil, mexico, canada, india, spain, everywhere, ukraine, like everyone came to to to uk and we, we hosted everyone. Um, did you know?
Speaker 2:at that stage that you were going to be acquired, or yeah?
Speaker 1:all right, yeah, okay, um. Well, we even said well, you know, let's do a kind of like a at least once get together and be like we. We we're not going to close off this company without the being Jigsaw, without saying we had at least one get together. And it was amazing. Everyone was um here over over one week. Um, we've been went to London for them visit london, but we were staying in brighton, had a lot of workshops, we went out quite a bit. So I think it was.
Speaker 1:It was a very important moment for bonding purposes because you see people like you've never seen them before and, yeah, you can do over the pandemic. We were trying all sorts of gadgets and software that helps you bond and do some exercises together, play some games, do a bunch of things, which was cool, but just spending quality time with people in person and just chatting. I think that that is fundamentally one of the things that's been dimming a bit since I moved fully remote because before Jexo we were, we had I was working in London in an office and the one thing that I really enjoyed was the water cooler and beer conversations.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because it was unstructured, it was unplanned, it was just chaotic and amazing because you just connect with people on so many levels and so many topics. Some of the some of the my best ideas came from having a pint in in a pub after after work with a couple of people at work. So I think that's one thing that I miss from working in person.
Speaker 2:Similarly, a couple of my best ideas came from smoking when talking about devices. But no, I think you do miss out on some of that, but then the challenge is how do you mitigate? Do miss out on some of that, but then the challenge is how do you mitigate? So what we do is we invest in making sure everybody has a relationship with everybody in the organization. So twice a week mondays and fridays half an hour of stand-ups, and these start up with everybody, but then we break out into little rooms randomly against different topics etc. So people get to know the other people at a human level. So the the rooms do usually break down to eight to ten people. So you have a chat twice a week. You're getting to know people in a way that you may not have actually done in the office as a consequence. So you can just then pick up the phone or drop them a slack message or whatever to engage with them about an idea that you have far probably more easily than you would have done if you were just in an office, because even when you go to the pub or coffee or whatever, afterwards it's those same people. Yeah, you're not broadening beyond that horizon of five or ten folk. So that's one thing.
Speaker 2:We do reviews, as, as I say, review and retro once a month as a company, so everybody gets to see everything, and then in the alternate two weeks in between that the teams do their reviews.
Speaker 2:But then, as I mentioned, we do two retreats each year.
Speaker 2:One is everybody in one place, so last year we were in in the summer and the the ones where we get everybody in one place across whole company, they're usually in the summer, so last year was up in manchester, the year before was here in london and then, uh, in the november time we do regional retreats, so we'll have little retreats in five or six different areas.
Speaker 2:So, like last November, we had one up in Lancaster, bristol, reading, mumbai and London. So you're now clustering people who are not in the same teams even, but geographically co-located, and it just gives you a much more integrated way of being as a team, in a way that, yeah, it's different to the water cooler and the pub after, but that often is very um, constrained or contained as well I mean, I think you're, I think you're, you're very right around the aspect of uh, you don't get diversification when you're in the office and you have your pub buddy here, uh, and you always go to pub with the same people because you know that's those are the people that you like you know the most and so on.
Speaker 1:So you, you're not really exploring outside.
Speaker 2:That's that scope and um, yeah, you kind of kind of have that limited view, in a sense of um, of what's going on and, as I say, what we try and do is make sure that everybody is seen as a human, whether it's our lawyers they're all still real humans and anybody from engineering through to sales, through to customer success, everybody can talk and should be able to talk to everybody.
Speaker 2:There's nobody out of limits. And because we make it that personal, not forced, forced, but we do have a discipline around making sure that people join those, you know, reviews and, uh, stand ups, because you have to occur as a human for somebody to be able to relate to you as a human and when they need your help, if they're afraid or concerned or well, he's too important or I don't know him really you can't reach out to people. And in a small organization, in an agile startup type environment, you need to be able to rely on every single person because there's no spare capacity. The people are there because their skill sets, their experience, are relevant to the business and everybody in the organization needs to be able to access that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and I've been on on the both ends of situations where, um, you know, either either I was um part of the leadership or I was part of the team members where I would experience this kind of like alienation because you didn't have the rapport with an individual from a different department, and so on. And then sometimes it can, it can get so easy to detach yourselves from that individual and not have the same behavior, the same treatment as you would have with the people that you're close with in the company. Oh, it's that person Like who cares. It's very easy to do that, even if you're the kindest and most thoughtful person, when you don't know someone and it's just a name on a screen that does a couple of things for it, for you. From time to time it's it's.
Speaker 2:It's very um, impersonal, absolutely, and that's why it's so important. Those stand-ups, um, you know, as know, say, six to ten people in a little room. Everybody has to talk because you can't disappear. And if you're doing that, you know, 52 weeks a year, that's 104. Well, apart from christmas and new year, we give people a full break over that that period. But yeah, you've got 100 opportunities to engage with people in the organization, and a handful of them at that. So you do get that opportunity to create. Even if it's superficial, it's beyond being afraid of engaging with that person, and that's the biggest thing.
Speaker 1:And you talked about transparency earlier yeah and that's, uh, that's one of your um main traits as an important traits as an organization, as a culture. Um, I'm curious so you do you share sales numbers, revenue, absolutely um do people in the company have um share options in every single person. It would be in the business. It would be odd if you're offering uh a platform for it crazy?
Speaker 2:it would be crazy, but also, you know, for me, you know everybody in the organization is key to success. You're, as you know, without everybody bringing their best to the table and it will be different for each individual, but the ownership effect is is real, even if it's a tiny, tiny, tiny bit. Um, yeah, that that different emotional contribution can make a big difference and there's enough evidence behind that. Research that's been done and on a portfolio basis. It's self-evident. Yeah, everybody will not be motivated by it to the same degree, but everybody, if they are vested in an enterprise, have some skin in the game and it does change how they feel, how they show up, even if it's a midgen do you have a valuation for for the company as in like uh, this is where we are at this stage, or anything like that, because I'm, it's a very controversial topic.
Speaker 2:We have a tool for so that everybody can see the on the platform. You have the what-if scenario capability. We know what the market for enterprises of our nature are because we do valuations for businesses on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:We've built a phenomenal valuations engine and capability with Invested. So people know what the multiples are of our revenue, based on growth rate, based on all the variables that you need to determine a value and at any point in time, people can see where they think we are approximately today and based on what we're, firstly, based on our track record, where we will get to, and then based on the new initiatives that we're developing, real time potential that the opportunity set is is phenomenal. I mean invested. You know the, the investment tool and flow that we've we've built out. Now you could always, you know, take on investment through the platform, but what we've done now is just made it so easy I mean everything through from the yeah, seis, advanced assurance, through to the issuance of shares, the resolutions, board, child resolutions that you need to put them in place so straightforward, and all we've done is we've continued to build the platform.
Speaker 2:We just keep giving more and more value to our customers, understanding them better, knowing what they need. We don't start more and more value to our customers, understanding them better, knowing what they need, we don't. It's like nickel and dime people. We don't go. Oh well, we're gonna do this little piece for you and you give us another 50 quid, 200 quid, whatever. It's about continuing to enhance value for our customers and and trust we. We're holding some of their key data. They have to know that they can trust us with it.
Speaker 1:But it does sound like you're really taking advantage of that being regulated and implementing so many features and launching so many things.
Speaker 2:Well, it makes sure that everything that you do you have to have compliance, yeah, and the customer in mind. That's what regulation is is all about. You know, we can't just give out advice, as it were, because you know what we say has to be what is appropriate and right. We can give guidance on stuff, but you know we're very mindful of not calling things what they aren't. Other people if you're not regulated, you can say and do a lot more, but when you're regulated, you have a level of discipline and responsibility that really forces you to lift your game, even if you didn't want to game, even if you didn't want to. Although, from my perspective, things like uh, you know, um, forcing people to stay on the platform that you know entrapment. You are not allowed, through the fca, to entrap people. You shouldn't make it difficult from my perspective.
Speaker 2:You know people should be able to and can leave the platform wherever they're like after they've done the first year or the first period of commitment. If you think you can do what we do elsewhere, here's the open door. You can download what you've done on Vested and off you go and we wish you luck. I know that people don't People don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know that very well and every single like the second year that we were using Vested. Of course, you have to figure out, you know, do we want to pay another year for Vested? Is there any other solution for that, or are we super happy with this? And the answer was super happy. But I did get to experience the you know, taking your data when we sold and we had to download all of the agreements and all of the information from the platform. I'm like, oh, thank God I have this because it made my at least for the hey who owns what share options and it made my life so much easier for the due diligence part, rather than having to communicate with lawyers and try to get them to give me this and draft that and do this.
Speaker 2:Well, with the data room structure that we've put in place now, people can start building up their data rooms from day one. If they're just about to get ready for an investment round or whatever, everything can be structured and ready to go and then, as they build, as they grow, that data room just gets populated with all the stuff that they need. So diligence is minutes to just give access to the lawyers of the counterparty of the investor or the acquirer and it's done. I think you'll see lots of exit stories on the vested platform and the appreciation, especially around the data and especially around just making that whole equity noise easy for people. It's heartwarming when I hear it. I love that. That's something that you appreciated.
Speaker 1:I need to tone it down because people will think that I'm fangirling over Vested, but it is a good platform. But, don't worry, I'll ask you some tougher questions about it is a good platform. But don't worry, I'll ask you some um, some tougher questions um about it. Uh, in a second um, the reason why I was asking about the transparency around uh share options and valuation and you know, people being able to make a marginal understanding and calculation of what's their share's value and worth at that point and how the company is progressing and so on. It's quite a controversial topic and I've talked to many people before even setting up the strategy at Jyxo about this. Setting up the strategy at Jyxo about this and there are people that say, don't even make a suggestion of what the valuation of the company could potentially be at this time and what it could be in two, three years and so on, because you're setting up certain expectations and your team might be demoralized or upset if that doesn't happen and so on. And there's other people that say, you know, fully transparent and that motivates people to basically to put their good side in the business and contribute and see results and so on.
Speaker 1:And I think it is a controversial topic, but I think for us, I've also been always transparent about things and we've set up a very transparent you know. We've said to everyone look, these are just thoughts here. This is roughly based on the investments that we have and based on the market and our revenue and so on. This is roughly what we think the company's worth today and we've always had the plan to sell right. So we told the team from the beginning, as we started employing people and contracting people, we will eventually sell. You're getting share options, here's your vested schedule and this is roughly what we think the company's worth here and this is what we want to sell for. So you can make a, an idea. And then every single month we would um, we would inform people of the revenue growth that we've had that month and people had their own ways of kind of like going and calculating what does that mean? And actually even back then there was a um on this there is a it was a field to say the forecast.
Speaker 2:What if scenario?
Speaker 1:yeah, the what if? Scenario. So people can go okay, so we're making this much revenue if we sell for arr, if we sell for this based on market, and then my uh, then the shares, is this. So people were incentivized by that because every after every single uh either after every single um full team hands-on, or I could even see people in the full team hands-on while we were doing our slides and showing how much we grew, grew in revenue you would see them going through and calculating how much is my that's the brilliant thing I mean.
Speaker 2:When you look at equity, it's about having skin in the game, being invested in the success of the enterprise. So brilliant for recruitment and it's brilliant for retention. If you don't know what the opportunity is here, then it's just salary. If you can't give an idea to the individual what might be possible, then why should they value your options at all? You're going to be the best place to help them gauge that. But also there are so many tools, as you say, even on the Vested platform, for doing that scenario for you.
Speaker 2:But not letting people know where the business is going, I think, is. I guess it's just philosophically misaligned to where I am. Because how can anybody you know lift up a gear or change the game if they don't know that they need to? If they don't know that you're in hot water now, how do they know that you need to get out? Yeah, If they don't know that, um, things are smooth, going well, and the reason why they're going well is this thing, this strategy or this game plan that you've got. How do they know to stay on it rather than move off? You know it's people can only work on based on the information that you give them. Yeah, if they don't have the right information, don't be surprised if they make the wrong calls or choices.
Speaker 1:I'm fully on board with that. I do also understand why some organizations do that, and it's usually say bigger companies that have VC companies backing them or owning them or such that are more you know. We need to not set certain expectations and communicate things that might not be true and communicate things that are actually achieved versus kind of like forward looking. I have to say.
Speaker 2:Most of the CVCs I know are of the transparent type, are of the type that would want you to be transparent with your team and would want your team to be vested in the business, because they know that the business is not just the founder. The founder is not the entity that makes everything happen. They may well be a focal point, they may have been the people who started it, but without the rest of the team the business is nothing. And so most smart V vcs and, as I say, I can't think of anybody who who doesn't fit this category of the ones I've spoken to they understand that importance and I think they they buy into the transparency that there will be some, I accept, that are not in that space, but none that I've really met.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like you know some really great people, so whenever the time comes that I need some VC introductions, I'll definitely come to you. Indeed, apart from regulation, which sounds like a big fat headache in a sense, um, what have been some of those areas where you know you had to overcome as a leader, as a business, like some of those areas as a startup that, um were a bit more clunky in the early days and you had to scratch your head a bit.
Speaker 2:Well, one more on the regulation before we move on from that. And that's being regulated means that you also have to provide the safety net for your customers. So being regulated means that you have to have tier one capital. That means a chunk of cash in the bank that will make sure that you can have a safe and managed exit if the business goes bad. So we've got millions of pounds in the bank that we have to just leave there to make sure that our customers are safe all the time and it's a big obligation.
Speaker 2:I understand it, but it's a big obligation for a startup and so when you're trying to build the business, you've got money coming in, but then you've also got this amount to make sure that all the overheads that you've got you have to cover for several months, such that there can be a safe and managed retreat from the market for you, for your customers. So that was a big challenge and, yeah, it's something that I guess gives our customers a huge amount of comfort as well that we won't just switch off one day and disappear. Being regulated means that you can never do that. As soon as it even becomes a risk, the FCA will come in and start managing that journey.
Speaker 1:And, I suppose, sucking your bank account with one of the well, you have to pay this, you have to pay that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but that's part of managing a regulated business. I guess the other challenge is the point that you made around remote. So, although net-net easily remote has been a massive advantage for us massive advantage but there are always things that you're missing out on relative to an in-person environment, and our continual endeavor is to find those shortcomings and see how we mitigate them. So, almost as well as leading the way in being equity management and distribution and sharing with your team business, the other thing that we're learning and trying to share with the world is how to manage a remote business, how to be a successful remote business yeah, and it's it, it's always, it's always a journey and I think that's you.
Speaker 1:You've learned, you learn, you adapt, you constantly learn, constantly adapt. You consider it as a positive and a success. When is a net positive? Not necessarily an absolute positive. Yeah, because I'm pretty sure that you are still still experiencing challenges, um, with remote stuff. I'm experiencing challenges with a lot of things as well. But you know, if I, if, if I know and I quantified that I'm in a positive, net positive position with that, it is something that I would promote as yes, for me, that is the right way and whatever you've learned.
Speaker 1:You try and share that's true, your personal drive in doing this business and taking it to heights. Let's leave aside the. You know there's a need, there's a problem, there's a challenge to solve and we're solving it as a business. What are your drives?
Speaker 2:There's a few of them. One of them is to have something that adds to the world by virtue of having been on the planet, something that you're leaving. That's useful, and for me especially, given my background. You know we've started life in the probably in the bottom 0.001 percent uk society. We didn't have the, the money or whatever, and it's about making it possible for as many people to have a stake in the enterprises that they contribute to, whether it's through their cash but not everybody has cash but also through their endeavor, their time, their skills, contribution.
Speaker 2:Everybody should have the opportunity to have a real stake, tangible stake, not just salary, but a stake in the enterprise that they contribute. And that's the endeavor, whether it's in the UK, which is where our base is, or taking that beyond, which is what we're exploring on how to do now. But, yeah, everybody should have a stake in what they're doing. It's not just, uh, a salary. Why should anybody I mean, if you think about it as a the founder why should anybody bust a gut just to make you a millionaire or a billionaire?
Speaker 2:there's nothing in it for them. Yeah, why should they? I mean just logically, why should they?
Speaker 1:I was just um chatting about this at one point with someone that um was telling me about this story where there's this guy that was in an office in London. Why isn't everyone working extra hard, like I do and staying overnight? Well, they don't own 90% of the business like you do and probably they're not that motivated either. In a sense, right, and you can never expect anyone. Doesn doesn't even matter, and I've said this recently, I feel I've said this so many times even if someone buys, after two years, 50 of your business, they're never going to have the same experiences and same motivations and and drives as as you that already invested two years it. It doesn't matter if they own 50% of the business.
Speaker 2:Absolutely right. And similarly, even with your team, there will be as I mentioned earlier, there will be different levels of commitment, even given the equity that they may well hold, and it will be different for all sorts of reasons. But I still fundamentally believe that even if holding that equity changes their mindset by 0.0001% and one more marginal decision on a daily basis is made in favour of the business versus not, I think that's useful. Even if it's one in a week or one in a year. That's a little bit more contributed toward moving the business forward yeah, um, had some.
Speaker 1:It was just editing, it was just anything of one of the podcast episodes. We were exporting one episode, um, and I said I probably should have made a t-shirt of this statement which was um, um, you have to in in startups and business. You have to compound and don't die. Keep on compounding and don't die in the startups. Yeah, um, I'm sure you're way past the don't die phase, uh, at this stage.
Speaker 2:I think, if you, I think there's a level of potential for complacency. The world is changing on a daily basis. Yeah, we see businesses that have, you know, raised a few million, you know, just a couple of years ago, and circumstances, a couple of years ago and circumstances change that end up with them having to sell for a pound to avoid going under.
Speaker 2:I mean literally whether it's the impact of having your developers in the Ukraine and war breaks out, or whether a part of your business is just being tapped or addressed by AI. There's so many things. Complacency would be the last thing on my agenda.
Speaker 1:How do you split your time? And this is a very personal question in a sense um, but I'm interested in in pretty quite a lot in you as a founder and um your journey and behaviors and such um. How do you split your time, work and not work and just hobbies and family and so on? Is it chaotic?
Speaker 2:Do you have like very time, box time allocated for vested? I guess, just for the avoidance of doubt, you know 25, 26 years in oil running big chunks of business Very, very different to being a founder. Founder. So what you thought, what you might have thought, was a little bit you'll be a bit more flexible, you're in control of your time, etc. It's very, very different when you have an organization behind you, you have redundancy, you have the ability to support on others. Being a founder is you ultimately. It rests with you. And so I've probably worked harder since setting up vested than I ever did before. But that's out of choice.
Speaker 2:But going back to the other things that are important, the other things that are important to me are indeed, family, our Indeed family, whether it's my little family or my broader family, I guess it goes back to, maybe, that immigrant. When we turned up there was no other family infrastructure. So our little family, although little a little is a a strange word when you've got eight siblings and your mom and dad but that eight brothers and sisters, yeah, but that core team have supported one of the all-time. So it's, it's mutual. So all the all, our nephews, nieces, great-nephews, nieces, it's all very, very important. We're all still very interlinked and inter supportive of one another. So that's brilliant.
Speaker 2:But then I think over the last few years, just recognizing that health is not something that you can bank on or it's gonna be there forever. So although in my earlier days I would play a lot of squash very healthy uh from that perspective, but over the, I guess, coming into covid and halfway through covid, I think I did let go of uh the health front. But now, um, yeah, I do most days, I would say 95% of the the, the days I'll do about four and a half K run in the morning, a little bit of uh, exercise around that. But that has just done a lot of things. It's allowed me to, firstly, getting up early. So it's five, 55, you're up, you're out by quarter, out by a quarter past. Have your faithful dog as your companion. But yeah, it gives you that space and time to just think. You're not doing anything else other than just the environment around you and just thinking through, mulling over a couple of the, the, the problems or challenges or opportunities headspace of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so important oh yeah, and then you get back and you, you get into the game so what time do you usually start your your work day?
Speaker 1:if you, if you wake up at five?
Speaker 2:I am in the office by 8. Okay, and my first call. Unless there is an 8.30 call, my first call will be with my PA at 8.40. We'll just make sure everything is organized for the day.
Speaker 1:I like that. I'm the same. I need some time in the office before I start calls, and my time is usually quite around eight as well yeah very similar training.
Speaker 1:However, and this is what I was trying to think when do you have time to sleep? Because, um, your um close family? You call it little family. Yeah, little family, that's a new term for me uh, your brother, your brother, um family, um sports, um work like that seems a very wide spectrum of things that you take on, yeah, and often you do them all because you love them and you know the family stuff is not an obligation.
Speaker 2:You know, when, um, when I was in, you know, working before in in oil, yeah, I would spend, you know, three weeks out of four away. I'd be on a plane, traveling around the the planet doing what I needed to do, and so actually, one of the real, real pleasures about the retiring that's essentially what I did, but that morning sprint, so I would, yeah, get up in time to be able to get the kids breakfast. So there'd be Ipti, these breakfast breakfast bar and there's four kids. They all had different times for departures, from sarah right up front through to adam at the end, and you know their bagels uh, different toasts, whatever. It was just such a pleasure to be able to do that for them and to get up to make sure that you're ready to to be there. Yeah, I'm not sure they appreciated it quite in the same way, but it made me feel good.
Speaker 1:Oh, dad, your sandwiches are not as good. That's awesome. Um, well, that's that's amazing, that that you make time and also are able. And you know, you said you know family is not obligation. But I think a lot of people would argue if your business becomes mainly obligation, um there's then something's wrong there. Um, it has to be kind of like you love it, um as well, there has to be some passion and some energy in there. Um, there's obligations as well. Because I feel like if you, you know, mainly love something or someone and it doesn't scream at you, right, that level of, and you have to have that obligation in a sense, and feel that sense of obligation and to continue to nurture your business as well and grow and so on. And at times it might not seem like it, at times you might get complacent and think everything's okay and you know, I'm just loving my business, but I don't feel that much obligation towards things, and things become a bit stale.
Speaker 2:So you have to have that mix of obligation and love for your business, I guess obligation may be a word, a useful word for it, but I guess it's also a responsibility, and it's a responsibility you have chosen to take on and therefore it's your responsibility to fulfill that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I was interested in one. I don't want to forget about this. Um, the technology part, yeah, and making use and amplifying what you do with technology. Are you able to share some, some examples of how you use technology to, let's say, not have to double your team every year or two?
Speaker 2:um, I guess it's just getting smarter with the tools and the team that we have people understanding. I mean, over the last six, nine to six months, every part of the organization has been doing at least one, if not two, experiments with different types of AI to see how we can improve the business. I mean, ai doesn't get everything right all the time, as you know. It has a lot of hallucinations as well. But using it with that caveat on it and understanding that can actually create great opportunities from simple things, from note taker and having some track of what you've been you're talking to who about, through to even on the help desk, on on vested.
Speaker 2:We've put a big caveat on there. You know we're trying this out and if you're not happy with the answer or you're not clear with the answer, you know the the vested team is still always there, yeah, in any case. But you know there's a a quick way of getting to 90 of the answers and if there's any ambiguity, you know we're still there. So we're testing out a number of different tools. We're testing out another piece, whether you call it technology or process that continual evaluation of how we are doing stuff and finding the next bottleneck and addressing it. Okay, just finding what's the slowest thing in this process flow, or what is the thing that causes the most consternation or slow down, whether it's within the business, the team doing stuff, or whether it's a customer, because we use all sorts of things like full story, etc to keep track of where people are going, how people are using the platform where they stop and why they stop, and then try to understand that.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so it's continually looking at the things that slow you down and just try to address or put in interventions that speed it up and, as a consequence, you know we probably have, you know, as many tickets now as we did two, three years ago, and yet we've tripled the number of businesses.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's amazing, and I suppose the idea is also to, for example, for customers and tickets to have a positive and continuously improving net promoter score as well with all of that stuff, and testing and experimenting is quite important in that sense.
Speaker 2:So it sounds to me like it's a mix of tools, be it AI or smarter tools internally for your own process as well as what we build customers, yeah, and it's trying to keep it as internal and visible loop as possible. You know, self-fulfilling, positive leap. You know we see things, their opportunity to improve it.
Speaker 1:We implement it and then see whether it did what we hoping to do, whether it's from a customer's perspective, as I say, or from a digital flow perspective, or indeed from our own team, and I suppose you also have some sort of process around adoption and such, because I one thing that I think about if everyone's experimenting constantly with new tools, you might get a bag of tools that are just lying around not being used, or some of them being used, some of them just forgotten, and so on yeah, and keeping a track of what you have and what you've let go of as well, and you shouldn't have to hold on to everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, true in terms of marketing and content. Yeah, so you're starting. You already started a podcast. Yeah, when did you start the podcast?
Speaker 2:uh, last summer last summer.
Speaker 1:What was it called?
Speaker 2:uh founder metrics founder metrics.
Speaker 1:Okay, um, so you started last summer a podcast. It does seem like you're also moving in a bit of a space where partnering up and collaborating with a lot more voices in there and you know, I mean you've been putting like. I remember when, when I started using vested um, got approached to potentially have a blog article um written about our company, which was great and we've done that, we contributed and such. So you're doing things um back then as well. But this, what was the motivation behind it?
Speaker 2:A couple of things. Firstly, if you think about what we were talking to start off with, part of our obligation as we grow and build businesses is sharing what we learned, yeah, and if we don't, then it's almost criminal. It's almost criminal. So if you've gotten to a stage where you feel you've got something to share, then start sharing. People can choose to take on board, ignore it, it's the fact is, it's your obligation, it's your responsibility as a founder if you've overcome certain hurdles, certain problems, certain challenges, taking advantage of opportunities to share that with everybody else, because we are ultimately just one thing this is a planet, humanity, the, the ecosystem.
Speaker 2:If we weren't sharing how we understood about, you know, the evolution of energy, for instance, yeah, we could carry on just burning fossil fuels forever and, yeah, not take advantage of the. The change, yeah, it's about sharing. So the whole reason was we felt that we'd gotten to a stage where we had something to share. We should start, yeah, contributing to the ecosystem that we've benefited from, yeah, the number of I'm sure you're the same the number of podcasts or webinars that you'd heard from or listened to, and they triggered one or two little thoughts in your mind that then resulted in where you've ended up with. Yeah, you have to share. You do Because you've benefited yourself.
Speaker 1:If we all stop sharing, then we stop evolving. Yeah, that's important and I think that's the right drive and motivation to have and make it clear to the world of your intent internally to your organization, to the world of your intent internally to your organization, because the one thing that I've seen over and over again is this mission and this goal of sharing and basically enriching and helping others outside your tooling and your product and your services with knowledge is not really well vocalized. And then there's a bit of internal challenges of oh, but how do we ROI this? How do we track this? Oh well, you know, maybe we shouldn't invest in this because you know this doesn't have that much appeal from a direct ROI and such.
Speaker 2:But if it's well vocalized and it's part of the culture and the mission of a company, then it's possible. I think it's part of the mission. So when you're spending money, there's strategic objectives, tactical objectives, commercial objectives and all of those are wrapped in to one. Ultimately, you have a certain resource. You have to deploy that, taking all those different uh objectives in in mind, and you know there will always be um some sort of uh compromise or adjustment, because ultimately you would need infinite money to be able to support all your infinite opportunities, like me infinite camera equipment I'm so impressed with this kit that you've got.
Speaker 2:I mean, it is literally the the latest from all perspectives from the lighting, the mics, the cameras and, no doubt, the, the deck at the back controlling all this um well, if you ever need any advice with anything, let me know.
Speaker 1:Maybe don't tell your finance team and it's just between you and I.
Speaker 2:I think they say um yeah, you want to try that if you diy yeah um well, anyways, I'm also excited to see your um your studio on the podcast. Can't wait to come over. Open the tile yard.
Speaker 1:Yeah um, so I usually close off with um a couple of questions, um, like flash questions. Normally I also ask if know yourself would have any curiosity or interest in asking me questions about anything that I've been up to. But I'm sure we're going to get into that on your podcast so we can keep that for your podcast exclusively. So three questions, flash questions. Number one um, what is a quote that you live by, like or any free to?
Speaker 2:because I had a couple of guests I was like I don't like quote quotes, but you know there are quite a few, but one that, uh, I keep thinking it's um chairman mail, uh, so not very capitalist, but the one about the frog at the bottom of the well. All he can see the sky is a little round circle at the top of the well. If you lift him a little bit he can see a much broader perspective, and I think that's what we need to. I'm not sure I translated that perfectly, but the the essence I hope it makes sense you've got. You need to help lift people and if we can and it goes back to what we were saying about sharing if we can lift people from where they are to even a little bit higher altitude, that sky broadens. If you can take them right out of the well, that's phenomenal. But each time you lift them even one centimeter, you're broadening the, the sky that you're helping them to see, and I think that's that's such a powerful quote it is, yeah, a learning for me.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for that book, your favorite book but we're gonna have a bit of a oriental theme to this. But, um, the art of war, sun tzu, um, it's just a phenomenal piece of, uh, you know, strategic thinking. I mean it's around as it says, the art of war. But I think it's something that, uh, you can play into life and business in so many ways, you know going into battles that you know you can't win. Don't do it simple, simple things like that and a good habit that you advocate for.
Speaker 2:I have a hunch of what you're gonna say, but go on, it's that, getting up early, there you go, getting out into the fresh air, whether it's minus five feels like minus eight, you get out and you give yourself that space and time to just defrag, to just think through. I it's such a power.
Speaker 1:I'm so pleased that I started doing that I've had a period where I wasn't a jack, so I wasn't doing any, and I've had a period where I wasn't doing any decompressing and reflection time and it just destroyed my mental well-being and I got super stressed and so on. And then I started with Nikki. We started because of a lot of stress let's just go in the evening, let's just go and have a pint, because I just need to not think of any of this.
Speaker 1:Um, and then I realized after one or one evening, of us being in the pub with our little peanut dog and just having a beer and just chit-chatting, and we still talked about work, but more holistic and high-level stuff. And so I realized, man, this feels really good and feels very familiar, and that that was the moment where I realized that that decompression and just extracting yourself from from the day-to-day is so important, because otherwise you're stuck in a rut and you can't think um I think that's where the little bit of discipline comes in.
Speaker 2:I mean, as we said earlier, as a founder you're effectively always on because ultimately the book stops with you. There is nowhere else for it to to go and stop. But you do need to create space and time for yourself, otherwise you won't be able to hold that responsibility, hold that book as it were, very true but it is difficult. It's probably the most difficult thing, certainly from my perspective, because you're so vested in the enterprise and the people, every you know. The success is ultimately your responsibility. Yes, everybody's contributing to it, but it is.
Speaker 1:It is difficult, but, uh, it is very important. So I think that's a really good recommendation take time, get up in the morning, go for a walk, stretch a bit, meditate and, yeah, just be be there and to decompress, um, and then start your day, or at the end of the day that's also an option um. Well, thank you so much for this conversation thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 1:You know it's been a pleasure I don't know if it's just me, that's a um talking head and that loves chit chatter, but every single time I I finish this, I feel that I'm one more time, I another hour, I want another two hours and such Well we will get our additional hour.
Speaker 2:And I give you this coin.
Speaker 1:You're an official misfit and you just press on the two buttons on the side there. Yeah, there you go. That's brilliant, so yeah.
Speaker 2:Fantastic, hopefully you'll. That's an inspiration for me as well. I'll have to think about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a really nice thing. You have your podcast in person as well and such, and I feel that you know just a gesture of thank you for your contribution. Your snippets, apart from the full long podcast, your snippets, as you probably might have seen, are going to be plastered throughout the internet and I'm sure that some of those moments in our conversations and some of your thoughts will deeply, uh, impact some founders, and you know that's the last thing, the the the least thing I can do for you well, thank you very much, thank you and really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Awesome, thank you very much.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate it Awesome. Thank you so much.
