E546 | Tony Jamous, Oyster: Reversing Brain Drain: Building an Impact Unicorn

0:00What if the biggest lie in business is that you have to choose between making money and making a difference? One of the characteristics of highly successful mission-driven businesses is this alignment between their financial success and their impact. It becomes a virtual cycle. The more you succeed financially, the more you have more impact. Tony Jammous built two unicorns, but his latest venture started with something deeper than profit. I was focused on clarifying my purpose. I was with a retreat with my therapist, and it became evident to me that I received a call to drop everything I was doing and focus on building a platform that reversed brain drains and reduced wealth inequality.

0:41And that's how Oyster started in January 2020. His breakthrough, software as the great equalizer. We use software to reduce the barriers for companies to employ globally. We use AI, we use a number of technologies that enable us to make global employment as easy as global employment. And between all of this, when the pressure mounts, your mission becomes your anchor. Do you think impact can drive better returns? Impact driven businesses deliver higher ROI and start testing it. It's also about changing the belief system of investors. Like we want investors to start believing in that truth. The more we have investors believing in that, the more we can redirect capitalism to work for planet Earth.

1:24This is the Impact Highlight Series powered by the EU VC. Subscribe now.

1:32Welcome to the Impact Highlight Series powered by EU VC, Impact VC, and Impact Supporters. I'm August Solove, one of your hosts, and I'm the founder of Impact Supporters. And I'm Dougie Sloan, your other host, and I'm Impact Investing LP at Better Society Capital and one of the founders of Impact VC. I'm really excited today that we're joined by Tony Jammous, who is a two-time Unicorn founder, most recently, of an impact company called Oyster. So he brings that entrepreneurial perspective, and he is also an LP in impact-driven venture funds in a personal capacity. So we'll talk to him a little bit about that perspective also.

2:09And I think it was a really, really good conversation. We talked about different things, but really three things stood out to me. First thing was the need or alignment on impact goals within the team so tony believes that it's really important that everybody needs to work towards the same goals in order to succeed so people don't start sort of fighting each other or go against each other then the second thing we talked about was that tony is actually trying to build oyster without focusing on the ego as he calls it and sort of not focusing on status either so he focuses on not chasing unicorn status but actually chasing impact goals and the wider impact focus that he has.

2:50And then the third point that really started to me was that the importance of focusing on impact in the way you build a company is just as important and actually having an impact goal with the company. So Tony gives an example where he gave a break to his customer acquisition team in the time of a lot of growth, just because he really could feel there was a risk of burnout in that team. and he wants to keep a strong team together that also works towards the same goal. Here's a few words from our beloved sponsor. Impact VC is a global community of VCs accelerating impact within venture. Their purpose is to cultivate a community and resources to unlock venture capital's ability to tackle the world's most pressing challenges.

3:35The community is made up of over 900 VCs, including both pioneers and newcomers, including generalist VCs and impact specialists. Visit impactvc.co to join the community and explore their resources, including the VC Impact Playbook, the Founder Impact Playbook, and the Impact Investing for VC's online training, which is designed to help VCs integrate impact practices into their investment strategies. That's a lot of information to get in 30 seconds.

4:05Tear down this wall. It's more than just an ally. This is a union of values. Let's start acting. This show is not investment advice and the hosts of this episode may be invested in the funds and companies featured. Welcome to the Impact Highlight Series powered by EUVC, Impact VC and Impact supporters. I'm one of your hosts, August Solis. I have my co-host here with us as well, Dougie. I hope it's great to be speaking again. And then we have you with us, Tony, today. Super excited to have you on. Welcome to you as well. Thank you for having me, guys. I'm excited for our conversation today. Maybe let's just start in a good way, which is sort of letting people know a little bit about who you are and what brought you to sort of get into the impact sphere.

4:54And I would love to hear a bit about your background, Tony. Yeah, sure. So today I'm the CEO and founder of a mission-driven business called Oyster. Oyster is on a mission to reverse brain drain, reverse wealth inequalities by democratizing access to global job opportunities. And before that, I built another business in the software API space. That was 14 years ago that I took public on the New York Stock Exchange, the reverse merger was Vonage before it was acquired by Ericsson for$6.5 billion. dollar and when i left that business i decided i want to align what i do that i believe in which led me to start oyster in january 2020 as a mission driven business first and foremost i am originally from lebanon and today i'm calling you from from lebanon i happen to be here and i lived the last 25 years or so between Europe, UK and the US.

6:00And currently I moved to the island of Cyprus four years ago. Now I live in Cyprus. Can you tell us a little bit about Oyster and sort of the journey of building that and sort of the impact angle on Oyster as well? How Oyster came to existence? Let's talk about this first. in my first business we employed people in 45 countries and i was able to witness the power of global hiring not only you can tap into a global talent pool but also you can change people's lives in many countries people from emerging economies would be our employees would be like the hard working people highly engaged committed and you would pay them salaries that are higher than the low-course salaries, and eventually you would help improve their lives.

6:51When I left that business, I took some time off and I realized that no matter what business I would do, it would be a globally distributed business. So I started looking for a solution for that. I started looking for a solution, how I can build a globally distributed business. And I couldn't find solutions. What I found is an industry called employer of record that is a$33 billion industry that enables company to employ people in other countries without the paperwork, setting up entities, hiring lawyers, accountants, payroll providers, but it was driven by professional services model. It wasn't using software.

7:26So I knew that if we use software to lower the barrier to entry and make global hiring as easy as local hiring, not only we can build a massive category, but we can also change people's life. People can stay in their home countries and access these job opportunities. I got obsessed with this opportunity macroeconomically. I'm just to give you some data. There are 85 million jobs going unfulfilled in the West. According to Corn Fairy, that results in 8.5 trillion economical loss. These are roles that cannot be fulfilled because of tenant shortages in the West. 8.5 trillion is roughly the economy of France or 10 % of the world economy.

8:10While at the same time, you have over a billion knowledge workers coming into the workforce in the next 10 years from emerging economies. So it became clear to me in January 2020 that I needed to start Oyster. Actually, I spent a year between the two companies. And during that year, I was focused on clarifying my purpose. I was with a retreat with my therapist and it became evident to me that I received the call to drop everything I was doing and focus on building a platform that reverse brain drains and reduce wealth inequality. And that's how Oyster started in January 2020. The pandemic happened like two months after and the demand for what we offer just went to the roof overnight.

8:55Companies realized that they don't need anymore to hire people in 20 mile radius from their expensive offices. And that propelled the company from zero to a billion in market cap in two years of operation. It's a pretty impressive journey, both from sort of a company perspective, but also you, right? You sort of realizing where your purpose was. You preparing a little bit for this, right? You wrote a little bit about how you also focused a lot on listening. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to that choosing that impacts sort of decision and getting to that. I believe when we calm the mind and reduce our ego or dissolve our ego, we can access what I call a higher level of intuition.

9:45Essentially, you start communicating with the universe and receiving downloads from what are you expected to do in this world. And this is how I keep clarifying my purpose is by making conscious effort to watch my thoughts, reduce my thoughts, and listen to the inner voices that exist within all of us. We just, our mind is too busy creating noise that prevents us from listening to that. That's what I mean listening to what you need to do is essentially calming your mind and connecting with this higher self that is guiding you to what you're expected to do or what you need to do in this world in alignment of a higher purpose.

10:33You won't get this information unless you are yourself centered, clean, and you're essentially putting yourself at service of what is required in this world. Turning it towards sort of generalized characteristics of founders and what it takes to succeed in an impact context. So you've been a serial entrepreneur. You've built an impact unicorn now. What types of people do you see as being, or the characteristics of the people that are future builders of impact unicorns? And how does that sit separately or in a complementary way with the characteristics that are required to build a sort of classic tech unicorn?

11:17From my point of view, an impact-driven founder looks at technology as a mean to an end to scale their impact. They are not creating technology for the sake of technology. They are using technology to scale their impact. In the case of Oyster, we use software to reduce the barriers for companies to employ globally. We use AI, we use a number of technologies that enable us to make global employment as easy as global employment. So it's a mean to an end to be able for us to scale our impact. So that's kind of just number one, is they see technology as a mean to an end. Secondly, is they are clear about the why they do what they do.

12:03And that why need to be bigger than themselves. So it's not about being driven by needing to prove something to somebody or to follow purely a financial success path. It's about putting themselves at the service of something greater than themselves that is required in this world. and also impact-driven founders, in my opinion, are people who have absolute belief in their capacity, their skills, their gifts, their strength to do what they do, again, at the service of a greater purpose. And actually this becomes like a growth area. At least for me, it became a growth area. The more I realize that I'm putting myself at service of something bigger than myself, the more I start realizing my gifts, my powers, my strength, my capabilities.

13:02And the more I put them at service, the more and more of them appears in front of me. And that became like, I grew personally with Oyster probably faster than Oyster grew. You sometimes hear talk of the tension between being conscious of the impact you're trying to have and operating in this perhaps sort of kinder, more open way and having the ability to execute at the real pace it requires to build a really big business. And what you've said perhaps suggests there's not such a tension there. I'm interested in just unpacking that. It takes a certain ruthlessness or disagreeableness or ability to really cut through things and get things done very, very quickly to build your sort of classic big tech unicorn.

13:50And I think that doesn't necessarily sit closely with and might sit in tension with, some of the characteristics that you think of when you think of somebody pursuing a purpose bigger than themselves, thinking about operating with all the stakeholders around them in mind and what's success for all of those people as well. And you can see some ways that those things reinforce, but also some ways that they might sit in tension. And I wonder how you've navigated that. To me, it actually goes hand in hand because you're still operating in the real world and some of your rivals might not be impact-driven, right, rivals.

14:23and you're interacting with a world that might not be as healthy as you want it to be. And so sometimes you have to make quick decisions. You have to make difficult choices. You have to, like for instance, we've done a number of layoffs at Oyster. We had to do them because of the market conditions. We are operating in a highly competitive environment. So we have to be strategic. We have to make quick decisions. We have to move fast. This becomes at service of the mission, right? So essentially, one of the characteristics of highly successful mission-driven businesses is this alignment between their financial success and their impact.

15:11It becomes a virtual cycle. The more you succeed financially, the more you have more impact. So it becomes part of your duty to be aggressive when you need to be aggressive, take quick decisions, make hard choices, as long as it is at service of a higher purpose. I would love to sort of hear what your business building lessons have been from building, I mean, two unicorns now and sort of doing it again. You know, when you're a serial entrepreneur, I'm sure there's probably a couple of things that have happened more than once and that you feel like have been lessons for you. The first lesson is about building not only an A team, but you need an A team that is align with you on the mission.

16:04You want to attract people that are here for more than just making money, more than just personal success. People that are driven by putting their efforts at service of the mission. That's a critical learning I've had in my first company that was not necessarily a mission-driven company. The second one was purely impact company. That's a great learning. The second learning is goals can change, strategies can change, but what you stand for has to be a rock solid. I call it your inner rock that you have to always come back to and stick to no matter how challenging it can be. Sometimes, for instance, I had to wait six more months to find the right candidate because I really care about diversity on my team.

17:00We are gender equal on my team, including on our board. Sometimes it hurt the business to wait so long, but we stick to what we believe in. We believe in diversity and its impact on the business. The third lesson is playing the infinite game. Simon Sinek refers, he has a book actually on it called The Infinite Game, which is, Yes, you have to make decisions for short-term optimization, but you are here to build a multi-generational business that is going to continue to exist within the highs and lows of the market. Talking about that, another lesson I've learned is that setbacks are redirections.

17:50but they are here to teach you something to get you to redirect your effort elsewhere it's like messages you're receiving through setbacks and and and success comes by iteration right so you have to keep trying you have like we had one of our strategies that we have we failed twice in it and now we're repeating in a third time because every time we learn and we keep improving and keep iterating and we take a different path on it and i think actually just jumping on the first one you said, because I think that is something we, Doug and I hear a lot when we interview sort of both founders, but also investors, right?

18:26Building the A-team and probably also building the impactful A-team that has an impact, a common impact goal. How do you do that? Do you have some things where you felt like, okay, this actually worked? Or how do you make sure that the person you end up hiring is actually as impact driven as you are, or actually has the same impact goal as you? because I mean, impact is still a fairly broad sphere, right? And you might not always find exactly the right fit on that part. So first, during the interview process, this is an important parameter that we assess, you know, how much they are mission aligned, why they want to join this company.

19:03And you want to hear answers that are linked to the mission. That's number one. Number two is I select people based on how much they're driven by their egos and so or not specifically not i i select people that are not driven by their egos so i test them how they react in in the interview process are they reactive or responsive are do they have some unmet needs to be seen or to be to prove something or they feel a sense of self-assurance about their self-worth, right? This becomes important because we want people to remain calm in face of challenges and not be reactive, but instead be responsive and not spread fear in the organization, but make courageous bets, even though the outcome might not be guaranteed.

20:05We want them to be able to take risks and align with a mission. And we want people that actually, they're not just here for the job. They want more than a job. They want to be fulfilled. They want to be purposeful in what they do. And typically there are people that don't need jobs or they have a high degree of certainty that they will be able to find jobs. If you look at my leadership team, they are highly accomplished people. And they can find jobs in the best companies in the world, but they have chosen to work at Oyster because of the purpose that we are on. That links into a broader set of potential levers that might be advantages that arise from building a company with impact at the heart of it.

20:59That's something that we spend a bit of time thinking about at Better Society Capital, Impact VC, and others, and talking about quite a bit on this podcast. But I suspect you've thought about it and acted on it much, much more than many, many others. So I'd love to hear your reflections. What do you think those advantages are and how have you seen them materialize in your work at Oyster? I have absolute belief that there, as a mission-driven company where you align your financial results with your impact, we call it collinearity. Like in the case of Oyster, the more we grow, the more we employ people in emerging economies.

21:35It's like linear between the two. The more you can be successful as an organization, more than if you're not a missionary company. That's a core belief. We can elaborate more on why later. But essentially, that enables you to attract more funding and high quality investors. That's number one. and the kid of oyster we've raised from great investors like emergence capital to the last funding round was silver lake but also impact investors such as salesforce impact fund and so you have more pool of capital that are available for you that you can pull from as an impact driven business number two is as we discussed earlier you can attract the best talent people that are driven by making an impact.

22:25People who can find jobs anywhere they want, but they are choosing you to work for you because they want to put their skills at the service of the mission. Number three is that you attract more customers. Many customers today, they want to work with providers that are here to deliver more than just a service. And it's aligned with our corporate corporate social responsibility initiatives. And we see it more and more often coming with RFPs and compliance questionnaires about these requirements. And you create a culture where people are more engaged because again, people are looking for more than just a paycheck.

23:09People are looking for purpose, for meaning in their work. So that enables you to create a culture that is just stronger, better culture. And when you are clear on why you do what you do, toxic toxicity in corporate culture, you know, politics kind of fades away. Essentially, you have this power of the light, I call it, that enable to keep darkness at bay because people are clear why they're here, right? It might not work for everybody, but people who are here they are here with clarity of what what they're doing why they're doing and and you have to make it a reality for that right so in at oyster we have our impact report that we communicate every year in the beginning when we started the company with our impact thesis we are a b corp and every time i start my all hands meeting every month i report on the progress we made on the mission, right?

24:15And we infuse it in how we decide, how we make decisions, how we write our roadmap and so on and so forth. So it has to be felt. And last but not least, the benefit of being an impact business is that when you are faced with challenges and pain, because it's painful to build businesses, you know, if you're building high growth businesses, you always have challenges to overcome, then this these challenges feel more meaningful to you when I have these challenges I I remind myself why I'm doing this and that gives me higher level of determination more stamina essentially reduced by stress level because I realized that I'm doing it for for a good cause it's a really powerful um sort of really human things you've said in there actually about why people choose where they want to work, how they show up in that context, and how they behave as a group in that context, being sort of a bit different, perhaps, in these mission-driven organizations.

25:20I also really like your tangible suggestions of how you've done that through some of those sort of reports and artifacts and almost company rituals around some of these things. I think it's really interesting. I wonder if you were asked by another entrepreneur earlier in the journey building a mission-driven company, hearing this and thinking, this sounds great, How do I build a company that taps into some of these benefits? What are the things that you might suggest they explore or experiment with? I think first, I believe that they have to connect with their personal purpose. Everyone is uniquely positioned to do something purposeful in this world.

25:58And when they discover that and tap into that, they will receive protection and the world is going to open for them. That's been my experience doing it at Oyster. So that's number one, is really follow what you need to do here, what you're supposed to do, and you're uniquely positioned to do so. Like every human being is uniquely positioned to do something specific. That's a belief system I have. So you have to uncover that. Secondly is design your business model to be aligned with your financial success. Like you don't want to have, you don't want to be in position where impact is in contrast of financial growth, right?

26:42You have to align them. This collinearity is important. So in the case of Oyster, as I discussed earlier, the more we regenerate revenue, the more we employ people in emerging economies. So we are 100 % aligned. Thirdly is about working on yourself to make sure that your primary goal is not to be become richer or more successful. It's not about you, right? It's about you being at service of the mission. And ironically, that will make you more successful. This has been experience living this. The more I let go of my needs to succeed, my need to perform, my need to look in a certain way, the more things get better for the business and for me, right?

27:32This has been my experience for the last five years. And the journey continues. And use it as a way to grow yourself. We live in a world that is sending us exactly the opposite signals. That tells us you have to succeed, you have to become a unicorn, you have to raise money, you have to make that much money to feel good about your self-worth. this is very this this is very damaging for the entrepreneur and for the team the company because it's going to spread toxic energy so you have to clean yourself take this opportunity to clean yourself and and realize that the more you let go these needs and focus on this purpose that is bigger than yourself the more you're going to succeed and maybe pulling on a slightly different the thread you mentioned um the first advantage you talked about was unlocking capital in different ways how have you found talking to venture investors about some of these dynamics around purpose and business model success or are there some that you do talk to and don't talk to about this or how is how have you framed it how have those conversations gone currently most investors uh they i feel like they are they are reporting on some of their impact metrics in a way to attract the new generation of LPs that cares about the stuff.

28:58Very few investors, and these are the one that I hope will be more of them, have this absolute belief that connecting impact to financial returns, right? There's an emerging category of investor that believe that impact-driven businesses will return more money than the rest. these are the one that i would like to support and uh and and work with more uh because because i believe i believe in this alignment i believe in that alignment and i believe that if you build a business that the world need truly needs right now you'll be rewarded as an investor as an entrepreneur but you have you have to do it with this alignment it cannot be a marketing thing it has to be truthful and you have to live it every day for it to work.

29:51I would love to ask you a little bit more about some of the VC firms and how they work with Impact, but maybe just one question I would love to hear with you. So you sort of say, oh, you shouldn't chase the unicorn status. You shouldn't chase the sort of the things that strengthen your ego. Did you then still set a goal for sort of oyster of X number of people that you need to help or did you have a metric or how did you still do the target setting, but where it was less eco-based, but more sort of, it would be amazing for you or for the world if you could create this much impact. How did you work with that?

30:25So, you know, we still operate within the financial system, right? So we do have a framework to set our financial goals every year. We are not in this mind of growth at all costs. That includes human impact in our business and outside. it's probably now pretty known in our category in the employer of record category has been some scandals about some of our rivals who grew really fast by doing industrial espionage on other firms right that's definitely something that we won't do right so we're not going to grow at all costs and that cost means that we were not going to grow by hurting other people.