Alex Macdonald. A $300M Exit is No Reason to Retire

43:34Because if you look at all religions, they have the same core messages there. like be kind you know love love your neighbor do something for others be good with your community they just wrap them up in different stories and maybe today we need new stories yeah new stories and then it becomes a perfectly realistic project it's not for sure you know we can you know you can create you're amazing at creating stories so of course you could create a religion why not yeah i look i agree storytelling is like the core of it right and there's you know and there's a reason by the way that those stories are still very old stories right it's because that's one of the things which like the human mind works very well there's a we can remember a story right i can tell you a story right now right which should last five minutes long and in a week you'd be able to retell that story yeah if i told you just a sequence of 50 numbers now and i asked you to repeat it in five minutes you wouldn't be able to tell me right and so the human brain really is perfect like vessel for for telling stories remembering them and pass them on through generations so i agree you know more modern stories would be useful and then you know the medium that those stories told in i think is is interesting as well i think i'd love this religion to keep the core messages yeah because when we're trying to reinvent what's good what's bed as happens in some of those modern communities i'm not sure it's very helpful for to help people find that spiritual fulfillment because you know for example even with with exited founders you we see it a lot people realize when they have this space and they're not busy they're like oh my god i actually want to develop spiritually i have no idea what it means yeah I just, I'm so drawn to that direction, but it's too complicated.

45:24And the word spirituality is very scary for some people because it's associated with this confusion and mysticism and something unrelatable, unfortunately. Yeah, and look, a lot of religions focus on what happened after you die. And I'm not sure that that's an interesting thing to think about. I think it's much more interesting to think about what happens while you're alive, right? And, yeah, so look, my view is... People are afraid of death, right? So those ideas, they didn't come out of the blue. They address this core fear of death. Yeah, fear of the unknown, yeah. They try to answer the unanswerable and use that to have power over people, which I don't necessarily think is a good thing.

46:13So, like, I think there's a way to get a lot of those values around helping other people, being kind to your neighbor, you know, being, you know, interacting with your community, right? Like people don't know their neighbors anymore, right? Like in London, like people who are listening to this, you live in a big city, I bet you they know one or two of their neighbors used to know everyone in your street, right? And so there are, there are ways to, I think, kind of get all those positive externalities of religion and religious communities, whilst perhaps having a more humanist approach, as in believing that man has the power to do things without necessarily deferring to some sort of spiritual entity um yeah so i think there's an opportunity there but look i haven't thought about it in detail and you're this is like the first detail conversation i've had about it but but yeah look it's definitely something for for post-sequel yeah alex you said that uh because you already had SQL before you sold Velocity.

47:16You didn't end up in existential crisis. I think you may not be in an existential crisis, but you're clearly thinking about existential issues quite intently. Yes, probably. Yeah. Yeah. Look, so it's a good thing I have something else to do. Otherwise, God, I'd definitely be in a crisis. Okay. But realistically, how much time you spend working on sequel uh it's 90 90 of my time so i'd say less less hours a week than i was uh with velocity black to be very honest but still still a full-time job it's still definitely a full-time job yeah um you know my other job is looking after my wife but um but yeah it's it's definitely 90 of my time i i don't really do you know i stopped angel investing to kind of focus my time on sequel so I'll occasionally make like one angel investment or incubation every couple of years.

48:11But yeah, SQL is 90 % of my time. I'd love to talk about your wife. Yeah, sure. So Miriam worked with you in Velocity and she was with you through all the ups and downs and the exit and everything and the SQL. So how did your exit affect her? And you're not working now together. So how did she handle that? Sure. Yeah. So the story is, I mean, she started working when we were right at the beginning of Velocity. She originally joined us as like almost an intern and then became a marketing assistant. And we didn't have a relationship while she was at Velocity. And I actually fired her. We've got the firing letter framed in our hallway.

48:56But I actually fired her. That's like a movie. I love it. She didn't do anything wrong. She was great, actually. that we we'd bought this company in the US and so we were moving all our marketing operations over to the US and it just wasn't feasible for her to go so we let her go and then it was you know a few weeks later she reached out and asked me to go for lunch for some career advice so that was the I guess start of the relationship and then yeah we got married really just before the exit actually um or around the time that it was happening because it was quite a long process and um and she had had a you know career after leaving velocity and pr and communications uh she worked in a pr firm then she worked for what three words which is like a location technology company in the uk and then also went to work with um andre who who founded a number of companies like Bumble and various other dating, Badoo and various dating platforms.

50:03But yeah, and then we had the exit and before the exit she unfortunately got quite ill with long COVID and chronic Lyme disease, which we think is triggered by the vaccine rather than COVID. um but um but yeah so how did the how did the exit affect her um i think she she yeah she i i think she's definitely more affected by it than me i hope she won't mind me saying that and like worried um because probably she you know she didn't feel in control of and she had less information about what was happening it was also quite you know the actual exit process for us was very intense right was publicly listed bank who was buying us and you know had the federal reserve involved various other regulators etc so it was long and intense um and so that period was very stressful and then obviously you get out the other side and uh you know for me the day that it closed wasn't like oh i'm super happy or whatever you know it was more relief that we got it done for everyone right and i think the peak happiness actually was when we got the offer right and then it's sort of then you go through a big dip as though you're going through all the due diligence all the challenges that come from that and then you know it closes and you're kind of relieved that it's that it's done um but um yeah I think you know I think a lot of I think um I definitely underestimated I think how it would impact her and how you know I think it impacts relationship dynamics and things like that I didn't I didn't impacted our relationship dynamic that much because I had already had some success in my previous career so I didn't think it had a huge impact on us but I think for a lot of people it does and so it's something they should think about and we didn't do any therapy or counseling around it but I would suggest that's a good thing for people to do if they do go through an exit at least have a few conversations together with someone else um who can kind of media and kind of help you talk through anything that you're feeling because um yeah look certainly as a man who's like you know my wife would say uh my wife would say I'm not you know my emotional intelligence is is a fraction of hers so you're probably you're probably underestimating the impact that it might have in your partner right and so it's definitely I think it's definitely something you should have a conversation about yeah but it's interesting that maybe the fact that you kept working and didn't take that break also was good for your relationship because lots of I think that existential crisis often makes it harder I think so yeah yeah it's not working suddenly being at home after you know ten years of not being at home right I don't think she would have liked that no so um and look to be honest you know would i if she wasn't ill um would we have taken some time off to go traveling together for a little bit maybe maybe we would have done that right um so and i think that's probably a good thing to do if you can do it um but um but yeah look i think that it was a good thing that i wasn't just suddenly sort of you know sitting at home doing nothing and having existential crises every day but it sounds like there's quite a lot of structure in your life for the business but also from you know the responsibility to take care of miriam that's also yes a form of a structure and maybe it's not a bad thing you know it's so interesting we we're dreaming about this financial freedom and this absolute freedom and in the western world generally there's a cult of freedom but freedom is tough you know it's actually you're so confused and there is decision paralysis and there's guilt because you think oh I'm free now so I should be doing this that and the other thing but I'm not doing it freedom is so tough and talking about happiness it doesn't bring happiness it brings a challenge it brings an opportunity to make your life more fulfilling because you can step back and think about things and learn new skills or you know reassess your own position in the world to make it more intentional but freedom requires work to be converted into fulfillment.

54:34I agree, yeah. And freedom brings about a lot of ambiguity and a lot of people don't know how to deal with ambiguity. As you said, and particularly founders, feel like they need to do something, right? So they feel uncomfortable doing nothing. And so if you have that void and you have that freedom, They're tempted to fill it with lots of things. That's where they go and do all this stuff. I'm going to look at cash flowing businesses or whatever it is. So, yeah, I'd agree with you. Because I think your situation is really great in many ways because you started a new business before you exited. So you just kind of transitioned smoothly.

55:18But I think once you've exited, then you have to take a bit of sabbatical because an exit triggers so many emotional challenges, then you're so likely to jump into a wrong activity. Yeah, that's true. Just because somebody else is doing it. Because when you started SQL, you had a chance to think about it and just choose. And it was before the exit. It was before the exit. You were not affected by all this freedom. No. Yeah, look, absolutely. And the challenge with the freedom is even bigger if you suddenly have a lot of financial resources, right? Of course. Because it's like, oh. Then you really have freedom.

55:57There's no, let's just throw some money at this. And, you know. So, yeah, look, I think that's definitely a challenge for a lot of people. So, yeah, taking some real time to, and look, maybe that time is three months, maybe it's six months, maybe it's a couple of years, right? Like, however long it is for people, right? But I feel that for most founders, that for most of them, the fulfillment will come through building something again. I think so. And what that is may take you a while to figure out. But I feel like for most of them, that's what will bring them fulfillment. Yeah. That brings me to angel investing.

56:35and your evolution of how you think about it. Yeah, well, I started Angel Investing around the same time as I started Velocity. So it's been like over 10 years now. We should be enough time to figure out if you're any good at it or not. Well, you become good, hopefully, while doing it. So maybe you were not good on day one. yeah look I think there's definitely some luck involved but yeah look I I'm I started angel like you've got to think about like why are you angel investing like what are the goals like you know financial returns may be one of them but typically it isn't if you're not like a full-time investor typically it's like you want to learn about things or you want to help other companies and you feel like that's a good way to start helping other businesses and for me it's definitely a mixture of those two it's like learning from other founders helping them a bit and then financial returns and um yeah I start I started off just you know because when you're a founder you just see other founder friends like starting businesses and the ones that you think are good like okay I'm invest some money in that and um got lucky with the first couple and um when they you know when they exited I thought oh I should really think about this a lot more I should structure this and went through this whole period where I was using quite complicated models to assess things at a very early stage, which was just a big mistake and a complete waste of time.

58:09And then just went back to, it's like that midwit graph, right, where you've got the bell curve, you've got the really smart guy, really dumb guy, and then you've got the midwit. Midwit's got like a thousand questions in their head and all these models they're using to assess whether to make an investment. I'm talking about angel investors, slightly different if you're a VC firm. And then you've got the midwet, you've got the really dumb guy and the really smart guy. And they're both like just back great founders, right? And that's ultimately what it comes down to at the very early stage. So I went through a period where I was like hyper analytical and then regressed back to my original process, which was just, yeah, like, is this a really amazing founder?

58:51you should back them and don't think too much about the products in the market because ultimately the best founders will pivot and find their way to the best products in the best market so um so yeah and yeah i had some some success with it and um i'm now helping through sequel you know our first asset classes venture and we're helping our but this is basically what i'm trying to understand how how that experience of angel investing directly uh transformed into the idea to start SQL? So yeah, I had like a WhatsApp group where I'd share deal flow and it grew quite significantly. And then I had friends and clients, even at Velocity Black, but friends who were in the world of sport and entertainment who wanted to invest.

59:38And, you know, there are two real, I think, challenges with startup investing if you're trying to do it really well. and one of them is getting access into the best companies right and even if you see them right which is the first challenge like just seeing these companies okay now you've seen them and you know around's happening how do you get into them right and um as a founder and operator you have a slight advantage right because founders are really like raising from other founders because they're not going to they kind of understand the problems that they're facing they're going to be helpful they're going to have relevant experience they're not going to cause them loads of problems like some other professional investors might do but I saw with some of my friends who are athletes in the entertainment industry they were able to get into any deal they wanted to right and I thought there's something interesting that and they were also able to help them post post investment right and help accelerate them they're very high profiles they can help tell their story and amplify that story to tens of millions of people right quite easily and they also have that you know athletes have a very similar mindset to founders right like they've they have to be you know they have to be very hard working and persistent they're they you know they're both playing power law games right like very small percentage of athletes reach the top very small percentage of founders end up being successful um and so there's a lot of ways they can help beyond just sort of marketing and and helping tell the story and so I thought there was an interesting opportunity there to kind of leverage the talent and and and in some cases expertise right because we're now we're going to expand beyond athletes into the entertainment industry eventually into exit founders anyone who can bring expertise the underlying assets so how can we leverage that talent to get access the very best investment opportunities right and help them invest in them and us invest in them and then post investment help accelerate those companies and hopefully generate real added value right and added value is something which a lot of people talk about i can just tell you as a founder and from my founder friends 95 of investors add no value um and and most of them well i'd say they can be even quite detrimental right like no and and look let's be honest i'm not claiming that any of our athletes or us are going to be the reason that one of our portfolio companies succeeds.

1:02:07And you will find this, you know, no investor will really make your company, right? They can't break it, right, if you have the wrong investor on your board. But yeah, that was the opportunity. Like, you know, really, if you're thinking about like a startup that wants to solve a big problem for the world in like healthcare, climate, education, you know, what do they need to succeed? They need capital and resources and they need the world's attention, right? And if they can get those two things and they've got a good product, they can, you know, they've got a good chance of succeeding. And so with SQL, we're really trying to help them on those first two things.

1:02:42We can help, obviously, with capital and then we can help tell their story and get it out there into the world and help accelerate them on that path. And, yeah, we'll see if the thesis works. It's still very early for SQL, at least. But it evolved from my personal angel investing and having some friends who are athletes. two of my other ex-to-founder friends Nick Telson Andrew Webster who founded Design My Night originally approached me about hey we should start a syndicate for athletes and I was like yeah it's interesting and then I came back to them and I was like actually I think we can do something a lot bigger here's what I would do and they were like okay can we invest and so yeah we started it so so yeah it kind of evolved very organically from you know it does feel like I have very good founder market fit for it right in terms of I've been a founder obviously I had 10 years angel investing I understand what it's like to work with this highly demanding highly successful high net worth clients from my first business and I had a good network in sport and entertainment so it kind of felt like all the pieces were fitting together and that it's something that has been building up for the past decade rather than from me just having the idea and then going out and figuring all these things out right it felt very natural to me to start it so you know what I find fascinating from my standpoint because I am obsessed about post exit journeys right and um on your website you talk about legacy right that's the word you offer to your clients and um I think it's actually fascinating because athletes don't have their long careers so they end up in this journey which is post exit to just exit that their careers as opposed to business and I have amazing friends who are athletes and I saw them going through very similar psychological issues so I thought it was fascinating to offer these people legacy in a way as a as a help to transition into something meaningful by associating themselves with companies that are solving really important problems, you'll help them avoid this void that we were talking about.

1:05:07Absolutely. That's very good. I think it's an amazing value that you're given, this sense of legacy, creating legacy. It's not just wealth creation. No, yeah, look, we say that we're helping them build a legacy for their families and for the world, right? And for the world, it's about hopefully bringing capital and the world's attention to these game-changing technologies and companies which are going to solve all these big problems, right? And for them and their families, obviously money is a part of it, but as you said like they you know their careers are very short right and this is why we called it sequel it's like what comes next after your relatively short career in sport you know in the nfl it's like four years right it's very short um many many because of injury but even then most athletes by the time they're in their mid-30s they're retired right so um so how and you know that's a long there's still a lot of life left after that right and um and obviously part of that you see a lot of problems as you'll see with founders after they after that you know that their first career ends right and they go through a lot of existential crises you know some of them financially driven right because suddenly your income drops to zero and you know if your lifestyle it's not like you've had an exit right so in some cases it's more aggressive than than a founder's transition out of their career so they you know some of it's financially driven and you know the whole family has to get used to a low you know a slightly different lifestyle to be honest um if they haven't prepared well for their retirement and so you know our approach to this to sequel was okay firstly we want to help them build wealth so that they're set up very well for the rest of their life beyond the end of their sporting career right secondly we want to help them make better decisions right and so what you'll find is a lot of solutions that for athletes that are out there whether it's these athlete-led funds athlete-led athlete-marketed funds um or other sort of wealth solutions financial advisors what most of them do is treat athletes like children they try and take away responsibility and decision making from them and they manage everything for them and in some way that's a that's a good service right okay i don't have to think about it but what happens after the end of your career when none of those people are there anymore right because they're not interested in you because you're not earning lots of money anymore what happens then how do you make decisions every day how do you do you know enough to make basic like financial planning decisions do you know enough to make good business decisions good career decisions and so our approach was we're actually not going to manage all this stuff for you we're going to give you the information the tools and the education through like short form video content and events and things so you learn very quickly about investing about entrepreneurship about startups about big business and we're going to enable you to be good decision makers so we're going to educate you and we're partnering with all these top education institutions to give you like accredited courses on this stuff through through the membership and so not only do we set you up hopefully by helping you invest in the very best you know assets out there which you know on the right time frame are going to provide very good returns into your retirement from your first career in sport but we're going to set you up with the knowledge to be able to make decisions for yourself whether it's during your playing career or after your playing career more importantly when pretty much everyone else around you goes away right and that's where you find athletes have a lot of problems they get into financial difficulties they have health problems and so we're taking the approach of which is a harder approach by the way it's much more expensive for us to do this and it like we have to invest lots of money to create like relevant content and to find ways to engage athletes and it'd be much easier for us to just go and manage their money for them you make them work but people don't like that yeah so it would be easier it'd be much easier to do it the other way right and look and this is our first you know our first target market is definitely those growth mindset athletes who want to learn this stuff right and eventually we will have some manage solutions and wealth management products but we're really focused at the moment on you know if we really want them to build a legacy for their families they need to have the knowledge to make good decisions right and so we're we're equipping them to do that through the platform you know lots of existent founders could could use that because it's very hard to transfer from an entrepreneur mindset into an investor mindset and then we don't have tools just because we are dealing with money much more than an average athlete doesn't make us good investors.

1:09:51Quite the opposite. We often have this hubris post-exit, right? We think, and we have lots of friends in common who invested a lot in angel deals. I did, by the way, as well. I didn't do a very good job. Just to realize that it's very different from running your own business. Yes, it is, yeah. And it's almost the opposite mindset that you need to be a successful investor. Because it's so interesting with angel investing. It's the thing that people do most often post-exit, but it's also the thing that people who exited long ago mention first when I ask them, what do you regret? And I think the answer is not that angel investing is wrong per se, but we have no idea how to do it, but we are very generous with founders.

1:10:38We feel so much compassion, and then we also miss the whole entrepreneurial buzz, and we think, oh, if I invest here, I'll get a little bit of that back. So there are all these wrong reasons, wrong meaning irresponsible financially, reasons to invest. or just we do it for fun together with our friends because they do. We get excited and all these impulsive decisions. And sometimes, by the way, it is greed because even if we have good exit wealth, we start panicking and we think, oh, my God, I need to invest somewhere because otherwise my bankers will only give me a 3 % return. Yes, yeah, yeah.

1:11:19Right? There's definitely, yeah. Look, at some point we will definitely address extra founders. Yeah, this whole education around angel investing is so important. But it's also so hard because you're right. You can't apply difficult, complex formulas to this. So much of it is just psychology and also understanding whether this founder will work this hard for 10, 15 years to deliver results. You want to make it very easy for people, right? So they don't see all the thousands of companies that we look at that we don't invest in, our whole DD process, our investment committee, all the memos and stuff we write.

1:11:59They don't see any of that. They just see a very simple video memo with a very slick app, and they're able to make an easy decision. But in order to do that, they need to have some knowledge. So yeah, I think the education part's super important, and we will definitely address extra founders at some point. but like I have like very much like a definitely a disciple of Peter Thiel in terms of you know focusing on a very niche market initially makes a lot of sense and focusing all your marketing and resources around that niche market winning in it and you know effectively creating a monopoly in that market and then moving into adjacent markets it makes a lot of sense we'll get there eventually but and as tempting as it would be to do it now I think it's you know I think it's stronger for us from a marketing perspective from our messaging to be very focused on on athletes initially and then we'll move into entertainment and it's not just marketing you're learning from your customers right how to deliver the result that that they actually want exactly precisely um so yeah we'll see makes a lot of sense for you but poor exited founders still lack education yeah yeah i think some of them do and yeah and you're you're right like the it's funny that there is hubris, right?

1:13:13Because people think, oh, I've been, you know, I'm a successful entrepreneur. You know, I know what I'm doing, right? I make smart decisions. At least athletes are usually realistic about their financial acumen. Yes, they are. But not successful founders. That's funny, yeah. You're absolutely right on that point, yeah. The athletes are actually much more conservative and are much more careful than a lot of exited founders. Well, at least they get realistic. Yes, realistic, yeah. About their own abilities. Yeah. But we'll see. Exeter Founders is probably, yeah, probably two to three years away.

1:13:48We could start looking at that. So in terms of what type of entrepreneur are you, if you had to choose between a creator, an operator, and an investor as your natural type, what would be your immediate reaction without overanalyzing it? Creator. Yeah, that's what I thought. Yeah. But you know, it also means that you'll probably get bored as soon as your business becomes bigger. Well, it depends. It depends. That plan to do this business for 15, 20 years. Let's see, like a Velocity Black, I did step back to be chairman to start something new. Exactly. There's definitely an element of that. And I don't want to say we weren't innovating at all at that point, but we were innovating far less.

1:14:35And, you know, one of the reasons we were able to successfully go fully remote is because it was a very like a lot of the business was completely systematized at this point. Right. And process in place and everything. And, you know, there was certainly less creativity involved in the day to day work. I don't think that has to be the case as you grow a company. And I think you can grow to be, you know, even a 10 billion dollar business and still have huge amounts of creativity involved in your day to day work. If you think about it proactively. Right. And there's this real push from, and to be honest, pretty much every business book, any person that advises you, any VC that sits on your board, they want to systematize things.

1:15:19They want to put process in place everywhere. Of course. And they want to make the business easy to manage, right? Because as it grows in complexity, you have chaos emerges, right? Exactly. have if you know so my approach is a lot more you know i love what reed hastings did with netflix which is like the way to address complexity in a business is not to put in place more and more processes right it's just to have to be extremely rigorous about the level of talent you have in the company right and making sure you have the very best people in the company means that they can have more freedom they can be more creative because you don't need to have all these processes in place like kind of solving for the lowest common denominator like team member who's the guy who makes a mistake and it costs the business 10 million dollars or whatever right so the higher quality talent bar you have the more I think as the business grows you're able to embrace creativity you're able to embrace not necessarily having a completely systematized you know business where you're just pressing a button and everything else works right And so I think there's a way to build a very big business.

1:16:26And I think some people have proven it where you can continue to have that creativity. You can continue to launch new products. You can continue to innovate. And you can resist the demand from investors, capital markets, people with MBAs. No offense to people with MBAs. To kind of systematize and make your business too process driven. right and so I think you can like if you're a founder and you're a creator type I think you can you know there is a way to resist the demand to to kind of be more of an operator right there's there's a way to resist that and so I hope to be able to prove that with SQL yeah but I guess you still need a partner or or employees who are natural operators and luckily I do have that they should be very good very talented Philip is my co-founder and CTO and he's definitely a lot more I'd still say he's a creator but he's a lot more systematic than I am and then I have a VP of operations Sophie who's very she's definitely an operator without Sophie and Philip my approach would just lead to chaos because a creator would want some chaos otherwise you cannot create I do enjoy chaos I frequently use it I still use it embrace the chaos I found that it's so important to understand who you are even though I generally don't like putting people into any pigeon holes but this particular thing I think it's so important to understand because so many of us rush into this idea that I'm going to be this amazing private equity investor or I'll buy someone else's business.

1:18:17But if you are a creator, you're not going to succeed in this because you start hating that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to start from scratch if you're a creator. Whether you like it or not. It has to be something very creative. It can't be just this passive kind of lifestyle. I'll help make some other business scale. Scaling is not what creators do very well. Exactly, yeah. So, yeah, like you have to embrace what you enjoy for sure if you're going to succeed. And then, you know, hiring the very best talent to help in the areas that you don't enjoy. Right. And where they can have where they can actually add structure and succeed.

1:18:57I think there is, you know, being a creator feels cooler than being an operator. So some people also think they're creators and don't want to embrace the fact that they're operators. And that is also not helpful. yeah definitely yeah you know what i mean i know what you mean yeah um it's kind of sexier to be a creator it is yeah yeah and look with my first business with velocity black i was basically forced into the operator role right like i had to do that because zia was better at being the creator with that business and um which is interesting because he he was the one coming from goldman sachs you would think he would be he's very creative an operator he's very creative but look we look to be clear we both were inputting on product and stuff as well but But I was forced into doing the operator role, which was setting up all these repeatable processes, scaling the operations team, et cetera, which was the revenue part of the business.

1:19:52But it was very much an operator role. And that probably led to a lot of the stress that I had on that journey. And frustration. And frustration, yeah. What would you say you are, Anastasia? A creator. A creator. And you know when I found out in my second business, I hired a CEO quite relatively early on. And that person was so much better than me in operations. It was a very humbling experience, but also it made me think, okay, great. So I probably shouldn't be forcing myself to do that. Because like you, I was very stressed by all of that. And I thought, okay, that's fine. I just embrace who I am.

1:20:35and next time I'll start my next business with a partner who is very happy being an operator. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, yeah. And look, we'll see what happens as the business grows. I think you can have creator CEOs, for sure, as long as you have a very good operator partner. and yeah look and it also depends on the type of business you know we're our clients are individuals who expect to have a relationship with the CEO right like that's their expectation and I think that will always be the case right even if everything we do is through technology and it's through content you know I might have spoken to all of our clients at least once but they feel like they know me very well through our content right and um yeah and you know they engage through you know messaging and stuff through our product as well so they feel like they have a real relationship with us even though it's very tech driven um but i think you can't like yeah look depending on the business i think creator ceos generally um are more successful um that's that's just my personal view and i think typically and and a lot of fat i think a lot of founders fit more in the creator profile out of the three you mentioned.

1:22:04And I think typically, and you can look at this in the public markets, right, the founder-led businesses still significantly outperform non-founder-led businesses, right? Yeah, definitely. And look, Elon's obviously an extreme example, but he's certainly not an operator. He's clearly a creator right and but he has amazing you know he has Gwyn at SpaceX right she's really running everything right she's she's doing what you what you said you know hire amazing people yeah so um so yeah I think you know I think you've just got to yeah you've got to recognize which one of those you are and make sure you complement yourself with partners who can help with the other areas okay so you you're building these relationships with your clients that makes a lot of sense How about in your personal life?

1:22:53Do you feel lonely at the top? Do you feel you have the right tribe, the right community for you at the moment, at this stage in your life? Yeah, look, I'd say I have a very small number of friends outside of work, like very, very small. And mostly they're friends who I've known since school, right? So it's still very long-lasting relationships. But very small. I'm talking about like five or six people and probably two who I'd see regularly. So and a lot of that is just down to how much energy I have to dedicate towards relationships outside of work and outside of looking after Miriam and my dog.

1:23:39So I keep it very small and concentrated and I'm very happy with that. And I'm probably like increasingly like kind of grumpy old man type person. like do i need more do i need more friends now you know do you know what i mean um so yeah look i uh i i would like to i i generally i don't have much of a social life at the moment um again mainly like if miriam was better and was able to leave the house like we would um we'd obviously be so well she'd be forcing me to socialize a lot more let me put it that way um but as she used to before she was ill so um so yeah look i think um i'm happy with my social life as it is i like you know the things that like give me inspiration or make me kind of fulfilled outside of work is doing things like adventures or whatever with my friends right like a couple of times a year doing something crazy um or fun you know like last year i ran an ultra marathon in africa with um with uh russ cook did you see that guy who ran the whole length of africa no really interesting like a russ cook he ran the first guy to run so you did it with him part of the last the last leg i flew out at two days notice i decided to fly out with some friends and we ran the lot and i'd never run a marathon before and it was like how did this feel 40 degree heat i mean it was intense but i did it right i completely wanted to do something crazy yeah yeah so i like doing that kind of thing a couple of times a year with a small group of friends.

1:25:15That sounds like something a creator would do, not an operator. Probably, yeah, with almost no planning. Exactly. So, yeah, those are the kind of things. Look, I think people go through different phases in their life. I don't have any kids yet. I do want to have a lot of kids, and so that will obviously take up a lot of time when I have kids. But, yeah, look, I think if you're getting, you know, who did I see? You said it the other day. The situation you want to be in is you want to be really looking forward to going to work in the morning, and you want to be really looking forward to coming home in the evening.

1:25:55And if those two things are true, you probably have, like, a happy or fulfilled life, right? And so I definitely feel that at the moment. I agree. It's a perfect formula. And then, of course, you also need to make sure that you feel satisfied with what you have. yes sometimes it's our fears or inner battles that actually prevent us from realizing that we can happily go to work and happily come back home yes we just need to think about there we go right yeah it's you know it's like it's that classic conundrum which is like desire is both the source probably of all human progress ever yeah and it's also probably the source of all human misery and so it's like those two sides of that coin and knowing when to control your desire and be satisfied and be fulfilled I think is the real challenge so you still want that desire because that's what kind of whatever it is, it doesn't have to be for money or anything but you want the desire to do things to achieve things Don't you think desires can be very different because it depends on where your desire comes from So if it comes from fear or greed or comparison, which is a fear of feeling worse than other people, that feels very different from the desire to solve a big problem for the humanity.

1:27:25Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. The level of fulfillment is very different when you get what you desire. Yeah. Yeah. OK, so again, let's say this to extreme. what do you think Elon Musk thinks? Because, you know, firstly, he's obviously achieved amazing things with humanity. Do you think he feels happy? Do you think he's, like, fulfilled? I think he feels fulfilled. I think he feels fulfilled, yeah. Happiness probably doesn't happen very often to him. I agree, yeah. You know, there's this interview where he actually said that, you know, guys, you don't want to be like me. You know, my life is so hard.

1:28:07It's so difficult. It's so this and so that. But then you look at him and you're like, yeah, but you're fulfilled. You know, when I read this biography of Steve Jobs, I completely changed how I thought about him. Because for many years, I thought of him as a miserable man. Really? who sacrificed for the... He was amazing at what he did as an Apple founder. But I thought, but, you know, he was a miserable man because people often talk about how he was a miserable man. But when I read his biography, I thought, no, he was actually deeply fulfilled. He just didn't care much about this happiness. Happiness, yeah.

1:28:48He didn't chase it. He didn't chase it. And people thought, because he's not chasing it, he's miserable. but this is what you kept talking about in the beginning of our conversation you know fulfillment and happiness are different things and fulfillment comes through struggle right it doesn't it again it comes from being in uncomfortable places and doing uncomfortable things and and from taking risks and being willing to fail and unfortunately like pretty much every piece of media out there mainstream media education our education system our psychiatrists and mental health and public health systems all teach us to search for happiness and that's why i think so many people are miserable yeah honestly i think it is right it's like the pursuit of happiness leads to misery and um yeah look i you know uh which which biography was it by the way was it the The Isakson one.

1:29:45Isakson, yeah. I still haven't read it. I need to read it. It's fantastic. Because there are so many other biographies, but this one was the one who, for me, made it very clear. Even though Walter often talks about how Steve made other people miserable and how he felt miserable and how he was angry, but if you look through that, it's actually very clear that he was fulfilled. Yeah, and it's the pursuit of excellence, right? You have to care about what you're working on.

1:30:19We often get taught, I did this leadership training with my team, and we had a former U.S. Navy SEAL commander and FBI special agent, a guy called Errol Dobler, a really good guy. I highly recommend him as a leadership trainer. He came and did a lot of work with us. And a lot of what he talks about is like, you know, controlling your emotions or at least knowing how you're feeling and kind of separating that from making a decision and reacting. And I think a lot of people in like the corporate world or in the startup world mean, interpret that to mean don't show any emotion. That's not what it means at all.

1:31:05It means being conscious about the emotion you're showing. and I'm very sure that when Steve Jobs was having those outbursts and you know smashing the prototypes on the ground it was intentional and he like and it wasn't fake that was how he's feeling but he had a reaction he thought about it and he was intentional in how he reacted and and and and that is that is how it should be right and that is that is demonstrating a care for your work and that you care for your team right it sounds strange but it is showing that you care for your team because you want them to care about this as much you want them to succeed on the project and succeed in their careers and try and i think he cared about some members of his team those who were aligned with him uh probably yeah yeah probably not the rest well there we go he should you know he should have had a better hiring process but um no he was just brutally honest to those who didn't quite perform or didn't quite care But that is caring.

1:32:03But that's caring. That is caring, right? This is what I tell my team, right? Like, you know, the biggest gift you can give someone is feedback, right? And real feedback, honest feedback, right? And, you know, there's all these books, Radical Candor and various others that go through this. But that is caring, right? You know, telling someone something's great when it isn't, that is not caring. That is, you know, that's jeopardizing someone's growth potential. That's jeopardizing someone's future career, right? So, you know, yeah, I will definitely read that biography. I've listened to a few before, but I haven't actually read that one.

1:32:45So I will read it. So, Alex, my last question. I always ask the same question at the end. How do you want to be remembered? um so I was funny because I was reading over Christmas my uh I was reading over Christmas my yearbook from my primary school okay and you write like a little page this is when I was 12 years old and you write like you know there's certain things you have to write on this page and there were two things on the page that really stood out to me so the first one was I said and by the way I wrote this I would have written this in like April 2000 so it's like peak of the first internet boom right and the one of the first things one of those is to be up to me as I said when I'm older I want to run a big computer software company and make lots of money right so that was like funny obviously um and the other thing which um I noticed and I noticed it a lot because a lot of my friends from back then replied to me uh highlighting it saying I think when I'm uh when I'm older or when I'm gone I want to be remembered as a very kind person who would always help his friends right um I'd still say that's very true um but I'd kind of I'd want to expand it to be helping more than just my friends and hopefully helping helping mankind right and and you know that word kind is interesting and that the discussion we just had around Steve Jobs is an interesting example like my definition of kind is often very different from other people's My definition of kind is helping people learn, helping people progress, helping people do better.

1:34:24And sometimes that involves saying a brutally honest truth, right? And pointing out the inconvenient things and pointing out the hard path that we have to take and the struggle that we have to do in order to progress, right? And that's my definition of kind. And look, I hope that I'll be remembered as someone who is kind and helped in some ways progress humanity in various different ways. That's so beautiful. I'm sure you will. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you so much. Thanks. I really enjoyed it. Awesome. Yeah, so did I. Thank you very much.