Craig Follett: Art Is My Post-Exit Purpose & Business

0:00Welcome to the Exit Paradox podcast, where we discuss how to build a fulfilling and meaningful life after selling a business. I'm Anastasia Koroleva, an exited founder who spent the last 13 years researching and collecting stories about life after a successful business sale. Artists historically have been always some of the best observers of the world around them. Craig Follett. He built Universe.com, a social marketplace for events, and sold it to Ticketmaster in 2015. Following the sale, Craig grew the business 30-fold and took the company global before leaving in 2019. He then found his calling in building Peggy.com, a secure marketplace for buying and selling investment-grade art.

0:45In this episode, Craig shares how and why he found his post-exit mission in making incredible art affordable to everyone. One of the things that make art interesting is it's an appreciating asset that you get to enjoy. It's appreciating. Art doesn't need to be beautiful necessarily. It could be ugly. artists have shaped society in parts. We look at heat tearing through the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, drawing attention to that, telling stories and messages and creating change. So that's very powerful.

1:26Hi, hi. It's so good to see you here all the way from Capita. That's right. Fantastic. What are you doing in London? I'm here for a really special event. We're doing an auction of 700 artworks in conjunction with seven musicians. So 100 artworks per musician and 700 artists. So super cool. One of the musicians is Paul McCartney. Awesome. Yeah, that's a good start. Yeah. I mentioned to you that I really wanted you on my show because we had that fantastic conversation in Miami a few months ago when you told me that you see building a business with art and I would really like us to dig deeper into this.

2:09Yeah I love that totally I think my co-founder and I are both creators and creatives and our canvas in a way is software and in this case it's a bit meta because our software is also for artists but this being our second venture together we actually built our first one together and then sold it to Live Nation. We knew we wanted to build another together and part of the motivation of that was really just the act of creating, of building something. I couldn't imagine doing anything else other than building another one with Adam. So then it makes you an artist? I guess so, yeah. We view ourselves as artists, yeah.

2:46So when you stole your company, which was quite a few years ago, in 2015, and you sold your business and then for four years you stayed with Light Nation, just Ticketmaster. That's correct. If you go back to that moment when you were free from your business and from Ticketmaster, that moment you realized you could do whatever you want, your business is sold, your obligation is that one. How did it feel? It felt like liberating and exciting but also sort of strange right because that was such a wonderful journey but very very intense and kind of fully involving us and one of the reasons it felt strange is I took the sabbatical between the two ventures and my first thought is okay I'm gonna try to do nothing and I tried my best did nothing and that was that was challenging so after a short amount of time.

3:46I got a bit tired of doing nothing and felt that I needed to do some other things and still maintain it as a sabbatical, but inject some purpose and growth and kind of take advantage of that sabbatical phase. But I did want to experiment with doing nothing as well. How did you take advantage of that phase at the end of the day? Yeah, I mean, a bit of travel, of course. That's kind of a classic thing that people do In the travel, one of the things that I did was a Vipassana. So that's a 10-day silent meditation. I did that in Thailand. And that truly was doing nothing. Because that's sitting 10 hours a day meditating for 10 days in a row.

4:31It was doing nothing, but it was also sort of doing something. It injected a challenge and a purpose. And yeah, being a sabbatical, sort of a special phase where no obligations, not taking time away from anything could truly sort of sit there for 10 days and what did you get out of uh 10 day long meditation i think a lot um it's kind of maybe even hard to describe but um maybe you reflecting all the other things was like a sense of appreciation um and to make that a story i guess like emerging from that i felt very aware like i would see colors more vibrantly um just kind of notice things uh with a kind of like a closer eye maybe the way the child does a little bit as a child sort of you know just has that sort of focus or attention or curiosity um and we get a bit distracted in life along the way where we're you know we've ordered you know have obligations and responsibilities and so um yeah that was really special kind of a sense of appreciation and...

5:38Do you think it had a long-term effect? Probably yeah. Yeah I think so. Did it give you a clarity as to what you wanted to do next though? Who knew you wanted to become next? It wasn't, there wasn't like an epiphany that came out of it. Like I need to do this or I want to be this more just kind of like a strengthening of the mind, of a moment to let the mind reset and prepare for the next big thing. Definitely I wanted to, I guess I also emerged from it, I'm a very motivated person already, but feeling kind of extra motivated, like okay, I really want to dive into something and experience. You felt hungrier?

6:20Yeah, I think so. After sitting for 10 days you want to do something. Yeah, exactly. Fascinating. Because you know there's this idea that boredom, in the silence, is very good for creative members. That's where creativity actually comes from. They're probably invited in your life. So I was curious if that's where the room to do new business came from. Would you say that? Yeah, I would say that that's a really special thing. That creativity comes out of boredom in today's day and age where there's so many digital distractions and things we rarely as a society get time to sort of have nothing and be bored and have that spark, the desire for creativity.

7:06So, totally. So, what did you do next? Yeah, then another challenge I wanted to take on is to do a month of surfing straight. So, I did that, which was great. That's a challenge. Surfing is challenging and fun. Could you surf before? I had surf before a couple times but I was like I want to dive into something new so for me this was something new and a new challenge and I love sports and staying active so yeah that's kind of another thing that I did. You're a professional climber, aren't you? Oh yeah I've done my bit of climbing today, I don't call myself professional but yeah I love climbing and bouldering.

7:44So you did a bit of that and then I'm just trying to see how you changed your at that time between your businesses and how the idea of going to a new business came to you. How long did it take? Yeah, my co-founder, Adam and I, we've been brainstorming businesses pretty much ever since the day that we sold the first one. We were saying, okay, what would we do next? Yeah. And we started creating ideas, hundreds of ideas, many whimsical, some more concrete. And of course we ended up coming to Peggy, which is the new business. But yeah, we kind of started brainstorming right away. Just observing things, pinpoints, ideas, and jogging them down.

8:31In Peggy, I assume you're tech background and interest, AI, arts all came together, activity. And you can see how it ticks all the boxes for things you like, kind of like, except for climbing. Yeah, totally. You forgot another one. That's right. Maybe we'll find some more works of climberists or something like that, or mountains. So tell me about it, how you decided to do that. Yeah, I mean, one of the first things that I also did, I guess, in this about was I went to Art Basel in Switzerland, the original art possible in basel switzerland and uh yeah that was a delight um and that's where i met her now vice president bart brown and hunter shortly it's amazing um and it's also where i learned a lot about the kind of blue chip art world and how it works um and how that's very vibrant for um you know the ultra ultra high net worth who can go there and purchase art from these major galleries and there's a whole ecosystem there um and uh yeah so learned a lot how did How do you see an opportunity there?

9:33Because to me it's a very obscure industry that I personally don't fully understand. And you came from a technical background. How did you see the opportunity there? Yeah, the opportunity wasn't solely from that trip. That was kind of an immersion that gave more context and kind of concrete understanding of the existing structures and incumbents in the space. but the idea also came from you know when Adam and I we sold the first business we each bought some you know nice houses and these houses had big black white walls that were just crying for art and it was time to buy grown-up art and so started looking into that but I found it to be kind of an intimidating kind of decision to make because you know once you buy that archer you're meant to take care of it and shepherd it and and but if you're operating in our art bracket that's not our basil you don't have that liquidity you don't have the ability to re-home it what if you're moving to a new place and you've got a different collector vision in that new place a different collector voice.

10:48The rest of the world who aren't ultra high net worth don't have that flexibility and therefore that lack of flexibility makes that investment in art a little less of an investment if there's no liquidity. And so that actually really constrains the emerging and mid-career sector of the arts because if collectors have a hard time collecting art in that bracket because of this lack of flexibility, then that hurts the artists too because it's harder to be an artist because there's less of a market for your art. So yeah, that was kind of a very tangible observation. So how do you solve that problem?

11:31So we solve that problem by creating an app in a marketplace in this app and one of the net new things that we've done is we've brought in an AI. So we built an AI in-house which lets an artist create an authentication of the artwork using their smartphone, the cameras on their smartphone, and our AI in the cloud which crunches the optical inputs and they register that unique one-of-one artwork as that specific artwork. So then from there collectors in the future can verify the artwork and trace the ownership history through you know all the collectors over the years decades and maybe centuries ahead all the way back to the artist studio and If the transaction ever happens in the future we actually pay a resale royalty or an artist resale right to the artist Which actually there's a an artist resale rate in the UK But that doesn't exist in the rest of the world.

12:31It's only UK and Europe Yeah, because you did tell me that artists can get royalties for secondary sales Exactly. Which I found very interesting because musicians can do that in a way, but the artists know when they don't. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, if an artist becomes quote successful over there, they're repeating just sold for millions of dollars, you say, in the secondary market, then the artist doesn't get any of that monetary upside until a pagan. So, yeah, we wanted our second venture to really quite squarely have a social impact and that's one of them. Why is that? Did you have that already in your first business or you kind of grew into it later?

13:18I think you know we we did have it in our first business but maybe not as it wasn't as zero one it wasn't as kind of net new. What we did have in our first business is so it actually began as a sharing economy marketplace so this was back in 2011 when most people hadn't heard about Airbnb but there was this thing called the sharing economy which was this movement and there were all of these little startups for you know sharing of bicycles or spaces Airbnb for instance so we created a company called universe with two eyes universe with two eyes.com and the two eyes were kind of two little people you know the two you know stick figures with heads meeting in real life because the you know part of the social impact that we were trying to create there is connecting people in real life the world was becoming and is today as well so virtual so digital you may not know the neighbors in your apartment building yeah or in your community and we wanted to connect people in real life over authentic and sharing of experiences, of items, spaces, skills.

14:32And so we built that. And we had tens of thousands of dog walkers and tens of thousands of items in all this. But where we were starting to see traction and that was actually the activities. So cookie classes or yoga in the park, peer-to-peer activities. So we focused on that because that's where we're seeing the most kind of traction and those activities were to larger and larger activities and then ultimately they became events. So we ticketed the birthday party of a local chef, celebrity chef who was on TV and he brought 100 or 200 people that were on his friends and they were also all chefs or foodies and that from there we ended up kind of exploding within food events.

15:20We did a night work, a food night work and we needed a ticket scanning app for that. At this point we still had item sharing in there, dog walkers and so forth, but then we kind of realized, oh wow, we've kind of accidentally created a ticketing company with a very strong technology underpinning. So we focused on that and then Sun said it, the items and the dog walking listings and from there just grew up and grew up and became what is that, Universal OneEye.com because it's He managed to get Universe.com and Peggy.com which was also challenging to get. Fantastic. So most people I talk to honestly admit that when they started their first business it was out of greed.

16:07How was it for you? I think it was also out of creativity. So at the time I was working at Boston Consulting Group and I'd been there for maybe three years and was kind of on this partner track. I actually really enjoyed it and was doing very well. But I started choosing projects that were in the tech space, due diligences of startups or landscapes of new startup and technology sectors, and was interviewing all sorts of entrepreneurs and realized, I want to be on the other side. I want to be doing that. And part of that, I think, is I wanted to be building. So I felt the desire to be building something again.

16:48and yeah so it kind of came out of that desire for creativity and yeah of course we wanted to make money while doing it but you know we could have made money in our day jobs at BCG and what have you as well yeah yeah so it was very creativity that pushed me forward and now the new business again that's your motivation plus impact yes plus also yeah certain plus impact yeah that's impact for primary artists but also to give access to everyone to this art. Yeah, to artists but also to society at large because you know there are unusual times in the world today and artists historically have you know been always some of the best observers of the world around them and many artworks have messages imbued in them and artists often create change and catalyze change to these observations and sort of tragic that to be a successful artist you're you know need to be part of this blue chip art world but it's challenging for for people to become an artist unless you're kind of inducted into that and so by creating this kind of more vibrant landscape and market for collectors to participate in art at a more affordable level, that means that artists can also do that.

18:18And yeah, we want to help society evolve in a way that is observant and aware. And does this give you a sense of purpose? Yeah, definitely. Yeah, because you mentioned before, because you lost back where the business was going. So you found it in Payday.com and that's what drives you now. Yes, yeah. You said despite that under. Yeah, a friend of mine was telling me about he was going through a career change himself and he was thinking about this framework that we together now called AMP, A-M-P, which stands for autonomy, mastery and purpose. So he realized that those are the three things that Lily over the imp.

18:58So, the rest of these with me too is certainly being an entrepreneur is autonomy. But if you're doing it for something that you believe in and you think has an impact that provides purpose as well, and if you're doing something challenging with AI and so forth, maybe that's the nastroid piece too. Yeah, and that's the definition of the trendy motivation as opposed to extrinsic, right? Which we often deal first when we start the business but again in the occasion it was a bit different. For most people it's quite extrinsic. Interesting. How does the fact that you built and sold a successful business affected the way you think about the mighty and love?

19:46The first business? Yeah. I mean, I think I feel very lucky and grateful. I think, you know, actually one thing I would remember or reflect on is during the time at BCG, you know, you'd go out, maybe you treat yourself for a debtor. And of course, the thing tastes pretty good. But I remember after starting the first business and And very deeply, the money that we did made the hard way, where we were being creative and working hard in a different way, certainly it's hard work at Bisa Jupe, the food sort of tastes better. If you feel like maybe you've earned it a bit more. So that's a bit different.

20:28And then there's obviously, when you reach a certain level of success, you can give back and so forth as well. Also during the sabbatical, I took my mom to Patagonia as a gift for a milestone birthday of hers. I took my dad on a trip as well. And that was super special to be able to create those memories. To have both the time to be able to do that, but also the means to do that too. You know, I interviewed somebody a few days ago who wrote Boris Dienberg and he wrote a beautiful post which was called, I'm in direct son and my business. And one thing he was told about there is that he noticed that many people after they start the business are turning into dragons.

21:11I love that. And that they turn into dragons and they focus all their energy on accumulating more wealth. And he didn't like that. He didn't relate to that. It sounds like it didn't happen to you. No. You didn't have that problem. Yeah. I'm not a dragon. I'm good. I'm hibisky about it because I do believe that some people when they accumulate money they realize in a way whether they are more creators or whether they are more investors. And then creators and you clearly are one of those, then some of them call themselves builders, they call themselves artists, but essentially it's creation that drives them.

21:56They end up building another business, oftentimes they spend years first trying to become investors because they think they need that they expected to. And it's quite interesting that it sounds like you didn't do that. You just fall on your motivation for creativity. Yeah, and the investment that Adam and I are making is largely in ourselves. It's a bit on ourselves in the next venture. So you would say money is more leverage for your purpose, not necessarily if it weren't by itself? Yeah, it's a resource. It gives you time if you use it in a certain way. Time is also an ultimate resource, and it's the scarcest resource, right?

22:45But yeah, it gives you opportunity and the ability to do other things. And how would the What affected your relationships with other people? The fact that you built and sold your business and others would see you as someone who succeeded that way. What happened in the social sphere of your life? I don't know. I'm not sure. I didn't really think about that in terms of relationships with other people. You handled it well. Yeah, that's good. So who do you want to be when you grow up? I guess I always admired both of my grandfathers in different ways. One of them was an engineer, the other was an entrepreneur.

23:33And I always really admired that, you know, this entrepreneur that he was. He was a really cool guy and had that autonomy and kind of a presence. And so maybe I want to be him in a little bit. Okay, he's your role model. A little bit, yeah. Is he still around? No, unfortunately not. So, so many people have this existential crisis of salt after they start in business. Some say, oh I sold my baby, I lost my baby, others deal with imposter syndrome or guilt. And you seem to be surprisingly healthy mentally. How did you achieve that? Was it that 10 day silent meditation? Maybe it was the Vipassana, right?

24:18No, I think that's an interesting question. One thing I would reflect on is in the first venture, I kind of conflated or associated my identity with that of the business. And so it was very sort of challenging to sell that and then to let go of it because I felt that my identity was very tied to the business. And so letting go of that was like sort of shattered what my identity was. Yeah. You know, how do I define myself? So I had to almost recreate that from a new foundation with lots of, with the resources from the acquisition and everything. So it's a good problem to have for sure. But yeah, that is a unique observation for sure.

25:09is like the association of identity with which it means a business is a corporation like it's not your identity so in the second venture it really um i guess i mean just being aware of that is part of the solution and knowing that the second venture it is it's not who i am it it's its own thing it's actually managed to test yourself does it work because i understand you want to achieve that theory right yeah i want to achieve that i do i do i manage to do that i'd say yes and no so um the yes being yes i i realize now that okay this is a separate entity is it is not me it is it is peggy um and uh it can live on its own in fact that to me is the definition of the success of it is that it's this sort of self healing organism that it's helped me out its own and that I am not it and I learned that from actually spoke with another entrepreneur who sold his business and spoke with him a bit of a mentorship capacity as well yeah about him his philosophies on that but then in ways that I don't manage to I'm definitely very involved in it's an all-consuming labor of love and I'm fully like invested in it and you know from a time perspective and energy perspective so but that's different than the identity yeah kind of concept it sounds like it's a vehicle through which you channel your creativity and you achieve your purpose through it but you managed to separate it into a different mean totally right exactly whereas in the um the first venture my definition of my being was inclusive of the you know of universe um and so and i think it's healthier if you're able to kind of keep those a little bit uh separate So when you lost your identity of you know we look universe.com, Mr.

27:19Universe, and you lost that idea, and you look at yourself in the mirror and you ask yourself, so who am I without what you are. I guess you know I look at the circles around me so I look at my family, my immediate family and extended family, that's a reflection of who you are against as well um so that's one thing um and then i guess in trying to do nothing whether it was literally just you know trying to do nothing um at home or doing the vipassana kind of maybe realizing that creative drive you know the artist at heart kind of mentality um so if you when you strip away the business at a kind of outlets maybe that's working down too So let's talk about self-interest and how you feel about that.

28:14So do you think it's morally acceptable to pursue self-interest through business? That's an interesting question. I think if you are pursuing something that is in self-interest, meaning you're making money for yourself or building something of which you own, is it morally acceptable? I think it can be if you are also aware of its impacts around what you're creating and like all of the impacts, the whole supply chain, so to speak, and ideally also the impact that it has in a positive way. So yeah, I think you can't separate that out of the self-interest. So self-interest is fine as well, that you are aware and take responsibility for consequences of your pursuit of self-interest.

29:11Correct, so maybe one pair with awareness and empathy, awareness of all the different surface areas that something impacts, draws upon or changes, and then empathy for all those different surface areas, all the other people and things and environment etc. evolved. So you clearly are a person, very aware of your personal growth. How do you plan it going forward? How do you think about it? Which areas of your life you would be, or your personality, you would like to improve? And in what direction? Yeah, that's an interesting question. My mind goes back to the Vipassana as well. And where emerging from it, I asked myself the question, would I do this again?

30:01And it was sort of I don't know if I could do that again. That's the feeling that I had in that moment But as time progresses, I actually realized maybe I would do that again and You know try to find a chunk of time and And see what's the impacts of it a second time a friend of mine does that we here for ten years. Wow So to do let's commitment. I know yeah, I think it's so impressive. Have you done? No, this is why I'm asking Yeah, they're curious about the impact that had on me. Diana So what's your relationship with spirituality? Yeah, we were as a family raised not religious. You know, we had traditions and we, you know, throw a Christmas tree up and things like that.

30:45But we were raised basically atheist. Yeah. My dad grew up with religion and then I always thought this was interesting. and then he was able to because he was raised with a religion then make the sort of decision or if need to make that leap into a non-religious paradigm himself whereas then we were raised with that decision or even me for us or raised in the that sort of paradigm post that ship that he had so that we that's how we were raised but yeah um uh but but yeah we've been kind of with traditions around Christmas and Christmas trees and things like that, but not in a religious way. Which is different from spirituality, right?

31:33Because you're talking about the way and it's going to be part of the universe. I mean, Mr. Universe. Yeah. So that's what led me to my question, because I thought, okay, maybe that's part of your intentional person growth in that direction. Yeah, for sure. I think there's a spirituality lens, if that's the right word. when kind of reflecting and pursuing pursuits like the Vipassana and so forth. So going back to you selling the universe.com, but then staying for four years with the acquirer, what didn't get you? How do you feel about that experience? Because obviously there are lots of people who regret ever agreeing to stay in the acquirer a city section become an employee a gap minute how did it work for you yeah that's a really good question i think one of the reasons uh that we said well first of all there was an earn out for the first bit so could walk away from there or not um or you know achieve the earn out so uh you know we were achieving the earn out so that was one reason to stay prepared that that was kind of a two-year period but then why stay for four right yeah um and uh the answer to that was I think maybe linked to the identity thing a bit they were talking about earlier where because I had associated my identity with universe I still really wanted to see that totally succeed and it was hard for me to to leave that because it was part of my identity that I kind of self-imposably defined for myself so so you are leaning on to all the identity yeah that's kind one piece and then another piece is for the for most of it credit to live nation ticket master um they allowed us to operate at a very kind of entrepreneurial win um and uh you know that's also due to the success they were having post-acquisition and the growth of universe um and uh so it still felt autonomous it was very fun to be expanding it internationally to new continents and there was still so on the autonomy mastery and purpose autonomy there from that perspective kind of to our pleasant surprise yeah and then there was also a new mastery because we were growing it to new levels of scale and into new geographies and so that provided learning as well until that sort of plateaued and there was a little less autonomy and you know we'd learn what we learned and processed billions of dollars of tickets that we had and then it was time to reclaim that independence and let go of the Erebi and then create the next one.

34:23Because I noticed for people who stay at the Acquire, even though they often regret agreeing to do that, it actually helps them to transition in a much smaller way. and then you know like me for example uh had an exit without any air now then without any obligations whatsoever that felt like it was a great idea there but actually it's a much more abrupt change in life interesting yeah i can see that that said i also kind of imagine you know when i think back on that that period it's like oh well what if we did just leave more immediately because time is the of all the resources you know it's the most finding scarce resource so it's like oh well you know could have left that earlier and um you know had that that time so to spot those things something like that you heard it yeah exactly yeah or do whatever right no i don't regret it yeah no regret it no regrets that was a great journey and we learned a lot and had a lot of fun along the way too.

35:27Do you ever regret selling the business? Sometimes I wonder what directions we have taken it had we not. But not really because it's enabled this new face and our big one with Peggy, which is an even more exciting Candice we aim to be playing with. Do you think he will sell Peggy in the kitchen? I'm not sure maybe if the offer was right you know fiduciary responsibility to our investors and everything but um but just interested in the intention because is it for you a lifestyle thing it's not a lifestyle thing I think I know it's it is a business at the end of the day it's a it's its own entity it's something that's living and breathing and growing and I think the way that I might answer that is whatever produces the most impact for artists and society and collectors and the art world and the society around it that can be shaped and change.

36:38And that the impact is associated with the impact to be created through partnerships and things and evolutions but I would kind of tie it back to impact really. Last time I saw you was actually at Art Bus in Miami. That's right. And I wonder what you've learned about the cool arts industry since you joined it. What are the biggest discoveries for you? A surprise for you. A lot. I mean it's such an interesting and intricate ecosystem of many different stakeholders so a lot of different things I think you know I've learned how it's it's very vibrant at this kind of upper crust billionaire upper ultra high net worth echelon and there's kind of a lot of liquidity and fund dynamics there that don't really translate down so it's one thing I've learned lots of observations.