How SURI built a £50M Brand by Just Giving People What They Asked For

0:00This year we'll do north of 50 million in revenue and we have to spend a fair percentage of that on marketing. 50 million in four years. I think actually the whole secret, which is like, it's so funny because I think it's really hidden in plain sight, is just listening and caring about consumers. And I think the success of Suri is really down to us asking lots of people, what do you like? What don't you like? And then building a product that addresses those problems and gives them something that they want. you know what's really cool as well like our biggest attribution in terms of where does our where do our sales come from and excuse the pun is is word of mouth more than our ads more than all of our influence or more than any other channel our biggest channel who bought your brush my mother your mother right talk us through some of the challenges that you encountered that maybe you didn't expect we have constant challenges right who are the only people who don't problem do you know oh let me think about this one because it's going to be some like it's it's dead people right the only people who don't have problems are dead problems are a sign of life yeah we just try and like improve the quality of our problems and solve like higher quality problems but like there's always more problems savings or did you have external investment we got external investment yeah how was that process for you the process is 98 to 99 percent of people rejecting you but fortunately i'd had a good experience of being rejected in my in my like late teens with the various girls who I tried to ask out on dates and so like you know it's like it was like I know this feeling yeah it's great when you've got people on your board that can understand your business as well or can that genuinely be impactful I think it's great if someone's like a very rich family can give you 50 million great but like the added value investors are like so beneficial to the business because they can sit down they can help you they can be like look I did this this is what I do differently or I can I can intro you here right before we get into today's episode I want to give a shout out to a special sponsor, Sam Lawrence Recruitment.

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4:21If you're looking for something naturally good, but seriously tasty, and my favorite is just our natural coconut yogurt. I have it most mornings with granola and lots of honey. Trust me, you're going to absolutely love it. Welcome back to another episode of Getting to Grow. Now, I know you guys will be very excited to hear this one because I have Mark Rushmore, who is the founder of Suri. Now, if you haven't heard of Suri, where on earth have you been? You've been living under a total rock because as I'm sure like you, they have been all over your Instagram feed with their amazing kind of marketing efforts and influence campaigns.

4:55So welcome Mark to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Yes, I'm so excited to have you on. I want to like really understand the whole business of Suri. But first, tell me a little bit about what you were doing before Suri. Yeah. And then I guess where the idea for Suri came from and yeah was it like was oral care always something you wanted to go into? So basically after university I started my career at Procter & Gamble. Okay. Working in a variety of sales and strategy roles ultimately managing Pringles in the UK. Cool. When it was bought by Kellogg's.

5:27Okay. And so then I helped transition the business from P &G up to Kellogg's in Manchester and then at the time I had like almost no savings in my bank account and then suddenly as part of this transition we got like quite a lot of uh money in the six month period and so i did what any like i don't know 26 year old would do and i i quit and i was like what shall i do next and so i wrote a list of all the things i wanted to accomplish in the rest of my life um or at least certainly with like some extra cash and partly that was driven by the fact that at the time unfortunately an acquaintance from university um committed suicide and he seemed like such a happy go lucky guy but clearly you know there was more going on there and so i thought you know i'm not going to wait until i retire to like live out all my wildest dreams and to take a risk but instead i will you know try and live out those dreams so i won a social media competition to take part in the round the world yacht race the clipper race and then i cycled from canada to mexico i did a ski season in canada became a qualified ski instructor and then i'd always wanted to set up a business so I wrote down what five businesses would I like to own and I was like Facebook and Soho House and Google and so I wrote to people who I had ever met from those companies being like hey can I come and work for you for free and they all said no but one of them said yes and and one of them was an experiential marketing agency that I'd worked with when I was at P &G who are based in Germany and as luck would have it like the day I emailed them they'd had a board meeting saying we want to open a London office and bring in a new partner.

7:02And so they gave me equity in the company and I set up the UK office of this experiential marketing agency. We then scaled that agency over five years and sold it. But during that time, I won Oral-B as a client, who is an ex-PNG brand as well. Oh, sorry, is a P &G brand. And so I learned, you know, we ran all their dental trade shows across Europe. So I learned a lot about the size of the market, you know um how they engage with the dental profession um but also you know was becoming more and more aware of like um you know some of the choices that we make as consumers and like the vast impact of like the billions and billions of packaged goods that you know sold whilst i was in my sort of former career and so i was really lucky one day to meet uh my now co-founder giv it's a wild story we met on a speedboat at the can lions that's so glamorous yeah well Well, it's kind of like a real sliding doors moment because I wasn't meant to be there and a friend last minute got a ticket and invited me.

8:02And then I wasn't meant to be at this event. But, you know, I bumped into someone who invited me to this event. And then I just so happened to be sat beside this guy on the boat. And it turned out that my co-founder, Gif, also had started his career at P &G. But he started in Geneva, so we'd never met. And he worked in finance and marketing roles, ultimately managing, I think, Gillette or Venus across EMEA. And so we kind of bonded over our shared time at P &G. And then he, you know, he was telling me about, you know, how he saw there's this huge sustainability sort of challenge in the package goods that we sold.

8:41And that one day he'd love to set up a consumer business. At the time, he was working as a right hand man for Sir Martin Sorrell, the founder of WPP. and I wanted to sell my agency to his boss. And so I was like, hey, we should stay in touch. And we became friends. I ultimately did sell the company to a subsidiary of that company. And then we turned our attention to categories. And we saw in oral care in particular, billions and billions of brushes are thrown away every year and end up in landfills and oceans. And electrical waste in landfills accounts for about 2 % of the actual waste, but about 70 % of the toxicity so this is an enormous problem and actually probably virtually every brush you've ever used since you're a child still exists somewhere so like gosh that that is actually mad it's pretty wild yeah that's yeah like an interesting fact really to think that it's still out there right and and then you then you times that by everyone you ever see because everyone brushes their teeth and so then we we kind of delved into more research and found out that you know two companies have like an 80 market share so we surveyed thousands of consumers to ask them you know like do you you know do you use the bluetooth function on your brush and they're like of course not i maybe i used it once but i've never used it again that they had bluetooth why would you need that or seven seven different modes like everyone only uses one maybe two but everyone also complained like you know i hate that gunk on the bottom of the like that is so disgusting and then also my battery dies so i don't take it traveling it's too loud it's too clunky you know like i have to carry a separate charger i've had mine turn on in the suitcase before and i've arrived and been like why is my um um suitcase vibrating and then obviously like all the staff think it's something that it's not and i'm like no that's my toothbrush i promise and then i get there and it's like still going and i'm like oh my god i really need to open this suitcase and turn my toothbrush off right well funny you should say that because of that feature we've actually included a flight safety mode on this one so okay whether or not you take it in the case you can turn the flight safety mode on so it won't vibrate ever in the suitcase for the exact reasons so funny okay that's great um and so yeah look so we we listened to consumer feedback we we tried to address the problem and then it was really difficult but we we you know created this product surrey which is short for sustainable rituals um and you know we launched in may 22 and since then it's it's really resonated with lots of people and we now have over 17 000 reviews on trust pilot with a 4.7 out of 5 rating which makes it the most you know desirable um and highly rated brush and so that that's the the long version of no it's so interesting because i was doing my research into you and i saw that you're in marketing and i think like you have to have to go into to go into dental care i would have thought generally the person is like super interested in it like a proper geek in terms of like teeth and stuff or they've worked for a big business before right that like could understand the market and bring something very different to the consumer and like you know all the brands i speak to are premiumizations of things that are already out there but better more sustainable like aesthetically more pleasing etc and that's exactly what like suri is it's all those it's tick tick tick um have your friends at oral b been like knocking on door being like oh my god i can't believe mark's doing this like he's been working before like that's where he got his idea yeah i mean you know i don't want to name any names but um uh several ex you know png people are now also working with us who may or may not worked on that brand okay uh the former global ceo of phillips sonica is on our board uh she ran as the ceo of sonica and and the ceo of phillips globally uh that business for a while taking it to over a billion in sales and so we have like a bunch of people also ex-dentists ex-dental professionals um so yeah all of that really helps but i think to your point around um you know what was it you know were you really into oral care were you were you from a big business i think actually the the whole secret which is like it's so funny because i think it's really hidden in plain sight is just listening and caring about consumers like kiev and i both deeply care about other people um we want to do something that was meaningful to us and at the time that we launched sure we just both had separately our own daughters within pretty much a month of us launching this and I think it it's the success of Suri is really down to us asking lots of people what do you like what don't you like and then building a product that addresses those problems and and and gives them something that they want and it it's kind of like I feel some people like oh Mark how to grew so quickly and like honestly i think the simple answer is we just listened to people and built what they told us they wanted and it just turns out that there's lots of people who had the same problem does that make sense yeah i think you're right like no sample size of one over here like you went and got so much data and information from customers to really be like right okay well if they hate that feature we're not going to do that but they they're missing this feature or they'd like this feature like you went and built that and there's just lots of those people you You know, like ultimately it's a huge addressable market.

13:49Oh, yeah. 100 % household penetration. Well, but also whether you're five or whether you're 95, whether you're male, female or anything, like, you know, you brush your teeth. We all have teeth. We all have teeth. And we all, it's not like, should I brush my teeth? It's like, you know, there's certain products, like, should I choose oat milk instead of dairy? Do you know what I mean? There's a choice. Whereas like, to a certain extent, it's like, I have to brush my teeth. Am I going to use an electric or a manual? and then within those like which one should i have and why and so i think it gives us a bit of a head start in a way because you don't have to spend money educating people on why why they should use your product yeah absolutely because you're right there is like you know a lot of brands i speak to have to do the educational piece sure like and significantly you know it costs them money it's a long slog whereas actually here's a toothbrush this is why it's better yeah and like you know like i don't know i think we're pretty i think maybe i'm just a very simple person but it's like you know again ask people what they want find out what they don't like make it better for them you know and build it to a high quality at a good price and yeah and as i mentioned earlier so your your marketing efforts are like significant and when you see like your campaign out in the wild or you see someone like looking at it on their phone you on the tube and it comes up and you like see their Instagram what goes through your mind you know it truly is genuinely like really it feels special every single time I meet someone who's even heard of our product let alone has it and like it doesn't like it's funny that that feeling has not diminished at all like even to this point like you know when you said like oh I've already got one and I was like oh wow that's so cool like and that your mum bought it for you and your and your brother and so there's actually three of you using them and you know it that that's really really genuinely um something that never gets old one time that really stood out for me was quite early on uh we got listed in uh goop so yeah so Gwyneth Paltrow had picked it up and said oh we should list it and we're selling well in goop so I was like right we need to go to LA and go and meet them so we uh we got on a plane to la and we'd sent some brushes to my friend's house who lives in la uh in pacific palisades before it burned down and on the way i thought oh we'll stop in an aroon store yeah which is this like yeah yeah i'd read about it so i was like okay we'll pop in there and i'll buy her a present you know to say thank you for the brushes i got chatting to you know this woman the store manager who worked in the personal care aisle and she was asking us what you know what do you do and and we said we got this toothbrush brand she's like oh it's not that that really beautiful slim one with like you know sustainability of the core with long battery and i was like yeah i was like and in my head i was thinking oh no there's a competitor like i've not heard of i was like and i was like what what's it called and she's like oh it's super easy to remember because i've got a dog called suri and i was like oh that's why you remember but being on the other side of the world in a random supermarket you know and and having someone who's who knows your brand it just felt really special and actually that led us um through her through sarah thank you sarah at errone um to a listing there and that that's really helped us in lots of ways because errone i think has a cultural capital beyond the you know 15 or so stores they have in the Los Angeles region in fact Kylie Jenner just you know had a real last week it's had 34 million views and her and her daughter Stormy are brushing their teeth with series which is surreal to see that is crazy isn't it yeah so my question is around figures if you can share how much are you spending a day on your marketing yeah the truth of the answer is I don't know so i'm really fortunate i've got a team of uh great growth people um so nick leads he's nick lawson's our growth director and then we have costier i think is our media buyer but we have nick horton we have jasmine there's a whole bunch of them and they're running um a lot of money through meta google influencer but suffice to say you know uh this year we'll do you know north of 50 million in revenue and we have to spend a fair percentage of that on on marketing 50 million and you started in 2022 yeah uh may 2022 so actually i think it might even be what day is it today it is friday the 8th of may yeah so we launched on the 12th of may 2022 so in four days it's our fourth anniversary is what we call it yeah sorry i think you need to say that again like louder 50 million in four years that's kind of insane is it you yes that's a unicorn well it's not definitely it's not a unicorn yet but hey look i actually think we're scratching the surface of what this is going to be this isn't like you know we don't think like oh my goodness we've got to this point like we we are we're in very low distribution we have one product we're only just getting started like this you know if you invite me again in four years time and let's see what we can do in that time I think that's going to be the bigger question whoa I'm totally like and I'm never lost for words me but I am that the you've not the wind out my sails there that's unbelievable thanks yeah I mean it is and yet it is like I speak to hundreds of founders and to get to 50 mil mark you know there's only a couple of business one other business I can think of that's done that um but I've had upwards of like you know I'm over 150th people I've sat down and spoken to and I don't hear that often very very rarely so yeah yeah no thanks yeah that's sick yeah no it's good it's good like it's it's just funny though because I can't I can't even explain it it's like it's not it's probably not even like one percent of what we're gonna do or maybe one maybe it's more than one percent but like it's definitely the next like fat dental care business of the world I do think a lot of people but like you know we have retailers in every developed market like contacting us being like look we want this some great lady thank you bought one on her travels who lives in New Zealand it turns out she's some like big influencer posted about it and like now we're getting inundated with people from New Zealand like why you know I want it and we just see this constantly and look like you know this is just one product and so you know as we look to the future in the coming months even you know there's going to be some pretty big announcements um yeah wow so this episode won't air until the end of this year so if oh really yeah so okay i might bring it out a little bit earlier because i think it's going to be a great episode but um can you speak about anything that will be launching because i'd love to talk about it i think i can't speak uh explicitly to what it is right now okay but by the end of the year we'll see was it a success or not I think there's some very very positive initial signs uh there's some huge huge announcements in in terms of um growing our distribution and some partnerships so I think yeah wow happy to redo an episode afterwards and we'll see like did it work but if it works it's gonna be big I can yeah I can see this like going like you know toothpaste and then like having you know like um what those things like toothpicks and literally like becoming like the go-to when it comes like a really cool sustainable brand um wow I'm honestly like it's just it's absolutely like phenomenal what you've been able to achieve so what is um and I love how you're sat here like so humbly being like is it and I'm like yeah it is but I think what's so like fun about you is that you're just like, I just asked what people wanted and I made it.

22:00The funny thing is, it kind of is like as simple as that. I think, you know, it's really cool as well. Like our biggest attribution in terms of where does our, where do our sales come from? And excuse the pun is word of mouth. More than our ads, more than all of our influencers, more than any other channel, our biggest channel. Who bought your brush? My mother. Your mother, right? And it's like, she decided like, okay, I love this. And then what we find is like when people love a product themselves or they find something that they really, really love, they want to share it with people they love.

22:37And so actually the people who gift our product the most, it tends to be within families, which is a super interesting insight. I mean, I guess it would be maybe slightly different to buy your friend a toothbrush or, but like, you know, it's people who are in couples, people who are in families because like you use it every day twice. So you get to think about your mum who bought you that brush. And it's like this nice way to be connected. It's for your health. So it's, you know, like a positive thing. I actually think it's a pretty perfect gift, you know. Fits in a stocking, you know, around£100.

23:05Yeah. And in terms of like the pricing of it. So how did you come, obviously like margin and things were put into it. But have you been able to really like work on, because obviously you're 50 mil this year, like economies of scale to make it that£100 price point. have you had to like drop certain bits of the product to make it that price or is everything working like as it set out to be uh there's always always room for improvement like there's this um constant never-ending you know uh challenge to improve what we're doing and it's it's incredible how that works you know and then i think because we've got like a higher volume now even you know we managed to actually shrink up a really cool project is you know we have really great performance design sustainability is the core of everything we do and so we found a way to actually make our packaging like have less material on the inside on our on our new version and so that actually reduced the amount of packaging from a sustainability perspective that was great it improved the speed on the line in terms of how fast the components can be packed.

24:13So we've got more efficiency. So then our packing costs decreased. But then also by doing those things, we reduced our cost by 10p a unit. But when you're selling millions or hundreds of thousands, millions of units, that really, really adds up. And so all of our team are constantly challenged to reassess every few months you know is there a way that we could maintain quality or improve quality while reducing cost and I think that's been that sort of enables constantly to to kind of improve the product and then reinvest into other areas and when you launched in 2022 May was it like hockey stick straight away or was it like your mum bought it your dad bought it and then you know it was like very slow and then it went like that or was it like day dot like that Yeah, we sold out in our second day of the first 5 ,000 units, which we had a pre-sale.

25:14So we'd pre-sold quite a lot of them. But then the remainder just went in like a couple of days. And was that because you had been like pre-marketing before? Exactly. So we'd been running ads beforehand. So we'd sold, let's say, like, I don't know, 60, 70 % of the volume. But then, you know, on day of launch, sold the rest. So then we ordered our next batch of 5 ,000 units. started pre-selling them, sold out straight away. And then what happened was from the initial 10 ,000 orders, we started seeing like five-star review, five-star review, five-star review. Press started picking up five-star review, five-star review.

25:47And so then suddenly we had this like, I guess more validation and trust that like, actually this is a great product that you've just seen on the internet maybe. And that I think then further accelerated sales. And so then, you know, in our first six months, we did everything about 2 million in sales, which, you know, that was with like limited stock availability as well. So yeah, it kind of, again though, it's like, I just think about it's business 101. Like, you know, find a very large addressable market, see if there's a problem in that market and solve it. You know, if we were solving a more niche problem, I can't think, but like, you know.

26:39Vegan bacon. Well, vegan bacon or, but even like just something that like, if we made like young girls clothing, do you know what I mean? Then that's like a smaller addressable market than, you know, toothbrushes, right? Yeah, of course. Actually, I often think like we have one of the best addressable markets, but then I met an entrepreneur last week in Hong Kong and he makes pillows yeah everyone needs a pillow and like it's kind of like they're in plain sight and and he's got this better you know he's he's taking on some of the problems in pillows and he's got this better product and it's like that's such a great addressable market pillows anyway no it's it's so interesting the way you speak about it because to you it's so obvious just to thousands it's not but you know this is a great thing about business it's like it's hiding in plain sight you know it really is it's not like you don't like some people like oh you need to like invent something new it's like no just think about something that everyone does you want to mean a huge addressable market and see are there any problems in it and make your thing slightly better if you can take 10 share of 145 billion dollar category yeah you're laughing to the bank so the way you've spoken about it so far um has made it sound kind of easy right we know that's not the case when it comes to building a business so talk us through some of the challenges that you encountered that maybe you didn't expect honestly it's just been no can't hear um yeah yeah no no um what do you mean it's so chill I'm just holding two weeks next week no problems here yeah it's it's it's so relaxing um so you're like daffing the beat blockers stuff before i'm actually 23 no um so yeah i mean look when you say the challenges like are we talking like last hour last 12 hours last 24 hours last week like like it is a like we have constant challenges right and someone once said that you know the only people who don't have problems who are the only people who don't have problems do you know oh let me think about this one because it's going to be some like it's it's dead people right the only people who don't have problems are dead and like therefore you can argue that problems are a sign of life yeah like like having a problem is a sign that you're alive and and it's just part of life and so i think actually in a bizarre way like we just try and like improve the quality of our problems and solve like higher quality problems but like there's always more problems do you know what I mean like that like I think part of being an entrepreneur is just getting like beaten day in day out with problems and learning to cope emotionally and and get better at problem solving I mean problem solving is so key and like being able to pick yourself up and keep going not let like to sit in the like shit too long be like yeah that's shit and life is shit and it's happened but okay this is how we're gonna come over it and get up and go to the next thing quickly because if you sit and dwell for too long like it's time missed out right it's like going yeah you know as well I remember really early on at like you know I'm I've been a voracious reader of business books for a long time like I just I find entrepreneurs fascinating and like in our first like year I remember meeting someone he was like oh don't don't like don't like feel the highs too much and don't feel the lows too much um and at the time I was like what no like I'm doing this because I want to feel the highs I want to feel the lows um i you know i kind of want that that kind of roller coaster but i think as i've been beaten down by by the highs and lows a bit longer i think the way i interpret it now is to to try and think like the way i try and think about it and maybe this is me not not really understanding what he was saying but my interpretation is if you were to go into a and you wouldn't want your doctor to be like overly flustered that your legs facing the wrong direction or something you you need to kind of like maintain a certain uh level-headedness in extreme moments uh both both when things are going well and both when things are going bad in order to be as rational and as effective as possible and so you know if you get caught up too much in your own hype i think you might not be as level-headed in your decision making and your response to situations and likewise you know there have been times where you know i've overly catastrophized you know situations of which there have been several um and then not being able to again respond you know as as effectively like a like an a and e uh doctor and so I yeah that's like a weird answer to your question no it makes sense I mean you mentioned a couple like you said there's been several like catastrophes is there any that you can share along the journey um I can share the ones that I share on podcasts yeah of course but honestly like I don't think anyone really shares like the real ones yeah that would be my like if I'm being totally honest like there's been stuff that's way worse I would never sort of publicly talk about where you feel like oh my goodness like this is existential but then it turns out actually it wasn't existential and you're overly worried about it we've had um you know early on uh a bunch of our products were caught in customs and didn't ship and it was right at the beginning and we were really worried that everyone was going to cancel their orders because it was on pre-orders but we didn't have enough cash to pay them back and so it was do you want to mean because we'd already spent a cash in more stock and then something was like oh my goodness we're gonna go bankrupt before we even started um and then you know uh we got we got a a lawsuit uh which we've never talked about actually uh from someone in the us from this lawyer and we didn't know what it was about and we were like really like super super worried and then it turned out like it was a very i think someone had got like a an email and when they'd unsubscribed and we had a 35 penalty from the state of new jersey or something and it wasn't oh right but but like you know we were really like yeah that's really scary at the time yeah um and then yeah i think you know that there's times where things are harder or they don't go the way you want you know and and that's tough but nothing you know nothing outside of yeah yeah and speaking of your your obviously your toothbrushes siri um in terms of like logistics so your supply chain um in terms of like the internal stuff of siri does it all come from like the same place are you bringing bits all across and then putting into a factory and then it comes out like a toothbrush or like how's all the sourcing done in terms of all the stuff in the toothbrush because it's so you know one of your things and one of your ads that i've seen is that they take an oral b apart and it's just like so much crap in there and i'm like i don't well not crap but like all the stuff that makes it work right and it's like a lot of plastic it's not very sustainable you know it has to go into landfill as we've spoken about whereas you open up surrey not that i would ever chop my story in half if i had to for some reason it would be like a lot more streamlined and i'm better internally yeah so just to clarify we never uh include oral b's in our ads oh maybe it was something else yeah and So like we tend to just get like generic non-name brands.

34:04Sorry, generic non-name brands. Yeah. And so we take generic non-name brands and yeah, might open them up and see what's in there. We're really careful and deliberate with our sourcing, you know, right down to making sure like, you know, the lithium is sourced from the right kind of mines, which, you know, we can identify. And then, you know, ensuring that, you know, we use castor oil in our bristles, which has a very specific supply chain um because it's a material that no other manufacturers i'm as far as i'm aware uses um and so there's certain um material and you know we use cornstarch in in the heads and so there is like a different supply chain from your regular electric tooth thrush supply chain um and we're very intentional about that and always looking to to improve it yeah because it is a it's so sleek so how have you managed to kind of gain all of the benefits with a smaller product and a longer shelf life longer shelf that's my day job talking a longer back through life yeah so i the key thing is but in our research we found out people like i don't use a bluetooth i don't i don't use like the flashing lights the seven different modes and actually by stripping out those things which take up certain size um we're able to like then optimize for things that people do care about um you know we have a pressure sensor um which is actually it's haptic feedback so if you push too hard it'll just stop and actually kind of trains your mind muscle memory to not push too hard which we think is a better um way of having a pressure sensor uh but then we also have really optimized to create a brush that's really powerful but slim you know and that's a bit of a feat of engineering that and we have a patent on our design and then how we kind of put everything together um and that was very much you know our plan because you know we wanted it to be slim for it to be quiet but also powerful so you know we worked actually with Professor Damien Wormsley, who you're probably familiar with, is the co-author of the Cochrane Review, which is the world's leading academic research into the efficacy of electric brushes.

36:05He's former scientific advisor to the British Dental Association for the last 20 years. And so, you know, we knew that it's all very well having a beautiful brush, one that's more sustainable in different elements, whether it's, you know, we're able to recycle our heads and then turn them into new products. But ultimately, you want to brush that cleans your teeth really well, right? And so I think you know we really focus on that performance angle because ultimately that's what's going to drive you know the the 17 ,000 plus five-star reviews that we have absolutely have you ever had a review that's been bad yeah really once in 2020 no um the thing about trust pilot is that you can't filter out negative reviews there's other review providers um where you can just be like I'm just going to show my five-star ones and no one will see your one-star ones trust pilot doesn't have that feature so every review good or bad comes up and actually my favorite api is every single person our team uses slack every single review that comes in comes live into our slack i can show you right now like i'm feeling my pocket vibrating that'll be a consumer leaving a review and so you know we will have negative reviews and you know it's a bit of a mix sometimes i'll be like my order hasn't arrived it'll be like a logistics issue um and some people like oh hey like i don't um you know i don't like this brush compared to my old brush or you know uh and often with those people will first try and explain like oh hey did you charge it for the end of that oh i didn't charge it oh right well do that and they're like oh now i see it's full power or maybe they're using a different technique so some electric brushes you're meant to just hold on your tooth one by one with ours it's like a little bit of movement um more akin to a manual uh brush but like with all the benefits of sonic technology and so yeah and then you know that that's okay like it's like um you know there can be some people for whom it's not the right product and there's lots of other great products out there for them but you know for the vast majority who do love it um yeah that's that's what we do and how do you feel about competition because generally speaking there'll be you know more players entering the market with sustainable toothbrushes going forward seeing the success of yours um how do you feel about yeah all the kind of new entrants into the market love it you know like ultimately the most important thing and like if you think about like you know impact beyond just business it's like if we can improve people's oral health by getting them to brush more regularly for the two minutes twice a day um that means there's less there's visits to a dentist there's less like oral health issues we know oral health linked to a lot of other cardiovascular issues and so i truly feel like you know if there's other manufacturers making great brushes and there are you know like there's other there's other brands who whose product gives a really great clean um that's brilliant you know like and and that's wonderful uh and so yeah we encourage it and then if through you know people seeing suri they're like hey maybe we should use more sustainable materials maybe we should reduce the size of our packaging remove plastic maybe we need to address like this issue around microplastics or recycling like wouldn't that be awesome like what what a great impact to make then that other people are like like doing more sustainable practice so you know for us you know it's a good thing if other players improve oral health and use more sustainable practices i think early on we've learned to like just focus on like doing the best job we can um you know you can't control you know uh what what u.s presidents do you can't control what other brands do but you very much are in control uh within what you can do does that make sense yeah absolutely um and was there a campaign or was there a specific influencer or like someone that like that moved the dial so significantly on your revenue i would say generally no like it truly is like the accumulation of like one percent across every little touch point from the unboxing to you know uh certain meta ads to then more influencers and to to you know reviews like if you type into google best electric toothbrushes the top 10 results all features usually often at number one right which is wild really really wild um and so like you know that's helped and it becomes a bit of a flywheel because then people like oh i saw i saw this person recommend it or my mom told me about it then you look online and then you see the great reviews with the five stars you know and and then you hear your friends doing it and so i think it all creates a flywheel however there was one moment which actually really has been like a standout which was we were invited to go on to a radio 4 show called you and yours and particularly called like the gap finders and that was in i think around may 24 two years ago and i swear every week like if i was to look at my phone right now and look in the last seven days on post checkout surveys like 10 people will reference that show like oh i heard it two years ago on a radio show and it was like midweek but it's just the unbelievable power of you know people listening to the story you know a bit like now um hearing you know the sort of thinking and reasoning behind it and being like oh yeah I've I've got that problem too like oh yeah where does my toothbrush go or um yeah why does the battery die all the time like maybe I'll you know think about buying Siri in the future and and yeah so that that one was I must say like a a real uh peak moment it's funny because you think like traditional radio um isn't as popular as it used to be so the fact that that has been such like had such an impact on your business is quite surprising we've been on multiple tv shows in america and i was like this is you know this is the moment this is it like all right guys everyone get ready you know like everyone's like the whole team is like standing by watching the shopify store you know it airs being like ready ready ready and then nothing and then you know actually like i think it really kind of talks to the power of you know not just appearing on a high volume uh audience but actually you know connecting with the story and the reasoning why absolutely 100 i think the reasoning why is exactly why you've been so successful but but on that same note there's sometimes a line with um like overexposure how would you manage that i think well in my opinion we're so far from overexposure that like that would that would almost be like a quality problem to have in the future i think there's probably you know if you're in a certain demographic you're more likely i.e me because i am totally served your ads but in the best way like i genuinely love your product totally right and for you you might be like well okay i really know about suri right now but if you already have one and you already have one but if you were to go to any city any town in the uk and walk down the street and be like hey what do you think about surrey toothbrushes people are like surrey what like like actually the the the quantity of people that know us as a proportion of like the general population is minute like is tiny our share of power toothbrushes right now in the uk is tiny is it's like negligible um and so it's interesting i think the people who know us really know us but that's a very tiny like sub-segment of of the wider population and and the people in the long run who will want to but like if it gets to the point where you can go anywhere and everyone's like oh yeah i've seen it everywhere then i'll i'll i'll worry well i don't even think i'll worry i'll be like okay job done like let's go to germany like you know what i mean like okay it's like if i'll tell you like um maybe i could phrase the question back do you think oral b worry about their overexposure globally and everyone knowing their brand nah it's not on top of their priority list actually for png oral b has one of the highest awareness of all their products all their brands in the world it's the one that people like recognize the most and you know it's a multi-billion dollar business so you know if we can get to the stage where like everyone is familiar with the brand and know it for you know being a high quality product that delivers on performance design sustainability i think like that would be my happy place probably absolutely and you know those guys are a bit long in the tooth anyway it was time for a challenger for sure um so you mentioned that you sold a business before this did that then give you funds to basically put into making surrey um or okay fine my next question was it um savings or did you have external investment we got external investment yeah so my last company it was a sale but it wasn't like a blockbuster like you know 50 really yeah spend a few years i think what you want to do and um it was you know it was a sale but it wasn't like a life-changing sort of sale um so yeah so we we said like oh no if we're gonna really do this and do it at the scale we want we're gonna raise some money and um how was that process for you uh so look most people in that i speak to like absolutely hate the process of doing it uh I'm I don't know why like I I genuinely I really enjoy the process um and let's be clear like the process is 98 to 99 percent of people rejecting you but fortunately I'd had a good experience of being rejected uh in my in my like uh late teens with uh the various uh girls who I tried to ask out on dates and so like you know it's like it was like oh I'm I know this feeling yeah um but i never give up as well um and so uh actually it sounds a bit weird in this context but but i think like you will go out with me no no but as in you know like i think i actually think there's a lot of analogies between raising investment and and dating and so like i i don't take rejection from uh investors uh or anyone else actually as like a damning indictment of me as a person or or my business do you want me and it's like i relate it i relate so much to after dating um but it's because it is so relatable yeah and it has so many like same qualities to stuff that you do in your life totally and and you know it's it's sort of it's easy when people reject you to be like what's wrong with me what's wrong with my business you can also think like hey it's not for you and that's okay that's exactly how i think i still believe in me i still believe in my business and you know this is why i believe in it this is what i'm going to achieve and this is this is when i'm going to achieve it and you know and like look and just that that level of belief which which we've had from the beginning is like hey if you're the right investor you'll see what we're doing and you'll understand and sure enough we've we found some of those and what's happened is every we've raised a few times but what's normally happens we get rejected by people you know in the first round but in the second round they're like oh you said you were going to do this and you've done all of that and more now what what are you going to do next and we tell them and they're like well i believe you more because you did what you said you were going to do and then they come in people reject us in that round a you know a couple years later hey we're raising um and and i think just you know yeah that's that's been our experience and so it's been full of rejection it's really difficult um you know it can be disheartening if people ask you questions and they don't believe in you but part of me is just like hey like we really believe in this and and we're proving why we believe in it and so yeah i think as long as you can do that and then we're very fortunate to have some incredible investors you know like they're kind of like ones that everyone would want people like jam jar richard reed sits on our board we have v3 who are part of verlinvest obviously salica investments i've got incredible investments across the board um and yeah so i think yeah we're very lucky yeah that's an insane board right um and some like like richard reed is obviously like what a guy to take inspiration from and also like just business learnings it's good when it's great when you've got people on your board that can understand your business as well or can like genuinely be impactful i think it's great if someone's like a very rich family can give you 50 million great but like the added value investors are like so beneficial to the business because they can sit down they can help you they can be like look I did this this is what I do differently or I can I can intro you here right you know I think everyone really brings like different angles and yeah I don't know I don't know if it's just getting older or what but like I think there's so much more to life than your company being successful or being really rich and i don't know a lot of this is actually like the emotional roller coaster like how do you deal with your emotions in hard times in good times how do you you know like how do you take your perspective on different angles on on your business whatever and so i think where we're really lucky is that richard really provides like a very like founder type perspective of like hey i was in your shoes with the same kind of challenges you know and this is how i think about it from not just an investor angle but from this angle then we have some You know, investors who are much more finance driven and they can really give it, you know, the unemotional, pure, like financially, hey, look, this is where we're at.

49:39And then actually family offices, I think, also, you know, can provide really unique perspectives from people who've maybe accumulated wealth over like tens of years or even like hundreds where, you know, they can provide insights and like a long term view of what matters, which can often be around values. and so there's some phenomenal family also I think like the Guinness family is like a really good example where you know it's not you don't sustain success over such a long period of time without having some like strong sort of values and and perspectives on that on on thinking about not just the short term but the long term and so I think we try and actually to be honest in life I always try and learn something from other people because everyone everyone has got like a different angle sure it's so important to listen as well it's such a skill yeah it is and like sometimes you know someone will like sometimes i'll go to talk and i think this is like the worst talk i've ever been to like but then i'll be thinking what can i what can i take from this like how would i do it differently what is it i don't like like how could you know how can i how can i ensure that i never have someone in the audience thinking this as well um and I don't know just switching that mind like what can I learn from this person because ultimately like it's the kind of root of what Suri is all about it's like about listening to people and learning from others um and I think I don't know it just kind of makes life a bit more enjoyable as well absolutely I mean that's like such a good um like view to have of life and everything because I think you know it's you're definitely built similar to how I'm built and how I outlook a lot of things I'm definitely like I can gauge you're a very cup half full kind of individual versus like cup half empty and I'm exactly the same you know I try and look at every scenario like that and obviously like sometimes you're not all you know sunshine and roses and it is shit and it is hard but you know ultimately if you can walk away from stuff being like hey it was didn't go well but I learned this and like make the next thing better yeah um it is a really good like it's a really good quality of an individual to have right but also like I truly believe you know our most like by far our most like precious commodity is time like you know we all only have so much time do you know what I mean like and I genuinely probably not well in my opinion nothing is more important than that and so you know regardless of whether Suri is successful or not um you know it's like can I can I really enjoy the time am I learning am I spending it with people I can learn from am i growing do i get to you know share and enjoy moments with others do i do you want to mean get to lift other people up um and i think you know you can't look at that and spending your time that way and look back on it with any kind of regret you can be like yeah no i i really did grow and learn and and yeah build these relationships i just had a thought actually for people that are listening to the positive don't know who richard reeves is he is one of the founders of innocent smoothies just in case you've landed on this episode and you don't know who I am and what I'm talking about he's an OG founder challenger invented the word challenge brand but also just all-around great guy yeah um 100 so you've mentioned about raising um are you giving equity away at each point or are you trying to like how obviously that's something that founders sometimes want to do but to release cash but also if that's something that maybe you don't want to do you don't want to give like control etc how is that dynamic working for you yeah so when we've raise around uh yeah like we sell equity in in the company um and i think you've got to decide what kind of company you want and what kind of game you want to play i think um kirstie at jam drows actually really i think good in the bc community always like stating like you don't have to raise money raising money is no sign of success there's not like like there is no like award or or really it's not really something to be super like proud of it's not a sign that you're good it's it's just like how you choose to finance and grow your business and i think there are some companies that you could build and sell for you know uh 50 100 million pounds without vc investment and you know make tens of millions of pounds for yourself and like that would be a great business it might not be a vc investable business and so you know a lot of vcs are looking for an outcome of you know in like a couple hundred million or something and you know there's certain businesses which will never be that size because the address will market and they don't need to be that size and so i think i always say to people like i don't think being rejected by vcs is like a sign that you've got a bad business actually it could be the best thing that ever happens to you um but that's the route that that we've gone down and so yeah we've we've sold a portion of equity in the business and what would be one financial lesson you've learned the hard way over the years

54:29the hardest financial lesson i remember like really distinctly feeling was in my first company uh we won some business from a russian client and they were paying us uh via cyprus to the uk and i didn't know at that time you could use um like uh money transfer services that you don't pay like the fee as a percentage of cash and I think they were transferring me maybe half a million or three quarters of a million uh maybe it was like euros into pounds or dollars into pounds or something and I I lost like 35 ,000 pounds on on the fee uh versus had I used like transfer wise or something and I just remember being like like just realizing like two hours after i did it and just being like oh that was a nice commission check for that business that was a very expensive mistake um yeah so that that's one that springs to mind yeah that hurts it's a lot it did yeah that was a lesson that was definitely a lesson um and what do you think people maybe misunderstand about surrey today what do people maybe misunderstand i think we don't probably share enough like how involved we are on a scientific level with dentists um that's something really good point we do loads of we have a dental advisory board with some of the leading figures of of dentistry you know like the former president of the british dental hygienist association um miranda steeples we have um you know, leading dentists, hygienists, policy makers.

56:17You know, it really is like we have this incredible advisory board. We thoroughly test all of our products in like the same clinical research labs, which all the world's leading brands use. You know, I'm working with some of the leading scientists around the world, you know, in Seattle, in Boston, in various places. to make sure the efficacy of our product is as good as possible and so I think you know probably that's something that we really need to work on I think a lot of people see like the beautiful design the sustainability the great features but all of it's really underpinned by this you know academic and scientific approach I think that's a really good point because it just gives you guys more like credentials ultimately to say like we know what we're doing like we've got these people on board they are they're like they're the expertise of this entire thing like they know and they have the respect and we literally have like the clinical data you know so i think it's funny because i think we hadn't really appreciated because we didn't probably talk about it enough that some people like oh hey like but you guys don't have this like yeah we do yeah or you don't do you don't work with like these people like yeah no no we literally do do it um so yeah so actually we we just uploaded to our website a couple of maybe a week or two ago like our dental advisory board and instantly we've seen like an impact on conversion um so it just kind of goes to show like that's a big opportunity i think and what has surprised you most about the journey to date with suri that's a great question what surprised me most

58:05that's a great question i don't know like what i can think of like some like flippant answers but like genuinely what surprised me the most i think

58:20it's not i don't know is this entirely true like Like, I think in my first company, I was a bit younger. And my ego particularly was tied to the success of that company and to the ultimate financial success of that company. And it felt important to me that the company was successful because then I was successful. Whereas I think what surprised me with this one is almost like letting go of that to an extent. I mean, it's easy to say when things are going well, maybe if it was going terribly, I wouldn't say this. Do you know what I mean? And then maybe I would really, it would really suffer. But I do think maybe having kids is sort of, my kids just do not care.

59:08Leo and Elsie do not care at all whether Sari is successful or not successful, you know. Your dad. Yeah. And it's like, you know, are you going to come and do some coloring in? Are you going to play football? You know, and I think it's just so, like, humbling, like, immediately that, like, that, you know. You don't need to, like, almost prove yourself to them either. Totally, yeah. So I think that sort of has, like, almost, like, you know, in some way perhaps freed me a little bit from, like, the pressure I put on myself previously. And then, like, how it feels when things are going wrong because then it's, like, I'm going wrong.

59:47uh whereas without that kind of um way of thinking as much then it kind of you know you can take more risk you can you can handle situations a bit better um but again maybe this is like survivor bias and like if it wasn't going well i'd actually be like in a pit somewhere so my next question if it all went tomorrow yeah everything gone yeah what would you be most proud of i think just taking the chance like having a go try my best and would you do it again 100 like like like would i maybe do something differently but like the first like fun fundamentally like you know i truly do believe like how you spend your time is is the most precious thing you know there's founders who sell their companies and they buy bentleys they buy watches and jewelry or whatever but they find pretty quickly like actually they don't necessarily love it and i've seen i've i've you know i love your podcast i love i love watching podcasts about other entrepreneurs i've seen enough of them to know that like a lot of them are like sell their company make lots of money and like oh actually i really loved spending my time doing doing this thing you know what i to me that really talks to like how do you get the most enjoyment out of your time if if time is the most precious commodity like really want to optimize to like enjoy and and spend your time doing the things that you enjoy doing that grow you and stretch you and aren't necessarily easy and so yeah i think i i love like having a go i like being on the pitch do you know what i mean and i so totally agree and just and just trying my best and learning and growing as i go along And so I think if Sari were to stop, I would want to do something else which enabled me to kind of be in the game.

1:01:47And yeah, let's see. 100%. So some questions to close the interview. Something you worried about that didn't matter.

1:02:03Something I worried about that didn't matter.

1:02:11i mean that's sort of everything probably like uh what did we worry about we worried about launching new colors with that with that work we worried about launching in boots with that work most recently we launched in target pretty worried like is that going to work and then the last few weeks has been growing 50 60 80 100 percent week on week um do you have teams out in all these places now all based in the uk still all based in the uk still um but we probably need to start building out you know the us is growing really quickly um so yeah i think you know i think i kind of probably do things by worrying like oh what what's this what of that and like that sort of worrying uh helps us to like plan a bit better the best advice i've ever got like my whole business philosophy is i swear i don't know if i read i think i might have read it in like a richard branson biography when i was like 17 or 18 or something but there's this philosophy i think warren buffett talks about it lots of people talk about it in different ways but it's like i guess i guess the idea is like to put the odds in your favor like in a casino almost but like if you can minimize your downside and maximize your upside over time like you're putting yourself in the best position to win.

1:03:25So, you know, I always look at, in fact, I was on a call before I came here, like how can we minimize the potential downside of this upcoming launch such that the worst case scenario isn't really that bad. But if it does work, it could like 10X our company because those kinds of bets have like a asymmetric return. I don't know if that's actually the right word, but I think that's roughly it. But like, you know, you're kind of like putting yourself in this really kind of like low risk environment where you can you can really disproportionately win and so I think I use worrying as my way to like minimize the downside and you're no star of the business like what what is what is your I feel like you're one of those people they're always going to strive for better so this is a hard probably question for you but like what is end goal and goal is that we have a like we basically take the foundations of surrey which is you know a super high mps score if we can um continue to build great products that deliver an unbelievable performance with a beautiful and functional design based on true consumer insight which is you know more sustainable than its practices and we can scale that um i i think the opportunity is global I think this could be a globally loved brand that helps to improve oral health and and is done in a more sustainable way such that you know it doesn't matter who you are where you are that you you can actually have all the benefits that our current customers receive and so that's that's my my belief is that it can truly be that kind of scale I'm so excited to see you guys just exponentially grow like it is so exciting I'm yeah I'm gonna follow your journey I'm gonna buy all your products that come out and really like I'm a massive advocate for Suri so thank you so much Mark for coming on the pod it's been yeah it's been such an insane episode and yeah massive congrats to how like quickly you've grown in such a short amount of time testament to your character and team of course thank you so much for having me on and for what you do I think like like you are one of those rare people has got this unbelievable energy and I can totally see why your podcast is a success and i'm excited to see what you do in the presenting beyond beyond this as well yes you heard it here first exactly that's where we're going that's the goal um thank you so much cheers

1:06:08Thank you.