The Swedish Focus Expert: How to 10x Your Brand Growth in 12 Months - Henrik Grim, Mimo

33:58But you should also be mindful of and know what data you should care about and not. So you can sort of act accordingly. And that's the art piece, I think. Yeah. It's almost like, you know, Little Moon's the mochi ice cream. Yeah. It's like if you'd looked at the data at that pre them going live and becoming massive. Right. The data would probably say, oh, you know, just go into a format that's like a standard ice cream and do like a Japanese ice cream with matcha. Like that's I think that's a darling example of the consumer doesn't know. I mean, it's the consumer doesn't know what they don't know, whatever.

34:29Exactly. It's almost the Henry Ford thing, which is like if people didn't know they needed the cast, they wanted a faster horse. Right. You know, I love. Exactly. Interesting. what were the lessons you took from uh spotify or like working because that's 2013 when that was getting going exactly so they were really taking off for in in the u.s then so i was in i was in new york they sort of just launched in the u.s i think there's a few things um that i learned from spotify i do think um um so i think first of all they had a really impressive way of building a culture around the company. And I've probably never been in a company that was as mission driven and as sort of gelled together by that strong mission.

35:16And I thought, I think it sort of came from the founders just being totally obsessed with music themselves and wanting for real to sort of solve the pains of the music industry. And so I think that was really impressive for me to see at a young age, how you at that scale already then they were sort of, I think, probably 1 ,500 people or 1 ,000 people. But it was so strong in terms of what everyone sort of felt and wanted and lived the sort of Spotify values and wanting to be part of that sort of momentum that was happening. So I think that was really impressive. I think the second thing was actually on the topic of data.

35:52I think already back then, Spotify was incredibly data-driven in how they were running their business and very sort of hypothesis-led in everything that they did. So So there was always this very concrete, thoughtful planning on what we were doing and why, led by hypotheses. So essentially trying to figure out there's a thousand things that they could be doing. They could be adding a new version of Spotify in your car. They could be adding audio books. They could be doubling down on video, which they did and then pulled back on a little bit. and all of these different bets opportunities that they had they were always very sort of hypothesis led and how they thought about those that was essentially that sort of came to me in my role and it was very sort of is there a specific example of that one specific example was looking so i was part of the team was trying to drive free to premium conversion so essentially trying to get more people to pay for spotify they still have a free spotify now uh i think they do So yeah.

36:59Really? And then there's just a shitload of ads on them. I actually don't know what the experience is like, because I've been paying since 2008. Same here. So I don't really know. But back at that time, there's a bunch of different things that you can test to try to get people to pay more. Yeah. And the methodology that I learned there was map out all the different potential tests we could be doing through brainstorming, But then rank them all by you guessing with data driven sort of thinking. Try to guess what opportunities have the biggest potential to have real impact. And you do that through math.

37:41So you sort of break that down into, let's say, we think into a hypothesis. So to get more people, one hypothesis could be to get more people to pay for Spotify. We want them to have a bigger pay button. on the subscription page. If we make that button this big, we think that's gonna make people pay to a greater extent, right? They can't really miss the button, right? That's one hypothesis. It's a fucking stupid hypothesis, but it's still there. And what you do is you break that down then, if we do, what's the maximum impact we can have on this metric and how does that impact the conversion rate?

38:17Actually, this is a pretty shit example, so let's pull this out. Yeah. But... No, no, I get exactly what you're saying. What they're doing is essentially, and what we're doing within MIMO as well, like there's a shit ton of opportunities we could be having. And what we're trying to do is to wait, sort of to prioritize across our endless of opportunities to go after. We use an approach where we try to guess which opportunities have the biggest impacts through an hypothesis. And then we essentially break these hypotheses down into assumptions and we test each assumption leading up to that hypothesis.

38:52It's a little bit theoretical. Yeah, no, no, basically. a lot of these questions are selfishly right yeah so with this we do we've got the the podcast in like terms of like verticals or revenue streams like yes podcast sponsorship um production company so we actually produce other people's podcasts right so we've got that up and running we've got like a we've got hungry productions right um um we've got this thing called house of creativity which is like when we go into brands and essentially essentially jolt or inject like how to think creatively of being into brands again like that's a small fire that's starting um and and so then we've got these sort of these and then actually i suppose within that within the sort of the the brand partnerships it's like oh sorry sorry the other thing is events so we do like in-person events supper clubs we're trying to do this big festival next year with founders where we take, it's almost like, I want to really build the brand experientially.

39:52Almost like you're a thousand true fans. Right. Kevin Kelly, right? Yes. Pretty more like you're 50 diehard fans, you know? But I'm like, fuck me, I've got a lot on my plate. Yes. And I suppose, I think a lot of founders that I speak to, brands, it's the same thing. It's like, do I go for Sainsbury's? Or there's this, Selfridges want to do this sick activation with my brand. Yes. Which one do I like? When you've got a panoply and a buffet of wonderfully delicious opportunities, and I really believe that distractions masquerade as opportunities. I suppose the art is trying to decipher it. How do you figure that out?

40:31What have you learned about that from either Spotify and or with Mimo? I think what they were really good at teaching me earlier was, first of all, it sort of came down to for each of your opportunities, doing sort of two things. One, trying to put a value on it. Like if things... Money value. Exactly. If this thing happens, what is it worth? That's one exercise. And the second thing to do was essentially to take that opportunity, break it down into its component parts. So for you to run a successful event, what are the things that needs to happen for that event to be really successful? And then you look at each of those components and try to judge how likely am I to succeed?

41:14with this, right? That gives you a broader picture of the sort of probability for you to reach your end goal, which is reaching the target value. What would be some of those things? For you, it might be, you know, I want to make sure that this is an event that makes X amount of revenue and yields this much reach. I need to have 50 people or 100 people with a certain caliber, right? For those to come, the second component is I need one or two or three really great speakers that has enough reach to be able to attract people. And then thirdly, I need to be able to produce an agenda and a story that's enticing to enough people to actually come.

41:55And logistically, it all needs to make sense. And so for those four things, those are the four things that sort of need to work out for your event to be successful. Now, for each of those, once you've actually gone through and sort of started thinking about each component, it's a lot easier for you to judge what the probability is for that event to be successful than sort of some of the other opportunities you might have. And then this is obviously a sort of pretty simplistic example, but the same holds then for what Mimo is doing. And when we're looking at what next products to build, for example, we're trying to judge what is the size of the opportunity, like who would care and how much would they care and how much money and usage could we expect.

42:40for that sort of to come true what are the things that we need to believe well first of all we need to believe that we can build a product that solves these pain points second of all we need to be able to generate this type of demand through a certain distribution motion or whatever it might be and by breaking each problem down into its components it's a lot easier to judge and wait where you should be spending your time and the final piece is if you got 10 you probably need to kick out you know seven or eight of them and do one to three yeah yeah yeah yeah i think focus is just well what steve job says focus is saying no or focus is no essentially exactly it's so hard exactly so yeah and actually some i think the hardest bit is sometimes say you've got something that's doing really well like say uh you know your main product which is probably you know the cash loaning sure but you know that's doing really really well and but you know the journey i think this is why it's hard you know the journey that that started small so actually you often have a big fire then you have these smaller little fires yes and you're i think the hardest bit has been like okay well could this become big yeah you know because you've been on that journey of like it being small to big and it's i think that's why it's so complicated you know it's not like you're thinking oh the 80 20 rule the 80 20 rule is good right now but what it doesn't take into account is actually context yeah and and past tense i.e the 80 20 rule of like you're looking at the thing at the projects right now but this one's been going for five years and this one's been going for three months yeah they're not you're comparing oranges to ferraris yes it's not the same thing exactly i think that's why it's such a hard um and complex task yes and you don't want to drop things and it's yeah it's interesting it is and i think it's sort of it It relates a lot, I think, to how, I mean, first of all, that's the opportunity for small companies in that large companies have gone all in on their big thing and they're too busy running the big thing that they're missing the small piece, right?

44:43So I think that's the opportunity for all the companies that we're working with that are sort of coming into a new category where the big players haven't gotten there yet because the big players are busy and they're busy running their 80%, right? And so they haven't had the time to focus on the remaining stuff. But I think obviously it comes down to resourcing. And I think the one, like if you're looking at, again, a sort of tech parallel, I think Revolut is a really interesting example where they've been able to sort of within the Revolut ecosystem sort of create these mini startups that are launching new products.

45:17I don't know much about Revolut. So for context, I know it's a bank. It's a bank. What do they go back a couple of steps or what do they do differently? And then in these little mini sort of startups that are blossoming within the ecosystem. So I think what they're able to do is essentially, I think it's probably a slightly less relevant sort of parallel. But I think what they've been able to do, like Revolut is a bank. They've been able to ship and sort of build a bank with a very broad set of functionality. They started with consumers sending sort of money internationally. and now they've got a full business bank.

45:51They've been expanding really quickly. Now, why it matters for us, I think, is sort of two things. One is they've been really good at isolating focus. And essentially, instead of having you run both the podcast as well as in parallel try to run the event and then three other things, you get diluted focus. You might lose, drop the first thing. they've been able to leverage their resources to essentially scale you and invest a new person or new people to run the next thing so that's one thing obviously distributing your focus by adding more resource yeah but i think the other cool thing that i think we're seeing brands that are succeeding what they're doing really well is also align like the investments that they're making into the aligned investments that they're making with the expected time of return on that investment.

46:56This is a bit of a sort of theoretical thing, but we got lots of companies that we're working with that are struggling to think through, you know, when do I raise more capital from angels? When do I use, you know, debt capital to fund certain parts of my business? And I think there's this interesting frame of mind that I think maybe one can have with sort of prioritization in general, which is, you know, I need to find resources and invest resources that align with how quickly I'm going to get a return. And so for many of the brands that we're working with, they might have sort of an up and running business that's humming nicely and they're using sort of debt funding to fund their day to day operations.

47:41But then they have this new shiny opportunity out to the right where they want to sort of launch in the US. Right. I want to find I want to find new resources to launch into Walmart. And it's a huge opportunity. It's going to cost us lots of money. You got this sort of 80-20 prioritization thing challenge. How do I balance running my core business here in the UK while trying to figure that thing out? And what we're sort of discussing with some of them when it comes to cash flow management is how do you make sure that you're taking sort of cash and investing the type of cash and resources you have and aligning the timeline of that cash with the expected return?

48:25So concretely, when you're running your business day to day, you fund that with something that's sort of relatively short term and align it to what your business needs short term today to just keep running your business. And then when it comes to U.S. expansion, you're going to need more patient capital and resources. You're going to need equity investments from angels that are going to say, OK, cool, we're going to need five million to launch our brand into the U.S. And it's going to take us probably three years before we can even see some of that return because there's going to be a long trough of investment.

49:01And you need that then patience from those funders to understand and align with you on that plan. And I think sort of there's this parallel on how you balance both sort of where you spend your resource, but also what you expect in terms of payoff across different initiatives. And also what I love about that is the timing, the time of the payoff. Exactly. Because it's like, for example, again, and I'm asking this selfishly because I think it will help others as well. But it's like this house of creativity thing, right? It's like we've just started that, right? And I literally had a call with James, the guy I'm setting it up with today.

49:39He's like, yeah, we've got someone, we've basically got our first client done. We want to get it set up. Like right now, from a revenue perspective, that's kind of small comparatively to say the main, keeping the main thing, the main thing. but it's like, well, hang on, I've been doing the podcast for five years now. Of course, that's going to be bigger. Well, actually that, you know, once if you can actually productize that. So it's like, you know what that is. Obviously it's case by case per client, but there's actually some sort of systemization there. And actually you could probably rinse and repeat that.

50:07You could maybe bring someone in who's really good and actually scale that. So it's kind of not, nothing's passive. Right. I think the point I suppose we're both digging into is there's priorities there's also having the sort of prudence and gumption to be able to look into the future and be like this may be spool now but it could be big later exactly yeah exactly interesting and i think one way of enabling yourself to do that right just to to invest into the new thing yeah is to put a structure that's repeatable on your long-term thing that's already working yes so that's yes that's one thing that i mean many of the brands that we're working with, they realize that, okay, cool, if I'm using, you know, Memo to fund my regular working capital just to fund my regular business, it's going to mean that I'm having, you know, two, three, four, five X more in the bank every month.

50:58Some of that money I'm going to take. And instead of sort of just holding that in working capital and inventory, I'm going to take some of that money to invest into a new country expansion or, you know, a new product or whatever it might be. And so I think it's sort of being smart about then setting yourself up on the thing that works. How do you set that up to pull as little resources from you as possible, both obviously financial, but also time, such that you can allocate that to something else. And I think that's one thing that we're sort of, we're trying to educate or sort of talk to founders about and hey, don't use, you know, your dearly beloved equity where you've sort of sold big chunks of your company, don't use that to have products sitting in inventory.

51:45Because products sitting in inventory, you're going to get paid, you know, two months from now. So use something shorter term than your equity and then take the equity and do something more exciting. Something that has a bigger upside up potential. I don't know where I read this, but I think it's like cash and money's energy. And I think like if you boil it right, step back. And it's actually what we're saying in terms of prioritization is where you're spending money or where you're getting money is where you're putting your energy. There's a dance between those two things. Exactly. And I think it's fascinating.

52:16I'm obsessed with Spotify. I'm an avid user, right? Yeah, super. And actually, I suppose it's, I fucking know Daniel Ek a lot. What he's done for podcasting is the way, what they've done in terms of going after Apple is fascinating from our perspective. and you've got to move quick but then also the way they're sort of finding their feet against youtube is is fascinating what what underrated lessons do you take from your time there not from from being at spotify like underrated it's a good question if you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in d2c but you're struggling to crack retail then you've got to listen to this maybe you've got an ocado listing maybe you've got a whole foods listing maybe you're absolutely killing it in selfridges maybe absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your indies but my friends making the leap crossing el chasum crossing el rubicon to grocery retail is not easy it's the champions league of fmcg it's super hard it means playing at a higher level and that's where some new amazing brands sadly stumble look retailers want stories backed by data not dreams and a pretty pitch deck and let's be real supermarkets are not just going to magically make a space for you and your little brand.

53:31They need data. Something's got to go for you to get in, for you to get on shelf. And that is why I've got to tell you about Northstar. They are the team that's helping purpose-led FMCG brands go from gut instinct dreams to unstoppable pitch decks that actually unlock retailers. Northstar are not like another data company that force feed you data like Fuagua that act like a NASA space mission. It's super, super simple to use. Their team are amazing and they actually get the challenger mindset north star are your shortcut to smarter decisions stronger pitches and investor confidence all built specifically for challenger brands like yours you don't need a massive sales team you need north star link in the show notes click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with north star highly highly recommend that and thank me later.

54:21So one thing that I did take away that also goes a little bit back to our arts versus data discussion is so a little bit of background. So I was on this growth team trying to get more people to move from free to paid Spotify. Spotify at the time was growing immensely quick Like as a sort of digital consumer business, there's a shit ton of data. And at the time, I was working with this new cool thing called Big Data, which now sort of evolved into AI. Yeah, because that was when I was at uni. So I was at uni 2013, 2016. That was this whole big data was being sort of force fed down your throat. Was that just the...

55:08That was probably by then. The precursor to AI? Yeah, sort of. And I think the learning that I'm trying to get to is we crunched a shit ton of data to try to understand how people use the product and how different behaviors could essentially infer them to pay to a greater extent. And we spent months looking at lots of data. And in the end, my key conclusion in learning was that we could sort of guessed lots of the things that we found out on day one. Even if we looked at so much data, done fancy analysis, we've gone through customer interviews and so on. But a lot of it came down to a realization that more data is not always giving you more information.

56:00It's creating more noise. And what you need is actually sometimes less data. You need the right data, not more data. And so that was, I think, one of the core learnings that I had there, that more data is not always great. You want less data, but you want the most important data. Nassim Taleb's got a wonderful quote about that, when there's too much data. And he says, do you know who he is? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, he's a love. We'll get on. Maybe we'll get on to the barbell strategy. He basically, like, he says, if you're at a road crossing and you're looking at what colour of clothes everyone's wearing, you'll miss the lorry that's coming past you.

56:41Do you know what I mean? It's like you can get so bogged down in the minutia of data that you don't actually step back and see the bigger picture, which is fascinating. So what have you picked up from Nassim Taleb and how have you applied that to your business? Because he's got a myriad of wonderful books. Yeah. I think anti-fragile. I've just reread Fooled by Randomness. Like, I just love the way he thinks. Yeah. What have you picked up from him? Look, I think I can't say I'm a Nassim Taleb sort of know-it-all, but I have sort of read some of his stuff on, you know, Black Swans and sort of outlier events.

57:18I do think it's probably also having sort of been, you know, as a VC, I met thousands of companies every year. I said no to thousands of companies every year, not investing in them and probably said yes to a handful at max. Now, I think some of the parallels to the sort of black swan sort of theory, I think sometimes gives me a little bit of sort of I sort of look at business building a little bit in that sort of with the lens of black swans. is that you don't necessarily always know and you can't always predict sort of how things are going to play out in your particular business and whether you're going to be the one that sort of ramps up really quickly and explodes and sort of does really well or if you're going to be the one that sort of tapers off.

58:09Like, are you going to be the Black Swan business that does really well? To a great extent, you don't necessarily know. And to some extent, maybe you can't even control it. Like for many large companies, there's always this element of luck. Yeah. And I think if there's anything, I'd probably say that having, you know, spend time as a VC, having met thousands of amazing founders that are, you know, pushing so hard every day to build beautiful businesses, but still not making it or not being the right fit for our investment. I think the sort of black swan idea of you not necessarily being in control has almost given me a little bit of inner peace when it comes to building a business and just being respectful for the process in that you don't necessarily know exactly what's going to happen.

58:55You can't control everything. Like there's always an element of luck in any business. And so as long as you sort of keep chugging away on whatever you can do, then you'll be fine. and maybe you'll get the black swan event for yourself. Yeah. But, and I'm thinking about black swan mostly as positives. Yeah, so I think black swan's negative, white swan's positive. White swan, fair enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I sort of frame it. But it's interesting because it's like, again, one of his big things is barbell strategy, which is holding two opposing things at once. Right. That makes you anti-fragile, right?

59:28Yes. So like, for example, um like in the the way he describes it is investing right so it's like have have an um a big chunk of your proportion in in low risk bonds that are just going to keep taking away with some high risk stuff yeah those two opposing tensions make you anti-fragile it's the barbell strategy yeah and i think what you're saying there mate i completely agree it's like there's his his whole thing is probabilistic thinking, right? Yeah. Versus deterministic. And I think that's a good barbell strategy. It's like be deterministic, but this is where we're going. Yep. This is how Spotify is going to get built.

1:00:06This is the vision. But then actually be pretty loose, fluid in the sense that something's going to go your way and a lot's going to go not your way. Exactly. But I think where people get bogged down is you're one or the other. Yeah. It's interesting. And I think it relates a lot to many other brands we're working with in sort of how they minimize risk for themselves. I think one of the core, when we're judging whether to offer funding, for example, to a brand, one of the core things we're looking at is sort of revenue concentration, right? I think we've sort of seen - What do you mean by revenue concentration?

1:00:36So revenue concentration would essentially think about it in terms of how distributed your source of revenue is. If you're a brand that's just coming out, that's selling 95 % of your revenue to one wholesaler, one grocer, that's a lot higher risk for us and for you than if you sit with 10, 15, 20 relatively easily sort of evenly distributed wholesalers and maybe a little bit of on-trade and off-trade you distribute risk and I think we've seen some you know especially recently you know some brands that have sort of gone really deep all-in with one particular sort of partner customer and then for different reasons, maybe there's a bit of a black swan, they get pulled out.

1:01:23And then obviously having all your eggs in that basket can put you in a pretty tough spot. So again, that sort of probabilistic thinking of, hey, how do I minimize my risk by making sure that I try to not only go really deep with one, but hopefully spread my risks a little bit, really helped me sort of maximize my opportunities, right? Obviously, it's an easy sort of thing to say, but I'd really, it's so clear for some of the ones that we've seen gone through a tough time recently has been that sort of high concentration towards one end of the barbell if you may you essentially have all your eggs on one side of the barbell yeah which can be really high opportunity in terms of growth and size right you're signing this one big grocer and maybe that could be the one that takes you to the stars but if it doesn't happen you're fucked and that's yeah and also and also I think it's the, the, the, what you, the, the being able to, if you're, there's what I love is like seeing business from a thousand feet and 10 ,000 feet from a thousand feet.

1:02:30You may look and think, right, if we go into, into Tesco's, right. We are going to, for us, we've got to just say yes to that and say no to everything else. Yes. That makes sense from a thousand feet. Yes. From 10 ,000 feet. You don't know what, and this is where Taleb's probabilistic thinking comes in. you don't know that tesco may have a faltering system with their uh have a black swan event where this happened to mns recently all their fucking things went down all the right checkers right you don't know what's coming exactly the ceo may do something nefarious and get caught i don't know shagging someone for example like you don't know what's going to happen right so it's like there's and i think that's another tension if i look in your business from close up that's zoomed out yeah and i think it's that that and again i suppose what everyone's trying to do is have some sort of and i think it's a human thing of like some sort of we grapple with nature of course and ultimately what i what i like i study a lot of stoicism i like stoic thinking and until i till teller basie said it's all all um all stoicism is is because people are so scared of randomness right when you actually put it like that you know that whole marcus reallius like focus of what's in your control it's human's desire that we don't like randomness but randomness is coming right um mate it's absolutely fascinating what are some of the sort of big ideas you've studied from say tech or from books or from mentors that you've implemented in your business that have really like had a profound effect on your growth?

1:04:07And this could be personal. This could be with Mimo. What are some of those big ideas you've picked up? I think they're relatively, I mean, I have a few sort of truths that I hold pretty highly. I'm not sure they're that revolutionary, but I think the first one is like, again, And I think it comes down to sort of that understanding of customer love and customer need and what it is. And I think especially like in a pretty digital world, like we're a digital company largely, I think it's totally underrated how much value you get from sitting down next to your customer, looking them in the eye and understanding them and their business.

1:04:46And I think that's way underrated. And I think it's sort of just one of these things that we're trying to do a lot of just to make sure that we stay very close to our customer to understand what problems we can actually solve for them. Now, it's not particularly revolutionary, but I do think that many people forget nowadays how important it is to actually meet people in person and hear people, see people, how they react. And so I think that's one thing that we hold pretty highly. I think another thing is sort of being part of and building teams that are incredibly competitive. Personally, I think that's one of the most exciting things of being in a small company and sort of trying to build a culture and a team where people really want to grow not only the business, but also themselves.

1:05:46and sort of creating an environment where you, through sort of structured feedback and sort of a lot of drive, can get people to do a lot more than what they thought. I actually think that's one of the coolest things of being in a small company, seeing how people can really grow in a short period of time. So that's one of the things that I am really, really excited about. I think apart from that, you know, it sort of relates to the third one, but giving people, and this is also like very much like a leadership thing, giving people a lot more ownership than they think that they can sort of take on is an amazing way to scale your business.

1:06:30And then I think it's sort of, there's this sort of, I don't know if you, in sort of tech circles there's this sort of idea of founder mode oh my god that's paul graham yeah it's paul graham i was gonna literally do that was i literally was gonna talk to you about that essay yeah i love that essay we'll get on to that but yeah and i think there's a lot of truth to that in that sort of you as a business owner you care a lot about your business um but i think the most powerful thing is if you're able to get more people in a company to buy into that same mentality and not only limiting that to founders.

1:07:08So I think that is sort of a third aspect that I believe matters and that I sort of try to hold on to. Those are a few examples. Let's dive deeper into some of those. I like the competitiveness one. I think there's baked into competitiveness can be neuroticism. which is dangerous because you look at your competition you become your competition if you look at categories in food and drink right i mean look at protein parts yeah i mean look at fucking drinks now they've all look at your competition you become your competition i think rivalry is good there's a nuance rivalry pushes you forward but you still stay true to your core yeah how do you manage that tension of like neuroticism not drooling and folding and slowly becoming neuroticism.

1:08:02Yeah. I think about competition probably more in the sense of sort of speed and urgency of execution. So like if you want to get to a target, you need to make sure you're running in the right direction, right? You need to set the direction of where you're going, and then you need to run as quickly as you can in that direction. Those are the two components of getting to a target. Now, I think on the first one, setting your direction, you need to make up your own mind. You can't look at competition to set the direction of where you are running. So you can't set the direction in terms of your product or the offering that you're coming to market with based on competition.

1:08:40I think that's the wrong starting point. However, when it comes to the second dimension of getting to a goal, which is speed of execution or speed of running in that direction, that's where I think it's more helpful. That's where I think you can not necessarily look at a competitor, but sort of be competitive with yourself. Like to me, I used to do, I've been competitive my whole life, used to do competitive sailing on pretty high level. And I think if I'm looking at sort of running a business today, to me, yes, I really do believe that we can help our customers a lot. I do believe that there's an opportunity for us to create value for customers.

1:09:18Frankly, personally, I'm also very driven by the competitive aspect of trying to scale a business. I think that's a fun challenge. And I think sort of trying to build a business is like trying to play in the Premier League in football. So I think it's like, I think on the first aspect of direction, I don't think you should consider competition too much. On the second aspect, I think you should, but you should probably anchor it in competition internally rather than against something external. Does that make sense? mate that's there's that's that's such a gorgeous answer because there's there is what i love going along with these conversations it allows you to get into the into the sort of the weeds of nuance because i think what you said there's perfect it's like don't let the competition set where you're going one to embrace competition because competition makes you better yeah like you know surviving of the fittest but putting this back to nature we need competition like all this shit around us yeah was built because of competition exactly that's part of our nature let's not deny that but then also using it as an inside job not an outside distraction yeah i think that's the hardest part how do you get your team to on that inside outside where that where the center of gravity of competitiveness is coming from yeah how do you how do you anchor that internally so we're actually so we're actually right now sort of So we're just passing 30 people in the company.

1:10:44We're starting to become a little bit bigger. We're actually introducing this new performance management sort of framework across the full company. So on a quarterly basis, we're essentially scanning and scoring and assessing everyone in the company. And we're doing it across three different components. One is to what extent people act in line with our values. That's the first thing. The second thing is to what extent they sort of deliver on their tasks in the business on a day to day. Yeah. And then thirdly, whether they have certain skills that's required for their role. So that's very role specific.

1:11:22Now, the way we think about sort of encouraging competition, if you may, or competitive behavior is being very, very clear on each of these components what to expect from different people in their particular role. And in particular, being very clear on what's expected from them today, but also what the opportunity is in terms of growth to get to the next level. And essentially being extremely clear on, hey, if you are competitive and you want to win in the sense of getting to the next stage of your career or getting to the next stage of having an impact on a business, then these are the things that we expect you to reach.

1:12:07And so by being very clear on the framework on saying these are the things that you need to do to get to the next level if you're competitive, it's all laid out here. By doing that on a quarterly basis, we're helping people understand what it means to be competitive within the context of Memo. because you can be competitive in lots of different ways, but it's not necessarily, you know, we sort of try to funnel that in the right direction towards what is most beneficial for the company. Yeah, you can have somebody who doesn't really care about their job, but you put them on a five-a-side court or a paddle court.

1:12:42Exactly. And it's like a different beast emerges. Exactly. So I think by being very, very clear on sort of, this is how we think about performance, and this is your opportunity to take this next step in terms of performance and impact towards the company, By making that more clear, it's a lot easier then for someone who is competitive and is ambitious to say, okay, cool. I know what to do now to get to the next level, which is usually the sort of hardest piece in business or in any sort of non-sport. The nice thing about sports is that everything's sort of framed. There's clear rules. There's clear goals.

1:13:17But in many businesses, you don't necessarily have that in the same way. You get to work. You do your thing. maybe someone once a year tells you whether you're doing a good job or not but it's hard to relate to on a day-to-day and so we're trying to just make it a little bit more concrete with a more sort of clear framework around what performance actually is yeah so i love that so so the so you said the sort of three principles were customer customer obsessiveness um the competitiveness and what was the third one again the the aspect of essentially allowing so is this this relation to founder mode and giving people more ownership than they think they can take right okay go go into that because that's uh there's a lot to that there is a lot to that i think the main aspect here and i think what's been the most exciting for me working in these early stage companies and small companies is the ability to see oftentimes young people grow a lot in a short period of time, take on more responsibility, realize that they can take on more responsibility and sort of grow and come taller into the office on a day-by-day basis.

1:14:33I think that's one of the coolest things, what can happen in a sort of young, fast-moving company. The best way to do that is take someone that's ambitious, that has raw talent, raw skill in some way, and then see if they sink or swim almost. Dropping them in on the deep end, helping them obviously to sort of realize what tools they have to swim, but in particular, giving more responsibility than they probably thought that they could take on and then coaching them through that journey. I think that's an incredibly exciting path. I'm a sort of big sucker for personal development myself. And I think it's a really cool part of building a company.

1:15:17And I think it relates a little bit to founder mode in that sort of founder mode, I think, is almost too one-sided in that sort of the way Paul Graham talks about founder mode. I think that's great. And I think you do see a lot of that. Just detail that for listeners. Because it's an essay by Paul Graham. Paul Graham, Y Combinator. I think he's based in Cambridge. American guy. They founded a myriad, did Airbnb, Dropbox. I mean, wherever he touched, it turns to fucking gold, quite literally. But Wright is an incredible, used to be a painter, incredible essayist, almost Wright, it's almost like the Hemingway of writing about tech.

1:15:58Right. Just there's no fat to his words, sorry, to his prose. But he's got this essay called Founders Mode, which was based on a talk by Brian Chesky, I think it is. and he's basically and i i'd love to get your take on this right because what he's essentially saying is in the the the discourse in universities is that we're taught and i went to business school we're taught very management speak how to be a manager you know how to manage or like we're taught entrepreneurships by people who've never actually been an entrepreneur so there's no discourse for founder mode yeah the only learning you can really get is either through experience mentors and arguably biographies autobiographies right um and i think what he's trying to say is as you get bigger and bigger the founder almost gets ousted from the business because all these managers come in and they're like okay this is how we run the business now yes and he's essentially saying that with that can happen but then the business loses its magic right and the founder mode is is what he's trying to say is we need we need a almost i don't know what would you say the rallying cry is from that essay?

1:17:07Like, is it, he doesn't really give a solution. I think that's kind of the point of the essay, isn't it? It's like, we don't know what the answer is to this, but hopefully there's more discourse on founder mode further down the line. Yeah, indeed. I think my sort of synthesis would be that he's claiming that there's this old world of running a company where, you know, as a founder and as a leader, the idea is that you hire a bunch of smart people and then you sort of delegate and let them run with what they're supposed to be doing and own that and then you sort of zone out right you as a as a sort of top leader you zone out and you let them do their thing whereas he's arguing that sort of companies like Airbnb then where Brian as the CEO where he is sort of actively engaging in all of the details of the business, not letting go of website copy or exactly the customer experience and user experience through different user flows, not letting go of that detail, that's where the magic happens.

1:18:07That's sort of how I sort of look at his essay. Now, I do think that's right in that, I do think it's right in that sort of founders and leaders that still obsess about the details and don't let those go, that's usually a net positive right i think whoever's read that's a barbell isn't it yeah probably it's probably like on the left hand side it's founder obsession not letting go on the right hand side it's letting go and letting people grow and do their own thing right it's like what how far do you go on that barbell i think the last thing to ever let a founder should let go of is brand and tone of voice right everything else they can kind of let go and let people run right but my perspective would be that there's a few brands I've spoken to citizens of soil I don't know if you work with any of these we do the soil yeah Michael we know yeah fucking wonderful human beings great guy bold bean yeah Amelia yeah um both good friends both been on the show and I think Amelia and Sarah were talking and saying you know if we let go of anything so the absolute last thing to ever let go of is brand.

1:19:21I think you sort of delegate within that but having your sort of tentacles in that of what's the copy on the back of the packaging. But I think that's an interesting tension. And I think you're basically saying you kind of disagree with Paul Graham on that essay essentially. I think it may be overly simplistic and sort of a little bit one-sided in that it's very focused on the founder and what the founder does, which I think is sort of relevant probably to, I mean, a very small share of people in a business, obviously. Now, I think that level of obsession is key. And I think it's sort of important for a founder to maintain.

1:20:06But I think it's even more powerful if you're able to create that level of obsession in others as well. Now, obviously, you can do that. You can't do that across a full company. Like everyone in the company can't be obsessed by everything. But I think being able to transfer the way I care about a business, about Mimo, to someone else is tenfold more powerful than only me doing it. And so I think that is the nuance that I think is important for that essay in that I think it's the right thing. I don't think you should outsource and sort of delegate and then zone out. But I think the more interesting bit is if and how you can essentially sort of let that obsession transpire to more people.

1:20:54And I think one of the best ways of doing that is giving people more ownership than they probably thought that they could take on. And then sort of try to figure out how to help them get there. How do you help them get there? I think it really varies, actually. I think it becomes a little bit of this coaching journey where some people don't necessarily want handholding or coaching. They want to sort of figure it out themselves. And then, you know, maybe you need to sort of steer them a little bit over time, whereas others look for more active coaching. So I think it really varies. I don't think there's a cookie cutter approach.

1:21:26But I think a common denominator that I've seen across some of the companies that I work with is this idea of having relatively young, definitely talented, skilled people come in and then giving them more responsibility than anything they can take on. It's this amazing foundation to both have them grow themselves, but also then scale your company. You said you love your personal development. What are the biggest weaknesses you've had to work on since, well, since they don't really? I think there's a bunch. So I think there's, so there are a few that are very related to like the day-to-day job.

1:22:07And then there's a few that are more related to the person and me as a person. Let's start with the person. So I think as a person, I think one of the main challenges that I've had to work on is actually a little bit on the obsession piece. So I've got two young kids, three and six years old. I got a wife and I'm also running this company. I tend to get a little bit obsessed with one thing at a time. and that thing for quite some time has been Mimo as a company. And so balancing being a dad and a husband and trying to do all those things at once, that's been a real struggle and I'd argue definitely at some points a weakness of mine.

1:22:58I think the way to do it is sort of forcing yourself and timeboxing yourself. and sort of, I think I sort of mentioned my schedule a little bit before this, just being very, very strict on how I spend my time. That's been a real struggle on the personal side. I think related to that is sort of friendships and being making sure that I am responsive and reach out to my friends, especially in intense periods. Right. So I think those are like two things that have been challenging and that I'm sort of working on actively to try to improve on. Trying to in particular just balance different sort of priorities, especially given I tend to get sort of laser focused on one thing.

1:23:46And I think so far, like before I had a wife and kids, that was a real sort of asset. And I think it's still an asset, but I think it sort of comes to a point where you need to figure out how to balance the things. So I think, yeah, those are two. What insecurities do you have? So I'm definitely sort of a, I'm definitely one that's sort of proven my sort of brought, put my own worth to a large extent on performance in some way. And so whether it was me being sort of 14 years old competing in sailing and sort of doing that on high level across Europe and sort of, you know, putting my identity a lot in this notion that I was a high performing dude or boy.

1:24:35that's sort of that's always been the thing and so obviously that's sort of coming from some sort of insecurity and that sort of i mean needing that performance to feel validated yeah and so i think there's definitely um and then where that comes from i think it's probably a a bigger bigger topic what's the bigger topic i think well i'm not necessarily sure um whether that's sort of from you know honestly i'm not really sure where it comes from but i do think it's sort of um i do think it's just one of these identities that i picked up really early yeah um in school and sort of in you know my life what were you like at school so i started um so i was born or i started school with like with people a year older than me ah interesting and so i started school so in sweden you start school uh at seven or i did at seven but i was a year younger about the nordic countries yeah we started a little later we started a little later but i so i started a year early yeah and unless you've noticed my body posture is not the biggest and in particular when i was a kid i was even smaller so i was you know one year younger and i was a small kid so that in combination meant that you know my classmates were probably like you know half a meter taller than me.

1:26:00Yeah, yeah, yeah. In many cases. That meant that I was sort of, I think oftentimes, I've always felt like the young kid, the little kid. I think I still get that sometimes coming into our room, right? I still feel like that. Really, yeah, interesting, yeah. And so I think that's definitely part of it, right? Having grown up with that notion and then sort of latching then my identity on not being the little kid, but the high-performing kid, the whatever you want to call it. Yeah. um it's fascinating yeah because i think with a lot of type a people um but behind not like i don't think it's quite reductionist to think that oh every type a person's got some sort of insecurity like we've all got insecurities yeah i was a chubby fuck at school right i love my i still love my food right but like a lot of it is bashing through that that um just feeling of it in some form of inadequacy and i don't think i think everyone feels inadequate in their own way yeah um but it's super fascinating and yeah again i i exactly i don't think it's necessarily that unique it's not that's what i think it's it's it's it's not unique it's just not often talked about right yeah no it's like it's like um it's kind of like uncommon common sense right it's like it's like everyone's got it it's just it's not commonly talked about yeah and go into sailing because I think we've talked a lot about like prudence and like weathering storms and probabilistic sort of tinkering and thinking.

1:27:29Ultimately, sailing a boat is kind of, I'm sure is analogous to running a startup in some regards. Yeah. But first to like preface going into that is what's the difference between like a good sailor and like a really world-class sailor? Like how do they see the world? Right. between someone who's kind of good rudimentary versus someone who's like world class. Right. I think it's a good question. I think it sort of comes down to, I think it comes down to a few things. Yeah. I think first of all, sort of we spoke a little bit like, I think getting to a goal, there's this combination of two things.

1:28:04You need to run in the right direction or sail in the right direction. Yeah. And you need to do it fast, right? Interesting. And so I think, and I think you could sort of think about this a little bit similarly. I think going in the right direction, that a lot of it actually comes down to understanding your environment and being foresightful what's happening in particular with the wind around you. So in sailing, the wind is what propels you forward. And so you being super foresightful and what's going on around you with a wind in particular in sailing is a very big driver of how well you do because you need to navigate around it.

1:28:39You need to catch, you know, stronger wind to go faster and those kinds of things. So actually understanding meteorology is a big thing. And then that's before you get in the boat. That's before you get in the boat or during, when you're getting in the boat. Like when you are in the boat, things are moving, right? Things are changing. The wind is not constant. It's moving around. There's clouds coming. There's a lot of sort of different dynamics. So that's one thing. And then obviously you need to take into consideration what other people are doing. So there's this sort of, there's lots of, you know, I think pretty geeky comparisons to sailing in a startup.

1:29:15Yeah. Which would be, you know, for example, you can't sort of, you can't follow, like you can't pass anyone by following them in sailing. Like you need to. I don't understand. What do you mean? So in sailing, you can't sail exactly the same route and pass someone. As in that's. That's physically impossible, right? You're going to crash into them. Oh, sorry. I thought it was like a law, like you're not allowed to take their path. No. Okay. Sorry. It's physically impossible for you to pass someone unless you take a different route. Yeah. And so I think there's a little bit of that sort of how you think about competition that you also need to take into consideration.

1:29:45Yeah. But that's the first piece then, going in the right direction. I think that boils down to understanding your environment, wind and waves, and then what your competition is doing. And then when it comes to speed in the right direction, there's two things. There's one is your boat and the setting of your boat and how you know the details of sort of setting your sails up for this particular condition. And then it's your physical behavior within that boat. So your strength, your core, your sort of how you're moving around, how you're compensating for wind by putting yourself outside of the boat.

1:30:17So I'd say those are like the four components that sort of breaks down whether you're doing well or not in sailing. And I think there's lots of parallels, obviously. but it's yeah direction and speed yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no i just hadn't ever thought of it like that and actually sort of the prudence before you even get in the in the water yeah a lot of the work is done up front you know before indeed yeah interesting dude so interesting and i suppose that's almost you know what we were saying earlier like the art of getting the customer bit right before you even get in the market or get in the water yeah it's all the work done beforehand And that's the art.

1:30:54That's being, you know, seeing where the Zephyrs are coming from, how choppy the waters are, whether the sun's in your face. Like, how do you win a race then? So say once you're in the mixer, right? So say again, applying this to a business, you're in, you know those three things, you know, how you are in the boat. Right. The sort of, you can't overtake someone, so you have to find your own path. Yeah. And then being aware of the conditions. Granted, once you're in the mixer and it's race time, how many boats are going around these races like it really varies okay really very what's the biggest race you've been in would you say so i've been in in races probably with sort of 250 boats on a start line but i've also been in races with sort of 15 and so it really varies right what's which which is which one would you prefer to race in so i prefer so towards the end of my career in sailing i i did um i sailed about called 29ers doesn't really matter but um we um so i sailed in the youth worlds.

1:31:52And then there was essentially one boat from each country representing that country. And you were like, is it sort of like when you're like fucking hanging off the side of it like that? Yeah, exactly. So there's one person standing on the side of the boat and then... So there's two of you in the boat. Exactly. Yeah. And so, and I kind of prefer that sort of size of fleet when you're more like 30 boats than sort of 250. Mainly for logistical reasons. It's easier to sort of, you know... Yeah. I don't know. I just prefer that type of racing. But I think the main parallel to me that I sort of took away from sailing is probably like the process of trying to get to the youth worlds and sort of how you how you break that kind of a big goal down into like essentially a training program across years sort of me and in that particular case my crew so we were two people like how do you how do you put together a plan what was the plan well there was essentially a sort of one and a half year plan where we sort of together jotted down like these are the things we think we need to improve to go through these qualifiers and sort of be able to to actually get to the youth world and then what again it sounds really stupid right but like how how can you improve on things if all of it on the day is like weather conditions again that could be a really ignorant like what are some of the things you're working on so so i think first of all there's the there's the direction of where you're going and then the speed so the speed is obviously a big thing you how quickly you get the how how do you get faster of that.

1:33:19There's so much granularity into that. I think we can cover over a few pints. And it really varies by type of boat as well. But in essence, it has to do with how you're setting up your sails in relation to the wind and how you're sailing through waves. And there's always an optimum path for yourself to maximize the pace. And so what you consistently do and everything's changing all the time right so you're consistently trying to adapt this this applies to startups it's tinkering and it's one percent improvements indeed indeed that's literally it and it's always changing right so it's like being yeah adapt to changing conditions and just trying to try to continuously work towards finding the fastest route and that's essentially that's essentially it and then there's lots of new ones obviously yeah yeah yeah yeah no No, it's just, it's, there, as you say, there's a lot of, oh, what's the word?

1:34:16Just like parallels between, between, between everything. What was it like when you got to the, when you, like, why did you get out of it? What was the, what was the, like, reason to get out of sailing? So, so it was, the main reason was, so the guy I did the youth worlds with, he. How old were you at this point, by the way? Like, I was. 18. 18. Okay. and um so he was as we ended up fifth and then he um him and i had been sort of doing this for like one and a half two years together and um and he was gonna do something else he was essentially gonna take a gap year he was a windsurfing guys he was gonna go windsurf somewhere else and just have a good time yes and um and i was sort of keen on potentially doing like an olympic campaign That would be like the next logical step.

1:35:09Yeah. And so he left and then I started trialing with a few different other people. But we never really clicked. So it's, again, this notion of sort of, you know, a little bit of luck and sort of timing where sort of those things didn't really come together. And that I didn't really find, you know, the next person to do it with. And then instead I decided to, well, let's fucking let's go study and then maybe I'll find someone later. and then sort of life happened. So I think that's also why when I met my two co-founders and we started ideating Mimo, like we just moved into a new apartment in Stockholm.

1:35:50My wife was pregnant like this with our second daughter and I sort of proposed, hey, why don't, like I think this is a really good timing now to start this company, but we need to move to a smaller apartment because we can't stay here because I need to cut my salary by 80%. and uh and uh and i was where were you working at the time so i was working at this u.s company um essentially helping them set up their business in europe right um and um so you were like a pretty decent salary yeah exactly it was definitely like a pretty comfy uh sort of u.s director that's that's that's that's there's a lot to talk about there yeah and but then you know given the opportunity was there and i sort of felt a little bit the pain on missing an opportunity before i I was really keen on doing it.

1:36:35And thankfully, my wife is very understanding and respectful and sort of flexible. Yes. So we found a way. Well, that's the thing. Another thing Taleb says is the only thing more addictive than heroin is a regular paycheck. Right. And I think it's like to cut off the bosom of funding is not easy, you know. No. So I have huge respect for that. Let's talk about zero to one. Let's talk about traction. and we can use, you know, Mimo or we can use other business you've worked in. Sure. And I think, I don't think, like even I've, I experienced with this, like it's when you, only when you look back retrospectively, you're like, how the fuck did I do that?

1:37:14Like even for, so for context, like we would set this, I would do everything. So we obviously got rich, but all these lights and shit, but it was just two iPhones. Right. And I'd do the whole thing. Yeah. And like now, now we're in this sort of luxurious position. We've got a team. I'm like, how did you do that? And then when you retrospectively, you look back, you think yeah fuck me what are those moments when you respect retrospectively look back to those early days and you're like fuck me like how do I do that yeah I think um I mean I mean pulling the plug on on my you know the previous employment and and sort of actually deciding sort of we're doing this that was obviously one of those that was one of those situations and and it was actually my uh CTO and co-founder Andreas um we've been talking about like the idea for a while we've sort of you know meeting on evenings and weekends sort of planning this thing out sort of validating sort of demand and and so on and um you know we started getting to the point where we needed to make a decision like either we do this or we don't and uh and it was funny because he just sent like a text one night just saying i resigned like are you guys joining me and it was this wow skin in the game.

1:38:26He sort of went first. Huge respect to him. We'd obviously discussed this a lot. Like, yes, we're going to do it. Yes, it's going to happen, blah, blah, blah. But when he actually did it, it sort of obviously sort of helped us sort of get across the line. And I think that's one of those moments that I sort of looking back again, like my wife was very pregnant with our second daughter. We just moved into this new apartment. Interest rates were sort of hiking. So housing costs was really hiking and it was pretty bad timing, honestly. And so that was one of those moments. I think another moment was that I think a little bit about sometimes is sort of the first offsite we did.

1:39:05We were sort of about five people, I think, in the company. We literally just started. We went to my parents' place because we didn't really have anywhere to go. Where's that? Like outside of Stockholm. and there was this sort of combination of thrill that sort of we're sort of starting to work on something that we think can be really big and we're excited about that. But also in the back of my head, I had this sort of stress, right? Like, okay, this thing doesn't really work. This thing doesn't fly. Like, what am I going to tell my wife? And so we pulled out of all of this sort of safety. And so there was this combination of thrill and sort of scare that I think I had at that time.

1:39:48Great job about that. Yeah. Where, yeah, I think, again, sort of looking back was one of those moments where you're sort of happy that we went through with it. And I think to some extent that's also the beauty of entrepreneurship and sort of many people starting companies. You've got lots of sort of seasoned entrepreneurs saying that, ask them if they do it again that they said no because they wouldn't know like by now they know all the pain that they're going to go through and to to get there and so i think you know you need to be a little bit uh yeah not arrogant but sort of naive yes to do some of these things and how did you get traction because i think um traction's a it's wind in the sails quite literally it's not the easiest thing to get like how did you what did you so you set up this business with your four mates well three mates three co-founders you got your parents gaff yeah you know you're shitting yourself but you're tremendously excited at the same time yeah what are the one two three steps you take to actually get traction yeah in that first few months so i think there were so there were a few things i think first of all, we did have a few relationships that we leveraged to try to get those first dialogues going.

1:41:09And you can barely call them customers even, but initial dialogues to sort of validate the demand. And a lot of that was actually from early ISETL days and sort of relationships that we had from then here in London. So we'd literally fly over and we'd sort of knock on people's doors, sort of email, call, say, hi, can we just meet up? We'd love to ask you about some things that we think you might have a problem with to validate demand. I think the second phase was sort of out of that group, we started getting the first sort of signals and us being onto something and they turned into our first few customers.

1:41:45Like a lot of what we did then was fully manual. There wasn't even a sort of technology platform. We were literally sort of paying stuff on their behalf, you know, with our own cash. It was very sort of scrappy, but it gave us those first relationships that gradually grew into our first real customer base. And that was sort of, you know, we're talking about companies like Chris Kong at Better Nature and a few of those guys that sort of we early got in touch with to build that first little, you know, understanding of what this product would be. After that, it was all hustle. Like we were literally emailing, calling, biking, Boris bikes around London sort of to talk to people.

1:42:31And there was this, you know, pretty long period of us just keeping a bunch of activity going where there was lots of noise and lots of sort of, again, on the data piece, lots of data for certain parts of the ecosystem not fitting with us, but then us honing in on what could actually work. So I think there was no secret sauce. I do think we had those three steps was, one, we had a little bit of initial people that we could speak with to validate the company and the demand. Based on that, we had a handful that could sort of say okay to be our first customer and yes there's a little bit of value that you're adding here so let's continue working on that and thereafter leveraging those names probably missed that detail but leveraging those names a lot to validate ourselves when we started reaching out to more so you know those early names that we started working with like better nature and And nice drinks, Jeremy at nice drinks, and after some time, surreal, really gave us that initial credibility to continue to expand our traction into more companies.

1:43:48And then, you know, Hunter and Gatherer came through and made a few introductions and then moth drinks. And so there's been, you know, it's gradual, but I think it all starts with that sort of seed of finding high quality first customers that actually like what you do. and then leveraging that platform to get yourself into more dialogues i think that's you know we're talking about science versus art like that's another that's another art yeah it's like is being prudent of like so i think people talk about yeah your your distribution is your marketing they say that in brand building so like selfridges is marketing right it's almost like sales as much as it is um it's sales and marketing as one because the prestige the status of the account.

1:44:33Same with Harrods. I think you can apply this to some of other businesses as well. It's like your first customer is as much as a commercial partnership and relationship. Yes. It's actually your marketing. Yep. Because it's your social proof for your next customer. Yes. Indeed. Interesting. And I think it's also the dimension. There's another dimension to that, which is it also, particularly maybe with our type of product, but it really informs your first customers are also the ones that really refines your product. And so your choice of first customer will have a huge impact on how your product develops over time.

1:45:10And so depending on sort of how thoughtful you are and finding those right first customers, it can mean that your product can go in pretty different ways. And so I think definitely it's there, you know, your first customers is your marketing and that's what sort of continues to fuel your distribution engine. But I think we've also found that it really informs where you take your product going forward as well. Just quickly, we'll wrap this up. I've absolutely loved this, mate. But how did you get the deal with the banks to give you the money? Like that seems like that's not easy. It's not easy.

1:45:48I think there's definitely a little bit of sort of us having done it and seen it before that really helped us in getting it done. As in you had contacts or you had... As in we had contacts, as in we'd been in businesses that had done similar things before. Right. And we came with a team and a proposition and a description of what we were going to do that we knew would resonate with them. Right. Because we'd sort of gone through a similar journey before. So I think there's definitely, sort of contacts, but there's also sort of the team that we came with showing that we are experienced, that we know what the hell we're doing, especially when it comes to money and managing other people's money, that there's definitely a trust element.

1:46:40And then also sort of finally knowing practically how we were going to go about it by having seen it before. So I think those three components probably were the things that sort of allowed us to do it. You know, it's interesting. Again, that goes back to that. There's a thing that a lot of all of this is like just the contacts. But then, you know, are you who you say you are? Have you got the evidence, the social proof? Yeah. Final question. What's one truth you believe that most people would disagree with you on? That's a good question. All right. So what about this one? So I think one thing that I'm quite intrigued about, and there's a lot of talk nowadays about AI and sort of how AI will impact our day-to-day jobs.

1:47:24I think one thing there is this belief that, let me see if I can formulate it well, this belief that the biggest thing with AI is not that it will take your job. but what we believe is that it will help you run your finances and manage the operational side of your business such that you have more time to do your current job. Does that make sense? Makes complete sense. So the narrative is that... It's basically the convention, the narrative at the minute is that AI is coming to nab everything. Exactly. Whereas actually I suppose what you're saying is... take your job it's a co-pilot it's not the pilot yeah and in particular it's not gonna take your job we're gonna deploy it such that you're gonna have more time to spend time on your job i'm not sure if that flies actually no that's good yeah no i like that something there there's no there's something there and i think it's um yeah there's something there because i feel like there's a fear-mongering culture and again in terms of survivorship and avoiding that squat swans we're always looking out of you know that whole thing of we're we're scared by randomness so the idea of the narrative of like oh it's going to come to take your jobs it makes us feel secure and actually i think reframing it reframing in context and contrarian views are super important mate i fucking love that thank you so much henry it was actually joy thank you thanks for having me yeah loved it man thank you so much you too thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you like that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much