Jonathan Simmons: Co-founder of digital agency Zone

0:00Elliot Moss:Welcome to the Jazz Shapers podcast from Mishkondorea. What you're about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM. However, the music has been cut due to rights issues.

0:12Elliot Moss:This is Jazz Shapers with Elliot Moss on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal.

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0:27Elliot Moss:Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me, Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with a musician shaping jazz, soul, and blues. My guest today is Jonathan Simmers, I'm very pleased to say. Co-founder of Digital Agency Zone, co-founder of Experiences Marketplace, and CEO of NPC, New Philanthropy Capital, a think tank and consultancy helping philanthropists make smarter, evidence-based decisions about where to direct their resources. After a 25-year career building multiple purpose-driven businesses and charities, including Digital Agency Zone, later sold to US consultancy giant Cognizant, Jonathan embarked on philanthropy, impact investing, and mission-led businesses full-time.

1:03Elliot Moss:A CEO of MPC, which over the last 20 years has supported charities, philanthropists, and funders deliver, impact, and distribute millions of pounds, Jonathan believes although there's certainly a culture of giving in the UK, there needs to be a culture of talking about it. And we'll certainly start talking about that very shortly. He's also a trustee of the Jewish Community Centre JW3 and leading donor advice fund provider PRISM. A lot of stuff, Jonathan. It's lovely to meet you here. I mean, we know each other, so I should say that. Talk to me about how an entrepreneur becomes a chief exec of an organization like New Philanthropy Capital.

1:37Elliot Moss:Most founders I meet are founders and then they're founders again and then they're founders again, not you. Yes. I hadn't thought of it this way, but I guess there's a point of it where once Zone was sold and we were out and it was finished, there was a definite question for all of us, for all the founders, which was about, and often I think for many entrepreneurs, what do I do now and I kind of really positioned that as a bit of a second album actually so I kind of think that I want to do something really different I didn't have the desire the the business had already scratched an itch for me so I felt that the next step was to spend all my time doing something that had a positive impact on the society that we had and so from that then you you look around and and you don't necessarily need to create something you don't have to go back to the beginning and MPC was there and in a really good position and wanted to do some new stuff and wanted a disruptor.

2:28So I did it.

2:29Elliot Moss:And the movement into becoming an entrepreneur, you've done the usual thing, come out of university, people go, what do I do? I think you did a history degree. I did a history degree. History degree at Leeds University, a fine university, I may add. Indeed. Also, I may have gone to Leeds University. And then you do the bits and bobs and then you discover the world of digital. This is the late 90s. And then ripple dissolve and suddenly you're the founder of a business and it gets bigger and you start doing stuff. What was it like going back then to that foundy mentality? Why did you become a founder, do you think, looking back?

3:01Two different questions. I think it was amazing. It was really great fun. And you got to make up your own rules and do things your own way. And we got to do that twice. Once, as an entrepreneur, you get to make up your own business and follow the rules you want to follow. and then we got to do it in a space where there were no rules and digital was every time we did something it was the first time anyone had ever done it. So we did the first sports website or we did the first charity website or we did, these were all firsts that no one else had ever done and that was great. So it was a lot of fun.

3:33I don't think we ever realized that we were starting anything particularly. We needed to generate revenue and have a business and then from there it kind of just got bigger and bigger every year and at that point you realize you're an entrepreneur and you've got something going and we just thought that no one else would hire us, so we would go that way.

3:51Elliot Moss:And the structure that you then had to bring to the thing that you happened to be doing, which was, as you said, building a website for a sports... What was it? Channel 4. That was Channel 4 Cricket's website. Channel 4 Cricket website. Again, they knew nothing about websites. They didn't have one. And then you go, lovely white space. Luck, or do you think you naturally were drawn to that digital space at the time? No, I think it was the bringing together of two different skill sets. And actually, I think digital and technology has always been this. It was the kind of creative storytelling, what's become kind of user experience, how does a consumer interface with that, which has always been part of the creative industries and lots of things.

4:29And then the kind of technical mindset of actually how do you make that work seamlessly and make sure it works every time. And we were very clear. I sat on the very creative storytelling brand consumer side of that fence. And when Channel 4 said to us, look, we want to build a website around this, then we had to go and get those technical skills. And one of the things that we did very, very well in the early days was we married those technical skills with that creative set. We didn't pick one or the other. And actually, all the way through, we had both of those teams working side by side.

4:58Elliot Moss:Was that just instinctive? Because obviously, you go to 2018, you sell to a big company like Cognizant. They're buying ideas, but they're really buying delivery. Yeah, they were definitely buying delivery. It felt instinctive to us. It wasn't the way a lot of the industry went at that time. a lot of the industry thought that the front end was the cool bit and the bit that everybody needed to worry about. And it turns out the back end was the really cool bit and the stuff you really needed to worry about. I think the technical bit of what we did and when we built digital, the stuff that kept the lights on, that made the site work, that made it work, whether it be a site or an app or whatever project it was, made it work, was the really important bit.

5:36And over the years, that became, the utility of it became more important than the creative of it, if I'm honest.

5:43Elliot Moss:Don't lose sight of the utility of things, even if it's really shiny. Staving for much more for my business shaper. Jonathan Simmers, entrepreneur-turned-chief-exec of Newfoundland through Capital. And sits on a bunch of boards. I mean, you've not got much going on. Have you thought about doing something else? I think you need to. A lot of energy, right? I mean, you have energy. You've got a lot of time. You think? Yes, there's loads of time in a day. So you've got to fill it with stuff. Otherwise, there's a brilliant organisation called the Good Ancestor Movement, which basically goes, what are you going to leave behind?

6:10so like you can't leave nothing behind if you're doing you have to do stuff

6:16Elliot Moss:what's interesting Jonathan is you look at your background and this is I alluded to this question and the thing I've been thinking about before today you go to a nice school you go to a nice university you do what a whole bunch of people do and then you went into a digital agency it's commercial but immediately you have an angle on it which is we're going to do stuff for good which is the one part of the business and I think if I'm right there was a percentage of all the profits that went to how did it work? A percentage of all the work was purpose driven. A percentage of the work was purpose driven.

6:46Yeah, we had to have, so we always worked with charities and when you put what a charity pays up against what a commercial producer pays, you're making us money. And then that kind of morphed with some really big projects with big brands on their purpose driven work.

7:00Elliot Moss:So there's all that stuff going on there. Then you move into this new philanthropy capital thing and I've heard you speak a lot about impact. At what point did this notion that, and you just said it then, what are you going to leave behind? Why is it so important to you? What's influenced this brain and your thoughts? I think probably a couple of things. One is I grew up in a youth movement and when you kind of, a lot of these organisations, whether it be kind of like people like the Scouts or I grew up in a Jewish youth movement or those kind of organisations, you sit around talking about what's the point of you or the stuff you're going to do.

7:35So I had that kind of very early on. I grew up in you know my parents did philanthropic stuff so it it was very it was all part of my kind of life growing up when I got to work and I can definitely pinpoint this I remember really clearly I won't say who I was working for the time so two or three years out of university where I worked for corporates um someone said that you've got to leave your personality at the door you we have a culture here and you have your culture outside of work and that just was bonkers to me it made no sense at all I was like well hang on but you're hiring me right and and either I come more I don't and so to me that moment I made the decision that where I could everything I would do would be would have an impact lens across it as well as a you know have to pay mortgage I've got children all of those things but they they had to align and I don't think you have to separate them and and I there's a kind of a more maybe old-fashioned way which is you can make your money over here and then you be philanthropic over there that never made any sense to me I or cut out the middle person and just always do something impactful.

8:36And if you can make some money out of that as well, then good, but impact should always be part of the consideration. So it was just obvious to me, and it's weird that when people don't do it, if I'm honest.

8:45Elliot Moss:Yeah, and therefore the way that you have lived your life, and we'll come to the latest album that you've released, as you said, the way you've lived your life has been in accordance with that. So it isn't about, as you said, just simply giving money and time over to the left. It's about integrating that. and do you think you did that really successfully in the in the digital zone world yeah happy with it as you look back on that time yeah i think i think we did it in two ways i think we did it loads actually in the work we did and we did some we you know we built the first um diabetes tracker in the uk or something like that so we built stuff that that made a difference to people's lives we built stuff that raised money for check we did we did all that i think one of the other things you get to do when you're when you're a business owner is you get to do it for the people that are in the business which i wasn't expecting like you get to you get to have an impact on lots of people's lives and you can choose how you do that and i i hope i think it's probably not for me to say but i think we did a really good job in that as well um so that you kind of there's two ways of having an impact when you when you the work you do and the people the culture you set for the people the way you run the business and the management team that was zoned at the time were they in the same boat did they did they agree with you were they totally aligned to jonathan simmons's view of the world?

9:58No, but there's no problem with that. I wasn't totally aligned with their views of the world either. I think that we weren't trying to, they were totally supportive and they totally understood what motivated me and it didn't, I don't know if it made the business better or it was better for the business, but it was my motivation and that didn't make them any less good or less purpose driven. It's just that that's not the bit of the business they wanted But yeah, they were fully willing to let me do that thing. Bring your personality through the door. Well, they all definitely brought their personalities through the door.

10:32Everybody was aligned with that idea and the idea that we're best off if we are who we say we are. There's a line, play everyone in their best position and kind of that. But I think they didn't, I don't think they overly thought it through whether it was okay or not. They just were supportive of me and they supported it. And then we hired a lot of people who came for that reason, so supportive of them as well. It was who we were. I'm not sure there was ever a real decision that we would keep doing this. It was who we were, I think is the point. And businesses that grow from five people up have a DNA, and it was part of our DNA.

11:06Elliot Moss:And is it conscious, though, as you're doing it, you then suddenly have to go away from the craft skill of delivering the website for Channel 4 or whoever it might be, and then you're actively going, I mean, this question is, are you actively going, what's the shape of this business and what's the character of it? No, I think... Or did it just happen? Yeah, I think that there's different parts of it. There was the clients that we had and making sure that the clients that we had were representative of, whether it be charities or social enterprises or purpose-driven organizations or things like that.

11:37Like, that was deliberate. Let's go and get more charities. And the more charities we had or the more kind of social projects we had, the more we got, as any of these businesses were, because you become known for doing something. I think the cultural thing about running the business in a certain way was just natural to the people that were running it. I think if you don't care about that and you don't believe in it every day, then it won't work. You can't fake culture.

12:01Elliot Moss:Yeah, and you can't push it in a certain way if it's not real. You can't do a, like a, let's do a culture session and work out who we want to be. You are who you are. And the people that I, you know, built zone with were brilliant people, are brilliant people. Much more coming up from my guest, Jonathan Simms, in a couple of minutes right now that we're going to hear a taste from the Mishkorn Innovation Series, which you can find on all the major podcast platforms. Lydia Kellett invites business founders to share their practical advice and industry insights for those of you thinking about starting your very own thing.

12:26Elliot Moss:In this clip, we hear from Paul Biestel, CEO of HutanBio, a technology company aiming to decouple long-distance transportation from fossil fuels with HBX, their zero-carbon biofuel. The Mishcon Innovation Series. Inspiration from founders of cutting-edge businesses. in association with Jazz Shapers with Mishkon Derea. What advice would you give to others at the early stages of creating a new-to-the-world technology or service or product? So I think there's a couple of things. One, be sure you have a market. So I've seen so many things that are really good ideas, but actually they don't excite people and people don't part money for them.

13:09Elliot Moss:If it's not valuable, you can't get investment and then you can't grow. So having said that, you will get setbacks. So always pick yourself up and keep going. I have the biggest emotional rollercoaster of my life at work. In a single day, I'll have moments where it's the most amazing thing and then there'll be an investor presentation and it doesn't go quite as well as I wanted. So you've just got to be very resilient. The Hutang Bio role is great for that because actually the impact and the benefit is really clear and the story is really easy to tell. So I can kind of just go and look in the mirror, give myself a shake and get back out again.

13:44Elliot Moss:And then I guess the final thing is actually being able to tell the story. Investors are often not technical. Customers are not technical. People don't buy technology, they buy benefit. So trying to tell the story of why this is the right way to change the world is really important. The Mishcon Innovation Series. In association with Jazz Shapers, with Mishcon Derea. Jazz Shapers on Jazz FM. In partnership with Mishkondorea. It's business, but it's personal. You can enjoy all our former business shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast. You can hear his very programming game with Jonathan if you pop Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice.

14:24Elliot Moss:I am agnostic. You can do what you like. My guest today is Jonathan Simmers. I've said that before, just in case you missed it. And he's co-founder of Digital Agency Zone, co-founder of Experiences Marketplace, Yup, and CEO of New Philanthropy Capital. He's a tongue twister. A think tank and consultancy helping philanthropists make smarter, evidence-based decisions. all very serious stuff about where to direct their resources. Just talk to me for a brief moment about Yup, because there's another thing that you have gone and co-founded. Yeah, that was actually kind of the bridge from a commercial business into kind of the philanthropy thing, which is, I'm a huge believer in business and the ability for business to have a positive impact.

15:01And the challenge that we looked at with Yup was really two things. One is that loneliness is a real thing, physical contact, and the lack of it or the decreasing amount of it is a really very serious, I would even say epidemic, and it's causing, I think, a lot of the problems that we have in our society. And secondly, one of the solutions to that is high streets and because you meet people when you go and buy bread or you quite literally break bread with people, right? And those businesses are getting hammered by e-commerce and the answer is not, please shop locally because, you know, like, it's good for us.

15:36You have to kind of take a business view of it. So we looked at those businesses and thought, well, experiences is something that they can do that the internet can't do. So baking bread or, you know, working with a music, because I'm sitting in Jazz FM, working with a music shop to write a song or build your own guitar or do one of these things. These are experiential things. Yeah, they're experiences. But the problem if you're a music shop and you want to, you know, do something with a guitar or some kind of experience in that music shop or a record shop and, you know, build your record collection one day with us.

16:06Come to us and we'll curate your record collection. the problem with that is it's very difficult for them to do that because how do they market it how do you accept money for it what's the ticketing system all that so we so digital is really good at building that platform so we built that platform that then allows hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of those businesses to come on and offer those experiences and that now exists in

16:28Elliot Moss:five cities in the uk so it's very good and this was actually just at the beginning of lockdown is that right? Yeah, that was really not good. No. Funny enough, yes. Physical experiences, you can't actually experience them. Yeah, that was really difficult. But still going? Still going, definitely. And really making a seriously positive impact, putting real money into small businesses, small independent businesses on high streets. So the objective of it, to do that, is absolutely working. It's an amazing success. Now, I know you maintain that you're not evangelical about other people and what they think.

17:01Elliot Moss:You're incredibly evangelical about yourself though in the sense that you've applied your philosophy of life to the way you've run your life and have you thought of it like that because as i'm listening to you and i you know read up about you it's like you've really stuck to your guns and this latest iteration is not a surprise yes if i think i've never thought of it like that but yes but that's because that's who i am and i'm evangelical about being who i am like i don't i don't think you should try and be someone different and this matters to me. I just wouldn't know what to do with myself if the thing I was doing wasn't trying to have some kind of positive impact.

17:39It doesn't always work. And, you know, I've done stuff, I have done stuff that has, you really struggle to see an impact because there might be a personal impact. And, you know, I don't take anything away from someone who feels that, you know, they've got to put food on the table. And if that means they have to do something that doesn't have an impact for society, then go for it because they're doing something positive. I do question people when they're having no positive impact. Like, it's like, what are you doing? You're part of a society, come on. So I may get evangelical there.

18:04Elliot Moss:Jonathan Simms, my business shaper. He is the CEO of New Philanthropy Capital. I can't actually say it, of course. I didn't brand it. I didn't name it. But it actually does what it says. Nippus. NPC, my kids. NPC. I know, it's not Nippus, obviously. What is it like being the chief exec? Are you still an entrepreneur? Oh, wow. That is a tricky... Well, I'm not an entrepreneur because... Or are you entrepreneurial? I'm definitely entrepreneurial, but I think... And do they like it, this world? I mean, it's not a world that you would associate with fresh and new ideas and leadership, which is vibrant and dynamic.

18:36Elliot Moss:And I don't mean that to be rude to the sector, but the sector does not have that perception. I mean, so many questions. So if I just break some of that down, right? So it's not mine. So I can't be an entrepreneur. It's a charity. There is a completely different relationship between the people that work there and the mission because the objective is not to, we can't build in whichever way we want. We have objectives and governance. I've got a board of 10 trustees that get to hold me to account every, you know, and so I think that is, that's a huge difference when you're working for an organization that is, well, for charity, frankly.

19:13I think I absolutely take task with the idea that as a sector, it's not entrepreneurial or exciting, or I think it is difficult. It's much harder to do it in this sector because A, your decisions can have a much bigger impact, right? And B, because of governance. And there is a certain governance rules that make it harder to be entrepreneurial. So for example, we always have to have months and months worth of money in reserves because that's what a charity has to do. You know, I mean, fortunately, we always did have that because it went very well. But in a business case, sometimes you are quite literally going hand to mouth.