How SuperAwesome Built the World’s Biggest Kid Tech Platform with Co-founder Lee Veitch

0:00Hello and welcome to another episode of Bride of Unicorns. Today we have Lee co-founder of Superawesome. it's great to have you on Lee thank you so much for joining us maybe you could just introduce yourself as a starting point yeah brilliant thank you James thank you Hector first of all congratulations on over five years of doing this and over 200 shows five years in anything is a long time so yeah huge props to both of you for what what you're doing and I know a lot of my family community get a lot of value from this so thank you thank you so yeah super awesome So we're the world's biggest kid tech and marketing platform.

0:36We started the company 13 years ago with the premise really of staying true to a very specific mission, which was all about building a safer internet for kids. So essentially Super Awesome works with hundreds and hundreds of brands across the U-space. We power billions and billions of kids safe digital transactions every single month and essentially help content creators, brands, generally everyone in the U space really engage well with young audiences. So, yeah, that's that's a little bit about Super Awesome in a quick, quick minute there. And Lee, tell us a bit more about what you were doing before Super Awesome and what led you to the idea.

1:16yeah so kind of my my background um essentially was kind of initially in sort of media and advertising so I spent a huge part of the early early part of my career in advertising and one of the things that's super interesting for me was that I've been in the kid and youth space throughout most of my my career and entrepreneurial journey so really helping brands connect with young people wherever they are so it used to be tv then it became you know print and and digital so i've sort of worked with brands super closely to take them on a journey wherever young people spend their time so yeah worked in in magazines and worked in sort of tv networks in my past nice and then what what was the um uh genesis of super awesome yeah i mean for me there's a few things i think the first one was sort of sort of frustration and and fear um i know it's a bit deep early in the podcast frustration but you know i think what what we were seeing and what the data was showing us is that you know a huge amount of young people started to get access to phones and kindles and hand-me-down ipads and what this was meaning is kids were at a very rapid rate being able to get access to digital whether that's websites or apps or games and the big frustration for us at that point is that kids were getting exposed to a lot of inappropriate content kids were getting exposed to inappropriate advertising so back to that fear of frustration point you know from our perspective we felt like actually this is only going to go one way kids are going to continue to go online and kind of spend time in digital environments and if somebody doesn't take the ball by the horns and and really build something that kind of allows kids to see positive experiences online or you know see safe adverts is relevant to their age group so first of all it was really fear and frustration that sort of drove us to to create something like super awesome and then the other side which you know some people get scared to talk about sometimes but you know opportunity and you know the size of the opportunity you know for us we knew we can about money here money exactly exactly there's so many founders and people in startup land that are a bit scared to talk to their team about money or or talk about it but you know the reality is money is absolutely going to be the lifeblood of blood of any startup so from our perspective at that point what was happening is even though kids were migrating and around about 2011 2012 to digital in a in a big way and spending a lot of time there all of the advertising revenue still was concentrated on TV.

4:01So if you can imagine every year, brands like Lego and Disney and, you know, huge brands that want to talk to young audiences continue to put investment from a media and marketing perspective into TV, but ultimately you're seeing less and less eyeballs. So from our perspective, we knew that at some point, you know, that revenue from TV was going to have to flow into digital. and we wanted to be the guys that you know did that that held the hands of marketing teams and really helped them bring money into digital because at that point the digital was a little bit of the unknown it was a bit of the wild west for brands and you know it's not as a sort of hyper fragmented as now but it was still a lot of choice you know to sort of think about when you thought about marketing to young audiences sort of bet if you like was that revenue was going to fall into kids digital in a big big way and we wanted to be the guys that helped brands make that transition so fear frustration and you know absolutely a huge revenue opportunity yeah which what's the um can you can you uh explain exactly how it worked in the early days like what what what were you doing for each of your stakeholders you know brands or marketers or the kids themselves you know you mentioned transactions advertising so just be good to get a sort of granular understanding of what you're doing for the audience yeah that's that's a great question i think our perspective we've always thought about the kids and youth digital ecosystem as not just one thing so for example we see sort of three key players in it so first of all is the child and the young people you know everything we were building really centers on that mission of building a safe internet for young people so our product roadmap the decisions that we're making you know how can we make sure it's safe for kids and fun for kids and creative then when it comes to the brands is how can you actually connect the brands with young people wherever they are digitally but in a safe way that is not allowing any kind of data collection you know that's making sure that they're doing in an age-appropriate way and that are we talking about like on on within apps that kids are using on roblox on youtube like where are these yeah great yeah so for us it's kind of across a sort of a mix of different digital touch points so it could be you know virtual worlds and games like a roblox or a fortnight it could be in social environments as well that sort of say for kids it could be youtube their favorite apps games websites you Kids just spend a huge amount of time in lots of different environments.

6:36So our sort of, quite cheesy when I think about it now, but the sort of pun I suppose we used to say to brands is, kids are everywhere, so are we. And we try to play in all the different digital spaces. And then the one thing that a lot of people tend to forget is kind of the content creators, the games publishers, the people that create great content for kids to spend their time. we always really put them at part of the heart and level of our decision making because the facts are if we're not helping them monetize and generate revenue they'll probably stop producing content for young people and then the young people then go to other environments that maybe they shouldn't be in and ultimately you know we don't have a safe kid healthy digital ecosystem with positive environment so for us when we talk about the ecosystem or the touch points we really make the young people the north star as a business so all of our decision comes around that then it's about brands and helping them connect with the young people across digital platform sure and then making sure that we're helping sort of um the you know the platforms and the content owners they generate generate revenue and so is that is it does it manifest as a software platform that brands interact with yeah pretty much i mean the best way to sort of um brands sort of see super awesome is like a a full stack partner which means that what we'll do is we'll come in we'll use data and insight at the step one of the journey and make sure that the brands know exactly where the young audiences are you know where safe for them to sort of connect with young people so that's always step one then you go into step two which essentially is kind of activations and you know the fun stuff that kids play with and watch and interact with and then you've got step three which is kind of measurement and understanding you know did it work did the young people engage what were their thoughts around the brand so it was all about taking brands on this full stack journey almost in a fully managed service it's really interesting to say that because probably in the early years of Super Awesome, we talked about like automated advertising, which we call programmatic.

8:55And we sort of toyed with that, but, you know, we made the decision not to play in that space, A, because of safety concerns, but B, actually, because we felt that we'd lose that sort of really strong relationship that we have with our brand partners and media agencies. And almost, it was a great decision to not go down that road, even though our board at the time wanted us to play in that space, because in the end, a lot of our product roadmap decisions really being about what's going to be safe and good for kids and families and actually what do our brand partners need and how can we service them well and lee have you talking of difficult strategic decisions have you guys ever thought about doing like your own browser like a like a chrome for kids that's that's completely safe that you control everything within that environment yeah i mean we thought probably every single touch point digitally that you can make safe will be part of our exec discussions and strategy sessions.

9:52I think the one thing I think being sort of real about Super Awesome is we've never been the best at sort of B2C. We're excellent at B2B and building stuff for the industry. But I think when we've tried to sort of launch B2C products, like we had an amazing product called PopChamp, which is like a social media platform for kids, I think it's never really been our sweet spot. So I think we've definitely thought about it, but I think you've got to be really careful how you try and show up with a consumer offer for young people. Lots of people have done it really well. And then there's a lot of people that unfortunately haven't done it well.

10:30And either have missed the mark from a safety perspective or missed the mark from a revenue generation perspective. So yes, thought about it. Absolutely no going down that road. yeah because it there's a battle there isn't there about doing what's right versus what maybe will be adopted because there's there's signaling you know right if it's really safe is it cool and kids like things that are cool and so you know if they're like you can't go on chrome you have to go on this other browser obviously the kids aren't they don't choose to go on the other browser you know so there's there's challenges with and that's just in that example so that is Is that one of the things that is a challenge in the B2C space?

11:13If you're selling a product that is targeted at the kids, it has to be super cool as well as providing the functionality that it was really designed for. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. The minute you put kids in the title, like generally young people are aspirational generation. so if you're six you're trying to aspire to be like your cool cousin or sibling who's nine or ten and do the things that they want to do so so almost when you put kids in the title like youtube kids is a good example you know youtube have tried to do the right thing by creating that sort of safer environment but by putting kids in the title there's a lot of kids that just don't want to play in that space so you you've hit an eye on the head it is it is a problem for for like brands and people creating a product in space because it is we are talking about an aspirational generation that want to aspire to be older and that's why you have to get the product right you have to get the creative right a lot of our brand partners when they're thinking about their marketing campaigns you know they're really thinking about those different age demographics because truly a six-year-old is so different to an eight or nine-year-old in terms of how they use digital what they like what ip and brands they engage with so you do have to get that that right and i've seen it be the death of so many companies in in the use space as well and jane i think you really touched on a great point there that tension between um sort of adoption and growth and commercial commercially appealing opportunities and doing what's right by the audience and the kids like have you can you talk about any difficult choices you've had to made where you've you know there's been that trade-off?

12:54Yeah, I mean, that's the one thing about being a mission-driven company. It kind of holds you accountable as a management team on the decisions you make. And I think I've got lots of different examples for it, but probably one of the big ones for me was around 2017 when I was starting to scale. We're moving into the US, you know, revenues are getting into the tens of millions at this point. And all of the data was telling us that young audiences, and this will not be a surprise to you to be clear, but young audience was spending a huge amount of time in YouTube. But on the flip side, at that point, YouTube were going for a bunch of negative press safety concerns.

13:31So brands didn't want to go near it in the kids space. And we had a huge discussion at board level around, should we build a, you know, a safer product for YouTube? And there was lots of debate and people said it's not compliant. And there's lots of, you know, inappropriate stuff there but actually where we came to is actually if we build a solution into youtube that essentially ends up showing kids on kids kids friendly ads then we're doing our bit for the ecosystem and we're making youtube a bit safer and we're making sure that actually that content is targeted younger users they're going to see you know ads that are more appropriate more age appropriate because believe you me i've got an eight-year-old and he had a sleepless night once because he saw somebody on YouTube that he shouldn't.

14:19So, you know, that is a really tough decision. On one side, you're saying, is it truly compliant? But if we don't do anything, kids are going to get exposed to really inappropriate adverts potentially, and that doesn't feel right to us. So that was a really interesting potential point in sort of 2017. We decided to build that product with some of our customers. We managed to get some very big brands who had not advertised on YouTube a couple of years comfortable and getting them back investing in youtube and and talking to kids in that in that environment so they're the type of tensions you wrestle with regularly as as a business that plays in sort of a you know a sort of space where compliance and regulation and privacy is really important to to our business yeah and i've got a very young boy and i'm pretty sure youtube thinks he's a girl um so i did everything is like barbies and everything um so the the link to the question there is probably probably more of a reflection than me but so the question there is like how does the data world work around like targeting kids and using data obviously that's a very like non-issue thing whether they think he's a boy or a girl but um but there are obviously way bigger sort of targeting questions that can be answered by advertisers so how does that all work and do you guys have to get involved in like lobbying with governments and regulation and like making things more compliant like how do you how does super awesome use its power to kind of make more change as well right right so i'll start off kind of with the first part of the question because the good thing about sort of the kids space and digital there's there's there's some hard regulation that has been around for quite some time so there's a law in the u.s called copper which is the children's online privacy protection act and then gdpr there's a part of gdpr which essentially is article 18 and essentially that says that people under the age of 13 and maybe 16 in other territories are a vulnerable audience and their data should be treated so so the good thing is this isn't like a moral compass decision it's regulation and you have to adhere to it and look some big companies who play in the use space not not maliciously have fell foul where they've you know on their platform for example their website they've had you know cookies and then kids have gone to their platform because there's ip that they like and then suddenly they then retargeted those children when they've gone on to other sites and that's an absolute no-no so So again, not everybody is setting out to make those mistakes.

17:04So realistically, people are still falling foul of regulation. And so what we did as a company to make sure that couldn't happen is we built our own ad tech from the ground up, which we call KidTech. And essentially what that meant is, you know, when a user clicks on an ad or sees an ad, there's no data collection happening. so that data can't be passed on across chains. That essentially what's just happened, you know, with your son being targeted as a girl, you know, we're just not allowing any data to pass through and build data pictures on kids. Because the truth is, if someone was coloring your child in the real world, we'd be calling the police.

17:46You know, so our sort of philosophy is let's stop the ability to collect the data in the first place so they can't get passed on and can't become a problem. So that for us is really important to get right. And back in 2013, 14, you know, this was sort of, I suppose, groundbreaking technology at the time, and we won a bunch of awards for it. But now what's great is it's table stakes. You know, a lot of people who play in the kids' space will make sure they're enabling kids' safe technology, technology that isn't collecting data on younger audiences. which is great and when we talk about change and legislation that's huge the fact that every company tries to adopt this now it's just a a beautiful thing especially now i'm a father um and my kids love digital so that's one thing where we've made seismic change in in sort of what people called especially investors who said no to us back in the day you know it's nice to see that we've made seismic change in the space and create that category almost and your point about how the Super Awesome use our brand and our reputation to do good at the highest levels.

18:55You have a bunch of our team are regularly in the US going into Washington and kind of giving their views on what's right, what's wrong, our view of the world. I spent some time in 10 Downing Street. I know politics is a sensitive topic at the moment, but being able to represent Super Awesome and the wider kids space at a government level is something that we're really proud of, being able to do and try to affect the right type of change and bring about the right type of consciousness around how you should show up in a responsible way when it comes to engaging and talking to kids. And Lee, it's clear that you're very, as an individual, very mission driven.

19:35And I just want to know where that comes from. I mean, you know, and you have a huge desire to do good. Yeah. Yeah. I think it is interesting because all of the co-founders actually didn't have children when we started the business. But I think for me, it kind of stems from just, you know, I've always sort of been a champion for vulnerable audiences just from when I was, just from very young, you know, and I believe that young people are an audience that needed to be protected at that time. So I think it comes from that, you know, whether it's disabled groups, whether it's underprivileged kids or races, I've just felt the need to sort of, you know, get behind those cohorts of people and support.

20:17So I think that really comes through in kind of what we wanted to build at Super Awesome. And I was just super lucky that we had a co-founding group that, you know, wanted to stay true to that. And what I'm so proud of is today, that mission, you know, it's changed a little bit in the wording, but it still really holds the business true to everything we want to do. But it definitely comes from my childhood for sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, and when you're building mission-oriented company, culture is kind of at the heart, right? So you had a great start with the founders who all sound like you've aligned in that mission driven approach.

20:52But how do you create the right environment for others to be mission driven? Is it something you hire for? And if so, how are there other techniques you're using? Yeah, I think there's a couple of things here. I think one of the things I've loved about being a mission driven business is people want to get on that rocket ship with you. So we had a bunch of really senior engineers join us and they said, we've left the gambling industry and we want to be here and do some good because, you know, actually we just feel that we need to, because we've done some. I don't want to know. You sort of feel like we're in a therapy session with these people in the interview process, you know, or you get people who've got children, you know, and their children are now getting older and adopting digital.

21:41talk so when you're almost in the interview process as a mission-driven company and you look into the eyes of these people especially when you're smaller it's just amazing that people want to be part of that mission so when they come in almost day one they're so fired up to do the right thing make change develop great product and just be part of some things I think for me a lot of great culture we've built stemmed from people we believe in and want to be part of that mission but i think probably one of the biggest things from super awesome perspective of culture is allowing people to be them like just be you be who you are when you come to super awesomes you know culturally you know we're not looking for you to talk a certain way you know we're not looking for you to wear a specific outfit and and you know there's this sort of notion that you must fit into our culture i just think that's completely a broken way of looking at things you know like everybody's got something they can add to the culture so almost in the onboarding session you're you're sort of inviting people to be them and be who they are and just this that sort of invitation to human beings in a working professional environment to be who they are and it's just it just is a great start to life and i think yeah so it's just it gets the best out of people so actions speak louder than words right so and and these things these cultural all um uh well these cultures come from the top like what do you guys as founders do to ensure it's clear to your employees that you are bringing your full selves to work like are you wearing your racket outfits are you being a weirdo that you are at home at work like what's threat yeah yeah i i think um that i i believe that as well by the way i mean by the way i get a lot of stick for my for my address sense by the way because it hasn't changed in 10 years um so that you know that probably gets me into trouble in the team anyway but i think you know from our viewpoint i think it's kind of you know like me and the founders are super happy to laugh at ourselves we're super approachable you know we didn't sit in offices away from the team we're always with sort of in a very open environment people could hear the conversations good bad and the ugly so people understand that you're a real person and you're a real human being and that you have good days and bad days i think that that transparency very early on for people was was really important i think back to the ability to laugh at yourself you know me and one of the founders would often you know embarrass ourselves doing karaoke very early on at those shawls and i know it sounds small but for people when you spoke to them that was really important that actually, you know, we're not sitting in an ivory tower and we're not, you know, we're not sort of unapproachable people.

24:33I think that really helped sort of set the tone. And then the last thing is we were, we just worked at an energy and a pace, you know, that I think people were able to draw from. You know, people don't talk enough about founder energy and how that can transmit to the team and really get them up or get you through tough moments. you know music artists DJs you know people talk about that energy transfer and a lot but actually people found that energy doesn't get talked about enough in my personal opinion and I think by being with the team I think it's huge and speaking to some of the people being with the business for over 10 years who maybe started as an intern and are now running departments and incredible incredible leaders you know when you talk to them about those early days they spend a bit of time I'm talking about the fact that they were literally sitting next to a founder and got their sort of rampant learning curve was huge as a result.

25:29And it scares me a little bit of the hybrid remote working world because I do think there's going to be some bits of that transfer of energy and skill sets that's missing that we were super fortunate in the early days of Super Awesome to have. So humor, laugh at yourself, probably number one for me. And they're just showing up in a way that makes you relatable to the team. I think that's one of the things I would recommend other founders think about trying to do. Yeah, and obviously the company got acquired, so that must have been a huge moment for you personally and for the business. It's been a little time now since it happened, so what is the reflection?

26:09And also what keeps you there? like what what is your like ongoing with mission with with super awesome yeah 13 years and counting gentlemen i think yeah the the the exit was amazing you know i think mainly because epic games are a company that we all really respected in terms of how they built their business very principle-based company not afraid to stand up to big corporations and and fight you know and so we really liked them so being acquired by someone that we truly felt would be a great home for Superawesome and kind of allow us to to scale and grow was was was just brilliant you know so I think that's the first thing to to say about the exit I think you know the big thing about sort of some of the learnings and reflections and then I'll get on to kind of why I'm with why I suppose I I'm still so passionate was was just being able to see that an organization that's multiple billions of pounds that is 5 000 people still had that entrepreneurial spirit i just don't see a lot of that today when companies get to that scale that they still have that ability to act like entrepreneurs and innovate and test and learn and not be afraid to fail so a lot of the learning inside epic which you know which was three and a half years inside business before we brought it back which i'm sure you'll want to want to get into soon was just was just amazing um and you they're just great people there and super fortunate to have had that had that experience with them and in terms of from my perspective I still believe the kids space and the youths because there's still so many broken things that need to be fixed so I kind of feel and I think our management team as well feel that that there's still so many things that we can fix and that we can be part of from a change perspective.

28:06And I think that just fires, it fires everybody up and it certainly fires me up. And then the last thing I'd say is one of the things I've laughed about the sort of journey on a Super Awesome perspective is the change. Like almost every 18 to 24 months there's change at Super Awesome. There's a new platform that's just exploded that we need to kind of solve for, or there's a new global regulation that you need to think about and help people get ready for whether that's publishers and content owners or whether that's brands you know and that challenge is incredible because you just feel like you're almost in a new company every 18 to 24 months which is which is a lot of fun so that's probably why i stay stay involved in and stay really sort of excited about the journey well you teed it up lee we want to hear about the the buyback yeah i mean exits can be quite a rare thing sometimes and and buybacks um probably uh also quite rare but um no i think we we had a great three and a half years inside epic games but the facts are that sort of sometimes when you're in a much bigger organization you can probably take your eye off the purpose and the mission and and the things that you want to innovate on um and the things that you want to build because you're just part of a a bigger entities so I think sort of a few years into the journey us as a management team we just felt that if there was a way for us to sort of become independent again and sort of really focus on those key things that are broken in the youth space it'd be an amazing thing so if you don't ask you don't get gentlemen and you know we had that conversation with epic games you know two and a half years in and and they they were supportive you know and I know some of these buybacks can be traumatic for people and they can be really hard but this was far from it you know this was this was done with almost that mission at the heartland of every discussion we had whereas if we're going to build a safe internet for the next generation super awesome are better off being independent so um so yeah you know we we sort of talked about it and negotiated it for probably for about six months or so um but epic have been great you know they're still a minority investor in the business they're still very much friends of the company when we sort of i suppose divorced very you know was it unconscious coupling or conscious coupling you know their executive team came on addressed super awesome and wished us well reminded us that we'd always be part of the epic family and you know they're sort of rooting for us so um i know people sometimes want a little bit of drama on podcasts um but i just can't give you that because it's not true more about the like what are the mechanics of it i mean so so is it was a really successful exit your exit to epic yeah like had had the business not yeah i know i'm asking for details here but and you can you can say no but we in the audience would of course love as much detail right we did did the business struggle as part of a bigger organization like and then so there was an opportunity to buy it back at like a lower price and what were the mechanics of that yeah so i think um you know the business sort of the business kind of went in and i'd say it you know it flatlined probably from a revenue perspective and it was i think we we stopped innovating on very kid specific things so i think the business wasn't in trouble it wasn't it wasn't struggling we're still you know serving big customers you know tens of millions of dollars we knew that if we wanted to scale and grow this business we needed real focus and that was kind of you know really the prime reason for sort of you know going and having that conversation and and getting it back in terms of obviously I can't go into details um but I would say that Epic are very invested in us building this business and scaling it again you know and one day maybe you know getting it to a billion dollars of revenue or somewhere along those lines so they're very vested in our success which is quite nice because typically i've done management buyouts earlier in my career and it's almost like you want to wash your hands of each other and move on but this is not the case so no i can't go into detail but they're very vested in us realizing our ambitions And where do you, how did it work in terms of getting the funding?

32:34Who funded the buyout? Are there specialists who do that? Again, this is one I can't go into too much depth. However, what I would say is the management team did the buyout and we put skin in the game to make sure that we were fully vested in the next leg of the journey. So, yeah, all of the management team, which is a sizable group of us, sort of put stake in the ground and kind of really backed ourselves to continue building this great business and, you know, stay true to the mission. You know, we always talk about tech for good and, you know, make more money, do more good. And I think that is something that keeps driving us as a business.

33:17Yeah. So what's next? What does the future hold for Super Awesome? Yeah. So I think from our perspective, you know, the big bet from the first iteration of Super was really about building kids safe ad tech and sort of really making sure that every ad impression was kids safe now we're moving to a place really where you know we're looking at you know really building a much deeper understanding of this cohort of of users things are moving so quickly with the younger generations they're so misunderstood in so many different ways so We're really moving to more of a data and intelligence-based business, which really allows us to sort of take a much deeper look at kids without doing anything that's not compliant.

34:03So, for example, almost the old school way of engaging an audience in media was, you know, you get a brief and it says, you know, we want to engage with girls and boys aged 10 to 12. And like that isn't how kids use the internet anymore. You know, they don't use the internet in, I'm 10, so I'm going to only go to these environments. I'm only going to do these things. You know, it's such a old school way of thinking about engaging with this younger generation. So from our perspective, we've built a new product called Awesome Intelligence, which essentially uses 10 plus years of data and insight and research and starts to sort of go much deeper into stuff like passion points, fandoms.

34:49and really understand that each kid is unique, each kid is different. They're in communities, they're in niche communities, they're in big communities. And how do we engage with kids in the places they are, show up in a way that they appreciate and engage with? So intelligence data is definitely where we're heading. As a company, we're looking at M &A as well. So we're currently looking at a bunch of companies to acquire us as well in some quite interesting parts of the world, different sort of emerging tech as well, which is super exciting. You know, we always want to be at the forefront of where kids are and kind of what they're doing.

35:31So that's pretty exciting for us as well to have M &A as part of our growth strategy. So I'd say they're probably the two big things that we're pointing at for the future. But, you know, for us, it's continuing to innovate with the mission at the core of what we do. Yeah, awesome. So the thing that comes to mind is I think Hoxton backed a company that did, it was like a synthetic data lab for replicating animal testing. So obviously animal testing is awful. I think everyone would agree with that. And so if you can create synthetic data that mimics it, then you can potentially destroy that whole industry and give brands that need to do some sort of testing a sort of synthetic environment and the only reason that comes to mind is just like you when you're dealing with such sensitive data and problems those sorts of things could be really interesting so in a world of ai maybe that's um some of the stuff that you guys might be able to do in the future and stuff as well yeah there's such a good point i think you know previously no human being has been able to take our 10 to 12 years of research and data we spend millions of dollars every year on research and insight and data to sort of you know make sure that out of every company in the world we sort of know more about young audiences than anybody else but how do you actually make that meaningful for a brand you know we can you know you can sit there to your point and and talk about where they are and what they're doing but actually being able to sort of you know use that to plan and and and set out media plans and where these brands should play where they shouldn't play i think is is really important and i think it's a real part of the future yeah 100 lee so we're going to just move on to our final couple of questions so the first the first one is a future unicorn prediction so this can be any company it doesn't have to be kids related if you but it can be if you want it to be um but any business that you've seen maybe the earlier the better but a company you've seen where you've just thought wow they've got something really amazing going on they could go all the way yeah so i think this is really easy for me actually and it's a company called space solar i don't know if you've heard of those guys it's two founders and sam alden and martin sota and i've i've kind of been in and around them in quite a lot different sort of entrepreneurial and founder environments probably over the last 12 months and every time i see them and hear from them i'm just blown away and essentially what space solar are is they're bringing clean energy from space to earth which just that being a mission-based business obviously gets you know gets me straight away but the founders are brilliant you know what they're trying to do is is seismic and is game-changing and i love businesses that are disruptors and are trying to do things a little different so yeah the founders are super impressive it so leah they literally like launching solar farms into space harvesting the energy and then suddenly it backed up literally that is it i mean yeah all the rooms that i go into because of the nature of our audience and i usually win most of the founder wars of like oh your story is really so wholesome and mission-based and then i was in a room with martin and he just completely blew me away and i was just like i'm such a fanboy of you and what you're building and that is a company to look out for they're raising at the moment but i think they could go all the way and really be a gang changer and they're a uk business as well you know and it'll be great to see more unicorns come out of the uk yeah 100 and then final question is our dinner party guest game so if you could have dinner with any three people who would be oh this is so hard yeah he was an ex-art but I do have I do have three so um Nelson Mandela is number one number two is going to be Denzel Washington and number three I'm sorry for any fans out that don't like Liverpool Football Club but I love Liverpool Football Club so it's going to be Jurgen Klopp which I know is disrespectful to our current manager who's Arnie Slott but I mean for me those three people would just be nothing but positive vibes i think every 10 to 15 minutes i'd sort of hit a gong and ask one of them to give me a motivational quote of theirs or speech and back to founder energy i just feel like you'd leave that dinner with so much like enthusiasm for the world there'd be no problem you couldn't you couldn't solve so i'm going for that that cohort because i just feel like they'll just give you so much positive energy and you'll be able to just take on any any any challenge 100 i think you've now completed pretty much completed the set on like top football managers because we've not had jürgen clark and we've got marina we've had marina we've had sir alex we've had mikhail we've had gareth southgate that was during the euros so okay right we can we can give lawrence a pass on that one because it's probably it was Southgate fever at the time but we've not had Klopp so it's kind of good to kind of complete the set of the big name managers and obviously Denzel I think we have had Denzel before and Mandela I think is maybe after Musk and Mandela top top top names but all great guests and really interesting well Lee thank you so much for coming on and telling us more about the journey was super awesome you know every founder journey is a roller coaster but you guys obviously have a much larger sample size with super awesome so you guys have been through so much and the landscape as you say it changes the whole time so what you're doing is is still so dynamic and you know there's probably never been a bigger need for super awesome than there is today and so hopefully you guys you know almost do yourselves out of a job by making me a whole internet so safe that we don't have to worry but you know it's always going to be a problem and with AI and stuff things are getting crazy so it's been so great just to hear you talk about it so passionately and share some insight also from the founder perspective on very challenging decisions as you build the business so so thank you again for coming on.

41:54Absolutely pleasure no thank you so much James Hector it's so great to yeah be able to sort of talk about some of those stories and go back in time in a few places too and yeah just again thank you so much for yeah for giving this platform to lots of great founders and entrepreneurs brilliant thank you very much cheers that's it for this week thanks very much for listening to stay up to date with the latest episodes please follow or subscribe on your favorite podcast platform we also have a newsletter called reading unicorns which is another great way to get every episode direct to your inbox please tell your friends about it and engage with us on social media and we'll see you on the next episode