Georgina Nelson: From Leveraged Finance Lawyer to a Billion-Rating Founder

0:11Hi, everyone.

0:12Matt Oxley:I'm David Rose with USXP. Welcome to the Scaling Stateside podcast, along with my co-host and co-founder, Matt Oxley. We are on a mission to help founders of scale-up companies from the UK and EU better understand the US expansion and US fundraising journeys. and as part of that mission we are having conversations with founders who've already made that journey and successfully expanded to the U.S. and we're having that conversation today. So we have a special guest with us, Georgina. Welcome to the show. Please tell us our audience about your background just briefly and we'll get rolling here.

0:47Hi, thank you so much for having me. So yeah, my background, I did psychology where I became obsessed with measuring consumer experience and then I became a lawyer. I first off did a stint with Clifford Chance as a leveraged finance lawyer where I slept under my desk doing big deals and traveled the world and realized it wasn't quite for me so I went to represent consumers at Witch, the equivalent of consumer reports over the New West and I worked all around big data and privacy and it was during that time that I began to understand the incredible competitive edge which all the online giants had versus bricks and mortar, which is what my dad was in, and he lost 50 % of his business to Amazon.

1:32And so that was where the seeds of true rating my business were planted and how to get better real-time consumer transaction data into the hands of retailers. Great.

1:43Matt Oxley:Well, we're going to want to dig into that some more because that is a super interesting path to entrepreneurship, which we always love to hear. But before we get started, we would like to take it all the way back to the beginning. Tell us about your very first paid job as a youngster. It was, yeah, babysitting. I think it was probably the standard job for many 14-year-olds, the girls down my road. Pretty harrowing when I went to the bathroom and she'd tried to shave her legs at age 10 with her dad's razor. And I wasn't invited back after that. Maybe not for you after all. Love it. Love it. Well, if I may, can I just dig into your origin story?

2:28As David said, it's, you know, we were talking about it before and it's fascinating. You know, psychology to law, founding a tech company. What was the moment that you decided and got the entrepreneurial bug and decided to leave, you know, some would say the safety of which a bill or true rating? yeah interestingly I'd had the idea while I was at which and then I was also working on another of my sort of entrepreneurial ideas there as well and you know I put my heart and soul into this into this project and then McKinsey came came on and they said yeah which needs to focus on their and so my project was was shelved and I knew the this other idea I had wouldn't have any chance of succeeding and at the time I'd just fallen pregnant and I think it's it's interesting me when a lot of women decide to start their own their own paths and it was just like I'm not having anyone else really decide on the future success of what I put my blood sweat and tears into i'm gonna i'm gonna own it and yeah i'm gonna own my time and yeah like just not not be beholden to anybody else and so that was like i guess that was the deciding moment and i bought truerating.com a few hours after my cesarean with my daughter on my on my hospital bed are you kidding me yeah and my waters actually broke interviewing a uh interviewing a restaurant manager because i was trying to understand whether you know restaurant managers retail managers would use my product and i was working so yeah waddling around covent garden in london trying to interview people and my my waters broke and the hospital they're like you need to get in here right now and I'm like I just need to finish this interview uh so uh yeah yeah it was the stars aligned from the start yeah have you always had that entrepreneurial spirit or was it was it you needed to find the right idea yeah I think so I guess um yeah you know I always a load of us in the UK would do um Duke of Edinburgh and have you know so I was I was hosting foam nightclub parties with my friends uh yeah uh while still at school and flogging you know I'd go to these warehouses and buy loads of off-the-cuff nail varnish and flog it to all the kids at school till the teachers stop me so yeah definitely it's definitely in there um but I guess I was also quite yeah I I also wanted to have that security yeah so I followed the the traditional routes and careers until I realized that uh but yeah I had my calling and then talk us through kind of the obviously the creation of true rating could you talk us all the way up to actually thinking about new markets because you're obviously in the US and we'll unpack that later but all the way through from like creation to thinking about new markets what was that journey like just unpack it for everyone yeah i guess it probably comes with a lawyers and data sort of mentality in the sense that i'm i knew what we would began doing in the uk was unique week.

6:07And I knew that it was, yeah, it was the start of something really big. And I knew that the UK wasn't the world. And so it was really, you know, I need to lock down. So it was, you know, from a legal perspective, it was, you know, getting my trademarks, getting my patents really quickly, starting companies in the US and then also Australia as well. and Australia served as a really good petri dish I guess you know it's where we they were much quicker sales cycles obviously much much smaller market but where we could quickly get new innovation and new products out and then the US was obviously the big the big daddy of it all with yeah with the scale and and scope so and did you raise capital in the in the UK uh what was what was how did you how did you kind of fund it to start with yeah we well the initial teams of all you know we all worked for sweat equity at the beginning and then and then it was just very much sort of angel angel rounds which just grew and it was always through networks so it was one angel would then open us up to a private family office which they'd used etc etc so we never actually had the traditional series a series b bc route we we just raised gradually but you know we've raised in like 40 million now across you know since our since the beginning but it's always been quite an iterative process and you're kind of the quote i love about you and i'm sorry i did some blue thing was you throw her out the door and she climbs in through the window.

7:54How's that out there? And that to me is, and I'm making a real huge segue and jump here, just this huge amount about your tenacity, your kind of grit, your drive. And one of the things that I'm really interested in, again, sleuthing on you, is you've talked about the neurochemistry of entrepreneurs. And this is something that I'm really fascinated in because I'm an entrepreneur in residence at a VC in London and one of the things that I've been working on recently is a founder index and what it actually does is it has the traits that we look for in people versus in businesses because I think at the moment there's too much sway into understanding the business and the metrics rather than the people and that's kind of what I picked up from some of your kind of work and thoughts so I wonder if you could just unpack how you think about that and again I realize we're making a massive segue here but I think it's a really important kind of thing to to unpack yeah yeah I guess it was when I read about ants and how you have all these ants have these different roles within a colony yeah and you'll always have these ants which almost sort of you know sacrifice themselves going out to find new areas new land ahead of ahead of the pack at really really high risk strategy and i remember reading about this and they were saying that the brains of these ants were different from a neurochemical perspective to the rest in the ant hell or whatever i thought oh my god that's me i'm like and that's other entrepreneurs where you know when you look at when you look at the facts of what you like what you continually risk and what you put ahead of yourself all the time it doesn't really make sense this continual belief and drive years after year and like and in the you know god my my board one of my board members called me delusionally optimistic and my chairman my chairman said well of course she is if she wasn't we wouldn't all the students wouldn't be here and I think I'm laughing because I'm called that that was what I was called two board meetings ago you're continually like you're optimist of optimists it's like but we believe in you because of that you know it it's kind of yeah it's this aura that I think entrepreneurs actually have to have which is like I believe in myself believe in the idea and optimism yeah like you know it's it's a form of manifestation I guess that you know that belief is unshakable.

10:32And then another one of my investors called me the English bulldog. I don't know how to take that.

10:41Again, just that, yeah, that tenacity and that belief. And so, yeah, I'm pretty sure in years to come, they'll find out that my serotonin and dopamine is all messed up, probably matched due to our heritage and on some Leeds dance floors, Yeah, I think the Polly Box got a lot to do with that.

11:04I'm just fascinated by it. I think just through the work that I've certainly been doing, you get into the core traits. And I do think founders are wired ultimately differently. And it's putting those people first and understanding who they are, how you support them. And I guess to me, it's about you want to back the people that can pivot. You want to back the people that can run through walls. You want to back the people that have that optimism when no one else has it, have the belief, get up in the morning, they're solving the problems. That's all they're thinking about. And that to me is more important than the idea because they will get to the idea if you back the right people.

11:43That's kind of my thesis. And that's why it's so just fascinating understanding the psychology of it. Now that I'm kind of like through multiple businesses, it's like, is there something wrong with me? but now you go back to it's like ah there's probably a lot of people where they've got things wrong with them wrong with them as well so yeah it's fascinating um but just to kind of get back onto the I think the the state side um side of this because I've been I've been through this myself I moved my like I said my girlfriend at the time in 2013 we sold everything we had put it in two suitcases, moved to Portland, Oregon.

12:23And my pitch to her was, hey, we're going for a year or so. Hey, let's see what happens. Ten years later, two kids, a dog, and then two shipping containers came back. So I'd love to just hear kind of your experience in embarking on the U.S. You know, what drew you there? What was the moment? What was the data set? What was that conversation that really, you know, made you decide, right, that's where I need to be? I knew that it was I've always thought really big and our whole you know my whole belief is that we should you know eventually go throughout the world and so it was always a path I knew I wanted to get on quickly I think you know meeting an American who really understood and I met him on British soil at an event who really understood that's the space taught the language had the network was really key for me because yeah that's yeah that's who I I picked to go and build the US team but then yeah that the culture was so important to me what we're growing in the UK and how to mirror that um and and I knew the competitive advantage of being you know Americans are very sympathetic to the entrepreneur I think they they have in their sort of I guess their their national memory like my forefathers came off the ship they put a flag in the ground and they built my family you know and it's that like yeah entrepreneurial spirit in the US where yeah people want to be they want to believe in your journey they admire you going out there and I just knew I knew that our story and my story if I could get in front of people would really resonate in the U.S.

14:19and so we made we made that decision really quickly to um yeah first it was you know every two weeks I'd be crossing the pond and then yeah and then we we moved in 2017 over so at the yeah at the beginning we just all sort of decamped into our president of North America, we persuaded him to get a bigger flat and all moved in with him. When we put a uniform bike seat on his bike for my daughter, he came and gave us the lecture that we needed to find our own place. Look, I've got you some keys. Get out of there.

15:03How you land in Atlanta?

15:04Matt Oxley:I was curious about that because a lot of companies coming from the UK, you go to New York because they've been there before. go to Silicon Valley because they think they have to use their tech. How did you land in Atlanta? Is it because you had the US president there? No, he was in Raleigh actually, so he moved. He moved to Atlanta during the week. I guess we work with payments companies and Atlanta is their epicenter of payments. So 70 % of credit cards get processed there. And so it was a certain type of skill set we needed the partnerships etc but also yeah atlanta is really good value for you know for a business like it's it's far cheaper than manhattan or the valley and you've also got you know it's a arguably a less competitive um employee employee set in terms of you know there's amazing colleges there, Georgia Tech, et cetera.

16:02And so, yeah, it made sense from a business perspective as well. And 270 days of sunshine a year, don't go and miss. So, yeah, we really, really loved our time there. It's definitely, it's a city which is really, yeah, winning the big tech companies as well. So it definitely felt that we were on that rise with it. And it's whether, you know, people talk about the Southern hospitality, but it's definitely a business community where people all the time want you to succeed, want to help you, you know, reaching out to make connections and everything. So it was a great place for us to start and grow.

16:47Matt Oxley:Which city, London or Atlanta, has better food? Oh, yeah, London. I uh you know the the best thing about London is you go to any neighborhood and it's like you've gone on holiday you know you're having the best Ethiopia and I've never found a good as tikka chicken tikka masala or actually paneer now since I turned vegetarian uh you know than you do and that's what I really miss the London curries um one of the things that I speak about openly whenever I'm doing panels or talks is the personal journey that I had to go on in America. Because I think there's kind of a couple of camps that people fall into.

17:31I think some people underestimate going to America. And I think some people kind of are very scared of it. I went over there and I felt I've always been more American than I have English. Just the optimism. And like you say, hey, can do attitude and put myself in the ring. And, you know, all of those kind of great metaphors. but the one thing that I did overlook was I experienced a degree of like loneliness when I was when I was over there um it took me probably nine months to be comfortable in a sales setting quite honestly because I couldn't talk about the weather and I couldn't talk about Man United so I didn't I didn't really have a lot to kind of like pull on so you know to your point I had to learn about like NCAA basketball and you know how how the kind of you know nicks were doing it's game fight you know so i had to really kind of indoctrinate myself and i think respect the american culture by emerging myself in it did you find the same or did you kind of kind of slip in quite easy i guess i haven't i probably haven't tried to slip in you know like probably small chat is based on my accent and you know just uh and wanting to to talk about my time in america or something so i never um and and to be honest and i don't know how similar this is for so many entrepreneurs i i can just about manage having looking after a family and being a mom and rescuing dogs and my business and that's me full and so when you yeah i don't i haven't built an incredible social network out here and that's okay because these are you know that's my my focus at the moment so yeah that is your network right yeah yeah yeah because i think some people are daunted by it they look at it and go oh what do i do and my answer to that is get on a plane and figure it out you know it doesn't have to be forever but just go for three weeks meet customers meet prospects meet vcs like find out if it is for you um so i think that any words of advice for people that kind of are on that side of the fence where they they're thinking about it they're daunted by by that kind of making that step any kind of words of wisdom for them i haven't met anyone who's ever regretted it you know everyone everyone i've met who've made who's made the leap has yeah been incredibly I overwhelmed with how like open and warm and hospitable Americans are probably don't get into politics I'd say is probably the good uh the good rule of thumb but uh but um and I guess I guess I when I talk about my life just being you know the business and a mum it still just feels like 10 years on that I'm on holiday in you know you go out and like even just what an American would see as a really grim strip mall still feels like all the movies I saw on a moment growing up as a kid and it's still that element of you know excitement and just the the ability like to get out into big skies big nature and you can just get in your car and drive and it's such you know the exploring America is just amazing you never get bored and like each state is also like a different country and I think that's you know what you really need to recognize like the sort of business culture in the Midwest is completely different to what it is in New York is different to what it is in you know in Florida and so there's always there's always something to learn there's always new experiences and so if you're that kind of person like I guess like I naturally am who's all you know just take all of that opportunity and have an amazing adventure and you'll never regret it no i love it those are amazing words because i and i agree with everything it's uh i always describe it as a land of opportunity and i think just don't worry about the barriers get out there go and meet people people want to help you um there is an insane i think difference and i'd perspective on this difference between I think hustle in Europe and hustle in America and I think that's something that I think takes people a little bit by surprise and I use the example of I had two kids that grew up in America and at the age of five years old they are in class in kindergarten doing show and tell about why my pencil is better than your pencil so at five they're literally pitching against 20 other kids in their class so that is indoctrinated in them very early as is I can be anything I can be you know whatever whatever I choose I can be and I don't know if that is the same in the UK schooling and kind of ecosystem but it's contagious it's contagious once you're in it and I think that is yeah that's certainly what kind of grabbed me yeah I think while you're talking I was thinking my daughter got into softball and I'd go to watch her games and this is you know when she was like nine or something and and the encouragement of all the songs all the parents what they're what they'd sing and shout to the kids and it's all like you got this annie ella you're gonna go girl and i'm so bad at accents but it's like it is this kind of confidence for these kids that like you're amazing whereas like i think of me watching my dad watching uh my brother's play where he's like watch the bloody ball to be bloody ball and it's just like you know and i just do think it's this yeah you're so right it's how the kids uh are brought up here and i i also think it's interesting in the school systems every year you move you know my my daughter has a whole new group of people in her class in her year 900 kids in her year I was with the same girls in my in my class from age 13 to 18 and as and I think again it's that it's that continual um ease of of Americans to be in any you know so well obviously it's a bell curve I'm not making board sweeping generalizations but I do think it's that amazing advantage which Americans have of um yeah being at ease in new situations that is confidence and belief which maybe i think us in the uk could learn a bit a bit off yeah we're still a bit like oh i'm so sorry like i describe it as like we're a bit like harry potter like oh do you mind if i you know it we're very like still reserved i think you know it it i describe it as you you have to find your american character when you're in in america how do you play that game how did how does Matt from London become Matt from America like that that took me a while to figure out um and it was and it's lovely because you go on this curve and it's like oh I am being you know the real version of me I'm more American than I am English and it's just the confidence you know you can go in there it's like yeah a bit of swagger and I think I had to unlearn a little bit of my Britishness, quite honestly.

25:25I think that, you know, when you're obviously you're from the world of VCs, but when you're a British, like female in America, and, you know, our off the cuff immediate response is to apologise and to always explain why things might not be as good as they could be and to immediately like throw up all the flaws on the table rather than like whereas uh you know one of my board told me Georgina you've got to be an American male channel your inner

26:06party female and British and uh yeah and then you look at you look at the results of how many dollars follow the American male and you know that confidence yeah money so it's definitely it's definitely something which I'm not sure I think I'm still pretty female and British but it's definitely something to be aware of of what you're competing with you know and as you said like try and try and recognize those gaps and get more comfortable being a bit more out there, I think.

26:51Matt Oxley:Georgina, you've raised$40 million, but it sounds like you've taken, much like a lot of things in your life, an unusual or untraditional path to that. So it's not the raise pre-seed seed in the UK, raise A round in Silicon Valley and on goes. Walk us through, was that planned? Was that happenstance? How did all that unfold from a fundraising perspective? Yeah, and interestingly, you know, I'd say the majority of our funds raised have been connected through the UK. So yeah, it was just the way our business works is we have to build all the integrations with all the payment partners before we can get a dollar of revenue in because they have to make our technology accessible to the retailers, which is who we sell our ultimate end product to.

27:38so we were quite we had large capital requirements early on and so the bulk of our funding came in those in those early years and we just yeah we just raised through angels and networks who then opened themselves up to further you know further angels private family offices multiple family offices um and so we were always you know if there's anyone else you know who you think might be interested in us or has experience in this space. So yeah, that was how we grew. And it was always very much sort of serendipitous, really, based on conversations at that time.

28:17Matt Oxley:If there was no formal plan, like we're going to go to the US and raise a big round, that was never part of the plan for True Ratings. Yeah, getting a big VC who obviously comes with a huge black book of connections, You know, it is quite the way business works in the US when so much still is decided on a golf course through networks. I'm sure, you know, maybe our path might have been easier here. I don't know. But each comes with their own. Yeah, their own benefits and their own pitfalls. So, you know, not having an aggressive VC on our back on sales figures and stuff has probably helped us through some times as well.

28:57So, yeah, it's great.

28:59Matt Oxley:Whatever works, right. You've obviously figured out what works. Can you talk us through go-to-market a little bit and how that was different in the U.S. market? So you obviously had traction in the U.K. first, but you come to break into the U.S. How do you think about product market fit and go-to-market motions and demand gen? Is it materially different? Is it similar? Help us understand the differences. yeah i uh i'd say i'd say you probably go through this cycle when you when you first launch in in the u.s of this just incredible euphoria because every business meeting you have everyone's like wow this is incredible let's move forward and then they go for a few months and you're just like i don't understand so um whereas in our in the uk on the flip side they're like that first meeting is them like let me try and shoot this idea down as quickly as I can and find all the holes in it and then both of them probably end up at the same period in the same amount of time coming back to you and moving down the path but I'd say definitely been aware of that optimism bias in the US that um that can sometimes take take some time to get moving um I guess it's just also just being built for scale, like the retailers, which we work with.

30:24Yeah, they have 7 ,000 outlets, like the just the volume, especially if you're a technology and data business. Yeah, you like you need to be from the outset, you need to have that architecture and vision, vision in mind. yeah i've been prepared to hop on a lot of planes and travel space time build relationships um i'd say you know the us is more expensive well at least in our experience for hiring as well you know um people command i'd say yeah but i don't know what is it like a third a third more on average probably looking at across our different uh different markets and and we also just want to be fair in like what we are you know what i consider is good practice in terms of maternity paternity and notice periods etc so i wanted to offer that across our markets irrespective of what the employment law was but yeah i would say hiring um hung in the us and i would always be like we'll pay a month's notice you know either side no us person is ever going to work for you for a month they're just like i'm out yeah you've got me two weeks max so um it's a very different a very different sort of uh mindset in terms of hiring and and firing and and the pace and so you know in the uk it's like some some of our team on three months notice periods and and you have have that time then someone hands in their notice for a really considered and thoughtful handover you know you need to be prepared in the US that you might just suddenly have your rug pulled from under you and then you're crambling it took me like the whole at will um philosophy in the US is something that took me by absolute surprise but also every founder that we speak to about moving to the US you try and explain that like people just quit and you can to fire people they're like blows their mind it's like yeah this is kind of like the shit you need

32:35Matt Oxley:to know um yeah how do you how do you from a from a ceo perspective from a cultural perspective if you're trying to keep if you have operations in multiple continents how do you kind of keep a common culture i know you're trying to talk about similar benefits and processes but they're fundamentally different how do you kind of keep a common company culture across all the all the locations yeah we you know we had this um i remember going to a conference in silicon valley once and saying that you had to have a mantra written on a wall you couldn't call yourself a ceo if you didn't have a mantra written on a wall it's just like what all right so like on the plane home i thought i better write a mantra and you know and i and i just thought this this shouldn't have to be spelled out it should be innate in all of us um but we did it and i do and i you know i really actually recognize the importance of trying to distill what your culture is in words because once you get that then so much of of that what you build on top of that whether it's like questions which you ask any any new starter you know in an interview process really digging into you know exactly what is their grit what is their bounce back ability what is their optimism um and then yeah and then just that after you've got that foundation thinking of all the sort of cadences the pattern of your business you know we have we have things like every friday across all of our markets we'll have true appreciation true achievements like true rating so we have to but you know um and so i think it's just getting that getting that rhythm of your business and your culture and keeping that consistent um and just like yeah continual reminders to people i'm not saying i'm not saying we've we've nailed it i think it's always a work in progress but i do i do think we've got a lot we've got a lot better at hiring people who exhibit that those kinds of those kinds of behaviors across our markets, which is, which is important.

34:44And we've met, you know, I think everyone talks about how important a diverse team is. You know, God, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more at one level of a diversity. I remember interpreting that, that I needed people who were really diverse from me in terms of how they looked at the world. I think ensuring that you build a team of people who have your core, your core values and attributes i think is important especially when you're yeah probably when you're small and

35:11Matt Oxley:in growth mode and then you know you've obviously got a lot of traction so we've talked a lot about the start so let's kind of talk about the scale at this point so you have over a billion verified ratings at this point yeah that's pretty massive yeah is there was there any as you were scaling and growing was there any specific unlock that unleashed this like was there a product change or partnership or anything or it's all just like cumulative progress and inertia from all the hard work early on well i yeah i think it's probably building that platform with with our payment providers um and getting that getting our tech into their into their system so then they can provide it to the retailers but you know i think it's interesting talking about the difference in the UK and the US.

35:58The UK, I always think, is very much a followers market. And so, you know, the UK will often say, you know, they'll be focused on which other retailers do you work with in our vertical because they'll want the confidence of the examples to follow. And so I think that's been quite key. One of the things I do want to kind of just extract finally is just some words of wisdom for people going over there. And I think there's a perception that founders need to be in the US to break the US. Do you agree with that or do you believe it to be a myth?

36:42I know, yeah, I know founders who are breaking the US, who are based in the UK and doing an amazing job. They just spend a lot of time on a plane. So I think FaceTime and building relationships is important. You've got to be prepared to do that for big contracts. When people are spending big money, they're buying from people. People buy from people. And so, yeah, I'd say it is possible. You've just got to invest in travel. And then just the final one, what's the hardest lesson you've learned going from the UK to the US that you couldn't have learned from a playbook or an advisor? I think it goes back to that, you know, well, whether it's from the US, but just, yeah, you've just got to be tenacious constantly.

37:34And, you know, I know everyone. Find a window. Yeah, everyone disses that, you know, like, oh, no, not more hustle porn. It's a huge market and you've got a finite window of time, I always say, to run at it and make it. And so, yeah, have that fire burning and have that energy and go and hit it hard. I love that. And I just want to say, look, thank you so much. This has been inspiring and I'm sure it's going to be inspiring for so many people. Your journey, how you talk about it, the values you've obviously kind of been really considered that you've carried through. I just want to say thank you so much for your time.

38:15It's been an unbelievable conversation.

38:17Matt Oxley:Yeah, Georgina, thank you so much for making time to speak with us. and appreciate you sharing your journey and hopes it helps other founders find their way into the U.S. as well. Thank you so much. See you next time. Bye. Cheers. Bye-bye.