Building a $1bn business after Dragons' Den REJECTION - Timo Boldt, Gousto

0:00So Timo, thank you so much for coming on. the question i have for you is how many gusto meals have you delivered since the beginning of the company since the beginning um we're not at a billion yet but i mean it's a big number and that's just to my house well i mean it's it's growing um and so we think about share of stomach you know you have 68 million people in the uk eating lunch and dinner wow times seven days that's a billion meals every single week and our share of stomach in in dinner is kind of 0.3 0.4 percent. Why not 1 %? Why not 2 %? Right? So it's day one for us. Wow. And do you think of Gusto as a food company or a tech company?

0:44A data company that loves food? Because the common denominator there's so many amazing teams across Gusto, and you got to design the recipes, but then you got to be amazing at supply chain, fulfillment, delivery, marketing, everything. And the common denominator is we all think about the customer, the customers first, and how we solve problems is through data, whether you work in the factory or on the supply chain. And so that's the common denominator. But obviously, we all love food. You know, this is my passion. This is why I founded Gusto. I love cooking. I love food. I love eating mainly. And so yeah, your godmother started 40 companies or something like that.

1:23I read. Yeah. So is she the inspiration for you being an entrepreneur? Or why did you start? completely like she's been amazing um i had the privilege to live in napa valley uh when i was 16 17 going to high school um and she exposed me to food entrepreneurship quality food um you know coming from germany i didn't know a single entrepreneur i didn't know anyone who's in food um and so kind of seeing her succeed at scale uh was amazing um she never raised money she doesn't have boards uh all the companies are fairly small but the lifestyle is amazing and so i always looked up to her. And then I happened to work in finance as one did in 2008.

2:01And she kept on pushing me, why are you working in finance? You know, go and quit your job, start a food business. If it doesn't work, you know, you learn how to cook. And you always get a job. And so that's, that's what I did in 2012. Would your parents think about that? That advice from her? I mean, they loved it. They always want me to succeed and have fun and kind of be my best. They saw how hard I worked in finance working 100 hours. I didn't love the culture. I loved kind of the curious element. I learned a lot. You get given kind of like a tiny toolbox, you can carry out the building. But I didn't love the culture and you know, the people side.

2:39I'm all about people. I love people. That's what gives me energy. And so I quickly realized finance wasn't for me, but maybe for other people. Yep. So I mean, you are a incredible founder, you've built an incredibly valuable company, You sit on the board of billion pound companies as well. Do you think without your godmother, do you think without that presence in your life on entrepreneurship, you would have made the change? Was there a moment of flick for you between the two? It's definitely down to her. I think if you challenge yourself and you think about your life and how few people have massively impacted your life, it's probably five people, right?

3:18Like where your life kind of bifurcates and she's been that kind of massive influence in my early days because if I had kids a house a mortgage I probably wouldn't kind of have gone into entrepreneurship and so she early on kind of made sure I at least consider entrepreneurship and then I went for it and I love learning I wanted to optimize for learning I didn't care much about money or income I'm very blessed to have a wife who didn't care about income and so I went from a very high salary to no salary moving back into student accommodation tiny tiny tiny one bedroom flat with my back then girlfriend and my wife um and yeah it's been it's been amazing but yeah i mean obviously it's hard at the beginning you have this like unusual story i read about uh i don't know other way to say this al gore and a christmas card you've done your homework um i in 2012 13 14 i wanted to really challenge myself to up my game and find people who could mentor me.

4:20You know, back then, you didn't have like what YouTube is today in terms of information. And so I kind of challenged myself, what bold thing can I do to reach people I look up to? And so I sent 100 Christmas cards, handwritten cards to people totally out of my league. Wow. And three people responded. Two of them invested. One of them was Al Gore. And, you know, they became mentors of mine. 97 people haven't responded. who cares right the entire story is everyone only remembers Al Gore I had dinner a couple of times he's invited me to group things in London I met other people through his network amazing no one cares about a 97 and it kind of conditioned me to believe you got to be out there you got to take risk um if you get rejected 99 times go one more time you might win and that's really been helpful in the early days yeah screw you Obama how dare you I think that's the advice also to to young people.

5:16I get the feedback all the time from people, which is like, I've reached out to X many people and no one got back to me. It's like, well, you've got to keep going because, but because someone will get back to you. They will potentially support you in this part of your life and then your life will move on and then you can reach out again. So are you going to send more Christmas cards? Absolutely. Yeah. Who's, who's, who's peaked at 400 per year. And then since then because 400 is wow. He's writing a lot. Yeah. We were talking about going to a cabin. I write my Christmas cards every year in the cabin, by the way.

5:47It's a good place to get through a lot of Christmas cards. That is a great idea. Yeah. Can I ask the, we were talking a second ago about the student accommodation and, you know, being with your then girlfriend, now wife, and now your company's worth hundreds of millions. The board you sit on, they're worth billions. Did you, is that what you saw? Is that what you seeked? Were you chasing that or what were you chasing at the beginning um i i wanted to be my own boss i want to have independent freedom that's kind of what i was seeking when i worked in finance you know i worked in a hedge fund worked 100 hours flying around um and i think kind of seeking independence uh seeking adventure wanting to have a positive impact on people and the planet was kind of gusto's founding purpose and still today is the purpose um i'm a builder i want to build products that have positive impact um and so that was the motivation and then it's learning i i love learning i'm a massive kind of learnaholic um and so i just felt like this is the richest way to learn you'll fail 50 times you'll be up at night but you learn so much and it makes life so much richer i never ever thought about kind of you know wealth or having cars or this stuff of course i want to be comfortable and I want to be able to provide um but fairly kind of within reason what's the toughest lesson you think you've learned so far what's the toughest lesson um I mean I can tell you the toughest time I had I mean a couple of times but you know in the early days we kept on running out of cash and that was really daunting um a couple of years in I started paying myself salary and then I had to stop again because we ran out of cash we had a term sheet from a VC fund they dropped out last minute we were completely exposed 10 weeks left but i mean this was kind of in the early early days 2022 super super tough i think what it taught me though is that stress focuses the mind and you learn the most when things are really really rough and tough here in the uk you know cost of living crisis wonder ukraine 50x increase in cost of capital you know 70 year low in consumer confidence and so we were like running hard as hard as we could into the storm you know full on making huge investments and then suddenly there's a sea change you know the party moves from hardcore party to sober uh within weeks you have this risk off risk on took 13 years risk off took 10 weeks and suddenly the party changed and i think for us adapting to extreme change and to tell the team that the definition of success is how you all how we as a team handle this level of change was really powerful you know i had to let go people i love working with people i look up to them i learn so much and so the toughest moment was to lay off people in 2022 we shut down a factory hardest thing ever um you know i walked through the factory.

8:54A lot, you know, shaking people's hands, thanking them and apologizing is really, really tough. But at the end of the day, kind of you get through it, and you learn, you become more resilient, you learn, you focus on the controllables, what is it you can control, the other stuff is anxiety, and you start kind of to dissect what's vanity, what's sanity, right, there's cash flow, and then there's kind of other stuff. And so it's been really, really rich and learning, but yeah painful what's it like to have you know built one of those very few uk unicorns and how much self-worth did you personally attach to that status which i imagine also really helps you attract capital and attract great people to then lose it like how does that feel like does it matter for example that it was a unicorn to not a unicorn any more than it matters that it was 10 million to 5 million as markets contract like is there a lot of imagine imaginative self-worth in that label uh no none um everything you just said is kind of alien to me because at the end of the day i literally wake up every day and i see huge opportunity to create value and that's my mindset to me today is day one um we're seeing amazing traction um we've seen incredible kind of profitability in the last couple of years thanks to everyone's focus on the customer what matters most and so i i'm a builder are we having more impact on people in the planet yes no are we getting closer to the vision of being the most loved way to eat dinner yes no and i absolutely know that if we just keep on building like amazing things will happen for everyone involved and so i have a fairly high degree of uh belief um probably borderline naive um but yeah i know i have total conviction this stuff will all sort itself out we were we were talking before you know you deliver 100 million meals a year right now and earlier we were talking about what impact you can have on people on the world in preventative health and is that the direction the company is going to go is that your focus moving forwards yes completely i mean we came from a world where the opportunity I saw at the beginning was mainly food waste.

11:0840 % of food is wasted. You know, if food waste was a country, it would be the third largest country after China and the US in terms of CO2 emissions, way worse than packaging. I mean, factor 1000, right? And so kind of sorting out this was the number one mission we had at the beginning. Then this shifted to packaging. You know, we've made 80 % of packaging recyclable. Every single time you eat gusto, 23 % of CO2 emissions are now taken out of the system. versus the equivalent supermarket shop. And so now I feel like we earned the right to focus a lot bigger again on the next 10 years. And that's preventative health from my perspective.

11:46What you put into your body, food is medicine, health is wealth. And food has such a profound impact. 60 % of food in this country, here in the UK, is ultra processed food. And the life expectancy you lose is, I mean, crazy. In poor demographics, 80 % of food intake is ultra processed food and you lose 10 years of life expectancy. If you eat gusto, it's not processed. I mean, sauces maybe, but like tiny bits, single digits. So processed, not ultra processed is the point. Yeah, totally, totally. It's fresh from the farm. You eat your five a day. At the end of the day, this is not rocket science, right?

12:25You don't have to have a PhD in nutrition. It's about basic stuff, cooking from scratch, healthy food from the farm. and then suddenly your life gets better. Obviously, we've got to credentialize this. It's one thing, me saying this, we've got to credentialize this. And so you should expect a ton of work in the next 10 years credentializing this, NHS partnerships, working with the treasury. We've got to shift as a country towards preventative intervention. One pound you spend on prevention probably saves you 10 pounds in NHS budget down the line. And so just from an economic perspective, from a UK well-being perspective, this has massive impact.

13:06I think one of the really interesting things in the election, the American election right now, is RFK, so Robert Kennedy joining the Trump campaign with the notion of, I'm going to focus on food. That'll be my remit. Because, you know, taking away all the other remit from neither party electing him. So that'll be his thing. Like making sure that America gets healthy again. Make America healthy again. Like that's sort of like their tagline on that piece. What do you think of that? it's a it's a big hill to climb um but do you think he's the right kind of reformer for it uh i don't want to have a political view here i didn't ask you what you thought about his vaccines i'm just asking he's got a great record in this stuff though on that on as in on challenging big you know incumbent i don't know how sophisticated his views are and how science back they are and so i can't comment on the science yeah right and in my humble opinion you got to do it really into the science you know the protein flavor of the month everyone is saying eat x protein that's not scientifically proven right if you really dig into the papers and so i think there's a lot of snake oil in this world um if we have politicians who genuinely focus on food you'll see financial benefits you see well-being uh benefits and so the compounding impact of focusing on food is huge it's the number one reason why you live longer or why you are healthy right there's sleep there's uh exercise there's a few things but they're not that many things and food is by far the most profound one because we all have to eat every day x times uh and so yeah any politician going into it great and the problem is that food has been politicized in general yeah can we dig into that statement about protein because i swear all i ever hear and read and watch online right now is just eat and consume as much protein as physically possible and so what is the science like how much protein should i be eating as a 30 year old man you should eat um fairly normal levels of protein so that's what like 40 50 60 gram and what is that contextually like is that just normal diet normal healthy diet whole grains uh vegetables fruit lean protein you You know, maybe like some salmon.

15:21Salmon is awesome from an omega perspective, from lots of perspectives. Just make sure you, you know, you get your fiber intake and, you know, eat the rainbow. Everything else is not bonus. It just, it actually makes it worse. Yeah, it's not actually good for you. So from a scientific point of view, all of this advice around, like, loading myself up on protein above and beyond my... It's not proven at all. and there is some evidence that suggests that it's bad for your organs but if you take a look at me and take a look at chris there's evidence right in front of you he has a lot more protein than i do you're veggie aren't you well a lot more protein yeah yeah there you go but i mean i've never i never drink protein shakes i don't really work out like i don't you know i would just eat a normal i eat a lot of food that's true but like i would say quite a balance yeah quite balanced balance That's the key, right?

16:14Don't take it into the extremes. I work out three hours a week. Fairly hardcore. I eat mainly vegetarian diet, right? Like pulses, lentils, chickpeas, all this stuff is great. Beans has plenty of protein. What's your favorite gusto meal? Oh, I mean, gusto's famous for choice. There are 100 plus recipes on the menu. Yeah. More than anyone in the world. So I love the variety, honestly. I love that is actually to be fair that as one of your customers as we were saying for four and a half years now that is by far the best thing about it when I explain it to people and like there's a downside to it the best part is is choice so whatever you love this week whatever it was great and next week you've got something completely different it's a completely different menu it's the best thing ever the problem with it is once you find something you fall in love with you keep a little recipe card but you're like damn it I don't know when it's coming back that's the negative side to it you can now heart it and we're working on it yeah I mean, this is my next question.

17:13So your AI is now predicting what people want to eat. What is the weirdest thing it predicts for people? But it's taken away their protein. I mean, look, I think there are a couple of things that are amazing about leveraging AI from a menu and health and impact perspective. One is that we consistently make the menu tastier when we look at the metrics, but at the same time, we take CO2 emissions out. And so as a customer, you're not noticing that you are saving CO2 emissions. We're just doing it on the back end by changing some of the choice we offer. Similarly, from a health perspective, we're making the meals healthier and healthier and healthier.

17:52But we're not telling you as a customer because we don't want to compromise on taste and quality. We want you to walk away like, wow, this was the highlight of my day. It's been fun. It's been tasty. And so we're doing this stuff in the background, leveraging the algorithm. And I think that's super powerful. and we're on day one again. There's so much opportunity. The funny thing about humans is, right, you ask people, what do you want to eat? And they say, salad. And you look at what they choose and it's sausage and burger. And I'm the same, right? These meals are great. Yeah. I find the idea of training in AI, like I find it exciting, the idea of training in AI and what to tell me that I'm going to enjoy.

18:32Because I think there's a simplicity to food, which is that having something suggests variety to you but within the confines of what you like is such an exciting idea i would love that to happen because i swear i spent so much time thinking about what i'm going to eat which i also find fun i yeah i do love that it takes that work out for me um you mentioned earlier that it's a data company that loves food when you first started gusto like how did you position that how how are you thinking about what that business is going to be and how to build it um i was clueless i genuinely had no clue i worked in a hedge fund 100 hours per week um i had no business plan written down i just felt like i need to quit my job next day i started gusto in my living room um and honestly i just started cooking dishes and kind of started experimenting wasting time i had no idea about performance marketing about anything if i'm honest unit economics or all this good stuff you need to scale a business um and so i had to learn on the ground um yeah but did you start with the intention this is going to be a data company because and therefore i know that you know data is the new oil and all the other sound bites that you would have pulled out from private equity or were you less intentional and over time have had to develop a thesis no so i my thesis was if customers love this i'll build a big business right and so the the only thing that really matters was the customer but from a mindset perspective i really wanted this to be a meritocracy so like if your idea is better than mine we'll go for yours if your idea is better great couldn't care less everyone is equal as long as the data backs up your opinion and we're not like shouting louder or over each other or whoever has you know higher rank kind of gets um their stuff done and so i had this idea of like as long as we listen to the data we do the best stuff for the customer and so this is kind of where this came from so not not data is oil but kind of yeah deep deep customer obsession gotta deliver for customers and then things will happen so interestingly um heights actually has been but my co-founder goes to these you run these events um and they are very much to talk about bento and the software side of the business um and it's funny we have this conversation in heights It's because my co-founder Joel loves this kind of stuff.

20:54And he goes, whereas I genuinely am like, I just love the food boxes. Like, I'm the customer out of the two of us. I don't want to tarnish my view of what Gusto is to me. Because it's like pure and beautiful to me. But you've got the software thing as well. What's that about? So, look, the idea was Gusto has built all the subscription technology for so many years. You know, spending hundreds of millions. I mean, we've got hundreds of data and scientists and engineers working on these things. But at the end of the day, we have finite resource. And the question is, do we want to put this finite resource into generic technology, heights needs anyone needs?

21:33Or do we use our finite resources to really deliver what kind of gusto customers want and can't get in the market? And so we just felt like we're doing the heart lifting because there's no subscription technology platform out there that can do what we need. And therefore, we just said we take it out of Gusto. We put it into Bento. You're welcome. We've done this for 10 years. And this way, Bento can have thousands of clients, can invest way more into subscription technology than Hides or Gusto standalone could ever do. And Gusto can use its finite resources to do what's best for the customer. And so this is where this idea came from.

22:09We've built all this cool stuff, self-service refunds, certain forecasting, personalization engine, all these cool things, churn prediction, resurrection campaigns, discount optimization. And so you got to just package this up and give it to other subscription companies. And it's really powerful. We have the first couple of customers on it. Customer success is the number one objective. If you are not making a return on the investment, obviously it's pointless. And so the promise is 3x return. We hired the chief customer officer from Salesforce in the UK. We hired an amazing guy, came from California, did 10 years at Palantir.

22:46We hired Gusto's first chief operating officer back to scale the second business for us. And so an amazing kind of dream team, plus lots of engineers. And so, yeah, it's my second startup after Gusto, and I'm massively enjoying it. It's good fun. How does it work from an ownership point of view? Do Gusto own it? Fully owned by Gusto. Yeah. we had term sheets externally personally no i mean it's it's it's a huge synergy so if we think about kind of expanding stuff inside gusto we use bento because it goes faster and they will have the toolkit into solution and so it actually massively creates synergy for gusto the flywheel the gusto flywheel goes faster because we don't have to use these techies on these generic things and we just build the stuff that actually creates the flywheel for customers interesting how are finding the sort of dichotomy between running a consumer company and actually like ultimately a b2b sass um look i like learning i i really enjoy the privilege of running both that means he hates it by the way he prefers the consumer you can tell i mean b2b is fascinating right it's it's so different on on the customer side you launch a cool feature you make it better for customers you see thousands of customers coming through the door on b2b you got to build relationships you got to do events.

24:00It's just a different kind of philosophy. I generally enjoy it from a learning perspective. I get the impression from you. And it's strange these days, I think so many entrepreneurs, you know, I would say myself included in this, will do businesses for short periods of time and move from business to business. I get the impression from you that you're going to be here doing this for a long time. Like you have an underlying mission which feels stronger than a lot of other people like the the move into technology the move into defensive health like is that am I right in thinking that that you see yourself doing this and leading this charge for a long time 100 % totally committed I love what I do I feel super privileged amazing I love the people I work with we're on a massive mission this is day one we haven't accomplished much um it is literally day one and there's so much opportunity to go after and chase um I'm fully committed for the next 50 years in 2022 you were valued at 1.4 billion pounds and it's amazing to hear from someone that they think this is day one when they've hit a billion valuation previously so how did it feel when that happened i know i get the impression you're not money focused but there must have been a moment where you went holy fuck like the company is worth over a billion pounds um look it's it's special what stands behind us you know suddenly seeing amazing investors um softbank and fidelity and kind of world-class investors piling into your company does feel special you get to meet massa you know you meet these people it's generally fun and special um and they recognize the potential you have in the next 10 years to build something that's truly impactful.

25:43And so to me, that's kind of what was signified behind the valuation. The valuation mattered less. It's kind of, yeah, what it meant for the team and the hard work and people got rewarded. Employees got to sell shares. This stuff is special. What was Massa like? I was going to ask the same question. We did an episode on Massa with Lionel Barber. Did you know he's got like a book coming out on Massa? Yeah. I didn't know that. He's like, followed him around. And we had him in last week and we did an interview and it was so good i cannot wait to read it so what was masa like i mean i love masa right there are a few people in your life who just sit there waiting with the baseball bat trying to swing a home run and they couldn't care less whether they have to hit a hundred times or a thousand times they just kind of keep keep going the guys in his mid 60s the meeting got like removed or moved around like five times ended up like i don't know midnight 90 minutes, no time pressure, take as much time as you like.

26:42I mean, a guy has boundless energy, right? And all his questions, it took him a time, some time to understand what I'm pitching. Yeah. You know, he does so many things. Once he understood it and he's like, wow, you're thinking big. You're leveraging technology, AI. Like I get where you want to head. Can you hire four X more engineers? Can you hire like five X more data science? No normal VC fund has ever asked me these questions, right? They want to know what's the return on incremental spending and so on. And then you meet this kind of total outlier person who's like, can you launch in Japan in two weeks?

27:17And he had 20 people on the call. He's like, Mitch, I forgot the name. I'm making this up. Mitch, Mitch, how many insurance customers do we have in Japan? It's like, Masa, we have 30 million. Timo, take my insurance customers. Give them gusto. It's healthy for them. Can you do it in two weeks? It's like, let me reflect on it. How much are you giving me? Well, he wanted to give us this and we wanted to take this much, right? Because we had a lot of funding. Can you give us context on those two things? Let's call this one 100 million so that we're directionally accurate, right? This is quite directional.

27:52And he was kind of more like, do you want to take 500 million? Well, you were going for 100 million and he was trying to give you 500 million. Directionally, that's the right magnitude. And the reason you didn't want to take 500 million is what? I did need 500 million and we're free cash flow but look to me it's all about discipline right it's about rigor in the execution I can only go as hard as the team can go so look I agree that this is the right answer and I agree with all of this it makes loads of sense but that's interesting because that's what I've understood and what we understood in talking to Lionel that's not what Masa wants to hear yeah I don't think he loves it I mean the team you know coached me before to just kind of politely nod and say like yeah I'll consider Thank you and great idea.

28:36But, you know, you walk out being inspired by the guy. I've never met anyone who thinks this big and you kind of feel like, should I go faster? Where should I go harder? And so he gets you in the right mindset, even though, you know, it might be a bit too extreme. I am going to show you a clip from Dragon's Den. Great. If that's okay. I actually do a series on Dragon's Den on my own channels. And it has done incredibly well. So to date, me and Timo each invested£75 ,000 each individually. And we've also raised£130 ,000 from friends and family. Is it all gone? Nope. We have about£90 ,000 left over at the moment.

29:17You're losing money at the moment? Yes, we are. Fucking idiot. Losing money? What a business. He became a customer after. Really? Yeah, it was awesome. He said it on the show. And then, you know, back then we checked everyone who kind of signed up. We saw his name pop up, became a customer. Loved it. £25 ,000 loss a month. I don't consider a small level. No, okay. Oh, dabs. Dabs, dabs, dabs. Will you show her the clip? We're going to have to. I'm going to show her the clip of you watching it. Yeah, it's going to get really better. I understand, but it's£25 ,000. Oh, that's good content. Can you describe that as a small...

29:53No, of course not. That is a lot of money to be losing a month when you've only got£90 ,000. We've done okay. We've done okay. Right now, he's got three months ahead of you. You are not... Feels good to be free cash flow positive. Yeah. It's a nice feeling. When maths is trying to give you 500 million.

30:14Message for Debs? Yeah, well, you missed out. You missed out. This was the big one. But look, it's hard, right? It's hard. How old are you there? I look so young. I started Gusto when I was 27. And so that was... I had food poisoning the day before. Oh, no. And they put you... I'm now from a pizza place up in Manchester. And they put you into this holding room. And you're in this tiny room for like up to 10 hours. And they say, look, in the next 10 hours, at some point, it's your slot. You're like, shit. And we had these girls advertising the self-tanning lotion. And they were in their bikinis doing the jingle.

30:49They were trying to get investment. And so we waited for like eight, nine hours. And they were waiting for like longer. And so for like nine hours, they were practicing the jingle in their bikinis. And the same song over and over because they were so nervous. And I just went crazy. So it's my phone. You've built a billion pound company that was turned down by the Dragons. Do you think that Dragons' done is a good thing? Yeah, I love it. It's awesome. Yeah. What do you think about the Dragons now? Like, presumably, not many of them have built a billion pound company. No comment.

31:27Look, it's hard to pick. you know to be an angel investor and succeed right the pattern recognition you got to develop i'm not claiming i would be good at this i've done like 10 angel investments yeah i think i suck at it i love being a builder and going hardcore into stuff and like really like zooming into culture and people and unpicking stuff i don't want to like write a check and then like speak on a quarterly basis i respect people who do it it's probably fun was the pr for the show a positive presumably Yes, it was. Because I always find, especially with companies like yours, it's kind of the perfect show for companies like yours.

32:05Yeah, it was awesome. I'm surprised that you've never... Yeah. Did you ever? It's more that they had the Vite of Artics guy on it for like ever. So I was just like, never want to pitch. And like, now I can't go on it because obviously Steve is a customer. Chase La Volle. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, it's really be conflicted now. And they're nowhere near as good. I mean, they're an embarrassment. Rubbish. back then you know we had one developer and we said like you the server cannot go down he's like yeah yeah i'm putting the server on a table so in case it's flooding and you know and we had this like party when when it aired and we took everyone to a bowling alley and friends and family and everyone and then like 10 seconds in website crashes yeah i love i actually like because i've had that conversation with developers over the years for various businesses it's like okay hey guys, it's unbelievable.

32:53I've got us onto Good Morning Britain. Like the traffic will be like nothing you've ever seen before. The developer's like, no, don't worry about it. I got it with this complex solution. I'm like, I just know it's going to crash. The second you're on, gone. Stuart, if you're listening, 12 years ago, I'm watching you. I feel like it's part of every entrepreneur's journey. At some point, you've got to have the thing that crashes your website. It's a rite of passage. And if you haven't, then you've got something to look forward to. Sadly, we had it twice. The other really big one was we had a massive kind of event, live cooking, cook along, lots of famous kind of TV stars involved during the pandemic beginning.

33:28And it like crashed completely and we couldn't get it back up. Oh God. Live event. What were the like other events? I suppose that would have been a big event in terms of exposure for you. Like I'm not going to call that a breakout moment. No. But when you look at the roadmap of the business retrospectively, what are the moments that you can pick out and say, that was, you know, that was a 10x moment. That was a thing that transformed my business. Because I think for entrepreneurs watching the show, and we have millions of watchers, they will be looking for those moments. Like what were the decisions you made that transformed the company?

34:06Always the same. Always one type of decision. Hire the right person. If you hire the right person, amazing things happen way beyond what you think is possible and you know we tried so hard we had amazing ideas nothing happened and then we hired the right person and they took it 10x up and so sounds less sexy but it does come down to hiring exceptional people the best advice I often find is not that sexy but how does someone who is young and inexperienced because you can remember yourself at 27 right actually hiring great people is an unbelievable skill but it takes discipline it takes structure it takes process so how do you find attract and hire great people um i mean we we try to really create a culture where where we have the conditions for people to be their best we try to make our ownership principles as repeatable as possible so that the winning behaviors are easy for people to understand.

35:08I think behaviors foreshadow financial success, customer success, more than anything else in life. And so we like double down on behaviors, and we try to kind of get to know people over time. Ideally, I always hang out with people, I always kind of have a list of people. I like to call full circle. You know, I like to call and just kind of ask and bounce off ideas and often i hired them five years later or i had them on my post when i had a podcast i had them on my podcast i hired them after um i did an mba on weekends i hired three people out of a 50 people class um and a fourth person invested and so i think it's kind of being yes it's being structured you have to have an amazing talent acquisition person and we've got like the best in the world.

35:59But at the same time, you have to have this mindset constantly to evaluate where my gaps, who are to meet the people I want to kind of, I aspire to hire one day. In a developmental culture like that, feedback is usually like very purposeful. What's some of the most challenging feedback you've had from your employees? I mean, I'm an ideas person and I can't hold back. And so, you know, I just had the session yesterday and I literally ended the session by, you know, what's the most helpful thing I can do? Like, what do you want me to do? And the team literally kind of like looked at each other and was like, well, we need a bit of focus here.