Hustle Awards 2025 Special: Orli, Winner of Social Impact Hero

0:00Welcome back to The Serial Entrepreneur. I'm your host Anna Wood. On today's episode, I'm joined by Dr. Mark Cox, the co-founder and CEO of Orly. We discuss the inspiration behind founding Orly after witnessing patient crisis as an NHS doctor, giving children the tools they need to regulate their emotions in a fun way, and winning the Social Impact Hero Award at the Hustle Awards 2025. Let's dig in. Welcome to the podcast today. Thanks so much for having me. Nice to be here. yeah thank you for coming on so we begin every podcast with our signature icebreaker question which is what's your favorite breakfast cereal and why oh i don't know if this is really rogue but i've always been someone who mixes their cereal so i don't really have a favorite i would go for a combination of raisin wheats a little bit rogue as well and i like golden nuggets and I also like Crave but I've you know I've been on a kind of mission the whole of my life to convert people that eating mix a mixture of cereal is okay so that's usually what I go for.

1:10I've never heard of anyone mixing their cereal but honestly it's kind of genius. So would you be able to introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your background? Sure um so yeah I'm Mark I'm a doctor by trade so I've worked in the NHS for about another eight years or so across a number of different jobs and yeah qualified in Newcastle in sort of 2018 and spent the last sort of four years in in London worked in Manchester where I'm from originally and have always been very interested in mental health and that's what sort of led me on the journey of of Orly I've always been someone who's fairly entrepreneurial i used to do things like run you know nights at night clubs when i was at uni and used to do all of the kind of classic entrepreneurial stuff i set up like a facebook group to sell tickets when i was at university and didn't really find the specialty within medicine i thought was going to be you know what i wanted to do forever just just that specialty i wasn't kind of obsessed with one particular thing and yeah over the last three or four years have been branching out across social media across podcasting myself and then also now you know most of my time is spent building building orly yeah so what is orly and what is your mission great question so orly is a digital physical platform that is designed to make looking after your mental health fun and engaging accessible for children but also make it easier and simpler for the adults in that child's life to support the child so so our mission really is to to create technology and products that help children improve their ability to emotionally regulate you know later in life therefore helping them become sort of confident compassionate leaders and so yeah we're building building what we call an ecosystem it's very buzzwordy isn't it but it's an ecosystem because it's something for the children which is a digital product called the orly verse it's also something for the parents which is orly family which is more of a co-pilot and then then actually the the product we've developed the most is orly schools which is orly professionals which is which is more for teachers practitioners and professionals and and that's something that we're launching at the moment across different schools so the the concept of orly is based around characters so a bit like the film inside out children and if anyone's watching the recording you can see one of my characters here this is orla the children meet these characters they get to create their own orly but then they meet these characters who will help them engage and teach them through storytelling through games through physical activities in the real world and then we use the data that they give us to turn that into insights or suggestions or activities for their parents or their schools to do so yeah there is a digital physical components orly it's based around these characters they're our kind of core they were our core insight back at the start of this year when we we went and worked with children and we found that the characters were what what created emotional safety what created this kind of catalyst for change and for connection and for learning and so yeah we we start with software and then we're branching out into physical products and later we will be we'll be looking at how we can make smarter smarter products that have an element of digital and physical technology within them great so i wanted to ask as you're already a doctor and you've now decided to kind of found a company.

5:02What was the inspiration behind founding it, especially as you already have such a, I guess, high pressure job and also people do see founding a company as also quite an intense experience? Yeah, you can say that again. So I've seen a lot of crisis in my life, particularly from a professional perspective when it comes to mental health. So there's a number of occasions I've cared for people in crisis with their mental health who were suicidal or who had self-harmed and when I have care for young adults or young people in a similar position it's always been something that stayed with me from a kind of emotional perspective more so than anything else physical sorry to the people that I see that have kind of broken their leg but it's always something that kind of affects me more deeply from an emotional standpoint and I was diagnosed with ADHD six months ago but before that I didn't know I had ADHD and I struggled myself with anxiety and burnout for the first time years ago.

6:02So the combination of those two things of having this experience of not really knowing myself properly and experiencing quite severe mental health symptoms or challenges, as well as then seeing the human side of crisis in a professional capacity, it was my inspiration. The kind of insight I think I bring as a doctor that you know separates that human side is is seeing how the system is not necessarily set up to support people earlier in the journey and particularly our young people who for me there is no greater social cause than the the way in which our young people's minds functioning and how they feel because we just know you know so much of our behavior as as humans is driven by emotion and it's really important that children have the skills and the relationships and the environment to think in a way or feel in a way that allows them to think more clearly or allows them to to make decisions that they would want to make so i think for me it's it's it's such an important kind of mission that i've seen firsthand in different capacity both from a personal perspective and professional and really having the insights into the system's failings have given me the kind of you know stepping stones to go down this journey of creating Orly.

7:25Great so you said that kind of you've seen how the system can kind of fail people so how do you think your approach differs from other support models that may be out there currently? What I like to think about when it comes to Orly support is that we we are blending something that is very playful fun and accessible something that is inspirational and so i guess what companies do very well in the kind of more b2c space you know i'm thinking of kind of headspace and calm and you know duolingo companies that you know are kind of household brands they they are able to capture people's attentions and be very accessible and be and be something that people aspire to so So there's one part of Orly that we want to create, which is that it's something for everyone.

8:15It's playful and it's fun. But we want to combine that with clinical rigor and evidence and a clinically backed approach. And so we sit between this, you know, the way in which we do that is through gathering evidence, building a clinically backed framework, making sure that things are designed by clinicians. And so we sit between this kind of, you know, something that is fun and accessible and playful and can be for everyone and capture people's attention and imagination, but also have the kind of evidence base behind it that other things don't. So that would be kind of number one in terms of our approach.

8:54Therefore, we aim to be something that is more based around early intervention, so support for anyone in their journey, but particularly earlier on, helping people kind of, you know, helping out to prevent mental health issues or kind of intervene earlier in that journey so they don't end up. We aren't a clinical service, so we don't necessarily offer assessments or therapeutic interventions with clinicians, although at some point maybe that might be integrated into how we refer people on or into something we potentially do. and then also i would say that we are very like i said focused on building an ecosystem so something for all of the different parts of of that child support system so parents school health care as you know grandparents all of this that we see all as as a tool that has the ability to support each of the different people in that child's life not just something that is designed to be here's six therapy sessions for you as a child without going and addressing any of the other sort of systemic or environmental factors in that child's life we see all year something that can hopefully improve or support those different areas great so you discussed the ecosystem and how it's kind of like for home parents and school and i know you recently did your first pilot yeah at a school how did that go yeah it was great we've we've run a workshop called create your raleigh for nearly nine months or so now.

10:24That was where we first designed the Orni characters. We'd done it digitally. We designed these characters. We went into a school. We ran the workshop and we realized just how powerful the characters can be and the impact that they had for weeks afterwards. We then went about redesigning our platform and our approach and everything really. And that was just in February. so this pilot was to go and re-deliver that workshop but with a digital side to it so children still create their physical orly literally with balloons and you know you put rice in it we do a demonstration they customize it and it's always the favorite part of what children do it's creative play it's creating something sensory that they can keep and they have ownership over they absolutely love it but we also then got them on the platform and we got some advice and our pilots at the moment are not necessarily focused on huge impact measures because it's still early in our journey and early with product development they're more focused on co-creation and so we have the platform where children can draw they can suggest activities we spent the whole time just getting more ideas of what children would like to do in the games how they would like us to interact with them via orly how much of it they want to be physical how much they want to be digital how would it fit into the school day what what would they want their characters to do in the future what games would they want to see what environments would they want to have in in the digital or physical world that we're creating so it went really really well we are now hopefully pushing schools that we're working with to continue using the platform and continue using the sessions that we create but it's a it's an it's early early days and we'll see we'll see what the kind of feedback is in the next kind of two to three months to to the first schools that are on the platform.

12:10Cool so you said how kind of co-creation is really important and it definitely must be important when you're working especially for a platform that's aimed at children as there's adults can have a certain view but a child's perspective and the person who's going to be using it must be completely different as well. Yeah yeah definitely and there's a balance to be struck with that because I mean I have a have an 11 year old who's our chairman of our young person's board and if i was to listen to all of his ideas we'd be creating something that might not be you know completely aligned with improving mental health but it'd be very cool for him so you have to you have to kind of you know take and take take as many ideas on as possible shape the solution so it meets the needs of children but you can't just focus on creating death lasers if you're building a mental health game but yeah it's one of those things it's um It's our favourite part of what we do is going into schools and running the workshops as much as we want to build cool technology.

13:12It's still never going to be beaten as an experience. Yeah, definitely. So what is the target age for Orly? We kind of sit between 6 to 12 at the moment. as as we expand out and we are able to develop further we will be a little bit more specific around age groups and how the experience differs for different age groups at this point it's more still testing which age groups respond best but we've had any we've had children as young as four using our physical orlies at home and we've had children as old as sort of 15 getting involved with some of the digital stuff and some of the physical stuff as well it kind of depends but where our pilots are at the moment is kind of like nine to 11 and then our physical product stuff we've been doing over the summer with with parents a lot of the children have been as young as kind of six seven eight nine ten that's kind of the sweet spot is probably six to twelve yeah great so i think there's an increasing conversation around concern about technology and children's well-being where do you think orly fits into this conversation yeah great question firstly i think my view on this is that technology is a huge part of our daily lives and the the difficulty that parents face is that we want to empower children to use technology but without any of the harm and and there's a really difficult battle you have to run there i think we're all as as humans experiencing i don't know if how you feel this but everyone i speak to at the moment we all feel more and more addicted to technology i very rarely meet someone who's like oh i've cracked it and i feel less it's like it's really difficult and insidious change that has happened over the last few years particularly in my life where i feel like i spent my whole life on a screen so there is there is a huge problem and there's no doubt that there are there are links to mental health but it is complicated and we need to see it as such i don't think there's a one I don't think there's just a one blanket answer.

15:18I don't think banning everything is massively helpful. Although, you know, there are things that we can put in place at home to make our lives easier and to reduce screen time to a healthy amount. So where I think Orly fits into this is that the Orly characters and the experience for children is all about helping children build agency and helping children to build confidence. and so all these become friends for children they become something they interact with and the way i see us expanding into the screen time and the technology sort of debate let's call it digital health or digital overwhelm is that we the early characters will teach children about screen time some of the early characters are more focused on emotions some of the characters may well be focused more on an area of personality and some of them may well be focused more on screen time as well as the fact that your own orly will power up and down depending on how much screen time you've had and how many kind of physical activities you've done and there'll be an element to which the parent can decide that and because these children that we are you know supporting are quite young so we want to make sure that parents have more tools to manage things like screen time to manage things like big feelings to manage things like arguments and conflict in the house so it's about trying to empower parents without becoming part of the kind of you know helicopter parent problem as well so it's really important we don't make things feel too controlling or give give kind of too much of a authoritarian response to to parents so So it's an interesting one, one that obviously we're really interested in supporting and making sure we don't become part of the problem.

17:09And I think that's probably another reason why we are really focused on the physical side to Orly. So whether or not it's the physical products that we introduce, whether or not it's the activities that Orly suggests that are in the real world to get children moving, get them off the screen. but also i i try not to vilify technology because it's you know we're sat here on laptops talking through technology children will live in a world that is so going to be so connected and going to be so technologically focused that it's important that we make sure children have the skills it's just got to be done in an sensible way yeah i think that's really interesting and important that you said that kind of like the screen time is also built in and the kids are being taught about it because I think that's the issue is we also mentioned how everyone is becoming very addicted to technology and it's kind of hard to not be in this day and age because most people's works are on the screen and then your phone's always on you so it's always something to fill the time and I think that's that line there with kids is that parents don't want their kids to be addicted to technology but the kids also need to use the tech to become tech literate as they grow because childhood now looks completely different to childhood even 10 years ago so i think that's that's a really interesting point that you've made yeah 100 there's a fine line there's a fine line and it's often about quality quantity has an impact for sure but it's quality what what are our children using on the screens and and how does technology actually create more moments of connection between family members so for example the audioverse is is going to be an app that parents and children can use together and then you know so there's parts of the experience that are actually creating connection the audio characters suggesting activities that you do back you're doing something physical so you're not just sitting there mind mind-numbingly staring at a screen it's about how do we use tech in a kind of intentional way rather than just completely vilifying it i think that is absolutely got to be the way that we go and you know i think i think over the next 10 20 years 10 15 years we'll see a lot of change when it comes to tech and i think we'll see less screens to a certain extent and we'll have clever ways using tech and we want to be at the forefront of that and we want to follow in in the footsteps of brands like Yotto and Edurino and Tony's who are child entertainment or child focused brands or family focused brands that use technology in a clever way that doesn't revolve around just purely using screens.

19:53And we want to do something quite similar at Oli. Yeah, great. So I was going to kind of move the conversation on a little bit. So you won the Social Impact Hero Award at the Hustle Awards this year. So congratulations on that. very much so what does that mean for you and or lee it's huge really because early stage businesses and i'm sure we'll talk about this in a minute but it's it's hard work right it's a lot of it's a lot of hours without much i mean but you know you have to put in a lot of time and you spend a lot of time doing things that maybe don't work out you're learning you are trying to build a team you're trying to figure things out and so i think just as context there are a lot of times where you feel a little bit like there's elements of self-doubt there's loneliness and and it's a very confronting experience for anyone particularly for a sensitive soul like me so it's one of those things where you you know you when you win an accolade or an award it feels it feels great you You know, it's great to have some recognition of what you're doing that other people have sat and looked through what you do and where you're going and how you've helped people.

21:08And then, you know, so to recognize to be doing something in the social impact space, particularly when you compare us to some of the other companies that were in that space who were doing amazing work, it really is special to see that. It's, you know, it's always onwards to the next thing with a startup. so it's nice to get a chance to sit and and talk about it and and so yeah i know i was i wasn't able to go to the hustle awards this year sadly i was away but my two of my team members ewan and stefano went and uh went and they had a great time and they felt they felt very smug winning that award which was nice so hopefully the first of first of many we have won a couple now which is great but i think you guys were the first one to give us an award so we're very grateful for that yeah I'm glad to hear that and yeah congratulations we hear from a lot of startups but as you said with the startup it's one thing after the other and you don't really have a chance to kind of sit and reflect and once you win an award it's like oh yeah we're we're actually doing good work yeah exactly that exactly that yeah it feels great yeah so I think you you already knew my next question from the way you answered that one because it was going to be what are the biggest challenges that have come up on the journey so far and how have you managed to overcome them there's there's a kind of like i guess i'll give two two parts to this answer there is a and this is different depending on what you do within the team but for me my greatest challenge has been fundraising and second part of this answer is the kind of mental battle that you have and fundraising is a big probably a big contributor a big part of that so fundraising is is really tough and i think for a company that are trying to do something that is very socially impact driven but we are a private company and we have big visions for the big vision for the future and and you know we have commercial plans it's always been the thing that is challenging It's not like a big, juicy AI agent, fintech, that is all the rage at the moment and you'll see massive growth.

23:18We are first-time founders raising money for a company that is social impact, that has lots of potential, but at the same time doesn't have a huge amount of, I guess, commercial traction. So the fundraising journey has been really difficult, particularly as we don't have a big network of angel investors. we haven't been doing this for a long period of time so that for me has has been the the biggest challenge so far and we are you know in the middle of a fundraise at the moment with some good authors on the table which makes life a little bit nicer a little bit easier but that's always been our challenge and i think as is the lifeblood of a company is it's how much money you've got until you've got a business that you can create scalable revenue then you're always going to be maybe chasing your tail a little bit until you get to that kind of point and then the second the second part and i think that's directly related i've definitely been struggling a little bit recently in certain areas is is the kind of mental battle that comes with so for me it's the fact that i i have lots of different ideas and loads of different opportunities and i create opportunities for the business but it's then the the difficulty that comes with not having money in the business or not having commercial traction and knowing which opportunities to take and then the kind of mental battle you have there so overall yes running a business is hard but there is this really weird thing that you have as a founder which is like what direction do i go in uh there are so many great things that are happening i've got like you know i've got huge opportunities at the moment in different areas but ultimately we can't go anywhere and i can't pay the people i need to pay and i can't pay myself unless we get funding in the business but me as a family it's not my favorite thing to do so it's like what you know which direction do you go in well i need to go in these directions so i get fundraising and then it's that kind of yeah it's that trade-off that is really really difficult so those are those i would say are the two biggest biggest challenges that i've faced so far yeah i hear a lot about funding i think just currently as well recently when i've been talking to people when i've asked about challenges everyone said funding kind of no matter what background they have i think especially for first time founders it's probably the biggest stress for them because it is you need funding to keep going and then they're like oh but then i've got to do all this other stuff and i do think it is a big it's just a big challenge in general 100 yeah it's that also like sunk cost of fundraising is you know i'm the one who spends most of the time in the business but if i i'm focused on fundraising then i'm not focused on building a business so it's really difficult and yes it's needed but it's not necessarily product development it's not necessarily you know creating partnerships or speaking to schools or speaking to parents doing customer research and all the other things that you could be doing it's trying to get money off people to to buy into your vision which is a necessary necessary part of the journey for a lot of businesses is is not always it's not always how I would I guess choose to spend my time yeah it's not I guess the fun part of having your own business no yeah it's not so on the flip side of that question what would you say have been some of the biggest highlights on the journey so far yeah great question I think that getting some funding so we got some funding in two occasions where we've had people give us funding so one was a grant in october last year and one was over funding from a vc and an accelerator in april and then recently we've had another much bigger offer which we're just going through the kind of due diligence with those those moments feel quite big and then we also recently had our first sale with a school so again another kind of revenue generation so you see it's all related to money right but at the same time those those would be like the kind of business headlines the business highlights and then from a kind of more personal perspective the highlights are always going into schools and running running the workshop and working and hearing feedback from parents around things that have helped and kids when they you know if you go to our website you can see a few little videos of some of the children we've sent all these to and and see the kind of impact that they're having and hear from parents you know and just a very quick story a parent said the other day they walked into the room where their youngest who has been helping us and had been engaging with us for a couple of months now was sat with our first version of the platform on an ipad just breathing in and out doing breast work and she carol caroline the mom i'm sure she won't mind me saying her she has said to me she's been trying to get her youngest to do to do breath work for about five years and she's never done it before so little things like that like i you know and like but you might people might hear me and say the characters magic and stuff but they do create this crazy connection we've seen it work time and time again in different kind of different things that aren't about emotional intelligence or emotional regulation and really what all he's all about is trying to harness some of that a natural human connection we have to these characters and then turn it into something really positive and productive and and helpful for people's emotions and mental health.

28:42So yeah, those are some of the highlights. Yeah, amazing. So you are a first-time founder. What lessons have you learned since founding the company? So number one, I would say, is that nothing is ever as good or bad as you think. At the start, it was like, you know, just feeling like some sort of emotional yo-yo and most things that happen are bad as well so you end up spending a lot of your time like in the pits and then when something good happens you're like we are going to change the world and i'm going to you know yeah we're going to take over in the next six months and you know we're going to be millionaires that kind of like it's that kind of like irrational you know disparity between good and bad and over time you do become numb to it which i don't know if it's like that good a thing either but your body just your body and your mind just kind of adapt to the fact that it's not it's it's not either that bad and things will be fine and you'll you'll find a way around it and and also things aren't as good which in some ways is good and bad i would say that that is certainly kind of like a biggie for me from like looking after yourself perspective the second one is is surround yourself with good people so so particularly in the early days unless I'm sure we're already really well connected and have done this before and have things set out.

30:10I think one of the best things you can do as a founder, for me, has been reaching out to people or finding ways to interact with people and engage with people that have different skills to you, who will then either potentially become team members or advisors or just become people that you know in your network because startups are a high risk game and there's no there's no saying even if you do everything right that the market will like like your idea or be big enough for you to succeed and so you you are indirectly giving yourself massive value add by doing this not just through the learning that you get from other people not just through the experience of the connection but also the kind of network that you build so i think that that's something i've done quite well over the last few years of you know putting people around me either that have become team members become advisors or just in my network and building a little bit of a you know i hate this word but brand and that kind of stuff is super important because you like say it's higher risk it one it helps your business while while things are going on and whilst whilst you're working but if if you know god forbid things don't work out you you have something to the show for it at the end of the day from a kind of network perspective which really is is one of the probably the most valuable thing i I think, sadly, it still is quite a lot about who you know rather than what you know in this world.

31:31It does definitely go a long way. Hopefully, I don't get any hate for that. But I think that's just my experience so far. It's very true. I'm not saying it's the way it should be, but it is very, very true that people open doors for you. Yeah, I think I've spoken to a lot of founders who say that networking and building a network for themselves is so important, whether it is kind of to find new opportunities but also kind of people talk a lot about founder loneliness and how being a founder is so stressful that being able to talk to other founders in a network who might be doing something completely different to you but kind of having that and being able to talk to them about it is really important for them too definitely and I think also there's a don't get me wrong I'm not someone who goes to like networking events every month or every week it's more a lot of it has been through maybe accelerators or through linkedin or you know you know other ways and reaching out to to people either in a random way or in a targeted way there's a balance you know i think you can get distracted as a founder with the things that are shiny or the things that you think you should be doing around that but there's just an element of make sure you're not just in your own little silo so focused on your idea that you know you're still kind of you're still kind of like contributing to other areas of your life because because when the going gets tough you don't want to be sat there just on your own in your in your bedroom trying to trying to code your way out of a problem it's really important that you have those people around you both from a mental health and and a future perspective as well as as well as solving the problems that you're probably facing great so my next question is kind of linked to my last one which is if you could go back and tell yourself something like a piece of advice or a lesson that you should know before you started the company what would that one thing be that's a good one i'm torn there's a few different things and i know you wanted one feel free to say all the things yeah i think i think i think there's a couple of things here which is one which is one which is more around kind of the product idea startup which is basically i'll give you a bit of context i think we spent a long time doing what kind of the startup advice is which is like you go and speak to people you ask them what what the problems they have and then you find a salute like you build a solution to it and then you try and test it and you get some validation and things and i think because because the way humans work it's very easy for people to say oh well i need this and then oh yeah that sounds great this is what would help me and whatever and then we spent a long time doing little experiments that probably we could done a lot quicker and probably probably were done based on things where we had kind of asked questions and people were being nice and saying they wanted certain things and then we ran experiments and i think ultimately you've got to try and get to revenue people will make a decision from a startup perspective from a from a from a buying some this perspective you'll find the advice you'll find the advice that you get back if you try and sell something much much more realistic than if you say all right okay yeah we'll we'll you do this experiment when we launch it for free so i think from a kind of where i'm going with this is that i think there is a lot of fairly outdated advice out there and i think if you can particularly with the new tools that exist like ai tools if you're building a digital product and whatnot i think you can get to better validation and better feedback on what's going to work much more quickly than we definitely did so try and sell quick more quickly try and put something together and if that means running a service-based business with a front end of digital then absolutely do that and i think if you do that you'll get better better feedback back and you'll know how to change and course correct and and and if you're onto something much more quickly i would say that is that is a kind of like quite a big one that you know we we if i started if i started business now i would do something very very different around how we approach that first you know validation point and then the other thing i wanted to maybe say here was i think i would be a bit more a little bit more meticulous in how i would set out my team basically and so how i first approached that in terms of what do i want to do in this business and what do i need to bring to the table so we certainly kind of fell into into running a business together you and i and then we have built a team in in a way off the back of that that have skills but you and i neither of us are technical and we're building tech and so we've had to learn certain things and so i would and i i've spoken to a few people recently who are signed businesses who wanted to just chat things through and i would very much be writing like spending a couple of weeks really thinking about what do i want to do what do i bring to the table what knowledge and more importantly what skills do I have what can I learn and what what do I not want to learn and then how do I outsource that in a team member are we often talk in our team about fantasy football and sort of like if I in our fantasy football startup like who would be in it and and what you know fantasy football who's that kind of new tech lead we want or new engineer or new new marketing person I think that there is something very important at the start of your journey to do that to get to get that right because you and i have obviously found an amazing team and we now have a really full set of skills but that wasn't an easy process so we spent a lot of time across the last two or three years like making sure that that was right and and actually we've had a quite a lot of luck with that whereas if i was starting again i would probably go and validate firstly on my own as much as possible and then you're in a really strong position to bring on like either a co-founder or or um just you know maybe advisors fractional people whatever whatever you need depending on what business you're trying to run yeah i that's something else i hear from a lot of startups that actually one of the big challenges is hiring and building out a team that is appropriate for the thing that you're building i think absolutely yeah yeah i think a lot of people outside of a startup wouldn't assume that hiring was an issue i think from the outsider yeah funding I can see why that would be hard but I think when you're building a product especially kind of something like Orly that is so important it's so socially impact driven you also want to bring on people who have the same vision and also want to do the same stuff as you yeah there's also a human side to that which which I think we are definitely better now than we were at the start you know we also had kind of you know different relationships that didn't work out in the same way that we would hope that now now the current team members like we have such a good vibe and we have a lot of fun together and everyone kind of understands that even you know when times get tough as they have been recently you know with funding and everything else that is that everyone kind of on this is already on the same page you know and you have to you have to be very good with your communication and and all of those things but it's really it's super super important so there's also probably something in that kind of do you how do you make sure they are the right person and what do you do initially don't don't go and offer x amount of your company to someone who you've only just met which is certainly you know something i've seen and heard of in the past it's like how do you get get that first kind of relationship building done in a way that works for both of you so you know what you know what the right thing to do is next yeah so my next question is what does the future hold for all you do you have any big plans in the pipeline that you can discuss at this moment oh so so there's kind of a couple of different things going on is is we've got a product for schools and and you know parents can use our home but it's more focused around schools and children in sort of lesson time or or start of the day we're going to run workshops at as many schools as possible and and learn from schools on how they would like to use this this as a product and and our aim is to try and get as many as as many as we can but at least 20-25 schools in the next kind of calendar year off the back of that we will launch our first kind of physical product so an only character based product where where when they buy the where a parent buys this product they will unlock content within the app and activities with the app based around this character children hopefully will want to collect those characters they will learn through through the activities and the content that we create and they'll also get a nice physical product so those are the kind of two main business actions but the kind of bigger long-term plans are to work with the right people to design our longer-term vision which is a potentially wearable a a smart companion which is something that helps children either feel proper or feel more connected to their parent or others we again will be based around the early characters it might be worn around their neck it might be worn on their wrist it might it might just be something that they collect and they can customize themselves moving from just a you know a screen-based solution to a digital physical solution to then a kind of smart screen-free solution is our kind of trajectory and so all depending on the success of you know fundraising revenue generation and everything else that we're doing in the background but that that's kind of where we're at there's there's obviously lots of other things that we may well be doing such as like you know try to work with the nhs and and we have just been accepted onto an accelerator that we can't talk about at the moment but it's it's a big one so there's a few other things in the background and a big partnership with a charity as well so So loads of really interesting things.

41:48A few big important jobs for me to do as the CEO to make sure we can fund all of these activities. But yeah, that's kind of where we're at and what we hope to do over the next kind of three to five years. Yeah, that sounds really exciting. You have a lot coming up. And that also brings me to my final question, which is, is there anything else that you wanted to add or plug at the end of the podcast? I think the main thing for us is if you work in education you are a parent please get in touch and you know if you want to learn more about how orly can fit into the school day how it can support your staff and and your students and your parents or you are as a parent would like to learn more then please go to the website orly.health and sign up and get in contact with me I'm at mark orly.health or you can get me on linkedin dr mark cox and yeah always here for a chat and to to hear about what's going on in your life and see how Orly can support.

42:40But yeah, big one is schools and parents at the moment for us. And yeah, thank you so much for having me on. Yeah, thank you for coming on. It's been great getting to chat with you and learning more about Orly and the impact that you're having. And once again, congratulations on winning the Social Impact Hero Award at the Hustle Awards. Thank you so much. Thank you. See you later. Bye. If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe to the podcast and check out Startup Magazine's socials to stay up to date on the latest startups news.