Hustle Awards 2025 Special: YASO, Winner of Top Performing Team

0:00Welcome back to The Serial Entrepreneur. I'm your host, Anna Wood. On today's episode, I'm joined by Jonny Plain, the co-founder of Yasso. We discussed a huge opportunity for Western brands wanting to enter the Chinese market, the importance of building a strong co-founder relationship, and winning the Top Performing Team Award at the Hustle Awards 2025. Let's dig in. How are you? I'm great. Thank you very much for having me today. Yeah, thank you for coming on. So to begin every podcast episode, we start with our signature icebreaker question, which is what's your favourite breakfast cereal and why?

0:40My favourite breakfast cereal? My wife's homemade granola because it's made with love. That is a great answer. So would you be able to introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your background? Sure. So my name is Johnny Plain. I'm the co-founder of Yasso. We are an e-commerce technology company building a solution for Western brands to sell their products directly to Chinese consumers. So actually helping facilitate e-commerce traffic and goods the other way, because China is the largest and fastest growing market in the world. Everyone wants to sell there, but very few people actually know how, and we're building the tools to allow brands to do that.

1:22So that's what I'm working on now. This is my second business. I had a startup called Pat, which I'm pretty sure I featured in your magazine for back in the day. That was another e-commerce technology product. It was a browser extension that helped people find voucher code. It's a very different business model, but very similar skills, I guess, in terms of growing and scaling a business. And that's me from a business perspective. Perfect. So what was the inspiration behind the founding of Yato? there's the phrase you know if the mountain's there it's kind of one of these things that it was such a massive opportunity that we needed to we needed to take it so my I actually studied at some Chinese at university my co-founders did Chinese at Oxford Uni I went off and didn't you know my finance and startup stuff and they started a marketing agency helping western brands scale in China so they had you know 10 years of experience which 150 brands and markets And when we kind of reconnected through various means and started discussing new bid opportunities together, the idea to actually build software and infrastructure to help brands get in China was too big of an opportunity.

2:38And we had too much of like an instant to the market to not give it a go. So it definitely wasn't, you know, drinks in the pub one night. Oh, this will be a cool day. Let's give it a go. It's like 10 years of personal professional experience coming together to help us. down to build this business. Yeah, great. So Yasso offers an operating system for brands wanting to enter China. Could you break down what exactly that means in practice? Cool. So when you're looking to sell in any market, right, let's just take Western e-commerce. So Shopify says, okay, they can, you know, you can build a website.

3:12But who's doing your, you know, who's doing analytics? Who's driving your traffic? Who's doing the logistics? Who's doing the strategy? Now in the West, because you have an idea of all of the, you know, how MetaWorks and Google, you have an idea of all of these systems. If you do want to start selling, you could probably figure it out on your own. In China, they've got all of their own equivalent platforms and systems from, you know, massive marketplaces like Alibaba to fast-growing social cost apps like Doion. and all of them have their own set of logistics, payments and information frameworks you need to build into in order to sell on these channels.

3:54So in Yasso, what we've done is we've integrated these different channels, marketplaces and social commerce channels into your point of entry and built tools on top of that integration layer to help brands sell. So that means that through Yasso, you can now do your logistics, you can do your payments, you can do all your social commerce integration, do analytics and you can do your influence outreach all through one system that's why we call it the operating system for brand growth in China because now just you can cover the full range of commerce needs that brands need to be able to scale up in that market So how have you grown the amount of companies that you work with?

4:36Sales, sales, sales, sales I guess are quite a niche product in some ways because you either want to have the desire to work in China or you're already there. We've seen a lot more success with brands that are already venting over to our system, but we actually haven't spent any on digital marketing. Everything we've done has been through cold outreach, organic, brand building, relationship building, partnerships, because we know that our solution is 10x. What else is currently out there? Is 10x what else is currently out there? So once we get in front of those names, we're usually able to convert, get them on board.

5:11so yeah the growth has just been quite natural i would say but now we've raised our round we're massively going to scale that up yeah perfect so you did recently go through a funding round how was that process very difficult raising money in this market if you're not super hot open ai product guy is tough i'm sure other founders you've spoken to will will say the same it was hard but you know you only need one you need one lead investor and everything will come from there so we knew that we weren't gonna be everyone's cup of tea either because we're not or because we're you know focused on a market that very few people know about so it took five months end to end it was tough but we ended up with an amazing investor in in puma growth partners yeah amazing Congratulations.

6:02Thank you very much. You already discussed why you decided to focus on China specifically. What do you think that you saw that other people were kind of overlooking? We, because of Adam Ames' experience of running in this market, we kind of like had really, really straight domain expertise that we could translate into a really, really strong product offering. And I don't think that's, you know, specifically to us. I think any founder out there that, has been in a space for a long that knows it inside and out they're the people that can build right that's their edge that's their their insight for us it was a case of okay we really know this market we really know what's wrong with it we just need some capital to be able to so it was quite an easy decision for us to what we wanted to build but still very very difficult to execute yeah so social commerce is rapidly growing in china how would you describe this opportunity for Western brands wanting to enter the market?

7:03I think it's the biggest e-commerce opportunity that you... It's the biggest opportunity, e-commerce opportunity anyway, right? It's the largest market. By percentage-wise, it's the land of big numbers. You know, it's larger than the next 10 e-commerce markets combined. So then you take the US, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Korea, South Africa, and you add all of those together, and china is bigger everyone wants to sell there it's just quite difficult to do it or there have been other stories you never hear the successes you just hear that the ones that have gone very badly so it's like the next frontier it's growing market and it's still growing at like five or six percent a year so even in you know absolutely the the largest and if you're an e-commerce brand and listening to this you need to be ready for china you can't you know we typically only work with brands once they've hit that five ten million a year mark anything smaller than that you're just just not ready for it but yeah it's a huge opportunity and the brands that we've taken have gone from zero to six figures in just a few months just because of how big the market is would you say you have any competitors in the market right now it's a great question we have competitors in that when brand enter the market they can do it in two ways they can do do something like us like a technology platform or they can do it via a distributor which is like an old school way of selling into the market if you've got a consumer you just find someone that is going to buy your stock and you kind of wash your hands of it and they run the business for you in china now you make a lot less money than that when you do it that way and you have a lot to control because ultimately owns your business in china and you don't you don't own it yourself and when that person may lose interest in your business, then you're kind of screwed and you're stuck in this terrible distributor relationship.

9:07We don't do that. Brands are in full control of their China business with us. We work on the consignment, so we don't buy stock. But some brands are short-termists. They think about the immediate cash flow and they'd rather someone buy their stock from them and they think about the risks kind of down the road. So yeah, our competitors, in a long-winded way of saying this, are distributors who would buy stock from brands directly rather than have them work with us and grow together. Interesting. So we're here today as Yasso won the Top Performing Team Award at the Huffle Awards this year. So congratulations on that.

9:44We did. Thank you very much. What does that mean for you and your team? It's got some recognition. you know starbucks magazine is a uh a publication we all you know know and know and respect we don't we haven't i think this is the first award we entered so to actually win was quite cool and you know building a team across the uk china and you know with remote hives as well difficult cultural reasons times zones technology block to actually get this recognized it's great and our trophy is perhaps played in our office for the team to see okay that's always good to hear that people like to have the trophy right on display as well that's great it's really nice to be able to point to it yeah perfect so so what do you think have been some of the biggest challenges on the yasso journey so far and how have you managed to overcome them that's a great question i mean there's been loads i'm just trying to highlight a few that may be useful for there's I guess to be getting the initial capital through the door, model is not one that you can bootstrap.

10:53It is one that zero or one, either what we built worked and you can send stock around the world and it can end up in the consumer's hand and we can take payments and all that stuff, or it doesn't. And so we knew we needed to raise money in order to get it to one, right? We had to make sure we had enough capital. so that meant we were raising a funding round pre-products pre-revenue in a market that very few people know about in a year that you know russia just invaded ukraine 22 and so geopolitical tensions were really high so just actually getting that first funding round done we ended up raising 2 million was yeah one of the biggest challenges because if we you know if you don't do that you don't get to get started all the other things i think people challenges hiring like you can deal with them if you're if you don't have the capital to get going you know you're never getting started yeah in the startup space funding and money in general is very much like the driver of everything absolutely absolutely so kind of on the flip side of my last question what have been the biggest highlight since founding Yasuo?

12:10Oh, there's been so many. I would say when the first time we tested the system and it actually worked, it was amazing because we knew, okay, we kind of raised the money to build this thing that we theoretically knew was possible, but we actually had to, you know, prove. And once that was, wow, the thing actually works and our first client on board, I mean, that's the best part of anything, right? You have an idea and someone wants to buy it. It's just like a dream come true so that would be the main highlights maybe all the other things you know winning awards raising funding rounds but you know that feeling of okay the idea you have in your head is now reality it's just crazy it's uh you pinch pinch yourself every day really and yeah kind of knowing that one one day you were kind of you thought i need to start this company and then it's actually it's a material thing it's actually existing yeah it's crazy it's yeah it's crazy that it can that it works like that that you know you have an idea and you're actually the company's reality it's still the best feeling i can imagine so was there any missteps along the way that provided valuable lessons that you learned from uh yeah i mean every business has breaks and errors dealing with some things now you know frustrating you're trying to learn from them as a leader and as technical leader and whatever it may be and i think for me specifically we made a few early hires that were just for the company they talk they talked a big game they had like good cvs but you kind of knew from the beginning they weren't right fit but you kept them on there because it's something easier to do than letting them go and i wish we just let them go as soon as we realized that they weren't right or more ideally we never hired them in the first place so yeah making those early hires that were not good for the business that was definitely i think i want to take through to enter the asso in the future it's funny i speak to a lot of founders and so many people say that hiring is consistently a challenge and i think that's something that people who don't run a company don't even consider to be a challenge.

14:30But I hear it so often now that it's always funding and hiring. Those are the two main challenges that across the board kind of everyone struggles with. So you previously founded another company, Patch. Yeah. So as a serial entrepreneur, do you think you have an edge when it comes to Yasso? Yes. Like second time finders are infinitely more successful than first-time founders and because the learnings you have in that first company doesn't mean you accelerate everything at your second these scenes will track second-time founders or they'll see when someone's like left a job that was you know left a company that they found they will like track and see what they're building next because the insights and the skills you bring to the second time round are just massive so yeah even if you've done something small I think it raises your chances quite a lot of like successfully building a company or successfully getting funded for your business what do you think are the main skills and insights that you have taken with you from your last company to now founding Yasso?

15:42Brazilian knowing that things will get hard and knowing that you can see the other side of them I mean I because it's my job, I guess, to always, I've done the fundraising in all these businesses. You know, when we sold Pouch, it was after we just had a term sheet called the day of signing with a big corporate investor. Three months later, we sold the business. To go through that rollercoaster and to know that actually it's possible to see something on the other side is invaluable to like have that resilience. With Yasser, during our raise, we got to some investment committees that were incredibly early on in the process.

16:20and they passed due to like China risk, which is a silly reason because we've never should have got to IC if that's what they were going to pass for. But the point is I had the confidence to not get this heart attack. Big no, and to keep going because if you like really believe it, you can make it happen. Like I genuinely believe in manifestation, all those types of things. So yeah, resilience for me personally is the number one skill that I took through from my first business to my second. Yeah, great. So even though you have founded a company before, what do you think is one lesson or even a piece of advice that you wish you would have known before starting Yasso?

17:03Such a big question. I don't know. I mean, everyone's just so individual that it's hard to say, hey, I wish I'd known this or I wish I'd known that because it just may not be relevant for what you're doing. it's not something i wish i known it's i get less from my first company is that like this code the co-founder was a very delicate relationship my pouch co-founder relationship got a bit fraught with the journey so i made sure that in yasso those were like very very strong from the style professional things covered in legals because it's all great when you start business thinking it's all going to go well but most don't and so you need to make sure you've got the guardrails in place to govern what happens if things don't work out and once you do have that makes it much much easier to just crack on with the company knowing that everyone's like agreed what the downside and it makes the building a great co-founder relationship much easier and you know i'm and james gonna be our fourth year quite soon and you know still a joy to work with them every day because we've just been such a solid base and foundation the number one reason businesses run out of money as cash the second is co-founders break up so investing in that co-founder relationship spending time together outside of work really really really important run a company successfully i'll say do you think as your previous business you also had a co-founder do you think your businesses would have been as successful if you would have been a solo founder absolutely not like me personally i need a co-founder to work with just how i operate you can build very many as a solo founder people have done it but to have some share the load with deal with the stress to be in the same position and help you you know to have 100 trust to know you're all in it together yeah i i don't ever want to be if i'm building a big ambitious company i don't ever want to be a solo being a consultant or running like an agency sure but building like a big ambitious project you i do think someone and the data shows that three co-founding teams are more successful and have bigger exits than single founding teams.

19:14That's great. So what do you think the future holds for the business as well as yourself? Do you have any big plans in the pipeline that you can discuss currently? More of the same, really. We want to keep growing, bring on more brands, bring on bigger brands, release more, improve our products so more people can access them. We have huge ambitions for Yasso. We want to be effectively the shopper by for China. where any brand that is operating in China should be using part of the ASO system for their China, whether it's the full service or whether it's just analytics or whether it's just our payment systems, it doesn't matter, but that's how ubiquitous we want to become with Chinese.

19:56Yeah, great. So that takes me to the end of my questions, but I do have one final question, which is, is there anything else that you wanted to add that you feel like we haven't discussed? no i thought your questions were brilliant and i hope whoever is the business found this useful and please contact me on linkedin johnny plain and happy to try and help you with your your startup ideas amazing thank you so much for coming on the podcast today johnny it's been a pleasure learning more about you and about yasso thank you for having me thank you and once again congratulations for winning the top performing team award thank you very much number one nerd from this year, more than the Series X.

20:36Or maybe they're the same. Yeah, that's good to hear. Well, thank you so much. And speak to you soon. Speak better. Cheers. 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.