Slowing down to speed up innovation

0:11Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Today's program is all about building digital businesses by prioritizing human connection and customer trust. First up, we'll discuss the importance of slow journalism with the founder of a digital media platform in Denmark. What is actually a modern news service and how can that be distributed in a way that feels as engaging and as entertaining as Instagram or Spotify, but at the same time really informs the audience. And later, we'll meet the founder of a British online marketplace specialising in vintage and antique furniture.

0:53In the UK only, 22 million pieces of furniture end up in landfill, and most of those pieces are new because people don't know what to do. Our network of sellers have helped rehome over 1 million pieces. This is The Entrepreneurs, with me, Tom Edwards.

1:16You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Tao Kletko is the group CEO and founder of Zetland, a Danish media company he launched in 2016 with the goal of combating the flood of low-quality content in digital journalism. Frustrated by the trend where legacy newspapers reserved their best articles for print and pushed out fast, lesser-quality content online, Tao set out to create a more thoughtful and engaging alternative. I caught up with Tao to hear about Zetland's impressive growth and how it ultimately led to the creation of another successful digital venture, Good Tape. Tao began by telling me about the start of the journey.

1:53So we are a digital-only media outlet out of Denmark. We started publishing about nine years ago and are now running a subscription-based news outlet for what we say is Curious Danes. And we do have a very broad audience here in Denmark, but it does specifically lean towards a younger audience than what we see for other news outlets. Yeah. And if we look back at the origin story, I think it's interesting. There are values which are actually quite similar to monocle values. The idea that we need to slow down, we need to consider things in more detail, and we need to try to address the sort of white noise from so much media that risks completely just confusing and frustrating people.

2:39That was really kind of part and parcel, wasn't it, if we go back to the beginning days? It was actually, and to a certain degree, it still is. That's still the mission we have. You know, nine years ago, when we started publishing, there seemed to be this general idea within digital journalism that the wonder of the internet was speed. So that meant that you basically, in legacy newspapers, you took all the long form, all the quality, all the well-researched content, and then you basically said, well, that's for the print edition. And now we're doing a low quality, high speed outlet for the digital version.

3:14And we thought that was wrong, because that was going to kill long form quality journalism, as we saw it. And so that was really the reason why we set out to say, okay, someone has to try something different, because this is not working. Yeah. And just on this point about being digital only, then so much of the digital realm, certainly in the last, what, five to 10 years, has become a bit of a race to the bottom, as I see it. You think of the so-called, you know, bottom half of the internet, social media, which is anything but social. Why is it important to have leaders like Zetland who are resolutely committed to the digital space and actually saying, look, we are digital, yes, but we're part of the solution.

3:56We have to be there so that we don't exacerbate the problem. yeah that's a great question and to be honest like so my background is within software development and purely digital however i will say that i don't really you know it's it's for us it's not about being digital for us it's about being you know distributing the content in the format and the way that will make it resonate most with the audience so really if you think about what is the value of journalism. There is no inherent value in journalism. The value of journalism happens when it meets an audience. And so when we started out nine years ago, we were lucky enough to not have a print edition that we had to think about.

4:38So we sat down and thought about what is actually a modern news service and how can that be distributed in a way that feels as engaging and as entertaining as, you know, platforms like Instagram or Spotify. But at the same time, really through that engagement really informs the audience because that is in the end you know the the value that we're bringing we're bringing information and we're bringing inspiration about society well yeah and you're also building a real community and i think it's interesting you know you've got these members whom you serve the really kind of the thread that runs through the way that you communicate what you do is this idea of being human focused it's in everything human insights human products and i know that you are very much of the mindset that even the technologies you use have to be i think it's human friendly you describe it on your on your website what does that mean exactly because there will be some cynics and i guess you've answered these people in a way to have already but who will say well look you know technology isn't human it's the antithesis of that you guys are proving that it isn't tell us how you do that well i mean again you know we're the the vision of setland is that it has to be a human product because who do we trust we trust human beings right nobody trusts a robot and especially not within journalism because what you want is to have a friend sit next to you and tell you you know about the world that is kind of the image we have in our heads when we're in the studio we want to be you know friendly and a machine something that is built out of concrete and glass is not very friendly And so that is kind of the vision, both in the editorial content, but also very much in the digital product.

6:20And then, of course, I agree, you could really say, well, being digital, isn't that the opposite? And yes, in many instances, it is. And that is why it's especially important to try and not be the machine and to try also in the digital product to be human. So one of the ways that we do that is that we insist on always having the journalist him or herself tell the story. So when we do audio versions of our articles, it's never a machine and it's also never a voice actor. So it has to be the human who actually conducted the interview or who actually did the analysis or actually had the idea about a way to look at the world.

7:01because that is what makes it personable and what makes it really trustworthy. Absolutely. Well, look, and this is our experience at Monocle as well. And it's interesting to me to have in some respects, if we go back to 2007 and the launch of Monocle, a lot of people said, well, you know, this business is very idealistic and it's never going to survive. And then there was a financial crisis in 2008. But actually, out of that backdrop, Monocle got a lot stronger. We then went into audio 2011. People said the same thing. Oh, radio, audio, that's not going anywhere. And we've proven over a decade and a half what you can do.

7:34Tell me a little bit about not just the satisfaction you take from proving the doubt is wrong, but tell me how you've built this business because some impressive numbers in 24, big revenue growth, you've added other component parts to the operation, whether that's good tape or you do book publishing now. Tell me about how you've grown this thing as a business and maybe give us some numbers so we can understand how it's growing. So again, I come from product development or software development. And I'm an entrepreneur and I'm used to saying, okay, if you can see a product market fit, if you have a product that people are actually willing to pay for, then it's time to scale it.

8:08And so both from a financial standpoint, but also from an impact standpoint, we want to reach more people. And so, as you said, like we've been profitable in Denmark since 2019, but Denmark is a very small country and there isn't a lot of Danes. And since our project is inherently democratic, it is a numbers game. So we want to reach much more people. We want to provide the information and the inspiration and the engagement in society outside of Denmark also. And so that is what we started actually just a few months ago in Finland, which is our first external country. And again, we're seeing basically the same thing that we have been seeing in Denmark, except in Finland, it's just much faster and much bigger, which is that people do actually have the need for a different type of media.

8:56So what we're seeing in Finland now, we've been publishing for a little bit more than a month, and we already have more than 15 ,000 paying members in Finland, which is a country around the same size as Denmark. And so we are very much on track to create a profitable business also in Finland. And that is a part of our strategy to say, okay, let's prove this product outside of Denmark. Then you're also talking about the thing we've done with our subsidiary called GoodTape. that is really a technology company basically grown out of a need that we had in our own editorial team which was that we were spending several hours per month per journalist transcribing audio and everyone hated it and our problem was that nothing worked automatically in danish which is again a very small language that nobody wants to invest in and so we built it ourselves and then we were like we had this experience that here in our editorial team in copenhagen people were almost crying because they could see that, wow, the quality of this is so good that now my work life will change.

9:56And, you know, obviously us being also product developers, we looked at those tears in the eyes and thought, hmm, there might be a product here. And so we actually built that product out to be first in alpha and beta. And then we launched it for customers around the world in the beginning of 23. And that growth has just been magnificent. And now that's a part of the Settland group that we're also selling technology. And, you know, I would almost say most newsrooms in the world now use our product. And also a lot of people who are not journalists are also using it within, you know, legal or health or business consultancies and areas like that, where they also do qualitative interviews.

10:38They use our tool. So that's one thing that we're doing. And then we're also publishing books. And then we also have, you know, because we built the distribution technology in-house. Over the years, we've just been approached by other media companies who wanted to monetize audio or work with journalism in the same way that we are doing. And now we've started to also license our technology to other media companies, which is super meaningful for us because it just means that we can employ more developers. Absolutely. And it's also a validation, right, of the original objectives, which must be really satisfying for you and all your colleagues.

11:13Just tell me a little bit about the broader sort of mobility of these ideas? Because it's interesting, great numbers and successes from Finland. And I guess maybe there's a Nordic or a Scandi kind of sensibility maybe that means that is a good fit. It's hard not to look at US at the moment, you know, a vacuum of political good sense, a race to the bottom in terms of media. Is it too lofty a goal to imagine that the kind of ideas, the ethos that Zetland's been built on, could work even in a market that is as crazy and fragmented and polarized as something like the US? Or do we just have to slow down a little bit and wait for these things to change iteratively?

11:56I mean, I don't think at all that's too lofty. It's probably going to take some years before we will try to make that endeavor. But I think really the basic need that we are solving, You could almost say that the more polarized a society is, the higher the need is for a product like ours. I would hope so. I would hope that there would be a big demand in the US. I would also imagine that our path to success is probably shorter in, for instance, the Nordic countries, which is obviously why the first external country that we tried our login was Finland, which to a large degree is similar to Denmark.

12:34Just finally, Tav, what should we look out for? because as you said, you're sort of a product developer as well as a media brand. It's a really interesting sweet spot to be operating in. But one of the things with technology is it advances and changes so fast. So as a leader of a business, how do you ensure you can keep the reins when there are so many accelerations and they can sometimes be somewhat unpredictable? How do you manage those pressures and ensure that you're retaining not just strategic oversight, but that you're keeping things on the rails and going in the right direction? I mean, that is the big question in my life.

13:09So thank you for posing that. I'll think more about that. But that's the only thing I'm thinking about. And my answer as a product developer is to always look to fill user needs. And I know that that's kind of a buzzwordy answer. But I think really, that is the core of what we're also doing here in Zetland. And we are really trying to see journalism not as something that is coming from a sender, but something that is received by a receiver. And the difference there is that we only cover the stories that we can actually make people understand are important. And it's the user need of really wanting to feel informed and also really wanting to be able to tell a story on the dinner party that you're at on Saturday evening.

13:56So you not only want to know what's going on in the US and what Trump basically said yesterday. So that is important. But it's equally important to think about, okay, so who might be the leader of the new world order if we needed a European figure to stand instead? And stuff like that that can kind of more inspire to discussions and thinking. And the root of that is, again, in the user needs. And that is also what we're doing with whatever we do digitally. And I think GoodTape is a good example of us really knowing and understanding our user needs really deeply. And then thinking, okay, well, how might we solve this user need?

14:37And then just going for it. And that's what I hope that we can continue to do over the coming years. I think we've proven that we are pretty good at that. That was Tao Klitko, the founder of Zetland and GoodTape. you can find out more about the businesses at zetland.dk or by heading to goodtape.io.

15:05You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Sandrine Zong-Ferrand is the founder and CEO of Vinteria, the platform that connects buyers and sellers of pre-loved furniture, managing all the in-between logistics. Since founding the business in 2015, Zondrine has grown Vinteria into a thriving marketplace, now partnering with more than 2 ,000 independent sellers from more than 30 countries to offer a curated selection of unique, second-hand vintage and antique pieces. I sat down with Zondrine to discuss the company's growth and some of its exciting collaborations. I began by asking her if Vinteria has turned out, well, the way she imagined when she started the journey 10 years ago.

15:45When I decided to start the business, I never really projected myself. It's just a bit like, you know, I don't want to work in finance anymore. I have this idea, seems exciting, I'm going to figure it out. And, you know, my friends, family asked me about my business plans, like, yeah, I'm just going to figure it out and learn on the go. So I don't know, probably it's better. Well, and that's funny because quite a large number of the entrepreneurs that I talked to on this program say exactly that, which is, oh, I didn't have a business plan, Or they'll often add, and if I knew what was involved, I never would have got started.

16:18So where does that kind of relative fearlessness come from? Because a lot of entrepreneurs have it. Is it that you, I don't know, I don't know, is it a subconscious confidence or is it naivety? Often people say, oh, just not knowing was the superpower because it meant I wasn't worried about things. How does it work? Yeah, I think it's a mix of, you know, like having worked for eight years in finance and kind of coming to the conclusion that I really didn't want to spend the rest of my life doing that. And, you know, like facing the problem myself, you know, when I moved home and struggling to find, you know, a great piece of sugar and furniture.

16:57And the fact that I had like some savings from my finance career. So I just felt safer to do that. And I think I just wanted to change. change so yeah naivety i'm like i want to change i'm gonna figure out i love a boot camp so that's gonna be entrepreneur boot camp and i guess let's come back to the sort of i guess one of the the foundational principles of the business which is this idea as you said pre-loved pieces and you know we spend we society spends so much money on let's be honest new crap and the thing is buy less, buy better, invest in things that either offer longevity or are already demonstrating that longevity, mid-century pieces and so forth.

17:38How big of a problem is that? Because your business is one that sort of bakes in this sustainability consideration into its reason of being. How big is the problem? And was that part of the reason that you saw such an opportunity? I mean, so to answer the first question, it's a huge problem. I think in the UK only, 22 million pieces of furniture end up in landfill. and most of those pieces are new because people don't know what to do or maybe they were not designed to be able to be reused or repaired. And I've read that I think in the UK that we have only six to eight years of landfill left. So I don't know where else it's going to go.

18:11On the second question, if I'm being frank, it was not at all a consideration. You know, I didn't set out to save the world. I think it just started from a quite vain problem. It's like I wanted to have beautiful furniture where I was sure that, you know, my neighbor wouldn't have the same. And I was just impatient. I want to have it right away. So, you know, I went to a lot of new furniture retailers. And when I heard that it took 12 or 16 weeks for so far to be manufactured, etc., I was like, OK, no, I'm going to buy secondhand. So, yeah, that was more like the initial problem. But obviously today, impact is really kind of the key driver for the business and the team.

18:51Now, one of the reasons it works so well is you have such a great network of vendors, of sellers, of furniture. How do you go about, though, especially in those early years when they don't know the brand, they don't know you? You've got to get buy-in, right, from people who maybe have been approached by other, I don't know what you call them, sort of platforms before. They've got an agenda. They don't understand their passion. How did you start building that network? Because it's very personal, and yet this is largely obviously a digital enterprise. How did you marry those things up? Yeah, so that's interesting.

19:22I think that's where naivety comes. The superpower again. Yeah. When I started, I really thought, okay, I'm the only one doing that. No one else exists. And I think by the time I started, five or six platforms were around. But in my first job in finance, I was a sales. So I was cold calling investment managers, private bankers. And I think it builds some experience on a thick skin. So, you know, contacting vintage dealer to offer a new platform to sell and I really made it easy for them to join, right? Like no fees, etc. We do everything for you. It was, you know, kind of the same process, but actually with nicer people than bankers.

20:05And what kinds of operations typically were they and do they run? I know there's such a breadth now, it's a bit different, but certainly in the early days, were they vendors that were selling, you know, flea markets? They had their own retail spaces. They were online a bit, but hadn't tapped into a broader market. Typically, what kind of stories were they telling, particularly the people who were enthusiastic to get involved? Yeah, I really focused on like some London dealers I knew. So a mix of mid-century and antique dealers. I'm on the premium end, so not fleet market products. And I'm just cold calling them, saying, you know, I really want to make it easier for people in London.

20:41So that was really focused on London to access those furniture, because when you don't have a lot of time to go find a shop or go in person, you know, just want to give access to more customers who are relevant. And, you know, I think there are small businesses, sometimes a couple of people, maybe maximum 10. So they have a lot to do. They need to source the furniture, restore them, take the photos. So it's a lot. So, you know, having a platform that can help them with marketing and acquire customers was quite attractive. And obviously the growth story speaks to the success of the model and the success of their engagement with you and yours with them.

21:19Give us some numbers because, you know, your kind of sales performance, I think was pretty impressive. The trajectory has been impressive too. And then obviously you've had, you know, external capital coming in. And I know you did an additional sort of rounds of fundraising, crowdfunding as well, what kind of things. Tell us a bit about the sort of the financial side of the journey. Yeah, like all the VC, ABC. So I think when I started, I was bootstrap and was on my own, so doing all the jobs. So it was fine. And I met with a preceded fund called SITCAM, a bit by chance. So that's how I got into the wheel of VC funding.

21:57Since then, we have raised in total 15 million, including a media for equity deal with Channel 4. So that's what's kind of really fueled the growth so far and allowed us to build our position as a leader in the UK. And I think the number I'm really proud of is like, you know, our network of sellers have sold, you know, have helped rehome over 1 million pieces since we've started. So that's really satisfactory. Well, yeah. And another thing that must give you great satisfaction is that there's, and again, I can speak from literally my personal experience, there's a very good and consistent sort of tone of customer engagement.

22:36Now, that's presumably quite challenging because you are divesting much of that responsibility to this broad network. How do you go about doing that? Because there is scrupulously charming. It's very efficient. And it kind of works. It does work in a, there's a small business vibe to it, which I guess it is. but it also isn't. So how do you do that? I guess you build trust, right, with your kind of partners, but it impressed me a great deal that it was so consistent. How does that work? Yeah, it's interesting to say that because I think we had so many internal debates about, oh my God, like we lack consistency, we need to have more consistent photos, tone of voice, et cetera.

23:15You know, I think like over 90 % of a business is coming from professional dealers and we need to rely on the expertise, the quality of the photo, and we try to support them with some, you know, like statistic feedback. And obviously our brand team has worked a lot to try to define really what the Vinture brand is, the tone of voice and guidelines. So it's a work in progress. I would say we had a lot of scaling challenge to maintain this consistency because as you grow, you know, like just by nature, we need to add more product types, more category, and our customers have very eclectic tastes.

23:48So how do we maintain at the same time the breadth of integrity to please everyone, but also remain consistent. Well, dare I ask about the role of technology? Because I guess, you know, 2015 to 2025, you have the introduction of, let's talk, you know, AI, this idea that it can personalise any service better than people can. The jury may be out on that one, but that must also offer both a challenge and an opportunity in terms of curation, adding, as you say, breadth to the range. How do you manage technology like that? that it's self-changing at such pace. Yeah. I mean, it's a huge opportunity.

24:24I think it's like, I'm not really seeing a challenge here. So for example, like, you know, I'm getting listing on and getting the right data, tagging them so that when people search for something specific, like, you know, a chip and a doll, et cetera, that they can surface is a challenge. And for example, you know, the first few months, I was creating all the listing myself to learn about the categories, the style, et cetera, and ensure that their quality. Today, AI can go through thousands of listings in a few seconds, and we have a better quality data, and it's cheaper. So it's just mind-blowing.

25:01Obviously, the flip side, it can be a black box. So, you know, we always run A-B testing to see what should be the best order to show the products. It can be different for each individual. But, you know, why it works, we might not necessarily know the answer. So let me ask you quickly about collaboration, because it's funny you were talking about, you know, maybe not being able to believe, you know, the scale of business where you are 10 years in. Did you have other pinch me moments? I know you've done some collaborations with the likes of, say, John Lewis or Farrow and Ball, these kind of storied names, really, with so much heritage.

25:36Are those also pinch yourself moments where you have to kind of remind yourself how the journey began? Daniela, tell me a little bit about what those opportunities have meant for you. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think, you know, when you are in the business, right, you always measure yourself with your goals. So, if you're like, it's never enough. And whenever we have, you know, some collaboration with just like, you know, world famous brand, like Fire and Ball, Selfridges, Monocle, it's, you know, like, okay. So, actually, we are someone. We are maybe relevant. And, you know, I always want to ask when I meet people, you know, how did you hear about Vinteria?

26:17And we're at an event with, you know, like an industry expert and in front of us. But I've never always known Vinteria. Like everyone knows you. Like, OK, so maybe we have achieved something. That was Sandrine Zonk-Ferrand, the founder and CEO of Vinteria. You can find out more about the business by heading over to vinteria.co.