From arch-enemies to best friends – the CONDUCTR story

0:00Well, welcome everyone to the Naked Founder On Location podcast, a business podcast where nothing is hidden. And this episode is sponsored by Financielle, the home of money for women. Today, the Naked Founder podcast is on location and we're visiting the offices of Conductor in Manchester. If you look out that window, you might be able to see Man United's Old Trafford Ground. I'll be speaking to co-founders Peter Cliff and Jos van der Steen. Today, when they first met, Jos and Peter didn't really like each other very much, but now they run one of the UK's most highly regarded immersive technology businesses with customers as diverse as Alton Towers and cruise lines around the world.

0:35I don't think people realise how tall you are, Peter. How tall are you? 6 '6". 6 '6". Well, we always start each episode of the podcast by asking how high the guests are. But we ask them, what do you wish you'd known as a founder before you'd launched your business? Yeah, you know, it's a difficult question, but I think it's maybe how relentless the bumps along the road can be and how quickly you need to pivot in order to stay on top of those bumps because they just never stop. Yeah, we asked the same question at the start of all our podcasts. And if I had a pound for every time someone talks about relentless, hard, et cetera, et cetera, being a founder, it's not an easy decision, isn't it?

1:17No, no, it's not. And, you know, I think there was a level of appreciation that that was going to come. But just you're always having to think on your feet. You're always having to be prepared for risk mitigation and dealing with those challenges. And dealing with them in a way that, you know, you can disseminate the issue. We've got a great leadership team, but lean on that leadership team. But also think about how we can manage that from a morale perspective from the team. I mean, I'm so thankful that Yoss is my business partner and we're equals and we're able to share some of that. I can't imagine how some kind of sole founders deal with those pivots because, yeah, sometimes it can really get to you, especially when they just keep coming month after month.

2:01I couldn't agree more. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And this is a Naked Founder podcast, the podcast where nothing is hidden, because we ask some probing questions that we think other founders can relate to as well. And we do it at the start of the podcast. So one of the interesting things about Conductor is you only launched it four years ago. And you were up to probably eight, 12 staff, I think eight staff, not a particularly big office. And then you get a knock on the door and it's Olten Towers, Merlin. And they wanted you to create a ride at Olten Towers. 1.6 million pound contract. And part of you would look around the office and say, I'm not sure we're equipped to do this.

2:34And the other part of you would say, this could be a stepping stone to greatness. You took the second option as well. Can you just talk us through that deal and your thinking behind it? Yeah, so I've worked at Merlin, who are the owners of Walton Towers, for a few years. And they were aware that we'd set up this business specialising really the kind of services that they wanted, which was a retelling of the classic haunted house, which was a ride that's been at the park really since its early years, the 80s, 90s. That's when the ride launched. It's called The Curse of Alton Manor. The Curse of Alton Manor is the new version.

3:11Originally, it was the haunted house. Then for a small period in the middle, it was called Jewel. Okay. So I'm very familiar with the ride, very, very familiar with the park. I was based there for about 12 years. And yeah, they were making this incredible retelling of the attraction. They sent what's called the theme book, which is the design of the attraction, basically asked a number of businesses to quote on the works. First time I saw it, I was like, I don't think there's any possibility any possibility of delivering the ambition of this, of the concept for the money they had. But we were like, actually, there's a real opportunity here for us to, you know, make a name for ourselves.

3:47And we had the talent, but we absolutely did not have the space, nor the tools, nor the facility to deal with the package. Because it's worth saying that that attraction, everything other than the actual ride and the scenery, is down to you. So the voiceovers, the technology, the imagery, all of that, conductor have got to deliver. Yeah, yeah. We call it like the show package. So we received the concept, but we had to deliver that whole, all of the storytelling. And even to a certain extent, when we received the concept, there were certain scenes that we had to retell because the technology wouldn't be able to deliver it in a way that was typical of an audience moving through like they do in a queue line.

4:29But at the time, we were in our first office. We were on the sixth floor of a high-rise in Media City. with no service elevator, there was no way of getting anything up there. And if we were doing this, there was probably£800 ,000 worth of hardware that we had to procure to assemble to FAT and then ship out. FAT means? Facility acceptance test. So we couldn't even receive a pallet to the front door of the office we were in. So, as I said, we went through a bidding phase for it. we won the project um uh which was amazing news but then we really needed to find somewhere to be able to start buying this equipment and bringing it to to a facility so we rang around all of the warehouses near to media city random ones that were you know rental equipment for for tv studios and and begging for a corner of their warehouse we just have somewhere we can bring a truck and drop things off and we were so fortunate because we needed the venue for maybe four months in this phase.

5:36To build it? Yeah, to receive it all, to build it, to do all the mock-ups, the demos, and then to ship it out to site. Once it was on site, we were fine. It was this window of procurement and prefabrication. And we found a company that had just left their first venue, which was in Trafford Park, a big industrial estate, and they'd moved to a new venue, but they still had five months left on their lease. It was empty. Wow. And they allowed us to take that space as a bit of a shell for us. So we were able to receive all the goods. Amazing story, but I think that's the life of a founder, isn't it?

6:12And actually, it was taking that contract, delivering that contract, if you like, set Conductor up to be the business it is today. Going to take you back a bit now. Going to take you back because, you know, I hear you talk and I think to myself, he really throws his voice. It's no surprise to know that you're actually a trained actor. Yeah. Or failed actor. It depends. Well, you starred with Daniel Radcliffe, didn't you? Oh, when I was like, I don't know, eight. When he brings out his autobiography, I'm going to see whether or not Peter Cliff gets a name check. But you went through drama school.

6:43You started to do a few auditions and started to do some work as well. And you got a job at Alton Towers. And you were working at Alton Towers, not the big job, because you liked the element of performing. And am I right in thinking that your agent said, you've got a choice, an ultimatum. You're like, go to this audition, or I don't want to see you again. Yeah, yeah. So I was, I think I did what most actors do when they leave drama school, is you go and do theatre education, which is school shows. And I was travelling all over the country performing for less than I was earning at Alton Towers, but I was giving my agent a cut because that was what you do.

7:19You build up your agent. You know, you do that, but you get a couple of commercial auditions or TV auditions along the way. and I just got to the point after doing it for 18 months, I was like, listen, I'm going to stay at Alton and earn there and earn good money, be with my girlfriend at the time, stay locally to where I'm from and then I'll wait for the good auditions to come up rather than doing these lower paying work. And yeah, he said to me, well, that doesn't work for me so you either stay with me or you go to Alton and literally at the same time, My boss at Alton Towers at the time said, we recognise this passion for creative and design.

8:04We've kind of carved out a new role for you. It's an operational management role, but with a creative in brackets. So, yeah, I was entertainment experience manager slash creative. How old were you then? I would have been about 22. Right, OK. You did that for nearly 10 years, didn't you? Yeah. Merlin. Yeah, I was at Merlin. All in all, 10 years. So I left Merlin after about 10 or 11 years. Right. And you got quite high up the hierarchy, didn't you? Yeah. So at the end of it, I was global creative director for live shows, entertainment and events. So I was looking after all what they call resort theme parks, Legoland parks, theme parks, supporting with the live entertainment.

8:48But it gave me, you know, it gave, because Merlin was very much a marketing driven business and you had to really make every pound, dollar and cent count. So when we were coming up with concept shows, immersive attractions, we have to do all the economics around it. Then we have to go and pitch to the marketing team to make sure that the concept was marketable, that the guests would actually care about what you were doing. So over the course of my time there, I had kind of honed in my skill of being able to communicate at an executive level and to get an idea across and really think about the commerciality of it.

9:28And that really, I think, gave me the bare bones of what I do now. Well, you left there and you joined a company called Holovus, where you met your future co-founder, Jos van der Steen, who we're going to interview in a minute. And he is in the room. So we'll hear what you say. But I read a great quote. You didn't click straight away, did you? Far from it. No. So I joined the business as a creative, Hollivers as a creative to begin with, but then kind of went down the line in business development and sales and generated quite a lot of growth there. So I had quite a senior role. And then a couple of years later, Yoss joined in another senior role.

10:10And, you know, I think we're both quite gregarious. We're both very driven. And there was quite a lot of, let's say, friction when we first started. A lot of us, we just wanted to own the voice in the room and be the direction of it. Alpha male? I wouldn't call myself an alpha male, but definitely wanting to hold the rudder.

10:32And, yeah, there was quite a lot of bickering in meetings and side conversations that had to be had as people were mediating our opinion. But I think that's quite helpful in a way, because if you were like a wallflower, and that you're not going to be able to bounce ideas of each other. And sometimes you do need that little bit of creative friction, I would imagine. You, clearly things improved because you decided to set up Conductor together. And I think when you visited Manchester, you quite often used to sleep on Yosh's couch as well. So you became firm friends. What was the background of founding Conductor, which only started in 2022?

11:06Yeah, so when we were together at the Holoviz, we were working on a bid together. And that was really the shift. We were kind of thrust into this bid package. I was staying at his place. And we realized by being forced together in that scenario that actually, if there was a Venn diagram of us, it's the leadership that we cross over. But actually, our skill sets are very, very different. And we're very, very happy for them to be separate. I'm probably more marketing, sales, strategy creative. He's more process, project management, delivery, thoroughness, let's say. And actually, I'm not great at that.

11:49He's not great at what I do. So we really complement each other. And that was that process. And then ever since then, we just recognized a real synergy between the two of us. And we really started to enjoy each other's company. And we got on with each other far better. And we just saw this opportunity in the future of saying, you know, one day, if the time is right and the opportunity is right, that we should maybe take a leap of faith. And, you know, the last business, their priorities, I think, sat. We carved out or created this kind of niche within the business that was very much what we call turnkey immersive concept development.

12:32But I think the business we were in was a little bit more focused on complex audiovisual, and we didn't feel like we necessarily had the support that we wanted to grow that. And we just got to a point of saying, well, you know what, maybe now is the chance. We're coming out of the back end of COVID. It feels like the economy is starting to grow a little bit. We see where this growth is in the industry. So let's do it. So, yeah, the back end of 21, we handed our notices in, and then in 2022, we started the business, really with just six months funding in front of us, as in self-funding, and we went, we'll see where it goes.

13:10No pre-book work? No, no. And your first gig, I think, was a project for Langston Canada Cricket Club. Was there any time in that six months where you thought to yourself, I've made a mistake? Yeah, several. Yeah. I think there was times when we thought we were going to win projects and we lost them. We had contracts that we were working on that were cancelled halfway through that we have to kind of, again, pivot. We were concerned at one point that we had a trademark dispute over the conductor. We'd been trading it for like eight to ten months and someone made a fairly reasonable claim that they had right to the name.

13:56So we thought after all this marketing and brand development, we were going to have to change the name. How many months was that into launching Conductor? About eight to ten months somewhere. Eight to ten months. And obviously, if you've got to change your brand and you've got an expensive legal case, you've not built up the reserves and you've not got the wool on your back to see yourself through that. No, we would have rolled over very, very quickly, but we managed to be quite tactical about it and managed to maintain it. I mentioned you won that contract for Alton Towers, the cursor at Alton Manor, 1.6 million.

14:26How big is 2026? How big is Conductor today? So we're around 20, 24, 26 million annual turnover year on year. Yeah. And the staff members? Just over 100. Yeah. And we'll talk about international presence as well. You've got quite an international presence, haven't you? Yeah, we probably do 90 % of our business outside of the UK. so we've got our HQ is here in Manchester with probably 80 % of our team but then we've also got Orlando because theme park central of the world and also we do a huge amount with cruise ships so they tend to be headquartered out in Miami so we've got an office there with again probably 15 % and then we've just opened in Abu Dhabi as well because again the Middle East is quite a quite a developing area for what we do in themed entertainment immersive experiences and that growth, all bootstrapped?

15:15Yes, no investment, no debt. Okay, one thing I found fascinating about your business is Conductor, I would say, has flown under the radar. You do not saw publicity. You just got on with it, which is true of a lot of founders as well. But what you are doing is you, and that's heavily dependent on a limited number of sizable customers. You've launched two other brands, haven't you? You've got Game Vault and you've got Originals. Just tell us about them. And why did you decide to launch two new divisions? So Game Vault came very, very early in the story. We recognized that Conductor's growth and success was going to be based on its portfolio, and we started with no portfolio.

15:57We had our personal brand of our background, but actually nothing sizable enough to get the big projects. So Game Vault was a product play. We also knew from previous companies, and not just ones we worked with, but others, that it can be very feast or famine. And actually, we needed something to level out that revenue stream. So Game Vault was taking a product play to do that. And we saw a gap in the market for tech-enhanced competitive socializing. So things like shuffle boards, but digital shuffle boards, shooting galleries, large-scale immersive spaces, all made for that kind of bar, family entertainment center marketplace.

16:40So that's done incredibly well. and continues to grow year on year. And then the kind of next chapter is Originals, which is our direct-to-consumer offering. So us owning and operating our own venues with our first venture, Game Face, which is due to open April 2026. That's Printworks in Manchester. It is, yeah. Okay, and that's going to be a multi-attraction, like I think 10 different attractions under one roof, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah, so the best way I can describe it is a house party feel where there are oversized party games that have got a digital element so it auto-scores you, but you're in a very large social setting.

17:24There's no locked doors. It's not like an escape room, but you're in this great, modern, fresh bar, loads of different games, a variety of experiences. And we don't think there's anything quite like it, actually. When you were the co-founder, you're not always going to agree. So how do you work through those disagreements? In quite a childish manner, actually. Often we disagree and go off and sulk in another room for a little bit. But no, I think we have quite a respectful disagreement and we understand each other and we respect each other's kind of position. But I think it's always knowing that, as I said before, we both come at it from very different perspectives and it's knowing sometimes to take a step back and go, I know why Yoss is thinking this way.

18:10I know he does for me as well. And getting ourselves to that kind of collective point, which is better for the disagreement. Peter, don't go anywhere other than vacating that sofa. Sofa is a reoccurring theme of this interview. I'm now going to interview Yoss, but I'm going to come back to you at the end. So thanks very much, Peter.

18:28So delighted to be joined by Yoss. Yoss, you're one of the co-founders of Conductor, and I think most people would say you're probably the brains of the business. Would that be fair? I would say that. I don't know if Pete would agree. Okay. Looking at Peter for approval. Okay. Jos, first of all, congratulations on your recent wedding. In terms of you sat through what we spoke to with Peter about as well and the dynamic between the two of you, finding the right co-founder is a bit like finding the right partner, the life partner, isn't it? Okay. How would you describe your relationship with Peter and how it's evolved over the years?

19:03Yeah, I mean, I think Pete touched on the fact that we didn't necessarily like each other in the beginning, which I think was more just we were both quite kind of interested in that kind of senior position and the autonomy that that brings. But I think what I always tell people is we were friends first and then founders second. And I think that's really resonated across the entire lifecycle of Conductor. It helps when we have disputes. It helps when we have challenging times in the business. Ultimately, you know, everywhere that we go in the world for all of our work, I really enjoy just hanging out with the guy, you know, outside of everything else.

19:42So I think that really complements all the business side of it, because, you know, with Pete, it's somebody that not only do I see him in the professional sense as somebody that's really top of his field, but then socially and personally, really get on with him, and, you know, he's one of my best friends. He was one of the best men at my wedding. and arguably I see him more than my wife so we have to be relatively close. Did, as an actor, did Peter give a speech? No, no, no. He was, I mean, not backup but my brother gave a speech and Pete was there if he needed to jump in and support. Backup best man speech.

20:20Yeah, yeah, exactly. You've got to have one. Exactly. We spoke to Peter about his backstory. Obviously, he trains an actor before he turned his back on the acting career. A big loss, I would say, to acting as well. Your backstory is interesting. I mean, your name, Van der Steen, your dad is Dutch. Your mum's English. Spent a lot of time in California. How would you describe your life pre-conductor and pre-meeting, Peter? Yeah, I mean, I think growing up in different countries gives you a broadness in terms of how you communicate and who you can get on with. I always say that no matter where you are in the world, you're going to find people that you like and you're going to find people that you don't necessarily like.

20:59So moving around a lot made me a little bit more adaptable, I suppose. Post-university, I joined IBM within their consultancy division. And that was great because that really gave me a broadness in terms of what business was like. As a graduate scheme, you get put into different projects and see all sizes and types of businesses, which was great. And then, yeah, I did that for quite a few years, working in South America, a lot of time in France, then back to the UK and got a bit not bored of that life, but certainly I wanted something that was a little bit more based in the UK in the long term.

21:47Consultancy is always a lot of travel, which has its kind of limitations. And I wanted to jump into an industry that I was a bit more passionate about from an interest perspective. So joined Holoviz, which is where Pete and I met, and then the rest is history, really. I'm interested to just dig a bit deeper on the whole co-founder relationship. Right, okay. So of the two of you, would one be more cautious, one be more of a risk taker? Would one be more visionary, and one would be more, you know, I don't know, low risk? I mean, how would you do, if you had to describe yourself and you had to describe Peter, and this sounds like a game show called Mr and Mrs, you know, which was big back in the 80s, before your time, I'm sure.

22:31But how would you describe each other? You know, it's interesting. I think on average, Pete is more of a risk taker than I am. But I think we counterbalance each other quite well in that space as well. But I think within some different opportunities, I'm more of the risk taker. So I think there's some environments where he's more of a risk taker, more somewhere I'm more of the risk taker. But on average, I would say it errs towards Pete being more of a risk taker in that sense. Also, I think what we do really, really well as co-founders is balance each other's opinions and views. And what I mean by that is Pete may have 15 different things that he thinks the business should be doing at any one time.

23:14Now, the reality of that is that you can't do all 15 things at once, all at the same speed and in the same direction. So I think sometimes my role is to help mediate that into a direction that's actually sustainable and can lead to kind of long term growth. So it's about working together to, out of all of the ideas that come up, find the ones that really work, the ones that are going to tick multiple boxes in terms of the longevity of the company and the sustainability of the growth. And then really focus all energies on that and make sure that within that, we're not burning out the teams. We've got the right infrastructure available for it.

23:54We've got the right skills that we're developing. we're seeing those opportunities within the markets and reacting very very quickly very very aggressively to the ones that actually make the most sense to go after rather than trying to do everything at once no in a second we're going to actually see behind the scenes we're going to look at some of the things that you're involved in and it really is an eclectic mix of of of things so according to your linkedin profile it says you design and deliver kick-ass guest-first experiences for the world's most ambitious brands what's your vision for conductor and what's your vision for the other businesses as well?

24:27So I think all of our businesses focus on one core message, which is heads up, not heads down experiences that join people in a kind of socially engaging way. Right. And that permeates across everything that we do. I think the growth from a conductor perspective is we're working on some really interesting projects and some really interesting markets at the moment. And our growth has always been about doing something really well for a client and then working with that client more and more on more ambitious projects and so forth. So I think that's going to continue to mature. On the Game Vault side, we're now in a market where some of our older products are becoming a bit more saturated in the market, which might seem like a challenge at the first term, but actually provide a number of opportunities.

25:14So I think there may be a re-pivoting of some of those original products within the market, constantly focusing on what we can do new to make sure that Game Vault continues to be a relevant and really product-first company. And then on the original side, I mean, we're really in our infancy with it, launching this April, which is really, really exciting. We've got our eyes on Manchester at the moment and there may be potential expansions to that Manchester site that we're talking about. We're talking about different cities within the UK that we might be launching subsequently. And then within the ideation piece for what Originals was, at least for this first incarnation as Game Face, we had a number of ideas which were just up there in terms of interest for us to do.

26:04So there may be some other bar concepts that we'll be launching in the near future, as well as expanding the existing Game Face bar that we're launching in April.