Big Mamma Group Founder: I sold my business for $320M and this is my golden lesson - Victor Lugger

0:01It's the most diverse mammal species on earth, a dog. So the difference between a Danish dog or a sausage dog is incredible, yet people tend to give them very similar foods. Dog food company Just Russell aims to improve dogs' digestive health through its vitamin-powered formula. Pet owners take a quiz, and Just Russell's algorithm will create a recipe unique to each pet's needs. And we've basically made an algorithm that combines the leading databases and the scientific research about all pets and type of breeds. there are 450 type of dog breeds. So do you think that if you go to university and you have this degree, your chances of fundraising are higher in comparison to someone that didn't go to university?

0:50And let's say that both of you have the same business idea. Probably yes. For me, fundraising boils down for investors to trust. Do I trust the person in front of me to do something well with my money in a certain market in a certain way. In your case, how did you convince yourself that this is good enough for you to actually do it? One of the benefits of being an entrepreneur today is that it's fairly cheap to already validate your business hypothesis. So currently we're at 36 million annual recurring revenue in the subscription model. So we have about 85 ,000 active pet owners that are in the subscription of personalized pet food.

1:34Wow. People really care about pets. Indeed. Pets are the new babies. If I were to bring you back to the very beginning, but with all your lessons learned, what would you do differently? That's a very good question.

2:00Victor, in 2020, you started your first company, which is called JustFrosso. And what you want to do with this company is improve the overall health of pets, of dogs and cats, by giving them specialized or offering them specialized recommendations on their food. Why is this important to you? Important enough for you to start a business. So basically, we were four young guys, my brother and two friends. We wanted to become entrepreneurs and we decided that the best way to learn about entrepreneurship is just by doing it. So then we had a look at different markets. We had identified that we wanted to solve a problem with impact.

2:49So we looked at different consumer problems. Then on the other hand, we're two engineers and we strongly believe that data can help us a lot improving people's life. So we basically started with a research on what consumer problem can we solve with data. We started looking at multiple markets and we basically found out that 60 % of pets have overweight. A lot of that also have obesity and it reduces the life expectancy of pets up to two or two years and a half. As people are more and more caring about their pets like babies, they're basically becoming from pet owners, pet parents, and they're spending a lot of them.

3:33They really want to have their pet as long around as possible and to offer them the best quality of life as possible. So we saw there a big opportunity to help those people in, first of all, bringing them the best type of food that matches their exact breed, life states, etc. Right portioning, activity advice, and basically making them a better pet owner with our digital subscription model about personalized pet food. And we believe that we could have a great impact by offering them the food and the whole digital experience around it. Okay. So it wasn't the case in which you loved pets so much and maybe your pet, your dog or your cat had a problem with the food that it was eating and then you wanted to do something about it to improve it.

4:27Because there's a lot of entrepreneurs in which they become an entrepreneur after they experience something that wasn't right for them or there is a product that is missing for them in the market or a service and then they venture into a business in which they would be the perfect consumers for. But you don't fall under that category. So in your case, it was a much more logical or driven decision. So you want to become an entrepreneur. Let me assess where is there a gap in the market and how can I tap into that gap? Indeed. As a way, less sexy, I would say. I love the passionate entrepreneurs and how they stumble on a personal problem.

5:07And then out of passion, they created the solution. They made a business out of that. I think those are the most beautiful stories. For us, it was more a passion about entrepreneurship. We wanted to have impact. And then we just had a look at, with very limited resources, with very limited skills, what can we do? What do we like as a market as well? Like we all have pets. So we had some affinity with the market, but we just strongly believed in the power of personalized food and preventive health services to get our pets while being better in a preventive way. What did you study? So I studied business engineering, which is basically a combination of business and then some engineering and computer sciences.

5:55Which is, I would say, you get to know a bit of everything, but you don't own any subject very well. So I'm quite a generalist, I would say. Did your studies help you in any way in your entrepreneurial journey? I think they helped me a lot mainly so I had the opportunity to go to university in Belgium then I went to the French speaking site where I was in a CEMS program which is basically a conglomerate of different business schools around the world I think they have 35 and I got the opportunity to move to Singapore a very different culture very different way of working and then six months later to Canada.

6:40Because I got out of my comfort zone, I also got in touch early on with entrepreneurship. So I did a Lean Launchpad program in Singapore. And then I also did some consulting case with a blockchain scale up in Canada. And that already gave me the first experiences with entrepreneurship, which were super valuable for starting my company later on. So I would say if you want to become an entrepreneur, making sure that you're in an environment where there is a lot of entrepreneurship increases the odds of becoming early on an entrepreneur. Can you give me an example of which one of these experiences while you were studying, something that you've studied, you actually applied in a specific case when you became an entrepreneur?

7:31So for example, in Singapore, I worked at the linguistic AI company where I did the business thinking about how the technology could be applied in different markets. And that design thinking approach and that phase-based way, how you basically try to take out risks, not by investing one big amount into a hypothesis you have, but breaking it up into 10 parts and then validating step by step and investing a bit more, really taught me in the beginning on how to find product market fit and how to do that in a very frugal and cost-effective manner, which is something super valuable for starting entrepreneurs.

8:09I agree with you. I think, I mean, it really depends what kind of entrepreneur you end up becoming, but generally my overall conclusion of going to university or not going to university, I would always advise to go to university because you're not going to get the answers that you need when you are an entrepreneur you're going to have a lot of questions so you won't get the answers just because you went to university I think those answers they really come from a lot of testing but going to university will give you some tools that allow you to perhaps or some methodologies to break down a problem into smaller problems and for you to then be able to identify a solution because you have this methodology that allows you to see more clear and have this visibility.

8:55So I think it's good because it gives you this framework, these tools, but I would not advise anyone to go to university thinking that if you go, you're going to have all the answers of being in business. Because I came across, at least myself, in my experience, I came across problems or questions that the answer is not in a textbook. Because if it was in a textbook, everyone would be an entrepreneur everyone would be making tons of money. So yeah, that's my conclusion on university. I totally agree. I think whether you go to university or not as an entrepreneur doesn't make any big difference.

9:33I think just having the mental framework of being able to break up different things or I think learning yourself certain skills in a rapid pace and being able to make a decision with very limited information that is 70 % okay, I would say, is the most valuable thing to learn. If you are in an environment like university where you are in a structured manner, go to a certain trajectory to improve yourself and your knowledge as a person, that definitely helps. But if you don't go to university and you're very disciplined in taking online courses, reading books, or just talking to relevant people to help you build your business, that's equally good.

10:19I think nowadays you can be an expert in most fields in six months just by Googling it or asking it to chat GPT. And I think that's something super powerful to know today as an entrepreneur that you don't need to have those super impressive university degrees to start a business. What about fundraising? So do you think that if you go to university and you have this degree, your chances of fundraising are higher in comparison to someone that didn't go to university? And let's say that both of you have the same business idea. Yeah, I would say probably yes. Because for me, fundraising boils down for investors to trust.

11:02Do I trust the person in front of me to do something well with my money in a certain market in a certain way? And people tend to give the benefit of the doubt to people they think that are similar to them or have the right accreditations to make it a success. So I would say university is still a certain stamp of approval, definitely for first-time entrepreneurs. Once you've done it as an entrepreneur, having a university degree or not is less relevant. I agree with you 100%. So if you're a first-time entrepreneur and you don't have a university degree, there is nothing that a potential investor is looking at.

11:47So how can I assess the level of risk? Because A, you didn't do this before. And B, you have no experience, but where is the knowledge coming from? Did you study this somewhere? So that increases the level of risk. But if you went to university, perhaps you don't have the experience because it's your first business, but the knowledge is coming from somewhere. and then once you perhaps have built one business or two businesses i don't think people really care where you want to university even if you want what they're immediately going to assess is what's your experience as an entrepreneur and that carries much more weight than any university degree having said that if your strategy as a first-time entrepreneur is to bootstrap and then at some point sell the business or make it very big or even a medium stage i also think that a university degree won't be very important.

12:38It's only important if you're an aspiring entrepreneur that is looking to fundraise immediately to get your idea going. I totally agree. Once you have a long enough track record with your business, let's say three years, where you can show, look, these were my initial business plans, this is how I approached this, and this is what we got out of it after three years. Having a university degree or not doesn't really matter, I would say. the trust will come from the traction you had in the first three years. Family. I think especially for young entrepreneurs, having the support of your family is important.

13:20Was your family supportive in your journey? Super supportive. I was very lucky. So basically, it's always becoming an entrepreneur is a bit super risky in the beginning. A lot of people think that entrepreneurs get very wealthy soon, which is totally not the case. I would say if you start with entrepreneurship, make sure that the first three years you get your personal expenses covered because we didn't pay ourselves any... How many years would you say is the right number? I would say three. I think looking further than three years is very hard to predict. Would you change that number according to the industry?

14:04Yes, definitely. And also the fact whether you raise money or not. We chose not to raise a lot of money in the beginning and to limit our dilution, not pay ourselves any wages, but first hire people, pay them wages, reinvest the money in the business because we were lucky enough to have the blessing of our parents who told us, like look we can support you to a certain extent uh in your personal surroundings like we don't have any children we um started with the the business plan when we were still in uh on school so we were supported by our parents we don't have a lot of personal commitments on expenses we don't have uh like any house to pay off etc so i think the earlier you start with being an entrepreneur the easier because you still don't have to provide for anyone and limiting yourself and your personal expenses that's personal choice but i think the easiest one to make i agree with you i mean definitely having parents that can support you in the early stages it is very beneficial but even so i think starting earlier gives you first an advantage over the rest because our time is finite and also means that our professional time is finite.

15:25So the earlier you start, the better. But also, I think failing entrepreneurship will happen. And what matters is that you don't quit. Either you don't quit a business and you pivot and you shape it, or perhaps if that business fails, you start something else. But it's about not quitting entrepreneurship in general. And because failure is a given, this so-called failure, and it could have a potential financial failure also failing cheap is very important as you're mentioning so if you are perhaps 35 45 55 you might have a family that depends on you so if you're failing you're failing at the expense of not only yourself but also other people but if you're failing at 25 you can build back up very quickly so 100 i agree with you and and my advice to a lot of my friends is start even if you don't know what it is just start because there's no best moment for you to start the business than in your 20s indeed and that's i think also the um if you start a job in the beginning the the the wage you get is any any way low so you still have to climb the corporate ladder which basically means the longer you wait the bigger the opportunity costs is to switch back to zero start a journey because you have to cancel your high paying job the quality of life you already have and i think um if you don't have a high quality yet like a student and you start with entrepreneurship it's very easy to make the switch and just keep on being cheap in the beginning i agree because there's no opportunity cost because there's no opportunity cost you don't mind everybody's living cheap anyway so it's i think it's hurting you on a personal level less much and as you said you have to make the failures you don't have a big budget so i'm a big fan of failing small.

17:16I also believe that entrepreneurs with no budget are the most creative ones. And it's just a process of learning. So make your failures on a very small scale, have them rapidly and best early of your career in life. So it seems to me that you've wanted, you knew you wanted to become an entrepreneur. it's not something that you came across you seek and I'm just wondering what type of entrepreneur did you want to become so did you just want to try something and see how do I perform in being a business owner or since you were in university you thought look I'm going to be this big entrepreneur and my vision is incredibly big and I'm going to basically extrapolate that vision into the first pieces that I'm going to build, which is just Russell.

18:09So how do you go about this? So my personal thinking was not really about having big business or making it a big financial success. I think it's more about we have a society, we have certain issues. I would like to make my contribution to that and I would like to maximize the impact I could have. There are multiple ways to have impact on society. you can go into politics, etc. I think for me personally, the easiest one to do was being an entrepreneur. And then I think the ultimate goal would be to solve like any societal business, any societal issue like a business. So you have a lot of beautiful non-for-profits that solve certain issues, but they are super dependent on people paying money every year because they feel they do well.

19:04whereas entrepreneurs are very good at finding a problem and solving it in a cost-efficient manner. So I once read a paper about creating shared value. I also did my master thesis about that, about what the real value is of doing good to society and how you can find a profitable business model around it. So if you can solve a societal problem like a business and make it break-even or even profitable, you can really maximize your impact. So for me, that's the long-term goal. If I look at my personal career, then the first thing I would have to do was start learning to be a good entrepreneur. And then you prefer to choose a market that is easy to succeed in.

19:52So we really looked at the markets where we could have a positive impact on consumers, but also a market that is growing, a channel that is growing, where it's easy to attract some resources and to have those failures and to grow as a person and then hopefully build in that market the first success and then to see for the next venture, is there any bigger problem we can solve? All right. So you built a business or at least your idea of entrepreneurship is building a business which is the intersection in between and a charity that you're solving a real problem could be for consumers but in this case for pets but also do it in a way that is generating money I think the first point is clear to me you are a person that cares in solving an issue that is useful and is important it's not a problem that you have invented but it's one that you have identified and then this leaves me with the second point of becoming an entrepreneur so money, what does that mean to you?

21:01so money itself I think money is definitely important for anyone but more important than money is financial independence so for me personally having financial independence and being able to say I would like to commit my time to this purpose because I strongly believe in that and I enjoy doing it that's in the short term a very big goal that's the first thing we would like to achieve once you have financial independence which we don't have yet I think when you say financial independence that you don't have yet it's because the business is not profitable the business is already profitable but we just leave all the resources in the business to maximize its growth potential at this point in time and financial independence is just for me being able to have a house and being able to live your life and not having to worry about your gas expenses for the next three years okay so and just nothing crazy just have food be able to go in a comfortable way to your work have a holiday once a year etc so and you're not in that stage right now so we're able to do that but I don't have a cash flow for three years personally, so no.

22:28But I think that's one of the first goals to have as an entrepreneur is if you really want to dedicate all your thinking to your venture, you don't want to worry about your personal finances. So I think having the financial independence is very important for you to be able to take risk on a business side of things and being able to fully focus on that. Are you worried about your personal finances? No, at the moment I'm not worried about it. But I think if you would have the financial independence, I would even be able to make more risk on a business side. Do you think people might get the wrong perception of where you are financially because you appear in Forbes magazine?

23:16Yeah, definitely. Most people think if you're on Forbes that you already made it, etc. Like with the podcast, you call it 30 and driving. I told you earlier, I would call it 30 working hard and hoping to drive. But I think the media always puts this very nice picture of entrepreneurs that they make big things and everything happens easily. I think it would be more fair to tell more about all the failures they had and how after continuing to fight that they eventually made it. I think that's a more realistic picture to present to everyone. I agree with you. In fact, this is what we were discussing earlier.

24:00Unfortunately, now what we see in the media is only the shiny stuff. So you see company A was sold to company B for these amounts of money or they did an IPO or they are expanding into these other markets. but they never print the struggles, the hard moments, which they're not unusual. They're not unusual whatsoever. They're even more usual. They're more usual. And I think also people would be very interested in knowing that. So this is what this show is about. Not necessarily only showing that you're doing great or if you financially are in a stable position or free, as you mentioned, or if you are in Forbes magazine.

24:41But most importantly, how do you feel as a person And how did you evolve in the last years since you became an entrepreneur? What does it really take for you to become an entrepreneur? And I don't think we see this. We can see this anywhere in a realistic way.

25:04Can you walk me from idea to execution? So you have this idea with your co-founders, which were your friends in university, all the way until you execute it and you deploy your initial capital to get the idea going? Walk me through those steps. So in the beginning, we read first a lot about entrepreneurship, about entrepreneurs. Then basically my brother and my other co-founder, they were studying at TU Delft. They wanted to launch a business in ecological products because that was another market that we identified as where consumers want to have access to sustainable alternatives, but they were not around back then.

25:54Someone that I've interviewed very recently could have supported you a lot in that particular... Someone that you know also. Maybe we would have made it a success back then. So basically then they started buying their first stock thinking it was going to call Behave. Why behave? Because my brother did the branding, but it was something around sustainability and having the right behavior. So we believe that people should live. You seem like you don't agree with your brother's branding. I'm on the financial side. So I wasn't that much into the brand development. He's way better at that. So we're very complimentary, which is good.

26:39and then basically they bought all the products they started launching the websites and then it was Christmas, I came back home we were looking at the margins, we could make all the costs and basically you didn't get out of the unit economics it was going to be a cash flow burning business even if it was a success, we would have needed more and more capital so then I asked them There were no economies of scale? No, it was very hard, we didn't find them maybe we were not investigating good enough but then we were like okay let's evaluate something else and pivot and i think if you start as an entrepreneur the three big things um to have rights are markets the people and then your product um you need to be in a good market first of all you need to have the right people to make it a success and you need an awesome product because you can grow business on marketing a lot but eventually if the product is not better or cheaper than what's around it's not going to be a sustainable business how did you learn this i learned by doing and failing and then researching reading books and i i would have liked to be more clear in the beginning but when we started because we made some issues on that one but we pivoted our market luckily enough we did it early on.

28:00And I think market is out of the three elements, market is the most important one. Because you can switch people, you can switch even co founders, if it's not working out, you can switch your product. If you have great people, your product sucks, you probably will be able to make an even better product. But switching your market is the hardest one. And that's really the one where you have to start again from scratch. So making sure you have a good market analysis, know what it takes in terms of resources to make your vision help happen is super important for any entrepreneur. As you told me your story, I think your vision and how you looked at the market in the beginning was also crucial to the success that you have today.

28:47So market for me is the most important thing, which is why we switched in the beginning. And then we had to look more to market reports. We looked at Euro Monitor, or we looked at consumer problems, we did customer interviews. And then we identified this gap in the pet industry, which is a huge industry. It's a red ocean. There's a lot of brands available. There's a lot of pets. People start humanizing pets. They look at them like babies. They reflect the trends that are happening in human consumption, like healthy lifestyles, focus on prevention. They reflect that on their pets. but still the traditional industry is so focused on selling more volume, selling more pet food at a higher price instead of solving the real issue like what does your pet need, how much volume do they actually need to eat and what type of nutrients do they need to have, more animal proteins, etc.

29:43And we identified that there was quite a big gap in just giving the product, selling the right amount, the right type of product, but also raising awareness among pet owners and helping them to be more responsible pet owners with preventively healthy pets. Then we looked at, okay, we think it's important to also have an affordable way of having pets. We looked at the total cost of ownership of owning a pet. We saw that actually people love their pets so much that when they get old and they were obese for their whole life, they tend to have more heart diseases, they tend to have more kidney diseases, they have joint problems, etc.

30:28And people are so loving of their pets that they're spending over a thousand euros in the last three years of their life to make sure that it's extending and that the pet keeps with them. whereas it was actually way more interesting just to focus early on on prevention and having them on a healthy weight and a healthy lifestyle. So the total cost of ownership if you focus on this prevention is actually cheaper and that's the message that we are bringing to our customers because we believe and also for humans prevention is really the key and also the most sustainable and cost effective solution to having better lives.

31:10Interesting. So interesting. I have a dog, so I was thinking of him while you were sharing these things. I'd like to think that I'm a good pet owner. Definitely my girlfriend is better than me. but so you spend this extensive period of time in identifying a gap in the market and also analyze if if what what's the product market fit and also how does the financial scalability look like which is something that perhaps your first business didn't have so you make your analysis you do your testing and you basically arrive to a conclusion that makes you believe that this business has some legs you can scale it up it has a good potential but i am 100 sure that you are not 100 sure yeah definitely exactly now it sounds like super rational that we did a very extensive market study we just like research what was available we talked to customers i think the biggest investment this time but i would advise anyone who's willing to start a business also limit yourself to six months.

32:17After six months, you really need to have an idea. Don't do like six months of analysis. Of analysis, maximum. The shorter the better. And then eventually it's really trying a market. Is that more for industries that are like consumer industries or you would apply this to any industry? For our industry. So I'm talking about personal experience. So for consumer industries, e-commerce businesses. I wouldn't think too long because one of the like one of my opinions is if I look at friends who want to be an entrepreneur they start in consulting, banking and any other job and then they're like yeah I want to be an entrepreneur but they keep on saying that for two years and my advice would be just start early.

33:02Once you think you think really well about your markets but once you find a good enough market I think it's way more valuable to start and to figure it out than to keep in your job and continue to invest and look at other markets. All right. So let's put ourselves in the following scenario. So we identify a gap in the market. We go through these six months of assessment and we come up with this idea and we believe that it's a good idea and we want to execute it. But the outcome of our analysis is telling us that more or less 60-70 % of this idea is good. The other 30 % we don't really know. How does the competitive landscape really look like when we really deploy?

33:46What's going to be the real feedback by our consumers? How strong are we really going to be able to penetrate the market? All these questions. But I'm 70 % sure that this is a good idea. How, or in your case, how did you convince yourself that this is good enough for you to actually do it? Well, I think one of the benefits of being an entrepreneur today is that it's fairly cheap to already validate your business hypothesis. You can launch any type of website for a few hundred dollars. You can do a Shopify store, start some advertising and see if people are actually buying your business ID that you have.

34:33and that's the best validation. I think you can cancel all the orders you have and saying, oh, the product is not yet ready, but at least you already have this validation. So when I talked about the design thinking process and making sure that you de-risk in 10 type of pieces before you really start, if you have an idea, you did the market research, you have an idea what the brand should look like, etc. Just make with AI some visuals. Use a competitor's product, put your label on it and start the smoke test. Build a website. It's not going to be perfect. It's not maybe the right product you want to have in terms of features, but do something very similar and then just start the marketing for a few hundred euros and you can validate whether or not people are actually buying, leaving their credit card details on the checkout.

35:27and that's the best comfort you can have in that stage. And once you're able to have 10 conversions or a few hundred conversions on that, you just cancel all the orders. What was the number of conversions in your case that made you think, yes, we're doing this? So we started directly and my mental threshold was like, okay, we need to have a thousand customers and then this can really be a good business. How did you come up with this thousand number? Random. Random, okay. A lot of people will say, I think this is the ideal number. Is it maybe based on market size? Even 10, I think, is already a great validation.

36:13The bad ideas that will drop out if you have zero or five conversions. I mean, a lot of, and it's called a book, there's the mom test. And that's basically like asking your friends and family for market research. Everyone is just being nice to you and by that they're actually lying a bit and it makes it not a very good validation. So the best validation is just go out in the market, put a website and ask it to random strangers who don't want to be nice to you or don't have the emotional obligation to say it politely. Because the market is hard, it's super competitive. I agree with you. I think also a very important take on this is that A, you do need to make your research.

36:57And if you went to university and you can apply all these methodologies to help you make that research and to analyze the risk better and the scalability of your business and so on is great. But also if you didn't, as you were mentioning, there's a lot of tools right now that are very cheap right now, like Shopify, that allow you to test your business. But I think the overall conclusion that I'm getting from this is that let's say you end up in a situation where you're confident that you're getting a few conversions it could be 10 but in your case it could also be a thousand obviously if you're in a thousand you're much more convinced but i think 10 as you said it's it's telling you that you're getting traction and perhaps you need to change things but there is traction in this idea i think the most important point here for an aspiring entrepreneur is to understand that you're never going to feel a hundred percent and you need to be okay with that and if you're not okay with that, I don't think entrepreneurship is for everyone.

37:52I don't think anyone is better for being an entrepreneur, nor worse for not being an entrepreneur. I think it's all about becoming the best version of yourself. And for some people, being an entrepreneur allows you to be the best version of yourself, to be sharper, smarter, be a better boyfriend, son, brother, partner, whatever. But if you become an entrepreneur, and it is not the right thing for you, because you don't have that risk appetite and tolerance, you're going to become a worse version of yourself in all these other aspects. If you have a girlfriend or a boyfriend, you're probably going to become a worse partner.

38:26Same if you are a sibling or a son or if you're a parent. So I think it's very important to know that yes, A, you need to analyze what you're doing as best as possible, but then B, always be very conscious that any business carries a level of risk. I don't think anyone in the history of business, aside from maybe a few pharmaceutical discoveries that you're like, okay, we know that this is really going to work. But aside from maybe that industry, in every other industry, it is impossible to be 100 % convinced and that is fine. And you need to be able to live with it, but not only to live with it, to thrive by knowing that there is uncertainty.

39:04Yeah, definitely. Well, my personal belief is that everybody can be an entrepreneur. it's just teaching yourself to be okay with risk making that you have a growth mindset I think curiosity is one of the key factors to determine your potential of success in entrepreneurship and then quick problem solving I would say because there's going to be so many problems along the journey more than you can imagine at start and just knowing, prioritizing is this a big enough problem and how can we solve it in a very limited amount of time and get on to the next one, that's the biggest determinant, I think, for the pace of which you're growing your business.

39:50What you're saying, I think, is very interesting. And I personally agree and I slightly disagree. So I agree that everyone could become an entrepreneur, but we are the outcome of the different circumstances that we've had throughout our lives. so if you're right now in your 20s and you're a person that has this level of risk tolerance and this appetite to innovate and this level of ambition i am sure that that is by a big majority percentage the outcome of what you've lived throughout your life and by a much smaller percentage your genes having said that if we get a newborn and we teach this person to be resilient to be brave, to be able to tolerate risk.

40:37I'm sure that almost anyone could become an entrepreneur. The problem is that I struggle to believe that a person in more advanced stages of their lives, they can build these skills or these attributes because these are very important inherent skills that I think you learn in the first 20 years of your life. I'm going to give you an example. My girlfriend, she sees my life And perhaps she sees the beautiful side of being an entrepreneur, right? What maybe the freedom or right now I'm very lucky and grateful that I do have a financial freedom. So she really likes that. So she wants to become an entrepreneur.

41:14But when I look at my girlfriend, she is a person that she thrives when things are foreseeable. So when she knows what's going to happen next and A is going to stay as A and B is going to stay as B, she is the best version of herself. She's smarter. She's bubblier. She's positive. She's incredible. She's an incredible partner. She's an incredible daughter. She's an incredible friend. But when things are unforeseeable, she starts to get stressed and she starts to doubt herself. I'm the opposite. When things are foreseeable, I become boring. I start doubt things. I'm not the best version of myself.

41:51But when I have more meat in the barbecue, when my life is more complex and I have this project at the super late stage, but this other one that is at an early stage and there are different industries and I still need to learn. And, you know, I feel like I don't have the grip of it, but I want to. That feeling really fuels me and it makes me be smarter to feel motivated, to have a purpose to wake up every morning. And I don't think my girlfriend can feel that because of her experiences in life. And I don't think I can learn to feel like my girlfriend. In some cases, I really envy her because of my experiences in my life.

42:30So I agree with the overall sentiment that everyone could become an entrepreneur, but I think there are certain attributes and skills and traits that you should, not necessarily maybe be taught, but you should live life in a specific way when you are growing up in the first 10, 20 years of your life. Yeah, I totally agree. And I also think it gets harder the older you are, the more you're already in a certain way of working or thought process. But I think at any stage in life, you can still be an entrepreneur or learn the skills like having risk appetite, being able to perform under stress, etc.

43:09It just gets harder. But it's like saying everyone can cook, right? You're not going to be the best chef probably. I will never be a great chef. But you can learn to cook and you can try some, I would say some ventures or like with a cook, some dishes that are less risky that will also lead you to success. So I think it's just like having a very good understanding of what type of risk do I want to take? How much do I want to sacrifice for my personal life, et cetera? And then you can also be an entrepreneur in a fairly predictable market like freelancing or something and still be an entrepreneur and do very well.

43:49I'm going to bring us back to just Russell. Can you please walk me through the customer journey? So I visited your website. What happens all the way until the food arrives in my house? Yeah, very good question. So basically, we want to change the way people care for their pets, being more data-driven, more focused on preventive health, and also being more convenient for pet parents. How we do that is so we've built a website where we explain the whole concept, the food, the science behind it. And we've basically made an algorithm that combines the leading databases and the scientific research about all pets and type of breeds.

44:41There are 450 type of dog breeds. and so it's like it's the most diverse mammal species on earth so the difference between a Danish dog or a sausage dog is incredible yet people tend to give them very similar foods so we basically we looked at that complexity and we tried based on amnesia which is basically like a questionnaire that you do at a veterinary to determine and what type of food matches best. So we ask a 10 simple questions about your pets. What's his age? What are his health conditions? What is he like in terms of flavor? What's his breed? What's his weight? And then look at the weight curves, where he should be for male, female, et cetera.

45:32And then basically we make a nutritional profile and we link that profile to the type of pet food formula in terms of protein, carb, supplementation, and levels of supplementation and the size of kibble that we think matches best to your problem statement. And then we come up with a whole personalized feeding plan online where you get also like an adjustable measuring scoop which allows you to give in a very convenient way up to five grams accurately of your pet's food. You go to the checkout page and you order your first meal kit. And we believe with this data-driven approach and with the 100 ,000 at-home tests and the feedback we already got from pet owners that we will be able in a very short amount of time to be one of the best placed players to predict what type of dry food matches best to your problem statement from your dog or your cat.

46:29So then you pay the first delivery, you get it delivered at home in one, two days depending where you're located. Then the meal box comes in, It's with the personalized pet food. It's a bag with a picture of your pet on the back, the name of your pet, then three claims why we chose a certain type of pet food, and then the recommendation that we give you with the adjustable measuring scoop on how much food your pet needs on a daily basis. And that comes with a whole personalized feeding plan, some health advice on how much activity your pet would need. Also, like if it's a senior or a puppy dog, you will get a puppy booklet, which is explaining you, okay, what is being a responsible pet owner.

47:17It's not only about food. It's not only about activity. It's also about behavior, training of that. It's also about prevention, having the right vaccinations, making sure your pet is insured, for example. So it's everything we believe is important to be a very good pet parent in there. And then based on that, you get a whole digital customer journey. So you get access to your own personal dashboard with your pet. There's a weight tracking evolution. You have the eHealth platform that basically gives you certain content from our digital vet based on the breed of your pet. Like are they having any issues that are very likely to have with this type of pet?

48:00So it's really a product plus service experience. For example, if your pet is obese, we have a six-month weight management program that is offered that you can conduct while being a Just Russell customer with our online vet. And then basically we really try to help all our customers to make their pets healthier and be good pet owners. And then you enter into a subscription model from Meal Kits, very similar to HelloFresh. My mind was thinking two things while you were saying this. The first thing was, Jesus, these pets are going to live better than us. But actually it's super simple because they eat every day the same meal.

48:40So if you want people to perform at their best, you just need to look at science and what nutritional intake do they need. And the second thing that I was thinking is if all these different types of dog breeds, they require different type of food, yet they all belong under, they belong to the same family or the same umbrella, which is being a dog. I was wondering if humans also could benefit from having these distinctions in what they should eat and what they shouldn't. So for example, an African person from a physiological point of view is totally different than an Asian person or a Southeast Asian person, for example.

49:23Perhaps there should be a study that is telling them, well, you can eat whatever you want because you only live once. And yes, you do need to enjoy. But be aware that because of your genetics, if you eat all these things, you're going to be either not living the best life and you're going to have these problems. I know that there's a lot of blood tests that you can do that they tell you that at a unit level, yourself, Victor or Alberto. but I think it's also very interesting to know most importantly also at a societal level or country level without feeling racist because I think we live in a world where whatever you say right now people are going to call you racist but I'm pretty sure that maybe me being Spanish and coming from so many Spanish generations there are some foods that are going to help me become a better version of myself than maybe someone in China and they're eating the same thing.

50:21Well, I think we just have the belief that scientific evidence and data-driven advice can help you a lot with preventive health through food. That's also the case with humans, for example. Like if you look at DNA tests, for example, I did one because I previously was in supplementation. I did a DNA test. My brother has Crohn's disease and they identified based on the DNA test that I'm also likely to have at a certain point in time that I have a higher chance of also developing this autoimmune disease so that I should, in my current lifestyle already, be aware of that and maybe adapt it to it. You could also look at stool tests, which is something that pet parents are doing quite a lot.

51:05If the pet food is not good, their poo is not going to be of the right quality. But same, that's actually for humans also a very good indication. What's the right quality? Just having like a dark brown, very consistent poo is good. If you walk in the park and you cannot take up the poo, there's an issue with the food. Okay, so that's how to test it. Yeah, indeed. And I think just like pets are so much more diverse than humans. Definitely dog breeds. I mean, your sausage dog versus a Labrador. It could be a different species, right? My dog thinks it's the same species. He would go against the Labrador.

51:45No, but adjusting the food to that makes more sense than for humans. Definitely. In how many countries are you doing this? So we're currently active in four countries. We started, which is also one of the learnings we had, as an e-commerce company, scale matters. Definitely if you're investing a lot in technology and a platform and a good service, the whole e-health experience, scale matters. And we started in Belgium, which is already a very small country, but only in the Dutch speaking part, which is like half of Belgium. So we found some product market fits, could scale the business, bootstrapped, super nice.

52:22But then when you start talking to investors, this is like one of the issues that we had early on was like, okay, Belgium is nice, impressive what you did in Flanders, but it's a province in Europe. It's not a very big market. So now there's a lot of questions raised about, are you able to internationalize? Can you replicate the success twice? etc. So we were first forced early on to go into another market, which requires finding again, product market fit, adjusting your positioning, your tone of voice, your payment service providers, logistic companies that you're used doing again, a pricing exercise.

53:02And it's again, like a one or two year journey of finding the right marketing channels, the right target audience, the right website. It's a one or two year journey with your resources. But let's say if you had more resources, could you stream? You can accelerate it, definitely. But then you just hire more people and it's a risk reward thing, right? But I would advise a lot of entrepreneurs to start in a big enough market if you want to have a big company one day, of course. So we went to the Netherlands, which is also Dutch speaking, culturally quite similar. we replicated the business model there it's also a break even now so that's good and then now we basically have this vision of becoming hello fresh for pets so in in order to be able to make it to that vision we have to internationalize two big countries so that's why we entered the french market in the summer of 2023 we also went to germany and now it's basically like enabling other people in the company that are native Germans or native French-speaking people to have the same entrepreneurial journey as we did, but then with a lot of more resources and experts already in place.

54:18You mentioned you're at a break-even point right now. In the Netherlands. In the Netherlands. And as a group, are you... Profitable. Profitable. Very small profit margins because basically our goal is to grow as fast as possible while being bootstrapped and staying on our current resources. And what about revenue? So if you were to analyze 2024 revenues. So currently we're at 36 million annual recurring revenue in the subscription model. So we have about 85 ,000 active pet owners that are in the subscription of personalized pet food. Wow. People really care about pets. Indeed. It's pets are the new babies.

55:05Yes, definitely. I can see the smile on your face. So this is not the only thing that your company does. So you have this idea and you want to improve the health of the dogs and cats. through personalizing their food recommendations, but you don't stop there. So you see that there is a potential for you to cross-sell something else, which is pet insurance. Why did you do this? That's a very good question. So basically, we talk a lot to customers because we're a direct-to-consumer business. One of the early-on learnings that we did was we initially started as a dog food business, but then we had 10 % of our customers also have a cat, and they were like, I still have to drive to the pet specialty store for my cat food to buy premium cat food.

55:53It would be super nice if you could also put personalized cat food in our meal kit because my cat is already eating the kibbles of my dog because they smell better than the existing food that they have. So that's why we started with the cat food. And then later on, we basically look at how can we improve the life of pets. So we looked at healthy treats, low-calorie treats that are still nice to give as a snack because people want to have this emotional bond with their pet. They want to reward them in trainings, but snacks are by definition not really healthy. Then sometimes pets also have some nutritional deficiencies.

56:33So we're looking into supplementations. One of the problems, our customers told us that the traditional supplements they give, dogs don't like to eat them, and they often just spit it out again. So we developed a product that has a treat with all the supplementation inside so that they can give it as a cookie. But with the supplement inside. You have no idea how much time I wasted in making my dog eat his vitamins. It's like all the pet owners are often going through the same problems. And it's really about talking to your customers, finding out what their problems are and how you can make their life easier and make their pets healthier.

57:14And one of the problems, I personally had that as well. If you go to a vet, and you have to make, there was an incident with your pet, you like ran into a car or something and you have to make a decision, okay, do I pay a thousand or two thousand euro for the surgery or do I lose my pet? A lot of people don't want to make this emotional versus financial decision. So ensuring you upfront is a very good way to not having to make a financial decision and just go for the emotional one. One, because your pet is insured. So we strongly believe that having your pet insured is part of being a responsible pet owner because there is a chance that at a certain age or at a certain point in time, you will have an accident where you have to make this decision between an emotional and a financial point of view for your pet.

58:10What percentage of your revenues come from the pet insurance business in comparison to the food business? It's less than one. So it's not really material, but we still want to give it as an opportunity for people that want to have this. And they also have a benefit by buying it via JustRussell. Let's talk pet stats. So which country spends, based on your analysis and your assessment, which country is spending more money in their pets? Well, the biggest pet market is the US for sure. Also, if you look at the US, fresh food is becoming very big. People have a higher spending power, of course. But do you think it's because the size of the country is higher or people just spend more money on their pets there?

59:02No, they also spend more money on their pets. The disposable income is the highest. And are pets, like for example, humans are more obese now than 50 years ago. Are pets more obese now? Yeah, so that's one of the issues that we see. But that's good for you, right? Because they keep eating. Well, I think it's problematic with pets and with humans. So everybody should be more aware and have more discipline in leading a preventive healthy lifestyle, not eating too much. Like you always have to enjoy life, but it has its limits. And I think it's also our responsibility to make sure that there's a convenient availability of healthy food.

59:46so if you look at the amount of pets that got obese or overweight in the last decades it's increasing why a lot of people adopted the pet people are hard working sometimes during winter months they come home late they don't want to go walking with their pets they have a feeling of guilt and then they give as a reward to the pet a bit more food but it's a vicious circle right They're having less activity, you're giving them more food so they get fatter, and then it's harder for them to lose weight. So I think it's super important to educate customers about the problem, also give them a convenient alternative for healthy snacks, for healthy food, the right portions, and then really to try to promote as much as possible to have the activity.

1:00:36It's also good for humans. So we see a big correlation between the health of the animal and the health of the owner. And there are a lot of studies that say that people who have pets are more mentally resilient. They have more social contact because they get out every day, even during winter months. Having a pet is like super good for elderly people because they still feel this sense of purpose. They have to take care for their pets. They have conversations like an icebreaker to talk to other people. So having a pet is also a bit of a personal health investment, I would say. Are pets living longer these days?

1:01:16So for example, is my dog going to live any longer than my grandparents' dog? Because humans are living longer now. I would guess yes, but I have no certainty to say that they are going to live any longer statistically. But I would say that the pet care has evolved quite a lot in the last few decades. Pet food, also the awareness about taking good care of your pet has raised quite a lot. So I would assume that the life expectancy, just like with humans, has improved. and how do you test your products? Because my girlfriend, Olivia, she thinks that most of these big marketing slogans or USPs that you see, for example, when you go into a pet shop and you want to buy a shampoo for your dog and it says his hair is going to grow faster.

1:02:14I don't see anyone saying, hey, the hair of my dog didn't grow faster. Like, how do you test these things and how real are they? You would be surprised how emotionally and vocally people are about making claims about what it will do to their pets. And if it's not happening, they get really angry. Give me examples. So if you claim that it's going to have like no allergic reaction, improve the stool health of a certain dog, and that's not happening, then people get really angry because they're like, you tried the product that was going to work for my dog, but it didn't. So you really have to look very well at all your data and make sure that the chances of having a problem with the customer are very low because people are super defensive about their pets and how you take care of them.

1:03:13also I think our approach I strongly believe in the process that we have so if we recommend something to a person they get delivered the product and if they want to cancel their flexible membership they have to indicate why they are cancelling is it a price problem is it a service problem of the logistics company or was it a product problem and if you indicate it's a product problem then we ask you why So basically every customer that is leaving just Russell has to mention us why they are leaving, which is for us a huge source of data to know what type of formula is matching what type of problem statement.

1:03:56And if people indicate its taste, its stool health, its long-term health benefits, it's for example the coat of my dog that gets less shiny or his levels of energy are decreasing. and we have a statistically significant group that is indicating this issue, we immediately ask to our vets, can you have a look at it? How can we improve it? We even call the customers to solve the problem. So we believe that this is one of the most sustainable processes or approaches to fix pet healthcare and pet food. It's very data-driven, but I still have uncertainty in how unbiased or realistic the feedback when it comes to product is.

1:04:42Because your customer is the pet owner, but the consumer is the pet. So the pet consumes the product and the customer, in this case the pet owner, needs to assume if the pet likes it or not or whatever it is, because the pet cannot speak. so how do you filter this feedback from the customer? How do you know that this is actually something that you need to look into and maybe change your product? It's a very right analysis. So basically the person who's consuming is not the one who is buying. So the purchase decision is made by someone else. Which definitely if you look at the different countries you will see that what people believe is best for their pets they have some trends that are different from a country to a country perspective.

1:05:35But if you look at the nutritional needs, like you have, let's say, more German shepherds in Germany. So that's going to make a difference. But within breeds, what they nutritionally need is exactly the same, despite if it's a Belgian or a German dog. So it's very funny to look at what consumers believe their pet needs based on certain trends or media consumption in their country. And then basically there is quite a lot of feedback your pet is giving you in a non-verbal way. So does he go to the bowl? Does he smell? Does he like the smell of the food? Does he eat it? Does he eat the whole bowl?

1:06:17How fast does he eat it? Those are all already non-verbal indications whether or not he likes the taste and the size of the food. What about the dental health? Like, do they have problems with eating the size of the kibble? Do they have any dental problems coming up after a certain period of time? And one of the early indicators whether or not your food is good is also the quality of the poo. And the level of energy that they have. Like, do they get super tired or does there change anything in their behavior? and then long-term effects like the joints, the quality of their skin, their fur, etc.

1:06:58So there are a lot of signals that a pet parent can see from his pet whether or not the product is right and based on that make a decision or get back to us and ask to change the formula based on certain problems or items that they've seen with their pet. That's so interesting. I think at least myself as a pet owner, the only thing that I look at is if my pet likes the food and then if he becomes overweight. But for me, seeing him overweight or not, I don't attribute it to the type of food, but maybe the quantity that I'm giving him. But now with this, surely my girlfriend, once she listens to this, she's going to be looking at these thousand things.

1:07:44She's going to become obsessed. I'm not going to exist at home, by the way. It's only going to be our dog Simba. Yeah, but it's very important to know who is the real pet parent. Because in a couple, there's always one of the two people who's really taking care for the pet on a very dedicated level. And I'm sure that your girlfriend is noticing a lot of the factors that I mentioned already. Do you know if it's more women than men? It's 70 % women, yeah. Wow, that's so interesting. So you're marketing to them? yeah we're marketing mainly to women but you also have like a lot of men that also take very good care of their pets but it's more women indeed and like one of the very funny things is like for valentine we sometimes do customer surveys and what comes out of the responses of people is sometimes really funny like they indicate that they get more affection from their pet than from their partner that their pet understands their emotions even better that they sense how they are feeling better than their partner.

1:08:48People who are single indicate, like half of them indicates that if they would meet someone new who's not accepting their dog, they would make it a deal breaker. So people are super fond of their dogs. Yeah, yeah. Wow. You founded this business in 2020, and within barely four years, you are doing over 30 million in annual revenues. It does sound from the outside like you have been on an amazing path towards success with no problems, but I doubt that. There's multiple problems. There are more things that went wrong than that went right. Exactly. That was my feeling because I haven't come across any business or any business owner that no matter how much from the outside their business looks, how thriving from the outside it seems to be.

1:09:43Every business comes inherent with different problems at different stages.

1:09:53In your career, in your journey, what has been the toughest moment that you've been through? I think every business has product problems, things going wrong with customers. I think if you have a very fair and correct attitude and explain to the customer like, look, this is not how we want it to go. It happened with you. We're very sorry. Let's reimburse you or make it right. That you already get quite far with just the right attitude. Then you always have like financing problems, cash flow, stress around that, etc. But for me personally, the hardest problems are people problems. so we had in the very beginning you're basically there's no real company there's just like an idea, there's a product and then we have to make it happen once you have a bit of cash flow you start hiring employees and some of those employees are very good in an early stage of the company because they're super hands-on they are also very entrepreneurial you don't really have to tell them what to do because they understand everything they are intrinsically driven and they do very well for the company two, three years.

1:11:06But then the company is evolving and I think the speed of the company's growth is very much determined by the speed at which the leadership of the company is personally evolving with that size. Because for every stage of a company, as an entrepreneur or as a business leader, you need different skills and you need to be able to get again out of your comfort zone. You need to do different things. Once you manage and you fix the problem, you have to give it to someone else or outsource it and move on to the next thing to make the growth happening again. And a lot of those early employees are doing very well and they're growing with you to a certain extent.

1:11:49They're making huge personal growth journeys that you could never have imagined even before. But sometimes they're hitting a certain ceiling And you see that the startup company is becoming a scale up and then it's becoming more of a corporate with processes, etc. And the skills that they were very good at being hands on entrepreneur, etc. are basically beaten down by the processes you implement because you have you want to take less risk. You want to think more about certain problems and projects before you implement it. And they were very good at implementing it straight away. and if it's not working, fixing it again.

1:12:29And I think for me, the hardest problems, the hardest issues we have faced is saying goodbye to the type of people that were very good in a certain stage of the company. Yes, so those are for me personally the hardest decisions that you have to make because they impact people that have done very well for the company and despite that we've tried a lot of different things to make it work for them in the new phase. that you have to let them go. I fundamentally agree with what you're saying. I think that depending on the maturity stage of your business, there are some people that have the right skills to take you to the next level.

1:13:13Then you achieve or you arrive to that next level and then you need that separate different level of skills and types of skills. but I don't think you learn that until you live in so we live and and we learn in your case this was in a way your first business what was your experience prior to this any real professional experience prior to this so my previous experience prior to this venture was I worked at Vision Healthcare, which is a company where I worked with Henry, who was on a previous podcast. So basically, during my SEMS journey, my master's, I had to do an internship. I did there a three-month internship where I was very lucky to get the internship because I immediately entered into a very entrepreneurial venture.

1:14:14And one of the things you have to learn as an entrepreneur is being proactive and taking risks without having a lot of comfort about the outcome and just making sure you take risk fast enough. And I think I saw a lot of, so my job was doing basically business development and identifying some M &A targets because they were doing a buy and build in direct to consumer healthcare companies that are doing beauty and personal care or supplementation companies. So I was able to see the end game of a lot of entrepreneurs because those were successful businesses. I had the opportunity to talk to those entrepreneurs to hear about their story and then to look at in the end, if you sell the business and get into a bigger venture that is more into the structuring and really getting a corporate.

1:15:10What are the KPIs we look at? How does that integrate into the new stage of the company and the bigger organization? So I learned at the beginning of my career, I learned a lot about the end game of being an entrepreneur, which helps you a lot in your thinking if you set up a business and how that vision should move on in the coming years. And I think that was very valuable, I think, also for JustRussell. And one of the reasons, besides having a fantastic team and people who execute really well, but that we could grow quite fast. A lot of people, they start their careers in the corporate industry.

1:15:55As you mentioned previously, some people could be in finance or consulting, many different corporate jobs. But a lot of them, they also want to become at some point in their lives an entrepreneur. and you said that your advice would be for them to start early. Now, what would you tell or what would you say to this person that right now has been working for a few years in a company and has an idea and is confident about himself and about the idea? How do you determine is the right moment for you to quit? Jump, just jump. There's no point in time where you are sure that this is the right moment.

1:16:32There's never a right moment. there's always a reason why you shouldn't jump. Is it the next promotion? Is it a personal situation? Is it doubt about the idea? But the fact that you jump is really a shift in your mentality. And I think the most important thing about like, I think it's good if you start your career in a corporate in the beginning to learn a certain degree of how business works, what is professional behavior, et cetera. but I would my personal belief is I wouldn't do the job for more than four years because then you start really building habits personally you build a certain way of working and one of the most challenging things also as an entrepreneur is breaking your old habits that brought you to success and adapting new habits that are more likely to bring you success in the future so I would say jump as early as possible once you have the two year onboarding the first experiences in your corporate job if you can still make a promotion after two years to another job that learns you another type of skill set you can still do it but I wouldn't wait too long because it gets harder and harder to change your habits again I agree with you also adding to that I believe that the longer you stay in corporate the more you're going to understand about companies in general, not necessarily about entrepreneurship, but companies in general.

1:18:02And you become more aware of the competitive landscape, the complexities of building these business processes. How taste and preferences, for example, in your case in consumer goods, they change rapidly. So you start to identify all these complexities. And the more you stay in that environment, the more, and it's, I think, natural, you start thinking that building a business is hard. and then you get paralyzed by this analysis because you think that the chances of failure are very big. And I want to deep dive into that failure. So I was researching the other day the different percentages, ratios of failure in various countries.

1:18:40And it's interesting that they vary. It makes sense that they vary because in one country, if you have one million startups every year, the failure ratio is going to be higher than in another country that you have half of those startups launching in that same year. Just here in the UK, it was around 60 % of the startups failing and in France was 86%. Regardless of Belgium or the UK or the US, failing is a possibility, is a given factor, is a given avenue that can happen to your business. Let's put ourselves in the situation in which just Russell, your company, fails. What happens? What do you do?

1:19:25If it would fail, I think I would take a few months to reflect on the failure. What I really like about some entrepreneurs that are brave enough to talk about their failures in public, like in Ghent in Belgium, we now have a whole ecosystem of tech entrepreneurs some successful some some less successful but they recently introduced a new event that is called fuck up night and they basically invite entrepreneurs who had a great idea executed very well in the beginning but then fucked up due to cash flow problems people problems product issues market that has changed whatever and they come to talk about their journey and what they have learned post-mortem of the startup life.

1:20:21And I think that's something super valuable to share to the community, to give back and to have your story, your experience shared with other founders, because it makes them aware about what the potential reasons for failure could be. And it makes them more mature to prevent this failure. I think that a company can fail but the entrepreneur doesn't fail the entrepreneur learns I think the only way that failure can become final is if you quit you don't do something else so I think there should be two avenues that you can take avenue A is you try to shape your business in order for you to adapt it to taste and preference exchanges or you improve your cash flow you add a new revenue stream whatever it is, but you're keeping your business alive by making these changes.

1:21:15Or you pivot into another business. But ultimately what matters is to not quit entrepreneurship. And I think that a lot of entrepreneurs, unfortunately, they make the mistake. And I was falling under that category in the initial stages of my journey. You feel identified with your company. So basically, just Russell is Victor and Victor is just Russell. And in my humble experience, those are two separate entities. Victor can create just Russell and a thousand other Russells, but they don't go hand in hand. And this is something that at least where I come from, they don't teach you in Spain from a cultural perspective, but also where I've studied, they don't teach you this.

1:22:00They don't teach you to separate yourself from your business and to teach you that you can build up so many different businesses. I also believe that this is very much connected with how in today's world success is defined. They keep narrowing the definition of success and it shouldn't be deviated. And they keep telling us through social media platforms, movies and TV shows that success have this small frame of how it should look like. And we should all follow that frame. And I don't agree with that. Through these amazing conversations with, for example, yourself or other founders, the first thing you get to understand is that number one, success has so many different definitions.

1:22:45And number two, there are so many, many, many ways of making a living in life. And if you already open up your mindset to these two things, to define your own version of success, and also you open in your mind to a lot of possibilities to create wealth, to open a business, I think that life becomes from one moment to another so much more beautiful. So much more beautiful. Indeed. I couldn't agree more, I think. So having the first ideas, there are multiple ways to have success. You can have success as an entrepreneur personally, but you can also have a successful business And just already like from the beginning of the company, having the idea that the best man should always have a position and not because he's a founder or because he's an investor or whatever reason.

1:23:50I think that's a very powerful thing to have because that makes, if you're in a certain C-level position in the company that you have to perform because it doesn't matter that you are a founder or not. you can be replaced by someone else. So you have to live up to the expectation. But also it's really about thinking about the success of the company standalone. Like I'm already preparing for one day. Probably I'm no longer the best person to be CEO at JustRussell. And that's completely fine because we need to do as the current management, as the founder of the company, we need to do what's best for the company.

1:24:29and we don't need to let our own ego decide who should be in a certain position and just make decisions based on where the company is going to thrive from and who is going to realize the next step of growth in the company and that also makes you think about your own personal success because my success today is very much linked to just Russell but if I already mentally prepare myself maybe for one day that I'm no longer the one who is best positioned to be the CEO, then I also already start thinking about, okay, what could be then the next venture or what else would I do? Despite the fact that I won't do it today, of course, it makes you mentally very strong to think, I think.

1:25:13And it also allows you to have some self-reflection, which is super important to think about your own habits, how you're approaching certain things today and what in an ideal world and what should the company look like in two years and what should the CEO then be doing? And then the question is, do I want to change my habits? Do I want to change the work that I'm doing? And then the second point is on the, there are many ways to make money indeed. And that basically boils down to having the luxury of being financially independent. So that's for me also one of the key things in order to be able to go for the maximum success of the company and also personally, not having to worry about those personal finances is just making sure you have a very stable ground to build upon.

1:26:08I can see that you've learned a lot within the four years of building your business. Multiple things, multi-layered. Not yet enough. If I were to bring you back to the very beginning, but with all your lessons learned, what would you do differently? I think we would do it way faster, immediately start in a bigger market. I mean, I think you just, as a first-time founders, you have a lower risk appetite. You have, from a personal finance perspective also, you only have one shot to make it work, right? So you basically want to make sure that everybody, everything has a very high chance of succeeding, which slows you down in growth, which is perfectly fine.

1:27:02I think it's very healthy in the beginning. But if I would start again today, I think we would be bolder in the products that we launched at the start, approach our market validation way faster, also be more convinced on the vision that we have. So if we look back at the business plans that we made in 2020 were overshooting every year. So we were still, I think we're still humble, but we were like very, we didn't dare to talk about our real vision. And we were super conservative indeed, because you just have such a big fear to fail and to say, I think we're going to do X in two years and then not delivering upon that promise and then you think about what are other people thinking about that, if I would fail, etc.

1:27:57So you're super conservative in the beginning. And I think being bold is something super important to maximize your chances of success. Do you believe in luck? Yes, definitely. I think every entrepreneur who made it has had a lot of luck in his journey. Entrepreneurs are just humans. and they are a product of their experiences in the past. Everyone can be an entrepreneur and every entrepreneur needs a high degree of luck to make it work. But you can put yourself in a situation where your chances of luck are getting higher and higher. How much would you attribute your success to being lucky if you were going to give me a percentage?

1:28:5190 %? I mean, it depends on what you see as luck, but like finding good co-founders, starting in the right markets, hiring the right employees, making sure that that one capital round has happened, getting the benefit of the doubt from a bank for a certain loan. I mean, is that luck? Is that not luck? I don't know. I would say a lot of it is having a good story is an enthusiasm about your company and the vision where you're going to can convince a lot of people. Is that luck? On a certain hand, I would say yes. So, but you need all those things to fall into the right order to make it a success.

1:29:35So we have been very lucky, I think. I appreciate your honesty. I really do.

1:29:47I want to talk about Forbes. So you made it to the list in 2023. How important was this to you?

1:29:58Not super important, to be honest. I think it's a great boost for ego for a lot of people, I think. And that's also how we look at awards, consumer awards, etc. It's a great celebration for the team. it's a great celebration of what we have achieved and that's super nice we're very grateful for it but it's having for example the Forbes 30 under 30 what is it accreditation it doesn't move it doesn't change the business right and what it does is that it opens more doors and it gave me the opportunity to have this interview with you today for which I'm very thankful. It allows probably I think more people respond to my LinkedIn messages now.

1:30:49So basically in the beginning when I was requesting for a lot of help because I think one of the key success factors at JustRussell is the fact that we were very young. We knew that we didn't know the solution and we were humble enough to go to other entrepreneurs, present the issue that we have and ask them for their feedback, how they would solve it and then get to work and try to implement that solution and go back to the entrepreneurs and say, hey, here was your advice. This is what we tried. These are the numbers. What would you do next? And that has helped us a lot. So we got a lot of free consultancy from other entrepreneurs.

1:31:31And then I think having a Forbes 30 under 30 recognition after four years of hard work is very nice. And it helps you with being able to talk to more other entrepreneurs, getting more feedback. And it just increases the speed of the flywheel. But personally, I don't attach a lot of value for ego reasons to it, because I think having a no ego culture is super important to succeed as far as possible with the company.

1:32:10How would you define success?

1:32:15The degree of positive impact that you have in people's life. Would you say you're successful? Not yet. we're still working a lot to have it on a European level. We're working still a lot to further develop our e-health platform. We're working a lot to improve our algorithm to make even better recommendations. And now we also started working with the university to do some scientific research on the data that we have. And I think if we can really improve, and so basically we're a technology innovation that matches an existing product to a certain problem statement. Now we have a lot of data about all those products.

1:33:09We would be really successful if we can make product innovations with that data. Victor, thank you very much. Thank you for coming. Thank you for opening up and for letting us into your world. I'm very humbled by your experience because you've shown us that a definition of success, your definition of success, even though your company is generating millions and millions in revenue, and you've only accomplished this within four years, which is incredible. Your definition of success is totally unrelated to that. It is related to helping. And you've said this in the beginning of our conversation and kept it through all the it until the end.

1:33:52Even though it was a long conversation, you could have forgotten about it. But this is what is true in your heart. And because of this, I believe that people can have great ideas, but it takes the right entrepreneur to be able to execute it. And I strongly believe from the bottom of my heart, but also my brain, that you're the right person to execute your vision and to bring Just Russell to be a household name globally. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me and your kind words. I was super happy to be on the show. So thank you for giving us the opportunity. Thank you, Victor.