I Built the UK’s Fastest Start Up with Steven Bartlett: Levi Levenfiche

0:0099 % of startups fail and it might even be higher for food and beverage businesses. But had it not been for Marissa's ADHD and anxiety, we wouldn't be here today. A founder and a team's gut is actually the strongest indicator of success, not necessarily what a focus group thinks. Teddy's childhood best friend had just passed away. Also one of the reasons why we are so inspired by just going at it 100 miles an hour and we do a lot of our stuff for him. I actually remember getting the WhatsApp from Steven's team saying dealer sign as the beginning segment of Dragon's Den was on TV. bigger it gets the bigger the problems get that's the truth Stephen approaches you and says listen guys I want to double down I want to invest again and that deal took a year to negotiate why did it take a year because Levi welcome to the podcast how are you good how are you very well thank you for joining us um we kick off with the same question every single time yeah who are you and what problem do you solve it's a good question who am I um I'm Levi I'm co-founder of Perfect Ted co-founder alongside my wife Marissa and my brother Teddy.

1:03We started the business five years ago and we are solving the problem of unhealthy energy and unhealthy caffeine and trying to build the largest matchup brand in the world. I think we're doing a good job of it but it's a work in progress. I think you're doing a brilliant job of it. So let's I guess dive into it there's three of you in the business i guess when you think of your strengths what problem do you specifically typically end up solving what you bring to the table in the uh the perfect ted i deal with all the problems that no one else wants to deal with that's my role what happened was teddy and marissa went full-time first and i was working in finance and i was more or less funding the business with my paycheck so i'd see like my really good payslip come in and then like the money go straight out um and that meant that teddy and marissa were focused on the highest priority items which were sales marketing brand ops and i got dealt the hand of tax finance legal accounting uh business ops which obviously has become a more important um part of the business shut out my finance people but that's kind of where the hand i got dealt and it's actually the hand I've continued to play.

2:17And as the business has grown and I came on full time after a year and a half or so, I continue to focus on that. We've obviously built out different functions. And now Marissa, Teddy and I work cross-functionally across everything, but still my domain is very much finance, biz ops, team, hiring, um, growth, fundraising, and Teddy's focuses supply chain and sales. And Marissa's main focus is brand marketing. But again, we all work cross-functionally so if one of us gets hit by a bus we all know what we're doing so so that on paper the dynamic of the relationships feels like it could get messy there could be crossover of we kind of had that argument in a boardroom and now we're sat around the dinner table how do you manage all the different parts of being a family being in relationships and working together well it gets more complex my mum is also in customer service for us oh wow and she's got very strong opinions.

3:10So yeah, the business started at our kitchen table. We were all living together, myself, Tay and Marissa. We lived together for the first two years of the business. Then we split up. I obviously, I got married to Marissa. We lived separately, which was the best, I think. And then we've actually just come back together. We all live in the same building now again in Shoreditch, which is great. So our superpower is honestly the time we spend together. And when everyone else is working with their co-founders or team and then they go home at night and live their separate lives our lives kind of just continue in our apartment building and we work weekends and we work every day not because we have to or because we need to but because we're obsessed and we love it so it is a complicated structure and there are times when if i disagree with marissa i'm like getting kicked in the bed or if i disagree with teddy my gym partner's all all of a sudden busy the next morning and if they disagree with each other i'm just like i have to mediate but that happens but the truth is the three of us having us together the trust we have among one another the ability to communicate super directly and then not be hard feelings and for us all to be on the same level goes a very long way so what's the starting point of who had the idea first how did you end up working together why did you end up working together yeah so marissa my wife has adhd and anxiety and she's a massive advocate for neurodiversity in the UK.

4:34The US is way further ahead than us in terms of diagnoses. And Marissa has very much been a flag bearer for the neurodiverse community. She has ADHD and anxiety at university. We went to university together. She was on Red Bull and coffee and was crashing and was just killing her. Anyone who has ADHD knows that drinking coffee and Red Bulls plus ADHD is not a good equation. she was introduced to matcha by a friend which she became obsessed with and it changed her life she then influenced myself and teddy but when we moved back to the uk during covid there wasn't any matcha the only matcha was at prep and you couldn't get it on a high street we had to order it in from japan as though we were a cafe we were actually pretending to be a cafe to get free samples just messed up but either way got us here and we were making matcha at home and we just couldn't get on the high street nobody knew what it was four years ago five years ago people thought we were crazy for drinking this weird green stuff yet here we are today and it's everywhere and had it not been for marissa's adhd and anxiety we wouldn't be here today so the genesis of the story was really a problem that was solved by matcha and you've paved the way i think for so many other people that have probably jumped on the bandwagon and that is through kind of like publicity and the story that you tell I guess now now looking when you think about like the competition and other people coming through what's the what's the feeling when it comes to like competitors knowing that you were probably like the trailblazer for it so we're big believers in kind of a rising tide lifts or boats and the truth is people see what's out there on social media They see brand, but they don't see the hard work in the background the four or five years.

6:25Going to Japan every two months. Teddy and I, Marissa tends to stay here, but Teddy and I go to Japan every eight weeks or so. I was just there. I'm going back in November. I'm back in January, working with our farmers, working with our farm partners, building the supply chain, focusing on supply chain resilience. That's really where the value of the business is. We're the largest matchup brand in the world by consumption and by purchasing. and we're very happy for other matchup brands to come in we're supplying many of those matchup brands people don't know that oh wow but we're very happy for matchup brands to come in because it increases the awareness of matchup and ultimately as i said kind of it benefits the entire community rather than just us nice and there'll be there'll be so many entrepreneurs i know that consume your stuff and are watching this and they're probably the feeling that they probably got is i want that i want like the end result like i want to have a business that's like one of the fastest growing i've got the team i've got the investment i've got all of those things but they probably underestimate like the level of how much hard work goes into it i know that you were saying like off air your day actually starts like nine ten o 'clock this evening how much can you tell us about like what actually goes into it behind the scenes from like the the graft Yeah, we're very, very honest with people when they ask us, should I start particularly a drinks business or a food and beverage business?

7:45They say, don't do it. Because it is so painful. It is so hard. We all know that I think it's 99 % of startups fail. And from a percentage or number, I think it might even be higher for over-index on food and beverage businesses because it requires capital to start it up. It's hard to find great talent in food and beverage. the category is dominated by big food and beverage companies Heinz, Nestle, Mars, etc. It's bloody hard. Like I won't swear because I'm trying to be polite, but it's, it's really, really, really hard. Insert swear word. And the problems change every single day. We're obsessed.

8:28And I think you actually have to be obsessed nearly to the point that people might say it's toxic, but you have to be obsessed with your craft, with building. if you want to be the best, if you want to, if you want to fulfill your ambitions, it's, it's no easy fee. And I think entrepreneurship in any category is, is often glamorized. And we try and kind of speak away from that. We love it. We're obsessed that I can never go back, never go back to working at corporate again. I love our team. I love our products. I love our business. I love the journey we've been on. I love every moment of pain as much as every moment of success, but it is not a glamorous thing.

9:10You're, you know, you're in control of your own life. You're the one that has to put their head on the pillow at night, knowing that you might not be able to make payroll for yourself, let alone the team of five, 10, 15, 20 and growing people, whatever it is, who are out there, who need to pay rent, need to pay bills. You know, it all rests on you. And the bigger it gets, the bigger the problems get. That's the truth. Oh, God. I'm so tired. I've just been talking to qualified prospects all day without any wait time. How have you been doing it? Because I've been cold calling people on my mobile, and I reckon I've spoke to one person.

9:42No, no, no. Stop that right now and use Nooks.ai. Why? What does Nooks do? It finds me the right people to call, and it calls them, and it connects with them over and over and over again. So you're saying it's Nooks.ai, and I can just be speaking to qualified decision makers all the time? know with a better connection right wow nooks.ai so in those early days you know you're around the table and you're all bought into the passion yeah how do you take that to a test group that gives you the information back of oh we might be on something that the broader public might be interested in wish i knew about test groups when we started we didn't and that's the beauty of entrepreneurship that honestly the more you know the more dangerous it gets and the more you uncover about how difficult it is.

10:30It's almost like a hamster wheel in a sense. At the beginning, you're just naive, probably stupid. And we're sitting around a table trying samples. We use a product developer at the very beginning. I swear to you, when it came to the flavors of our energy drinks from our first product, we were just honestly pulling names out of a hat, pulling flavors out of a hat. I think at one point we had like an elderflower drink flavor that we were like, could be that. And we ended up selling on four flavors. Why? Because they tasted good. Because the focus group that was myself, Teddy and Marissa, and probably my mom and one of my other brothers and my dad, Marissa's family was like, yeah, it tastes good.

11:06So I went with that. And that's the gut feeling we went with. If I could go back and do it again, I actually don't think I'd change anything because what I've learned along the way is as important as focus groups are and test groups are, and there are so many food and beverage businesses out there that spend fortunes on consumer testing, product testing. A, you have to love your own product and be obsessed with it. and B, a founder in a team's gut is actually the strongest indicator of success, not necessarily what a focus group thinks. Where did you get the first feedback from a broader audience?

11:39And so there's no test group. You guys have all sat around and said, these are good, the flavors are good and there's good feedback here. Where do you get the first feedback from people outside of the family? So we went into a trial run of a couple thousand cans, which is why there's quite low barriers to entry for food and beverage businesses because you can run a trial run of a couple thousand drinks we meant to run a trial run and then if it went well we were going to do a larger production run and we were launching at london coffee festival in 2021 yeah and we got a call from we got a call from the factory and actually it was an awful day because Teddy's childhood best friend had just passed away, died of cancer.

12:25And that's also one of the reasons why we are so inspired by just going at it 100 miles an hour. And we do a lot of stuff for him, for Jack. And Teddy was at the funeral and I got a call from the factory and they're like, good news or bad news? I was like, go with the bad news first. They said, the machine's on fire. And so I said, okay, what's the good news? They go, you can do a bigger production run. And so we ended up being forced to do a proper full production run. And we launched the cans. And we had no choice but to basically buy the cans and try and sell them. Fortunately, at London Coffee Festival, it was a massive success.

13:03Consumers loved it. In a coffee festival, you stand out when you're the only green non-coffee product. Holland and Barrett approached us very, very shortly after to launch us. When they asked to launch us, we were thinking, oh, cool, like 15 stores, 20 stores, trial, whatever. They were like 600, 700 stores. Wow. And we were a bit confused, but went with it. So, I mean, that was our real first consumer feedback was London Coffee Festival and then buy us at Holland & Barrett. And I just want to shout out Holland & Barrett because every single person in food and beverage told us not to launch in Holland & Barrett because, or launch into big retail generally, and then we can never build a business in retail.

13:39We should build it online. That's bullshit. You can build a business in retail and Holland & Barrett, along with the other retailers, are phenomenal partners. they backed us from the beginning and they are one of the outlets that has the most distribution points for us both in terms of doors and products they have more or less our full range they're phenomenal so don't listen to everything that everyone tells you they listen to everything yeah i think that's right yeah so so the trajectory is just like you launch it around a dining room table then you go to the coffee festival then holland barra so it's win win win so it's like this and i imagine levi are you looking at me like there was some fucking stressful days don't worry but but but the the chart if it was the smp it's going down but then it's going back up again so it's this uphill trajectory and then dragon's den happened so it feels like at that point actually you're already like on this path that dragon's den could maybe ultimately be a bit bit of a risk i guess what if i was around the dining room table when when the conversation around dragon's den is happening what's being said

14:48we are a bit nuts so we were always going to do it regardless and for us it was we came from corporate backgrounds so we were like we might as well give it a shot give it everything for a couple years and see where it goes we had the holland barrett listing that alone doesn't build you a billion dollar business but we'd watched selfishly we'd watched dragon's den growing up marissa from the us watch shark tank so it was just a massive opportunity to put our names out there give the brand a chance probably get you know the odds are you get slaughtered um and when we got the call from dragon's den we got it was a thursday and they said we'd been in their system because the producers reach out to you if you're doing making noise online etc you got a call on thursday said hey guys do you want to come on dragon's den unbelievable so it's just at the end of covid unbelievable like let's do it it's okay cool films on tuesday so this is thursday at the beginning when you've got hon and barrett you kind of have to be legit with your not like with everything and you've got to have your numbers in order we didn't really have any of that we were kind of making it up on the fly as we go it was just the three of us i had no idea what really what a gross margin was what a net margin was how to account for our cogs properly or logistics or freight all things we know now thank god but at that time we basically had four days to get our numbers in order.

16:06A year and a half or so of trading history. Which doesn't sound like a lot, but there's a lot of details and Teddy and Marissa were in there for an hour and a half, two hours, getting grilled on the numbers. So my advice to anyone who wants to go on Dragon's Den is A, definitely do it because it's four or five million eyeballs and know your numbers because you're going to get grilled. When I see people on Dragon's Den who don't know their numbers, I think it's appalling. That sounds quite aggressive. I think it's really bad because you're going on a business show, the one thing you should know is your numbers.

16:33and worst comes to worst was our perspective on dragons then was a lot of people see the brand and we go from there so then obviously people probably watching this know that dragons then was was part of the story and you were successful and then i'm imagining when the episode went live there was like instant feedback and instant results that you probably saw but i imagine that process then of navigating the deal and negotiating with steven that was probably a whole new world going from holland to barrett dragons in and then that what what can you tell us about that yeah so we filmed in june and it aired the following march between june and march we were negotiating with steven we signed the deal with steven actually the same deal that was on dragons then so it didn't change many deals change we signed that deal the evening of the airing of dragon's den wow that's how close it was there was a matter of minutes i actually remember getting the whatsapp from steven's team saying dealer signed as the beginning segment of dragon's den was on tv we were the final bit of the show so that's how that's how close it was it took you know months and months to to negotiate and we ended up doing it and it was the best thing we ever did.

17:51I'd love to know a bit around, so when you're on the table and you start with this initial passion and it's a passion project, right? You're all so bought into the idea. How does the dynamic change when an investor comes on board who's not necessarily passionate and maybe motivated by commercials and things like that? How does that change the dynamic? It creates more accountability. So we've never really reported to Stephen and the structure is very flat. He's been the greatest advocate of the brand. So much love for Steven and his team. We speak to them every single day. We're in the same office as them.

18:27It's a genuine partnership, which can't be said for many investor-investee relationships. It changes the dynamic because all of a sudden you're managing someone else's money and you can't necessarily cut corners that you could at the beginning and you've got to do everything to the best of your abilities to make sure you're doing it within regulation, doing it properly. All of a sudden, you know, your contract has to be watertight. Everything has to be perfect. And you, and you know, but what it does is it makes, it makes the business grow up. But Steven as an investor is not the kind of investor who, especially at the beginning when the business is very, very small, he's not grilling every single number.

19:07He's very focused on brand. You'll know that about Steven. He's the most incredible brand and storyteller um and he really helped us with that but it was never it didn't really change anything commercially it just leveled up the opportunity from a brand perspective nice okay and then i imagine once that investment takes place and you're now in tescos and wherever else and there's a lot more demand on the product and the growth yeah there's a new demand on the team that needs to be in place to fulfill what team yeah yeah so what have you learned about what What have you learned about building a team around that and instilling those values?

19:42Cause it's, it's a family business at its core. So, so then building that, that team around it. So I think about team building in stages. The first stage is who is crazy enough to join you. Like who is actually out of their mind nuts enough to join three people building a business. And before dragons, then we're out around dragons. Then we had one team member outside of the three of us. Wow. Shani, our head of sales, employee number one, still with us, absolute beast. She was crazy enough to join us. So phase one is people that are nuts enough to join you. Phase two, as you grow is people that are nuts enough to quit their first job, maybe even more nuts, nuts enough to quit their first job to join a small but fast growing food and beverage brand that probably has a very high chance of failing those people are walking away from like really good salaries or decent salaries they're a few years out of uni phase three is people that have quite a few years of experience proper adults that are leaving jobs and actually have partners and families and stuff like that we're in kind of phase three to four i come to phase four and then phase four is people who are looking at the business saying this is a massive growth opportunity for my career at the beginning you have to fight for talent i'm on linkedin trying to convince people to like take a call with me i put out a linkedin post yesterday because we're growing the team from the 35 that it is today to about 85 in the next 12 months i put a post out on linkedin that said we're just hiring amazing talent in any category or from any category in every department all across the country let me know if you're interested like send me a dm comment below and my phone has been going nuts and to think that people actually want to work for us is a bit of a pinch myself moment because it was not so long ago that i had to fight for people to call me for a job people that didn't even have jobs when coming out of uni still wouldn't take phone calls with us and the same thing goes for retailers obviously the momentum changes and the leverage changes leverage probably the wrong word but think about the beginning with you guys you were trying to probably fight to get people on the show when you first started now people respond to you and it's crazy when when you take a step back and think how the how the moment changes so let's stick in that then Levi so your phone's blowing up loads of people want to now work at perfect ted you're the fastest growing company people going I want to cut my teeth there have that opportunity yeah you've got hundreds if not thousands of messages what for you decision maker what is standing out amongst the noise it's a good question i wish it was people trying to sell themselves differently i.e here's a video of me pitching myself i.e here's me with a photo of perfect head and i love that and i love that hustle and that ambition and trying to stand out but at this stage of business we obviously hire across the entire stack of the business, all the way from senior leadership down to people coming out of uni.

22:50And I think that works junior to mid-level roles, but mid to senior level roles, you've got to be super targeted on the people that you're recruiting. And that often isn't the person, it might be the person that DMs you, but we were super targeted about how we hire. Marissa, Teddy and myself, and Steven as well, spend hours and hours and hours a week really targetedly DMing people on LinkedIn that we think have the right profile for roles at the mid to senior level. At the junior level, stand out, be super creative, do whatever you can. I've had somebody fly over from a different country, turn up at our office, didn't get the role, which we actually weren't hiring for the role they were looking for.

23:32But I respect that. I love that. Please don't come to our office, but I do love that. But for the mid to senior level roles which are critical i mean all of it's critical for those roles specifically it's really targeted i'm on honestly the reason i look tired is because i'm on linkedin at like 1am which sounds weird actually but hopefully they read a message when they wake up and not at 1am but dming people asking them hey off the record can i have a conversation with you about this role really specific so then if we stick with that level three those people that you're bringing digging in i imagine they are people with a wealth of experience and it might it might get to a point and we've had this where we're looking at like really senior highs for the business yeah and we're going these people are more experienced than me they're older than me they're more experienced like how am i gonna even though it's my company how am i going to be the one that tells them what to do how do you how do you how do you manage leadership especially in that situation yeah we We genuinely feel like everyone has a voice in our business and everyone has share options all the way up from senior leadership team to the most junior person in finance or marketing or sales, whatever.

24:48Everyone has an ownership stake, so everyone should be incentivized to have a voice. But in terms of leadership, if I'm not hiring people that are better than me, I'm doing something wrong. It's just ego if you think otherwise. I've never built a food and beverage business. Marissa Teddy and I are smart. We work bloody hard. We are hustlers. We're entrepreneurial. But I don't know the first thing about really structuring promotional activity for Q3 in Tesco and preparing for seasonal activity in Tesco. I don't. But I'm going to find someone who can and does know that. And if you're a founder and you're not hiring people that are better than you, everyone says it.

25:28It's just ego. It's just wrong. We've just hired a very senior role in operations. that person is way better than any of us in operations i don't want to be the smartest person in the room anymore that's that's that's not how you build a business that has scale zach thompson do you ever get sick of calling kebab houses and nanas when you're trying to speak to qualified decision makers i do well i think i might have found the solution 98 correct qualified data which means when you're cold calling you're always going to be speaking to the right person. Do you know what the solution is? It can't be Prospio, can it?

26:06Prospio. Let me spell it for you. P-R-O-S-P-E-O dot I-O. Now, if you're looking for great qualified data, then you know what the solution is. Prospio.io. Prospio.io. How do you now view, so there's obviously something very different around kitchen table, testing ideas can be quite agile and quick. A business that's going to be, you said 85 people right that was the ambition so a business of 85 people to get experiments and ideas done feels like a very different place how do you view experiments and even failures yeah steven also talks about this a lot experimentation and failure is kind of the cornerstone of of how you built the business we experimented and failed at the beginning there are products that never launched there are loads of products that never launched there are ideas that never happen we have in our team's channel at the top pinned for everyone we have crazy ideas it's like a channel and we just post the craziest most random stuff in there most of it never happens and we test things and we fail it's obviously harder when there's a lot of people but if you build that culture in from the very beginning test and fail test and fail then it actually becomes a secret weapon we don't think about failure as failing we think about failure as an opportunity to learn but also if you think about failing and you think about it from a risk perspective you never do anything that is outside the box and we talk a lot about performance.

27:26If you look at, you know, if I say this a lot to our team, if the three of us sit around a table today on the September 30th and we all put a pound in the S &P 500 or the FTSE 100 and we come back a year later, who's going to perform the best? None of us. We're going to perform the exact same. So it's the same with ideas and hiring and taking risk. Unless you take risk and you do things away from the mean away from the average you're never going to outperform we're not looking to be just another food and beverage brand we're looking to be something different we're looking to grow faster than everyone else be bigger than everyone else and win and you're not going to do that if you're doing the same thing as everyone else the you mentioned ego before right and that's a really interesting piece especially when it's it's your business you've done all this work you've made all these sacrifices but you're also talking about inviting in the idea that kind of goes against the grain more often yeah there must be times when there's that kind of push and pull between you can feel the ego kind of wanting to go it's it's my thing how do you manage that and make that not take over that's a hard question i think having the three of us balance each other marissa for example will call myself and teddy out on ego multiple times it's not that we don't have egos, it's we try and limit them we always say to our team, check your ego at the door it's one of the big things we filter out for when hiring is ego but I think having the checks and balances of A, having the three of us who can talk really openly to each other and B, having a senior leadership team and a company-wide culture of really direct communication we are blunt it's really efficient by the way for someone just to say like drop the ego get over yourself you're talking out your ass you're just it's ego it's really direct it's really efficient if everyone has that culture and everyone can be really honest with each other the ego gets kicked out the door because you can just say it as it is if everyone's scared of saying how they saying what they feel to each other and don't feel like they can communicate up or down the chain of command honestly that's when i feel like ego sets in but having accountability which is basically giving other people the voice and the right to tell you to stop being egotistical is usually the best way at least for us so you've mentioned culture a few times yeah i guess what when you look back on the perfect head journey so far what have you got wrong about culture along the way we didn't hire world-class people early enough that's no offense to anyone who's come and gone from perfect head everyone's been part of the journey they've been phenomenal and along the way the business changes the business needs change the kind of people you need in different positions changes but and obviously your budget's change as well at the beginning you can't hire somebody on a massive budget that's come from you know a large business that's had 15 20 years experience you can't you haven't got the money for it um but investing in world-class talent as early as possible a players pay themselves back plus plus plus really really quickly and a players elevate other people on the team so how how do you i always feel like expectations is like the key here because obviously the culture from from talking with you so far is like we we work fucking hard and we need people that are crazy like how do you and like you are right there will be people from like a an outside point of view will go and that's toxic that's not for me yeah and it's like we don't want you to work at perfect that's fine But how do you portray that in the hiring process and before people start the role to make sure that the expectations are managed?

31:12I think it could be considered toxic how how hard we work, but it's also. It's what it takes to build. A household name brand, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs. I mean, these people have questionable reputations, but the greatest business leaders in the world are building really efficient teams and they're not ashamed about the struggle that it takes to get there. I would also say Perfect 10 is the single most fun place I've ever worked in my life. It's absolute mayhem. It's nuts. Every wall is green. We're bumping EDM from 9 a.m. till 8 p.m. in the afternoon. Everyone is in their 20s and 30s. it's changing a little bit because we're hiring even more senior, but most of the team is kind of, I'm one of the older people in the team.

31:59It's a bunch of super ambitious, young, hungry people trying to build a billion dollar business. It's absolutely nuts. It's the funnest place in the world. Also the people that come through our office, cause we're in the same building as Diary every CEO, you have A-list, B-list, C-list celebrities coming through the office. You have cameras on at all times, video cameras, recording the journey, writing a book. We're doing a docuseries, we have a YouTube channel. It's nuts. We're building a media business, not necessarily a food and beverage business, but it's an insanely fun place to work. And because we're all in it together and because we're all building towards a shared goal and we're all super aligned on what the vision is for the business, you don't have to feel guilty about wanting to work hard and build something incredible.

32:44And the truth is, the truth is that there have to be sacrifices. I've been sacrificed in my life for this business, but you have to sacrifice some, some level of comfort to build something incredible. If, if you want perfect head and you want your career to be spectacular, but, but no doubt is the single most fun place I've worked at. I'm obviously biased or any single most fun office I've been to. It's the reason that Stephen's team is probably upstairs so much because they love it. It's nuts. It's amazing. But it's work hard, play hard, I'd say. So the story, I mean, it sounds pretty exciting.

33:27Even like the first start with the fire, the machine set on fire. And most of it sounds pretty exciting and cool. And there's probably people listening like, I want to do that. I want to start by. It is really fun. What are the bits that maybe people need to know before they go and start their own drinks business that maybe we haven't talked about? Yeah, I'd definitely start it with somebody. It's not that you cannot, but I've seen solo founders struggle and then want to find a co-founder or co-founders because it can be a lonely journey if you're on your own. It can be a lonely journey if there's two or three of you, but having people to bounce ideas off, to dovetail with you so when you're having a tough day and they can drag you back up and vice versa.

34:12Go through it together, the wins and the losses, and to celebrate with, ultimately. And two heads is always better than one. For any founder that says, I want 100 % of it, and it kind of comes to fundraising as well, any founder that says, I want 100 % of something, that's also ego, because 50 % of something that's worth something is a lot more than 100 % of something that's worth nothing. And that's kind of what we thought about with the deal with Stephen. I mean, we gave Steven 5 % more or less for the investment on Dragon's Den, but the company wasn't worth anything without him in some sense.

34:43We were trying to build something much bigger. So the first piece of advice I'd say is work with a co-founder or find someone you trust to work alongside you in building. The second thing I'd say is be ready to make mistakes and fail. and when you fail, fail fast and move on really quickly. Don't get emotional about the losses or the failures. You're going to get rejected from every single retailer at least once, but keep building, keep going because momentum does change. And if you believe in your product and you believe that you deserve to be on the shelf for those retailers and you will be, then just keep going, keep hustling.

35:27Yeah, you can't get emotional with the losses. there's a point with entrepreneurs where it feels like even if they reach the finish line it perhaps isn't enough yeah if i was to sit the three of you down and say in your minds where is the point where it's enough what do you think the answer would be

35:52it's hard because at the beginning i think entrepreneurs are motivated by money or people think that money is the end game and at one point Stephen Bartlett said to us he said we're talking about how we wanted to return his investment plus plus plus he said guys it's not about the money trust me you'll understand it and then as you scale you realize it's not about the money it's about doing generational really fucking cool things and just doing cool shit I keep swearing sorry a lot of profanity it's about doing things that are just legendary and iconic and building something incredible generational we call it so we will keep building i don't know what enough is but we will keep building until we get to the point that we can no longer do and more and more and more insane and incredible and legendary things and the point at which we feel like we're tapped out but we are nowhere near there every day i feel like we're reaching new heights.

36:50Every day the team is doing unbelievable things in marketing. They're pushing the boundaries. There is no limitation on what they can do, whether it's on social content or in real life marketing, the sales team, adding accounts, adding products, NPD team, producing the best products in the world and new products that I didn't even know existed. The finance team finding margin, which gets them excited. It's weird, but it's good for them. until we stop doing legendary things we have so much room to grow we're just getting started I genuinely believe that if you think about matcha five years ago nobody knew what it was now it seems like everyone knows what it is but we also live in a bubble we are just scratching the surface you still walk up and down London high streets and only a small fraction have matcha on the menu or are doing matcha properly we feel like we're just scratching the surface we're just at the beginning of this journey and we're not slowing down.

37:50You said generational. What do you mean by that? It means something that's bigger than us. I think once in a generation, a food brand or a drinks brand comes along in the UK or globally. I think Innocent was that for a prior generation. I think Huel is that in some ways. I think we are that. And it might sound super egotistical, we're talking about dropping ego, but it might sound like I'm twisted or I'm delusional or I'm egotistical, but we are building a brand again, a media brand, not a food and beverage brand. We are building something bigger than me, Teddy and Marissa. We're building something bigger than match.

38:32We're building a movement, something that people really associate with my marketing team hates when I say it, but it feels like a cult and you know, you can't have the word culture without a cult and generational to me is building something legendary that lives on far beyond us and it really has no bounds so we've spoken about obviously like the post dragon sense you've signed it as the episode's gone on and then there's been this amazing journey of like your sales going through the roof going into more stores and then i don't know lots and lots about it and who better to ask than yourself levi but then in between that there's a point where another deal comes from another round of fundraising so i was watching one of the behind the scenes things and it it was like it was beautiful to see because i was like watching you negotiate with steven bartler i was like this is actually like quite like there's two dragons like going head to head it was quite tense so what can you tell us about that next phase the next phase is you get a bit of confidence so you're really naive you start building you realize there's a lot of problems and you work out and navigate the initial problems and you get a bit of confidence and momentum is a crazy thing we talk about it the whole time at perfect ted and the formula for um momentum is mass times velocity in physics and you start to get a bit of velocity a bit of momentum start to move and you get a bit of confidence and steven approaches you and says listen guys i want to double down i want to invest again and this time actually you're no longer you know on the back foot drag is then isn't just about to air and you have not leveraged but you have a bit more confidence in yourself and the product and that gives you the right in my opinion to negotiate and put value in your business and that deal took a year to negotiate too took another year to negotiate genuinely 12 months to negotiate that deal