Ep. 98 I Started A New Company!! Meet The Founders Of Retrograde

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1:30What is up and welcome to a bit of a different episode of Working Hard Hardly Working. I'm joined by Jake Brown and Gary Meehan, the co-founders of a brand new AI company called Retrograde. And here is, I guess, the wildest bit. I am the other co-founder. This podcast has obviously always been about sharing my business learnings and it seems crazy not to use this opportunity to talk about my biggest learning curve of the last few months, almost year now, which is founding Retrograde. I wanted this episode to be a raw and real conversation about our journey to date, the reality of what it's been like, how we've taken our idea and made it into something real and what we think this company can be.

2:09I really hope you enjoy it. The kind of idea is that you've just dialed into one of our meetings where we're really just talking about like where we are going and why we are going there and why we have started this company and why we believe that it is going to change the creator economy. It feels very different because usually if I were to announce a company, I would also have a product for you to like be able to get immediately, which is the difference between being in the product and tech space. So we'll talk it through and talk through what the company is, why the company is, and who can use it.

2:39But if you are interested, once you've heard about it, there is a waitlist link in the description. So you can click and join the waitlist and then we'll be getting in touch.

2:55Before we get into the podcast, if you could just go and rate this on whichever podcast app you are listening to this on, it makes a huge difference to the podcast and the types of incredible conversations we're able to have, the types of guests we're able to get on. So you know, I know it's probably something you don't think about, but if you could just go rate it now or follow it, it makes a huge difference. Thank you so much.

3:23Welcome to Working Hard Hardly Working. Thank you, Grace. Thanks for having us. Very excited. This probably isn't a question that I should be asking right now, but I'm going to ask it anyway because this is how I always start the podcast. Both of you, are you more working hard or hardly working right now? Working hard? It's a good answer for what we're about to talk about. I want to go straight into it because I feel like this is obviously a very different episode from what we would usually do. And Jake, do you want to explain why we're even here? Technically, we're here because I sent you a WhatsApp like a year ago.

3:59True. Well, we've all started a new company together, a technology startup. And I guess we're here to, for the first time, ever talk about it. Does that feel weird? It feels long overdue. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Happy to be kicking it off and getting things on the road. That is a pointer to what we will come on to talk about, which is the importance of going fast in a tech startup and the difference between that and a consumer startup, which is what I've worked in for the past eight years. um but on that before we even get close to talking about the kind of journey so far the whole idea of having a tech startup i would like to talk very specifically about the idea for retrograde so i'm nominating you to give a synopsis of the idea for retrograde how it came about what it is just in case i don't know so the idea for retrograde started at the last company that i started which Gary worked at that's where I met him Gary's great so basically we were financing invoices for content creators and talent agencies and a lot of the content creators were pretty unhappy with some of the stuff for the talent agencies and a lot of the talent agencies had so many new creators that they couldn't basically cope they couldn't grow as fast as they wanted to and then obviously AI became a big deal in the last 18 months and kind of realized just one day by accident that possibly the two things could marry and that the problem of the agencies and the creators could be solved with AI.

5:32And I'm sure we'll get into more into the details about what RetroGate actually does, but that's kind of how the idea came up. Was that what you asked me, Grace? Yeah. No, I think that's a fair response. Do you have anything to add, Gary? No, I think that kind of covers it. Like we've seen a lot of the challenges together in in peblo and just with ai was kind of booming i suppose with with the dawn of chat gpt and a lot of awareness about it and just a lot of opportunities yeah so i i i sold that company and i left after a year and i promised my wife that i wouldn't start another startup and i was sitting so you did what all husbands do yeah i went to work i was sitting in the office one day and i was like playing around with chat gpt and the api i had a few creator friends who were like annoyed with their agents and like they weren't answering their emails and they weren't sending them updates so i like hacked together this little thing they basically like took their emails and sent them a text just like a tiny summary and i was like oh my god probably gonna start another startup and then i called gary who's smarter than me and i was like gary is this even a thing and gary said it was a thing and then i called grace because grace is smarter than me in other ways and you needed a woman of course and then yeah that's that's really it isn't it Yeah, no, I think that's a very fair synopsis of the start of it.

6:50I also feel like the founder profile is a very important part. We all know that investors invest in people and there's a reason for that because a business can take any which route after the point that it starts and actually it's really about who's behind it and who's able to truly understand the problem, et cetera, et cetera. Like the jockey, not the horse. Yes. So, Gary, could you give me a whistle-stop tour of your career so far? I've been a software engineer now for over a decade, I suppose. That's kind of like my expertise, I suppose. Started out working in small company websites, freelancing.

7:24Moved on to like a big tech company in Ireland. Worked there for the five or six years. Corporate setting, you know, slow moving. Looking for a new challenge. You know, start-ups obviously a bit more exciting. Every day is different. Jumped in there, as Jake mentioned. One of those was Pueblo. That's where I met him. You know, that's where I kind of got the peek behind the curtain at the creator economy. We actually met in London for the first time. Actually, when I was at Pueblo as well, had a little bit of a side hustle, worked on an AI travel app, gained a lot of popularity, wouldn't exactly call it a company, done pretty well, lots of users and ultimately a larger travel app kind of took that in house.

8:06And yeah, so that gave me a taste of what an AI tech company is like. so yeah and how long between the time that you started that kind of side hustle and actually exited about six months i'd say yeah amazing to build something and exit within six months is very very impressive how how common is that within the tech space yeah i don't know pretty uncommon but yours was like sort of a quick yeah i'd call it a quick it's more like an indie project i suppose i'd call it projects are kind of popular these days it's more common but still like not something people do. No, so it's the idea of a solo dev takes on a project, gains traction, and then gets rid of it.

8:47Gets rid of it, I suppose. Yeah, passes the book, I suppose. But like, someone else already has a slightly larger project maybe, or the vision, or the team to bring it forward. Yeah. And they absorb all the success and all the traffic and all the users that come with the site project. Great. And Jake, could you give an overview of what you've been doing? So I studied electronic engineering. So it's like building computers and phone chips and all that boring stuff wi-fi etc and i went to work in software as well in a sort of company that made software for investment banks and after four years i fell in love with youtube and quit my job i bought a terrible little camera the cheapest one i could afford and then i built kind of a business up around that for probably three years so i ended up working with like BMW, Chanel, Samsung.

9:39Then I was hired by a startup to make a series of videos. And I'd read a lot about startups online, but in Dublin and Ireland, it's a pretty small place. And it didn't really feel like that was an option that would be like a viable path for me. So I was just a little old Jake sitting and sitting at home making a few videos. And what I was just blown away by like the ambition that these guys had and like the scale of their like, I guess, vision or their dreams and I was like wow I just want to I want to do that I don't even know if I can but I want to do it so I shut my video business down like the week after that again my parents were like we're seeing a trend here Jake and I didn't really have any good ideas for a startup but I had seen a bunch of content houses over in America like the Hype House and these kinds of things and I said okay I can rent a house and like convince people to stay there so we did that and in Ireland it was like level five covered lockdown so i got a lot of press like good and bad and but it did pretty well commercially so we were just like selling ads for the creators kind of like a talent agency but not really and then we moved to la we did that again up in the hollywood hills bigger house bigger creators obviously bigger budgets and bigger brands and uh we were kind of managing the content creators a little bit like a talent manager and we realized they were like 23 you know they they'd never really had a job they're making loads of money but they also had like no money to pay their rent and i was like what's going on here so we sat down with a few of them and they were like owed money like for 90 days from like x brand so that's where the idea for pueblo came from we started just paying the creators up front and we would charge a small fee and then we would go to the brand in like three months and obviously get paid and we'd make our little profit and and that kind of took off went pretty viral in like the first week we had like 7 000 creators sign up and like millions of invoices millions of dollars and but we had actually no money to lend out to anybody so we were like technically it's lending and so we went and got some money from some people who give people money and we gave the money to the creators and we got the money back and then we raised some money and then it kind of took off again and then it was bought by a company called wayfire and that all happened in like nine months which was pretty insane and we think it might be the fastest ever Irish company to be sold for like 10 million or more like ever yeah it's like just pure luck by the way it's not I need to do it on me and a broken clock is right twice a day grace but um so I stayed in in the business and grew it quite a lot I probably shouldn't say the numbers but after like a year and a half I decided I didn't like having a boss and it was back onto the streets for Jake, back into the big mean world.

12:24And like I already said, I sort of had the idea for Retrograde and I called both of you. And now we're on - I actually didn't get a call. I did get a WhatsApp voice note. It's kind of like the 2024 call. Like who calls people? Understood. Yeah. When we started talking about Retrograde and whether it was a good idea and what the founder makeup looked like and what our roles were and all of that, I feel like a big selling point is the balance between us three and i think that that as someone who's never had co-founders and they're oh have you not am i giving only child energy is that what it is um and i think that like i think that that to me really felt like a huge advantage from the beginning because i think that at the point that you're able to provide or get to much further down the line in terms of before you even go to customers and before you're even getting that real customer data purely because you're able to supplement a lot of different roles internally.

13:28I do think that that is a huge advantage even before like raising money, for example. So brief overview, as we've kind kind of already discussed. We started talking about this a year ago. Yeah, it was actually such a funny thing in my head when I was like, I met Grace Beverly once. I think I'll just ask her to start a company with me. And I was like, she probably wouldn't say yes. Yeah, actually, let's cover that because we had met once. So the story of us meeting is that I was in Dublin for a tech summit and you had reached out. Sent you a pretty solid called email. A pretty solid called email actually it was solid and all it did was it linked it linked peblo and wayflyer yeah and said hey we're the founders of peblo and wayflyer and then just linked it to like these are companies that are worth a load of money and we're like do you want to go for dinner and i was like yeah cool perfect and then as you did you decided cool now's the time to ask her to start a company with me yeah it's kind of just like focus um let's see yeah if you don't ask you don't guess so 1st of March Grace it's your famed spammer back again launching a new product at Pueblo in the influencer space would love to pick your brain over a call if you're down and then you said you're happy to pay for my time I always say I always say that usually that's a good way of not paying for people's time then on the 18th of September oh September you said Grace Jake from Pueblo here well actually I've just finished Pueblo and I'm on to the next one.

15:06So it was approximately three months between you deciding, telling your wife that you wouldn't start another company and actually doing that. We're building a new tech platform for the creator economy and I was wondering if you'd be interested in potentially being one of the co-founders. And then I replied four days later and then to be fair to me, you replied over a week later. But you did send me a little loom video of what it was so far. And then I responded a week later and then you never responded so i chased you with an enormous message yeah but so we had that timeline and then we sorted out the roles between us yes very quickly very quickly very speedily yeah so why should someone even care about what retrograde is doing like who's the customer why are we building this what specifically are we building for them yeah before we even get to the customer maybe like you know we've discussed a lot like how do we explain a tech company in a straightforward way that everyone can understand and i think ultimately it's a we're building like an ai talent agent that sits in your pocket i think you know so we are building a tech company massive product behind this but what all that the stills down to is it's an ai talent agent in your pocket that's on 24 7 and you just no apps no website you just you have a question you text if a brand gets in touch we text and it's straightforward straight up communication and that's kind of you know it in a nutshell really like that might be the best retrograde explanation i've ever heard yeah you're now on pitching one yeah imagine you had a talent agent that just never slept never made mistakes never had mood swings because we all do as people um and was just like the best at their job ever and dedicated to you only works for you to me i think one of the biggest issues with the creator industry is that we've borrowed the agency model from all of these other industries and that's perfect for you know people who have that type of personal brand like people in music like people in acting whatever it might be whereas we're at the point where there are millions of creators now so not only there are not enough talent agencies but also if you sign up to one and you don't have if and you are not the like creme de la creme you're not getting the service that people in other industries are getting from their agents yeah so i think it's like there's two strands to it the first one is like financial and it's just like the margins of those talent agents and their businesses so the whole thing was inherited you said mainly from hollywood that was like the original entertainment industry and they're obviously big long projects pretty big paychecks complicated arrangements director's fees talent there might be a sequel they might get back pay based on how well the movie does.

18:15And that's sort of where the talent agents came from. They started there and then creators became a thing and they're like, great, we'll just apply that model to these new people on the internet. But the content creator thing is a little bit less complicated. I don't wanna say it's simple, but they make content. Sometimes a brand wants to come along and sponsor it. There's pretty standard rates for that based on the creator's engagement, their following, their niche. and it's kind of over and done in a month or two. Yeah, like if you think of someone who blows up on TikTok tomorrow, they could pretty immediately start making money from social media.

18:52The obstacle, the barrier to them making money is either they need to then start doing hours and hours of admin a day to start emailing someone. Which takes away from their creating. Which takes away from their creating. Or they need to find an agent and immediately be able to trust that agent and also immediately be able to know that they're going to get that top tier service and that their emails are always going to be checked, etc, etc. Whereas actually, it's not in that agency's interest to do that, unless they know that that creator is going to start making a lot of money, the margins just don't make sense.

19:25And I guess what we're trying to do is not say there isn't a place for talent agents, but instead say this industry has got far bigger than we ever expected it to get or than most people expected it to get and taking this one size fits all model from a zoella to someone who blew up on tiktok yesterday and now can make a few extra thousand pounds a month just does not make sense in any way at all yeah could you based on that could you describe how the tech actually works so like if i was a creator signing up to retrograde today signing up to the waitlist that will be linked in the show notes for example um what experience would i get and how would it work yeah so as i said earlier we're like a text-based system so that's like think whatsapp or telegram something like that so they'd simply follow a link you text a number and then you just have a conversation so you'd give over some of your instagram details how many followers you have, for example, and that's it.

20:30You're signed up to the waitlist. And then from that point forward, you would get like an email assigned, which is essentially your autopilot that works for you. So for example, it could be grace at getretrograde.com. Exactly. And that is now the email that the brands will get in touch. So if there's a brand deal that comes in, they'll email that email and we'll instantly let the creator know that they've been in touch and that we're having a conversation and that we're negotiating or getting more details for the brand deal. And just to explain the difference between how that might work for someone who blows up on TikTok today and decides to go to an agency, obviously there's a little bit of a delay in terms of like actually finding that agent.

21:10But also when you say if I'm Tala and I email that person's email in their bio, they won't necessarily know that that email's coming unless they're manning that email. What happens with Retrograde is that email will go in and they will immediately get outreach from Retrograde saying, hi, Tala's been in touch. They want to offer you 500 pounds for a story. And you would be let know that immediately in order to be able to feedback whether that's something you would accept. I think one really big important part for us was like, we basically want a creator that's moving from a normal talent agency, which can be great we're not here to talk badly about that if they're moving to retrograde they basically shouldn't notice that anything has changed so our ai texts them on whatsapp in the future i message it also has telegram like most creators just text their agents they don't want to do phone calls the agent sends them updates they ask for updates so that's why we did that and and then in terms of the brands our ai talks to the brands it updates the creator it gets all the details it's actually no difference so i think it can sound kind of scary it's like oh tech platform ai it's it's what happens already yeah and that's one of the things that drew me so much to the idea was the fact that actually in a lot of the creator space there have been a lot of companies that have started and not worked because they rely on adoption of the influencer like the the creator needs to adopt a new way of working a dashboard or something yeah Yeah, exactly.

22:42To log onto a platform and now be using this thing new every day. The whole point of Retrograde is that they don't need to, as you say, they don't need to change anything they're doing. Say if they have their email and their bio and a brand reaches out and essentially says, you know, we're going to offer you 500 pounds for a story. They don't need to hop into their emails. It's not that we just let them know. It's not a notification system. They can just directly respond to their retrograde autopilot and say no i won't take under two grand and retrograde will go back and forth then with a brand so for example if you were representing yourself which is crazy which especially in a world where retrograde exists that's true i do think lots of people would like to represent themselves if it didn't take a huge amount of time and effort like The cost is low because you're not paying an agent, but the time and effort that you spend on your emails creators essentially turn into doing an admin job.

23:44It's also an emotional job, though, as a creator, to be rejected sometimes and to feel that you have a certain worth and a brand is putting less worth on you. And negotiating is hard. Even just asking for more sometimes can be hard. Especially when you're the product, in a sense. Yeah. It's kind of what I'm saying. And I think on top of that, it's like, you know, I always recommend people to hire people who are better than them and hire people who are specialists so that they can facilitate their own earnings going up, for example. In this scenario, you'd be hiring an agent, for example, to fill that gap.

24:19What is currently happening is there's a little bit of a mismatch between you're not necessarily getting someone amazing and you are automatically paying that 20%, which, as we've said, is borrowed from a lot more complex industries with a lot more complex contracting and deals in general. But on the other side, if you want to be managing yourself, you are going to end up doing a desk job. You're going to end up doing hours and hours of emails a day, which also takes away from your time creating. So what we've wanted to create is this middle ground where essentially you're not paying 20%, you're paying half of that.

24:52It's a 10 % commission on the way retrograde works. and on top of that you you have the full like you've got the benefit of managing yourself in terms of visibility in terms of decision making in terms of um you know speed in terms of like knowing what's in your inbox all of that you all and like the relationship as well but you do not have the downfall of it being much higher cost or you having to spend basically all of your time in a desk job, which to me is what makes a huge difference to creators. Because actually, unless you're a huge creator and you have a really, really strong personal brand, and actually your deals end up being very complex because of things like IP and just generally being long-term, very expensive deals, I strongly believe that the large majority of people are not getting a good enough service in the existing setup of the industry because it is this one size fits all approach and that's not to say the talent agents aren't great I've had some fucking phenomenal talent agents but it is not a one size fits all and the amount of creators I have that have I've had conversations with like every single day that have been like oh this is an issue that I've had and I know these brands have reached out I've never heard anything about it I feel like they're not prioritizing me because there are bigger creators within the within the agency etc etc and i think being able to be presented with a product that essentially automates it all for you but you're still making the decision making retrograde is never going to turn down a deal for you you're the one who gets to ultimately make that decision without having to email back and forth five times before you even get to a rate yeah well i just want to say some creators don't want to make the decisions and they kind of feel scared and that's where they they kind of rely on an agent or human agent so our system does make suggestions and it can say look, this is below your rate.

26:48It's probably not the best deal or this contract looks a bit dodgy and it's up to the creator then say, great, okay, what should we do? Or I want to do this. It's not a co-pilot in the sense that the creator now has all this extra responsibility. They certainly can take it, but it's not that different from a human talent agent in that it will guide the best thing that it thinks you should do. Which is also, I think, what a lot of people aren't getting or at least anecdotally what I've heard from the large majority of creator friends who I don't know we've reached out to them about something about Tala for example and they've never heard from it because the original rate we quoted was well like was not what they would go for and that's what's happening because if you think of like if I'm an agent and I'm managing five creators and I'm thinking you know I know this one makes more money than all of the others and I know that I'm going to have to do the same amount of work for below rate card, it should still ultimately be the creator's decision if they want it to be their decision that they know about that deal and decide whether to take that deal.

27:50Whereas actually, as we've talked about with the margins of an agency, it doesn't always make sense to be fully transparent. I don't mean that in a negative way. And I don't mean that. No, it's just business. Yeah, it's just. Imagine you're the best talent agent or sorry, imagine you run a talent agency. What are you going to do with your best talent agent? you're going to put loads of creators on them because they're the best. And then that talent agent is going to have no time left. And then even if they wanted to do the best job for the 20 people they look after, they can't. And things just start to slip.

28:20It happens. I have a friend who's represented by the second biggest agency in the world. We won't name their name, but pretty obvious. And they lost him a$50 ,000 deal like three weeks ago because they didn't respond to the email quick enough. So we've had the outreach from the brand. It's WhatsApp to you or it's Telegram to you and said, this is the deal. you've said no i'll take this it gets it back to the resolution point essentially where you've agreed on the deal what then happens within the tech i think even going back a little bit there just what we're talking about the the beauty of the you know programming something or creating this tech is we're taking like what the best agents in the world do and like what we've heard from creators that their best agent is doing and we're creating that for everybody essentially like we're only putting the best practices in place like we're taking learnings from yourself for example, like what is the ideal brand deal flow from start to finish?

29:10How does that run smoothly for the creator? And we're trying to recreate that for everybody. Which isn't something that exists anywhere else in the industry, because it's a very closed industry. If you're a creator listening to this and you think of how many creators you've actually heard tell you how much they earn, how their brand deal process works, what briefing documents they're using, what contracts they're using, all of this. Like it's very closed. Like there is very little knowledge sharing, especially I will say in the UK. I think there's more knowledge sharing in the US and generally I just think that that's something that I've learned very gradually over time to the point that now I'm very strict on briefing documents I use on like how things work specifically in my whole brand deal process and have been for the last few agencies I've been at essentially as it like must be this what I believe is best practice so that I don't need to reshoot content or so that I don't, you know, we don't lose out on brand deals based on that.

30:06So I think that's a really good point in that actually there's no guarantee with whoever you sign with, especially if you need to sign in a week because you've just blown up. And I think worth saying now actually that for anyone who doesn't know within the creator industry, this 20 % we're talking about is essentially a standard rate commission that is applied pretty much everywhere within the creator industry. Until recently, I've never seen differing from that. And actually the only differing I saw the other day was someone was paying 40 % to their talent agent. I screamed and then helped I compose an email.

30:39It's so crazy. And also for creators, I don't think they realize how strange it is that you would ever pay anybody 20 % of your business's revenue to do anything. Even the person who runs your entire company, even if they're managing 5 ,000 people, you don't pay them 20 % of your revenue. Nobody does that. And that 20 % is blanket, right? It's accepted that like, it's like, oh yeah, it's 20%. Yeah. And it's exploitative. Like it is what a monopoly does essentially. It makes it unfair for everyone within the industry, because especially with lack of knowledge sharing, people are essentially coming in and they're saying, you know, an agent could say to someone who blows up tomorrow, do you know what?

31:19We charge 40 % for new people because they haven't proven themselves yet or whatever. And who are you going to go to? And those are the types of messages that I get all the time and I'm like literally like jump on it because I'm like do not sign that contract. It's actually unfair. Yeah there needs to be a viable alternative in order for the industry to continue to grow and for also talent agencies to be able to do what they're good at which is managing the people that it actually makes sense for them to manage. So within that 20 % for example you're not paying that 20 % up front but you are paying that off every brand deal.

31:54So it's absolutely blanket. And often you're also paying expenses on top. You're also paying VAT on top. If you sign up with an agency, often they will say that 20 % is across all of your earnings, whether it is from social media or not, because they're representing you. So even if you started a business, I've seen, yeah, my first business, I had 20 % taken out of that from the agency until I moved and essentially said, I'm not even coming close to joining if you're, if you're going to take 20 % of my revenue for my business. That is obscene, but that is what's happening across this industry. It's a lot of lack of knowledge sharing.

32:28It's important to have, as we've said, alternative solutions so that someone can say, do you know what? I actually do want to be with a talent agent and I don't even want to see anything and I just want to be told what to do and whatever. And someone can also say, yeah, I want to manage myself and I don't mind doing five emails back and forth when I could do two texts or whatever it might be. but actually a lot of people would have a lot easier time and be making a lot more money if they are a able to spend more time creating and be not paying a blanket 20 to an agency that also might be doing nothing other than responding to their emails the other thing that i think is unfair is that like if you're a talent agency and you've got a great creator and they refer all their friends to you you as that creator don't really get anything from that other than like probably a clap on the back and a big thank you so what we want to do is we actually want to share our revenue with you as a creator so if you introduce us to your friends and they join the platform and they do brand deals we will pay you part of what we would have charged them so it doesn't come from their part it comes from our part and obviously we hope that helps us get lots of customers.

33:39But more importantly, we think it's a fairer way to do that kind of thing. Because agencies are so reliant on creators introducing them to their circles and their friends, but they don't get anything for it. Yeah, no, absolutely. If you join retrograde and you refer two people that are the same size as you, because of the commission percentage, the referral percentage, you essentially end up paying zero commission. Yeah, you basically don't pay retrograde. Because you're making it back through the referrals. And how easy is it for you as a creator to refer two friends? We've spent so much time around this and what makes it fair and what makes this truly a company like by creators for creators in terms of like how they're able to earn money.

34:14And actually, part of that is transparency around the fact that actually, if you've given us that customer, great. We absolutely owe you and make something from it. And that's fantastic. And as we've said, it doesn't affect that creator who you've referred at all. We're not charging them anymore. They are essentially going to, you're going to get out of our commission. So the way we're doing it is obviously retrograde's commission is 10 that's just the standard if you refer someone you will get five percent of the 10 we charge for what they're doing so you'll get five percent of their earnings but when i say that it sounds like you're getting that directly for them they'd be paying it anyway yeah the best thing about this in my opinion is you wouldn't be using it for each respective brand deal if you didn't love the service so it also means that you have a layer of trust because if you're referring that person and they use it retrograde once and they never use it again which won't be happening um is that you know you'll be getting five percent from that deal and they'll have used it once and they can absolutely move on but actually as long as they are continuing to use that you're going to be making a load of money from them too which is and one of the challenges we've seen in the industry is that people are getting referred to agencies or like hey come join my agency but the agencies are actually like full like they have to turn people away because you know the margins are tight they only have so many people that can service them whereas like the beauty of the tech is that we should be able to take those creators on and support them yeah and we hope in time that we'll be able to make that easier as well for the agencies themselves because as we've said the margins don't work for them to take on people who aren't enormous creators already making a huge amount of money like it does not make sense to them it only makes sense to them to sign up people who are blowing up or who they think are going to blow up and technically give them nothing until like no time until they do or it makes sense for them to sign up people who have already blown up.

36:04And actually, if you're anywhere in between those two things, even if you have a huge amount of potential, you're not going to get. And the other thing is talent agents themselves can refer creators. So they obviously know a lot of creators. They might be full themselves. They may be a little bit dissatisfied in their current position, or they just want to make a bit of extra money. We will pay talent agents the same 5 % fee to refer creators. So in theory, if you're a talent agent, you're really connected, and you referred, I don't know, 20 creators, 10 creators, you could make more money from retrograde just on referral fees than potentially you make working your job in the agency.

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37:59Figs gives me one less thing to worry about. Get 15 % off your first order by visiting wherefigs.com and use code FIGSRX at checkout. That's wherefigs.com, code FIGSRX. So we've got through the negotiation. We've agreed on a price for a certain reel or post or whatever it might be. What happens next? Yeah, so typically a contract will come over, we'll review that. And how we're going to do that is our technology will read the contract. And what we've done is we've done extensive research and found all of the clauses, the little hidden things that are added to contracts that are no good for the creator.

38:39So we look out for all those things. We'll flag that to the creator, say, look, we don't think you should sign this. It has XYZ in it. Review yourself. If you're comfortable with that, that's fine. we'll do what you want. In the case that a good contract comes through, we'll just give an outline. We'll have like the bullet points, the high level overview. And if the creator has any further questions, they can ask us, just text and we'll respond. Otherwise they can actually review it, look at the contract themselves if they wish. Or they can just say, looks good to me and we'll instantly get back to the brand, let them know that we'd like to move forward and we'll move on to the content creation then.

39:20so what happens next so you get the contract you've signed the contract because you're happy with it where do we go from there yeah so i suppose that's the content phase the creator does what they do best creates the content um once all that's published brand's happy uh we'll start working on your behalf then and ensure that you get paid and that you get paid on time i think it's important to say because from my experience with creators the most annoying part is like sending over the drafts and getting them back and the feedback and all like you just literally open whatsapp and send us the video or the photo there nothing else no links no annoying google drives and we take that send it to the brand get their responses and feedback and then like summarize it really nicely for you grace helped us a lot with this and it's just like really obvious what you need to do if any changes that you made send us back the next draft that's it none of this like oh hey can you upload this portal can you do this can you look at this dashboard because that's kind of the slow part as a creator it's annoying to spend a week making a video and then get told oh sorry the background is supposed to be green and you were supposed to say like i don't know paris instead of london it's just a waste of time yeah and i also think as part of that is that like we all know that within marketing especially like briefing bad briefing causes huge issues and loses a huge amount of money to companies so essentially you know you need to do work twice, you need to like, I don't know, it just makes it a lot more complex when there are more and more rounds of review for everything.

40:49Again, this is an area where we've been able to build into the tech essentially best practice for briefings so that you know what you're receiving is what a top, top, top tier agent, best of the best would be giving to their client essentially so that when you record something or you take a photo or whatever it might be you've had the best possible briefing and what that should be and then that makes it a lot easier when you go when the brand comes back and says like blah blah you know it should have been this and you say well that wasn't in what was a very tight brief um and actually from experience as a creator that makes all the difference in terms of things like reshooting content and essentially then losing time and money because you're doing something again and you're essentially getting paid half because you had to do it twice rather than once yeah that's a big point if you're reshooting stuff as a content you're you're losing money you shouldn't ever have to do that so we've done the contract you've done your content we've sent over the brand they're happy you've posted everything's gone live we're going to get the analytics send it to the brand this is what we built in pebble we automated the invoicing collecting the money from the brands and paying the creators so me and gary have already built this we built it again for retrograde and that's it's just simple done you don't have to worry once you've posted your content we've got everything else we will get you paid we will tell you when it's coming you can ask us when you think it's going to land in the bank like hey how much money do you think i'm going to get paid next week or how much did i get last week it's all done it's simple easy which from experience you need to wait back from the accounting department generally yeah um and i also think as part of that that this is part of your job turning into a desk job when you're a creator especially if you're self-managing or even if you're not the amount of people i know who have not been paid for six months to a year yeah and they're being told it's non-payment from the client and yeah but it's not just it's not just about getting paid for one brand deal it's about having certainty and security over your cash flow as a business and a person it's like i know i've got my rent due in three weeks and i know i've done that content and spent hours on it and i know what's in my bank account and i need a little bit more and it's like you ask your agent they're like oh i'm trying i'm chasing like we have predictive algorithms that will tell you how much is going to be paid to you in that amount of time and then you can kind of take a bit of peace maybe some peace if you're gonna have enough maybe you need to go get a side hustle i don't know i want to talk about being co-founders okay um because i don't know if you've heard but you are my first co-founders um and it's been a great journey so far as we said been very different in your opinion in gary what would you say is the most challenging part of building an ai company yeah i think the most challenging thing is just it's a different way of thinking you know when you when you're working with ai it you're not getting a guaranteed outcome every time so you just have to be a little bit more careful um and add in extra checks i suppose whereas when you write software it's deterministic and it you know so it's just a new way of thinking but with that it gives us the ability to work with like emails and texts and that was never accessible before and one other small thing is everything's new and shiny in the ai space every day there's a breakthrough every week there's a new tool and it's just we're laser focused on solving the problem that we're working on and sometimes you just have to remind yourself don't get distracted stay on on mission and don't yeah i think that's try start another company don't try start another company i've heard that one before and mindset wise jake what would you say makes a successful tech founder successful tech founder i think um building something that people want but i think what a lot of people get confused about is like thinking that they need to know what they want beforehand you actually have to just build something and give it to people and then see what they say kind of like i guess in marketing that would be like a research group or a survey which is kind of can be true and not true so you just got to build a product put it in people's hands and like kind of watch what they say listen to what words they use and then very quickly iterate on it and change it like kind of almost in real time yeah which i think has been a a journey for us based on your background and our backgrounds yeah you come from the d to c space where like a piece of clothing has to be like has to be perfect and ready or someone's not gonna buy it and if they do buy it they're gonna be upset whereas for us like with software it's almost like you can go into someone's wardrobe while they're asleep and like change the seams and fix it the way they want so we can like yeah we definitely can't do that we but in software you can you can edit things live almost and like the next time they use the app it's better and different and we've incorporated the feedback and yes it's a very different way of working so it's a lot more of an agile and fast mvp method in comparison to like i always talk about the MVP method when it comes to like a D2C background for example like you want to get the company out there ASAP you want to get the concept out there ASAP like will people buy that you know the problem you're solving for example but you do need to make sure that the product is at least like 95 representative of where it's going to be or maybe it doesn't have all the colors you want or it's not as like fancy design or whatever or not as fancy materials like whatever that you're going to move on down the line.

46:09Whereas, can you talk a little bit about why it's so important to move fast in a tech company from like this MVP perspective? I think generally moving fast is a good idea. I think you get used to moving fast and like people think, oh, if we go too fast, we're going to make loads of mistakes. But maybe for the first while, but once you get used to it, it actually becomes normal. I would almost challenge you, Grace, to move fast in any company where it's possible. obviously with dc you've got like inventory and shipping times and that's just nothing you can do about it but definitely software lends itself to constant iteration and like it's almost like this connection with the customer and the quicker you get the change into the product from the moment the customer said they want to change the more like i guess in tune you are with them and you probably feel like this with your audience as well for for your own content and talent if you let that gap get too big you lose touch you kind of lose the intuitive feel of it and building software is the same way you got to stay in that loop and i think like we're confident we know what we're doing like we you know we've done the research but then ultimately the creator will tell us so if we wait three months to release a new feature maybe we got a little bit of that wrong so it's better to get that in their hands early get the feedback and because we're moving fast we can just change that right for anyone who's listening to this who might be starting a tech company and looking about raising funding, like raising a pre-seed seed round, what would be the biggest pieces of advice that you would give them?

47:41Probably the same advice that you'd give someone around any type of sales because fundraising is almost a type of sales. You're selling an idea to people. That's like a lot easier if you have proof. So if you're trying to sell a brand on sponsoring you as a content creator, probably easier if you have good content with an audience. and so obviously we've got experience on a track record where we've said what we're going to do and we've done it and we've proved it and now people are willing to back us that's really the main thing is like if you're just starting out first of all try and do something impressive try and build the first mvp try and get the first few customers get the feedback like anything from point zero to point whatever you want to call it is better than nothing and so don't just walk in the room to the investors being like hey i'd like some money it's like hey here's what i did yeah so a lot of the feedback i give on pitch decks generally when sent is either it's not clear where the money's going or it's not clear how you even know this works and obviously there are different levels of what you can do you both have an advantage because you've already as you say you've set out to do something and done something and been backed before and people We'll still say no.

48:56Yeah, no, absolutely. For a first-time founder, that's obviously not super reassuring because, you know, you can't have done something until someone's taken a chance on you in order to be able to do something. I guess what you're saying there is make sure that someone doesn't need to take a chance on you so you can somewhat, even if it, like I always say, even if it's just like a mass survey and you're just paying for that survey to reach as many people as possible or a few people who fill in that will, you're doing it on your Instagram story and a few people who fill it in will win a voucher or whatever it might be so that you can get truly as much data as possible on your product and so that you can almost hypothetically prove that it works even without the product itself because you need the money to build the product.

49:33Yeah, just reduce the risk. Like if someone was trying to pitch you on letting them edit your videos or something like that, you would probably hope that they've included some examples of other videos they've edited. It's kind of the same thing. Yeah. Or like same with job applications. Like they might not ask you to do a task could you do a task based on exactly what they've asked for rather than a cover letter could you like if you're applying for a social media manager role could you take their socials rip it to shreds and show what you would do instead and make some of the videos exactly you might not have the experience in that role but you've gone and said well here's what i think i can do but it's the same thing it's just sales so let's talk about having co-founders i want to talk about that as an experience did you have a co-founder before when you founded peblo I had a co-founder.

50:21I've had one, two, three, four co-founders. So I had a guy called Dave in Pueblo. He's great. He's still one of my best friends. And I've got you two. It's a journey. It's probably the hardest part. What would you say is hard about it? Well, like we're all building this thing together. And like by definition, we're probably all opinionated and strong-willed and ambitious. And we probably, you know, wanted to work out a lot. and that's quite a hard balance to strike. Yeah, definitely. And I would say that one of the things that investors asked over and over again, actually, was what do you foresee being the problems between the co-founders?

51:00And like, how do you, like if this were to absolutely blow up in flames because of the co-founders, why would that be? And I actually think that's a really good thing to talk about and also to think about going into funding. I think one of the biggest risks in a startup is like the founder's falling out. Like, you know, you're based in London, we're based in ireland and just getting to know each other is very important early on i think yeah especially with like new like you're you were essentially a stranger and we were strangers to you yeah like we're still getting to know each other it's still early in the journey and it's like even harder then because you're trying to be respectful but reading someone you don't know and you don't really know what that meant yeah and you also like there's a lot of risk so on top of like say if it's a new friendship and you're being respectful but trying to get to know each other and trying to move in a direction like we don't have the time for that no no like there's not that yeah you can't be too you can't be too respectful at the expense of the company or the funding or whatever it might be yeah what would we say are the biggest things that we've done in order to alleviate those issues be transparent i think i think myself and jake have had a couple of frank honest conversations just like you know jake seems to be the um what's it called the common denominator yeah well i suppose sorry like you know we work like we're in the depths every day i suppose so like yeah you know we're coming up against each other a lot but i think frank and open conversations and you know i think for us which you i think is meeting in person more often that gelling yeah person getting to know each other standing calls even if they're annoying to actually just be able to like you need i always talk about the fact that you need space within teams in order to be able to deal with things that aren't just like the every day like it's not on the list which is why i believe in like office as well especially for a product company because it's like i need to talk to you about something that i would never arrange a call about because it's not important enough but actually that in the corridor is and the moment is kind of gone or lost right I would say almost like the founder part and the people part is actually harder than any of the other stuff like probably over the lifetime of the company end up spending as much maybe not time but like certainly mental energy on like people things which is quite funny isn't it because like you just wouldn't you think oh AI and sales and like fundraising and that's all hard but like the people stuff is the one that you really crunch your brain on here like what am I gonna do what's the biggest piece of advice you would give to someone trying to find the right co-founder to start a company with oh god i think it helps if you've worked together um or you know each other probably from work first i hired like a lot of friends and family and was lucky enough for it to work out almost all the time but in another world it could have caused me some really big problems in my personal life so probably just stay away from that if you can and to work first relationships probably people you've worked with or even people you admire like grace beverly which is a girl who lives in a different country who i sent an email to we had dinner with yourself and myself and jack and then we found a way flyer for people yeah who also is involved in retrofit um and then one day i was like yeah she seemed all right she's pretty impressive i'll give her a shout and obviously there was lots of chats before we decided to take the plunge um and it can work i think if both people or all three people are in the right space to want to do it and are not afraid of like being offended sometimes or offending sometimes or like i think growth is probably a bit of a cringy word but it's the most important thing yeah like i feel like we all just want to even if we're wrong or we think we're not wrong ultimately just want to get better yeah as people land as a group that sounds like super like woo woo but it's kind of the only way like if you don't want to get better you're gonna get your feelings hurt yeah and it's a like us versus the problem thing because you can't necessarily like you can't go into everything i mean you literally can't go into anything as co-founders i think thinking of a like me versus you situation it's very like we're trying to build a company here we're trying to get in this direction we need to get a product out to customers yeah therefore if there is an obstacle it's not about any individual even if that individual has like played a part in it whatever it might be it's about how do we get to a point that we are and how do you find that and how did you find like jumping in with like essentially two strangers in another country and founding a company well you've got to take some risks sometimes um i like overall because i feel like this is probably one of the craziest things i've done come on i know live a little boring but i think that you know like yeah that's as it stands i've already got a lot to do yeah um i didn't know you guys well yeah um we're not based in the same place it's not like i can pop into the office every day or whatever it might be yeah and actually i thought it was a great idea and my gut said do it um purely based on the fact that i have never seen an industry need anything more um it felt like a really great idea i think that it's been really great to be building this with you too obviously you guys are actually building the tech just in case anyone's wondering if i'm building grace is now a software developer exactly so is it really annoying this is your riskiest craziest thing you've done is it really annoying when i just turn up and say like here's this really big thing we're gonna do and i've now planned for it and it's really easy we're gonna figure it out on the spot no because i anticipate that that's what good tech co-founders do okay any industry that has been disrupted has probably had that approach to it originally like there were a few people who were called crazy in the beginning there were a few people who were called crazy when the creator industry was even invented and now to essentially create a new way of that working for millions of creators is a little bit crazy before we end both of you what is the best piece of advice you have ever received um i think for me it wasn't really advice it was um a manager i had in my early career and he just kind of allowed me to fail almost or get me the room to fail i suppose so as a junior naive like you know taking on the world just like there was no challenge that i couldn't solve and i was just given the room to like try and fail was it was an option it was okay so i think yeah just keep moving forward and like you know if you do fail that's fine yeah for me is it work advice or life advice it can be either life advice wasn't necessarily advice but like my granny used to just tell me i'd be like oh i want to do this and she'd be like oh i know you will just all like constantly I just really like certain affirmation I think that kind of brainwashed me and I just believe anything's possible like I just think that everything's gonna work out maybe things will go wrong on the journey but like when we sit here today there's just no option in my head that retrograde isn't gonna be a massive success I think that's because anytime I said anything to her when I was like four she was like of course you will jake and I was like yeah and I think that you can kind of do that to yourself you can as well I mean that's literally there's been like Just to believe and like if there's a way to do it, it will happen.

58:27There's a mindset shift between saying, I want to be X and saying, I will be X in terms of the fact that it sounds stupid, but actually you need to put yourself in the headspace where you could truly foresee that happening. And I know that's like manifestation. And I know some people don't believe in that and all of that, but actually like there is a mindset part of it where you say, oh, well, I, even if it makes you realize actually I won't because in the current state I'm in, I can't or in the current work ethic I have I can't or whatever it might be and so it allows you to kind of replace yourself where you would need to be in order to actually make that happen yeah I also 100 % believe in the universe this might sound kind of weird as like someone who works in technology to learn and uh early on in the process like if you just say what you're going to do and you actually put the work in like I'm pretty positive the universe conspires for you and the best like translation of that niall who's in the room over here knows well about this because i always tell him about look i think like if you just put yourself out there and you do the work you'll be shocked how lucky you become things just start happening by accident make your own look did you just show up and it just happened like did you like why are we on grace beverly's podcast i remember following you when you were like just starting out i think i was into the gym you were obviously in the fitness stuff back then and now we started a company together and i'm just a little jake from dublin and like now we're here with gary and like we've sold companies and like why did that happen that's really nice place it's weird yeah so just try it like i don't like not the cliche try but like people think they can't do it you probably just can't i like that yeah you go back to your point you don't ask you don't get it's like you know you just try you ask grace to start a company ask me to start a company you know you just don't know until you try or ask i also think i brainwash myself into thinking i'm the luckiest person on the planet i do that a lot i really believe in it on tiktok it's called lucky girl syndrome but i don't think i can go i can go with that lucky boy syndrome doesn't have the same it's a thing if you honestly think you're the luckiest person and you're maybe it's gratitude or gratefulness like you're just happy for everything you have and even when something goes wrong it doesn't matter because everything's great it's tiny i so there's the as part of lucky girl syndrome there's the saying everything always works out for me and you know like when you i don't know when something goes wrong or like whatever it might be or it goes right even just affirming for yourself that everything always goes right for you i do think there's a big mindset shift in terms of like being feeling like life happens to you and don't get me wrong terrible things happen that absolutely do not deserve to happen but i also think that there it can be quite we can get ourselves into a failure spiral when we think that things are constantly going wrong and alternatively you can flip that on its head and get yourself into a success spiral based on truly saying that everything always works out for you every time something goes right or goes wrong and actually it worked out for the best in the end because i don't know whatever it might be and people say like that's easy to say when like you know maybe nothing has gone terribly wrong for you here's my example for that is that when i was 25 my dad died but i think i had the best dad ever and like the best childhood and like an amazing family and some people don't have they don't get to meet their dad their dad my wife's dad died when he was when she was three that's like how can i not be just insanely lucky to have like the best dad ever for 25 years so it's not about like things not going wrong it's about as you said it's about your mindset but i didn't fully brain I believe that.

1:02:12Completely brainwashed myself. I like self-brainwashing. Yeah, it's a theme. And just before we end, the housekeeping side of things is that Retrograde is officially announced, which is exciting, as of literally the second, as I was saying. I think we just announced it, did we? Yeah, that was that. Okay. And if you want to join it, you can join the waitlist. And it will be a selective process to start so that we can make sure it's exactly where it needs to be. We're going to be in touch with people. We'll be letting people off the waitlist slowly. And yeah, we hope it's just amazing for everyone.

1:02:47It's pretty easy. You literally click the link. You're done in like 30 seconds. And we'll let you know what to do from there.

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