Will Taylor - Workflow

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I'd like to pretend that it was some kind of genius plan you were having coffee by a river and the sunlight was coming down and as the birds settled, you thought oh, I'm going to just do a CV writing service.

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Honestly, anybody listening?

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This is the worst business model in the world, and so I kind of like had this session with stripping out everything that was going to get in the way of that piece of creative work.

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Oh, so fast.

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I bet if you and I sat here for about six hours we could fire up a company.

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Hello, is it me you're looking for?

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Hello, is it me you're looking for.

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Sorry, sir, I was just caught.

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I happened to look after the cat.

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Oh good, how are you doing?

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Yeah, good, thank you.

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How are you doing there?

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Good, good, good good.

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How's the day's all the all the holiday festivities and everything going it's great.

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Yeah, I caught up with family.

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We went for a walk, actually caught up with both uh, my girlfriend's parents and our parents.

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We had a big meal together and we got the check.

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So, um, it was nice just to bring everyone together and, uh, nice, yeah, a good three-hour conversation.

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It's one of those things you think is going to be like an hour and then suddenly everyone gets chatting and it's like thanksgiving oh, and then you're just in it and time just sort of like expands and and you're just like in that flow.

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I love that which have really good, uh.

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So we went out to this uh little tiny restaurant just by the side of the river um, and it's got this amazing platter of fish, so went for fish mostly.

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My sister, uh, is a vegetarian, so trying to cater for that as well.

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Yeah, it was nice, it's nice, and tell me about yourself how was your?

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How was your day?

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it was good.

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It was good.

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I think it was nice that we were, we were here sort of um in in the house.

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Uh, we haven't really done christmas in our house proper.

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We usually were either like at my mom's house or we were at um my in-laws, who are here right now, uh in their house and in um sacramento, and so it was our first sort of like, and our youngest is now now four.

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So really in that, like I get it, I get all the things, I get the ceremony, I get what we're doing.

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But it was nice just to kind of be here and settled, especially after a year of traveling and being on the road and doing San Fran and New York and all those sort of things.

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It was nice just to of be, be settled and it was good.

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And then christmas day, about halfway through christmas day, I went like oh, I'm like, I'm not feeling it and uh, and then I was out for like 24 hours and then my son was also out and he was like throwing up and stuff, and so all of a sudden both of us were just like out and so we all of a sudden, both of us were just like out and so we all of a sudden went from excited Christmas to like we all just sort of collapsed into like nap and nurture mode and now we're all sort of like back up and out itself.

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So it's been an interesting turn of events this week so far.

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I am sorry to hear that you felt sick, man.

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That's always the worst timing when it happens over these holiday periods and if you're gonna do it, though you might as well do it when everyone's around and can support, and like you're together and like you know whatever, versus like being in the you know, in the daily rhythm when things are moving and popping and shaking, and so it was.

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It was all right though.

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It's been good though it's, it's man.

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I hope you're feeling better um, well, I prefer that.

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Yeah, I, I, um, I'm excited to talk to you.

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Know, it's so funny.

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I just used workflow and in an instance where our cto, martina, is working on a side project, and she had slacked me a link and was like, can you just give me some feedback on this?

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And I was like, yes, and I'm going to tell you how I'm going to do it, uh, and so I, I threw it into the platform and um, and, and we're going to start working on it, um, uh, through the platform.

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So I love it.

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I'm excited to, to dig into um, to all the things and um, and kind of hear all the stories.

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And I didn't know you, I, I think, I just thought, thought you, you raised a seed recently, right, yeah, we just closed our pre-seed even, um, it's one of the largest in london for a while.

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Uh, for our type of company.

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Three million dollars as got us off to the races and we're uh, yeah, we're official now yeah, that is amazing.

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So let's, I want to.

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I want to hear how we get to this, how we get to this point.

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But, like I want to go back to um, I saw, uh, physics, is that right?

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is that uh?

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that's how we get here physics um, you know what it almost like traces back a little bit earlier when I was growing up.

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I was always growing, I was always, um.

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When I was growing up, I was in this very creative family where my dad is a set designer for the theater, my mom is a director for the theater, my sister actually went to study fine art, and it's just a very creative family, and so I kind of wanted to put my own stamp on that.

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Um, you know, when I was a teenager, I spent a lot of time making different video games, and particularly making the maps for video games.

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So it was this kind of like digital art in a way, um, where you're painting the scenery and you're trying to think about what looks natural, what looks good and um or or as natural as it can, when you're dealing with, like the, the 8-bit renders of doom, the difference between stone and grass, and you're like, okay, visually I can sort of tell one's green and one's brown, but um, what, what were your?

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What were your, like top two games that you were into into making maps for?

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so we took a command and conquer game that was based in um deserts, um command and conquer generals for those that have played that version of it and we turned it into a vietnam recreation oh wow, yeah, and I I really got into that.

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I think I made maybe 40 maps.

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Each one of them would have taken 50 to 60 hours, and I went down amazing, uh, even like do a recce and understand what is this world really like.

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So I'm really invested in trying to understand it and recreate it as much as you can with the limited tools you have.

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So I've always come from creative place, of wanting to make things, wanting to build things.

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Um, I've always had this kind of curiosity for how the world works and how things can connect together, and, being a bit of a systems thinker, that kind of took me down this path towards physics, where I sort of started to understand how things relate to each other.

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How does the world work at very large scale, at very small scale and everything in between, and that just always fascinated me, so massively enjoyed that.

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The one thing that I wanted to do, though, is new things that were creative and gonna make an impact today, and I always found that academia was just always making things that are going to basically help the world in 200 years or 500 years, and it's a little bit too detached, and so I think entrepreneurship is that real opportunity for you to actually connect, to make an impact today in a really, really big way.

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And so, um, after finishing the physics course, um, I was quickly trying to apply kind of systems, thinking of how do things relate to each other, to the world, through entrepreneurship, through building startups.

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And, um, while all of my other friends from university went and got serious jobs and started making actual money, I decided to, um, throw caution to the wind.

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Uh, just go out at it on my own and see if I can get a startup together I love that and so, yeah, making not serious money and not having a serious job.

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What was it?

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What was the thing that that made you sort of like take that, that left turn or or sort of go against the grain and what I imagine is usually pressure, for I mean, even when you're a junior and you're sort of like you know, you're starting to talk to big companies and you're getting internships set up and like you're, there's this like I feel like there's it's changing now, but I feel like there's always been this coming out of the 80s and the 90s, this sort of steamroll towards like, get done with school and just get in and get the best, most prestigious or the biggest sort of you know salary you can get, and then just keep plowing through.

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Like what made you sort of you know divert a bit from that of you know divert a bit from that.

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Yeah, I think there's a huge amount of pressure and expectation that, um, people come out of the education system with in terms of you have to simply keep climbing the ladder and you have to get that next run right now, otherwise you're kind of failing.

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And nowhere is that more seen than at oxford, where I was, where people honestly tie themselves in knots, worrying if they're good enough after they graduate and, um, what you see from a lot of people is they go for, like these, management career paths in very large companies because that's where the salaries are the highest and that's kind of what the most prestige in terms of brands of company and you know you've got this amazing cv that allows you to get there, so of course you should go and do that.

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Um, I just remember like a couple of uh years ago I was going on the yc co-founder matching platform and I was scanning through all these different types of people and you had some people who had gone off and built some kind of crazy technology and some people who had kind of been pounding the pavement doing sales and they sort of started to build businesses.

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And you had these other people who came out of very prestigious universities and they'd all gone down this much less interesting management track because they kind of been forced to do so and they've got these skills which are so valuable and they're always very bright.

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What they haven't got from that is this um, uh, real world experience building companies, because they've never taken that risk and I think that stems from this kind of pressure that puts on people to just be climbing the next rung of the ladder in a very safe way.

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Um, so I've seen it.

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I've seen it happen to a few friends For some reason.

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You know what happens.

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I got an internship in a big company and I saw what it was looking like and people there had no passion or motivation and anytime I think like entrepreneurship's hard.

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I always think back on that and think, wow, I mean the alternative of spending 50 years there time, is it how many more hours until I leave?

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or like, let's see.

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So I've only got three months, so if I can just put in a good push for three months and maybe I can ask for a raise and then maybe like and these, these, that, these, that, that sort of like cycle, um, just keeps going, and I totally.

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I totally agree.

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It's funny.

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I just had a conversation on a previous podcast where we're talking um on an episode where we were talking about the same thing.

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That um I remember interviewing I I started the uh interactive division at uh no-transcript acquired in school thinking, but you've never had to deal with Home Depot or Sprint or AT&T and like and all of the stuff that goes with that and navigating the sort of and the contracts and the sort of you've got the one stakeholder.

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That's just a pain in the ass, like all the things that you haven't touched yet, so sorry.

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You're like multiple degrees Are that worth that much to me?

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And thinking that you know even early on in my career that it really just comes down to that like tenaciousness of being able to sort of figure it out and put as much real world experience as you can under your belt.

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So totally agree.

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It's not easy because I think, you know, in today's society people need to build their own safety net, and so I can't pretend to say that everybody should just go out there and quit their jobs.

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You know, I know how hard that is, but, as you say, in terms of like building real world experience, there's nothing quite like being the last line of defense, making this decision before stuff goes wrong, like until you've been there you can't put into words like how that changes you as a decision maker totally, but I think I've, I think I even and maybe it really helped that I did this when I was in my 20s, but I I one of my first jobs I was, I was making commission hand over fist, but I quit because, uh, just the, the management and the the company didn't, didn't suit me and I didn't know what I was going to do next.

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But I was just, I was fine that I was going to figure it out.

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But I think one of the things I also learned early on is no, people can't just quit their jobs, but now is the best time in the world to be able to learn stuff on the side for free and like building websites or launching things for people doing social media consulting.

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Like there's stuff that you can do for free that doesn't cost you anything.

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There's so many free tools that I sort of did that early on as I learned how to build websites, and I always had this like as soon as I knew how to do that, I always had this safety net that I could always tell a company to just like piss off and like and I could leave and I knew that within a week or two I could start making a thousand or $2,000.

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Like I could start sort of making some money to have some come in to sort of expand that time and not be like I got to find something and whatever the next thing is, that seems halfway decent.

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I'll just take it because I got to get back to whatever the next thing is, that seems halfway decent.

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I'll just take it because I got to get back to that safety net place that it was nice to be able to sort of always roll into something, and I think now's the time that anyone can do that.

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While you're at any job is just to be able to like find and gather some extra skills.

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Charge 40 bucks, like literally, just make it up $45.

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Like this is what I charge, charge, you know, and then just start like doing it and then, once you've done it a couple of times well, now you're 50 an hour and just like start doing it, and then you'll always have this thing that you never sort of get trapped in that place where you're like I can't leave, I can't change, I can't do anything because I'm just like set here.

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So, I went through the exact same path, kyle.

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And that way you put it, where you build up your own safety net in terms of your skills, like marketable skills, where you know, whatever happens, I can now do this thing, I'm covered.

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There is a market of opportunity out there to pick this up.

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It just allows you to because you've kind of captured your downside.

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Suddenly you can start thinking, okay, what do I really do with my time now, now that I've kind of freed that up?

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Yeah, totally.

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So I love.

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So you took this sort of left turn while everyone else is going down the career path and you set your sights on entrepreneurship.

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What was your like?

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Your like, okay, this is what I'm going to do.

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Or what was the spark to that?

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this led you into the first, uh, the first venture so I'd like to pretend that it was um some kind of genius plan you were having coffee by a river and and the sunlight was coming down and and the birds, as the birds settled, you thought ah exactly like that uh ray of sunshine.

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Um, exactly.

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I actually remember I was helping a lot of my friends by writing their resumes.

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Um, because everyone else has graduated and I'm, you know, I've graduated, I'm now doing some boring corporate job and I realized that I really enjoyed helping people in this way, more than what I was doing, punching numbers into a spreadsheet and, um, weirdly, by following that kind of desire for service, I was like, well, if I'm doing this for free for a bunch of people, maybe I can at least get paid for this.

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That could be a business.

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And so it started out being, um, as you say, a side hustle of I'm gonna just do a cv writing service for people.

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Now, honestly, anybody listening, this is the worst business model in the world.

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There is no repeat business.

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If you've done a great job, they can use that resume for the next 10 years right you're working yourself out of a job yeah, you really, are you really

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are and it's very service intensive.

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It's very hard to maintain quality control and, like scale up a team.

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So I ended up, uh, getting to a point where I had five writers who were writing cvs for me, and that was already quite hard to manage because you're trying to like now, while you still had the, the daytime job so I I did something a little bit extreme.

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Where did you make a?

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pivot.

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I actually quit the daytime job before going into this and what I was doing.

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My rent was, uh, I was then tutoring kids on the on the side, and so I was going around london on my bike, turning up at, uh, very wealthy people's houses and teaching their kids for, um, you, you know, a good, a good amount per hour, but you know it's a lot of work to get all the hours you need.

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So I was basically doing that part time and then I was building the CV, writing business resume, writing business, uh, the other, the other half of the time, and that's where I was starting to learn, like, how to become an entrepreneur.

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Here's how you manage your time and you prioritize and here's how you deal with people and all this stuff.

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That's kind of the ground for me, uh, so while I'm building this company, um, I realized this is never going to scale and become like a gigantic company, um, and it's.

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It was a labor of love and I think one thing that came out of it and this is something you'll always get whenever you do something entrepreneurial you come out of these like amazing skills you never expected to have.

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Like, suddenly, you're quite good at non-fiction writing and you're quite good at like summarizing things for investors, because you've done it like a bunch of times totally I tell you one that was funny for me is I I worked on the um, the game awards, uh, for a couple of years and there were so many assets that had to be sort of done across, like all these games and all these people and developers and designers that I got so good at these, that like photoshop, like pulling something in and editing and like doing the shortcuts and like pushing it out.

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Like there are these, these little things that like during some early, some early jobs that like you get so good at, and now like you come out going oh my gosh, now my ability to like fly through, like design tasks and things like that are great things.

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You would never like think ahead of time that you, you would acquire yeah, it's brilliant.

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It's like something you've got all these like weird little superpowers that you've, like, really invested in um so yeah, I um I basically decided to round that off and go into tech.

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Um, so, when I'm sort of learning how to do a business and do this properly, I was following all sorts of different sources online, and this is one of the other things that's great about when you just start going down this road and committing yourself to it is that suddenly you're picking up all this new information, like your brain is like suddenly alert to everything that's around you.

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That could be like possibly helpful for this very, very difficult task.

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Well and interesting that your your first venture also, while while you wouldn't consider it a commercial success, it's one of those that it did.

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Two things you picked up skills.

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You'd be well.

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Three things you picked up skills.

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You became finally attuned and aware now of what was going to sort of get you to a place where you would get financially successful.

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And then I would say the third is also I sort of equate it to taking the shrink wrap like off like a new product, where you've sort of equate it to taking the shrink wrap off a new product where you've broken that seal and now you're just in entrepreneurial mode in V2, which you operate differently in that mode on your second time around.

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Yeah, big time.

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I think a lot of people put pressure on themselves to deliver the billion-dollar company the first time they have a hack at it and, um, what you see actually is almost the opposite.

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It's the kids who got started when they were 16 mowing lawns who actually become really powerful, strong entrepreneurs, yeah, um.

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So I think if you see entrepreneurship overall is more like, hey, this is going to be a 10-year journey and you're going to go at this particular idea for a bit and not feel emotionally tied to that one thing.

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It's like a healthier way to just be able to move forward and it definitely allows you to um.

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So, yeah, I basically one of the sources that was like, coming in, I realized that I really loved everything that yc was putting out, y combinator, the um investment uh community based out of sylvan valley.

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Um, they had this whole series of lectures they called startup school and this is like pretty classic material.

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I would strongly recommend anybody who's thinking about entrepreneurship go and explore where you have these 21 hour lectures, which I know sounds like a lot.

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They're on specific topics so you can just cherry pick the ones that are relevant and they're given by like mark zuckerberg and like reid hoffman, who founded linkedin, and all of these like giants, like the guy who founded twitch, like all of these people who are like we're giving you for free because you can just watch it.

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This like lecture course on how to build a tech startup, and I just saw, you know, having struggled with scaling and making an impact through that with my previous venture, this would actually be like a really good playbook to follow, and so I became quite a student of the lean startup method, where you go out and validate hypotheses rather than just trying to like charge a product, charges money for a product, you actually really think about it more systematically and I really loved everything that uh, silicon valley was putting out in terms of this is how you can build a company and make a huge impact by building something that's scalable and that can be backed by investors, and so the next period of my life was really having a go at building those kinds of companies, so I knew absolutely nothing at all going into that.

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I really want to emphasize that.

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Well, and the naivete I think sometimes is is one of those things that gives you the um.

00:23:49.183 --> 00:23:54.306
I think it was orson wells, who, who, who was asked about that when he directed for the first time.

00:23:54.306 --> 00:23:57.240
They were like how did you do all these things that no one has done before?

00:23:57.240 --> 00:23:59.263
And he's like I didn't know you couldn't do them.

00:24:00.085 --> 00:24:15.232
Yeah, that's my first time, totally, yeah, I think I heard a similar line from a yc uh person saying the best companies are these recent grads who don't know how long things are meant to take.

00:24:15.232 --> 00:24:24.617
So they think something that, like most people would say, would take like four weeks, takes like an afternoon, and they kind of get it done in two days and they're like, well, I kind of like amazing, you just got all your branding and website sets done in two days.

00:24:24.617 --> 00:24:28.303
And they're like, well, I kind of saw it get done and they're like amazing, you just got all your branding and website set up in two days.

00:24:28.303 --> 00:24:28.964
That's fine.

00:24:29.286 --> 00:24:30.911
Totally yeah, exactly.

00:24:31.883 --> 00:24:44.467
It's an advantage sometimes, and so for me, building a tech company that was learning how to build the technology Because I had no money, I had no way to do it.

00:24:44.467 --> 00:24:48.647
I didn't feel like I was backable at that point, to be quite honest.

00:24:48.647 --> 00:25:18.824
So I felt like the best thing I could do is simply get this business up and running as far as I can myself and also learning more properly, really, how to do a bit more marketing, a bit more sales, which I'd done a little bit of in the previous company, but not really and so, and so, um, looking at the kinds of companies they're coming out of silicon valley at the time you had uber, airbnb, these gigantic marketplace star business models, and I really want to get good at doing that.

00:25:18.824 --> 00:25:22.211
And so I was looking at other opportunities to build marketplaces.

00:25:22.291 --> 00:25:24.345
And what are the dynamics of a good marketplace?

00:25:24.345 --> 00:25:32.390
Like you need, kind of like a high volume of transactions so that it's worth both sides sticking with the marketplace instead of like, getting off marketplace.

00:25:32.390 --> 00:25:47.875
Uh, you need, ideally, things to be relatively sort of like, um, at least on one of the sides of it, things to be sort of commoditized so that it's worth it for users to choose between different options, so you have these different like flavors of what makes good marketplace.

00:25:47.875 --> 00:26:11.704
I was hunting around and where I landed was on on demand dry cleaning, so I often joke that this is because I've just been a student and like the only two problems you have as a student, so like where to eat and totally gotta clean my clothes exactly and, uh, maybe there was a part of me that just lazily didn't want to do this again so I was going to just build a whole startup around it.

00:26:12.446 --> 00:26:16.583
Um, but the uh, the truth was it had some like interesting dynamics.

00:26:16.583 --> 00:26:24.048
Which is this like very repeatable problem, um, which people hate and says like there's real pain there, like and it's pretty universal.

00:26:24.048 --> 00:26:30.641
And, um, all these like suppliers, but they're basically indistinguishable, so you don't really mind who you go to.

00:26:30.641 --> 00:26:43.804
You probably just want someone who's low cost and available and, uh, on the um, consumer side, you know, they probably it looked like like be willing to pay a premium to be able to get this just handled for them.

00:26:43.804 --> 00:26:45.662
Um, I also just searched.

00:26:45.662 --> 00:26:52.651
There was like a company in the states called washio that just started up and was like pushing this model forwards and this hadn't really arrived in the uk.

00:26:52.651 --> 00:26:57.064
So for me there was like a lot of ticks that this is worth exploring.

00:26:57.064 --> 00:27:08.891
Um, yeah, shut down the cv writing company and decided just to start building this, and I can kind of take you through, if you want, how I approached that.

00:27:10.201 --> 00:27:15.901
I would love to know, yeah, the first week, and how you thought about logistics just in terms of.

00:27:15.901 --> 00:27:29.326
I mean, immediately, I got this vision in my mind of you basically picking up your neighbor's basket and bringing it back to your house and like putting it all in your wash, like like, how did like?

00:27:29.326 --> 00:27:30.067
What is your like?

00:27:30.067 --> 00:27:30.367
Okay?

00:27:30.367 --> 00:27:38.461
So so you, you saw this, you know it ticked all the boxes and you saw that it was being done else, somewhere else, and and that this is there's a good chance.

00:27:38.461 --> 00:27:39.862
So this is something that you could scale.

00:27:39.862 --> 00:27:44.305
But what did, like week one look like, when you sort of set your mind to it?

00:27:45.405 --> 00:28:01.238
So I mentioned the lean startup methodology just a few minutes ago and the big idea there is that you don't trust, try and like build the whole business on day one and just like grind out the platform and then do a big launch after six months.

00:28:01.238 --> 00:28:06.744
The whole philosophy is to minimize the amount of waste.

00:28:06.744 --> 00:28:19.586
Where you've made a mistake and you've gone in the wrong direction, you try and identify which parts of your business model are kind of the flimsiest, weakest hypotheses and you then go and validate if those are true or if they're false straight away.

00:28:19.586 --> 00:28:29.894
So the way I started this was trying to see would suppliers actually be willing to jump onto this platform and use this platform?

00:28:29.894 --> 00:28:39.515
I figured that the demand size the consumers would be a little bit more validated just because I'd been the consumer.

00:28:39.515 --> 00:28:41.884
I just didn't know anything about the other side.

00:28:41.903 --> 00:28:49.723
So what I did is I took this uh screenshot of you have like grubhub um in the states.

00:28:49.723 --> 00:28:53.530
So there's one in the uk called just eat.

00:28:53.530 --> 00:28:55.443
It's the same kind of thing where you order your takeaways.

00:28:55.443 --> 00:29:08.265
I got a screenshot of the just eat home page which has all these different takeaways, and then I mocked up over the logo of just eat like a different logo, our logo and I switched out all the food for shirts and ties and things.

00:29:08.265 --> 00:29:15.986
I took this printed out down to basically like the, the posh area of london, where there's tons of dry cleaners.

00:29:15.986 --> 00:29:20.542
I just went door to door saying, hey, we have this new platform that's going to be coming out.

00:29:20.542 --> 00:29:21.885
Would you like to sign up?

00:29:21.885 --> 00:29:30.810
Your business will show up in these listings so that when people you know book in their dry cleaning, it comes to you and you get an order.

00:29:31.192 --> 00:29:37.584
Yeah, so I just, without having anything else, like there was nothing I love that I can, because I can visualize in in my mind.

00:29:37.584 --> 00:29:56.368
You've got a clipboard and essentially what is a canva mock-up of a screenshot that has been altered a little bit, and you're saying we have this platform that's going to be coming out like that one little line right there is the best, because it that sort of you do need that.

00:29:56.368 --> 00:30:00.769
Like you got to get past that idea that I don't have anything and and I haven't built anything.

00:30:00.769 --> 00:30:10.604
I don't even know any developers, I don't know any designers, like all these things I that hang people up, whereas literally you can just have a piece of paper and a picture on it and say I have this thing coming soon.

00:30:10.604 --> 00:30:11.625
Would you use it?

00:30:11.625 --> 00:30:12.688
That's okay.

00:30:12.969 --> 00:30:13.810
Like do that.

00:30:13.971 --> 00:30:14.452
I love that.

00:30:15.143 --> 00:30:27.587
Yeah, honestly, and this you know I could have spent a year learning to code and building it year learning to code and building it, and I think a lot of people fall into that trap.

00:30:27.587 --> 00:30:30.940
Um, I think if you go and validate and actually speak to customers for a bit first, it's really really helpful.

00:30:30.940 --> 00:30:34.931
Um, because you know, for all I knew, everybody could have said no, this isn't going to fit for us.

00:30:34.931 --> 00:30:40.884
And then I do something completely different and it needs a whole different skill set and there's no point in me having learned everything.

00:30:40.884 --> 00:30:42.426
So I did that.

00:30:42.426 --> 00:30:49.410
I signed up 20 different drive cleaners over the course of maybe a couple of weeks uh, maybe nice weeks.

00:30:49.410 --> 00:30:53.260
So I mean, you'd expect it's a pretty much a no-brainer for them.

00:30:53.260 --> 00:30:55.646
They get new business, great.

00:30:55.646 --> 00:30:58.452
Um, then I.

00:30:58.452 --> 00:31:01.601
Then I I felt still quite confident on the demand side.

00:31:02.301 --> 00:31:11.106
Um, what I then went and did is I decided I need to see if I can actually build this thing and just get a prototype into people's hands and watching them use this.

00:31:11.952 --> 00:31:24.256
So To do this, I'll give the caveat that in my physics degree we'd done a little bit of programming, but it was mostly very physics-y, hardcore programming languages that you wouldn't really use on the web.

00:31:24.256 --> 00:31:30.232
So I'm not saying I was a complete beginner to the idea of what a variable was or something like that.

00:31:30.232 --> 00:31:41.241
I kind of knew the gist of programming but I didn't know any of modern web technologies, any of modern web technologies.

00:31:41.241 --> 00:31:53.691
And yeah, I kind of went into a bit of a grind mode or over maybe about six weeks, I believe, where I built out a mobile app for consumers, uh, which is just a website so it's not trying to build like all singing, all dancing app where you could book in.

00:31:53.691 --> 00:32:06.192
I want these items, uh, and I'm gonna basically click them, I'm going to put in a date, I'm going to like organize it and then I'm going to go and book that in and pay for it.

00:32:07.421 --> 00:32:08.584
And so was it essentially.

00:32:08.584 --> 00:32:22.247
You did kind of an HTML form type format right when it was just it was more sort of check boxes and I was sort of selecting and I'm I'm inputting some information to you to send yeah, and you know what I will say.

00:32:23.249 --> 00:32:40.290
What I would do now doing the same thing is I'll do something that's very much simpler than that, where you could use a type form or you could use a google form, um type form or air table, or also zapier has a great front end that basically you have a form and then it goes and triggers all the other actions afterwards.

00:32:40.480 --> 00:32:45.990
There's so many low-cost options like that to basically do it for nothing.

00:32:45.990 --> 00:32:59.272
Excuse me, one alternative to Typeform that I love is Fillout for free, because Typeform sometimes is like $40 to $ to a hundred bucks or whatever it is, but fill out is great.

00:32:59.272 --> 00:33:07.587
You basically fill out a form and it's got that multi-step process and it links into like a Google sheet or whatever and now you have your intake form that goes to a spreadsheet.

00:33:08.209 --> 00:33:08.368
Yes.

00:33:08.410 --> 00:33:09.673
Nothing Doesn't cost you anything.

00:33:09.673 --> 00:33:17.251
That's you're right, that would be such a good easy prototypy way that you could do it and basically tie that.

00:33:17.251 --> 00:33:20.723
That form could be tied kind of just to a domain name.

00:33:20.723 --> 00:33:25.032
That looked good on mobile yes, absolutely, absolutely.

00:33:25.073 --> 00:33:31.641
It would be done and it would look pretty crisp if you use something like that, rather than you having to learn ux design and so on.

00:33:31.641 --> 00:33:31.821
Totally.

00:33:31.821 --> 00:33:36.053
So I think this is what like a bit of a blunder, but I decided I was going to build it myself, to be fair.

00:33:36.053 --> 00:33:38.460
A lot of those blunder, but I decided I was going to build it myself.

00:33:38.460 --> 00:33:51.929
To be fair, a lot of those tools weren't like as accessible back then and I also had this idea in my head that we need to have a bit of a brand around it for the consumer side so people trust it, and I actually think that's not necessary.

00:33:52.721 --> 00:34:00.380
I honestly think if you have a good deal, if you are good, good value, you will get an initial batch of customers.

00:34:00.380 --> 00:34:01.945
You won't get every customer.

00:34:01.945 --> 00:34:04.959
They'll always be the naysayers who say who's this company?

00:34:04.959 --> 00:34:20.784
I don't know them, I don't trust them and, trust me, you spending like five grand on a domain name is not going to change those people totally yeah, yeah don't worry about those people, just if you have a good deal, then you don't need to think about branding too much, to be honest.

00:34:21.324 --> 00:34:33.086
Uh, but anyway, I I went to start building this thing and, um, what I did that I think was really good, because this was kind of the start of me getting into design is when I built a version of this.

00:34:33.086 --> 00:34:43.751
I went out into the street where I knew buyers would be, so I went down on people's cigarette breaks and lunch breaks down to where the banks were, all these like blue collar sorry, white collar workers coming out into the street.

00:34:43.751 --> 00:34:49.570
I put the phone in my hands and I said, hey, like this is gonna be crazy, but I just want you to test this app I'm building.

00:34:49.570 --> 00:34:50.753
Can you see if you can order?

00:34:50.753 --> 00:34:53.748
And just watched if they could use it and like what their questions were.

00:34:53.820 --> 00:34:55.106
Like, where were they getting concerned?

00:34:55.106 --> 00:34:57.108
What questions were like, where were they getting concerned?

00:34:57.108 --> 00:34:57.288
What was?

00:34:57.288 --> 00:34:57.847
It was a bit nervous about.

00:34:57.847 --> 00:35:14.438
A lot of things in e-commerce are about like how do you reduce the risk and increase like value, and what I learned through that is I absolutely sucked at design which is amazing because that's the place that you want to be, I think.

00:35:14.538 --> 00:35:18.548
I think a lot of people also get hung up that they're just going to assume that they're going to be a bad design.

00:35:18.548 --> 00:35:19.431
So you don't start.

00:35:19.431 --> 00:35:26.065
But I love that you basically you built something, anything and you put it in people's hands and you got the feedback and then you went great.

00:35:26.065 --> 00:35:34.992
Then the second that you went home, you were going to be better at design, Like you were going to every time that better and better, Absolutely.

00:35:35.052 --> 00:35:38.675
It would literally be that I'd be out there at lunch getting the feedback.

00:35:38.675 --> 00:35:40.737
In the evening I'm building the next version.

00:35:40.737 --> 00:35:47.405
I'm out there the next day with a completely different app and then just like going through that loop until we had something that people could like pretty seamlessly use.

00:35:48.942 --> 00:35:55.909
I think like those are the reps that I wish every designer could go through.

00:35:55.909 --> 00:36:11.726
I think if you've never designed for clients and you have maybe like two occasions to present work to them and a lot of it has been kind of like popped up by other people in your team, you're not going to see the suffering where a user just doesn't understand how to click through.

00:36:12.882 --> 00:36:14.487
Or you design for the design community.

00:36:14.487 --> 00:36:34.344
Aesthetically it looks, looks pleasing, but like that's totally different than than you know what I think about when I go to an atm and like how things like that from a human you know, human computer interaction perspective is that there are these things that have had to be made as dummy proof as possible.

00:36:34.985 --> 00:36:56.472
Uh, and sort of taking it from that perspective yeah, yeah, this was good for learning house design for the general market, but I was never going to end up being like good as it is, like actually good, like someone who could build something for the design community through that process, but it was helpful and, um, what we ended up with was basically, I have this front end.

00:36:56.472 --> 00:37:01.311
Now people can click through and they can put in a request and they can book it in.

00:37:01.311 --> 00:37:15.789
So that process yeah, I'd like to say it took me, you know that, six weeks of me grinding and building I mean realistically, probably after a few iterations of that and trying to like make things work.

00:37:15.789 --> 00:37:23.259
That could maybe be like three, four months and off the back of that, trying to like make things work.

00:37:23.259 --> 00:37:23.400
That could.

00:37:23.400 --> 00:37:23.947
That could maybe be like three, four months.

00:37:23.918 --> 00:37:24.556
Um, and off the back of that, decide to launch.

00:37:24.556 --> 00:37:25.726
And to launch, I need to get this in front of consumers.

00:37:25.726 --> 00:37:28.050
And so I printed out a lot of leaflets and I went around and I was handing those out on the street.

00:37:28.050 --> 00:37:46.501
I was putting them through people's doors in the areas of london where they were, uh, people had um, money and I thought they'd be like suitable for this and just waiting by my mobile phone to see if people call the number and they book in and they start using it and wait are you still tutoring at this time?

00:37:47.184 --> 00:37:47.445
yeah.

00:37:47.445 --> 00:37:51.817
So I'm still tutoring, I'm still, uh yeah, trying to make it work for that.

00:37:51.817 --> 00:37:55.706
So, um, what happened was it was pretty quiet.

00:37:55.706 --> 00:38:05.313
It was pretty quiet and I didn't get a huge number of calls and we got a couple and then it's like oh, you want to clean that?

00:38:05.313 --> 00:38:07.960
We actually can't support that.

00:38:08.521 --> 00:38:20.554
Oh, you're in the wrong part of london and we don't take mink coats, sorry, yeah exactly um, and then, um, we did get a few through.

00:38:20.554 --> 00:38:22.222
You know that we got the business started.

00:38:22.222 --> 00:38:27.099
People are starting to use it a little bit, um, and the product was kind of working.

00:38:27.099 --> 00:38:29.646
But there was this problem we just didn't have the volume.

00:38:29.646 --> 00:38:43.541
And this is this classic thing with marketplaces that once you get things started, firstly, your value proposition isn't great at the start because you don't have a huge range of suppliers, you don't have a huge range of buyers to offer to these suppliers.

00:38:43.541 --> 00:38:45.947
So my suppliers are calling me up saying, like, where are the orders?

00:38:45.947 --> 00:38:54.302
Um, and this is kind of called the cold start problem in marketplaces, where you base as big as you can early to make it more valuable.

00:38:54.302 --> 00:38:56.289
Um, so that was a bit of a problem.

00:38:57.092 --> 00:39:14.440
And the other thing is, in any marketplace you want to be balancing cost per acquisition versus the lifetime value, um, so if you haven't heard of these jargon terms, cost per acquisition you know what is the total amount of money you've spent, including your own labor my case handing out stuff door to door to be able to get someone on boards.

00:39:14.440 --> 00:39:26.146
You can do the maths and figure out a number for that and then you can work out what was your margin times, how long you think they'll keep using the platform to work at lifetime value, and you really need to get paid back If you're bootstrapping.

00:39:26.146 --> 00:39:27.425
It needs to be pretty quick.

00:39:27.425 --> 00:39:41.141
So what I was doing myself, um, I was going to run through all my money, which was basically nothing, pretty quick unless it took off, which was basically nothing.

00:39:41.141 --> 00:39:41.925
It's pretty quick unless it took off.

00:39:41.945 --> 00:39:42.827
Yeah, I tried a bit more on the paid side.

00:39:42.827 --> 00:39:55.461
I tried a few cross promotions with other organizations, so I started exploring different marketing channels, um, but it became pretty clear that this was, um, not going to be as successful.

00:39:55.461 --> 00:39:59.192
A bigger company as I was initially expecting.

00:39:59.192 --> 00:40:04.652
And then, while I'm sort of like working through the motions here, washio, this US-based company.

00:40:04.652 --> 00:40:09.387
That is like doing the same model, which is called Folds.

00:40:09.688 --> 00:40:10.391
No pun intended.

00:40:10.851 --> 00:40:16.507
Sorry and I apologize, so it wasn't working there.

00:40:16.507 --> 00:40:37.231
I was speaking to our customers customers and like people who would be prospective customers about it, and it turns out the dynamics are pretty interesting about the buyer behavior um, where essentially, if you are somebody who might use this and has a discretionary income either, a a lot of it, unfortunately, is men who have a wife who stay at home.

00:40:37.231 --> 00:40:38.713
I don't know why it's that ginger dynamic.

00:40:38.713 --> 00:40:46.650
There's probably a switcheroo in other people's lives, but it was often that way around and so those people did not want the service because they had it done at home.

00:40:46.650 --> 00:40:52.853
You had a lot of people who, in Britain in particular, didn't really value their time and so they're happy to do it.

00:41:02.820 --> 00:41:12.980
Um, you had also, uh, a lot of supply in a really convenient place compared to being at home to hand over your dry, your cleaning and being at home pick it up again, whereas you could actually go on the train and see like a dry cleaner right by your train station, right on your.

00:41:12.980 --> 00:41:20.684
So like a lot of the demand was actually being satisfied by these other methods, which starts rather would work.

00:41:20.684 --> 00:41:34.043
Now, this wasn't like a huge, huge time commitment for me to like figure these things out, but it was a bit disappointing because you realize the market size which you think is like scalable, everyone's going to use it is well, actually it's only the people who are earning over 100k.

00:41:34.565 --> 00:41:48.612
right then bring the people who don't live near a train station and there's, I would say there's one other piece to it that I've used services like this, and there's one other piece to it that I think comes into it, which is a little subconscious but and it's hard to quantify sometimes.

00:41:48.612 --> 00:42:04.143
But it's like there's preferences right between sort of like I have my sort of like everyday t-shirts, which doesn't really matter, could be warm, you know, uh, warm and warm, and then I have like, uh, stuff I have from hugo boss where I'm like, okay, here's the deal, okay, let me just write down.

00:42:04.143 --> 00:42:05.505
Okay, so here's how we're gonna do it.

00:42:05.505 --> 00:42:30.737
You can do tap cold, but then you're gonna hang dry, but this other one that looks similar, that one can go in at low, like there's, like sometimes there's these like things, um, that make it hard, that sometimes you also worry, I think, on your, on your nice stuff sometimes that like people won't read the label right or whatever, and you're like you know, so there's, there's, there's sometimes that friction I mean.

00:42:31.518 --> 00:42:42.947
The thing I would say that is good in hindsight of the approach I took is it took me six months to realize all these dynamics about the business and I have spoken to 100 people in that time.

00:42:42.947 --> 00:42:55.128
And what I think a lot of people do is they invest three years in a project like that or they, yeah you know, raise immediately and suddenly you discover it's that you have to kind of keep doing it for two years.

00:42:55.128 --> 00:43:06.369
It's a lot of your entrepreneurial life doing it, and so there's a lot to be said for just being scrappy and getting kind of stuck in realizing all these things and then just being able to move on.

00:43:06.369 --> 00:43:24.521
Um, and so what I did is I ended up selling the technology that I'd built to the biggest dry cleaner of my suppliers because they wanted it for their order management, and then I had a whole bunch of data about the dry cleaners which I then used to jump into my next startup and I'd kind of got moving.

00:43:24.521 --> 00:43:25.244
And it cost me.

00:43:25.867 --> 00:43:29.420
Six months were quite fun six months where I picked up a lot of like learning.

00:43:29.420 --> 00:43:32.447
Yeah, yeah, it was okay.

00:43:32.447 --> 00:43:33.568
You know that that's.

00:43:33.568 --> 00:43:36.661
That's a better, I'll say so that's so, that's so great.

00:43:36.780 --> 00:43:38.844
And now you're stacking that learning on the first learning.

00:43:38.905 --> 00:43:50.563
It's something you've got two, two companies worth of of learnings to take into the next venture totally I mean I think in that second venture I did about six months worth of work in terms of what took.

00:43:50.563 --> 00:43:54.322
What took in the first venture in about two weeks and then the third venture.

00:43:54.322 --> 00:43:57.951
I'm getting it done in like a couple of days, like you really start to speed up.

00:43:58.472 --> 00:43:59.293
Oh, so fast.

00:43:59.293 --> 00:44:03.568
I bet if you and I sat here for about six hours we could fire up a company.

00:44:03.568 --> 00:44:05.873
You know what I mean.

00:44:05.873 --> 00:44:13.588
Like, you get really good at those processes and know how to like sort of connect those dots and pull people together and sort of get something going.

00:44:13.588 --> 00:44:15.385
So it gets much faster, which is awesome.

00:44:15.907 --> 00:44:20.061
It's a skill set, yeah, and so I going.

00:44:20.061 --> 00:44:21.222
So it gets much faster, which is awesome.

00:44:21.222 --> 00:44:21.884
It's a skill set, yeah and um.

00:44:21.884 --> 00:44:36.945
So I talked a little bit about, like what next, and what I saw is that the dry cleaners, um, all had this big problem, which is that when the order comes in and their driver isn't available, then the owner of that store, who's like meant to be running a business, has to hop in the back of their car.

00:44:36.945 --> 00:44:42.835
They're sticking the shirts from the back seat, they're driving down like those owners hated that.

00:44:42.835 --> 00:44:48.436
Can you picture, like thinking you own your own business and you're now climbing into the back of your car?

00:44:48.559 --> 00:44:54.463
it's like pick up and someone's yelling at you on the other end when you get there and you're like why did I do that?

00:44:54.463 --> 00:44:57.353
You know yeah this driver.

00:44:57.735 --> 00:45:14.800
So, um, and this is a really common thing as well these new entrepreneurs which is like the first few ideas you do, they're sort of obvious ones, they're ones that maybe you felt and then by being in the game, so by being in the market, you start to uncover things that nobody else is really thinking about, and so at this point it became obvious.

00:45:14.800 --> 00:45:28.804
Actually finding drivers in london is really, really difficult, and london has the most amazing food scene you would ever imagine, like you can literally eat from any country in the world.

00:45:28.804 --> 00:45:34.186
I mean, I think there's actually like a restaurant for every single country in the world uh, maybe barring antarctica.

00:45:34.186 --> 00:45:37.302
So we've got all of these deliveries needed to do, for that.

00:45:37.302 --> 00:45:37.989
E-commerce is huge.

00:45:37.989 --> 00:45:38.335
Everyone's ordering things online.

00:45:38.335 --> 00:45:38.396
You've got all of these deliveries needed to do, for that.

00:45:38.396 --> 00:45:39.059
E-commerce is huge.

00:45:39.059 --> 00:45:40.423
Everyone's ordering things online.

00:45:40.804 --> 00:46:01.206
You've got all these other like on-demand services like uber, um, which has us on-demand drop off for things now they're all spinning up, everyone's competing for the drivers, and so I took this view of like maybe we can get in there and provide a platform to connect all of these employers of drivers with the drivers themselves.

00:46:01.206 --> 00:46:11.389
Nice, so, um, if you picture kind of uh postmates, or grab one of these, they have like an operations layer that does that all for them.

00:46:11.389 --> 00:46:15.967
That's great big company that can afford to like build all that tech.

00:46:15.967 --> 00:46:18.672
If you're like a takeaway, you have no access to that.

00:46:18.672 --> 00:46:22.010
Your, your like logistics layer is your contact book in your phone.

00:46:22.010 --> 00:46:26.262
So the vast majority of companies don't have access to this.

00:46:26.262 --> 00:46:28.226
And so I'm off to the races again.

00:46:28.226 --> 00:46:31.440
I'm spinning up the, the mvp, like the draft.

00:46:31.702 --> 00:47:07.425
I'm going around to the uh the companies straight down um kingsland road, which has like about 50 different takeaways on it signing twice as fast now, like in terms of spinning up, asking what I'm asking, how I'm asking right exactly everyone signed up spreadsheet, the works, don't have to do everything on like build my own app, anything like that, it's just people text me when they need a driver, I call the driver, that's how it gets validated, and so right at the start, you know, it's simply running this tiny little operation to try and connect all the different employers in london to all different drivers in london.

00:47:08.067 --> 00:47:09.369
And how can we connect these?

00:47:09.369 --> 00:47:31.210
And then slowly kind of backfilling with technology where we're sort of realizing, okay, well, this is how we need to do this, and we had this quite kind of like I would say clever view that essentially you can have a driver that needs to go to three spots and so you can then route them to the three spots and that like adds a lot of value to everybody because like drivers earning more and the people get their food quicker and things like that.

00:47:31.210 --> 00:47:43.103
So, um, we're starting to figure these things out ourselves just over the phone, like figuring stuff out on google maps, and then we can just build that into the platform straight away, and that's how we start to sort of build the tech around that.

00:47:44.244 --> 00:47:45.126
So that's amazing.

00:47:45.126 --> 00:47:47.090
I love that with such a.

00:47:47.090 --> 00:48:00.193
It's such a great journey and I think and and you know I mean I've said this before, but I think I love hearing that journey from coming out of school to to that place, where you're already third time around.

00:48:00.193 --> 00:48:20.112
You're doing it quick, you're setting it up, you're getting it running and you're also just validating for yourself that you caught on to something much, much faster by that third time and it's such a great way to approach it and so many good learnings in that, in that period um big time.

00:48:21.001 --> 00:48:21.382
I love that.

00:48:21.382 --> 00:48:23.987
Now, where did where did like so?

00:48:23.987 --> 00:48:31.208
So what was the spark from a workflow and I have to know, from a design perspective, workflow is just is just gorgeous.

00:48:31.208 --> 00:48:42.954
So like where, where, when did the when did the spark sort of happen for workflow and sort of what started that in motion?

00:48:44.280 --> 00:48:53.710
So I ended up selling the tech for that company and again it actually wasn't that lucrative, it turns out.

00:48:53.710 --> 00:49:09.059
The margins were pretty tight and I went and then built another marketplace that then actually caught on and really, really worked out, and it was this on-demand staffing platform where you could book in waiters or nurses or like warehouse operators.

00:49:09.059 --> 00:49:26.137
So I'm running this company we had 40 people in the team and I am managing a really really high performance products and engineering function in one area and I'm also managing this quite chaotic marketing function in the other area.

00:49:26.137 --> 00:49:27.715
I loved our creators.

00:49:27.715 --> 00:49:31.876
We had some very talented creatives it was chaos, yeah, I've been there, yeah, and very talented creatives.

00:49:31.876 --> 00:49:35.563
It was chaos, yeah, yeah, been there, yeah, and that's the way it is, unfortunately.

00:49:36.304 --> 00:49:43.867
So I mean, it was just frustrating to me that where this chaos was coming from, because I don't actually think it was because of the people.

00:49:43.867 --> 00:49:52.054
We had really really good people and I just started looking over almost enviously at how our engineering team was able to operate and all the tech they had available.

00:49:52.054 --> 00:49:58.094
So, to kind of break that down, our engineering team had centralized review in github.

00:49:58.094 --> 00:50:01.043
That is like the de facto way you now review code.

00:50:01.043 --> 00:50:12.693
You wouldn't dream like doing what they did 50 years ago, where they'd like you'd zip up the code base and just email it to someone yeah, yeah, exactly, and I'll unpack it and then I'll compile it and then I'll talk to you about it.

00:50:12.733 --> 00:50:14.798
Yeah, exactly that happens.

00:50:14.798 --> 00:50:22.923
And then it moved to this technology called FTP, which is basically a picture dropbox for code and it's like one person can check it out, like a library card.

00:50:22.923 --> 00:50:24.954
They can check out the code and everyone else it's locked.

00:50:37.590 --> 00:50:39.335
It was still not not super efficient, and then it moved to centralizing view.

00:50:39.335 --> 00:50:40.820
Oh, you know what that I just had this flashback of dreamweaver did.

00:50:40.820 --> 00:50:43.487
Yeah, back in the day I remember on dreamweaver being able to like work on a, a website, and like check out those, those files.

00:50:43.487 --> 00:50:52.211
Uh, you know, from a web design development perspective, um, or when all of a sudden I get flashbacks of like corral draw and like dreamweaver and stuff, but that's so great.

00:50:52.231 --> 00:50:54.693
So this is essentially it's dog food.

00:50:54.693 --> 00:51:09.806
Right, you're dog fooding the fact that you built a company and as you were built, a company you looked at which was very slack right In their pivot, but like you saw a problem and you solved it for yourself and then took that into your next iteration.

00:51:10.427 --> 00:51:12.175
Exactly that, exactly that for yourself, and then took that into your next iteration.

00:51:12.175 --> 00:51:12.534
Exactly that, exactly that.

00:51:12.534 --> 00:51:17.766
You know how do we solve this very messy process of managing all of these files.

00:51:17.766 --> 00:51:25.673
People just you know they just dump a file at you in slack and you lose it three days later and you can't find it again and the whole process is like quite chaotic.

00:51:25.673 --> 00:51:35.516
So on the one hand, I had this like idea maybe we could borrow some of the ideas from engineering, bring them over to the creative world.

00:51:35.516 --> 00:51:37.079
Part of that was centralized review.

00:51:37.079 --> 00:51:38.751
Part of that is automated testing.

00:51:38.751 --> 00:51:57.536
So in code you now just set up a testing suite, checks the website's gonna run smoothly and it means as an engineer, you're not clicking on every link to test it works, whereas in creative, you know, it's so easy to like drop a full stop or you put a typo in somewhere and you just end up publishing it.

00:51:58.317 --> 00:52:14.041
You know, yeah, every single one of my linkedin post has the shameful edited mark because I've I totally, I have half my things have that edited because I'm like that looks great and even the timer counts down, yeah, and then it publishes.

00:52:14.041 --> 00:52:20.699
And right, when it publishes, I go oh, zoom it, it's like I've transposed two of those letters or whatever it is.

00:52:20.699 --> 00:52:21.420
I totally get it.

00:52:22.472 --> 00:52:28.159
So again, these ideas that, like engineering, is like decades ahead of how creative is running.

00:52:28.159 --> 00:52:31.579
So I'm like I'm inspired a little bit by this and actually ahead of how creative is running.

00:52:31.579 --> 00:52:36.646
So I'm like I'm inspired a little bit by this and, um, actually approaching this, I started to get a little bit more disciplined about how I'd approach new ideas.

00:52:36.646 --> 00:52:41.059
So previously I'd just see, hey, here's some problem that I have.

00:52:41.059 --> 00:52:42.181
That's kind of where I started.

00:52:42.181 --> 00:52:48.472
I feel this pain and then, kind of moving through it forward, through these businesses, I'm then going and speaking to customers.

00:52:48.472 --> 00:52:56.099
I'm saying, oh, here's a problem that I think you have and I'm going to tell you the solution and you can just tell me if you'd pay for that and use that.

00:52:56.099 --> 00:53:10.876
But then at this stage there's this kind of like next level of discovery where you say you know what, I don't even know what the problem is, forget the solution, I don't even know what their problem is, and that's a really, really strange place to start.

00:53:10.876 --> 00:53:19.918
But what it means is you're just picking a niche, you're picking a group of users who have some common behavior and you're then just going to go and listen and learn.

00:53:19.918 --> 00:53:38.543
And so what I did is I then, when I was sort of exploring this idea of, like the chaotic world of sending files around and managing your creative work is, I spoke to to, I think, 30 different agency owners and I reached out to anybody I knew, which wasn't very many, maybe three or four.

00:53:38.543 --> 00:53:39.932
And then I went on upwork.

00:53:39.932 --> 00:53:43.302
I posted job ads saying, like, would everyone like want to speak to me?

00:53:43.302 --> 00:53:45.476
I'll pay whatever your hourly rate is.

00:53:45.476 --> 00:53:51.858
And I was emailing people, I'll pay your hourly rates and, like, most people don't pick you up on that because they just want to know you're respecting their time.

00:53:51.858 --> 00:53:57.030
So I sit down, I'm listening, I'm like, hey, take me through.

00:53:57.030 --> 00:53:58.574
What's going on?

00:53:58.574 --> 00:54:00.318
Like where are you frustrated?

00:54:00.318 --> 00:54:01.380
What does your day look like?

00:54:01.380 --> 00:54:09.235
And they're just starting to list out all these issues and I'm getting like a map of like how everybody's working and, um, the reason you do that is.

00:54:09.235 --> 00:54:13.543
You then know what's the number one issue on their plate.

00:54:14.010 --> 00:54:17.721
It's so easy as an entrepreneur to pick out something that is genuinely a pain point.

00:54:17.721 --> 00:54:26.385
It just happens to be pain point number like 256, which they kind of don't have time to go solve, or the money or the budgets go solve.

00:54:26.385 --> 00:54:31.077
If you come in and you just listen to the problems of a particular niche and what's number one in that area.

00:54:31.077 --> 00:54:35.125
You know, this is like the thing that bugs them the most and they will definitely pay for.

00:54:35.125 --> 00:54:45.885
And the thing that came out from like creative agency owners is like getting feedback really hurts and like managing the process of collaborating really, really hurts.

00:54:45.885 --> 00:54:51.541
And so I mean just sort of like to recap I've come from this pain I felt myself.

00:54:55.809 --> 00:54:58.590
I've then discovered that it's actually a bigger problem around creative collaboration and feedback that could be figured out.

00:54:58.590 --> 00:55:05.115
And so, hearing those problems, I then went and built a deck that just said here are the three problems I think I've heard.

00:55:05.115 --> 00:55:08.237
Here is the three things I think you want a solution.

00:55:08.237 --> 00:55:09.559
Went back to the same people.

00:55:09.559 --> 00:55:10.943
Is this correct?

00:55:10.943 --> 00:55:12.914
Which one of these problems is actually the most important?

00:55:12.914 --> 00:55:13.715
Oh, it's this one.

00:55:13.715 --> 00:55:15.559
Great, are these?

00:55:15.559 --> 00:55:18.112
Uh, is this solution set useful?

00:55:18.112 --> 00:55:21.744
What other attributes would you need of this solution to make it work?

00:55:21.744 --> 00:55:31.255
And that basically mapped out our initial feature set for this new company and it was super validated and I knew I already had like 30 customers basically lined up good to go when we built it.

00:55:31.976 --> 00:55:38.606
So, that is, I would say, like the best way you can go about like getting yourself started.

00:55:39.311 --> 00:55:39.952
That's amazing.

00:55:39.952 --> 00:55:52.090
Now, what was the timeframe there when you were so, was this were you still at the um, at the previous um, like and, and had you sort of started exploring this, or was this post acquisition or post sale sort of started exploring this, or was this post-acquisition or post-sale?

00:55:52.090 --> 00:55:53.612
Then you started exploring this?

00:55:54.355 --> 00:56:09.867
yeah, so this is actually post-sale and I had been exploring like a different problem, um, which was around how people talk to each other over meetings, and I felt like zoom meetings are a nightmare to be able to like collaborate with people on.

00:56:09.867 --> 00:56:14.615
Yeah, so I was exploring like what if we had something which allowed people to have a zoom meeting?

00:56:14.615 --> 00:56:17.753
But it's kind of also a part of the apps that you were using.

00:56:17.753 --> 00:56:22.635
So I was exploring that, realized that like the technology to build that was going to be really, really difficult.

00:56:22.635 --> 00:56:35.523
So, um, then I just started like expanding to other ideas and so I'm kind of at this, at this point in my life, I have a few more funds behind me and I have the time to be able to like go and do this properly.

00:56:35.523 --> 00:56:52.139
And so the time frame for that validation period I think the first round of conversations took maybe six, four to six weeks and then kind of conversations where I'm like really dialing in exactly what we need is like maybe another four weeks, nice and what was like.

00:56:52.762 --> 00:56:58.920
I'm so curious as a, as a, now I I have a, I have an affliction, I have a problem.

00:56:58.920 --> 00:57:16.476
The problem is is that I try every physical and digital product that I can get my hands on, um, and so on the physical side, I buy everything, I try it and then I sell it on Mercari or on Facebook Marketplace because I just want to know how it works.

00:57:16.476 --> 00:57:17.456
You know what I mean.

00:57:17.456 --> 00:57:40.938
Like soon as these things come out, like I'm like trying it when it's rough and I'm giving prototype feedback, like I'm, you know, and I just love sort of seeing the evolution of some of these sort of things.

00:57:40.938 --> 00:57:58.804
And so obviously, in my era I've, you know, I've tried like the markups and you know, and Miro, and obviously Figma, and I think about like frameio and I think about all these sort of adjacent kind of services.

00:57:58.929 --> 00:58:24.594
But what I'm super interested in is that it seems like one of the things that you didn't do or haven't done yet is niche down into a specific Like this is for flat file creative feedback, or this is for video and you're going to go after frameio, or this is for website feedback, so you're going to go after a markup or whoever else is in that space.

00:58:24.594 --> 00:58:29.693
Like what, what was it that sort of has kept you in this?

00:58:29.693 --> 00:58:37.318
Like no, my circle is sort of wider and I eat all of those things because my solution sort of you know.

00:58:37.318 --> 00:58:38.201
Does that?

00:58:38.201 --> 00:58:39.277
What was the?

00:58:39.277 --> 00:58:45.438
Was that a conscious decision, or did you find yourself just sort of not constricting past a certain point?

00:58:46.590 --> 00:58:49.280
Yeah, it's definitely been customer led.

00:58:49.280 --> 00:59:09.280
So, to give some context to people listening, the software company I run, workflow basically allows you to add any assets or creative piece of work you're working on, like a website, for example, and then share a link to that to any collaborator you're working on and they can come and put comments on it and do video feedback on it and this kind of thing.

00:59:09.280 --> 00:59:17.117
And we've had this kind of question of like should we just do one asset type really really well?

00:59:17.117 --> 00:59:21.744
Um, for example, you know frameio do video really well.

00:59:21.744 --> 00:59:44.480
The reality is that, like, most designers these days are using more and more different mediums together, different mediums together, and marketing and creative teams are doing that as well to be able to like launch a message, but through like videos on tiktok and also they're doing some print ads and then they're also oh, I can tell you so.

00:59:44.519 --> 00:59:53.242
So a use case here, um, which is super relevant and which help will hopefully help explain it also is so for our social posts.

00:59:53.242 --> 00:59:54.373
We use Buffer, right?

00:59:54.373 --> 01:00:02.159
So Buffer, basically, we go in and we sort of schedule those and my social media manager, carmela, she goes in and posts them and then she adds some comments.

01:00:02.159 --> 01:00:09.592
So I have a Buffer login with a Buffer account for myself that has comments tied to it that I need to go answer.

01:00:09.592 --> 01:00:16.576
Then that usually comes into Slack and she says, hey, I built out a bunch of social media posts.

01:00:16.576 --> 01:00:19.543
They are now in Buffer, can you go review them?

01:00:19.543 --> 01:00:22.659
So that is one sort of like thing I need to go do.

01:00:22.659 --> 01:00:31.262
Then we've got our UI UX designers that are working in Figma and they're building out new pages for the platform and for the marketing site.

01:00:31.262 --> 01:00:34.710
And then they go into Figma and they comment and they say, hey, pages for the platform and for the marketing site.

01:00:34.710 --> 01:00:37.347
And then they go into Figma and they comment and they say, hey, can you review these things and let me know what you think?

01:00:37.347 --> 01:00:40.778
So and then that usually comes back to Slack, where I then have to.

01:00:40.778 --> 01:00:43.918
I get a message that says, hey, can you go into Figma and review these things?

01:00:43.918 --> 01:00:46.719
So now I have Buffer on one side and I have Figma on the other side.

01:00:53.989 --> 01:00:57.661
Then, from a video perspective, I'm shooting a video myself and we're getting testimonials in and I'm taking that and I'm putting it in frameio and frame.

01:00:57.661 --> 01:01:09.101
Basically, you know, I add that, or Carmela adds social memes or whatever it is that she adds, and she says to me in frame in comments hey, can you review this stuff and let me know what you think?

01:01:09.101 --> 01:01:13.891
And then that usually goes into Slack where it's like hey, I put some stuff in a frame, can you go review the stuff that's in frame?

01:01:13.891 --> 01:01:21.373
So this is just three things between website or product development and social media and video.

01:01:21.373 --> 01:01:22.675
And it's just those three.

01:01:22.715 --> 01:01:30.840
But even thinking about print, creative or copywriting for blogs you know, a blog would be another example we do it in Google Drive.

01:01:30.840 --> 01:01:34.498
So then somebody does it in Google Drive and then they take that and they comment.

01:01:34.498 --> 01:01:39.753
That is three or four, and obviously bigger companies have way more than this.

01:01:39.753 --> 01:01:48.291
But these are three or four disparate platforms that all have comments that are not tied to each other, that all have different accounts, that are not tied to each other.

01:01:48.291 --> 01:01:50.016
And so me as the stakeholder.

01:01:51.418 --> 01:01:58.523
I have to keep up with how many people are commenting to me on how many tasks on how many platforms that I have to sort of.

01:01:58.523 --> 01:02:06.873
So the overhead even for me as a single person is a lot to just sit down for a second and go how many comments across.

01:02:06.873 --> 01:02:10.583
How many platforms do I need to review and give feedback on?

01:02:10.583 --> 01:02:12.650
Across?

01:02:12.650 --> 01:02:37.601
How many platforms do I need to review and give feedback on, to which we will either close all of those out in individual platforms or we won't, and I will need to come back to those platforms again before those are reviewed and approved yeah, we've honestly been inundated with these like single purpose tools from Silicon Valley and that's kind of the playbook, like you choose one very specific thing and then you give the user a bit of like incremental value in that one area.

01:02:38.052 --> 01:02:48.838
But the kind of cost we're now seeing is we're using so many different tools I mean even for just like one asset, like one design asset, forget across different mediums.

01:02:48.838 --> 01:03:01.400
That might go from an idea that you had in a Zoom call that got shared on Slack, now it's in a task manager and then you have to go and build it in Figma and then you end up sharing that in Slack again.

01:03:01.849 --> 01:03:05.858
You have all these different places where you have and the knowledge for the teams that are using these.

01:03:05.858 --> 01:03:10.072
I was in a team that was heavily using Miro and heavily using Figma.

01:03:10.072 --> 01:03:13.478
I was like, can we just use Figma?

01:03:13.478 --> 01:03:16.443
Can we just at least consolidate one sort of?

01:03:16.443 --> 01:03:29.179
But how easy it gets once you get everybody in one ecosystem and one platform to be able to do these things saves not only yourself but saves so many hours across the whole organization.

01:03:29.889 --> 01:03:42.717
Yeah, I mean, that is exactly it, and I think one company does this really well is you look at, like the Apple ecosystem, and you just know that everything speaks to each other and you know that it's a very simple experience to work in that space.

01:03:42.717 --> 01:04:02.335
And so something I'm kind of inspired by is what if we can bring all of these different creative assets that people are doing and these different conversations they're having into one space so it can kind of be organized and kept in a way that's not a huge overhead to everybody and they're not constantly switching and distracted by notifications and six inboxes and things.

01:04:02.335 --> 01:04:07.909
So that's kind of where we've been led on this and that's been a strongly customer-led um desire.

01:04:07.909 --> 01:04:09.913
You know people have just said to us like we are, we are stressed.

01:04:09.913 --> 01:04:11.094
That's been a strongly customer led desire.

01:04:11.094 --> 01:04:16.498
You know people have just said to us like we are, we are stressed, yeah.

01:04:17.059 --> 01:04:25.463
Totally, and I think even even sometimes, you know, I think we're we're trying to do the same thing too from a from a Sackless perspective, is not?

01:04:25.463 --> 01:04:28.090
You know, it's very easy for us to sort of we've gotten the.

01:04:28.090 --> 01:04:29.052
You know, do for us to sort of we've gotten the.

01:04:29.052 --> 01:04:33.418
You know, do you just niche down right, is this just for travel and restaurants or whatever?

01:04:33.418 --> 01:04:45.554
But you see, even on a global macro, on a macro scale, that we have the same problems in our personal and professional lives.

01:04:45.554 --> 01:04:50.715
Name the amount of apps and platforms you use and then name the amount of places you save and try and remember stuff on all of those things.01:04:51.177 --> 01:05:10.240


So for me, having another platform like a Belly to review restaurants, that's one more app that I need to invite my wife to, and I've got to make sure I only put or I only save stuff in there and I don't do it also on Google Maps or OpenTable or Talk or Resi.01:05:10.240 --> 01:05:13.019


It just keeps going and going and going.01:05:13.019 --> 01:05:43.376


And so, you know, I think it's so interesting that I think you're going to have more and more of this, where it's like we had this niche down sort of principle because it was super easy to like identify a problem or an opportunity area, put money towards it, grow a team, make some revenue Ah, this is something that we can grow, but that's just going to get to a point where no one's going to want to have to manage 200 services and platforms across their lives, like it's going to have to come down into something that all works together.01:05:43.958 --> 01:05:44.260


Totally.01:05:44.260 --> 01:05:57.951


I think people are getting that app fatigue and, additionally, something I'm very inspired by is you see people starting to get really intentional about the platforms that they add into their either their own life or their team's life.01:05:57.951 --> 01:06:05.954


So there's one agent I spoke to who took the very extreme view that they were not going to have any chats.01:06:05.954 --> 01:06:08.400


They're not going to be distracted by a chat throughout the day.01:06:08.400 --> 01:06:20.420


Now, I don't think many organizations could do that, but I think them taking that view was this stance of like we're going to control the narrative and the conversation around this so we're not distracted from the work that we're doing.01:06:20.420 --> 01:06:34.079


We're going to have some set times when we catch up, when that's going to allow us to do really good quality, deep work, and so for that, you can see, I think that's like a brilliant bit of kind of orchestration of the environment to allow you to do really good quality work.01:06:34.882 --> 01:06:37.130


Um, and there's I think ai is going to help a lot with that.01:06:37.130 --> 01:06:46.070


I think orchestration is the perfect word for it like we've tried to do it on slack, where you've got these apps that sort of tell people that you're you're in focus mode or whatever it is.01:06:46.070 --> 01:07:04.929


But I think a lot of that stuff's going to start happening automatically, where your system can sort of tell that you're like into something and it's the, it's something that was also on your to-do list that you you've been putting off for a little bit like, and so because of that, it's just going to sort of like block things out and then when you come back to life, that it's going to go hey, I got four things.01:07:04.929 --> 01:07:10.695


You need to do these, you need to talk to sue, you need to email this thing, you know whatever it's going to get better.01:07:10.695 --> 01:07:23.847


But until that takes place, I can totally see how doing that sort of manual curation of platforms and services to try and like over, you know, to help relieve that overwhelm and stress.01:07:25.429 --> 01:07:26.673


Have you seen Design Joy?01:07:26.673 --> 01:07:36.090


No, we um the.01:07:36.090 --> 01:07:43.811


So it's this one man um design subscription agency who is cranking some huge numbers, uh, like 145 000 a month kind of thing, and he has this policy that he doesn't take meetings with clients.01:07:43.811 --> 01:07:49.751


And you know, I think every agency owner is like that doesn't make sense, that's not going to work.01:07:49.751 --> 01:07:54.175


But he has put in place those constraints and builds a business around it.01:07:54.175 --> 01:07:59.842


Yeah, that's actually works for him and I think there's just this like beauty in, like adding in these constraints.01:07:59.842 --> 01:08:02.130


But, yes, you lose on this marginal gain of.01:08:02.130 --> 01:08:13.391


Yeah, maybe you could have took a meeting and maybe got one extra client, but it costs to you know the rest totally I love that, and I also love that when it's like most people would go.01:08:13.452 --> 01:08:14.173


That would never work.01:08:14.173 --> 01:08:21.743


You're gonna have to build relationships, you're gonna have to like xyz, and then you get someone on the other side going uh, nope, you don't.01:08:21.743 --> 01:08:25.416


That's my favorite.01:08:25.416 --> 01:08:26.157


I love.01:08:26.157 --> 01:08:29.483


I love those sort of things um, where does the?01:08:29.483 --> 01:08:31.930


Design portion of this become because it's so elegant.01:08:31.930 --> 01:08:45.893


It's like, uh, I mean, I would have, I wouldn't have said physics, I would have said you were an architecture, uh, you know, uh, like, where did, where did the simplicity and the and the design uh, especially on on the ui come from?01:08:47.095 --> 01:08:54.405


so again, there's a part of this that is very consumer-led.01:08:54.405 --> 01:08:57.359


I spoke to people they said they hated cluttered apps.01:08:57.359 --> 01:09:01.020


You know, click up requires a PhD is one of the phrases that someone said.01:09:01.020 --> 01:09:02.994


But there's also a part of that.01:09:02.994 --> 01:09:12.497


That's just me and you know I'm a bit weird when I hear the radio turn on to onto ads.01:09:12.497 --> 01:09:16.355


That has to go down, like I can't have that extra noise in my head.01:09:16.355 --> 01:09:25.578


Um, when you know you finish like watching a video, a movie on, like Amazon prime, it comes up a little pop up for the next, um, next movie.01:09:25.578 --> 01:09:26.520


Totally understand.01:09:26.520 --> 01:09:27.542


They want to get you on the next thing.01:09:27.542 --> 01:09:29.032


I hate that.01:09:29.032 --> 01:09:33.300


I should build a chrono extension that goes and finds the css and hides that.01:09:33.900 --> 01:09:36.246


That's amazing I love that, um.01:09:36.246 --> 01:09:49.103


So I really really appreciate clarity and like space to think and even like small little distractions can really throw me off, and so kind of like reflecting that in the products.01:09:49.103 --> 01:10:03.051


One of the things that I really wanted from this space is it's something where the creative work is front and center, like it takes up the maximum amount of space we can possibly give it and nothing else is going to get in the way of that piece of creative work.01:10:03.051 --> 01:10:08.153


And so little things I don't think I think a lot of designers will pick up on, but I don't think a lot of other users will pick up on.01:10:08.153 --> 01:10:32.971


Things like if, like, if you have color in a UI and the color of like some green button is a slightly different color to something that's green on the design, suddenly your brain is just processing a clash of these colors instead of taking in the design, and so I kind of like had this obsession with stripping out everything that was going to get in the way of that piece of creative work, and that meant reduced work and that meant reduced colors.01:10:33.132 --> 01:10:34.917


That meant taking out a lot of functionality.01:10:35.417 --> 01:10:41.359


It meant revisiting a bunch of design norms which I think people take for granted.01:10:41.399 --> 01:10:50.681


For example, normally you want every screen to kind of present all the options it can do at any time, and so so it kind of ends up in a cockpit of buttons.01:10:50.681 --> 01:11:10.636


But for me I actually want these screens to be a presentation of the information first, and to give you functionality second, a distant second, and so things like things that only appear on hover, or bits of functionality that you have to have a keyboard shortcut to go and access, and you train the user to do that.01:11:10.636 --> 01:11:13.497


For example, to do search, you just pull up the command bar.01:11:13.497 --> 01:11:22.114


Most designers know how to do that, and we do have that part of onboarding, but it means we don't have a little search icon in the top right, which every other platform would have.01:11:22.114 --> 01:11:37.260


So we've really like stripped back everything we can so that there's just the minimum amount on the screen and, um, for me it just makes it a space where you can focus on the work, and that's really what it's all about I, I love it and it's.01:11:37.319 --> 01:11:54.192


I tell you another thing that it does, though, is from a brand and trust perspective, that, because you've hit all of those, it's so elegant and clean that it also subconsciously, I, I think it it from the homepage to when you log in to, when you're using it is.01:11:54.192 --> 01:11:55.975


You just get that.01:11:55.975 --> 01:11:57.319


This is it looks.01:11:57.319 --> 01:12:01.314


You know, I don't, I don't know when you started, but it looks way more mature than I.01:12:01.314 --> 01:12:05.813


Assume that you know what I mean, that it's one of those things that, like it's, it looks like it's.01:12:05.813 --> 01:12:18.939


It's been iterated upon a lot Um and so it looks really nice, but I will say, you know, kudos to you and the team, because that simplicity and that removing doesn't always work.01:12:18.939 --> 01:12:22.413


I'll give you a good example is I don't know if you've ever heard of dovetail.01:12:23.457 --> 01:12:42.274


Like the it's a platform where you can let's say, you and I were doing a zoom video or like this and and I said I want you to give me product feedback and we were recording this I can take that product feedback and put it into Dovetail and then they sort of automated, they get transcripts and then they automate over it and so you can start to highlight.01:12:42.274 --> 01:12:52.322


You know, this person says that's confusing, or this person says that's confusing or whatever it is, and so it's where you can sort of aggregate all of that user feedback.01:12:52.322 --> 01:13:03.881


I have tried my hardest to like this platform and they did a very similar thing where it's very, very clean, like it's supposed to be very sort of straightforward.01:13:03.881 --> 01:13:15.615


But it's one of those that I have spent at least three concerted 30-minute sessions just sitting down sort of trying to get in the flow and just cannot.01:13:15.615 --> 01:13:20.806


And there's something about they have projects and insights and data.01:13:20.806 --> 01:13:26.090


Okay, so I make a project and let's call it homepage feedback.01:13:26.090 --> 01:13:27.414


Well, then I upload.01:13:27.414 --> 01:13:28.719


It says do you want to make a new insight?01:13:28.719 --> 01:13:29.954


And I'm like I don't know, do I?01:13:29.954 --> 01:13:35.761


And then data is is that the output of what I get?01:13:36.149 --> 01:14:20.917


Well, it turns out you have to upload a video and that's called data and like there's this like very specific sort of flow, but it feels like it's one of those that you have to kind of if you know, you know, and I've, I've, I spent like an a good effort amount of time sort of doing it, and then I gave them that feedback and their feedback was like oh well, here's how you're supposed to sort of you know, do it, and I think that's one of those things that like after and this was recently, which is why I also love digging into workflows because I've been through some of those platforms where it has tried to be very clean and sort of minimal, but you also you either take it too far or the labeling and other things are not right and it doesn't become sort of intuitive.01:14:21.630 --> 01:14:41.426


What I would say from a workflow perspective is and working with lots of different creative and management teams in the past is that you've done a great job of being able to make it clean and simple, but also not so stripped down that you have to like be an insider or you've got to be really designy to kind of learn how to use it.01:14:41.426 --> 01:14:49.514


It's simple in the notion sort of way, in that it's simple but it's also like super powerful once you, once you get into it.01:14:49.514 --> 01:15:11.260


So kudos, because that's a, that's a hard, that's a hard thing that you you typically assume that someone in a later stage company has kind of figured out through trial and error and lots of, lots of like negative feedback, but, um, it feels like you guys have have sort of solved that out of the gate that's really, really appreciated, carl and um, to be honest, it has been a lot of uh, a lot of hours.01:15:11.921 --> 01:15:35.039


You know a lot of reps, which is to say, we reach out to everybody that joins the platform and try to get on a call and watch them use it, and we really listen to where people are getting stuck, and so there's a there's a huge amount of yes, there's the sort of artistic stripping away where you can bring your sort of craft and taste to it as a designer, to be able to make it simple.01:15:35.039 --> 01:15:43.978


There's also a lot of just sitting and watching people get stuck, the struggle and then give them just a little bit more information and, like, try and find that right balance.01:15:43.978 --> 01:15:50.978


I think where you get trapped as a designer is if you lean entirely onto your own taste.01:15:50.978 --> 01:15:54.855


You're flying blind because you haven't actually watched enough users using the platform.01:15:54.855 --> 01:16:00.640


Um, so I think that's like a big factor into it and, uh, yeah, kudos to the team who have done a huge amount of that as well.01:16:01.404 --> 01:16:10.320


Um, another thing I would say that's really helped us with this is because we're trying to build this kind of inclusive space where everyone can chip in on design.01:16:10.320 --> 01:16:24.121


You know, it can't be something that is really oriented around power users, and I think, like if you're building figma, you know that your users are fairly tech savvy and they're kind of gonna know what these icons mean and so on.01:16:24.121 --> 01:16:36.439


And we're working in this environment where actually you might be sharing this link to a design with somebody who is like some senior stakeholder who can't like zoom in and some of it is generational also.01:16:36.559 --> 01:16:52.654


I also think it's one of those that, like being being someone born in 79, I always sort of consider myself in that like nintendo generation and and you get this like the people that sort of grew up with nintendo and sega and like game boy and like you know what I mean and the early computers and stuff like that.01:16:52.654 --> 01:17:05.954


There's this like, there's this way of thinking and and interacting with computers that that just sort of a bit older than that it's not as intuitive to think in these sort of systems and patterns.01:17:05.954 --> 01:17:09.476


You, you have to sort of be conscious to train yourself to do that.01:17:09.476 --> 01:17:21.453


So I agree that's super important that being able to send something to someone and have it be as intuitive as Gmail or whatever that someone is used to using is important.01:17:21.994 --> 01:17:34.757


Exactly, we have this phrase, which I don don't like, but one of our customers came up with, which is dinosaur users, who not only are they not tech savvy, they don't want to become tech savvy, just want to get yeah, yeah.01:17:35.420 --> 01:17:36.243


No, it's very specific.01:17:36.243 --> 01:17:40.314


It's not even just sort of I don't have the time, but I've also decided that I'm.01:17:40.314 --> 01:17:49.617


This is not something that I'm gonna like no push or train myself on, so um that's that's a hard sort of nut to crack from a UI UX perspective.01:17:49.757 --> 01:17:49.998


It is.01:17:49.998 --> 01:18:01.278


It's a hard use to build for, but these people are busy, important people often and you want to respect them and their time and I don't think these are idiots.01:18:01.278 --> 01:18:02.935


They just want something that just works.01:18:02.935 --> 01:18:07.994


It's very simple and so really it's like mandates of like how do you build a product that works for those people?01:18:07.994 --> 01:18:10.931


Really forces you to make a whole bunch of decisions.01:18:10.931 --> 01:18:16.112


You know there's a whole bunch of stuff you just can't do when you're thinking about that person.01:18:16.112 --> 01:18:20.101


For example, as soon as you build clusters, the ui it's game over.01:18:20.101 --> 01:18:20.911


They shut the laptop.01:18:20.930 --> 01:18:38.676


you know it's like I can't use this, get somebody else so you suddenly make really, really difficult decisions, to be able to like keep them in the game, and I think that like actually helps everybody else, because then everybody else kind of gets the benefit of something that like has to be quite simple, totally yeah what's so?01:18:39.337 --> 01:18:39.899


so where do you go?01:18:39.899 --> 01:18:40.942


So you've raised a seed.01:18:40.942 --> 01:18:41.523


What's the?01:18:41.523 --> 01:18:43.372


What's the looking forward?01:18:43.372 --> 01:18:44.015


What's the?01:18:44.015 --> 01:18:48.192


What are you, what are you looking forward to, and and what's the sort of?01:18:48.192 --> 01:18:51.539


You know we're uh days away from a new year.01:18:51.539 --> 01:18:53.452


What are you looking forward to in this next year?01:18:54.314 --> 01:18:56.059


yeah, so we are.01:18:56.059 --> 01:19:19.502


We're building this platform that is kind of, as you say, appealing to all these different types of creatives, and I think at this I still think we're very, very early at this stage we are building kind of this space, this place where you can build out your workflow, your, your environment for collaborating on creative work, and it's kind of building the building blocks for people to have that space.01:19:19.502 --> 01:19:43.716


I think what happens this year is we go from something that's very focused on our platform and the fundamentals of can you upload things, can you add comments to specific use cases for different types of user, and where we're starting to go more into the user's world and give people, um, really quick access to this exact kind of use case they need.01:19:43.716 --> 01:19:45.323


Okay, that's that sounds very theoretical.01:19:45.524 --> 01:19:47.675


Let me give you a really concrete example of a company that has nailed it.01:19:47.675 --> 01:19:58.356


So like Notion started out as being this like software builder, where you can build whatever platform you like, and then they realized that users didn't want to build software.01:19:58.356 --> 01:20:15.440


What users want is they want a to-do list or they want a Kanban board or they want a box page for their company, and there's these specific outcomes, and so we've kind of built the building blocks of making a workflow where you can share your work and you can collaborate.01:20:15.440 --> 01:20:22.061


But I think for us next it's like how do we make that super, super accessible for creatives?01:20:22.492 --> 01:20:42.140


instead of you having to set it up, it just comes out of the box with a whole bunch of sensible defaults so that it's like ready to go yeah, if I could pick a box folder or a dropbox folder or a google drive folder and anything that was uploaded to that just all of a sudden became, you know, an action and a thing for me to review, that I wouldn't have.01:20:42.140 --> 01:20:45.092


It's one last link that I would have to like go into.01:20:45.092 --> 01:20:48.801


I would just end end up seeing my inbox and I click it.01:20:48.801 --> 01:20:54.398


And to that point about the dinosaur user, the dinosaur user doesn't have to sort of go into the.01:20:54.398 --> 01:20:55.520


What folder is it?01:20:55.520 --> 01:20:57.689


Did you put it in the new folder or the other folder?01:20:58.631 --> 01:21:20.203


You know, log in, click your inbox and like I want you to watch this thing and then I want you to type your comments, you know, whatever, it is, I could see that like being um super powerful that nail on the head there, which is like how do you, instead of having somebody come to our platform and think how do I set this up?01:21:20.203 --> 01:21:34.338


Yeah, instead going to them where they're already working in places like Dropbox Well, have the platform, go out, connect and bring it all back into the simplicity that you've created is that's super powerful.01:21:35.051 --> 01:21:42.279


So some of the things we're playing with in that space are you know, a lot of creative work is shared in this very casual way through like a screen grab.01:21:42.279 --> 01:21:48.010


Like you won't export a frame from figma necessarily and send that in slack.01:21:48.010 --> 01:21:53.713


You might share the whole thing, but if you want like a specific part of it, you might just screen grab that and just put that in slack.01:21:53.713 --> 01:22:00.237


So we're kind of exploring can we allow people to like, capture parts of their screen and then share that?01:22:00.237 --> 01:22:08.292


But it's actually not just a static png, it's a place where they can then like, add comments and video review and so on, and so it all.01:22:08.292 --> 01:22:14.197


That's kind of in this theme of how can the platform go to where people are working and like the habits they have for sharing work.01:22:14.197 --> 01:22:14.679


That's cool.01:22:15.180 --> 01:22:36.297


And then I also like my brain starts racing to like I could see this little mac app that runs up by your clock and it basically is uh, if you, if you drag and drop something up there, it's just a dropping, but then it also you could have a screenshot alternative that when you do the screenshot alternative, it gives you that like even in Mac it does the preview where you can mark it up and stuff like that.01:22:36.297 --> 01:22:44.260


But if you've got your own, then it basically means it is so interfaceless that you don't really sort of see it.01:22:44.260 --> 01:22:51.738


But what it does is it goes, even if you're not the most power user, you can still get it from yourself to the power.01:22:51.738 --> 01:22:55.511


You start, like with no, like what was the site?01:22:55.511 --> 01:22:56.734


And I can't remember my login.01:22:56.734 --> 01:23:01.573


I don't have the piece of paper, like whatever it is, like it's just, you know, sort of uh, that could.01:23:01.573 --> 01:23:05.000


That could be a cool way to do it I love that.01:23:05.039 --> 01:23:07.583


Reminds me of like me, of like Loom, you know where.01:23:07.583 --> 01:23:08.524


It's just a habit.01:23:08.524 --> 01:23:12.777


Like no one's thinking I'm opening Loom, you're already recording a Loom before you even bought it.01:23:13.337 --> 01:23:14.220


Totally, yeah.01:23:14.220 --> 01:23:15.572


Yeah, you've really.01:23:15.572 --> 01:23:23.162


You don't even think of it as an app, as much as it's just this little widget, but the power in that widget is amazing.01:23:23.162 --> 01:23:25.234


So, yeah, I dig that.01:23:25.234 --> 01:23:28.742


What else in terms of so I could see?01:23:28.742 --> 01:23:38.621


So that that to me sort of is the platform stretching beyond the website right Into sort of APIs and connectors and and and little microservices and things like that.01:23:38.621 --> 01:23:45.377


Um what about like from a, a team perspective, or or uh, or culture, or like what?01:23:45.377 --> 01:23:45.798


What's the?01:23:45.798 --> 01:23:47.081


What's the plan for next year?01:23:47.882 --> 01:23:57.469


yeah, so we have just grown from three people I think we were about nine months ago to uh to 12 um.01:23:57.469 --> 01:24:20.640


We're all based out of this office in the center of london um, a little creative studio, and we've decided that we want to keep the team small but high talent density, the idea being we're going to pay people a bit more than you'd usually pay people, but get like people available, and by having fewer people there's less communication overhead.01:24:20.640 --> 01:24:24.739


The theory is that this will help us move faster.01:24:24.739 --> 01:24:29.319


I also think it's just like a really fun way to work because you're not thinking about management layers and things.01:24:29.380 --> 01:24:34.845


It's just oh, if you could just save that off as long as possible, like our, our slack is.01:24:34.845 --> 01:25:18.092


But just a bunch of gifs like basically, like you know, martin, our cto ships something it goes to production, I you know, or or sends like something for testing and I click on it, I look at it and all I do is send back that GIF emoji of the ship going you know, sort of, when you hit that thing it totally flips into that next realm of you know communication, breakdown and hierarchy and why, why wasn't I included, and like, and all that sort of stuff.01:25:18.113 --> 01:25:19.796


So yeah, you're in a good sweet spot.01:25:19.796 --> 01:25:23.637


Yeah, we're gonna try and keep it in this, in the sweet spot, as you say.01:25:23.637 --> 01:25:26.952


Uh, I love, I love that bit where, like everyone kind of knows each other.01:25:26.952 --> 01:25:29.342


It's kind of feels more like a whatsapp group than a company.01:25:29.564 --> 01:25:40.916


You know, yeah, it's totally everyone knows um and the shorthand is so efficient, someone sends over a quick screenshot and you write back yep, done.01:25:40.916 --> 01:25:57.958


I know all of the things that are going to happen, because what you don't need, we're all just mind melded together in such a way that and everyone's making very similar calls, like we're all sort of tapped into the same, you know, like the same brainwaves, and it's a, it's a special, it's a special period.01:25:57.958 --> 01:25:59.662


Yeah, we'll call it under 30.01:26:00.323 --> 01:26:14.149


Yeah, yeah, the under 30, the, the, uh, the teens, um, yeah, so I'm looking forward to the next couple of um, next couple of months, while we're sticking in this period and, uh, the goal for us is to kind of turn this into a company.01:26:14.149 --> 01:26:22.896


We're doing something a bit on vc, which is we're really, really caring about building a profitable, stable company rather than blow it up massively.01:26:22.896 --> 01:26:28.529


So, um, for us it's just about getting the basics right and building really great.01:26:28.529 --> 01:26:29.872


You talk about, like culture.01:26:29.872 --> 01:26:39.221


What is our culture of building a great quality product, like how do we use that into everything we do and take the time to get it right?01:26:39.221 --> 01:26:42.533


I mean, these things it's not even something you can hire for.01:26:42.533 --> 01:26:49.551


Sometimes it's also something you just have to, like, build a community around these principles, and so that's kind of where we're up to and it's the thing I'm thinking a lot about.01:26:49.953 --> 01:26:57.759


You know, I actually bring like products and things into the office for us to talk about and we just think about, like, what made this great?01:26:57.759 --> 01:27:13.216


I've got one that I got for christmas which is, um, there's this really fancy brand of cookware uh, the curacao uh, yes and um, just like maybe bringing that into the office and we can talk about what the experience is like there.01:27:13.216 --> 01:27:16.314


Uh, I just I just feel like all of that team building stuff.01:27:16.314 --> 01:27:21.113


It sounds goofy but honestly, that's, that's the magic that makes the team really, really good.01:27:21.434 --> 01:27:27.744


On the same way, totally Well, I can't wait to like I I so appreciate you.01:27:27.744 --> 01:27:49.247


Like this is so fun just having these conversations and it gets me all like I'm all juiced for next week when they start getting back into things and um, and I really love hearing the early stories and what I would love to do is, if you're up for it, as um, maybe late 2025 is uh, you know is, maybe late 2025 is Q3, q4.01:27:49.247 --> 01:27:55.500


Come back and I'd love to hear where you guys are at and what you're working on and do a bit of a follow-up on this one.01:27:56.369 --> 01:27:57.372


I would absolutely love that.01:27:57.372 --> 01:27:59.319


That'd be great yeah dig it.01:28:00.292 --> 01:28:01.395


Well, this was so great.01:28:01.395 --> 01:28:06.295


I appreciate it and I'm so glad that we, like, I got the email.01:28:06.295 --> 01:28:16.020


I signed up for the wait list, I got on the wait list and then, I think, you and I emailed, we got on the phone and I think within the first minute or two, I'm like don't tell me anything about the platform you go.01:28:16.020 --> 01:28:17.310


We got to do it on the podcast.01:28:17.310 --> 01:28:18.493


This is so great.01:28:18.493 --> 01:28:19.154


You know what I mean.01:28:19.154 --> 01:28:22.537


So I'm so glad that we got the chance to to do it.01:28:22.537 --> 01:28:27.224


So, um, um, hang out here after we finish and we'll catch up a little bit.01:28:27.864 --> 01:28:30.033


That sounds great, man, Really really good to catch up.01:28:30.615 --> 01:28:33.445


Yeah, good to see you.