Welcome to the Innovation Conversation, a podcast
about innovators, both in business and real life.
Hosted by myself, Ricardo Rescual and Harry McCona.
This podcast is sponsored by openexperts .com.
OpenExperts is a place to go if you're looking
to talk with top experts from around the world.
That is open -experts .com. This podcast is also
sponsored by startupnetworks .co .uk. Startup
Networks, it's an online forum where you can
find all the resources you need to learn your
startup. Hi and welcome to another episode of
the Innovation Conversation. Today we are joined
by Daniel Pitcock. Daniel, welcome. Thank you
so much. Thank you for inviting me, Ricardo.
It's a pleasure having you here. Daniel, would
you like to tell the audience a little bit more
about yourself? So I am a designer and UX researcher.
My background is graphic design. I always wanted
to be a designer from a very young age. In fact,
I got my very first paid design gig when I was
just 14. And throughout my career, I worked through
four companies, big companies like Justy and
Honda, Royal Navy and such like a lot of startups.
I've also founded and built my own companies
and startups over time as well. I'm currently
the founder of Cleanly, which is the UX repository,
storing knowledge and the form of Atomic UX research,
which is a process I invented while I was at
Justy. In all your years in this industry, I'm
sure you've seen a lot. So when you launched
your own company, how was that journey? Was it
a bit scary or actually you knew exactly what
you're doing and everything went perfect from
day one? I founded quite a few in my time and
some of them deliberately and some of them accidentally.
So there's two companies, Cleanly being one,
where there wasn't an intention to build a company.
In fact, so we built Cleanly as a tool to help
people who are using the Atomic UX research process
better deliver it, right? And actually I was
quite dogmatic at the beginning to say we shouldn't
ever have specific tooling. The process should
always be able to use whatever you've got on
hand. And I still think that's true, but there
was a few things we just wanted to be able to
achieve and we ended up building a tool. So yeah,
I wouldn't say it was scary. It was kind of just,
it was a natural progression. And yeah, there
was another situation in the past where once
again, I accidentally built a business. I wasn't
intending to, I was, you know, kind of my problem
is I'm ADHD and a creative. And if there's a
problem, I want to solve it. And sometimes. I
can do that through my role, whoever I'm working
for, wherever I'm working. Sometimes it's something
you can do as more like a societal, you know,
society thing. Or sometimes you know, there needs
to be a tool built for this or there needs to
be a product that does this or service that does
this. No one else is going to do it. So I suppose
I'll have to do it now. But I can't leave it
alone. That's the problem. It's quite interesting
because most of the people I talk to are either
investors or startups, right? And a lot of the
startups, they haven't done that many startups
before. They're probably on the second startup
at best, but you've gone through multiple startups.
So I guess the big question is what makes it
successful? Like, how do you know you're going
to be successful in a startup? Is there any tips
or tricks you can give to the audience? I don't
think you can. I think the number one thing is
being passionate about the subject matter. You
know, you have to have love for whatever you're
building or whatever you're creating, whatever
the company is. I know people have been successful
depending on how you measure that through things
that they're maybe not particularly excited by
and they're just doing it to make money. I'm
sure that's the case. But I suppose, well, first
of all, is that a measure of success? And secondly,
for me at least, I find that You know, it's difficult.
You know, it's a stressful thing. It can be,
you have ups and downs. It's like a roller coaster
with a startup. And if you're not fundamentally
in love with what you're doing and passionate
about delivering that thing, you know, as soon
as it gets difficult, it's going to be hard to
carry on. I think for a lot of people, especially
myself. So yeah, I think that's that for me,
that's the fundamental thing is to love. The
problem with that is for myself, I don't really
consider myself as a business person. I see myself
as like a product designer or as a creator in
that way. And so sometimes my decisions can be
more focused on the product or delivering something
rather than necessarily what's financially the
correct thing to do. And I think that's sometimes
been a challenge for me personally. Do you drive
your investors to like command? The fact that
you focus on everything but profitability. How
do you manage that relationship? Why are we still
spending so much money on developers when the
product works? People are buying it, it's selling.
Stop building new features and pushing it forward.
But I've got a vision. I know where I want it
to be and I know that we can drive value with
a better product. And if you set on your laurels,
if you're not pushing forward and someone's going
to come along and do it better. do it cheaper
or just have more of a marketing budget and be
able to overtake you. That's how we drive forward.
But mostly the reason is that that's less of
a rational thing than I'm making out is because
that's what I'm interested in. That's what I'm
focused on. I've been quite open that at some
point I'll be replaced as CEO. I know that would
be the case because I'm not a CEO. I'm and the
person is passionate about the product, I'll
always be passionate about that. But maybe, you
know, at some stage, it will be the right time
to bring someone in who's more focused on the
business. Interesting. You mentioned something
quite interesting, which is the, I guess, the
combination of passion and vision. Now, multiple
businesses, you obviously have quite a lot of
baggage in this and know your stuff, but did
you find that it is easier to go and ask for
investment from investors when you bring these
two things to the table? Like you're passionate
about it, you have a vision, do you think that's
often the deciding factor between them investing
or not? No, I'd maybe even say the opposite.
We've got this really cool idea. We know we can
do this. We know this is a problem that needs
solving and we believe we've got the evidence
to show that we're capable of doing that. But
I think for a lot of investors that I've spoken
to, there are some that are excited about that
as well and they can see the opportunity there.
But what they really want to know, I suppose,
is well, you know, what's going to happen to
my investment? How quickly will I get that back?
How much will it grow, et cetera? What's the
next step? Are you going to get more investment
later on? And it may be slightly controversial
to say, but I don't think there's many investment
organizations that I've met that are actually
interested in creating a product or a stable
business. You know, what they're looking for
is to get to the next round. And sometimes, maybe
even commonly, that isn't necessarily what's
right for the business or the organization or
the customers. You know, there's a famous phrase
at the moment, I'm sure you heard, like the end
shittening of technology, where, you know, the
only growth can be got by making products worse,
you know, putting more ads on Spotify or pushing,
you know, on Netflix, even if you're paying,
pointing at my TV there, but you're paying for
Netflix and now you're showing me ads. Surely
that was the entire point of having Netflix in
the first place. There's so many examples I can
give, right? And that's all coming from driving
growth. You know and what's gonna happen and
i'm starting to see that with a few organizations
they're getting to the point i've cancelled my
spotify subscription recently due to political
reasons and uh but mostly fundamentally the product
quality has dropped so severely and they're not
there's not like they're playing paying musicians
and such like so where's that money going it's
just i think spotify is going to fold at some
point because someone will come along and go
actually we can do spotify but better which is
what Spotify was, right? So I think there's almost
like too much of a short -term vision. Now this
is someone speaking who isn't a billionaire,
hasn't created a product of that size and that
scale, but have worked within businesses that
are, you know, some of the work that I did with
Just Eat got it to FTSE 100 a year earlier than
it was estimated to, which I'm quite proud of.
But the things that I'm most proud of is where
we fundamentally move that product forward. as
a good quality product and protected it from
the kind of polarization and shitifying. You
know, for example, bringing in like better accessibility,
which was profitable for them, but it was costly
and it was maybe a bit dry and maybe not what
investors and stakeholders would have been interested
in, but it was important and it was the right
thing to do. And I think it protects them long
-term. This is actually quite interesting because
you touched on a very interesting topic which
is the things that investors look for in a company
and in a product might not necessarily be what's
best for the company, the product or even the
consumers because they're just looking at the
bottom line. The bottom line is are you increasing
revenue or not? Am I getting my money in a hundred
X or a thousand X or not? So it comes down to
that, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, there's a good
example is, you know, obviously this is a world
I know fairly well from work. I mentioned just
earlier, but when COVID hit, we saw companies
like Deliveroo really start to struggle because
suddenly so many people were ordering food and
Deliveroo was having so many more orders. Well,
surely that's a good thing. Surely that makes
them more profitable. No, because they lost money
on every single order. And they basically had
investment, they had money, they were looking
for growth, looking for scale and such like,
and they had money to, you know, their burn rate
to go. And then suddenly COVID hit and they were
burning through that cash so much quicker than
they were expecting. Now to me, and this is me
not being an investor, maybe being quite naive,
that doesn't sound like a business to me. That
sounds like some kind of food charity where we're
going to pay you to have food delivered. It doesn't
make sense to me, right? And I understand kind
of the scales. You know, one thing Just Eat always
said is that if they couldn't be number one in
the market, they would either buy number two
or leave the market. They always need to be number
one. What they defined as number one was at least
40 % bigger than number two. And the reason for
that is they just couldn't be profitable otherwise.
But there's so many, especially tech businesses
out there, And that seems to be really endemic
in the tech world, where there is no monetization
side. It is a case of getting scale, getting
scale, and then going through an engineering
process where we give, we give, we give, we lose
money, we lose money. Right now we've got market
share. What we do now is we just ring out those
customers for the profit that we haven't been
having. Why not instead just build a profitable
business? When Gleanly, my business, live in,
I think it was September we went live. Within
three months, we were technically profitable,
not by a big amount, but we could cover our own
costs. Now, last year, last year was the COVID
of the UX world. And, you know, we knew something
was going on in December 2022, because we had
some, we had December is our, Christmas is our
biggest busy period, weirdly. It's when there's
less projects going on and people can focus on
stuff like knowledge management and such, like
they put their projects down for a bit. And we
didn't have the, you know, weren't as quite as
busy as we were expecting. Some of the deals
that we were hoping to close didn't seem to be.
And then we noticed that some of the renewals
that we were hoping for weren't happening. We're
like, oh, what's going on here? Over the next
month or so, especially March was the peak time.
companies just started wiping out, not just UX,
but I think when I've looked at the numbers,
it looks like UX was less affected because, you
know, for every five developers that were fired,
one UX was. But then most companies, there's
normally about 20 developers to one UX. So I
think there was about four times more UX people
and research designers, those kind of people,
those people adjacent to knowledge and research
getting fired. And certainly I know of many of
the companies we worked with, whole teams disappeared.
They had no UX people left anymore. Fundamentally
speaks, I think this is going slightly off subject,
but fundamentally speaks to a failure within
my industry for not really showing its value
and not proving itself that they've felt that
they're practically done. But from our business
point of view, Suddenbush is a subscription -based
business and relies on that renewal and either
monthly or annual renewal. And it meant that
not only were we not closing, we're not getting
new business as much, but a lot of the companies
that have been with us from day one, if not even
before that, suddenly weren't renewing. There's
literally nothing we could do about it because
they weren't there anymore. There was no failure
from our side. It doesn't matter what product
or what a price it was or anything like that.
Just literally there weren't people there who
needed it anymore. Now we were able to bear that
out. bloody difficult, but we were able to bear
that out because we built a sustainable business.
We weren't debt -based. We weren't based on projected
growth. We were hoping for growth. We had a really
good year planned out and I'm glad to say that
we're back on track with that now, better than
ever in fact. But it meant that suddenly for
a year, we had to kind of shore up a little bit.
Now, this is where My investors were going, stop
spending money on product and probably that would
have been a better thing to do. We'd probably
have more money in the bank, but I would have
lost all that knowledge and all that talent and
all of the people who, luckily I'd built a really
good relationship with my team that when there
was a couple of months that we did have a shortfall
and I said, guys, look, we're not going to be
able to make the next round of invoices. They
were able to go, it's all right. You're fine.
We can hold off for a month or two. In fact,
the first time I remember, I went to my developers
and said, Yeah, it's good. We've got some scary
months coming up. There's a big renewal happening
this month But if that doesn't come in for any
reason we might have a trouble and then this
next month It looks like it's gonna be sure I
was really open and honest with them. And anyway,
so I said there may be a chance next month I
won't be able to pay your bills this month. It
might be a month or two afterwards But we've
got this one which I've already guaranteed is
coming in in two months time Anyway, they went
back and said, we just have to go and think about
this. I was like, oh no, I'm going to lose them.
I'm going to lose them. They came back and they
said, right, we've looked at it. We looked at
our figures. We can go six months without being
paid. I was like, what? Wow. That is, that's
a lot of commitment right there. Yeah. And I
was like, I don't need that. They went, no, no,
we know that. We know you don't need it. Hopefully
it will come in the next two months. So anyway,
just to let you know, we can go six months and
we're willing to go six months. We can afford
to go six months. And you know, if that's okay.
And I was like, yeah. Did they have shares in
the business or? Because that's a really big,
do they have shares in the business? Yeah. Wow.
Their rationale was they trusted me. I'd always
been open to them. I'd been really clear all
the way before that. I'll move on to another
story with the opposite of this after, but the,
um, you know, I'd always been really open to
them about, you know, financially, how we're
doing, what's happening and you know, they're
included in all of that. It's completely transparent.
Um, they, but more than anything, they enjoyed
and love, love working on the product, you know,
so they enjoy working in the business with the
team, but they also cared about the product and
they believe in the product and they know they
understood the situation. It wasn't a failure
and they realized that this would, you know,
We saw March was a massive drop down and then
from March started climbing up. So there were
still people firing, but people were starting
to get rehired slowly. And actually in the end,
that ended up being a boom for us because the
product is good enough. One of our biggest growth
areas is people leaving a business and taking
us elsewhere. And it's one of my proudest metrics
is that so often on a sales call, we see someone
who was in a different business. They've joined
a new company. One of the first things they've
done is to set what we need to use neatly. Well,
you know, that wouldn't have happened if we treated
them like shit or took advantage of them and
didn't look, you know, try and always build the
best product we could for them. Not to say a
product is perfect by any stretch of the imagination,
but yeah, that's, I kind of feel that that's
what saved our lives is. caring about products
in the first place and our team and caring about
our customers and delivering a good product to
them. So, you know, but then we're not the size
of Spotify either. So maybe I'm wrong. I don't
think you are. It's actually quite interesting
because I was just thinking about what leadership
tricks and tips you can give to people because
this, this is I guess that yeah. It's a testament
to a true leader when you get people coming back
to you and say, hey, we can go for six months
without pay because we believe in what we're
doing and we believe in everything that we stand
for. That speaks volumes, right? I'd like to
think so. I was shocked by it. I was blown away.
It was really quite an emotional thing to happen
as well. It wasn't something I was ashamed of.
There was even going to be a month where we would
be able to cover them. And there was a few months
then and afterwards where that happened. And
it was nice that I had that to fall back on.
We never had to borrow money extra. We didn't
have to do like bridge loans or anything like
that, or sell off shares, you know, too low to
cover us over or anything like that. So it literally,
they saved our businesses life, I would say.
I'll always be grateful for that. But, you know,
you could also make the argument that They shouldn't
necessarily have been in the business at all
at the time. That burn rate could have been so
much lower. We could have more money in the bank
if we had just focused on growth and reinvesting
into marketing and stuff rather than building
the product. I don't know. It's a difficult one.
As a researcher, what's really difficult is I
can tell anecdotes, but that might have been
fairly specific to them. I don't have a control
to say, well, actually, if we'd done it the opposite
way around, it would have been less successful
and more successful. So yeah, I think my policy
has always been transparency and honesty. And
I've seen the opposite. So I said, I'll show
you an example of the opposite of that happening.
I remember when I was working, I'm not going
to mention your names very carefully here, but
for a lot of my career, I've worked as a contractor.
And quite often, because you're a contractor,
brought in to deal with certain problems, you're
quite exposed to kind of the inner workings of
an organization, but still kind of slightly from
the outside, which is interesting. So it was
a company I was working for, and I'd been there
for about three months to six on contract. And
they said that I was in a meeting with the board
and senior people there. And they said, look,
we've got cashflow issues coming up. What we're
going to do is just fire a load of people. We
need to get rid of about 50 people from our organization.
And it's a medium sized organization. I think
they would say they had about 250 people. So
it's significant portions. Now to do that in
the UK, you can't have contractors and fire permanent
staff. You have to get rid of the contractors
first, because obviously that role must be available.
Otherwise you wouldn't be contracting people
for it. So they said, sorry Dan, you guys are
going to have to go. So don't tell anyone we're
going to announce it next Thursday. So keep this
under your hat. Next Thursday rolls around, they
have a big announcement, they say, well, we've
got good news. Errol's been complaining we're
spending too much on contractors and we should
be hiring perm staff, investing on perm staff.
So we've made the decision we're getting rid
of contractors. And I was like, hold up, no,
you're getting rid of contractors so you can
fire them. It was just the most, but the thing
is, of course, that didn't work. They completely
lied through their teeth and word quickly got
around the truth of the matter. You know, someone
blabbed and someone told someone like, yeah,
just between you and I update your CV and they
told someone else they know it's between you
and I update your CV. Before you know it, at
the end of the, you know, there was a month then
they'd already lost about 40 % of their staff.
Good news, they didn't have to fire people. The
bad news is that was mostly the best people they
had, you know, the people who could easily just
turn around and get a job somewhere else. drain
of the knowledge out of it. I mean, obviously
that's kind of my subject matter as well is recording
knowledge. So when you lose people, you know,
they didn't have a good knowledge management
system. And even if you did, you still all that
talent and people that had left a perfectly functional
business, they weren't even, it wasn't that they
had a cashflow problem that they were going in
debt. It was just that they, you know, they wanted
to balance out a little bit more, maybe have
a little, you know, show a little bit more profit
to the investors. And they turned what could
have been a little bit of a difficult conversation
with the shareholders into a dramatic issue which
nearly killed the business. Isn't that what happened
with Boeing, for example? We've seen that happen
lately in the news and everyone's criticizing
Boeing CEO. They say, actually, you've done great
for the shareholders because you massively reduced
costs, but that did come at, you know, It had
some really bad results as a consequence. So
you kind of see that happening where you have
someone who was very good finances just looking
at the finances of the business and then not
actually focusing on actually does matter for
the business. So I guess it happens all the time.
There's another company I can talk about this
because it was long ago and also that company
doesn't exist anymore but I used to work for
a car retailer. And they retailed several brands,
including Fiat, Renault, and such like. And the
way that that deal works is you get so much for
selling a car, you get so much for the finance,
but also you get a bonus for hitting certain
targets for the manufacturer. Now, this company,
they kept their costs, I think it was quite a
standard thing to practice at the time, but they
kept their prices really low and their sales
very high and relied on the bonuses as the profits.
They made no profit on selling a car, they made
it all on hitting these bonuses. So one quarter,
they didn't make their bonuses. And what they
did then is say, well, we're a big retail of
yours. You either pay us the bonus we just missed.
We're only a little bit off. So just pay us that.
Otherwise, we're going to stop selling your cars.
And they went, no, that's the deal. It's black
and white. You don't hit that target. You don't
get the bonus. They went, okay, well, we're not
going to pay you for the cars that we bought.
They went, okay, well, we won't supply the cars
that you've bought. And they were so pigment
about this that they, and they started trying
to You know, they basically were pushing and
pushing, pushing. They fell flat. Because they
were so focused on this, they ended up missing,
I don't know whether it's because of that, but
my belief is because they were so focused on
this argument with one manufacturer. The next
quarter, they ended up missing three bonus from
three different manufacturers. And suddenly they
were basically on stock with most of their suppliers.
Liquidators came in and took three fives for
the second -hand cars on the lot as well. The
company kept on selling. they were still taking
deposits for cars, new cars and they kept selling
the second -hand cars they didn't even legally
own anymore. Now I remember the day that they
actually made us all redundant and because they
were got very nasty trying to force people out
and leave but you know in the end there was enough
people stuck around that they had to give redundancy.
payments out and the guy flew in on his helicopter
landed came in told us that we were all fired
and then flew off with his helicopter again and
it's like one of those where you're like this
is so stupid you've got to listen so about this
but also you're like and then you've just flown
home in your helicopter whereas you know i no
longer have my my even my business car anymore
so it was yeah okay yeah strange situation Well,
it kind of brings me to another question when
she is, how do you see the UK market? Because
all these companies have been in UK, you had
tons of experience. Do you see it as a good place
to launch a startup to grow business? Or do you
see there's a lot of, you know, gatekeepers and
it's quite hard to do a business in the UK? So
do you mean to sell products in the UK or to
get investments as being a base of operations?
I mean it as to actually launch the business
and for the business to be successful. That's
a combination of reaching out to investors and
them investing in your company, but also to actually
launch a new product and making sure that the
product is successful. I would say there's positive
and negatives and some just kind of I'm not sure
whether it's anything particularly unique about
the UK. So the positives are that There are a
lot of government incentives and things like
that for investors and therefore people seeking
investment. So like SEIS and EIS, which do you
know what they are? Is it worth giving a brief
overview? We actually had an entire podcast on
SEIS from my founders catalyst. Go and look up
that podcast listeners, especially if you're
looking for investment. have investment because
it's a damn good deal if you've got money to
put down, right? And yeah, so there's benefits
like that. There's all sorts of things like UK
Innovation Fund and grants and stuff that's available.
We've had, especially in the early days, we did
a lot of work with the universities, which gave
us a bit of a blast forward because we were quite
a research and innovation based business. So
until recently, the tax, what's it called? R
&D tax credits were really good. It's now almost
impossible to actually get that money. As a business
that actually does real R &D, obviously so many
organisations are taking the mickey with it.
But they made it so difficult now, it's just
not even worth spending the time on, I don't
think. Unless you maybe are, I'm sure the situation
is where it is. So there are some benefits. I
would say that the investment culture here, and
I don't know how that is different to other countries.
The easiest one I compare it to because it's
the only one I know in any amount is like the
US investment world, especially tech investment
world, where money seems to be a lot easier to
get hold of and you can get a lot more earlier.
In the UK, I'd say it's more conservative in
terms of how much they're looking to put down
and invest and risk. And it seems to be a lot
more focused on who you know rather than what
you know. Um, so that can be good or bad depending
on your situation. You know, the amount of products
I see funded that are fundamentally failed at
the most basic level, um, in my opinion, of course,
but, um, you know, then go on and completely
fail. So, um, the, you know, and, and it's because
they, they, they know the right people and they,
you know, they, It's not like some secretive
thing, it's just that people trust who they know
and if you can help your friend out, you're going
to, right? And I think there's maybe that little
bit of an old school thing. So probably being
white and male and going to school in certain
schools, especially in particular universities
and stuff probably doesn't do any harm or having
worked in a company in some blue chip with someone
who's moved on to be an investor, all that kind
of thing that helps. So as someone who doesn't
know those people, though, as just white males,
I have some benefits there. Yeah, I'd say that
can be a challenge. Though saying that there
are some great funds set up for like women -owned
or being BAME -owned businesses and stuff now.
So I think that is changing in a really positive
way. Yes so i think it's a bit more conservative
here i don't think that's a bad thing and some
of some there's been some startups i've worked
with where the biggest problem they had is they
have too much money too early there's one organization
in particular that's um uh raised 50 million
without a product you know it's 50 million seed
level and well that's very impressive they were
gone within eight months yeah i don't It was
actually a genuinely good idea as well and great
people behind it. There was no actual real thing.
I'm not going to go into the details of why it
failed. What didn't help is that money came so
easy to them and there were so many noughts on
the end that they kind of just, you know, every
Friday, right, we're going down the pub now,
cast behind the bar, eat and drink as much as
you like, you know? And I'm sure it barely put
a dent into it. But I kind of do believe in that
adage, if you don't look after pennies, you know,
you have to look for pennies and pounds of hollow
kind of thing. And there's even if you've got
50 million in the bank. Yeah, of course, let's
let's celebrate things. Let's have a treat for
the, you know, we need to get people motivated.
You know, that there's no negative than that.
But also, you know, probably you shouldn't be
looking up Bentleys and such like and buying
yourselves nice cars. My dad, so I'm from kind
of an entrepreneur family, every single member
of my direct family has or has had their own
business and my dad who's a retailer has always
said like the biggest sign a company is going
to go under is when they go out and buy themselves
fancy cars. I don't know if i completely as someone
who buys themselves fancy cars not fancy ones
maybe but because i love anyway um i don't know
whether i agree with that but his point was is
when they start spending frivolously they think
they've made it and thinks they can't fail that's
normally when they start to lose grip you know
they haven't actually established themselves
enough to be able to go out and make these purchases
um so um yeah i don't think it's as simple as
he makes out but it's not a bad point right it's
good but it's hard isn't it i think When you're
an entrepreneur, if you think about it, it's
the fine balance between having a strong enough
ego to deal with all the blows you're gonna get
along the way and then to actually say, you know
what, I could spend this money on a nice Bentley
or whatever it might be, or I can just keep it
for a rainy day, continue driving my Honda or
something. It's a really hard thing to do. I
mean, I've only seen one person do that, which
actually Jeff Bezos was famously interviewed
in his Honda Accord, I think in 1999. And people
say you have so much money in your bank, why
are you still driving the Honda? And they said,
well, still drives, why would I change my car?
But it's it's a hard thing. No, that's someone
who really loves their cars is I mean, I sold
my car to start cleanly. And that made me to
not work for about six months. And, you know,
just as COVID hit as well, which didn't help.
But the but yeah, like, Of course, you know,
if there's something you're passionate about
and it makes your life richer and such like,
I think it's when it's to show off. And yeah,
there's that kind of phrase like fake it till
you make it. what's better to do. Or maybe if
things are looking good, there is this perception
that it's always going to be like that. It's
the same as people who win the lottery or maybe
they get a job that's a lot of money at the time
and they spend it all. It's not that you shouldn't
enjoy life while you've got it. Absolutely, you
should. And perhaps I should be a little bit
more like that. I'm a bit more of a tight ass,
unfortunately. Parents are both northern. So
maybe there's a cliche. Short arms, long pockets.
But at the same time, I'm someone who's quite
money anxious, which is difficult as an entrepreneur
because the thing I find most stressful is not
having enough cash in the bank. I think everyone
finds it stressful, but I think I probably struggle
with it more than a lot of people who are willing
to remortgage their house. I would never remortgage
my house. I've never put my family at risk for
business. my family is more important. Whereas
a proper ultra now I think would probably take
that risk and take that gamble on themselves.
So I always have a backup. It's a big gamble.
But it's always a big gamble, isn't it? Because
it's one thing when you're taking a risk, it's
one thing like you said, they have a backup of
a backup. And it's another thing to gamble things
that are are your I guess your Necessity is your
bare necessity. So if you put in the house into
a second mortgage on house to get money to invest
in the business, that's a really big gamble.
Not everyone can actually do that. Even mentally,
the stress must be unbelievable. For this business,
I sold my car at M6 and BMW and it was a lovely
car and such. Not that I'm really passionate
about it. And I sold that to Libom for the first
three, four, five months. And I left a very reasonably
well, pretty well paying job to, to work on the
business. So I missed out on that income for
that period of time. And for business that I
knew wasn't going to be able to pay me for at
least a good few years, if at all. And so that
was a gamble. That was a risk. But I never ever
put my family at risk. They, you know, we could
live without that car. We had, you know, an old
banger that we could drive around and you know,
the mortgage was still going to get paid and
I could always go back. and find another job,
you know, and I would have missed out on that
income in the meantime. That is my level of risk.
But there's some people who will, you know, sell,
remortgage their house and if it doesn't work
out, that's, you know, we lost the roof over
our head and people like that. That for me is
the definition of what is an entrepreneur, someone
who, you know, is actually risked, you know,
goes out and I don't necessarily think it's the
right thing to do or something that's necessary
or you won't be successful without that. You
know, Warren Buffett, for example, is a good
example of someone who, you know, famously he
still goes and gets his McDonald's in the morning
and if the markets are down, he doesn't get,
is it something like he doesn't get like a drink?
He only gets, he doesn't get a side or something
like that if the markets are down. So he saves
that extra 79 cents. So maybe that's a bit much.
He's quite well off. I think he can probably
afford that extra thing. And I don't know how
much of that is like marketing, like kind of
personal marketing as well, you know, so maybe
that's because he also owns a share in all those
companies, doesn't it? Because I think he owns
a share in McDonald's and Coca Cola and Dairy
Queen and all those. So every time he goes and
say, oh, this is what I eat every day. Is it?
Yeah, I think that's probably the definition
of built different, but probably not particularly
healthy way of living either. But I think, because
on the flip side, who was the other chap was
it Sam Altman, who also was driving around in
Old Bangor, it's company's worth billions. At
the end of the day, it was all a scam. So I don't
know how much of that was actually real. Maybe
he just didn't care about cars, but you know,
because he still had 12 million house in the
Bahamas and such like. So it obviously was a
completely anti luxury. So yeah, I'm kind of
a little bit, I don't think there's a set way
of coming back to your original question, what
makes a good leader? For me, what makes a good
leader is someone who's honest, who really cares,
not just about themselves, but about the team
and the product they're building. The best people
I've ever worked for have been passionate about
delivering something, right? And you want to
do that with them. You want to be part of that.
You want to help them. You'll maybe push a little
bit harder and go a bit further. Because if you
think you're just paying for their then you Mercedes
or whatever, probably won't be so focused on
it. But if you can tell that you can fake, you
know, you're either passionate about it or you're
not. And yeah, that's, that is a big motivator.
I was reading somewhere on LinkedIn that someone
said that in the beginning of a startup, you
need to be not only passionate, but it can be
crazy hours. And if you're not willing to either
one of these two things, the startup will fail
because the requirements you will have in the
beginning are absolutely ludicrous. Have you
found this to be true as well? That intensity,
that passion, that crazy hours? Well, the thing
is that in that regard, if you're, if you're
passionate about it, it probably doesn't feel
like work. You might be working on it in the
evening or, you know, at the weekends and such
like that. It's because you want to. I think
there's a danger with, you know, Um, as long
as ADHD, I've got a great risk of burning out.
And I think a lot of people are, you know, burnout
is a real, real problem. And, you know, so for
instance, with my, with my stuff, it may sound
like a bit hokey, but, um, I say, look, I'm paying
you for six hours a day. And, um, so we don't
do like a four day week or five day week. I'm
paying you for six hours, five days a week. You
can do those all on three days or you can do
them across seven days. I expect four good quality
hours per six hours, basically what I'm asking
for. I don't expect you to be fully productive
for those six hours, but I want you to be productive.
And what I have found is that there is only so
much time. These aren't business owners, of course,
these are staff. But realistically, a human can
only produced for so much time. Now for me, as
I mentioned ADHD, I am super productive for two
weeks, absolutely shit for two or three weeks,
right? So I also suffer from that amazing quality.
So I know exactly what you're talking about.
It's like, Oh my God, he can do everything to
he hasn't left the couch. What's wrong with him?
So I know that. I used to say, I'm the most productive,
lazy person in the world. What's going on? And
yeah, there's pre -diagnosis. So yeah, I know
that I'm on it at the moment. I'll work through,
yeah, of course I will. But I've got two kids
as well and a fat wife and you know, there's
the stuff that needs to be done and you need
to balance those things out. But actually being
more aware of that and not pushing myself too
hard when I'm, or saying yes to everything when
I'm on, means that for those three weeks, then
maybe become more like one week, or maybe actually
I'd be quite productive through that period as
well. So I think there needs to be a balance
and individuals are different, right? Some people
want to and can do. I wouldn't want to be somebody
like, um, you know, uh, uh, I've forgotten his
name, Thingy Gates from Microsoft. How have I
forgotten his name? Bill Gates? No. Bill Gates,
that's it. I can remember his first name. Famous,
he used to sleep underneath the desk and such.
I don't know how true these stories are, but
this is what we hear. He obviously built one
of the most valuable businesses in the world
and it seemed probably to do that. He was probably
hyper -focused for a very long amount of time
and now is doing things very differently. I think
I'm probably this is one of the reasons I'm not
a business person in my mind is probably once
I'd made 10, 50 million, I would probably gone
like, well, that's probably enough now. You know,
I'm probably just turn it down a little bit and
enjoy, you know, before I have an aneurysm, you
know, maybe not because you like cars. So I'm
sure you can find a car for that amount of money
that you want to buy, right? But if you gave
me a few million pounds now, I would still work
because I love what I do. During COVID, I was
starting cleanly. So we got our first round of
funding at the peak of COVID, which was a really
interesting time for that to be happening. Do
you remember when the stock markets were crashing
and the lawyers are on the phone going, well,
we're not sure about this. get this closed because
they're going to pull tomorrow or money will
be worthless. So, you know, we don't know what's
going to happen. Let's just get it closed. And,
but, you know, there was still, my wife suddenly
was looking after her mum who was in terminal
care and such like. And so I had quite a new
baby under one arm sorting out the investment
on the other. But there was still good big periods
at night where I was like, I put a film on, I'm
not really interested. And a friend of mine,
we started a charity platform. called Wishy and
it was just because we were discussing one day
that kind of I was talking about the philosophy
of giving and some of the challenges there is
around charities and we kind of came up with
an idea about this over the phone. Let's build
it you know and it only took us two weeks but
like once again it's that thing of like there's
a problem there I think I know how to solve it
well let's just go and give it a go I can't let
it go now like a dog with a bone so I can kind
of understand that you know working even if you
don't need to but there has to be a balance doesn't
there? I was just about to ask you, how do you
manage that? How do you create balance? Even
having ADHD, it's hard to have that balance.
What support do you have around you that makes
you keep that balance? Because it's not easy,
is it? No, no, absolutely. And I think things
were a lot different before I had a family. I
used to have a design agency years ago and I'd
quite often be there till 10, 11 o 'clock at
night and maybe regret it the next day, maybe
not be productive the next day, but I was quite
young as well. But yeah, it wasn't like I didn't
have kids or work to go home to and that was
different. So I think then your friends become
very important and having hobbies and interests
outside of that. Even when it comes to work,
I've always tried to have two projects on the
go at the same time. And one of the reasons for
that is, you know, part of ADHD is procrastination.
If there's something I need to do for cleanly
and I just can't bring myself to do it. Normally
the crazy security force you have to fill out
just so many forms, right? I hate forms at the
best of time and these are the most boring things
and so repetitive. I hate them. So they're really
challenged and they're a blocker to me. So luckily
I've got a good team around me now so they do
most of this. So that's the other thing is offloading
stuff, like knowing when you're just not the
right person to do it, which is not always possible
when you're a startup and you haven't got the
cash to bring into other people. But yeah, moving
on to something else. So if it's very easy to
go onto YouTube or whatever you're interested
in and be... Do that instead and feel unproductive.
And I think, you know, actually sometimes you
need to do that and it's not necessarily a negative.
Let's be unproductive for a bit. And, you know,
if it allows one of the things I'm doing, I'm
being kind to myself now, now understanding ADHD
and how it affects me is if I'm stuck with something,
we'll just go and sit out in the garden or get
a hot tub or go for a walk or something. And,
you know, it's not productive at all, but it
lets my, my role that though is my My punishment
for being unproductive is I'm not allowed any
phones or digital or anything, but I have to
go in there with no inputs. I'll go and sit in
the garden for an hour because I can't work right
now. My brain's not letting me, but my punishment
is I'm not allowed any distractions. The good
thing there is positive boredom. One of the biggest
problems with this, with our age now, the world
we're in now, is there's always some kind of
entertainment, there's always some kind of stimuli.
The best ideas, the things that get me going
are things when I force myself to be bored. Not
every day, it used to be I used to make time
every day, but I've completely failed on that
recently. Now it tends to be if I'm procrastinating,
I'll go, okay, you're fine not to work right
now, but you're not allowed anything else either.
So I'll sit there. And then of course, five minutes
later, I might just go and fill in that form.
I think that's called meditation. Why do you
have to do that? It just sit around someone.
Maybe it's like an informal form of meditation.
That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I treat it as a
punishment, but actually, it's quite enjoyable.
And I'll normally come up with, you know, I'll
have some idea of Oh, God, I'm not going to do
this now. Daniel, as we're reaching the end of
the podcast, if people want to reach out to you,
how can you do so and find more about all the
exciting things you're doing? So well, you can
you can catch me on on here and but also on LinkedIn
as well or through click cleanly that's glen
.ly is my website. On the floor. Daniel, thank
you so much for your time. I really enjoyed our
conversation. Thank you. I should have said OpenExperts,
I just said on here. This podcast is sponsored
by OpenExperts .com. OpenExperts is a place to
go if you're looking to talk with top experts
from around the world. That is open -experts
.com. This podcast is also sponsored by startupnetworks
.co .uk. Startup networks, it's an online forum
where you can find all the resources you need
to run your startup. from grants to investors
to tips and tricks on how to be successful in
your startup. This podcast is also sponsored
by ODEV Tech. ODEV Tech is your premier software
development partner. Make sure you check them
out at odev .tech.