Welcome to the Innovation Conversation, a podcast
about innovators, both in business and real life.
Hosted by myself, Ricardo Rescual and Harry McCona.
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Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Innovation
Conversation. Today we are joined by Tom Lauren.
Tom, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for calling.
Yeah, it's great to be here. It's great to be
here. Thank you. Tom, would you like to introduce
yourself to the audience, please? Sure. I'm Tom.
I'm the founder of Passion Lab, which is a London
-based AI machine learning laboratory. We design
and develop bespoke machine learning solutions
for businesses, all shapes and sizes. But yeah,
I'm a born and bred Londoner and love this city,
albeit with the UKs going through a bit of a
market correction, put it that way. But things
are hopefully going to gradually look up and
yeah. So yeah, no, all good. You're one of the
few, not few, but in London, I think it's 50
-50, isn't it? people actually being born in
London and elsewhere outside of the UK and also
outside of... Yeah. It's a wonderful melting
pot of all sorts of people. And for that reason,
I love it. I wouldn't change it for the world.
And I think it's rare in terms of global cities
to have that level of diversity and cohesion
as well on the whole. And I think it's... No,
I love the city. It's also got an abundance of
opportunity. in the sense that, you know, again,
for all its challenges, it has a, you know, it's
a very mature economy and there are lots of,
from service led businesses, well, businesses
of all shapes and sizes. And you look in the
right places, there's a hungry ambition. Maybe
not quite like the Americans or the New Yorkers,
but like it. So there's a hungry ambition, I
think here still in London. Well, at least we
know that London does get its sleep. unlike New
York, right? You never stop sleep for brainy
sleepers. In London, people actually do go home
and get a little, a good night rest every once
in a while. Every once in a while, not all the
time, but yeah. All right, Tom, tell me a bit
more about National Lab and how you came to be,
you know, the CEO. Sure. But also how do you
get to that point? Well, let me actually, let
me start that way around then. So I've done various
things in my career. I'm in my early thirties
for full transparency and first cut my teeth
back at when I was 18 years old in recruitment
in headhunting um my really he was my first sort
of mentor man called John Gardner he gave me
my first job at a company called NBI and I was
a research associate there and I was basically
you know told to go and actually you know find
some interesting candidates for various roles
big roles but it was a great first foray into
business and out of school and it was a great
it was a great It was a small enough business
that you got to sense that, you know, of all
the different moving parts and the energy involved
in a kind of high growth business like that one.
Anyway, they actually sponsored me initially
through university and through Bristol University.
I wasn't very good at watching daytime TV though,
so at any sort of free moment, I was looking
at new ways or new ideas or new businesses to
launch and got myself quite immersed in the whole
event and artist management space. Managed and
ran or set up a company called Foundation Present,
which ran basically nights over the course of
three years. We did pretty well. What was essentially
a team of nightclub promoters giving it a good
shot. I think at one point we ran 27 nights in
a month and turned over some pretty good cash.
It was good again. It was. It was. But yeah,
I left Bristol with a first in politics and then
decided, as you would, with the support, with
two others, launched an ice cream business called
Pops. Myself and two others, James and Harry,
they'd spearheaded the idea and they needed someone
to come on board and lead a lot of their sales
and the commercial side. And so I came on board
in 2014 as a sort of founding partner of Pops.
And again, that was a bit of a step change from
nightclubs to ice cream. And we ended up in the
course of four years, we sold, I think just shy
of 9 million ice lollies and ice creams. We did
a JV with Diageo, created a Pimms and bought
a Ginatonic ice lolly. And we had an office in
Melbourne. And in Ibiza, where else? And obviously,
and in London, yeah, it was, it was, again, that
was the sort of, that was the step up from that,
from foundations through to POPs. That was a
step up. We were now kind of in the sort of so
-called, I don't know, teenage years or whatever,
trying to work things through and work things
out. And then I left in 2014, following our exit
to a contract caterer, to Bruce. We then moved
and... And then I got head on to that, she could
join as a co -founder of another consumer lifestyle
business called Oto. And I spent and have spent
the last, well, four years from 2018 to 2022
building that business. And again, some great
successes in loads of learning curves and loads
of learnings. And it was, it was again, it was
a fascinating journey, that one. And in 2002,
I decided to step back from that and we, and
go into something totally fresh. I wanted to
try something really new and really challenge
myself. And I, I'd spent 10 years in the kind
of consumer brand space. Tough, you know, it's
a, it's a real, it's a hustle, you know, consumer
market was fickle, Brexit didn't help. COVID
certainly didn't help. And so I was wanting to
try something new and have some real intention
in my next move. In the past, I'd fallen from
one thing to the next, you know, one conversation
led to another. And then, you know, there, there
I was, you know, in the business, whereas I wanted
to stand back and go, okay, what does the next
10 years look like? What the next 20 years look
like? I have real intention in my actions. So
actually for First part of 2023, I took a four
month sabbatical. One of the best things I've
done and didn't go traveling, but really tried
to use that time as constructively as possible,
as possibly, you know, and try and try and do
something really, really worthwhile with that
time. And in that period, it was just that the
whole applied generative AI boom began to really
take you know, really, really, you know, really,
really started emerging. And it was at that point
that, you know, when we started seeing it very
much in on, you know, on the newspapers, on TV
that I realized that, you know, this is the space
that I really wanted to go into. So I spent the
best part of the last 18 months, combination
of various different, I went back to university
today, did a kind of executive management program
in the sort of foundations of AI, machine learning.
I did recently one with University around sort
of AI product market specialization, product
specialization. And then I've spent the last
year from about August, 2023, commercializing
a machine learning research lab called Kerasos
and had some great successes with that. But more
recently, that was tied to a venture studio and
more recently was keen to do my own thing. And
so subsequently I've launched the Fashion Lab,
which is a sort of AI and machine learning laboratory,
designing and developing tools for different
businesses, mainly kind of medium -sized to small
-sized businesses, scale -ups, looking to kind
of build AI. So yeah, that's a long -winded answer
to your short question, but hopefully it gives
you a sense of why I'm here. how I got here.
It's great. And it actually gives me a lot of
follow -up questions to do now. Now I'm just
curious on one thing, because you actually, you've
been in business for quite some time. You've
grown business successfully and now you're building
something in AI that actually helps other businesses
to be successful as well. What are the key features
that, you know, that you need to implement in
order to make a business successful? Because
you've done that all in the past. I've done it
in various different ways in the past and There
are so many different business books and founders
have written so much about various different
approaches. Of course, there is no one best approach,
but I mean, my personal view is, yeah, it of
course takes grit, determination and resilience.
It goes without saying to really get moving and
get pointing in the right direction. It takes
conviction. I think you've got to have a sense
of like, you know what, we can, we can do this.
We've really got to do this. And it's in, you
know, my way will work as well as anyone else's,
you know, I think often you can get, we can get,
we can be prone to in general and talking to
just, you know, people in general can be kind
of prone to be knocked off course, you know,
get pieces of advice that way. And suddenly,
maybe you should just, you know, throw it all
out and go that direction instead. You've got
to be able to really stick to your guns and despite
sometimes what the market might be saying or
whatever, you go, no, actually we've got a lot
more to go on, whether it's customers, what they're
telling us, validating product and market, those
kind of things. You've got to be able to really
have that conviction in kind of where you're
going. But yeah, I think there's that. I mean,
it goes to that saying that I also, you know,
flexibility, nimbleness, the ability to pivot.
I mean, if I could, if I had a pound for every
time I pivoted and gone a different, you know,
because of a certain thing has gone some way
or another, then, you know, I'd be a lot richer.
But it is, I think there's definitely that. Um,
and yeah, just, but also, you know, learn what
to take seriously and what not to take seriously.
Sometimes you've won. One can try and take certain
things too seriously. We're all trying this.
We're all just, just trying our best here. We're
all just trying to keep the lights on. We're
all just trying to, you know, you know, exist
and continue and grow in this world. And yes,
of course there are certain things that really
require like, you know, you know, need to be
taken seriously, but also you get knocked back
a bit, laugh it off, move on. And, you know,
and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, you know,
approach the next challenge with a kind of but
in the sense of humor. Are you finding the market
now that you're doing something in AI, you know,
for SMEs, are you finding, are they very receptive
to it or they still might figure out what exactly
it means for them? There is, as everyone will
probably not largely know, a gold rush happening
right in front of our eyes right now. And I've
been involved in those areas before, but This
is obviously, this is different, this is a new
frontier that's being forged right in front of
our eyes. And there is no doubt, a lot of hype,
a lot of excitement, you know, a lot of it is
absolutely valid. I mean, this technology is
and will transform our lives. Largely, we hope
for the better, but also, you know, there is,
you know, not all hype is good hype either. You
know, we're seeing that in some of the valuations.
coming out to the US and, and, and also here
in the UK. And as I say, we're seeing a, um,
yeah, it's a sudden sort of shift. I mean, you
know, it's, it's, it's extraordinary speaking
to certain businesses, you know, big businesses,
you know, they have, they have talking with Goveting,
they've just gone right, they're sort of down
tools and everything else. It's like, what is
our AI strategy? Where do we focus? How do we
go after it? It's obviously a deciding thing
for me to be involved in. And I was speaking
to businesses at the time. all shapes and sizes,
largely in that kind of, you know, kind of UK
definition of a medium -sized enterprise. So
from kind of like, you know, 30, 40 employees
up to about 150, 200 employees, you know, turning
over, I don't know, 5 million plus, 10 million
plus, that kind of bracket is who we're kind
of speaking to. And the nice thing and exciting
thing about this technology is because it's still,
I mean, it's, you know, in its current form,
it's in its, you know, relative infancy and what
in terms of what it's in its capability and it's
evolving at such a rate that every day there's
something new to offer. There's something new
to explore. There's something new to kind of,
um, you know, upskill people on. And so it's,
it's exhilarating. You think you actually mentioned
something actually, which is the upskilling of
personnel. Do you think that a lot of people
are going to be left behind? Cause that's always
something. I'm saying, Oh, you know, a lot of
people are not going to give up in times and
whatnot, but I actually think it's going to end
up creating a lot more. So you need some bigger
economy. So what do you think about that? Absolutely.
And I think we began, we only distract ourselves.
I mean, like we must be careful that there is
a bubble broadly still. You know, within certain
people who read certain types of news or are
in certain types of industries, et cetera, they'll
be very aware of AI and particularly these generative
tools that are getting a lot of excitement. But
there is also that 80 % below whereby they're
still running their business. They're still running
in the right direction. They probably heard about
it. They essentially flirted with ChatGBT and
things like that. But really for them, it is...
totally uncharted ground. For me, there's an
interesting chunk there. Of course, you'll always
have the 5 % who are very kind of like aware
and kind of informed of this technology. But
there's, I mean, I know this, I mean, 5 % of
businesses have started exploring implementing
AI, yet 95 % of people have heard about AI. So
there is a huge gap between awareness and implementation.
And that is a very exciting sort of you know,
thing to be able to kind of, you know, work with.
So yeah, I think, I think it's going to be, it's
going to be, it's going to be, um, going to be
careful not to over hype it and realize that
in fact, there's still lots of people who aren't
fully yet, you know, a concept or the very, or
the other side of the spectrum. They're quite
intimidated by it. What do you think is stopping
people from actually implementing more solutions,
more AI solutions onto their business? Because
we can get tutorials on how to, for example,
Totally. I think there's a couple of, a couple
of things. I think some of it comes down to,
like, emotional behavior, comes down to trust,
comes down to, um, comes down to kind of, you
know, credibility and making sure that, you know,
is this right for me now? Other stuff comes down
to like, you know, the realities of life. There's
always, you know, a new and exciting technology,
maybe not like this one or a tool that, you know,
one might want to implement into their business.
the sort of often manana manana kind of mentality,
you know, we'll do it tomorrow, we will get to
it, but you know, we're actually really quite
busy at the moment. And so it's about actually
trying to again, create an environment which
is accessible, helps businesses adopt it in a
way that is not daunting. It is not going to
be a major upheaval to their workflows and everything
else. I could do it in kind of conjunction with
their existing, which From our experience, we're
able to do, and we have been able to do, and
again, just be able to, main part of this is
just education, demystifying it. It is not as,
I mean, put it this way, these models are extraordinary.
The time it's taken, you know, remember this
science, machine learning has been, you know,
a science since 50s, you know, Alan Turing's
day. You know, I'm not, I'm not. downplaying
the extraordinary minds that have gone into it.
But when you break it down, when you realize
you've got a set of input data and you've got
a set of output data and you're creating essentially
a set of an algorithm, a set of rules to be able
to do stuff with that data, whether it's making
prediction or generate new data from it, you
can begin to break it down in a way that's a
bit more bite -sized for people and understand
that what data, which is such an overused word.
What does that actually mean for people? Like,
is it images? Is it numbers? Is it videos? What
is it? You know, how does it look? How is it
structured? How does it look in your business?
Once you break it down for people, from my experience,
it just becomes, people go, oh yeah, actually,
no, that's not as complicated as I was meant
to believe. And therefore a little bit more kind
of receptive. I was just about to ask something
regarding breaking down barriers, which is, you
know, in all the businesses you build, I'm sure
there was many stages where you actually had
to break down mental barriers that people might
forge a business saying, this is never going
to be successful. Maybe it was the ice cream
business, maybe it was, you know, the nightclub
business, and now the ice cream business. So,
is there any tips or tricks you can give to fellow
entrepreneurs listening in and say, hey, this
is how you break down problems, how expensive?
Just... I mean, it's a great point and you're
right. I mean, we'll always come across sort
of stigma or the status quo. You know, many people
are inherently more sea conservative. You know,
they don't necessarily like, you know, abundant
and fast change, which is what we're experiencing
right now. I think you've got to it that every
single step of the journey put the customer of
the consumer first. If that be a business, the
key stakeholders. really bringing them along
on the journey. And it comes down to precisely
what I just said. Like it's a combination of
putting a core foundation in place from a business
perspective that gives you credibility from the
onset. You know, sweat, I do think sometimes
sweat the small stuff, sweat the detail, because
if it is in the early stages, make sure you do
dot those eyes, plus those teeth in respect to
putting the foundations in place because it will
build for so much something so much bigger, um,
and I think will help you bring your customer,
be a business, be a consumer along the journey
with you more easily. And as I say, I think making
sure that you're always, you've always got to
look at how is it useful? How is it delivering
value? Is it a nice to have? How do you turn
a nice to have into a must have? And I think
when you can do that, people, people will put
aside their prejudices, and they'll give you
a chance. Now, you know, I'm sure when in your
career you've had some dark moments, right? There's
always fears of more uncertainty, more instability.
How do you deal with it? There are various different
ways. There are some physical things I do, which
is walking. I'm a big walker. I live not far
from the river in Hammersmith, if I just need
to take a... breath and a break. A walk down
the river is often the best and most soothing
kind of reset that I can do. It's more of a kind
of meditation. Then more kind of like behave
really otherwise. I have a strong group of mentors
and friends that I can speak to and I lean into.
I think we are only kind of as good and strong
as some of our parts and making sure that you
do have a strong network in place. be able to
speak and get advice. I mean, I'm going this
alone a bit. I've got some great people on board,
but I mean, yeah, I'm a sole founder in respect
to Passion Lab. But, you know, behind the scenes,
there's lots of, there's lots of people actually
there along the journey with me. I think making
sure that, yeah, you've got some, like you take
some time with yourself, whether it's exercise
or water on the river, and also you surround
yourself by, um, and great people because at
that point the rest does fall into place. Who
inspired you to start this? Because obviously,
you know, you didn't wake up one day and say,
I'm going to launch a business. You always had
some type of role model on the shipping. So what
was this role model? I mean, there have been
various role models in my life at different stages.
I mean, you know, true, albeit cliched, my father
was a, was a, was, was a self -starter. Um, and,
um, and was very kind of entrepreneurial in that
respect. So I think there's definitely elements
of that there. I think, but also there was a
sort of personal conviction of like, I believe
we are, there may be a higher power, but we're
on this earth once and we need to make sure that
we really make a difference. And I don't want
to waste the day and I don't want to waste a
minute. And if that means forging something new,
creating a new business, creating something,
adding value, changing the landscape in some
form or another. That is, for me, empowering.
It's quite powerful. When you're in sales, you
often come across people who end up, I'm not
going to say making you lose your time, but they
end up just falling. How do you manage that?
How do you manage that anxiety of waiting for
someone to say yes or no? And like, why don't
you just give me a reply? I need this reply for,
you know, So my sales approach has always shifted.
It's been very fluid and dependent, obviously,
what I'm selling. But the skillsets are very
transferable. And there's a lot of commercial
crossover over what I've actually done, believe
it or not. Again, it comes back to that value
adds, speed to value. I think making sure that
you are approaching it in a way that you need
to understand what it is the buyer in any respect
is. how they operate. What's their rhythm? What's
their working rhythm? Don't go chasing people
on a Monday morning. That's for sure. Make sure
your timing is on point. Make sure that where
you structure, whether it's an email or nowadays,
frankly, people selling over new tools like Loom
videos and things like that. I think that we...
We're selling in different ways and you're not,
you're, I mean, you know, on one side you're
selling, you're also, remember, you've got to
talk, you've got to just talk to the benefits.
You know, you've got to, you know, the classics,
the feature advantage benefit, try to make sure
that you're always talking to the benefits. You're
not, you're not, you know, trying to get away,
you're trying to get away from that. Just sort
of, you're selling a feature, you're selling,
selling, you know, a life -changing experience
a life -changing moment whatever it might be
it's going to it's going to deliver real value
and also don't don't stop knocking either don't
take the foot off the accelerator either i mean
strike well the iron's hot people are keen you
know people can get distracted also very easily
too so make sure you you you don't let time get
in the way of good deal so from the knowledge
you have right now what advice would you give
yourself 10 years from what you've learned in
your journey What would you tell yourself? I
would, it's a good question. What would I do?
Just get going. Just keep getting moving. Because
often, and I've done this in the past, I did
this very recently in fact, I spent a long time
spending hours, hours, days in fact, strategizing
and planning the perfect, you know, doing all
the market research and doing all the consumer
and company research and finding my, you know,
ICP and owning it on that. But really it was
all sort of theoretical because I just, you know,
until I got going and still I started, started
trading and I just got my first few customers.
Then so much became clearer. I mean, so much
to the extent that in fact, now I remember about
three months ago, just about before we got Passion
Lab really moving, I said to a good friend of
mine, And what do you think the next step is?
You need to sit down. To make it a classic error,
you're trying to steer a parked car. Just get
going and you'll be able to move and pivot and
all the rest of it. And that's definitely been
true. So don't think too hard. Just do get going
and a lot will become clear. Now I've noticed
on your journey, you went in and out of university.
How important do you think education is for an
entrepreneur overall? So I think it gives you
a great question that actually, because I would
say one thing I probably would have done possibly
differently is, you know, after my bachelor's
gone on and done something, you know, a little
bit more kind of concrete straight afterwards,
as it was, I went straight into kind of business.
I intentionally made that decision at the end
of when I left Oto. to go and really cement some
of my form of education, give myself some of
that structure that I'd been missing. I considered
an MBA to make the mud numbers work. And frankly,
it's been the last 10 years doing a life MBA.
So I was, I wanted to just basically identify
the gaps in my knowledge and try and plug them.
And that's why these actually, these three months,
executive manager programs, nanodegrees, people
call them different things. are actually really
useful because if you know yourself best, you
could take kind of a holistic view of where,
you know, where my knowledge is in a specific
area. And then there are, there's invariably
a course out there, whether it's a Coursera course
or there's something online or there's an university
degree or something like that, that you can go
to actually hone in and unplug that. And it gives
you just that structure of critical thought,
which you don't often necessarily always get.
when you were just in fast -paced, you know,
business mode. How do you deal with the fine
balance between being confident to launch a business,
but then not being too arrogant to listen to
what people are saying and actually take that
on board and start with the fee? How do you manage
that balance? That's a good, again, good question.
Make sure you do, you know, you're listening
to the bank, you listen to others and know that
you don't always know best. Yeah, I don't want
to Contradict what I said earlier about having
strong conviction. I think that's still important.
Um, and making, you know, making sure that, you
know, when all's said and done, whenever decision
you take, you back yourself. But to reach that
decision, definitely lean into your customer
feedback, lean into your, you know, investors
feedback. Some of these people, some of the people
on my cap table have got 40, 50 years of experience
under their belt. You know, I don't want to be
naive just to say that, you know, they don't
know what they're talking about. I'll always
lean, lean into the great minds. Um, at what
point do you just stand up and, you know, push
forward? Was it hard getting investment for,
for your latest business? Not so much, not for
this. I mean, I didn't raise a huge amount of
the grand scheme of things. I needed just enough
to get the engine moving and sort of fuel priming
the pump, so to speak. So I, um, I raised a sort
of. you know, friends and family around. And
you know, at that stage when you're kind of free
revenue, they're ultimately backing you. You
know, you've got the best pitch deck and idea
in the world, but really you're backing me. So
in that sense, it's flattering, but it's also
quite pressurizing. And so we raised the cash
and I think for any successive funding rounds,
things will look a lot more different. But there's
capital out there. You know, there is capital
out there for the right product and right idea.
Um, and as long as it's packaged up in the right
way and it's got a great team around you and
a strong, you know, find a market fit, product
market fit, et cetera, then you've, you're onto
something. There's, you know, so for anyone raising
them, you have a great product market fit, a
great team. And then they're being, they're good
to be invested. To an extent. Yeah. I mean, you've
got to, again, like, selling anything. It's resilience
there to keep knocking, keep looking in the right
places, keep looking under every single rock.
But there's cash out there for the right idea
and obviously around the world of AI, people
are bending over backwards. The only thing to
add to that is that the UK again, and maybe not
to the same extent in the US in terms of people's
risk appetite, but there are some good schemes
in place and people will be aware of like the
SCIS and EIS schemes to help encourage investors.
And I think, you know, we, and as well as the
grants that are out there, like Innovate, which
I've had experience with in the past, you know,
we, we have got a, there is a, there are, there
are other areas and ways of raising money and
it's not just empty finance sources, you know,
you know, Virgin Startup Club and things like
that. They're all, they're all very, they're
all very helpful for just getting things off
the ground. So what does the future look like
for you? It looks like bedding and some really
in those strong foundations, as I mentioned,
for the passion lab, making sure that we've got
a really strong base in which to grow from 2025.
And we are at the moment a lab building different
businesses for different problems. But gradually
I will want to focus in on one or two core areas
and who knows in the future, productize into
those areas to really kind of like generate some
serious scale into the future. But yeah, I think,
I think every day is a school day and every day
is a new day. So we just got to give it a, give
it our best shot and see which way we take, which
way we're headed. Tommy, if people want to reach
out to you, how can you do so? They can reach
out to me on LinkedIn. That would be the best
bet. I'm increasingly vocal on LinkedIn and I
think it's a great platform. So yeah, please,
please send me a DM or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Tom Lorimer, you'll see. Building cutting edge
AI tools and solutions is what my title said.
I'll read into that. Tom, thank you so much for
your time. I really appreciate it. Simon, I'm
sick. Not at all. Thank you, Ricardo. Take care.
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