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Welcome to Two Commas. I'm your host, Josh Comrie. The podcast is all about exits and

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particularly multi-million dollar exits. The idea and intention behind this podcast is

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to inform and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs and of course those that

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are guiding their business through to the eventual part of the journey of getting a

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wonderful exit. Today we're honored to have a great guest with us. So we have James McCarthy.

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James is now a serial entrepreneur and he started a business quite some years ago which

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we're going to focus on through a bit of our conversation and then guided that successfully

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for over a decade to the point of a ultimately wonderful exit. So please welcome James.

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Thanks Josh. Yeah, it's great to be here.

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Wonderful to have you on the show. So I always like to start with a bit of an origin story.

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So my research has been digging around and found out that you've hailed from rural stock

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down in the southern North Island, I believe. Originally Manawatu, I think. Is that correct?

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Yeah, that's exactly right. When I was born, we lived in a place called Bunnythorpe. We

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had a three digit phone number which also dates me. And my grandmother was in Hawaii

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and called and asked for Bunnythorpe 803 when I was born.

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Amazing.

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Which they scarcely believed that that was actually a phone number.

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Did you have a party line?

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No, I'm not that old, but close to it. So Bunnythorpe, which is between Palmerston North

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and Fielding, I guess. Famous for Glaxo Laboratories, which eventually ended up being part of GSK.

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Right. Interesting.

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Other than that, not much there.

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We discovered that your entrepreneurial leanings came early in life and that you got involved

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in cattle trading, not in a bad way. But tell us about the early forays for you and what

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sparked your curiosity about entrepreneurship.

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That's really interesting. So as you may or may not be aware, when you grow up in rural

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New Zealand, schools will have like a lamb and calf day. And you're encouraged through

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spring if you live on a farm to get a lamb or a calf and then raise it up to a certain

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point and then bring it along to the school's lamb and calf day. And dad agreed to give

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me calves when I was a kid. Well, give to let me buy a calf when I was a kid. And he

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essentially loaned me the money to buy the calf and then funded me through the process

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of paying for milk and feeding the calf and having the animal grow over a period of time.

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And then after lamb and calf day, they would be sold and I would get a market price. And

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all of the costs that had gone into that would be deducted, but I'd get the profit that had

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been earned over that period of time. So at about six years of age, I was learning that

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working on your own equity, even if you were borrowing it was good way to generate value.

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That's remarkable. What a wonderful opportunity. I'm guessing that your dad was being very

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intentioned around that and the lessons that might be behind it.

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It's funny because when I think there was a semi intention to do that, but I don't think

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it was quite as explicit as it as it now appears to me when I look back at it, because it demonstrated

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something very obvious to me. For my parents, I don't think it was quite that intentional,

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but it was definitely intentional that I understood that you had to pay for the things that you

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were using. Yeah, for me, it kind of went another step beyond that to where putting

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your own labor into an equity or an asset that you ultimately can benefit from is a

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way of generating more equity.

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Yeah, yeah, I love that. So did that light an entrepreneurial fire for you? And you were

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then committed to being on the path of founding and exiting businesses? Or did you did your

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life take a different turn at the ripe old age of six years old?

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In some ways, I think it did. So I was always looking for things that I could do. Growing

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up on a farm, you have a lot of opportunity to go and do things with your hands to make

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things to try things. When I was living on Cobalt and road, so probably nine, 10 years

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old, I used to go in and grab old lawn mowers from one of dad's friends who had a lawnmower

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place and I'd bring them home, I hated it all these old bloody lawnmowers hanging around,

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but I would pull them to bits and try and make a functioning lawnmower out of parts.

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And that didn't turn into anything that I could ever sell. But the same philosophy sort

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of continued with me for quite a while. And when I was about 16, so maybe sixth form of

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school, I found this website in Japan that was selling wrecked and otherwise, you know,

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not useful cars. They weren't the typical Japanese use imports. They were things that

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might have had something missing or that had been in an accident. I found a 2001 Opel Astra,

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which is not an overly exciting car, you know, especially in my modern context. But it was

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pretty exciting to 16 or 17 year old me and had no engine, but it was brand new other

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than that it had 32 kilometres on the clock, not 32,000 just 32 kilometres on the clock.

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No engine, no engine. How did they get the 32 K's on there? That's a good question. I

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don't know. So I answered anyway, I bought the thing and it owed me something like two

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or $3,000 by the time it was landed in New Zealand. But of course, it had no engine.

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And I've worked out that they Subaru actually use that same motor and one of the people

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movers that they were selling in New Zealand. So I found a wreck people moving with the

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same engine, bought the engine out of it, dad helped me get the engine into the car

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and got it started and put it on the road, drove that car for 18 months and sold it

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for 17 or $18,000. Once I'd driven it for a year and a half. And I did the same thing

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over and over and over through university, I would buy cars, use them for six months

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and then and then sell them. I'm trying to keep within the limits of what was acceptable

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for personal use. Yes, of course. But typically looking to, you know, at least not lose any

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money on them and still own them for six months. And I accumulated enough through uni to pay

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for my uni fees by doing that, which is it's a great story. And I wondered if we might

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go with the story given that you had all these lawnmowers around the house was that you then

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put a lawnmower engine into the Opel, which some motor engineer would probably believe

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was part of the problem with that vehicle at that time, but a Sabara engine very respectable.

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Yeah. So you went from trading cattle to trading vehicles. And you were studying at university.

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You studied an engineering degree. Is that correct? I did. Yeah, I did. It was a new

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major at the time. And it was out of Massey in Palmerston North. It was called mechatronics,

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which is relatively common now. But the broad idea was to take a lot of the engineering

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disciplines and kind of give you a high level view across all of them. So everything from

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computer engineering through, you know, software engineering through to mechanical engineering

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and some aspects of civil. So we were at one point designing beams and at another point

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learning how to make a compiler. So everything in between as well was something that we were

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looking at. And the guy who pitched that particular major to me said, Look, this is like an automatic

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gearbox. This is the mechanical bits that make the wheels turn. But it's also the controller

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that decides when you need to change gear and every aspect in between. So I did that.

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There were only 13 of us in the class. It was a very small major and it was all pretty

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new. I was probably the most annoying person for all my classmates. Asking questions. I

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was a bit of a dare I say it arrogant little shit. And I was also accelerated into the

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second year of the program when I was only freshly 18 years old, which I don't know,

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it leaves a little bit of social development on the table, I think. So yeah, the first

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couple of years at uni were a lesson for me in growing up and not pissing everyone else

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off too much. But learn to love was really it was a really cool degree to do in many

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ways. But by the end of it, they want to they wanted a lot of us to come back and to do

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PhDs to a lot of things. I think more than half of I think seven people in that class

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ended up going and starting their own businesses. So that gives you an idea of how entrepreneurial

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the people coming out of that were. And I think that high level, broader view of engineering

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probably helped with that. It may also be new degree, new major, only risk takers are

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going to go in and do something which is unproven. So maybe that was it. Maybe it was a combination

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of both. But yeah, there were a lot of people in there that we ended up starting businesses.

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And just I'm just trying to think there were at least a couple of exits in the first six

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or seven years after uni.

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Wow. It's quite remarkable, given that it's a discipline, you know, broadly focused across

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the discipline. That's not even a term. It's an oxymoron. But you've got a span of the

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discipline. And so the discipline was not business, however. And so 50% of the people

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went and then started a business. And so I personally have a belief that the entrepreneurship

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studies are possibly a waste of energy and waste of time. Because it's a I believe you're

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better to focus on the core requisites that would enable you to build a successful company,

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which is become a great product person, a great salesperson, or a great developer kind

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of person that's in the context specifically of building some form of a software related

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company or something that has software involved in it. And so what you're able to do is to

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get this kind of breadth of orientation, which you can then apply across a range of different

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things post university. So you were doing the making money on the side through study,

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you did the mechatronics degree, what was your then step in to go into business and

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what was your kind of first your foray into the professional commercial world?

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Yeah, good, good segue. So I'll be honest, I was pretty sick of the more pure aspects

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of engineering by the time I finished all I wanted to do. So talking about the lawnmower

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and bringing that back and I just wanted to go and work for Kevin or Kermie, as he was

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known and fix lawnmowers for a summer and work out what I wanted to do with myself.

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And my mother was horrified at this prospect. So she went and found me a job working for

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someone else who needed engineering graduates. So I had a job working for a company called

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Samarung McCray. The guy who started that had worked out a way to meter out the really

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fine seeds that go into the baby leaf crops and masculine salads, that sort of thing.

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And he'd created a really successful niche company in that horticultural machinery business.

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And I just got a job, there was a sponge in the middle of the product. And it was part

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of the seed metering mechanism. And my job was just to grind these sponges. It was intensely

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boring. But it was a great way to be around other people who were who were thinking about

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how they could improve something. And it was sort of a serendipitous confluence of a whole

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lot of events. And my being there at that particular moment, which demonstrated a problem

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for everyone in the room. So in 2005, Michael Ersek was flying his helicopter from Auckland

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down to Queenstown. He had a Dutch guy from one of the beer companies that independent

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liquor he sold on the helicopter. It was a brand new EC 120. So that's a it was called

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EC is short for Eurocopter. It was kind of like the seven series BMW of the of the helicopter

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world. It had all of the latest tricks on it. So in theory, if anything had gone wrong,

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something on there should have worked. But they crashed just just south of Raglan. And

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the first that anybody knew about the aircraft being missing was that they didn't show up

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in Queenstown and not not showing up seven 800k south of where you meant to be a couple

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of hours later as a massive time gap. And it was obvious to us that there was a big

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problem with the way that the different technologies weren't working. The guy so Don who, who has

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started Sam Brut McCray and seed spider actually, he was also a helicopter pilot. So it became

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an immediate pressing problem that he was quite closely related to his wife also became

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slightly anxious with the idea that he was out there flying around and she might not

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know if something had gone wrong until he didn't show up later that day. So there were

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a bunch of us and he said, Look, why don't you guys go and make something so that I can

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see so that my wife can see where I am. And so we had a look to see if there was anything

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on the market. There were a few companies, there were a few New Zealand companies even

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making some things that could solve this problem. But they were all 747 type solutions to a

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small helicopter problem. So massive big boxes that weighed an absolute ton. And as you can

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appreciate in a small helicopter, every gram counts. So you know, 2030 kilo box that can

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show you where you are isn't really that useful. So yeah, we condensed everything that we could

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find down into the smallest package that we could. And we had the thing weighing in well

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under a kilo. So it made sense. It was small, could sit on the dash and it just required

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accessory power off the helicopter. So we'd made something that could sit on a helicopter

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and track where that helicopter was in real time at a cost effective price of I think

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we were paying 20 cents per ping at the time. So if you go every four minutes, that's $3

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an hour, which, you know, in the context of a helicopter is not quite affordable. And

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that was up against the sort of 20 $30,000 box that that costs $30 an hour, but could

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track a 747. So we'd sort of, you know, change the change the game by orders of magnitude

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and cost and in weight. And suddenly we had a product which was able to address a problem

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that a lot of people flying helicopters, especially in the likes of New Zealand was remote areas,

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bad weather, not necessarily mobile coverage everywhere you're going to be. Yeah, we'd

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solved as it turned out quite a quite a gnarly problem. Quite an early problem. Yeah, yeah.

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So just recap, because I'm curious about the segue into the spider tracks business. So

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you're employed by someone who had a company called seed spider. And they were an enthusiast

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and had some domain knowledge around flying helicopters and the lack of the solution that

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might exist in there. Then there was a catastrophic event for a family and an individual. And

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I distinctly remember that happening in New Zealand, because, you know, he was one of

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New Zealand's wealthiest people at that stage. It was it was a big deal in New Zealand history

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at that stage. And so there was a timing thing that cropped up as well. And I'm a big believer

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that timing is one of the most critical factors in any business, you know, getting getting

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your timing right to enter that space, and evolve the solution appropriate to customer

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needs along the way as well. And then there was a desire to kind of, you know, make a

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bit of a difference in a space and provide a solution that was a meeting a meaningful

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need. So that to me kind of encapsulates the start journey of spider tracks is really think

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you'd add to that? Yeah, so the timing thing, I can talk about,

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you know, the lack of timing, if you like, and a couple of different ways. So we, in

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order to make our product relied upon a brand new piece of technology called SBD, the Iridium,

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which is a satellite communications network had so recently released that they didn't

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even have documentation for us on how we were going to use it. And SBD stood for short burst

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data. And previously, anyone who wanted to do globally available tracking had had to

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use a sat phone, which made it like a dial up connection, and then transmitted over that

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dial up connection and sat phone calls costs, I think, $2 us a minute or something. So

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every time they needed to send something, it was a minimum $2. So in the short burst

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data was costing us 10, 20 cents. And that hadn't been available even, even a year before.

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If we look at if we go back 10 years, Iridium was set up by Motorola, and they spent billions

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and billions of dollars putting that up in the sky, and then it all collapsed and went

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into liquidation. And it was only because someone was able to buy the satellites before

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they crashed them. I think they spent 50 million buying the satellites.

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From multi billion dollar investments.

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Multi billion dollar investment. And within 10 years, they were, they had probably 10

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times that in annual revenue. So they did pretty well. But timing wise, that technology,

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if not for a couple of little, you know, brave people, but a couple of cock ups along the

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way wouldn't have existed at all. And all of the alternatives didn't give us what we

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really believe that you needed. So for our technology to have been useful, it needed

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to work everywhere.

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You don't typically have a crash with this mobile coverage. Well, you don't have a crash

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that matters in our context. If you have mobile coverage, someone's going to see that because

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they put mobile towers where people tend to hang out. The other satellite networks were

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often constrained by the need for a ground station to be in sight at the same time. So

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the satellite was there, but it was only a relay point. So if you flew from New Zealand

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to Australia, as soon as you left the coast, you weren't covered. So we were just, I guess,

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lucky in some ways that the technology was mature enough, but not actually mature, that

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we could use it when we when we came along.

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I refer to that as a technology trigger. A kin case, which may have been a similar time

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for maybe a little bit later, is Amazon with AWS releasing affordable cloud computing.

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And then in the background, there was the advent and popularity of fiber to the door

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to people's homes. And so this combination of being able to access supercomputing on

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a rent basis, and then people being able to consume massive amounts of data much more

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than they had been before. And so it was the perfect conditions for a whole bunch of these

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SaaS companies to kind of get out of the ground and entertainment companies, Netflix, etc.

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to get out of the ground. And it was really a really exciting period. It was a similar

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sort of timeframe to what you were doing, albeit very different technology stack, of

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course.

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Yeah. When I think about the, you just made me think a lot about how we went about building

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the first pieces of software, we were debating amongst ourselves, do we build cloud base?

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Do we build a website basically? And back then, there weren't words like web apps. And

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there certainly wasn't any AWS. But yeah, it was about the same time. And there was

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a lot of change in that market. Yeah. I'm just thinking about all of the things that

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we had to build. We had to build our own billing system. Stripe didn't exist. We had to work

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out where to host the thing. AWS didn't exist. And then shortly after that, we ended up hosting

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in the US. But it was still we had to buy a server, a physical piece of hardware that

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our stuff would run on. And we had to manage that ourselves. And then within five years,

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all of that had changed.

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I remember seeing Gary Vee speak at a conference and he uttered something which I do believe

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in. He said that one of the core functions and responsibilities of a entrepreneur is

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to be a problem solver. Because you're confronted every day with a new problem, or hopefully

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not the same problem, otherwise you haven't resolved it properly in the first place. And

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so one of the core things you have to get great at is to find creative, cost effective

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solutions that you can generate quickly to all of these problems that you're coming up

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with. And so there was there was a myriad of those things that you had. So I'd like

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to talk about scaling. And so understand that you had a you're operating in an industry

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that was quite antiquated and quite slow to adopt new technology was very safety conscious

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industry. And so the new things that turned up had to be validated and go through a period

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of time before they would be accepted by the industry. And you had to go to the States

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to attend a whole lot of trade shows and you're investing all this money and all this all

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these resources of which you had a very limited amount to gain presence. And there was a point

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where you got some kind of inflection and some subtraction. So tell me a bit more about

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the growth path and talk to that story and any others that might be relevant.

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Yeah. So I'll go right back to the first sale and and talk talk about our first five units.

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So we we made the unit that Dom was flying around the country with and then some people

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said, Hey, look, I think I'd like one of those as well. So we started building them in batches

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of five. And we decided that we should try and talk to more people in aviation than just

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one by one. So we went to an air show up in Auckland. And that led us to a trade show

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in Australia called Avalon in 2007. Avalon was primarily a military type show, but we

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ended up with a whole lot of people from all types of aviation across Australia, and the

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Department of Sustainability and Environment, I think it was DSE, in Victoria, they were

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responsible for some firefighting type work, and they wanted to know where their firefighting

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assets were all aviation based, of course. And they said, This is exactly what we need

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many 20 of these things. And you know, because I've built about five of them by hand, there's

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a team of three of us soldering these things and the workshop by ourselves, shaking with

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an order for 20 of them working out what we're going to do. At that point in time, it was

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costing us more to make them than it was, than we were selling them for. But the subscription,

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you know, we had that loss leading model, the subscriptions going to work. And so we

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went home made these things and shipped them off and very quickly realized that this was

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completely unsustainable. If we were going to scale the business, we needed to be able

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to make something that wasn't as intensive as what we were doing. And across that year,

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so 2007, you know, you know, for just a reminder on context, beginning of the GSC, was it Fannie

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Mae and Freddie Mac, I think they were both collapsing when I was at a trade show in the

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UK. And that was all that the news was about the world's going to have no money in a minute.

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So it was a very interesting time to be trying to start and scale a business. And I went

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to Oshkosh in Wisconsin. And it's one of the largest air shows in the world, primarily

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aimed at recreational flying, not at commercial and stood there in the in the absolute pissing

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rain outside because we couldn't get a booth inside trying to flog these things off of

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three and a half thousand dollars each or something, and didn't sell any, didn't sell

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any at all. It was it was quite depressing. I think one trucker from somewhere up in northern

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Ontario bought one to afterwards to try it. Anyway, we we we generated a bit of interest

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as a result of all of that. And about three or four months later, we got an email from

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someone at Cessna who said, Hey, look, we really like what you're doing. We want to

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buy some and we want to sell them through our reseller channel. We think this is the

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future. And of course, pitching a giant tent over this thing is pretty bloody amazing.

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Cessna is a reasonably substantial business, a multi billion dollar organization.

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Yeah, so Textron, who I'm not sure that they even still own Cessna, but they were they

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were huge. And Cessna is by number of aircraft in the world, the largest aircraft manufacturer.

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Obviously, they're not Boeing or Airbus, but they they make the or they at that time had

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the largest number of aircraft flying in the world. Most amount of wings, we'll call it.

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Yeah, yeah, the greatest the greatest number of propellers. And we didn't even know how

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to react to something that that was that exciting. We showed up like a bunch of amateurs and

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in Kansas and did a demo to them. And they actually loved it and bought 125 grams with

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the product, which was more than all of the seed capital that we had at that point in

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time. And then we had to work out how to make the bloody things. All of this demonstrated

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to us and really hit us in the head with the reality that what we were doing wasn't scalable

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at all. It couldn't be hand making these things. So we started working out how to make them

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and how to how to have injection molded enclosures that we could make for $3 each instead of

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CNC machined aluminium enclosure enclosures, which cost us 250 bucks each. Anyway, if I

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if you want to talk about scaling, I think it's important to jump forward two years.

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So 2009, we went back to Oshkosh. 2008, we decided it was a waste of time. We're going

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to go back, went back in 2009. And this guy came cruising up to the stand and said, So

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we're here two years ago, I wasn't going to buy your product. Okay. Interesting way to

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introduce yourself. I needed to know that you were going to survive. So it was that

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very early lesson, especially in the States, in a conservative industry that you've got

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to prove to us first that you're going to be around. And it was a very horse and carty

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type problem to overcome in the US. So a lot of our early success came as a result of working

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out some kind of crafty way to overcome that. And I'll credit Bruce my other business partners

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for for doing a lot of leg work in the US to convince a particular market that we were

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worth betting on. Yeah, we we found that the tourism industry, especially the helicopters

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that flew people into the Grand Canyon had a really strong use case for our product and

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needed to know when the helicopters were coming back. They had a big safety mandate as well.

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A safety issue in the tourism industry would be able to lose to them. So making sure that

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they were operating safely, and they knew where their aircraft were, so they could schedule

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the next group of people for the flight became really important. And we ended up selling

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into Sundance helicopters and that precipitated nearly I think, every single tourism operator

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based out of Vegas that was flying to the Grand Canyon within a year or two that all

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that all fitted their fleet out with our stuff.

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Did you become like a competitive value add to those businesses? Do you think?

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Absolutely. The the the emphasis on safety was huge. And the ability to demonstrate that

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they were actively doing things was important. That's amazing. Were you I'm imagining by

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now four or five years into the business, you're starting to see some competitive pressure

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as well others were recognising the opportunity and kind of building their own technology

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or did you still have a reasonably clear playing field?

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It's interesting talking about the competition because we at that point was still probably

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the newcomer. You've referred to the fact that aviation is pretty conservative. A lot

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of the aircraft that we were putting our stuff into 10, 20, 30 years old and based on 50,

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60 year old designs. A lot of the competition was still selling what I would call legacy

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type hardware based on the old way of doing things. And even though that migrated slightly

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in how they were doing things, I still wouldn't have described them as a true competitor.

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And there were a few smaller competitors coming up from beneath us. And to be honest, there

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was one out of South Africa and two others out of New Zealand, which I found really interesting.

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That New Zealand seems to create its free companies all trying to solve the same problem.

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But at that point, I think it would still be fair to say that our largest competitor

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was nothing. I was doing nothing. There was no legal requirement, no mandate. There was

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nothing compelling people to do other than the benefits of the product itself.

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So more often when we lost a sale, we would lose it to people deciding not to do anything.

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It said in enterprise software, particularly that inertia and the alternative of not acting

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is often for people a more attractive option because it actually reduces risk in a number

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of ways because you're keeping the status quo as opposed to taking a risk by doing something

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which could be perceived to be the thing that pushed you into a trajectory or a path that

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you didn't want to be on. And so it's interesting that was the same in aviation.

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So I'd like to start moving here and talking about the exit itself. So if we jump forward

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a few years to when you started to ponder the future for the business and the future

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for you as founders and shareholders of the company, so what was the thing that kind of

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precipitated the start of that journey of pondering the exit?

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So it's a piece of relevant context. I actually stopped working on a daily basis in the company

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in 2015. So that was seven years, give or take six and a half years before we exited

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and probably five and a half years before it became a relatively consistent discussion.

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Why did you do that?

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I've been there 10 years. And if you subscribe to some of the Jim Collins methodology around

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your own hedgehog concept, I think my hedgehog concept is very strongly tied to what happens

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right at the start. And once things become about the processes and lots of reports and

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layers of reporting that help a business grow, I don't think I'm the right person to run

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the company at that point. So I stepped away.

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I view the world as being as a founder or as a CEO, there's phases of the company, which

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suit a different skill set and a different personality type. And so to me, what I'm hearing

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you say is that you're a start build person, as opposed to a change or a operate person

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or potentially a sell person. Some of those things can be blended together. And occasionally

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have people that are able to be polymaths or apply skills across a range of different

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contexts. But I like you and actually a start build person. So I can really relate to what

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you're saying there.

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So I had gone and I hadn't been a part of the company. I took two years where I wasn't

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really involved at all other than to get the odd update and to have a chat with the guy

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who had taken over from me. But I put myself back on the board in about 2017. And coming

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through COVID, the number of people that were tapping on the door saying, hey, we'd really

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like to buy you, it just became too hard to ignore. And we didn't think as a board, we

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didn't think we were probably ready to try and sell the company for the value that we

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thought we were generating at that point in time. But if we if we look back at it, the

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shareholders were ready to exit that been on that journey at that point in time for

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1516 years. The company was the market was ready. And the company was actually it was

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ready to sell, we just didn't necessarily think that we were going to realise all the

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value that we'd created recently. Sorry, I'm not sure that I've answered your question.

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It's okay, we'll circle around it. Yeah. So the there was a range of factors that led

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you to go now is perhaps the right time, there was a good degree of interest, you felt like

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you might have extracted a pretty good degree of value from the company at that stage as

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well. And there was a desire from shareholders, investors to perhaps see a bit of a return

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on that. So there's some pretty compelling reasons. So people were expressing interest.

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And so knocking on the door, what did you do then? Was it assemble a deal team? Was

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it retain advisors? How did you go about kind of starting to cobble together a deal that

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ultimately was able to happen? Yeah, we've been having the conversation with shareholders

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for a couple of years before that point. And we'd already talked to I think, Regan Holt

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from PWC had done a bunch of work on valuations and, and a potential strategy. So we'd already

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had that piece of work done. At the point when we decided, okay, we're going to do this

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now is the time. The board put a bit of a subcommittee together with the CEO, and we

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said, okay, let's pick who we think are the most likely buyers for this company. And let's

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go to them and actually get a non binding indicative offer, and talk through with the

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shareholders what this could look like. Because the shareholder expectations were all over

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the map. There was a you know, multiple of two between the lowest and the highest. Wow,

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that's a spread. So you know, there are some expectations that you need to manage. And

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there was a lot of work in front of us that we probably didn't realize was in front of

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us at that time. We after we'd gone to these people and said, look, why don't you give

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us a non binding indicative offer, they obviously needed a whole lot of information. Luckily

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for us, we were relatively well prepped for sale. So we had, well, I wouldn't say that

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we had a data room, but we'd had at least a high level brief that we could send, send

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out. And people were pretty good at giving giving indicative offers on a relatively short

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turnaround. And the thing that surprised me is especially given the differences and the

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three potentials that we've picked out one being a sort of a long hold PE one being more

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of a local and short hold PE firm and one being a more of a trade sale type purchaser.

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All the evaluations were relatively close together. Nothing what you know, too far outside

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my expectations, and all of them above what I thought the minimum value for the company

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ought to be. So that was at least a good start. And then we went to shareholders, put the

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options out, got some feedback and the shareholders took the advice and we decided to go ahead

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with a with a process with one of these one particular buyer, or name is Arcadia, because

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it's easy just to talk about him by name. Arcadia's deck to us had had a very optimistic

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four week process for weekday. And I think even Paul would now acknowledge that that

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was probably a little bit optimistic. But I can talk about some of the funny moments

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through the process, including them not realizing that New Zealand shuts down for all of summer.

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But they in early November told us that they would have the deal sewn up by Christmas.

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Wow. Anyway, the the board sort of put the CEO at the time in charge of this process

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and we kind of sat back and answered questions and wanted to see what would happen. A terrible

400
00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:10,520
idea. Terrible idea for lots of reasons. And I can talk about where we ended up and what

401
00:36:10,520 --> 00:36:11,520
we should have done.

402
00:36:11,520 --> 00:36:18,800
But probably not quite a good time to do that actually. Look, the ultimately you need someone

403
00:36:18,800 --> 00:36:23,960
who's connected enough to the decision makers and the decision making process connected

404
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:27,360
enough to the business and the information within the business and ultimately who's going

405
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:31,160
to sign the warranties that person needs to be leading that process will need it in our

406
00:36:31,160 --> 00:36:37,600
case to lead that process. If I think about all the relationships, so I was leading that

407
00:36:37,600 --> 00:36:44,000
process. If I think about all the relationships that I had, and had to manage, there were

408
00:36:44,000 --> 00:36:48,000
four shareholding groups, but within those shareholding groups, different groups of different

409
00:36:48,000 --> 00:36:54,400
shareholders as well. So probably about 15 people all told on the shareholding side that

410
00:36:54,400 --> 00:36:59,720
you needed to have a relationship with and bring along on a journey. There was obviously

411
00:36:59,720 --> 00:37:03,800
the buyer. And within the buyer, there were a whole lot of different people. There was

412
00:37:03,800 --> 00:37:09,000
our own legal team. And then there was the company itself and the people working in the

413
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:15,360
company. And that includes the board who were ultimately going to carry a degree of responsibility

414
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:27,360
for making sure the company achieves its objectives. And that is a hell of a distraction. And if

415
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:38,560
you get the CEO who wasn't a founder shareholder, he wasn't centralized based on an exit, but

416
00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:45,760
he wasn't a founder shareholder with a huge stake in the company. If you take that person

417
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:50,160
away from the things that they're going to be doing every day and throw this job at them,

418
00:37:50,160 --> 00:37:56,160
for a start, they're going to have an overhead of consultation with the people who can generally

419
00:37:56,160 --> 00:38:01,360
make the decisions, and they're going to have no time for anything else.

420
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:05,520
So the risk therefore is if the deal doesn't go through, you've probably started to slip

421
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:09,760
in your earnings and your ability to execute upon the strategy. So such an important thing

422
00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:14,800
to keep an eye on where the business is going and the deal that's on the table in front

423
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:21,840
of you at the same time. So just to be clear to recap, sorry to interrupt, the many moving

424
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:28,160
parts relatively standard situation when you've got a mature company, especially with a multitude

425
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:33,760
of shareholders in that company as well. And so you were external to the business and you're

426
00:38:33,760 --> 00:38:40,480
back on the board. So non operational, but not exact director. And so you took responsibility

427
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:44,560
for taking on some of that and the CEO took some responsibility. Could you talk to that

428
00:38:44,560 --> 00:38:46,080
a little bit more for us, please?

429
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:54,560
Yeah, so Dave was running the process to begin with. And we actually got to a point where

430
00:38:54,560 --> 00:39:04,400
we thought it was all going to fall over. And part of that came down to Dave not having

431
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:11,680
the ability to make make the calls on behalf of shareholders and then go and pitch those

432
00:39:11,680 --> 00:39:19,120
to shareholders that realistically you need. And so we kind of had a first half and a second

433
00:39:19,120 --> 00:39:22,880
half and the first half was unsuccessful, not because of any anything to do with Dave,

434
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:30,160
but just because it was the wrong people trying to run the process. So I think the other thing

435
00:39:30,160 --> 00:39:35,200
is I was naively trying to step back because I thought it wasn't my place to be doing it.

436
00:39:36,240 --> 00:39:41,520
I was already wearing plenty of hats and didn't think that wearing the let's lead

437
00:39:41,520 --> 00:39:45,680
the exit hat was the right thing for me to be doing, especially given my lack of

438
00:39:45,680 --> 00:39:51,040
operational knowledge of the business at that point. That was a big mistake. You need to have

439
00:39:51,920 --> 00:39:59,280
that person involved. And so I picked up the ball and ran with it at that point. And it was

440
00:40:00,480 --> 00:40:03,840
I look, it was a hell of a task to get up to speed.

441
00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:10,160
I knew the business. I broadly knew how the business ran. A lot of the older stuff I knew

442
00:40:10,160 --> 00:40:13,440
very intimately, of course, but I hadn't been operational for seven years.

443
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:14,080
It's a long time.

444
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:21,200
And, you know, to give you some examples, you have to warranty all sorts of things about the

445
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:26,160
business, you have to warrant that, you know, software meets a certain specification or has

446
00:40:26,160 --> 00:40:32,320
done a certain way or that there's none of this or that there is all of that. And I knew

447
00:40:32,320 --> 00:40:37,600
that I had to do that. And when you're involved with the business, and you've got a high degree

448
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:43,200
of trust with the people doing the work, extracting that information is a lot easier than when

449
00:40:43,200 --> 00:40:47,680
you actually don't know who that you don't know the team on a personal level anymore.

450
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:55,040
So you have to go in there and trust but verify for yourself. So there's a there's a huge amount

451
00:40:55,040 --> 00:41:05,360
of speed. And the problem with that time is that the more time you give a buyer, the more time

452
00:41:05,360 --> 00:41:11,120
they're going to spend looking at things, and the more questions they're going to ask. And we ended

453
00:41:11,120 --> 00:41:19,840
up in a relatively drawn out process. It took another two months after I finally stood up and

454
00:41:19,840 --> 00:41:28,400
did what I should have done from the start. And that time just gave them so much time to ask a

455
00:41:28,400 --> 00:41:34,480
whole lot of questions, which I don't think serve them or ask particularly well. Yeah,

456
00:41:35,120 --> 00:41:41,360
you there's a notion and sales as there is, you know, selling a company that time kills deals,

457
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:47,440
and it's tends to erode rather than increase value. Yeah. So I'm curious, you may not have

458
00:41:47,440 --> 00:41:51,520
reflected upon this, but you weren't heavily involved in the start of the journey, you said it

459
00:41:51,520 --> 00:41:57,280
was a game of two halves, if you like a deal of two halves. And then you became really heavily

460
00:41:57,280 --> 00:42:01,600
involved. I'm guessing that you either were the largest or you represented the largest group of

461
00:42:01,600 --> 00:42:06,160
shareholders. So you know, the largest vested interest in that deal, and your founder of the

462
00:42:06,160 --> 00:42:11,920
company as well. And so you know, super important to be able to see the right outcome for all of

463
00:42:11,920 --> 00:42:14,960
the different stakeholders that you served, or which these many, you know, that the company,

464
00:42:14,960 --> 00:42:21,120
the customers, the shareholders, it's a complex entity by the stage. Have you reflected upon the

465
00:42:21,120 --> 00:42:25,840
difference that you may have been able to make through becoming much more active in that deal?

466
00:42:25,840 --> 00:42:30,400
Like for example, could the deal have gone off the rails? You mentioned that may have been a

467
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:37,920
possible outcome at that point. And or was there a potential increase in the EBIT multiple? Or was

468
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:42,000
it just getting the deal done in better terms? Or you know, what influence do you feel like you may

469
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:49,200
have been able to have on that deal? I think the deal would have fallen off the rails of

470
00:42:49,200 --> 00:42:52,320
if I or someone representing the largest shareholders hadn't gotten involved.

471
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:56,320
That's basically what it comes down to. Yeah, that's fundamental.

472
00:43:00,320 --> 00:43:02,400
One of the things that I talk about as being a real,

473
00:43:02,400 --> 00:43:10,320
probably one of the hardest things was just the decision fatigue through the process. And

474
00:43:11,760 --> 00:43:16,320
when you can make the decision and know that you've got the backing of a majority of shareholders

475
00:43:16,320 --> 00:43:23,600
behind you, and you will have to discuss some things, and negotiate some things. But when

476
00:43:23,600 --> 00:43:29,280
you've got the ability to make those decisions, and just keep moving, you're far better place to

477
00:43:29,280 --> 00:43:37,600
stop that time just blowing out. So that was probably the thing that I brought to it was the

478
00:43:37,600 --> 00:43:44,320
ability to just make a lot of decisions without too much consultation, and then go back and sell a

479
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:51,520
package to the shareholders instead of going back piece by piece and asking questions along the way.

480
00:43:51,520 --> 00:43:58,080
Yeah. Consequently, my mind goes to that does two things. On the one hand, it means you're

481
00:43:58,080 --> 00:44:03,040
on the one hand, it means that you can accelerate the deal process. And on the other hand, you give

482
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:06,800
confidence to the acquirers that they are dealing with the person who's actually kind of responsible

483
00:44:06,800 --> 00:44:11,360
for shepherding this thing through. And it feels like it's a cohesive entity and a smartly run

484
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:17,200
entity as well, to a degree. Absolutely. I think the other one thing that one piece of context,

485
00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:23,360
which is probably missing from the discussion at this point is the fact that Arcadia was a brand new

486
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:28,640
fund at that point in time, first deal or one of we were first basically first equal, I think we

487
00:44:28,640 --> 00:44:34,880
and another company closed within a week of each other. And so not only were we learning about this

488
00:44:34,880 --> 00:44:40,320
for the first time, but even though the principles at that firm had a lot of experience, this was the

489
00:44:40,320 --> 00:44:45,360
first time they've done it in their own fund. So there was a and this was also the first time

490
00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:54,160
they've done it in New Zealand. So there was a lot of legal and cultural and just novice type

491
00:44:54,160 --> 00:44:59,680
learning around the whole process that needed to happen as part of the journey for each of us.

492
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:07,200
Yes. And that definitely impacted quite a few things. I'll give you examples. There were there

493
00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:11,680
was workers comp in the in the spa, when it first landed on their desk, and no matter how many times

494
00:45:11,680 --> 00:45:16,400
we went back to them and said, you need to remove this workers comp reference, because that's an

495
00:45:16,400 --> 00:45:22,640
Australian concept, not a New Zealand concept. The little things like that, that just took a lot more

496
00:45:22,640 --> 00:45:26,960
work than than than it really should have. And that was just an experience thing. I didn't know

497
00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:31,280
that I needed to say, Hey, look, just strike this for these reasons. And they didn't know that that

498
00:45:31,280 --> 00:45:36,240
wasn't a thing in New Zealand. Yeah. So that thousands of little pieces of learning like that.

499
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:41,600
Once you've done them once you kind of understand it. But when you've never done it, you have no

500
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:46,320
idea you're right. Yeah, I'm going to discover what the notion of that construct is, and then

501
00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:50,880
work out what you want to do and then sell it to some other people as well. So again, more complexity

502
00:45:50,880 --> 00:45:57,920
that comes into the deal itself. You don't need to mention names. But I'm curious, did you have

503
00:45:57,920 --> 00:46:02,880
advisors that were working alongside you in this in this journey? And to what extent they make a

504
00:46:02,880 --> 00:46:08,400
difference? Yeah, so there were actually I have a note of the people that I've talked to. And I

505
00:46:08,400 --> 00:46:13,520
looked at that this morning and prep for this. There, there were a half a dozen or so people

506
00:46:13,520 --> 00:46:18,640
that I would talk to and ask questions about how their process had gone. And they were kind of

507
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:24,800
informal friends, if you like that, that could mentor me through the process. And then on the

508
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:33,360
formal side, we engaged PWC legal, and I'll shout out to Elena Kim, who did a fantastic job at

509
00:46:33,360 --> 00:46:42,960
helping me through the process. Great. Thanks a lot. I can't, I can't mention enough how having

510
00:46:42,960 --> 00:46:52,960
a good legal representative helps you quantify what the risks are going to look like. The counter

511
00:46:52,960 --> 00:46:58,720
to that is that your lawyer also doesn't have a the context, the industry or the company context

512
00:46:58,720 --> 00:47:02,720
to help you interpret every aspect of the risk, they can tell you what the risk looks like from

513
00:47:02,720 --> 00:47:08,000
a legal perspective, you need to apply the real world element over the top of that. And so having

514
00:47:08,000 --> 00:47:13,040
a good lawyer who can break that down for you and give you examples of when or when not risks

515
00:47:13,040 --> 00:47:22,240
is going to exist is invaluable. And Elena, she did a fantastic job at that. And she was also

516
00:47:22,240 --> 00:47:27,600
incredibly available, which when you're trying to work across one of the guys was in Australia,

517
00:47:27,600 --> 00:47:31,280
some of them were in Florida, some of them are in Toronto, when you're trying to work across

518
00:47:31,280 --> 00:47:35,600
what's that 10 hours of time zones, it's really important that people are available, but

519
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:44,640
ungodly hours. It's a bit of conjecture. But to what extent do you think that you're able to

520
00:47:44,640 --> 00:47:49,360
positively influence the deal from the outset of what the heads of agreement was through to

521
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:52,800
ultimately what ended up being? Was there a difference in that marketly, by the way,

522
00:47:52,800 --> 00:47:59,920
and either in terms of the multiple or the terms that were attached? I think I was able to positively

523
00:47:59,920 --> 00:48:08,160
influence it. And so far as we got the deal across the line, we were we were really happy with the

524
00:48:08,160 --> 00:48:13,440
price that we got. And I think part of being happy with the price that we got was making sure that

525
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:17,440
we had a buyer who was happy with the price that they bought it for as well. Takes a lot of risk

526
00:48:17,440 --> 00:48:25,600
out of warranties and everything that comes afterwards. We negotiated quite heavily on

527
00:48:25,600 --> 00:48:39,680
the way that the post sale looked. So where we did change the shape of the deal was in

528
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:43,680
things like networking capital considerations, making sure that we weren't leaving a whole lot

529
00:48:43,680 --> 00:48:48,720
of cash in the company, making sure that we were tidying up imputation credits properly so that

530
00:48:48,720 --> 00:48:54,160
we weren't leaving a whole lot of unrealizable value inside the company. We did quite a

531
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:58,320
quite a bit of good stuff, which made a material difference to the outcome for us.

532
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:08,720
We had quite a short holdback time and the holdback funds were all held on deposit in New Zealand.

533
00:49:08,720 --> 00:49:16,320
So with a new fund, that made us feel that many shareholders feel quite safe. So the structure of

534
00:49:16,320 --> 00:49:25,200
the deal and the risk that we considered lay in the warranties were areas where we negotiated

535
00:49:25,200 --> 00:49:33,040
quite hard and I think we did quite well. And I think if we talk to Paul from Arcadia, they're

536
00:49:33,040 --> 00:49:37,840
really happy with what they bought and they're also content that they didn't buy a whole lot of

537
00:49:37,840 --> 00:49:42,960
risk or a whole lot of issue. There haven't been any warranty claims. It's a good outcome for both

538
00:49:42,960 --> 00:49:46,960
sides and I think that speaks to the integrity that we built into the deal.

539
00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:52,080
I love the approach that you've taken there, which you didn't use the words, but it was essentially

540
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:58,160
a win-win kind of deal. And so I think often people from the outside can look at a company

541
00:49:58,160 --> 00:50:04,560
exit and kind of hope they're going to screw the other person on the buy price. But I subscribe to

542
00:50:04,560 --> 00:50:09,360
the same model of thinking, which is that it's got to be a deal that stacks up for everybody

543
00:50:09,360 --> 00:50:13,520
and one that you can walk away with a sense of pride that you've done the right thing. But you've

544
00:50:13,520 --> 00:50:20,400
also achieved an outcome which is a positive one for Acquira and also all the other stakeholders

545
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:25,360
that we've talked about earlier on. Absolutely. And I think one of the big

546
00:50:25,360 --> 00:50:31,200
realizations that I had in this process that I was naive to as a founder and a founder who had

547
00:50:31,200 --> 00:50:35,600
gone and tried to raise money from the likes of VCs and other people in the intervening period

548
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:41,760
was that people buying companies need to buy companies. They need the companies to buy as

549
00:50:41,760 --> 00:50:47,840
much as the companies want to sell. They don't make money by not buying companies. So they're

550
00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:51,200
out there in the market looking for things that are worth buying. And if you've got something

551
00:50:51,200 --> 00:50:59,040
that's worth selling, there's so much potential for a win-win as you've termed it. So that was

552
00:50:59,040 --> 00:51:03,920
one of my big aha moments in the process. Actually, these guys need us as well as we're

553
00:51:03,920 --> 00:51:08,240
going to be able to do. They need us as well as well as much as we need them.

554
00:51:08,240 --> 00:51:13,120
It's a really powerful realization. I think a lot of people from the outside feel like,

555
00:51:13,120 --> 00:51:17,040
especially when they're going into the deal for the first time, if it's their first exit,

556
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:22,160
and that they might be beholden in some way to the buyer. And that there's some, you know,

557
00:51:22,160 --> 00:51:25,760
because it does feel like you need to jump through a lot of hoops when you're going through a DD

558
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:29,920
process. And it can feel quite arduous to people if they're unprepared for that, if the data room

559
00:51:29,920 --> 00:51:35,600
compliance has been a little bit lax along the way, whatever it might be. And so reminding

560
00:51:35,600 --> 00:51:40,400
oneself that this organization that's sitting here is here for a reason. It's because they need to

561
00:51:40,400 --> 00:51:44,640
buy a company like us. And so let's make this as easy and positive as possible for them.

562
00:51:44,640 --> 00:51:46,320
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

563
00:51:46,320 --> 00:51:53,440
Yeah. Just reflecting on the deal, it's always good to, you know, hindsight is a 2020 vision.

564
00:51:54,400 --> 00:51:57,840
So were there any kind of, and you may have touched on a couple of these, or it could be

565
00:51:57,840 --> 00:52:03,520
something different, but were there any missteps or mistakes that you made along the way that now

566
00:52:03,520 --> 00:52:05,440
you know looking back that you could have done differently?

567
00:52:10,240 --> 00:52:15,120
I think the major one was just getting the right people in the room from day one.

568
00:52:17,760 --> 00:52:24,880
I think we probably, we didn't fully believe, but we probably put a bit too much belief into the

569
00:52:24,880 --> 00:52:33,360
fact that it was going to be a quick and easy process. And what we overlooked there was the

570
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:38,720
fact that a buyer, if they're not content with something, will just manage that risk using

571
00:52:38,720 --> 00:52:47,600
warranties. And because I didn't have the in-depth day-to-day knowledge of what those warranties

572
00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:56,560
actually looked like, the work had to be done to quantify what those risks looked like. So

573
00:52:57,360 --> 00:53:03,760
if I'd been involved in the way that I ended up being involved right from the beginning, and if I'd

574
00:53:07,520 --> 00:53:13,280
probably, I don't know, I don't know how I could have got up to speed on the warranty requirements

575
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:16,800
more quickly. I'm not sure that there is a way. I think if you've been out of the business,

576
00:53:16,800 --> 00:53:21,040
there's just time. You need to spend the time to get to know the people to ask the right questions

577
00:53:21,040 --> 00:53:26,720
and work out whether the risks that are present and your warranties are worth taking.

578
00:53:28,800 --> 00:53:35,520
I didn't ask this question, but I'm making an assumption which is dangerous. So was Spider

579
00:53:35,520 --> 00:53:41,200
Track started with the intention of taking it through to an eventual exit? Or did that come up

580
00:53:41,200 --> 00:53:47,360
along the way? Or was it when Spider Track started to raise some capital that took me through that aspect?

581
00:53:47,360 --> 00:53:56,320
Yeah, it's a good question. There wasn't the explicit language that you would have about it now.

582
00:53:56,880 --> 00:54:04,880
I think that's the first thing that's worth saying. We kind of agreed on a handshake that

583
00:54:04,880 --> 00:54:09,360
eventually this is something that we probably would sell. But we'd had a few shareholding

584
00:54:09,360 --> 00:54:14,800
changes along the way. We'd had some disagreements which had led us on different paths and we'd

585
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:23,440
bought one shareholder out. So it's fair to say that the initial intention, whatever it was,

586
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:27,520
had been muddied by the things that had happened in the intervening period. We've raised some money

587
00:54:27,520 --> 00:54:33,200
along that journey as well. And K1W1 were the investor at that point. And they obviously have

588
00:54:33,200 --> 00:54:40,560
a mandate to invest on the basis that they will exit at some point. As a young investor of that

589
00:54:40,560 --> 00:54:46,960
ilk, the only way you see a return is from an exit event. Yeah, exactly. That said, we were never

590
00:54:48,880 --> 00:54:55,920
aiming to be operating in a constrained market. This wasn't a VC led company that was going to get

591
00:54:56,800 --> 00:55:01,680
50% month on month growth forever because the market is just tiny. The number of aircraft,

592
00:55:01,680 --> 00:55:08,160
the whole industry is worth about $3 or $4 billion. That's every aspect of the industry.

593
00:55:12,160 --> 00:55:15,520
You're not looking at a total addressable market of hundreds of billions of dollars.

594
00:55:16,480 --> 00:55:21,200
So it's a totally different ballgame to where your early stage angel and VC money might typically

595
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:29,520
be going. That said, I think it was understood that we were going to exit to someone at some

596
00:55:29,520 --> 00:55:34,080
point in time. And that would be a major return of capital to the investors and the founders.

597
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:40,400
You mentioned that you think that the investors, the other shareholders were pretty happy with the

598
00:55:40,400 --> 00:55:45,600
results that happened along the way, which is a great outcome. So not always is that the case.

599
00:55:46,240 --> 00:55:52,480
So I'm curious, and don't share if you're not comfortable to do so, but what kind of level

600
00:55:52,480 --> 00:55:56,960
of return did some of those investors see? Like perhaps the best investor story they saw,

601
00:55:56,960 --> 00:56:00,560
you know, 20, 30, 40 X of their number or whatever that thing might be. Is that something

602
00:56:00,560 --> 00:56:06,640
you can share with me? I'll share with you what my IRR was. Great. Thank you. So my IRR on my

603
00:56:07,200 --> 00:56:17,360
time and my capital that I put in was in the early 30s. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. For those unfamiliar,

604
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:22,720
would you like to just break down on a very simple concept as to what IRR internal rate of return is?

605
00:56:22,720 --> 00:56:28,880
Yeah. So it will, if we look at it this way, if you put a dollar in a year later, you'd have $1.30

606
00:56:28,880 --> 00:56:33,520
and then a year later you'd have whatever 1.3 times $1.30 is and you compound that over

607
00:56:34,080 --> 00:56:40,400
the time period. Yep. Got it. So in other words, that equates to 30% compounding interest per

608
00:56:40,400 --> 00:56:47,920
annum. Correct. Yeah. That's a great return. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And my family who ended up being

609
00:56:47,920 --> 00:56:53,520
in the order of two thirds of the shareholders by the time we exited, they were more than happy

610
00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:57,840
with the exit that we got. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Well done. And I think part of it, it's worth saying

611
00:56:57,840 --> 00:57:05,200
as well, a lot of angel and VC funded companies run along losing a lot of money without any

612
00:57:07,440 --> 00:57:15,840
ambition or plan to return cash flows along the journey. And that hadn't been us. We had paid

613
00:57:15,840 --> 00:57:20,240
dividends along that journey as well. So we'd been cash flow positive and paid dividends,

614
00:57:20,240 --> 00:57:27,600
as well as generating a capital base and the asset that we had. So we returned money to shareholders

615
00:57:27,600 --> 00:57:37,360
in two different ways. Yeah. Yeah. Great story. So you were part of a founding journey as a

616
00:57:37,360 --> 00:57:44,160
young person, graduated from university, working in a job, everyone collectively spied an opportunity

617
00:57:44,160 --> 00:57:48,640
and then kind of drove that thing through. And there was a lot of lessons and experiences that

618
00:57:48,640 --> 00:57:53,120
you had along that journey. I'm curious, this is a kind of a three part question. So I'm going to

619
00:57:53,120 --> 00:57:58,400
ask each part individually so it doesn't get too complicated for either of us. So what were those

620
00:57:58,400 --> 00:58:03,920
key kind of bits of growth that you had to go through over that journey as a young person at

621
00:58:03,920 --> 00:58:09,200
university to enable yourself to function effectively as a leader inside that high growth

622
00:58:09,200 --> 00:58:17,920
or that growth company? I mentioned probably an hour ago now that I was a bit of a pain in the

623
00:58:17,920 --> 00:58:26,000
ass. Let's just use that phrase when I was at university. And it's fair to say that managing

624
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:32,720
people and forming good relationships with people wasn't a strength that I came into this business

625
00:58:32,720 --> 00:58:42,080
with. And I definitely had my training wheels on for the first five years. And that was probably

626
00:58:42,080 --> 00:58:47,600
the area where I needed the largest amount of growth in order to have a chance of success

627
00:58:47,600 --> 00:59:03,600
through that. The realization, so you're an EO member, I'm an EO member. I came into EO

628
00:59:03,600 --> 00:59:08,560
on the tail of being in an organization called CQ for a decade. And I remember my first meeting

629
00:59:08,560 --> 00:59:16,400
at CQ, it's a forum like experience, there are eight people in the room. And everyone has just

630
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:20,160
given their update. And I just remember sitting there thinking, well, I'm nowhere near as fucked

631
00:59:20,160 --> 00:59:26,080
up as anyone else. But in reality, I was equally, if not more fucked up than everyone else. I just

632
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:32,320
didn't have the tools nor had I spent the time reflecting in order to understand how much growth

633
00:59:32,320 --> 00:59:39,360
potential I had in front of me. In other words, how naive I was to what I needed to be able to do

634
00:59:39,360 --> 00:59:42,960
in order to grow the business that I was running and to just be a functioning human.

635
00:59:42,960 --> 00:59:48,960
Yeah, wonderful piece of reflection. EO Entrepreneurship Organization, for those unfamiliar,

636
00:59:48,960 --> 00:59:54,080
global organization in which James and I both are part. So the next question, the lead on from

637
00:59:54,080 --> 01:00:00,960
that is that, so you went through a full lifecycle evolution, including succession planning, so

638
01:00:00,960 --> 01:00:05,360
moving yourself out of the business, which is a wonderful piece of awareness to have of what

639
01:00:05,360 --> 01:00:09,200
you're enjoying, but also where your capability set lies, hedgehog concept, as you mentioned.

640
01:00:09,200 --> 01:00:16,640
And so you've now moved on and started a new business, Cradle. Cloud PBX is kind of a space

641
01:00:16,640 --> 01:00:23,200
in which I think that would be a descriptor. Give us a quick pitch on Cradle. But the thing

642
01:00:23,200 --> 01:00:29,200
that I'm really interested in is how did you, upon starting that business, what were the key

643
01:00:29,200 --> 01:00:34,800
things that you applied that were the hard fought and won lessons from the Spider Tracks journey?

644
01:00:34,800 --> 01:00:38,960
So Cradle is a Cloud PBX, as you've talked about it. We talk about it as a Cloud phone system,

645
01:00:38,960 --> 01:00:44,400
and the goal is just to help primarily accountants have better, more meaningful conversations

646
01:00:45,120 --> 01:00:51,840
with their clients. We do that by giving them context, right? So we pull data out of their

647
01:00:51,840 --> 01:00:56,080
practice management tools and surface that data when they're on a phone call. So they're not

648
01:00:56,080 --> 01:00:58,960
talking blind, they know who they're talking to, they know when they last spoke.

649
01:00:58,960 --> 01:01:04,080
We've made a fair share of mistakes and and mis-turns in Cradle as well. So I won't

650
01:01:04,080 --> 01:01:11,680
sit here and claim to have it nailed and have it perfect. A couple of key things come to mind.

651
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:16,240
So the first one is that, and it speaks a little bit to one of the questions you asked about,

652
01:01:16,240 --> 01:01:23,920
was the intention from the get go to sell this company? I did a lot more work making sure that

653
01:01:23,920 --> 01:01:29,520
the on-ramp and off-ramp for anyone who was involved was clearer. So we weren't reaching

654
01:01:29,520 --> 01:01:35,120
points where founders or early stage investors were going, I want my money out or I don't like

655
01:01:35,120 --> 01:01:40,640
you anymore, how do I get out of here? And we didn't have a mechanism for it. All of that stuff

656
01:01:40,640 --> 01:01:46,480
was defined. This is how you get in, this is how you get out. And that has been really valuable,

657
01:01:46,480 --> 01:01:52,480
and we've used it in a lot of different ways. So we've used it in a lot of different ways.

658
01:01:52,480 --> 01:01:58,480
We've used it in a lot of different ways, and we've used it and not ended up with any degree of

659
01:01:58,480 --> 01:02:10,880
animosity. Which has been a really fruitful piece of learning. I'm not necessarily sure that this is

660
01:02:10,880 --> 01:02:16,240
something we didn't do at SpiderTracks, but we've been much more explicit about it at Cradle in that

661
01:02:16,240 --> 01:02:22,640
we don't try and build things if we don't have to. There's lift and shift opportunities everywhere.

662
01:02:25,760 --> 01:02:29,680
Part of the reason that we had to build things at SpiderTracks was the immaturity of the

663
01:02:30,560 --> 01:02:34,320
SaaS space. We had to build our own billing system. We had to build,

664
01:02:37,120 --> 01:02:43,200
let's use the billing system as an example. So you need to be able to bill your customers,

665
01:02:43,200 --> 01:02:47,120
and you're selling them something. So you work out what your billing model is going to look like, and

666
01:02:47,120 --> 01:02:52,720
you build a system around that, which every week, month, year, whatever it is, invoices them for

667
01:02:52,720 --> 01:02:58,640
what they've used or what they're going to use. Stripe didn't exist in 2006. Well, if it did,

668
01:02:58,640 --> 01:03:04,960
it certainly didn't exist in New Zealand. So we had to build that from the ground up. And we spent

669
01:03:06,400 --> 01:03:10,560
hours boiling the ocean and came up with the most complicated thing in the world, and then people

670
01:03:10,560 --> 01:03:15,520
from marketing and people from sales and everyone's having their input. And what we didn't do was just

671
01:03:15,520 --> 01:03:23,520
pair that scope down to the absolute bare minimum. So we went from a database query, which spat out

672
01:03:23,520 --> 01:03:26,960
a whole bunch of numbers, which we then turned into an invoice manually each month to the most

673
01:03:26,960 --> 01:03:32,800
complex billing system where Ruth, bless her, came into the door of where the dev team were

674
01:03:32,800 --> 01:03:37,040
working at the end of the day, and she's German. Is this billing system actually going to work?

675
01:03:37,040 --> 01:03:44,800
I love the German directness. And it was the right question. And we probably should have listened

676
01:03:44,800 --> 01:03:50,720
more to that question and understood the anxiety sitting behind it because we built a monster and

677
01:03:50,720 --> 01:03:57,360
it's still getting used today because it was far too complex for the job we were trying to solve.

678
01:03:57,360 --> 01:04:04,800
We over-engineered it to death. Now at Cradle, we use Stripe. And if Stripe can't do it, we don't

679
01:04:04,800 --> 01:04:10,880
offer that billing bill. Sorry, that's not how we do things. These are the choices. And all that we

680
01:04:10,880 --> 01:04:18,000
do is we send units across to Stripe and then we use their system as best we can. So one of the

681
01:04:18,000 --> 01:04:26,960
learnings there has been just don't build it. Build as little as you can. And I think there are,

682
01:04:26,960 --> 01:04:32,480
I can think of many different moments throughout the history of Spider Tracks where we probably

683
01:04:32,480 --> 01:04:37,280
should have stopped and thought, do we really need to build this thing? There's a couple of

684
01:04:37,280 --> 01:04:42,160
philosophies that you've unearthed there. Things that really resonate with me, terms that I would

685
01:04:42,160 --> 01:04:49,200
use would be buy not build. And so that's an ethos that can be quite present in companies,

686
01:04:49,200 --> 01:04:55,200
or it can be the alternative, which is a derivative of not in my backyard, NIMBY,

687
01:04:55,200 --> 01:05:00,080
which is not invented here. Which means that if we didn't make it, then it's not as good as it could

688
01:05:00,080 --> 01:05:06,240
be. And that's the luxury of a incredibly cashed up company, one that has an invention mindset,

689
01:05:06,240 --> 01:05:10,320
and that perhaps isn't necessarily focused on the outcomes that they're trying to deliver to as

690
01:05:10,320 --> 01:05:18,320
well. The other thing that I'll call out is the fit for purpose as well. And so over engineering

691
01:05:18,320 --> 01:05:23,280
and ending up with a whole lot of scope creep is something which is a real risk for anyone that

692
01:05:23,280 --> 01:05:28,960
has a tinkering engineering producty mindset. It's very, very easy to end up in a situation

693
01:05:28,960 --> 01:05:35,680
where you build a Frankenstein, you build a monster when something really simple could suffice.

694
01:05:36,400 --> 01:05:40,320
If you cannot buy it, if that's your mentality, and you need to build it, then build the simplest

695
01:05:40,320 --> 01:05:47,200
thing you possibly can for this point in time. There's a terminology that one of my previous

696
01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:52,640
co-founders Gareth Cronin talks about, which is the last responsible moment, which is kind of,

697
01:05:53,920 --> 01:05:57,440
still being responsible, but we're doing it at the time that is appropriate for how we're going to

698
01:05:57,440 --> 01:06:01,600
deliver and roll this thing out. So there's kind of three notions that you've surfaced there and

699
01:06:01,600 --> 01:06:05,840
why is it perhaps put some words around. So I think another one, another, you know,

700
01:06:05,840 --> 01:06:09,760
to borrow from Sir Peter Blake would be that doesn't make the boat go faster philosophy.

701
01:06:09,760 --> 01:06:13,440
And are we doing this because it's fun and exciting? Or are we doing this because it's

702
01:06:13,440 --> 01:06:16,800
genuinely going to make a difference to our customers and the value of delivering them?

703
01:06:16,800 --> 01:06:24,480
Yeah. And we also, I, and maybe it's a combination of all those things, or maybe it's the last point

704
01:06:24,480 --> 01:06:30,080
about being the last responsible moment as we avoid building things that we can do manually

705
01:06:31,600 --> 01:06:35,040
whilst doing them manually doesn't take up a ridiculous amount of time.

706
01:06:36,160 --> 01:06:41,440
Because often the cost of automating or building a system is what is a magnitude more than just

707
01:06:41,440 --> 01:06:44,800
doing it manually for a while and seeing if you actually need to do it in a year's time.

708
01:06:45,440 --> 01:06:47,680
Because a lot of things turn out to be bad ideas, right?

709
01:06:47,680 --> 01:06:55,680
Right. I was emceeing a panel with Bob from Cami a couple of weeks ago, and there was this

710
01:06:55,680 --> 01:07:02,800
beautiful simple masterclass on automation that he had as they were going through a COVID-fueled

711
01:07:03,440 --> 01:07:09,840
rapid, you know, unbelievable explosion of growth. And he said really simply that the founding team

712
01:07:09,840 --> 01:07:14,960
would apply themselves wherever they possibly could across the function. And then so they

713
01:07:14,960 --> 01:07:19,120
understood clearly as a group what needed to happen across the business, what the different

714
01:07:19,120 --> 01:07:24,640
responsibilities were. And then they would, once they got to a stage where they were breaking,

715
01:07:24,640 --> 01:07:30,640
they would automate. And then, so not hire, but automate. And then once that thing started to get

716
01:07:30,640 --> 01:07:34,960
a little bit creaky and groany, they'd reevaluate it again, and then hire someone to sit alongside

717
01:07:34,960 --> 01:07:40,560
that. And so it was the simplest way of looking at how you go about building systems and automation

718
01:07:40,560 --> 01:07:44,640
and behind the scenes to support the efforts of the humans, because automation is not necessarily

719
01:07:44,640 --> 01:07:48,560
always the right answer. It's not the panacea. It could be that another human or a part of a human

720
01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:52,320
could be right, or that we don't do it at all. You know, it's another way to think about it as well.

721
01:07:52,320 --> 01:07:54,000
Yeah, exactly.

722
01:07:54,000 --> 01:08:01,680
If there was like two or three, you know, things, you know, virtues and philosophies,

723
01:08:01,680 --> 01:08:06,640
you know, things that were just paramount to you in business, James, what would those two or three

724
01:08:06,640 --> 01:08:08,000
things be?

725
01:08:08,000 --> 01:08:15,600
I like to use the word why. Why are we doing this? Why is it like that? I think having a,

726
01:08:15,600 --> 01:08:22,000
maybe a curious mindset is something that I'd like to see in myself and in other people. So

727
01:08:22,000 --> 01:08:31,840
why things are the way they are, why should we make them different? So having that curiosity

728
01:08:31,840 --> 01:08:36,400
is something that I value in myself, I think. I think my dad hated it when I was growing up,

729
01:08:36,400 --> 01:08:42,400
because he used to ask that question a lot. When it comes to what we're creating,

730
01:08:46,720 --> 01:08:55,200
I've always, I strive and we as companies have, is it striven or strived?

731
01:08:55,200 --> 01:08:56,400
Strove, I don't know.

732
01:08:56,400 --> 01:09:02,160
Whatever that context.

733
01:09:02,160 --> 01:09:06,480
To ensure that what we're doing is more simple than what people are currently doing. So, and it's a

734
01:09:06,480 --> 01:09:11,120
little bit Steve Jobsy, so I'm, I'm nervous to say this, but simplicity is something that I really

735
01:09:11,120 --> 01:09:17,040
value. And that I love to see in our products. I love it when people can just sit down and use

736
01:09:17,040 --> 01:09:22,240
them intuitively, because all the thought has already happened. And I think that's the

737
01:09:22,240 --> 01:09:28,800
doing and making products like that, that I personally get a lot of pride and delight from

738
01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:34,800
from what it is that we create. We're gonna have to, you're gonna have to cut this out, because

739
01:09:34,800 --> 01:09:40,480
you're gonna hate it. But I think having integrity in business is really important. And that comes

740
01:09:40,480 --> 01:09:47,360
back to you talked about having a win win with your with whoever it is that you're going to be

741
01:09:47,360 --> 01:09:55,680
having a win win with your with whoever it is that buys your company. But you need to think of

742
01:09:56,400 --> 01:10:00,320
the integrity and the value that you're generating for your customers as well. I think it's important

743
01:10:00,320 --> 01:10:04,800
to see that what you're doing adds value to their business. And then you don't have to sell anything,

744
01:10:04,800 --> 01:10:10,480
you just show them how it's going to help them. So that honesty, your integrity and purpose,

745
01:10:10,480 --> 01:10:15,760
I think is really important. And if you're solving customer problems, and you're doing it in such a

746
01:10:15,760 --> 01:10:21,280
way that they can see the value and you are delivering genuine value, there's integrity to that.

747
01:10:25,440 --> 01:10:32,160
Yeah, I don't hate it. So what I dislike about the word integrity is when it becomes a

748
01:10:32,160 --> 01:10:39,680
trope. Yeah. And it's overused or misused. And so what you've talked about there is integrity in

749
01:10:39,680 --> 01:10:45,040
product integrity and design integrity and customer relationships. And so that kind of really gives it

750
01:10:45,040 --> 01:10:52,240
a strong grounding. And I really like that. And I think there's nothing wrong with aping Steve Jobs,

751
01:10:52,240 --> 01:10:56,000
you know, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of any generation, especially the last couple of

752
01:10:56,000 --> 01:11:04,000
generations. What I would make that mean is that build beautiful things simply. Yeah. Yeah. And the

753
01:11:04,000 --> 01:11:12,240
last or the first thing that you mentioned was the curiosity. It's such an attractive virtue. And I

754
01:11:12,240 --> 01:11:17,360
think not often enough respected or admired and other people, you know, we like drive and we like

755
01:11:17,360 --> 01:11:21,360
determination and we like resilience and these sorts of things. Well, certainly, you know, I do.

756
01:11:21,920 --> 01:11:28,400
But curiosity is one of my main values. And I have to remind myself of that sometimes that when I

757
01:11:28,400 --> 01:11:32,640
think that I know, perhaps a better thing to do would be to approach something with curiosity,

758
01:11:32,640 --> 01:11:38,400
because if you don't have curiosity, then it makes it very difficult to learn. And it's also,

759
01:11:38,400 --> 01:11:41,520
it can be quite repellent to people if you always have the answer to things, you know,

760
01:11:41,520 --> 01:11:47,520
the Sheldon from the comedy show, you know, kind of persona where the know-it-all personality is not

761
01:11:47,520 --> 01:11:52,400
very attractive personality. So they really resonate with me. I really like them. Two more questions.

762
01:11:54,240 --> 01:12:02,240
Do you have an alternative career that you didn't pursue? So the thing that if you hadn't gone into

763
01:12:02,240 --> 01:12:05,920
the space of being a founder, being an entrepreneur, being a company builder and taking it through to

764
01:12:05,920 --> 01:12:12,160
a year and exit that thing that is the... I wonder what that path would have been like or the, I really,

765
01:12:12,160 --> 01:12:17,200
if I had all the time and money in the world, what I would dedicate myself to is this thing over here.

766
01:12:17,200 --> 01:12:20,480
So is that something you've pondered? And if so, what would the answer to that be?

767
01:12:22,240 --> 01:12:33,200
Maybe I don't even need to ponder it. So 2005, I was immediately post the Michael Erce crash.

768
01:12:33,200 --> 01:12:37,280
I was helping dad out here, business installing irrigators, and I was standing in a paddock.

769
01:12:37,280 --> 01:12:43,920
I'd applied for a job with George Western Foods in Sydney. George Western Foods owned Tip Top,

770
01:12:43,920 --> 01:12:52,640
the bread brand, not the ice cream. And I made it through their graduate application. And they

771
01:12:53,200 --> 01:12:58,640
wanted me to come to Sydney. I flew to Sydney for a job interview, went through a whole lot of

772
01:12:58,640 --> 01:13:06,800
psychometric testing, which was interesting, described me as abrasive. Ended up getting

773
01:13:06,800 --> 01:13:14,000
interviewed by the CEO at the end of the day. And afterwards, I got the train back to somewhere

774
01:13:14,000 --> 01:13:21,040
and stayed in Formula One at Sydney Airport and then flew home. Anyway, the CEO, as he had

775
01:13:21,040 --> 01:13:29,600
gone to shake my hand at the end of the interview, grabbed his PDA, bless him, and looked at it.

776
01:13:29,600 --> 01:13:35,280
And he was just looking at it while he shook my hand instead of looking at me. And I convinced

777
01:13:35,280 --> 01:13:41,520
myself at that moment that he was not interested in hiring me. And I also don't understand why the

778
01:13:41,520 --> 01:13:46,320
CEO was interviewing graduates in a company with I don't know how big George Western Foods is,

779
01:13:46,320 --> 01:13:51,200
but it's... Thousands, right? Thousands of employees. Yeah, that didn't seem to make sense to me.

780
01:13:51,200 --> 01:13:55,440
Anyway, I convinced myself that he didn't want to hire me, I wasn't going to get that job. And also

781
01:13:55,440 --> 01:13:59,440
I didn't want to work for that company, if that's the way that the tail end of an interview like

782
01:13:59,440 --> 01:14:07,440
that happens. So I land back in New Zealand and make my way home and the phone rings. And as I say,

783
01:14:07,440 --> 01:14:14,400
I'm standing in this paddock helping dad and sore irrigators. And they say to me that

784
01:14:14,400 --> 01:14:19,920
they'd like to offer me the job. Was it the CEO? Or is it his HR team? No, it was the HR team.

785
01:14:19,920 --> 01:14:26,320
Right. And so then I have this huge conundrum. I've just spent 24 hours convincing myself that

786
01:14:26,320 --> 01:14:31,040
I'm not going to get it and that I don't want it anyway. Although I've gone to all this expense to

787
01:14:31,040 --> 01:14:37,040
fly myself over there. And the woman on the phone tells me that I've got flights booked with my name

788
01:14:37,040 --> 01:14:41,120
on them already. And next week, I need to be up in the Blue Mountains. And there's this onboarding

789
01:14:41,120 --> 01:14:50,480
experience that's going to happen. And I so then I have to work out whether I actually want that

790
01:14:50,480 --> 01:14:54,480
job or not. I have to go through the whole process of reevaluating what I want to do with my life.

791
01:14:54,480 --> 01:15:00,400
And do I want to go and work for a big corporate? And I do often think about what would happen had

792
01:15:00,400 --> 01:15:06,560
I taken that job, I turned it down. It's quite empowering turning down a job. And also it's quite

793
01:15:06,560 --> 01:15:12,080
valuable being the gift of thinking it through properly by having decided that you don't want

794
01:15:12,080 --> 01:15:17,040
it. And can you get yourself back from that? I don't want this through to maybe I do want to try

795
01:15:17,040 --> 01:15:27,200
this. Yeah. So yeah, I didn't take that job. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder what I would have done with my life

796
01:15:27,200 --> 01:15:34,640
if I'd ended up making bread in Australia for 10 or 15 years. I know. Pardon question for you. How

797
01:15:34,640 --> 01:15:40,960
do you identify? So by that I mean, professionally identify, but also if there's some personal things

798
01:15:40,960 --> 01:15:48,160
that you wanted to drop in there, you know, husband, hopeful father, son, entrepreneur, you

799
01:15:48,160 --> 01:15:52,880
know, what are the what are the things that when people think of James that they might go, how does

800
01:15:52,880 --> 01:16:00,080
this guy identify in the world? What would those be? When I was younger, I think I would have had

801
01:16:00,080 --> 01:16:13,040
much more clarity about an answer for that. Part of my life is going from being, you know, a closeted

802
01:16:13,040 --> 01:16:21,360
gay guy in Palmerston North and then with stints in the US. And trying to hide that quite strongly

803
01:16:21,360 --> 01:16:26,320
for a period of time and identify, you know, creating a strong identity that reinforced that.

804
01:16:26,320 --> 01:16:32,960
And the journey from there to where I am now, and what that does to your identity is really

805
01:16:32,960 --> 01:16:42,800
interesting. And I'm not sure that I've fully landed on a new one sentence identity on the other

806
01:16:42,800 --> 01:16:48,560
side of that. There are things that are really important to me that will always form part of my

807
01:16:48,560 --> 01:16:57,520
identity. I grew up on a dairy farm and I really I strongly identify with the creativity that comes

808
01:16:57,520 --> 01:17:02,160
when you have to find a solution to something, but you don't have all of the things that at your

809
01:17:02,160 --> 01:17:07,440
fingertips that you might like to have that creativeness and inventiveness, that creativity

810
01:17:07,440 --> 01:17:18,560
and inventiveness. As you know, I love my cars and it's somewhat orthogonal to one of the other

811
01:17:18,560 --> 01:17:22,240
things that's really important to me, which is the fact that we live on a planet and we treat it like

812
01:17:22,240 --> 01:17:29,840
it's going to get a wash in three weeks and we'll be fine. So yeah, there are lots of conflicts and

813
01:17:29,840 --> 01:17:34,560
conundrums in my life around how I view myself. And as I get older, they seem to

814
01:17:34,560 --> 01:17:48,800
I don't necessarily get clarity. It just becomes a more complicated question to answer.

815
01:17:48,800 --> 01:17:57,280
This way I can think of to describe that. There was a, this is going to date me again, there's a

816
01:17:57,280 --> 01:18:00,080
Star Trek movie where one of the, I think it was one of the voyages or the

817
01:18:00,080 --> 01:18:05,600
something gets sent off and ends up coming back and wants to hear a whale on planet Earth, but

818
01:18:05,600 --> 01:18:09,680
there are no whales left or something. So they have to go back in time and find a whale. I feel

819
01:18:09,680 --> 01:18:13,600
sometimes like I'm Voyager and there are just bits that keep getting tacked on and it slowly

820
01:18:13,600 --> 01:18:20,160
changes what your identity is. That's a weird analogy to give you.

821
01:18:20,160 --> 01:18:26,640
Oh, I think it's a pretty good one. So I like the reflection. I can't really explain it.

822
01:18:26,640 --> 01:18:34,080
I like the reflection. I can't recall the phraseology of the quote, but it was something about

823
01:18:36,080 --> 01:18:42,240
as a younger person, you have certainty about who you are and it's not right. And as you age,

824
01:18:42,240 --> 01:18:47,280
you realize that you're actually kind of a mix of different things and boxing yourself into one

825
01:18:47,280 --> 01:18:54,320
place isn't necessarily all that helpful or necessarily all that accurate. And so look,

826
01:18:54,320 --> 01:19:01,520
synopsis for me, I've really enjoyed the conversation today. Thank you. It's been in terms of a

827
01:19:02,400 --> 01:19:06,240
conversation, very reflective. So I really appreciate the deep thought that you put into

828
01:19:06,240 --> 01:19:11,440
this, the preparation before coming along today. Really insightful in terms of the business journey,

829
01:19:11,440 --> 01:19:17,840
but also the lessons about exits, which is really powerful and super helpful. And I love the way

830
01:19:17,840 --> 01:19:23,680
that you approach thinking about a problem and then articulating it. So deep gratitude to you

831
01:19:23,680 --> 01:19:28,800
and thanks for coming on us today. Thanks for having me. Thank you.

832
01:19:53,680 --> 01:19:54,320
you

833
01:20:23,680 --> 01:20:24,480
you