Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: What a modern company could look like, which is just one person and a bunch of agents and models could be like a very successful company. And the challenge there is like the buck stops with me. I just want to say one other thing about like having a co founder, like one positive that I can imagine is like accountability and staying on track.
I was talking to one of the tiny seed founders, he said I know how to raise money and build a venture backed company and the team that you need behind that, I don't know how to do that in the AI era.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Hey folks and welcome to Rogue Startups. I am Colin Gray joined by Craig Hewitt as always. How are you getting on Craig this week?
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Hey, good. How are you Colin?
[00:00:49] Speaker B: Yeah, very well actually. Very well. Let's head up again here in Scotland. So I was playing a bit of golf yesterday, appreciating the good weather. So that makes for a good week so far.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Yeah, we were talking on WhatsApp. Like I'm going to have to come over next year and we'll do a run but I also got to play some golf so yeah, we'll have to arrange like maybe a rogue startups meetup or something. That'd be fun.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
What prompted the running bug to get started again?
[00:01:15] Speaker A: Getting old, just like.
Well, we took our vacation and went to Norway this summer. We did a kayaking and hiking trip and we hiked. It was like 12 hours like up fjord and back down like 4,000ft elevation which is like a good amount. And I was really tired at the end and I was like, this is lame.
I'm never tired. Like I'm in, I'm in really good shape. And so I'd run a lot. Like previously like I've done Ironman, I've done a couple ultra marathons and I was like, I gotta like get back into this or I'm gonna be old, really old soon. And so which is like looking around and my typical thing is just like sign up for a race and that forces you to get into it. And so I did a sign up for a half marathon here in Newport which is in six weeks, seven weeks. So I'm about halfway through kind of like a 12 week training cycle. And it's going well. Yeah, feeling good. Definitely getting more fit already. And so just looking to like I sign up for another one with a buddy about five weeks after that and then it'll be winter here so I won't be able to do as much probably. And then you know, look into the spring already.
[00:02:23] Speaker B: Well, if you come across Here to do a race. I could certainly offer you some good landscape, some good hills, some good environments to run in, but it sounds like you won't have a very good running partner, because I'm definitely not Ironman nor ultramarathon capable, so.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Oh, I'm not anymore either.
I'm not anymore either. Yeah, no, I mean, I did eight and a half miles this past weekend. I'll do like nine or ten this coming weekend, so ramping up the long run, but still nothing like I used to before kids.
[00:02:51] Speaker B: Yeah, half marathon would do me. I'd like to aim for a half marathon next year, so maybe we can set out a plan for that somehow.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: It's a good distance, two hours, something like that. It's reasonable. Yeah. Cool.
[00:03:02] Speaker B: Right. What we're covering today, then.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Yeah, I think speaking of running partners, we're talking about business partners, co founders, partners. You and I have both been solo founders.
I think a lot of people that listen to this show are solo founders, coincidentally. A lot of folks that reach out and, oh, by the way, everyone who's reached out over the last month or so since we've had the show going again, I really appreciate the kind words. I've had a lot of folks reach out and be like, hey, I'd love to hear you guys back on the podcast. A lot of folks say they really like you as a co host, so I'm glad.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: That's a relief.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Well, I'm glad we're doing this again and thank everybody for the kind words. But I think this is kind of representative of, like, what we're talking about, which is like, having a partner to do a thing with is just so much easier. Like you and I doing the show. Like, I don't have to do everything. I don't have to schedule all the guests. I don't have to come up with ideas. And in this case, you don't have to do the post production because our team is. Is doing it. And I think that, like, when you find that, I'm going to say synergy, because that's just the best word when you find those complimentary bits to a partnership, it really is better than either of you doing it alone.
I think the reason that a lot of folks don't do it is there a fair amount of risk, right? Risk of, like, you know, exposing yourself to someone else in, like, a really vulnerable way. That's probably the wrong way to say that. But, like, you know, like, being really involved with someone in a way that, like, we probably don't have other Relationships like this is, is different and it's something that like I've never done. You've never done it. We've done a lot of stuff.
So, so I think that like, yeah, I want to talk about maybe how we think about it as like second and third time founders and like practical steps maybe that, that we would go through to evaluate a situation and a, a person maybe for a partnership.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Yeah. There's so much in this as well, isn't there? I think you're, I think you're spot on there. That the fact that I think I certainly ended up with solo founder. I feel like from what you've said in the past, you're maybe similar and certainly applies to a lot of indie makers is it's just the simple way you just start tinkering with something and it, you know, it just starts growing with it. Like a lot of people get into this without a super concrete plan around how they're going to build a business. It's actually just a hobby to begin with and it becomes something else and therefore you don't plan far enough ahead to do it with somebody. So that's a, I think that's a big part of it. But yeah, there's.
It's the old cliche, isn't it, that you're getting married essentially when you take on a co founder, when you commit to working with somebody on a 3, 4, 5, 10 year project, it's like you spend. I spent more time day to day with my team on the previous company than I probably did with my wife, honestly, like even. And that's not even saying I'm, that's not even boasting about hustle, 12 hour days and all that kind of stuff. Like you're just working an eight or eight, eight or nine hour day, a normal eight or nine hour day. You're spending seven or eight hours with these people and then you go home, you're home by 6 and you're in bed by 10. You know, there's like three or four hours in the evening. So it's like it's completely unbalanced. So you need to, yeah, you need to know these are the right people. But yeah. Where do you want to dig into it then? What's your thoughts on it?
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I'll just throw one other wrinkle into this and I'll never forget this conversation. I was talking to one of the tiny seed founders who is like a third or fourth time founder, had raised like proper venture money, had a couple of exits and he said Something to me that stuck that like I've had since then, which is I know he said I know how to raise money and build a venture backed company and the team that you need behind that, I don't know how to do that in the AI era.
[00:06:41] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:41] Speaker A: And so I think that's another wrinkle with, with all this is like you needed a, let's say typically in SaaS you needed a co founder, right? Like I'm the marketer, you know, Jonathan is the developer. That's super clear now, both sides, right? Like you're a developer, you can use AI to do marketing, you can use AI to help with marketing, you're a marketer, you can use AI to help with product.
So I think even the math around like do I need a co founder with AI or even if I have a co founder that the resulting team I build with AI or that I don't build with AI is different.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: I think this is a great place to start because I think there's, my opinion is I don't think this really changes things. I think that the power of having a co founder and again I'm speaking, I think we're both speaking from a point of view of never having actually had a co founder over any particular length of time. But I have quite a few friends who have that I know very well and I know quite a few people that run companies that I've shared. Like I've asked a lot of questions about this over the last 15 years because it's been one of the things that I've mostly worried would hamper the growth of what I was building before. So it was something I thought a lot about, I talked a lot about with people and tried to mitigate a lot as well. So I think I'm still speaking with some knowledge of it.
Is that fair to say, Craig?
I think both of us are. But yeah, I don't think it changes it because the main reason I always felt I needed, I wanted a co founder. The main thing I felt missing wasn't really the kind of, it wasn't really the specific skills. It was simply somebody else to share the load.
It was simply someone else to have a peer level conversation with about and be utterly honest about the business and say, look, this part of the business is absolutely screwed right now. Like we could go under in three months. Like what are we going to do about this? You just, you can't do that with your employees.
[00:08:38] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:39] Speaker B: And bounce ideas around and talk about it. Like, I realize it's probably a good Benefit having a really good technical co founder, like having the technical skills, all that kind of stuff. But to me the big one was really just having another brain in the business as committed as you are and as you know, able to be as honest and like open about everything as you can.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: I don't talk about this much here, but I will have a kind of shameless plug that like I do coaching with founders. I think you do some coaching too. Yeah. And this is if folks are interested, like just hit me up like on, on Twitter, LinkedIn or whatever it is one on one. It's not a group setting and it is filling this gap. And all of the folks that I coach are single founders and it is filling the co founder role essentially in that like they can talk to me and they talk to me about shit that you wouldn't believe.
It's everything from money to marriage to the business to you know, their own self worth and their upbringing and all this kind of stuff like it goes way beyond even co founder level stuff. But it does fill that gap, I think. And not surprisingly, all of my coaching clients are solo founders. One thing that like I have had people push back on this with me about needing a coach or a co founder is like there should be senior level folks on your team that you can talk to about most of these things. And I always kind of push back and was like, I've had quite senior level folks on my team and I can talk to them about like, you know, hey, this is where we are. We're not growing and we're burning money. We have to like lay, you know, lay some folks off. And this is what I'm thinking, what do you think? I've got to like that point with a few folks but I've also not like with some of those same like senior, senior folks. So yeah, like I think at the end of the day no one is as invested in the business as you are.
[00:10:28] Speaker B: I did some paid coaching just like you're talking about too. That did help. I always felt the lack of as good and I'm sure you're an absolutely excellent coach, Craig, but there's like something around the other person you're talking it through, being as deep in it like as in they're the ones that are going to suffer the consequences at the same time. And yeah, absolutely. Coaching like you offer is a really, really good substitute and it's very valuable in its own right.
Despite all like, besides all of this as well. I think the closest I got is actually with like with yourself and Other people, like a few really select, like me and you had some really honest conversations over the last five, ten years about our companies kind of weirdly in many ways and that we're also like slight competitors too. But I think we always felt like there's so much space in quadcasting, it kind of never really made that much of a difference. So that helped me a lot actually. Is having other peers running something similar that you can share with and maybe it helps. There was a few times we had chats where we were both going through quite tough times at the same time, I think, which helped.
The last thing you want to do is phone up a peer and they say, oh yeah, things are going brilliant, we're 10% every month.
All right, I won't share what I was going to say then.
So.
[00:11:49] Speaker A: So like I think we'll say we've kind of established the need for a partner, a co founder. Let's just say they're the same thing. They're not the same thing, but let's say they're the same thing. One of the big decision points here is like if you're just starting out, it's a situation. If you're further along and you want to bring in a late co founder or a partner, it's a different thing. I think like the considerations here, and this is, this is probably obvious to everybody but I'll just kind of list some of the considerations.
Equity compensation, all like, all in or part time areas of interest. Talking about being complementary, which I don't think is actually necessary. So. So like just for instance, you and I partnering on something, right? Like we are not very complimentary. No, I don't think like we're, we are in the, in the grand scheme of things, we're pretty similar. I think we could be really good business partners because like we both are, I think T shaped, you know, founders and we would just kind of like evolve and develop, you know, other parts of the tea where we're not already kind of strong. But I do think that's important because I think that like unless the business just needs that deep part of the tea and you're basically doubling up on that. I think, I think like you could argue, you and I, let's just say partnering up on something would be not complimentary and not beneficial.
[00:13:06] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely.
[00:13:08] Speaker A: Unless the business really needs this thing that we're both really good at. Your two developers or your two designers are kind of, whatever. What kind of areas of consideration did I miss besides equity pay, responsibilities and time?
[00:13:22] Speaker B: The biggest part really is the personality fit, isn't it? And I did this with my team. Actually. You mentioned before about the fact that you got to a certain stage with your team where you could be quite honest with certain people. That was how I tried to get around it in many ways too. And I brought on a junior developer quite early who kind of grew up with the company and we worked together for how many years? It was nearly 10 years. It was nearly the whole of Alitu. He worked on the very first version of Alitu, basically. And we got pretty honest. Like I could be very. I could be quite honest with him. Like I probably. I didn't share all of my fears and worries and like doomsday scenarios with him because of. Cause it was still.
I don't know, maybe I could have, maybe Brian might be over there listening to Be Fair and say you should have.
But I just didn't feel like. I always felt like I had to hold back some of that stuff from that team. But they were brilliant.
There was four on our leadership team like that.
Two had worked with me for 10 plus years and the other two were a wee bit less, but still got to a point of really high trust. I still just couldn't, I don't know, I still couldn't share everything. Like I still had to have my own stuff that I was going through and thinking through. And then I would come to them with a plan. That was generally, I think, the difference. I would have to come to them with a plan.
Whereas maybe this is dumb actually, maybe this is actually the way where you shouldn't be, you should be coming to that kind of team and saying, look, here's the problem, help me solve it. But there was a few things where I would say I need to come at least with some possibilities to show some optimism. You know, there's a couple of doomsday things going on right now, but here's a couple of things I think we can do so that people don't panic. Basically. That was always my fear. Yeah, but yeah, so sorry, back to your question around considerations. Yeah, absolutely. You have to think about equity and time and all that kind of stuff. But probably the biggest one is like whether you can actually have a similar personality sort of approach to solving problems and stuff like that. I think probably that's a big part of it is how you approach risk, how you approach problems, how you approach when things are really tough. Does that. I don't know, do you think that's required or is it good to have somebody complimentary in those as well, and have the opposite ends.
[00:15:37] Speaker A: Just as an aside, like, there was an episode of My First Million where Sam Parr talked about an exercise he went through with his business partner for Hamptons. And I'll link this blog post in the show notes. It's a good exercise, basically. Kind of like you do kind of async in a doc, answer kind of all these questions and address a lot of these things that we're talking about. How do you deal with stress when you have a bad day? How are you? How do you like to communicate all these kinds of things? The nice thing is, like, it's async. You swap them, you compare them, and it's like, hopefully you get an honest, unbiased answer from each other. So I think if folks are going through this, that that might be like, a helpful exercise. Yeah, I think that, like, how you communicate is, like, to me, the most important thing. It's just the most important thing in hiring in general. And I think, like, I would call this a flavor of hiring. I'm selecting a partner and they're selecting me, which is kind of the other.
The other part of it. But I just have, again, we have had people on our team who are abrasive and kind of jerks.
And it's just. It. I change a lot. I change. I can't be. I'm a really open person, you know, me, Like, I just.
I can't be. I can't be that person. So I can't. I can't express myself. Like, I want to express myself and so then operate in a different way. And then that's less. I'm less me, but I'm less productive. The only thing else I. I would add is, like, what are your goals?
[00:17:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:17:03] Speaker A: For the business? Like. Like, I want to build this and sell it. I want this to be something my kids can run. I want to make a million bucks a year. I just want to make ten grand a month. None of that, like, none of those are wrong, but certainly not being aligned on that is, I don't want to say a recipe for disaster, but an opportunity for conflict. There's a tiny seed company that I know that the co founders did not agree on this. Later in the business, really. And you can imagine, like, later, fuck later in the business.
You got married, you grew the thing. Now you don't agree on things.
That's tough.
It's maybe unavoidable. Right. Because you did everything right up to this point. But this kind of, like, where is this thing going? Especially if it works, can Be a pretty big source of friction, I think.
[00:17:46] Speaker B: Do you think it's possible to have a good working relationship like that if everything else is? So all the stuff that we've talked about here is good. You got fit on goal, you've got a fit and personality.
You're all aligned around time and everything. Do you think it's possible to have a good co founder relationship with different equity stakes? You talked about equity. That's an interesting one. So somebody starts, say one of us starts a company, the other one comes in a year later, but you count it as a co founder because it's really early stage.
But you say you're only getting 20% or 30% and I'm having the other 80 or 20. Does that work?
[00:18:20] Speaker A: I know it has worked for people. So, so, so, yeah, I think so, yeah. I think there are people for who it works. I could imagine, like I would join a company as a lake co founder, as, you know, whatever. I would come in as if it was an amazing company and a rocket ship and sure enough, we were going to sell this thing in three years and I just needed to come and shore up this one part of it.
I would come in for 10 or 20%. I wouldn't come in at the ground level with something that's not proven for 20%.
[00:18:49] Speaker B: So it has to be. Has to mitigate a lot of the risk to come in at less than 50%. Basically there needs to be a lot more proven route to outcome and the
[00:19:00] Speaker A: probability of upside needs to be there because basically. Okay, I'll just put some numbers on it. 20 million, right? Like 20 million is the number. The next thing I do, I want to get 20 million out of it. Mm. If I come in at a 10 or 10% business, it needs to be selling for 200 million. Like that's joining.
I don't even know. Like a pretty big company. I'm trying to think of, like what would sell for 200 million right now.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Probably not software, probably some in hardware, An H vac company, Something like that.
[00:19:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Right. Something like that, yeah. I think the equal co founder equity split thing most likely happens early. I don't see an unequal split until someone comes in later.
[00:19:43] Speaker B: Did you ever do staff options, share options for your team?
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Yeah, all of our team has options.
[00:19:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Great. How do you find people respond to that? Do you think that gives them some genuine feeling of ownership over the company?
[00:19:59] Speaker A: You know, it's interesting, like working with the tiny seed folks I see. You know, I've seen 250 different versions of this now. And like, Rob sees more Robin Aarc Moore. But the way I look at, I'll say, like, intangible compensation is options only matter if you're going to sell. That's obvious. That's obvious. But, but like, it needs to be said because, like, I have folks that I've worked with, either in Tiny Seed or outside who are like, oh, I'm going to give options. I'm like, yo. But you are like, kind of like mostly bootstrapped and you're not going to be a $5 million company. The. That's just not that exciting. And you're massively profitable. That's just not that exciting. I think the other option and the one that's more exciting to a lot of folks is like, hey, we'll profit share.
[00:20:41] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, totally.
[00:20:43] Speaker A: And actually that's. That's where we are, right, as we've evolved from, like, we raised some money and we were kind of trying to be hyper growth to like, we're sustaining and, and like, we're profitable. We're, you know, I've told the team, like, we'll profit share at the end of the year. And so they have both, they have options which, you know, if we go and sell, they might make a little on their options. And if we don't or don't for a while and we're profitable, we can take up, you know, some of that profit and share it with the team.
[00:21:08] Speaker B: We did it with our team as well, and I'm really glad we did because it meant when we sold the company, we could give out, you know, we could share in the rewards in some way. Yeah, they're obviously. They obviously tend to be quite a small percentage as a whole, but it's still, you know, it's still something. And I think for the leadership team as well, like, it's possible to do it so that, you know, you give more senior team more. You know, it can be based on time as well, that kind of thing. And so it meant that we could. We could pay out the people that really put a lot of skin in the game more as well, like to kind of.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: You mean options?
[00:21:38] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah, yeah. To give them more kind of reward for what they put in. So. Yeah.
[00:21:44] Speaker A: How was the, I don't know, the vibe with the team after you exited around, like, compensation?
I'm sure some things changed with them with the new acquirers and stuff. But, like, generally, were they happy that you sold? Were they anxious and uncertain?
[00:22:02] Speaker B: Yeah, a bit of that, I think.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah. All of it, yeah.
[00:22:06] Speaker B: We'd had a good run, we'd had a good go at it. I think we did a lot of what we wanted to do with it, but there was a lot of sadness about it as well. I think it was a really close team. Everyone got on really well. We did some great work together. The aim was to go bigger than we did, but I think we still got a really good outcome as it was.
So there was like, despite. That's the trouble with humans, isn't it? Like, despite getting a good outcome for a company, you still just think of the things that you didn't manage.
I know you still think of what could have been.
So, yeah, there was definitely a lot of sadness around it, like the team having to split apart, essentially. But it's really nice to see everyone has gone on to do something new already. Actually, I probably can't share.
Probably not my place to share what they're doing, but there's definitely some really interesting stuff that some of our team are working on now, which would be great to talk about in future, actually. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, definitely. We've kind of talked about just almost as if having a co founder is always better, but it's definitely not, is it?
[00:23:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:08] Speaker B: We haven't said about the upsides of being a solo founder as well.
[00:23:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:13] Speaker B: I mean, there's a lot of upsides to it. Like, even that, the way I got into it, like I said, it was almost a hobby for me and I just kind of fell into it, basically. And so having.
Just having all the control over those years, especially when there's no team as well, you just basically decide to do something and you can do it. Within an hour, you're done. That's the biggest thing, really. But I mean, what else do you love about doing it by yourself?
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Yeah. I just want to say one other thing about having a co founder. One positive that I can imagine is accountability and staying on track.
So let's say you and I are co founders. I'm not going to go do another thing, probably because you'd be like, that's dumb. Let's actually focus on our real business. And so I think all of us get shiny object syndrome. And probably, I think just intuitively or inherently, you would not do as much of that because you'd be like, I can't let Colin down or I can't let Craig down or whatever. Right. It's kind of like being married. Right. Like, I don't do a bunch of shit that I would do if I was single because I know My wife would not be okay with it. She doesn't have to say anything.
It's just implied.
[00:24:20] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Because you know her well enough and if you have a co founder you work with for that long, you know that too. And it even works within the company as well. And you know, this is one place where my team got very good at. Taking the place of a co founder in this space is like shiny objects and syndrome even within the company. Like not doing something outside of the company, but meeting up with these other things that I want to build or like shift from this project to that project or you know, just, oh, could we do this feature? And it would always be there'd be somebody on the team with the speciality to say, well, actually, have you looked at the user data? Does it show that there's people actually want that? Like, can you show me the data that shows that it's worthwhile putting that together? Whereas I would just go, I know, it's my gut feel. My gut tells me that this is what the users want and they're like, I want to see some data.
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So to the point of like, when is it better to not have a co founder? I think speed and flexibility maybe is like one of them. You know, you can just. Especially now. Right. Like maybe that's like not a co founder with AI is. I'm going to use a word that's not right. More better than, you know, co founders with AI that's possible. I know that there's data from Y Combinator and I think Tiny Seed has seen the same where like applications at least about like acceptance rates of solo founder companies is up.
So I think like you could say like the viability of a solo founder company is increasing.
I think speed slash, decision making, which is kind of the same thing obviously, just like way, way better. As a solo founder, your upside is doubled.
Yeah, I mean that's maybe that's arguable.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: Well, I don't know. Why'd you say that?
[00:26:03] Speaker A: I just don't. If you have two smart people who are working hard, they're going to build a bigger company than one person.
[00:26:09] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So it compensates in some ways.
[00:26:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I think probably. Yeah.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: But there is certainly going through the experience of selling the company, there's something around the realizing how realistic it like what the realistic company exit actually is.
I was about to say these days, but always has been. I think the realistic one is a lot smaller than most people are thinking. Like you said 20 million. Certainly.
Absolutely. You could get there and you will, I'm sure, Craig. But like the, the vast majority companies, like actually the chance of selling out is like, you know, 1, 2, 3, 5 million and then suddenly you have one co founder that's like, oh, that's not enough to live on. And the other one's like, but I actually still want to do it anyway because it's like it's a stepping stone to the next thing. And I can imagine that being quite a tricky point at that.
[00:26:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I don't know, I'm racking my brain of other benefits of being a solo founder.
Do you have any?
[00:27:07] Speaker B: I mean, I think there's. Yeah, the core one is the control. The core one is being able to actually choose where it goes and there's the kind of absence of the negative in that, you know, there's a lot of data flying around. I'm not sure, I've never actually checked into where it comes from, but that co founder fallout is like one of the biggest killers of companies as well. So I mean, if that is a huge killer of companies, even if it's not the biggest, even if it's just like 20, 30, 50%, then still, like that is a big risk that you're sidestepping just by going solo. And if the main risk is it's just going to be a bit smaller than actually at least a bit smaller but alive and you get out of it either profitably on the other end or you actually manage to sell it, then that's a pretty big, big win otherwise. So I'm not sure I don't know what I would do next. Part of it was in my head because I'm thinking about what to do next, like how to start a Minix company. And there's a couple of options I've got, I think, where I could do something with somebody else that I know and I'm just not sure. As much as I think it would have been great to have a co founder on my last journey, I almost think second time round is probably a time where you could do it better as a solo person.
[00:28:23] Speaker A: Oh, interesting.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: But I'm not sure. What do you think? Is that just being arrogant?
[00:28:28] Speaker A: No, I see where you're coming from and I think I probably agree with the premise.
You've made all the mistakes, you've done all the dumb things, right? I certainly have. I've made all the big mistakes.
[00:28:42] Speaker B: Hopefully not all, but certainly a lot.
[00:28:46] Speaker A: I guess where my brain goes here on this verse is what you said about being like a stair step thing, like if you want to basically kind of do the same thing you just did. I agree. Just go solo, build a nice, good, I'll call it lifestyle business. I think that's really the smart thing. If you're like, okay, we're going to take the next step and make a 10x kind of business, that's probably where another co founder who's had a similar kind of level experience and you really can do more.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: I think you're right. I think it's a lot of it's about appetite, isn't it?
I almost think appetite at this point. There's a weariness that comes out of running something for 10 years, isn't there? No matter what the outcome is.
[00:29:29] Speaker A: I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: Don't know what you're talking about. And so my appetite for jumping into something that is big enough that it would benefit from one or two co founders is probably not big enough right now. But yeah, who knows? In six months, 12 months.
[00:29:46] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:29:48] Speaker B: But then again, I don't know. We've been talking about some ideas as well and like, I don't know, there's a lot of really interesting things you can do with like you said, the two brains on one subject.
How did you hire your team to try and so did you. Do you have. The question I'm asking here is the structure, structure of your team? Like do you have people on your team that are kind of empowered to take a, a co founder type role?
[00:30:13] Speaker A: Not currently. Our current team is pretty well, I don't want to say siloed because we work cross functionally and obviously communicate a lot, but they have their areas of focus pretty clearly. Well, I guess this is something to say I don't see changing that. I don't see anyone taking co founder kind of thing. I think the other option is ahead of operations.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: Sorry, maybe I wasn't very clear there. That's kind of what I meant. What I meant was not necessarily somebody becoming an actual legit co founder, but just in setting up roles like header operations whereby they have real serious responsibility where they are empowered to question you and say, no, I don't think that's right. Or they're empowered to come up with new ideas and new ways to grow the company or new projects or things like that.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: That culture definitely already exists.
We're a very horizontal company. I ask them questions, they ask me questions, they challenge me. And I think if they didn't, they just wouldn't be a good fit for the company because like, I don't I don't know, right? Like, that everyone in our team is way better at what they do than I am. So. So, like, I think that we're all right to. To kind of question each other in a respectful kind of way. The thing that's interesting is I have started toying around with the idea of, like, if I take a step back from the business, could I further empower the existing team to own. Run more of the business? I don't want to say own more of the business, but run more of the business.
And I think, as opposed to hiring a head of ops, I could, you know, do this by committee. Kind of like, hey, guys, all this. Maybe we'll increase everybody's pay a little bit, and you guys are just responsible for kind of everything. This is part of your job now. This is the role. These are how. Maybe this is how we'll do this. I think that, like, if you have a good team, they should be able to pick up that next 10%, I think.
[00:32:02] Speaker B: Agreed? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I.
I deliberately built as much of a culture of that as I could, even over engineering the team quite a bit, I suppose. Part of it was taking on the funding that we did back in 21. So we took on half a million in funding, in pounds. And so that was designed to grow the team to scale the way we wanted to. And so at that point, the people I hired were hired as team leaders, even though there wasn't really a team yet, a couple of them. So the engineering leader had two or three engineers under them. So that started that way. The growth lead only had one growth person under him at first, I think, or even maybe zero. And it grew into two. And Content had two people under him, but it was only him at first. But. So it was like it was kind of starting with that in mind. Like, you guys are our leadership team. And we ran board meetings every cycle as well, with.
So they were the four people that were on the calls with me every month. Sorry, every other month. Acting as the board of the company, making decisions, being like, sharing the financials with them, sharing the ups and downs of the money, all that kind of stuff.
I said earlier on, I maybe didn't share everything with them, but I did share a lot.
[00:33:15] Speaker A: Yeah, like financials, like stripe or like bank account.
[00:33:18] Speaker B: Yeah, they all had access to the stripe. The head of Ops had access to the bank account. She did all the payments, did all the wages, payroll, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, they had a lot of control and it was. It was great. That was they all did that really well.
[00:33:32] Speaker A: Do you think they could have done that without you?
[00:33:35] Speaker B: No doubt. Yeah, absolutely. Probably not immediately, but yeah, for sure.
Over time. Like in the last year or two. Well, I mean, I left.
What was the longest. I went to Japan for a month last year because my. My wife got a opportunity to. To do a work thing out there and I just left for a month and there was a bit of prep. Obviously it wasn't. I just left, but I was away for a month and I said, look, I'm just not coming online. And everything went perfectly. Projects progressed, things got paid, payroll went out, all that kind of stuff. So. Yeah, totally.
[00:34:03] Speaker A: That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. I think we're. Yeah, I've been on that path, I guess, but it's a spectrum.
[00:34:09] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:34:10] Speaker A: It's not, you know, they can or they can't. They can do certain amounts and, you know, probably, like you're saying, truth be told, it's mostly up to you. Totally.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: To actually empower that. Yeah, for sure. It's a lot about the hiring as well, though, isn't it? I want to talk about this over an episode in the near future about hiring, because so much that I had no bloody clue about in the early days and made. So, like, we made a few bad hires we had to fix.
And that's harder in the UK than it is in the us, by the way, I'm sure. Yeah, it wasn't even necessarily always their fault. In fact, it was mostly my fault. Any bad hires, honestly.
But the people that ended up being the leadership team were great because they had that kind of entrepreneurial spirit and they're proving it. Actually, like I said, some of them are going off and doing other projects now which are entirely their own. And that's so cool to see because they always had that kind of spirit inside the company. They've remained outside.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: That's cool. Yeah. I think hiring is a really. Again, especially now we haven't hired in the last couple years. And so how you hire now with AI and just the flood of kind of crap that you surely get, I think is. It's something I don't. I don't have firsthand experience with. But, you know, again, I think the composition of a team and how you hire, how we've hired traditionally, which probably still fits largely is. Is like. Is interesting. Yeah, it sounds like a. That sounds like a good next episode.
[00:35:37] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. There's a few things we did in our hiring mainly to try and make it easier for us to identify the Good people and also easier for us to just review the material that I think probably is even more relevant in an AI application world. Actually, I think I would probably lean in even more to some of the stuff that we did, which is kind of unusual, I think, but yeah, we could come back to that.
[00:35:59] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:36:00] Speaker B: I haven't even asked the question. I think that slightly inspired this for me, which was you said something a few weeks back to me. I think you just reached out completely out of the blue. We hadn't even been talking about something and you just said, I love working with a team. I just love it for so many reasons.
Talk to me about that. Like because. Yeah, because having a team like we've talked about, it's the same as having a co founder. There can be so many downsides to it as well. And that the main problems you have in running a business are people problems really. But also the main brilliant parts about running a business are people things as well. So what was it brought that up?
[00:36:40] Speaker A: I think it goes back to what a modern company could look like, which is just one person and a bunch of agents and models could be like a very successful company.
And the challenge there is like the buck stops with me or you for everything. And I think that's where my, I love working with a team comes from because I can do my thing and then they do their things and other stuff happens in the business. You know, product gets developed, customers, you know, get support tickets answered. Marketing happens.
And I'm, I don't say the manager, but like the manager. And if I'm honest, that is the place I like to live the most in a business.
You know, like my worst case scenario would be to be a, like a full time consultant where I have to do a bunch of work.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: You have to do every single step
[00:37:30] Speaker A: I have to do. You have to do. Oh yeah, I mean certainly all that. But even just like say a bunch of new leads came in and I have to create marketing copy or write landing pages or you know, record YouTube videos for someone else like that.
That's just not me. It's not my. I probably don't have that many specific strengths there and I just don't like it.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: For me it was just the, it was the chain reactions that happen around ideas and problem solving. So like there's a problem in front of you and you say something and we were an entirely remote team, which I always thought, you know, there was someone very fashionable working remotely and it was like, yeah, this is cool, we can hire anywhere. But it would be so good to have a totally in person team. Like we had a small group that worked in Edinburgh for a little while and that was brilliant because they were just in the office and they were just talking and I think this would happen so much more. But you know there's a problem in front of you and you're like, ah, I just tried this and it didn't work. And then somebody else says, well, did you try that variation of it? And it just starts snowballing and then two hours later you've got like 300 sticky notes around the office and like a whiteboard full of stuff. And yeah, and even remotely we had a fair bit of that. It was more slack conversations. It was like somebody posted a wee slack comment and then there's suddenly a 70 message thread like an hour later which is like totally branching off into eight different topics. That was the stuff that I loved. It was just when you have a team, when you have a group of a team who are totally bought in and so enthusiastic about what you do and there's just these ideas and there's this chemistry that just happens that just brings stuff up, it just doesn't happen by yourself half as much. Whereas certainly not as enjoyable even if you are capable of doing that by yourself.
[00:39:14] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So even, you know, I think that's like the two branches of it. One is just like strategy ideation, someone to bounce ideas off of even if then the kind of ball comes back in your court to implement.
And the local thing is spot on, man.
If we built another team, it would be local.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: That's why I like co working spaces these days. I've got to get out of the house, got to go and be around some people. And that's talking as generally an introvert as well. You still need to be around folk.
[00:39:44] Speaker A: I have an office here. It's not co working. We have a really nice setup. It's an old, very big house that somebody converted into probably 15 individual offices.
[00:39:54] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: And so I'm home right now, but probably for the rest of the day I'll go to the coworking place and it's. Or to the office. It's just a, I don't know, 8 by 8 by 10 room. So it's basically just a desk and. But I can close the door and then there's, you know, there's accountants and CPAs, there's an acupuncturist and another one and then there's like a little common area with a coffee maker and stuff. Like that. And so, like, I don't actually talk to more people really there, but I just see more people. But yeah, as opposed to, like, real coworking, where it's like an open space, typically it doesn't work for me just because I'm on so many calls. Like, I don't have many days where I just sit and work at the computer.
[00:40:29] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I needed a room like that. Had one like that as well. And I have now a more open one where I'm in with a few other people, and it just doesn't really work. I don't use it much because I just always end up in calls and stuff.
[00:40:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I would, like, kick this out to, like, the listeners. So, like, if you're watching on YouTube, like, leave a comment. Or if you're listening in podcasting apps, like, hit us up on socials, maybe.
How do y' all think about co founders? How have you, like, what experience do you have that, like, we didn't cover? We'd love to hear either kind of questions or kind of comments, and then I think call for topics like, Colin and I want to talk about what's interesting to y' all that, like, we have firsthand, hopefully, experience in. So, like, if you have things that we haven't talked about that you want to talk about, like, let us know for sure. Well, it's a good one. Thanks, Colin.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, thanks to you. Yeah, it was good fun. That's interesting. It's definitely a topic with no right answer.
