NZ Business Podcast - Paul Spain
00:17:13 · Jamie Beaton
[00:17:13] S0: Well, really good. I mean, I've... First of all, I've kept studying at more of them, so I've been making my way around. You know, recently, I won't say what university it was, but I received an email from one of my professors, or rather one of the deans, and I was a bit nervous because I had been traveling for Crimson and had missed, you know, a couple of classes, they wanted to meet me. And so I rolled into the office, you know, slight butterflies, and I sat down. The dean looked at me and said, Jamie, I'm actually going to be leaving the university soon, and I'd love to come work for Crimson if there's any spots available. This particular fellow wanted to move to Europe and do some, you know, more flexible work. And Crimson, of course, has a lot of remote work options for our college admissions counselors. I thought that was that was pretty funny. But I guess, in short, you know, what we've been able to do is build Crimson as a fantastic employer of choice for many of these graduates. So whether it be, you know, at education schools like UPenn all the way to Harvard undergrad, a lot of graduates are really excited to work for Crimson, both in college admissions roles, teaching roles, tutoring roles, some full time, some part time. And it's a really good way for someone to convert their passion for academics into an earnings stream and also a way to inspire students. So it's definitely become very mainstream. We also hire a lot of former admissions officers that used to work in admissions that then join Crimson and provide advice to a next wave. And it's quite impactful work because when you're in the admissions office, you're often declining people and accepting some. But when you're working on the Crimson side, you're actually making every student you interact with a stronger profile, a better applicant, helping them get more career direction. So it often can feel quite fulfilling. So, yeah, that's been very exciting. And I think we've continued to, you know, build relationships with more and more institutions, and it's, you know, it's been key to our success.
00:18:48 · Paul Spain, Jamie Beaton
[00:18:48] S1: Great. That's good. Now, tell us about how how you looked at at Crimson, and, you know, from the early days sort of through, and where your inspirations were in terms of, you know, were you looking at, you know, other sort of specific entities that you might, you know, you might be competing with? Were you looking at Silicon Valley tech startups? [00:19:15] S0: Were you [00:19:15] S1: looking at, you know, New Zealand success stories? What were the directions you looked, and where did you take the most inspiration from?
00:19:25 · Jamie Beaton
[00:19:25] S0: The big inspiration was the pain that I felt going through the College of Admissions process from New Zealand, where I was at a fantastic school with great teachers who were really excited to help me. But the process was simply so complicated. It took hundreds of hours, and it took me on a very different path to many of my peers. And all the way through the process, I had no idea how it was going. I had this idea I wanted to get into these schools, but I didn't know if I was gonna get into one of them, so I applied to all these universities. And only when I actually got the result, and I got into all these different universities, that I realized, actually, I'd kind of stumbled upon this approach that was quite effective and and distinct. So I think initially it was this combination of having a lot of voices around me saying, hey, you don't need to do this. It's not necessary. This isn't gonna work. And then getting the positive feedback that actually... Well, it did. And seeing actually many of my smart peers who I did Math Olympiad with or chemistry competitions with or whatever, who didn't get into these schools, realizing, okay, there's actually a bit of a problem here, like an information knowledge training problem. So that was, like, I guess, the key catalyst. But as far as inspiration, I began working at Tiger for the late Julian Robertson, I studied companies like New Oriental and Teleeducation Group, which got up to 40 and $35,000,000,000 companies, respectively, on The US stock market. And seeing how they had shepherded more than a million students in China different learning processes and built, you know, a valuable company, but also a really important training engine for students, that certainly was a kind of inspiration. So I actually didn't look at many Western examples of of these education companies. I looked at, you know, particularly China as a as a heavy inspiration. And I sort of took the view that over time, the kind of competitive academic culture that existed in places like China will eventually diffuse around the world, both literally because Chinese families will move to places like New Zealand and Australia and The UK, but also because the world generally gets more competitive over time.
00:21:05 · Jamie Beaton
And I thought that, you know, if I if I built this, you know, training program that was aligned to what I would have loved in high school, that will be quite powerful over time. So that was one inspiration. I also looked at other companies like Teladoc, you know, online health care delivery. I looked at businesses like Rocket Internet in Germany, which were really notable for execution, looking at things that were working, cloning them, launching them across Europe and Africa, and then, you know, even across different investors that I admired too. So there are some of the different types of inspiration that I took. I also was very inspired by folks like Rod Drury, because when I was first beginning at the Ice House in 2013, you know, Xero had an office across the hall from us, and I heard they were this really exciting company. And, actually, when I was getting trained as a a hedge fund analyst in New York, one of the mentors I had told me to go study Xero stock. And so I thought, wow, this Kiwi company is doing so well that this New York hedge fund is now looking at it. So I think there are couple of of the different, you know, touch points that really inspired me. But certainly, my approach as an entrepreneur is to study business obsessively, see what's going on across many different industries,
00:22:03 · Paul Spain
[00:22:03] S1: and take different ideas. And hopefully, that helps me keep adapting our roadmap. And, you know, walk walk us through your opportunity to learn from from Julian Robertson. How did, you know, how did all that come come together? And and, yeah, what were the the big kind of lessons there?
00:22:21 · Jamie Beaton
[00:22:21] S0: Totally. So I first met Julian through interviewing for his Robertson scholarship back when I was 18. And I'd... At the at the point, I knew a bit about investment banking. I'd read some books like What They Teach at Harvard Business School. My knowledge is pretty low. And I was reading about him and his background. I read about hedge funds and this idea of investing and finding good companies and bad companies and this kind of thing. Now I went along to the interview process, and I began speaking to him. Fast forward about twelve months, I was at Harvard. I was interning for a hedge fund called Weiss Asset Management. And I was building Crimson. It was rapidly growing. And I thought, okay. Maybe I should reach out to him and and check-in and get some advice. So I sent him a cold email, and I said, hey. Know, some of your Robertson scholars are using Crimson for STD tutoring, and I'd love to tell you a bit about the business I'm building. And, also, I'm working in finance now. I'd love to get some wisdom from you. So he very kindly met with me in New York. Now the short meeting ended up, you know, running, and he took a lot of fascination with our rapid growth at Crimson and this, you know, I guess, growing interest I had in stock investing, and also even just my family journey and a bit about kind of this multi generational adventure from my granddad moving to New Zealand through my mom through to me, and really took me under his wing. And he hired me to work at Tiger, and also he invested in Crimson in the seed round alongside his son, Alex Robertson. So throughout college, I was bought in Crimson, investing for Tiger, and, you know, Julian was taking me all around The US, meeting different CEOs, learning the tips and tricks of a stock investor. And I think that foundational training really helped me see how do you build a good company, you know, what do you look for in enduring businesses, strong leaders. And actually, I learned so much from him in terms of financial advice, but I actually learned a ton as well from general leadership, his principles, his integrity as a leader, and how he'd built this incredible community, the Tiger universe around him. And, you know, to this day, alongside my own family, he's definitely been the most inspirational role model that I've ever had.