00:16:25 · Henry Innis, Sachin
[00:16:25] S0: 100%. Hard not to like 100%. Read it. [00:16:27] S1: And I think maybe that that day when it started happening, these things kind of just explode and we were like quite anxious. We're just reading these comments. Our our whole strategy was never to respond. Like that's... I think you can do two things. You can like just post through that stuff and pretend like it doesn't happen and then, you know, or you can address it directly. And we thought that the risk of us addressing it directly would be more controversy. And we didn't want to like add, you know, any fire on the flame. And I and I think like the views got complex because like, I... We both very much empathize with female founders not getting the same amount of funding and it's a problem in venture capital in general. Right? But I also think that at the pre seed stage, there's always context associated with a raise. And I think that like a lot of these relationships, we've built them for four to five years. Like literally some of our investors on our capital, we met them four or five years ago. And I think that context is lost in an AFR article. The other bit of context that was lost is that like we basically do a friends and family route. Like we only raised 500 k. It's not like we all led... It wasn't it wasn't like a VC led round. Like everyone put a small amount of money in and I think that nuance was lost
00:17:30 · Henry Innis, Adam, Sachin
[00:17:30] S0: in the controversy where everyone thought this was a venture backed media. Yeah. Yeah. I mean like when you think about that stuff and stuff like that I mean one of the things I think is and you know I sit here as someone who's obviously benefiting from a fair fair degree of, you know, benefits and access given, you know, my, you know, my upbringing basically. Right? I mean, it's undeniable that that's true. So I think, you know, does it make you think about how... Because you're a media company, you can draw attention to these things, like how you might start to challenge some of those things and stuff like that and, like, start to build that into your ethos. Is that something that you've consciously started to think about? I I think, [00:18:08] S2: like, as a media company, there's always this element that we can invite people on to chat about those issues. Yeah. So we don't just have to avoid them. It's like, okay, this is an invitation for us to, like, talk about that more. And I think like that's something we wanna do more, like bring on people to talk about that exact issue and actually understand, like, why particularly is that an issue, what's happening there, and then challenge that issue as well head on. [00:18:30] S0: Good thing. [00:18:31] S1: Sort of interesting that I don't add on to that is that a fair few people that wrote comments about us that didn't know us then [00:18:36] S0: Mhmm.
00:18:36 · Henry Innis, Sachin, Adam
[00:18:36] S0: Mhmm. [00:18:36] S1: Have then started following our content and they messaged us saying we're loving what you guys are doing like and actually apologizing for making those comments because they didn't have context about us which is which is good like you can just do the work and just show people yeah [00:18:48] S0: I mean I honestly just just think you know, I mean, I would love to say like a, like, you know, more series about how to solve that sort of problem on a personal level, like, you know, I've got someone in my business. I tell her, I won't name her, but I tell her this all the time that she is a future founder. And I literally just don't think that she has been given that recognition enough and things like that. Like in three years, like she'll either be, you know, she'll either be running half of the Mutinex business or she will be a rock star future future founder and she'll fucking kill it. Like something interesting, like, I I think that's a really good point. Like we could... We were scared about talking about it in terms of more controversy, but like, why not like us make a video on like how we actually did it as a resource? Honey. 100% or even better yet, like go coach three other people and Yeah. [00:19:42] S2: Film them through the journey. Yeah. Literally free lives until the interview and then coach them to show them like, is it? [00:19:48] S0: Coach her coach them exactly how to do it. Like make the introductions, maybe Brett, maybe bring a female founder or an underrepresented founder on with a VC next to them. [00:19:56] S2: Yeah.
00:19:56 · Adam, Henry Innis
[00:19:56] S2: Yeah. [00:19:56] S0: Right? That'd be cool. Like, like doing that sort of stuff. I think like I think it's important because I don't believe in a quality of outcome, but I do believe in a quality of opportunity quite a And I think it's just... It's one of those things like I have noticed more and more that access is a problem and like it is amazing to me how insular a network even as someone who had never been before I founded beat x like fully in the ecosystem like it's amazing how insular the ecosystem feels once you get into it How did [00:20:27] S2: you find that before you sort of broke into that system? Like, did you find it was hard to... Was it hard to meet people? Was it hard to understand the terminology?
00:20:27 · Adam, Henry Innis
[00:20:27] S2: you find that before you sort of broke into that system? Like, did you find it was hard to... Was it hard to meet people? Was it hard to understand the terminology? [00:20:33] S0: I found it very confronting. So Yeah. My first pitch deck, which was just a pitch deck to to... I think it was Jethro Cohen and Casey Flint at Square Peg. It was 58 pages of like a jargon garbage text. Like you have no idea how bad this text was. You can see that. Right? Yeah, they do. Yeah. Like, like in agencies, they absolutely do. Like, you have like a single word on a slide. And like, that's a thing rather than like detailed execution plans had zero metrics on it, like zero metrics. And we came to this, businessman and I were like, this is so good. Blah blah blah. Really told the story here and like, it's complete fucking garbage. And I reckon like completely tanked all for every internally at square beg the ages. And and poor Jethro, like, it came in introducing us and I like tried to get to know me and things like that. He's done an amazing job. Right? But like, we had no idea what the standard was and anything like that. I didn't even know what, like, the air true open source VC thing was at the time. And so that's... It's very different. [00:21:39] S2: I've I've felt like there's definitely room for like a 10 part podcast series. It was just teaching these people. If you're a complete outsider, what is venture capital, how to raise from it, what's a event, pitch deck, people to meet different VCs in that ecosystem. Yeah. No, for sure. Like, yeah, it was it was a
00:21:39 · Adam, Henry Innis, Sachin
[00:21:39] S2: I've I've felt like there's definitely room for like a 10 part podcast series. It was just teaching these people. If you're a complete outsider, what is venture capital, how to raise from it, what's a event, pitch deck, people to meet different VCs in that ecosystem. Yeah. No, for sure. Like, yeah, it was it was a [00:21:54] S0: big thing. Like, like, I distinctly remember this deck. Jethro, if you're listening, please feel free to post it publicly. It's funny. Detach it in the episode, It's really, really funny. I'll see if I can find it. It's the funniest pitch deck you'll ever see. Like, I look back on it as like a very laughable moment, but at the time it was a really big and confronting thing to go, oh, this deck is like no good. Like, yeah, it's it's trying to [00:22:17] S1: say is real. I've a question for you, Henry. Is this something that we're struggling at the moment where it's like, I think in the very early stage, obviously get as much feedback as possible, and you run a little of these experiments whether that's in product, whatever it is. But then there's also some of the best founders, like, you know, your Steve Jobs archetypes that have like a vision of the world and maybe people say no, it could initially, but then you like eventually get there. Like you almost build that vision of the world versus like listening to the customers and running lots