00:27:11 · Henry Innis
[00:27:11] S0: I think tech people have a different orientation to risk indecisiveness, which is the trait that allows them to move faster. I'm not sure intelligence necessarily lets you move faster. I think an appetite for risk and an appetite and a decisiveness is one unlocks speed and generate speed in organizations. So, you know, I always think that a more important kind of way to look at why a big, what's a big corporation has unlimited resources. Their primary cost is cost of alignment, cost to align the 20 people who need to make the decisions. And that's why they can't execute. A startup, it's the flip side. There's very little cost of alignment, but there's very high constraint on resources. So I think that they're just different orientations to understand. So the skill set that you build to get things done in a large corporation, which is, you know, generating high alignment around decisions is probably not the same skill set that applies well in a startup, which is like executing well and not necessarily bothering to align people. So I just think they're fundamentally quite different and you get different environments to teach you different things. For me, you know, I think getting up to speed in this space and stuff like that, I think, you know, and to go to the tech arrogance point, I do think there is a bubble filter that that does exist. I'll give a really good example of this. Early on in the stage of Mutinex, you know, kind of just pre series a and stuff like that when we're looking to raise a bit of money, a lot of VCs were very, very keen on a, making instructions for us to portfolio companies and b, judging us on whether or not those portfolio companies bought. Now that was problematic for two reasons. One, d to c companies and things like that for me are a tiny part of my market segment and probably not that relevant of a one given how much they rely on multi touch attribution and stuff like that and other dodgy attribution stacks that kind of matters to them, but they're not statistically sound. There's a high cost of education without high cost of contract... Without a high payoff in contract. Second thing is they didn't necessarily have money to spend, which is a big, big challenge for us. Like we're an enterprise first business, and that was a really, really important aspect of it.
00:29:23 · Henry Innis
And I think the third element for for me was like a lot of marketing managers and marketing directors, because I've noticed that VC introductions don't always go really well, even though they're really well intentioned, really well set up by the VC. My gut feel is that the marketing director, who is probably two levels below the founder and stuff like that, probably doesn't want a VC accountability thing coming in, so probably slow walks it a bit in 90% of scenarios. Because it's a scary thing. Right? Hey, the VC's got relationship to this analytics company, which is going to be able to tell us exactly what the marketing budget is gonna be doing. Shit. Is the VC gonna have access to that? So I I I wondered whether or not it was like the bare best thing, and I didn't realize that really recently that that might be a problem. And so I've kind of tried to try to think through it a little bit more intelligently how we use those connections, things like that. But it's just an example of me of like where there's probably an over indexing to to to like why we weren't winning startups. And for me, startups who could buy our product are like 5% of the market if that. Yeah. So I don't really worry about whether I'm winning in startups. I worry about whether or not I'm winning in tier one brands. And and I'm not sure that was necessarily appreciated for what it was until we got
00:30:41 · Adam, Sachin, Henry Innis
[00:30:41] S2: to revenue scale. Open Source CEO is a great newsletter written by my friend, Bill Kerr, and it's read by over 30,000 people from Canva, OpenAI, and Stripe. And it helps founders, investors, and leaders in tech outperform the competition. [00:30:56] S1: The reason I always click this email when it's in my inbox is it offers such a variety of content. There's interviews with great founders like the founders of Mercury and Beehive, but also deep dives into the greatest companies of our times like Amazon, and 30,000 other people also enjoy this newsletter. So think about what we do with our podcasts, interviewing big figures as well as [00:31:15] S2: more up and coming startup people, and imagine it in a newsletter version. This is Open Source CEO. The newsletter also contains a list of those things that [00:31:23] S1: are always really hard to find. The best business books, templates, all the kinds of admin things that are very difficult to get your hands on. The newsletter also has those. All the resources for founders under one roof. [00:31:34] S2: Yeah. And what do you think the Australian VCs missed out on you as well? Like, what what did they not understand? [00:31:39] S0: Well, one glorious VC didn't, did they? EVP? Absolutely didn't. And, and Justin Littman and that person who have been... You should be a brand ambassador. I think... I I had a full on EVP brand ambassador. [00:31:51] S2: I saw that photo they made of you of you in the hospital, some text messages and stuff. [00:31:55] S0: Yeah. I was on your LinkedIn. Funding round.
00:31:55 · Henry Innis, Adam
[00:31:55] S0: Yeah. I was on your LinkedIn. Funding round. [00:31:57] S2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you in hospital? [00:31:59] S0: Yeah. Yeah. I just come out of a general anesthetic, and I was texted them manically, kind of jokingly. [00:32:04] S2: What what did all the others miss? [00:32:07] S0: Look, I think it's hard to say. I think there were very good reasons why they did it. Right? Like, I look at our business back then and I can kind of tell you the reasons. Early on, we hadn't been through a renewal cycle. That was a blocker for for most of it. It was like the risk of like customers not renewing is high. I think the... Then it became an issue of we scaled really quickly. We had to build some foundational teams. I probably wasn't good at P and L management. And so, like, our gross margin was shit, and we hadn't proven international. And so for the stage that we were at, like, we were always in a slightly awkward stage where we're probably just a little too early, and we hadn't proven enough things. Because I think really what what raising capital to me is about is about providing really good evidence to mitigate risk. Right? And so we didn't know how to frame things up like that. We didn't know how to explain things like that. And I think we were pretty lucky because, you know, I had Justin and Alan who effectively could look past that. And it kind of went, this guy will figure it out. And they had enough belief in the metrics of the business that that were really solid, that they're pretty comfortable with it.
00:32:07 · Henry Innis, Sachin
[00:32:07] S0: Look, I think it's hard to say. I think there were very good reasons why they did it. Right? Like, I look at our business back then and I can kind of tell you the reasons. Early on, we hadn't been through a renewal cycle. That was a blocker for for most of it. It was like the risk of like customers not renewing is high. I think the... Then it became an issue of we scaled really quickly. We had to build some foundational teams. I probably wasn't good at P and L management. And so, like, our gross margin was shit, and we hadn't proven international. And so for the stage that we were at, like, we were always in a slightly awkward stage where we're probably just a little too early, and we hadn't proven enough things. Because I think really what what raising capital to me is about is about providing really good evidence to mitigate risk. Right? And so we didn't know how to frame things up like that. We didn't know how to explain things like that. And I think we were pretty lucky because, you know, I had Justin and Alan who effectively could look past that. And it kind of went, this guy will figure it out. And they had enough belief in the metrics of the business that that were really solid, that they're pretty comfortable with it. [00:33:15] S1: Do you think they miss anything in you as a founder? I know that's hard to get that feedback directly at the early stage, but do you think they missed anything? Because clearly you're building an exceptional business now. I mean, I think that
00:33:15 · Sachin, Henry Innis, Adam
[00:33:15] S1: Do you think they miss anything in you as a founder? I know that's hard to get that feedback directly at the early stage, but do you think they missed anything? Because clearly you're building an exceptional business now. I mean, I think that [00:33:28] S0: I'm pugnacious and slightly rough cut and very competitive and probably don't fit that classic mold of a marketable founder. I wouldn't class myself that way. Know, I'm slightly overweight. I've got a slight double chin. I've got an unkempt beard and you come you come in Birkenstocks to that award ceremony at the airfield? Yeah. Yeah. I know the word. Yeah. And like, and you know, I've got thinning hair, you know, like, like, I'm not, I'm just not that classic found the founder type. [00:33:55] S2: What I trade on is grit and determination. It seems like Justin Littman saw that the grit and determination you call in him at like, I think it was 6AM every Saturday or something that he got really pissed off about. He wasn't dead. Everyone sort of underweighted that maybe.