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.
00:34:08 · Henry Innis
[00:34:08] S0: He wasn't thrilled with that. I mean, but like it can come off as manic intensity as well. Like I I didn't really look back on it and go, what did people miss? I think I got lucky that someone's sure enough. Yeah. I mean, if that makes sense. Because, you know, I will say that even though... I don't know why this keeps turning but hang on. Even though a lot of the... Even though a lot of VCs like didn't invest, I would say a lot of them have been ridiculously helpful like and ridiculously supportive like I can, you know, name people from Airtree and SquarePeg and, you know, and some people from Blackbird and some people from, you know, overseas funds as well, you know, the title people have been great to us over the years, like, you know, but they introduce you to people, they help you get... You know, they refer great talent when they see them, like, you know, they help you look at metrics and think through problems. They help me think through overseas expansion, but this is all time that Australian VCs are giving me freely. And so I don't necessarily see it as, as well as like people kind of, know, left us by the wayside because I'm not sure that's a fair characterization. I do think that you have to give a lot of yourself to get stuff like... And I think the reason that people were quite open with me is because I was quite open with them about life problems I was having and things like that, and
00:35:26 · Adam, Henry Innis, Sachin
[00:35:26] S2: I think people kind of appreciate that. Yeah. And you mentioned this idea of, like, the marketable founder. Do you think that there's potentially a problem in Australia that we have a vision of, like, these sort of superficial characteristics that a founder might have? Yeah. [00:35:38] S0: And that we... I don't wanna go into it more than that. [00:35:42] S1: I do. Protecting your next funding round. But Henry, we've talked a lot about in the past, and you have some really intelligent opinions on is what's wrong with modern marketing. Obviously you were in this world for a while obviously, you know, you're dedicating the next decade or so of your life to fixing it. What do you think like the average marketer, the average company is getting really wrong right now?
00:36:05 · Henry Innis
[00:36:05] S0: Well, I think when you are bidding bottom of funnel and everybody's bidding bottom of funnel in an auction market, what inevitably happens is you will trade your margin to tech platforms. So I think that's just a fundamental market dynamic. Like, how did d to really start? Think is a... Is an important question to ask. In my view, and and I will say again, these are novice views. There are much smarter founders in Australia than me who will know this. But in my view, what D2C companies effectively did was invested the margin that they would normally pay into a retailer to winning search auctions. And that's fundamentally where those businesses emerged from. Everybody cottoned onto that, set up their own DTC divisions and stuff like that. And because they were selling through their own websites, could afford to then drive that traffic. I think there's been some challenges to my mind in terms of like how performance marketing was set up. I think performance marketing is a real misnomer because it implies that other marketing is not performance driven. On the flip side, I think the concept of brand marketing is also really bad because it implies that brand marketing should not have a short short term payback in order to be effective. Like it is frankly fucking crazy that we say, oh, we'll run a bunch of these brand ads, but, you know, they're not going to do anything for sales in the short term. But magically after a year, they're somehow going to pay off in memory structures or whatever, and it's going to then start generating sales. Like that is not how advertising works.
00:37:36 · Adam
[00:37:36] S2: Is there no like psychological theory that like you need to hear a message a certain amount of times over a certain point of time? No. Don't Where like that embeds in you and that's like your first option?