NZ Business Podcast - Paul Spain
00:02:26 · Jamie Beaton, Paul Spain
[00:02:26] S0: and congrats on the wonderful podcast. [00:02:27] S1: Thank you. Thank you. Well, it... It's a great opportunity. I I thought to sit down and and hear a little bit about the Crimson story because I was looking back. How many years is it now since you started the business? [00:02:41] S0: It's crazy. We started this when I was 18. Now I'm 25, so no longer a young entrepreneur. [00:02:47] S1: Well, I I think in most people's books, you're you're still a fairly young entrepreneur there, exactly. But, look, yours is a is a really interesting story and the story of of Crimson because, you know, you've had quite a successful journey. I I think it's fair to say, both, you know, your your personal journey from an educational standpoint and then how you and and your team have really built something around that. You've attracted, you know, pretty significant funding from... And you've expanded globally. So, yeah, the current the current state, there's lots of bits and pieces in there in the media about the, you know, the hundreds of millions of dollars valuations and and things like this, but I'm interested in in sort of learning a bit about your story, the challenges, the learnings along the way. So maybe we can we can start out with your your school days and, you know, where you grew up and where you studied at school and so on. Tell us a a little bit about your upbringing.
00:03:42 · Jamie Beaton
[00:03:42] S0: So I grew up in Glendale in Auckland. And in my 18, I guess, in school, I lived once in 31 Elizabethan Gardens, and I moved up the road to 29. So we were in the same street my whole, I guess, upbringing. I was at Saint Kent's Prep, year one to year eight, and then King's College on a scholarship from year nine to year 13. And I guess growing up, grew up with my my mom and my grandparents on my mom's side, and we were really close, kind of a three generational family. So I guess from my early days, there was a big cultural focus on education, at home. My mom always emphasized to me that education is the most powerful way you can kind of transform your own opportunity. My granddad, when he was 14, was offered a full scholarship to a British boarding school, but he couldn't afford to go because of the uniform cost. So he ended up dropping out of high school, and he worked for about, you know, fifty years or so in some very manual industries, you know, working hard, but was a very sharp guy. But the education opportunity was was challenging for him. Then that the kind of baton got passed to my mom. She went to Auckland University. She did an MBA degree, law degree, commerce degree, and accounting degree. Back when university was basically free, she worked very hard. I was an out of zone student at Epsom Girls Grammar School. And so I guess growing up, I was very inspired by her tenacity and grit and, you know, love of education, and so that definitely infected me. So I guess that's a bit about the, you know, upbringing so far.
00:04:56 · Paul Spain
[00:04:56] S1: Yeah. Yeah. So how did that sort of come through day to day? What were the things that sort of, you know, stood out as a as a youngster at home? Did you sort of draw comparisons between your grandparents and and your mother? What were the what were the things that sort of, you know, settled in your in your mind, and what did that sort of... That grit look like that you saw in
00:05:18 · Jamie Beaton
[00:05:18] S0: your Totally. Totally. So from a young age, my mom was, you know, really focused on supporting me educationally, so she made a lot of sacrifices to get me to things like tutoring. So I have this funny memory of being about six years old going out to botany, to a tuition center with about 200 Chinese students and me, and I just thought this was normal. Know? Saturdays, I would do my math and English tutoring. I used to do phonics down in Penrose when I was about three, I think. I went through Numberworks, which is now a Crimson company, which is quite cool. Basically, I really enjoyed education. It became something that I was really passionate about. And I have these very distinct memories up to the age of about 11 or 12, where I'd be sitting in like a Wendy's in Oderhoo or something. My mom would be testing me on history or social studies, and she would know the content, you know, probably better than I did. So we were real team going through school, and she really helped foster that real love of learning within me. Then I think around those years, near the end of Saint Kitts prep, I became pretty motivated to do well at school, I guess, you know, really intrinsically. And then coming into high school, you know, I was kind of all guns blazing, shooting to really do well at school, both because I loved my subjects and I really saw it as a really important path forwards to these top universities. A key switching point for me was when I was about 14. Up until that point, you know, my mom and I's goal was really to stay within New Zealand and probably do medicine locally. That was, you know, something if you're good at science, it's a pretty respectable path. But I didn't really have a deep reason for why I wanted to do that. And I sat on a train from Glen And Us to Kings, next to this guy called Ben Kornfeld, who was the ducks of Kings. He was year 13, and he was an American citizen who'd just gotten into Yale. And he told me that I should consider looking overseas. That really shifted my horizon because I really respected him a lot. And I thought about, okay, what would it take to get into these schools I hear about in movies, like Harvard and Yale and stuff? So I spent the next four years, you know, going pretty hard down that process.
00:06:59 · Jamie Beaton, Paul Spain
That led me to take about 10 a levels where most students do three or four, create a lot of different clubs, do different extracurriculars, and, you know, ultimately apply to a wide range of schools in The US, UK, Middle East, Singapore. And then after getting into all of those schools, you know, really had lots of families reaching out to me about my own education experience, and that was really, part of the genesis of Crimson. [00:07:18] S1: How were people finding out that you were doing that? Did you get some media coverage? Was it... You know, how was Yeah. How was it that that you were attracting attention at that point?
00:07:27 · Jamie Beaton
[00:07:27] S0: So I guess going through Kings, know, Kings is a very supportive community, a celebrated achievement. So, you know, know, I would often go into prize giving, winning awards for ducks or different subjects, etcetera, going up in assembly. So lots of the community knew me pretty well, and I was a prefect in the school and really involved with lots of younger students in things like debating and various sports like hockey and tennis. So I came back and I did the leavers speech just after year 13 had ended, and I'd gotten into Harvard and Cambridge at that point. And so they got me to do a kind of a keynote speech to the students about my journey through Kings. And so lots of students, I think, were quite inspired by that because they saw that, you know, this didn't happen that accidentally. Like, was quite intentional from age 15 onwards about this goal. I guess I was kinda constantly pushing the limits in Kings around what subjects I could take, you know, creating new clubs, things like this. And so, initially, it was a lot of just students who knew of me through the community. So I was doing things like tutoring and giving some advice. And then I went to actually an internship following high school at the Ice House, which is, you know, the accelerator here locally. And I saw these entrepreneurs, you know, creating their different companies, raising capital. And I thought, you know, we're making great traction doing this, and it's all happening organically. Maybe we can kinda supercharge this. So that that was really how it unfolded. So I remember our first event. I think I had about $40 in my bank account at this point, and then I think I got some funding from University of Auckland, on the scholarship, and I created our first event on the Crowne Plaza in in Auckland CBD. We invited along a lot of students that had just gotten into overseas schools. We had about 200 parents come along, and that was the first kind of Crimson kickoff event. And that really created a wave of our first initial students coming along to our services and then really got the ball rolling.