Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, it's Oliver Bruce and welcome to the Unlock. Previously known as Success is in the Mind. I'm a UK entrepreneur, angel investor, a neurodivergent founder, and I recently exited my first business, which I scaled from my university halls into a multimillion dollar agency with no backing, no funding, just grit, mistakes and determination. I want to pass on some of the lessons that I've learned, the barriers that I had to overcome and the challenges that I'm still coming up against today. This podcast doesn't grow by itself, it grows with you. If you could possibly share this with friends, family, colleagues, anybody you're in business with, somebody that you think might find this useful, I would be greatly appreciative. Anyway, let's get into it. Connor, thanks for joining me on the Unlock. Connor Wells, formerly of L'Oreal, then prime time now, Capla and

Speaker 2 (00:48):
Dyson.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
And Dyson. You've done all of the above. Let's just dial it back a little bit before we get into the capla journey, which is super, super exciting. What was your kind of background back in the day? Because it wasn't founder, it wasn't startup, it was very much working for larger organisations. How did you get into the world of L'Oreal?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, great question. Not many men for L'Oreal, I think I was always kind of captivated by consumer goods

(01:15):
Simply because it always changed a lot when I was growing up. I wanted to be an airline pilot till I recognised that I'd probably get sick of being in a cockpit the whole time, but it was always something which was very trend led. So I started my career at L'Oreal marketer. That was kind of my forte. Then moved into more commercial, more general management. But for me, I've always been trend led and I love to understand where the market's going and that's how I usually make decisions. So I think for me, something that changes so quickly as much as consumer goods and a company, L'Oreal at the time, they return over 32 billion globally. It's a lot. Euros. It's a lot more than capital right now. Yeah, quite. But yeah, for me it was kind of just always chasing the next thing and being trend led was always really, really exciting for me. I love the beauty industry. I think it's brilliant. I love consumer goods. I think it's really important. But yeah, I guess in terms of how that journey started, so obviously in my dorm room in America, and that was kind of, I was going through a lot of other, what many other people will be going through in terms of what am I going to do next? Am I going to get another grad scheme, route the internship and was fortunate enough to slip through the cracks, but it ended up being a great chapter for me.

(02:34):
Set me up for a long time. Spent eight years there, eight

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Years at L'Oreal. Yes. Why were you in America in the first place?

Speaker 2 (02:40):
I spent some time out there at university,

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Which

Speaker 2 (02:43):
Was great, and I've always wanted to explore different places. I think when I was at L'Oreal, I had a stint in Dublin, which was interesting. Very

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Good. It

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Was very good. I was there for about seven months. It was good. That

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Explains why you're so good at drinking Guinness.

Speaker 2 (02:59):
Yeah, I love Guinness. Yeah, I've got a great record on Guinness, but yeah, Dublin, I was at Dublin, got the youngest ever expat contract out of the UK to go out to Paris, which was my first expat experience. I had to pay for everything when I was in Dublin and I didn't really have to pay for that much and I was in Paris. Then I moved back and it was just brilliant. It kind of gave me that first taste of that type of life. And you know what I find really interesting is that so many people who are founders, it's a really big cliche to say that I didn't want the rigidity of being in a corporate environment, but for me, L'Oreal was one of the best places I've ever worked. It was phenomenal. I think if you go into that environment with that level of tenacity and you do have that entrepreneurial flare,

(03:45):
You do feel like every single brand. I worked at a lot of brands for L'Oreal, so I was on the launch a team of Seve in the UK back in 2017. That was at the time L'Oreal's biggest acquisition. I was at one point, didn't it bought for 1.6 billion at the time, was blown out of water by esop. When that was bought, I think it was like 2.9. L'Oreal Paris has spent the bulk of my time. I worked in the luxury division in the likes of Lancom, Armani, VEON, all of those Urban Decay, all of those different brands, which not many people understand that L'Oreal actually owned. But I think with regards to, I've always felt like I owned those brands despite the fact that I'm working for this enormous engine. And I think that is really what epitomises entrepreneurial spirit. It's kind of when you care enough to feel like you own something.

(04:34):
So when you go into an environment that's corporate, but that level of attitude, so entrepreneurial spirit, you feel like you own the brand, you would give it absolutely everything you feel like this is, you owe your life to this company. And I think also that kind of spans back to my background as well in terms of how lucky I thought I was at the time to get L'Oreal as an internship and then a graduate scheme and then so on. That was really, really great for me, that period of my life, and I'm not one of those founders who were like, God, I really needed to get out the corporate environment. I had that tenacity. I would go and knock on people's door. I think the first two weeks I went to knock on this guy called Jonathan Ballinger door. It was the HRD of the luxury Division. Now when you're a little kid like this and you're an intern and you're just this skinny little runt kind of trying to make it in the world of business,

Speaker 1 (05:17):
It's very similar to where you are now. Really.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Well, I wouldn't say that no stress of business takes a totally on your diet, sometimes hundred raising capital, but I think it was a great environment for me. I got the opportunity to build so many mentors and kind of learn from the best in the industry at the time within consumer goods. And a lot of them have stayed with me throughout my entire career,

Speaker 1 (05:38):
Which

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Has been excellent.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
I mean, how does a large organisation L'Oreal then inspire a graduate or whatever it might be in a business to be entrepreneurial or entrepreneurial, let's say, because there are so many different places that you could hide

Speaker 2 (05:51):
In

Speaker 1 (05:51):
A business like that.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
Yeah, I think first of all, L'Oreal in hiring and recruiting for a big company that recruits the best talent. Not saying that I am, but I'm saying that a lot of other people who they hire are great. A lot of people have gone on to do brilliant things. They hire on pillars and they're very good at hiring. And typically you'll walk into someone like L'Oreal and you'll walk into the room and you'll see, yeah, everyone's different in terms of their beliefs and how they feel like they should best get the work done. But there is a commonality between absolutely everyone and they do a really, really good job of hiring based on those pillars. And I think therefore no one hides. You cannot hide at L'Oreal. In fact, when I moved to Paris, the term that I was told, which I really love, and it was by a guy called Michael Shin, I believe that he set L'Oreal up in Taiwan at the time. He told me that L'Oreal is being on a stage and the soon as you mess up on that stage, as soon as you mess up on that stage, it can be cut pretty short. So

Speaker 1 (06:54):
There's

Speaker 2 (06:54):
No way of hiding. I think one thing that always stays with me, and it's the most simplistic advice ever, and it was kind of an HR mantra. We were in Hammersmith 2 55, got a really good story about that, but I dunno if we've got enough time for today, but we were, it was 2 55 Hammersmith, eight story high building. You see it when you come out Broadway. And they always told you that as an intern, your job is to live on the eighth floor and meet people, as many people as you can. And I think it really inspired me, I think, how to become a strong leader. I think when you have so many managers, when you're an intern level to a grad level, I think the only way to understand how to be a strong manager or a leader is to learn from people who do it really, really badly and people who do it really, really well. And I think that is how L'Oreal shaped me in my time. We had Thisme Sharma, he remained a mentor of mine for a long time when I was in Paris. He was the country manager. I loved how he led.

Speaker 1 (07:56):
How did he lead then? How can people learn from how he led? What have you taken?

Speaker 2 (07:59):
He was people oriented. He was tough. He navigated L'Oreal through Brexit,

(08:05):
Navigated through various different European tariffs, and he was incredibly personal. He understood and recognised the talent at the lower end of the business, which would've been me at the time, and he would entrust you with it. I think entrusting people with that level of responsibility, L'Oreal has built on grassroots talent. Lots of corporate companies, as you'll know, are built on grassroots talent. And I think if you can recognise and if you've got enough trust in your hiring process to kind of say, okay, well these people are strong. They've got the baseline intellect level. This is one of my favourite frameworks for hiring people, baseline intellect level. That then gives you confidence. That confidence gives you the ability to think creatively and logically. That's super important to me. That's my little hiring framework, although it's really simplistic. That's something that Vismay had an abundance and he was personal. I could go up and I could genuinely have a chat with him in the cafeteria and ask him for a coffee. And that kind of draws back to that level of tenacity that I thought always had me destined to become an entrepreneur. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Absolutely. Not

Speaker 2 (09:08):
Working corporate, but

Speaker 1 (09:08):
You were a very good leader generally anyway, mean you obviously moved into Dyson and moved into prime time and became MD a prime time. But let's just double click in that transition from L'Oreal into Dyson specifically, why did you jump ship into another corporate and then ultimately after that, why did you go into a sort of startup organisation?

Speaker 2 (09:24):
Yeah, really interesting, very simple answer. I think moved to Dyson. I was, had hunted, spent a lot of time at L'Oreal. Dyson at the time. Were going through a big transition. Beauty was their fastest growing division, lots of enormous business they had in Asia and a massive business in the uk. Obviously this kind of encompassed everything from Air App Supersonic, all of those tools. And then ultimately they were moving into the launch of what we call wet line beauty. So products James Way born, his family office and James, they have lots and lots of land. They

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Had a cricket pitch, I think actually

Speaker 2 (10:02):
He's probably got 10, but ultimately you lots and lots of land. They were building their farming, farming side of the business. You'd be in the office and they'd bring strawberries in. I was like, well, I didn't know buy did strawberries. But it was really strange because I'm used to looking at these air apps or these vacuums, not Hoovers vacuums, and all of a sudden you just see this punt 50 punts of strawberries drop into the office and what the hell is this? And then I was told, and that's how I learned, but ultimately it was a big focus to play a wet line beauty. The difference with beauty being an ecosystem between L'Oreal and Dyson was that L'Oreal is a frequency buy. You're buy on average a male moisturiser 3.2 times a year, right?

Speaker 1 (10:44):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
You are buy an error out once every 15 years. And that mindset from engineering to something which is frequency led and very salience oriented, which far too much about was a huge shift. So they needed a category strategy to enable that growth within that category. And I was a good candidate for that. I guess Kathleen Pearce was there at the time. She used to be a president at, I believe she was a brand president for Estee Lauder, I believe. And the reason why I remember that is because Leonard Lauder is one of my favourite people on the planet. Questionable character sadly passed away last year I think it was. But I've read his book about seven times. But yeah, that was my role. It

Speaker 1 (11:28):
Was

Speaker 2 (11:28):
More mission oriented in terms of that transition then into a beer company, consumer good led very, very low revenue at the time. I mentioned earlier on that I always did want to be an entrepreneur. I had that entrepreneurial flare, tried to start a business before, tried to start two actually. One was called Wordy, SEO content, Uber for SEO content, which is really interesting.

Speaker 1 (11:51):
Good name.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Yeah, awful. Now given the rise of ai, but I mean I would've pivoted somewhere, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Sure. You'd got into ai.

Speaker 2 (11:58):
Yeah, yeah, probably I would've actually built the equivalent of chatty. I

Speaker 1 (12:03):
Would be for Sam Altman. Exactly.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
But less controversial maybe. Definitely. So I think maybe more. But yeah, I think I had that then. I really, really, I've always loved Tech. Web3 was a big focus of mine at the time. Years ago you were very

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Bullish on crypto.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
I loved it. Yeah. I actually never held crypto as part of my sales pitch and I was speaking to people, but we did some great stuff. I went into business with two of my friends. We would go around various different countries across the UK just given talks and how you can leverage this really strong blockchain based technology to actually achieve or more traditional KPIs within business. So whether it's logistics or marketing or whatever it might be. And it was just really, really interesting. And so I always knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I'd never raised capital. What better opportunity for me to go into a company where I know is very cash intensive margins in alcohol, as everybody knows they aren't great. Very cash intensive, very salience oriented. You need a lot of money to build these companies and you need a lot of time to get to a point of breakeven, particularly if you're going after scale.

(13:14):
So I knew one of the founders, he was a really, really good friend of mine, Sam Holmes still is a very good friend of mine, very closely affiliated with my company now. I love Sam, brilliant, brilliant person. And he reached out to me. He was kind of, well actually I was trying to give him some advice at the time around building his team told me that I needed someone in marketing and I just said to him, I was like, Sam, my advice to you, I'm a firm believer in hiring senior people and enabling them to build their own team. I think one of the worst mistakes that a founder can do is go into a business, get a little bit of cash and look, admittedly this isn't easy, but for venture backed businesses that have capital, I think if you can pull that university student in, I mean they'll come into your business eventually because that's really, really important. But if you pull that university student in to manage something as important as marketing, that salience, particularly as a consumer goods business and also the tech business. I mean, distribution is absolutely everything. And they come into the company and they inevitably mess up just like I did when I was an internal L'Oreal.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
But they're learning.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
They're learning, but inevitably they can have so many areas for development. And I think what happens because that company is so, that founder is so emotionally attached to that business, the second one of those very junior people mess up, that just creates an enormous cultural void in the company, and that is what can destroy a business. So I'm a firm believer in that. I think when we were scaling, I think it was really, really important that I had Paul on board, my co-founder tech ability. I didn't want someone who I didn't trust fully and naturally is our co-founder, but I think tech is Paul's side. It's nothing to do with me. I might test it and I will then

Speaker 1 (15:16):
Hope it doesn't break because he's built it so well. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah,

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (15:18):
It doesn't break.

Speaker 1 (15:19):
And there was that transition. So Dyson is fundamentally run by an entrepreneur, right? James is an entrepreneur. He starts it for nothing, scaled it, and now it's something more than a couple of pounds. It's a big business. And then you moved into primetime also run by two founders. So you'd kind of moved along the journey quite sort of chronologically from large organisation to large organisation run by an entrepreneur to then maybe taking your own organisation to a level because Sam and Harvey had trusted you to essentially run it as md. They'd given you the reins and gone, let's have some fun and let's see where we can get it. You then dialled out from primetime and into caper. What did you learn through that primetime journey then of raising capital, of hiring a team, of being essentially the boss that you have then implemented into the caper journey? For

Speaker 2 (16:02):
Sure. I think as I mentioned, I mentioned earlier on insight is everything and insight gives you clarity. When you're building a business, something not a lot of founders have with regards to what they're building, that's actually usually one of the biggest reasons why people can't raise capital. But I think I stumbled upon the pain point of cap when I was at primetime. We raised a lot of money, I'd say pretty easily going through those fundraising cycles. Given the fact that it was so cash intensive, it would take a lot of my time. I'm talking 60, 70%

Speaker 1 (16:36):
At least of

Speaker 2 (16:36):
My time

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Minimum.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
And it's stressful and the business needs it. And I think that was when I stumbled upon the biggest problem within venture about businesses is this fragmentation within the fundraising or the venture capital ecosystem. I think it is across many, many levels. I think we have an issue with fragmentation in terms of I guess the processes that founders are going through. A lot of it they're completely new to. It's a massive knowledge gap. There's no right way of doing it.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Hey guys, sorry for interrupting the podcast, but I thought you might find this useful. If like me, you found that one of the biggest headaches when running a business is managing money across different tools, currencies, and expenses. Then I think I've got the solution for you. Incar is built to fix this headache. Incar is a new financial platform designed specifically for high growth modern businesses. It gives you multicurrency accounts, connected banking and smart spend management all in one place. The really cool part is the rewards with in card, you earn up to 2% cash back on things that you'll probably already spending money on, like advertising, SaaS, tools and travel. Every time you spend, you generate points and you redeem them instantly for cash directly in the platform. So if you are building or scaling an online business and you want a smarter way to manage your finances, check out in card using the link in the description. Thanks so much for taking the time to listen to this. Let's get back to the episode. Primetime raised millions, Dyson, not necessarily that you were involved in raising money or anything like that for them, but the learnings that you implemented in primetime, the issues that you had to overcome, how you raised the capital you did. What is the process? When do you need to go out and raise? What does that look like?

Speaker 2 (18:29):
I think there are questions you need to ask yourself first. I think you need to recognise the level of strain that fundraising puts, not just on your business but on you. So if you're going through a fundraising round and you're a traditional founder, the stats are against you. It'll take 50% of your time. That's an official, it sounds very convenient, but that's a stat. Founders who are raising will spend 50% of their time raising capital, not building their business. That's counterintuitive. It's not to the founder and just the business, but also the investors who are coming in. That was one of the biggest reasons, by the way, why I built cap. But I think in terms of timing, it really depends because there's such proximity is a lot in venture that proximity. What I mean by that is if you had an enormous chequebook and I knew you, my raise wouldn't be very long.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
I could close that quite quickly because

Speaker 1 (19:25):
I'm

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Sure that you'd invest in my company. Oh, definitely. But if you don't, then you're looking at anything from a four to six month cycle that's gruelling and it's absolutely brutal. I had a meeting with a founder psychologist actually on Monday, and

(19:41):
Naturally we've got a lot going on at Capari at the moment and we're not even fundraising. And she asked me three very simple questions. She said, when was the last time you drank water? When was the last time you had three meals? When was the last time you had a full night's sleep? And I'm not the sort of person to boast about working hard. I tell people if I'm working hard, if they want to know and I tell people if I'm actually doing okay, I look at work in peaks and troughs, but ultimately I couldn't answer any of those questions. I didn't know when they were. I couldn't remember the last time I had three meals, water, Christ, only. I'm drunk water for three weeks. But I think it's,

(20:13):
Imagine that. And then place on top fundraising, we're talking unbelievable levels of resilience that you have to have. Fundraising is not for everyone when so much of your focus needs to be on demonstrating that positive momentum. We've got got this listing, we've got this listing, we've got a meeting with so-and-so. We've got a meeting here and we've got this person who's interested in investing and yours trying to stay. You have to stay in such a positive mindset. But when 99.5%, which is the official stats of companies that get through to IC and actually get an investment off the back of a venture capital firm, that means for the 15 meetings that you're having per week with investors, that means that a lot of them are saying no to you almost. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean 14 points, and I think it's like it's really hard to have that constant No, no, no. And naturally your head, because you're emotionally invested in these companies, naturally your head is going to think, well, God, I've got a really shit business. But actually you haven't. But that resilience is critical

Speaker 1 (21:20):
And

Speaker 2 (21:20):
If you don't manage your care, if you're not the right person for that, then it can really set you off on a bad trajectory. So I think, yeah, those raising cycles can, obviously they vary in size depending on your background and who you know and everything else. But ultimately, yeah, you're looking at a good three to six months of brute force.

Speaker 1 (21:42):
Yeah, no, for sure. And it does take its toll, but arguably you need to be a hundred percent in the business. And if we were to dial it back to your primetime days, and Sam Holmes who I know quite well, I knew him before I knew you, I ended up working with Sam Holmes and then we obviously met you came through with this idea for caper and it kind of went through the motions of actually if you're going to do caper, you need to be in caper 110% of the time. And Sam said to me the other day, if I'd never met you, Ollie, Connor might still be at primetime. And the reality is you did jump ship to go into cap a hundred percent because you knew you couldn't fundraise on the side whilst also MD primetime, right? When is the right point because you were not being paid. You were in that limbo period for quite a period of time before you raise the capital and go, right here we are, off we go. But there was a point where you were essentially in capillary it didn't have any money and you hadn't raised anything. What does that feel like as a founder to be employed, jump ship, have nothing, and then eventually unbox something?

Speaker 2 (22:35):
It's okay if you make decisions based on really strong signal. So let's rewind a little bit and I'll tell you a little bit about, I get why you know all about this, but the founding of cap. So obviously you stumbled upon a problem fragmentation. I've also not been a fan always of the allocation of capital amongst people. Given my background, I'm not from an incredibly rich family. So naturally I started with a bit of a step back in that regard from a proximity perspective, and it was always a passion point of mine. So stumbled upon that pain point, knew that there was something that needed to be done, bringing that level of structure, clarity and speed to the venture ecosystem. And I then sat there, had a few beers at the local

Speaker 1 (23:25):
We did,

Speaker 2 (23:27):
And had this kind of ideated something in my head and just thought, well, this could be a really interesting concept and if I'm going to do it right, I need credibility. I need distribution critical for a tech company. Now, I almost thought through it in my head like a consumer goods business. And lots of the ways that we activate as a business are like consumer goods, consumer goods brands, naturally as I would. But I then thought, well, I need this credibility. So I sent an email to who now is a very dear friend. He sits within the business professor Thomas Hellman. Thomas Hellman is professor at Oxford University Side School of Business. And he is a globally recognised expert in venture capital and entrepreneurial finance. He's single-handedly played an enormous role across the venture and the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Oxford University to quite an extraordinary level. And I reached out to him with this idea. And my idea at the time was essentially that that one truth that every founder needs to find when their fundraising in terms of their readiness, capital readiness is a problem. There's a big knowledge gap in fundraising. And I think just

Speaker 1 (24:49):
Double click into that capital readiness piece. What do you mean by that? Capital

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Readiness is essentially you having the confidence that you are ready to raise by the time we get into AOR of an investor. So we're talking fundamental product, market fit, foundational readiness. Do you have the right documents available? How are you presenting them? What does your cap table look like? Is there anything that's going to scare an institutional investor? And readiness? Capital readiness isn't necessarily just about, okay, well I'm leaving university, I want to start a business. I'm going into my pre-seed now. It's actually so much more than that. There's a very big difference between capital readiness, between a pre-seed level and a series A level. Different investors, different investors want to see different things. So we kind of wanted to bring a level of structure and clarity to what that readiness looks like. And that was part of the fragmentation in terms of every investor wants something different, but they kind of want the same. And I think we would serve ourselves so well in terms of even the wider economy. We know how much private markets impact the wider economy. I think we'd serve ourselves so well if we got to a level of consistency with those things. So ultimately had this email, had this email idea, sent this email off to Professor Hellman.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
It was the best email I've ever read. Thank

Speaker 2 (26:10):
You. It was very appreciate that. Yeah. Well, it took

Speaker 1 (26:12):
You about a week to write.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
I don't mind long emails. Yeah, no chat g pt, no

Speaker 1 (26:17):
Chat.

Speaker 2 (26:17):
Do not write emails on chat g PT

Speaker 1 (26:20):
The M dashes. That's the issue with chat God,

Speaker 2 (26:23):
Or at least get a prompt to get rid of those. But yeah, I sent this email and really wasn't expecting to hear back. And I think as well, that kind of comes back to my tenacity might be the wrong word, but me kind of being like, well, you know what? I'm going to knock on the door if they don't answer, it doesn't matter. It's still going to put me in good stead. And at least I can say I tried. I'm a no stone left unturned mentality kind of guy. I've always operated like that. And he responded,

Speaker 1 (26:47):
He did.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
And it was really interesting. He also responded. He gave me, he also sent me this paper which was titled AI and VC Hellman Al. And I read it on a Sunday morning and completely lost it. Thought, wow, I mean this is pre-published. I don't want this to get out there. People start businesses off the back of published papers, particularly

(27:08):
From someone like Thomas. I thought, well, this is quite something. Anyhow, had a meeting with Thomas. We went through everything. He sent me this paper and then he said, okay, well let's meet, let's see if we have chemistry. And I went to Oxford, met him in the Thatcher wing of Oxford side of business school. And I was just pushing so much for what's the next step? Am I going to get a commitment from you? Can you partner with me on this and can you help us? And so I just asked him, I was like, well, what's going on, Thomas? Are you doing this? If we do this, I'm handing my notice in next week. He said, yes, and I did. And that was the founding, really the true founding of Capy outside of speaking to the likes of you, refining the concept and making sure that we had something that was venture ready and scalable. And I think what Thomas gave me was the hunch that every founder needs, and

Speaker 1 (28:11):
It was also a product market fit, right? You could see what white paper, there was a definitely requirement.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Exactly. It was a lot more than a white paper. It

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Was a Bible.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Yeah, it was. Well, 22 page Bible. But yeah, for me, back to what I said before, that was the signal that I needed. Signal is everything we talk about signal a lot in terms of capital readiness and having the right signals in place so that an investor can spot them, which is why we built the cap passport. But signals are also for you because you are constantly trying to, in those very, very early days when you're just mapping everything out, you are almost trying to almost convince yourself,

Speaker 1 (28:54):
And you

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Have to stop yourself from doing that because that's really dangerous. So going and getting that external perspective of people who are credible, who've been there, who have a very objective view of your company is super, super important. So my signal was Helman and it was kind of the belief that he has in my little idea at the time, had some legs, for lack of a better term. It sounds quite simple.

(29:19):
And Thomas is heavily interested in multiple different facets of venture, human adventure and behavioural thesises or thesis. So that's something that we're building into the platform at the moment. He's very passionate about that. He's very passionate about ethical ai, which is super important naturally, particularly within the VC space. And he's got some incredible, incredible ideas. So having someone like him by my side was enough to keep me relaxed over that Christmas period when I was trying to raise. But everybody had gone on holiday and you've sat there thinking, oh my God, how am I going to get this money in? But there was the other unlock as well. I always sat there confident in the signals that I built for myself. Sorry.

Speaker 1 (30:08):
No, I was going to say the other unlock I think for you was also the validation from Paul dod, who's now your co-founder and CTO, right, who had scaled a tech business called Habu, taken it to a billion dollars in terms of valuation. And he very much jumped in with both feet very, very quickly. He

Speaker 2 (30:23):
Did.

Speaker 1 (30:23):
I mean, he's bullish on ai, but he was very, very bullish when he noticed.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
So Paul is one of the most extraordinary characters I've ever met in my life. I found out two weeks ago that he's like some robotics expert and he goes around giving expert talks on AI and

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Robotics. I think Paul is actually just a robot.

Speaker 2 (30:40):
You know what? Really

Speaker 1 (30:41):
He, A human wouldn't

Speaker 2 (30:42):
Surprise me with better human skills.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
I dunno,

Speaker 2 (30:47):
I think. But that was a huge signal for me, huge. I went into the discussion with Paul. We could talk for hours about choosing a co-founder. By the way, I

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Think

Speaker 2 (30:58):
It's really, really important. That's something that I consulted really heavily with Professor Hellman on, which is an entirely different topic. But with Paul, we kind of had this calling off period, for lack of a better term, where we kind of said, okay, well let's see how it goes. Let's see if we actually, we gel,

Speaker 1 (31:18):
We

Speaker 2 (31:18):
Click. It's like a marriage, right? Everybody always says that. It's a little bit cliche, but it really is true. I speak to Paul a lot more than I speak to my girlfriend and

Speaker 1 (31:28):
I live with her. I know, I know. But

Speaker 2 (31:29):
I think it's really is it really was special to have him on boards. I mean, if you look at the journey that Paul's beyond with HaBO still a business, heart's still beating today, co-founded was the CTO. Paul's won multiple different awards. He played an enormous role in innovation. The fundamental architecture of that company, which scaled to, I believe they had a valuation at some point of half a billion. They raised over a hundred million in venture capital. So having that technical ability to be able to come into the platform and take a very intuitive approach to building something for AI for the venture ecosystem was actually so helpful for me because then I'm not just sat there with some agency CTO telling them, first of all, this is what the venture ecosystem is. Please can you build this? It really helps. Your

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Founding team is fundamentally built up actually, or founders that have been there and done that, which is so rare for so many. Often a founding team is net new founders and you had them on board before you'd raised any money. So just talk to me about that process. You had Paul on board, you had Thomas Elvin on board, and you were obviously in the business as well. No capital raised the process to get to the capital that you did eventually raise. What did that look like and how did you go along that journey? It was a pretty quick raise, right? Yeah. Two weeks. It was a matter. Exactly. And a couple of WhatsApps. Again, proximity. I get that.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
Just

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Talk to me about that a bit.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
It was, proximity played a role for me for sure. I mean, I did raise off the back of my cap passport, but I think you have to do your homework when you're building a business. I think you have to understand, I was very lucky because I knew what the core signals were in terms of the fundamental building blocks of building a company. I'd seen it being done in billion dollar companies that I've worked for before. I've seen it not be done right in other companies that I've sat close to. And I've seen it being done very well in smaller businesses that I've been managing s of. And I think having that knowledge enables you to build something that's bulletproof in terms of the problem, the solution, what is the deep rooted pain point of this? And then who's your ICP? How are you going to take this to market? What people around you do you know that can support you taking this to market and Ali Bruce. But I think all of those different things play such an enormous role in terms of you turning up with credibility. I mean, if a founder is turning up to an investor room or someone that they want on their founding team desperately want like Paul Todd,

Speaker 1 (34:09):
And

Speaker 2 (34:09):
You turn that with zero credibility, no understanding, no confidence, you're starting on the back foot. That's why we've built CAP here. We're trying to put every single founder who's raising capital on the front foot from day one. I'm organised. Here's my signal, my data room's in check. This is why we need to exist. This is our unfair advantage. This is who we have on the team. This is why they're suited. Well, to build this company. That's critical. Not a lot of analyst actually have that. And I think that was the difference between me being able to go to the likes of Thomas and say, look, here's what we're doing as an idea's. Pretty much a plan on a page. But I didn't go into that meeting with that. I went in saying, look, here's my idea. This is why I think it'll work. This is my hunt. These are the people that have around me. Here's my experience. Oh, by the way, and that's I think how I managed to do it in terms of fundraising. I think we could have gone institutional. We didn't. You could have raised more. Yeah, we could have. We oversubscribed by 22%. Did you raise in the end? We raised what? In terms of cash for two nine

Speaker 1 (35:11):
On a what valuation?

Speaker 2 (35:12):
On a 2.4 mil

Speaker 1 (35:14):
Reserve

Speaker 2 (35:14):
Valuation. Yeah. So we originally went out to raise 350 aligned to my financial model that was going to give me about a year's runway. Runway forecasting is interesting when you have a business at that early stage because you never really know. You never really know. But it's just having that confidence in yourself that you've actually done the work and you've done it properly. We raised that capital oversubscribed by around 20%. We've got some great investors

Speaker 1 (35:41):
Cap

Speaker 2 (35:41):
To cap table really, really lean, which is super important for us. And one of my investors, co-owner of runner, very strategic for us. Very good when it comes to community and building that ecosystem, which is super important in fundraising by the way. Founders need to be within a community so that they know that other people have their back. And then the other person, sales president of an ed tech company, very tech based. I speak to Richie every single day. I can always, every single evening, half past seven will come usually just about the time of my dinners at the table. The one meal I have a day with

Speaker 1 (36:25):
Water,

Speaker 2 (36:26):
With no water, no water. And I'll get a call from Richie. And it is critically important that founders have the term strategic cap table. It doesn't have to be that strategic. It doesn't have to be someone that can completely revolutionise the business. That can come later. Richie and JP both can revolutionise the business in their respective ways. And I've got another investor as well who has and is revolutionising the business. But I think it's more about the moral support.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
I

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Think that's the biggest difference with working in a company with a team to working in a very, very small company remote most of the time.

(37:05):
And being sat there thinking, I'm about to embark on this next fundraise, to have someone who knows the business and who knows you and who you can be upfront with. I mean, the conversation that Richie and I had, this was back at primetime, used to be a board member at primetime conversation that I've had with Richie is, and I've done this with every single manager that I've had. Hello, I'm Connor. This is what I like. I'm extremely emotional in terms of management style. I'm firm, but I'm extremely fair and this is how I go about business because I've learned so much about myself over the last 12 years. And to be able to give someone else who's working with you and coming and joining you on that journey, such insight into you and how you operate is critically important.

Speaker 1 (37:53):
Guys, I think I found something that might be super useful for you and something that we've started using in my businesses. It's called In Card. It's a new financial platform designed specifically for high growth modern businesses. If you're running a business, you've probably found that one of the biggest headaches is managing money across different tools, currencies, and expenses. Well, incar gives you multicurrency accounts connected banking and smart spend management all in one place. The best part, you earn up to 2% cash back on everyday spend, such as ads, SaaS and travel, earning you points every time you spend, meaning you can redeem them instantly for cash in the platform. Check out incar using the link in the description. If you are building or scaling a business and you want a smarter way to manage your finances, I think this is the solution. Thanks for taking the time to listen. Let's get back to the episode. You also somewhat sort of developed a bit of a rocket ship. I mean, you're talking at the moment to the likes of Google from a startup scale up perspective. You're talking to ops in terms of the, there's tonnes of exciting things that have really only happened over the last probably quarter or two because you've just turned it on and off you go. So

Speaker 2 (39:01):
Do you Well, he's got Professor Thomas Heldman on board. He's built his capillary readiness index. The amount of people that I've asked me if I've gone to Oxford, I bloody wish. I wish I could.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
You could have gone to Oxford, but just physically, briefly,

Speaker 2 (39:15):
I've visited.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
But

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Lunch there a few times,

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Done a bit of punting.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
But the amount of people who will think that I've come from a background where I had that level of backing or who think that I've met these people through family friends, which there is nothing wrong with at all by the way. But I just want to make it really clear that that is not the case. And that has come through me having brute force, a brute brute force in terms of, okay, well this is what I want to do. This is where I'm going to go. And if I'm literally pushing my career, which I value so much to the side and I'm taking this transition to something else that no stone left unturned mentality is critical for me. It's not for anyone else. For me. And I think

(40:02):
Obviously that has then opened doors to, we're launching across osac, which is the Oxford size entrepreneurship centre. And all of their founders are going to go through caper. They're going to manage their applications through it. They're going to manage how their founders are progressing towards readiness through the platform. That gives us a great case study that enables us then to go knock on other people's door. And I think that really has been it. I think it's kind of, I'm obsessed with design partnerships. So if people are watching this and they're in tech and you are looking to start, I think the best piece of advice that I could ever give is find design partners and find them quickly. I mean, there's a lot of people who will go and build something very similar to caper, not on an infrastructure level, but more of a tool. And they'll go to a really subpar partner thinking, well, they're not multinational, they're not that big. So they're probably going to say yes, they might also playing around with us from a design partnership perspective, and we can probably get somewhere from that. No, it's completely wrong. If you believe in your idea, you should believe enough to know that this can benefit something like osac, someone like NatWest, Barclays, HSBC, all of these banks that have these amazing accelerators, these vast, but all

Speaker 1 (41:34):
Conversations that we're happening right now for

Speaker 2 (41:36):
Sure

Speaker 1 (41:36):
With blue chip, blue chip, blue

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Chip banks. Exactly. That's the point. I mean that's come because I've been able to deliver really strong design partnerships with companies. You design those partnerships, you take the case study and then you move forward and you have pure faith that what you have is strong

Speaker 1 (41:57):
Stacks

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Up and legitimately drives value.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
But one of the key validators as well was the fact only the other week where you're down at the London Stock Exchange with the AI sovereign fund. That's unbelievable. You managed to access a market within a six month period and immediately literally be within the stock market, that sort of hub of England, if you will, from a financial perspective. How was that? I mean, how did that get unlocked?

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Do you know what the venture ecosystem at the moment is absolutely fascinating. Genuinely fascinating. A lot of founders Ollie, and I think it really is incredible. So if you look at where we are today, capital has being mobilised at serious rate. Last year on record, it was the second highest year of capital mobilisation globally across venture capital. So money's entering the ecosystem. If you look at the US back in the nineties, there were 700 VC funds operating across the US. Today there were 3,400.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Where's the money going though? Where's it getting put?

Speaker 2 (42:55):
So that money is going into founders who have tripled in volume in the US on the uk, both triple in volume from the nineties to now. So there's an influx of founders capitals being deployed. It's a really healthy ecosystem and we're set up for this goal era of success where it comes to, I mean, I was reading the article, it's the World Economic Forum just released

Speaker 1 (43:20):
There

Speaker 2 (43:21):
May Venture Capital Growth Report. It's phenomenal, slightly worrying in places, but it's phenomenal and it's kind of, people don't recognise how much the private market contributes to the overall economy, which is why now you see things like the sovereign AI fund launching and you see governments supporting these various different initiatives because that's how we're going to grow the economy. There are multiple different ways to do that,

Speaker 1 (43:49):
But there are thesis to find the next chat, GPT to open AI kind piece for

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Sure. If you look at the uk, I mean uk, the UK invented the worldwide web. We've got a pretty good track record on this stuff, but I think it's a really interesting environment. The only problem is, is that despite the fact that Capital's being mobilised, despite the how fair and more farmers coming into the market, we're still running fundraising rounds like it's the nineties and it's a problem. We've still got a screening issue because investors are completely bewildered by the noise in the market. So you've got more founders coming in, a lot of them don't have clarity. They're shoving pitch decks in investors' faces. And ultimately that investor is then going through that pitch deck manually to try and extract the signal, overlay it onto their thesis to figure out, and by the time they've done that,

Speaker 1 (44:35):
They missed

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Three great deals.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
And similarly, they could have also had actually

Speaker 2 (44:37):
Their business

Speaker 1 (44:37):
Also had a bad day and not necessarily be reading

Speaker 2 (44:39):
It correctly. 100%. And I think that is a major problem. If we continue to raise those fun rounds like we did in the nineties, if we continue to screen, continue to fundraise similar to how we did in the nineties, we're going to miss out on this golden age. We really are. And it's a problem. The economy will miss out. We'll miss out. The UK will miss out. And this also, by the way, it doesn't take infrastructure within fundraising. It doesn't take something like Capla that brings that speed and that structure and that clarity. It's not just that this is, I'm talking regulatory change, I'm talking taxes around equity regulations with regards to, well, we can all talk about external. You've got a very strong opinion about that. But we can all talk around founders creating, I mean the ai, the sovereign AI's entire mantra is that they want to empower more businesses to start here, build here, and scale globally. That's an impressive way I like of saying this is how we want empower the next level of entrepreneurs. But if you look at the venture capital allocation to female founders, for example, 2% in the us, 10% here, 10% in Europe, that's 10% of all of venture capital funds going to females.

Speaker 1 (45:55):
Yeah, remarkable. Too low.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Now how do we fix that? How do we fix it? Do you know?

Speaker 1 (46:00):
Go on

Speaker 2 (46:00):
Cap.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
I like it. We

Speaker 2 (46:02):
Give every single person, every single founder the ability to raise on the front foot,

Speaker 1 (46:07):
See further, move faster.

Speaker 2 (46:08):
Well, yeah, but also we want to give founders confidence. That's critical. Confidence means so much when you go into fundraise, fundamental understanding of the signals that an investor is looking for critical giving investors something which decision ready, not something that is going to completely ruin their day in terms of the time they being to spend on. It

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Removes the subjectivity somewhat from the whole investment process. It because there's so much more data and KPIs within place. And I guess that cap passport piece, which is so unique in terms of how you guys have developed the cap passport and what that actually means to founders. When we were speaking back in the day, Experian give a credit rating to a business, to a person, to an individual credit safety, the same. We had

Speaker 2 (46:48):
To pivot from that point hundred

Speaker 1 (46:50):
Percent at one

Speaker 2 (46:51):
Point.

Speaker 1 (46:52):
But the point is, it's you are kind of going out and saying, this founder is capital ready. As you said, the Caprio passport somewhat underpins that as a kind of route to, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (47:04):
Look, ultimately one of the biggest challenges that investors have is that if you, I'm talking now pre-seed seed because your business changes a lot from pre-seed to seed on many occasions. I think one of, well think I know, I know. What are the biggest challenges that investors have? That they are consistently spending lots and lots of time on businesses or founders that aren't ready for capital. They might not match the thesis of that vc. That's another one of the biggest for downs. And the reason why a lot of founders waste time raising capital is because they're not looking at the fundamentals. Do we fit this fund's thesis? Every single fund in the world, the majority of one, I'd say 90% will have a thesis online. And if not, you can use our discovery tool. But every single fund will have a thesis online. It takes two seconds. Just check it before you go through that application form, before you reach out to the GP on LinkedIn, just check it because that will save you so much time. But all of these little things are pretty critical. But the role of the Capla passport is saying, as I mentioned earlier, hello Mr. Or Mrs. Investor, hello investor. This is our business in its best form. These are the signals that you want to see. Gives them decision ready signal at their fingertips.

(48:29):
And should you want to go further, my data room, my cap table is just a link away. Just a click away.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
That's the unlock. And I mean, at the moment, you've got what, 10, 15 new founders every single day signing up to the platform. You've only launched basically a month ago, publicly, give or take very lovely, shiny new website. Talk to me about the Easys and how that's working with Opus. That's properly exciting as well.

Speaker 2 (48:50):
Yeah, mega exciting. Well, the Easys is a really great really way for us to get immediate distribution. We've partnered really, really well with Opus. Opus is, for anyone who doesn't know, Opus is a thousand founders globally across multiple different markets. And they have a phenomenal roster of founders,

(49:21):
A phenomenal roster. Opus is kind of an umbrella. They've got multiple different areas. So they acquires a company called Embark, I believe they bought 'em from Notion Capital last year. They're looking to bring on a lot of, I mean ultimately it's capitalising on the fact that there are lots more founders coming in to the market. And in true oppu form, they're trying to give them visibility and a voice, which is, by the way, what they do best. Yeah, they're very, very, they've done such a good job of calculated with that. And we're essentially plugging in as their assessment layers. So essentially the process and how it'll work, and this took some thinking through and it took a lot of brain cells from Paul. But first of all, to get the platform built and then figure out how this was going to work, how it's going to

Speaker 1 (50:07):
Stand up.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Ultimately every single founder that applies, we'll go through obviously the easy application form. They then get dropped into their capar workspace. So when you do onboard Caprio, it's typically we'll take your pitch to, or the cap player robot will take your pitch deck and then it'll essentially turn it into a fundraising passport. Now we want every single person in the EAs who are applying, now we're talking, this could be a lot of people

Speaker 1 (50:40):
Without

Speaker 2 (50:41):
Mentioning any numbers, but a lot of people, all of those people get the ability to be dropped into Kaplan, to have one place to manage their entire raise and understand their readiness. That is an amazing tool. It

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Hasn't been done.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
It's an asset

Speaker 1 (50:57):
For them.

Speaker 2 (50:58):
It's never been done.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
No,

Speaker 2 (50:59):
And I think following that, we will then, I mean Opus will use us, the ETS will use us to kind of go through each of those various different talents and figure out the level of readiness, whether it matches their internal rough thesis. And that's, so they're going to be using it from that perspective. But the thing I'm most excited about really is giving all of these founders something that I genuinely wish I had when

Speaker 1 (51:26):
I was

Speaker 2 (51:27):
Raising for the first time and

Speaker 1 (51:28):
I

Speaker 2 (51:28):
Was learning about it.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
It'll make it so much more simpler. And the fact that you've also got that sort of AI consultant, if you will, within the platform called Iris, how useful is that and what does that actually do? That's so unique because it love Iris

Speaker 2 (51:39):
And

Speaker 1 (51:40):
Does everything that you'd normally do in terms of shareholder updates and writing notes and such. It just remembers the process and then deploys it.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Well, Iris is fully agent, which essentially means that it just relies on different tools or it can speak to different tools. To give you the right answer, I think the most important part about Iris, that contextual,

Speaker 1 (51:59):
But in

Speaker 2 (51:59):
A very safe way. And ultimately, for example, at the moment I'm discussing with a behavioural psychology expert because a big plan of ours is to build behavioural psychology into the platform in a very strategic way. And here's where I see it, and I think this is actually quite a good way of putting it for many different industries who are leveraging ai, given the different customers and the different areas that we span across the venture ecosystem, we want to be the AI platform for venture LLMs are very intelligent, very intelligent. But when you are trying to close a round for your company, you don't need your LLM to be able to speak Hindi or tell you the A, B, C, backwards. It's just not something that you need it to know. Fundraising Rogo a great example of this big company, US-based the AI for finance. You hear them talking about this a lot. Yes, chat gpt core brilliant in terms of depth and breadth, and that's all really, really important stuff. But ultimately, does it know about finance? And that's what they do. They still build on these LLMs. It's not like they train their own lab, but they have just prompt engineered as probably a very loose, simplistic way of, they probably hate it if they heard that, but they have just built around these LLMs in a way which is absolutely bulletproof.

Speaker 1 (53:33):
And that's

Speaker 2 (53:33):
Why they're doing so well. And they are now trusted by some of the biggest institutional banks on the planet.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
For sure. And I mean, if I'm a founder and I'm listening to this, even if I'm a VC and whatever I am, and whoever I'm listening to this podcast, if I want to go to Caterpillar and if I actually want to build out my thesis, put in the Capar passport, get ready for fundraising, what do I do? How do I do it?

Speaker 2 (53:53):
So you don't need to be hellbent on the fact that you're going to fundraise fine

Speaker 1 (53:58):
By

Speaker 2 (53:59):
Going onto cap. You don't actually need a pitch deck. So you can actually get onto CAPA by entering a website URL, and then that will give the platform enough context to give you the right answers back in terms of being like a fundraising mentor. Outside of that, if you are raising, get onto capa, put your pitch deck in, we'll generate you a passport in 60 seconds, or Iris will, but then, and then you refine it and then you upload your materials. Capitally becomes the place where your fundraising materials live and you can share it, and when you do share it, you are putting your best foot forward. So that's really it. We wanted to make the platform super accessible. That was really, really important. There will come a time where there will come a time where Caprio will be free for founders. I'm really passionate about that. My investors of the future probably won't be as passionate, but I'm really passionate about that because I think, I don't think that level of access on any way, shape, or form should be paid for. I think if we can get to a place within the UK whereby capital is mobilised, we can get to a place where more founders come into the market and we can bring a level of structure, clarity, and speed to fundraising

(55:19):
And to the venture ecosystem, we'll be in a much better place. Founders will be in a better place.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
A hundred percent. I love it. I love Cap. I think it's amazing. I'm stoked to be on the journey. I think it's such a cool proposition run by a cool individual, so to speak. Questionably. We wouldn't call me cool. My girlfriend wouldn't call me Chuck Atal. So you can atal, but no man, I think it's really, really cool. Anyone that wants to go over to Kaia, bang it into, I guess wherever they want to bang it into, and you guys will load up and con, I appreciate you jumping on. I'm conscious of your time, but super excited to see where Kaia goes. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (55:51):
Thank you, man. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
Appreciate you listening to the podcast. Hopefully you found it useful. For those that want to read up or learn more, head over to my LinkedIn page, Oliver Bruce online, where you'll find a weekly newsletter called the Brucey Bonus, where we double click into more detail and give you more tips and tricks around how to scale your business. If you want to share this with friends, family, colleagues, business owners, people that are in your circle then might find it useful. I would be super appreciative if I said at the beginning of the podcast, this does not grow on its own. This grows with you and we do it for you. So thank you so much for listening and catch you next time. I mentioned earlier, but I do think something that you guys might find super useful if you're running a business and managing multiple transactions across multiple platforms is in card. It's a new financial platform for modern online businesses, giving you guys multicurrency, accounts, connected banking and smart spend management all in one place. You can open up an account in minutes, attach cards for expenses, and earn up to 2% cash back on everyday spend like ads, SaaS, and travel. Check out in cards using the link in the description.