Speaker 1 (00:00:00):
Most people running businesses right now are drowning in noise. Every week there is a new AI tool, a new platform update, a new thing that you are supposed to be doing. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, the actual job of growing your brand, acquiring customers, and building something that lasts. It's getting harder to focus on. That's why I built this podcast, The Unlock. I'm Oliver Bruce. I'm the founder and CEO of Pinpoint Media, a performance marketing and paid media agency based in the UK. We run campaigns for some of the most ambitious brands in the world. We live in the data, we test the creative, and we operate at the intersection of where creativity meets performance. And over the last few years, I've watched AI and automation completely reshape what's possible for marketers and business owners. Not in theory, but in practise, in the ad account, in the creative studio, in the way brands acquire and retain customers at scale.

(00:00:54):
This is for anyone essentially running a business or a brand who knows things are changing fast and wants a way to stay ahead. Whether you're scaling a startup, leading a marketing team, or just trying to figure out what AI and automation actually means for your bottom line, The Unlock is built for you. No hype, no theory, just what's working, what's changing, and what you should be doing about that. Now, let's get into the episode.

(00:01:20):
Matt, thank you so much for coming on The Unlock. You started out knowing literally nothing about business, but now you've got quite a significant sized organisation.

Speaker 2 (00:01:28):
Well, everyone starts out knowing nothing, I guess, I think. Yeah. I mean, I always say that I still don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but I guess I do speak to younger founders sometimes and then they tell you like, "Oh, your fucking opinion changed my life." I'm like, actually yeah, I guess maybe I do have some nuanced understanding because I've been doing it like 10 years or something now, I guess. Not full-time, probably full-time for eight years, which is mad in itself to be fair. I also think I should be way further ahead, but maybe that's because I'm very harsh on myself. Do

Speaker 1 (00:01:57):
You compare yourself to others?

Speaker 2 (00:01:59):
Yeah, massively. But I compare myself to the 0.01%,

Speaker 1 (00:02:03):
Which

Speaker 2 (00:02:04):
I seem to have had a knack of. My entire close circle are just guys in their 20s and 30s that have just done ridiculous shit, usually in the e-comm space because that's been obviously my niche. But it's definitely unusual statistically. It's probably not good for your mind, but it also is good for getting better, I suppose.

Speaker 1 (00:02:28):
Starting out, you were redesigning logos illegally, let's say, fake logos, if you will. And then you went into jewellery and then you went into neon signs. They all kind of worked, but they kind of didn't. And obviously now you've got space goods age 30 something doing 80 million in revenue, but you say you haven't succeeded. Across that journey, when you started to where you are now, what were some of the lessons that you learned? You obviously lost a lot of money on the second business.

Speaker 2 (00:02:52):
Yeah, I was saying before someone else on this other pod I was on today, I feel like every other business was. I felt like all my businesses, because they've all been in e-com, but I've done lots of things. If you count back to if you count a business as a concept and a website that existed with maybe one customer, then I probably had 10 or 12 over time and each one got slightly bigger and better and you learned from each one as it went along. But I felt like everything prior to Space Goods was more just almost only marketing and acquisition focused beyond the initial make the product.

(00:03:22):
But then SpaceGoods which now been four years, four and a bit years, crazy. It's the longest one I've done, which is weird to say that it was only four years, but to me that's a long time probably because I'm mega ADHD and already want to start something else and I always will do probably all the time. But this is the one that's been more of like a, I call it a real life MBA. I mean, I never got a degree of any sort. I dropped out of uni twice, but definitely taught me more in every other area rather than just. Because everyone in the e-comm space just talks about paid ads and Shopify screenshots. It's kind of like the fucking meme, how much are you spending on Meta? But I'd done all that before, but I guess everything else I hadn't done to the same degree, like hiring a senior team, raising money, dealing with different opinions, going into retail, different markets, going deeper on one brand rather than just.

(00:04:09):
Jewellery was a decent business to be fair. That's probably one that got away in hindsight because Crafted London, if you know then they're 60, 70 million now. I was their main competitor for two years and then I got distracted by the neon thing, which then crashed and burned and took both of them down. Long story for another day or in this one, depending on where we go. But that was the first episode of my pod five years ago, crazy. And I think to the day actually, it was like 11th of September or very nearly to the day 9th today. So yeah, I've done a lot of things. I feel like everyone just teaches me more. But I'm always just conscious of like, fuck, I just feel like I'm running out of time all the time.

Speaker 1 (00:04:41):
Yeah. I know the feeling. I think mortality becomes more scary the older you get.

Speaker 2 (00:04:45):
But I do think I have a very toxic mindset because I though I'd be like a billionaire by 30 and now I'm 30 and I'm not a billionaire. I say that slightly tongue in cheek, but I've always just had this kind of OCD, probably very much on the spectrum obsession with if someone's done it, then why can't I? I think that's probably why I was saying to you off camera before, struggle with some of the more, I guess, traditional ways of built this business. I think what founders are often good at, that's why I think dropship has made great e-com founders in general, is that they just question all, I would say the fluff. I'm not saying anything other th marketing is fluff in a business, but I do think naturally dropshippers are great at just being so focused on the few levers that actually work.

(00:05:30):
And that's the way I started every business. You have a product, you just run the fucking ads that work, you ignore all the shit that doesn't make sense and isn't necessary. I guess since we've hired more people, gone into new channels, built more of a durable business that doesn't rely on me anymore,

(00:05:43):
That's definitely been different, but I guess it feels like the kind of next level in a way of building something.

Speaker 1 (00:05:49):
Because the first couple of businesses naturally relied on you and you were the head honcho and scaled them up. The jewellery branded five million people taking revenue straight out of the back pretty much of university. The neon sign business, you did significant revenue within that, but then -

Speaker 2 (00:06:02):
Significant profit before it all crashed and burned.

Speaker 1 (00:06:05):
Well, exactly. But why did it crash and burn? Why did you get distracted and what are you taking from that? What can you tell other people?

Speaker 2 (00:06:11):
Well, I mean specifically why that one crashed and burned. It's a long story, but basically I had a supplier run out of money during COVID and go and watch my 102-minute episode on that for the full story. But ultimately as well, I think I just didn't have experience scaling. Yes, it crashed and burned for one large reason, but also had I been more experienced, it probably wouldn't have happened, to be honest, because you just have a more nuanced understanding of how to scale stuff. What was the question?

Speaker 1 (00:06:40):
Who guides you?

Speaker 2 (00:06:40):
I'm going down too far.

Speaker 1 (00:06:41):
I rabbit hole already. That's right. Who gave you in those de decisions back in the day? So you

Speaker 2 (00:06:44):
Wanted to move - No one. To be honest, no entrepreneurs in my family. Well, not in my immediate family, like my uncle definitely is, but not in e-com. Didn't really know any founders. Going back to day one when I was 18, at the time of that business, I was living with founders and I built a network, but I was always a solo founder, always have been. I think that's, in hindsight, probably quite dumb. I think I would've maybe enjoyed it more and arguably done better if I'd had a co-founder. But again, pros and cons. And I guess I was just learning from doing it, I suppose.

Speaker 1 (00:07:19):
The business that went peak tong, you were moving to another factory in China, spent 400. Yeah, it's like an

Speaker 2 (00:07:24):
Infamous story at this point.

Speaker 1 (00:07:25):
But what was the purpose? Why did you want to move and how did they not fulfil that two million pounds worth of order? Did they go under themselves?

Speaker 2 (00:07:33):
Well, yeah. So basically long story short on that, to paraphrase it, I built Neon Beach, it was called. I think it's still. Someone rebought it eventually and then actually a new buyer bought it again about three months ago and they wanted me to get involved and I said no, that's long gone. I don't have time legally to be doing that anyway, but I also just can't. That's like a demon of my

Speaker 1 (00:07:50):
Past. PTSD.

Speaker 2 (00:07:52):
Yeah, basically scaled it way too quick. Well, not too quick, but in hindsight too quick. The supply chain was incredibly complicated because of massive AOB product. Very different to someone like Space Goods, which was intentionally aggressively simple at the start, although that has drifted since, ironically. And now we're trying to bring it back. But it was huge AOV, huge expensive to make every product. It's a great margin, but not great percentage margin. So super expensive per unit. A lot of stuff made to order because people were doing bespoke signs and all this. And I originally built it because I wanted a pink neon side of my other jewellery brand. Well, my other brand being my jewellery business logo to have in my flat in London. I though, well, if I want this, other people will have it, so let's just build the business. That's how it started.

(00:08:29):
So naturally 50% of orders for a lot of beauty studios, barbers, whatever. It's kind of weird because I got into this quite niche LED lighting business, but I'd never even thought about it beyond just I want a cool thing on my wall, so other people probably will too. In the theme of just moving very quickly, zero to one and not probably considering the implications of that model. And then I thought we were making it in China, shipping it from China because it was bespoke. And that also gets a bad rap, but actually the irony was that was far better than the UK setup ever was.

(00:08:57):
So long story short, thought great, this is working, but I think it could be better. Let's bring it in-house, improve the margins. I basically did a bit of a joint venture with a factory up north, which I'm not going to go into the specifics of who they are because I probably shouldn't. They just bit off more than they could chew, long story short. They were a B2B supplier making massive fit outs for Louis Vuitton stores and all this. I naively though, "Oh great, COVID, their business has largely disappeared. Demand's gone massively up for the online stuff. Obviously they're going to want to do this because they haven't really got another revenue source." Yeah, the volume was just insane and they couldn't keep up with it. I put loads of money up front into building out this setup in this factory and yeah, we just couldn't keep up.

(00:09:37):
And then I had a primetime TV campaign with Love Island in November 2020, which is actually mad. I kind of forget about this and then I re-speak about it and it comes back to me where we did all the. I mean, I'm not a Love Island fan, but I guess it's a massive programme, especially back then it was even bigger. All the signs in their house were sponsored by Neon Beach and all this. We had a collaboration collection. It was literally like primetime TV campaign that I filmed in my fucking iPhone in my flat. It was insane. And then Amanda Holden said that I was a fraudster on all this and it basically started to fall down. I mean

Speaker 1 (00:10:07):
The business - Why did she say that?

Speaker 2 (00:10:10):
Basically loads of orders stopped getting delivered and in about two months the business went from being highly profitable with seven figures in the bank to being aggressively insolvent and me getting death threats. I mean, it's all a bit of a blur looking back now, but essentially that's what happened.

Speaker 1 (00:10:22):
How did you cope with the death threats, with the negative - Oh, it was fucked.

Speaker 2 (00:10:26):
I went to kill myself, honestly. It was really bad. It was probably the lowest point of my life. I've always been extremely up and down mentally, I would say, but I think entrepreneurship is maybe just an environmental driver of that rather than just genetic predisposition, although that's definitely there. But yeah, that was super dark and I ended up breaking up my girlfriend around the same time, put on loads of weight. It was the classic, looking back now, it's kind of funny, but at the time it was horrible. So March 2021, that business went officially into administration and I remember quite literally Googling, "What the fuck do I do? I've got HMRC at my door." It was that bad because the business just. And I'd taken on loads of short term debt because that was very cheap back then. I was famously Wayflyer who were a big e-comm D2C

Speaker 1 (00:11:09):
Revenue-based

Speaker 2 (00:11:10):
Financing lender. I was there one of their first customers in their first ever default. I think maybe, well, probably not the only one now, but I remember Jack, the founder, who's now a good friend of mine, one of my earliest investors, and he made a shitload of money from that a few years later, getting on a call with me being like, "What the fuck's happened here? You're our first founder to founder." I just told him the honest story and then I think he got behind it and ultimately they ended up actually buying out that business from administration because they were setting up this new arm, which it was called Flyer Brands at the time. Didn't end up going anywhere a year or two later, but that was actually. They were the people that bought into it because they saw my vision and they saw that it was a hard situation, all this.

(00:11:48):
Yeah, it's kind of weird situation looking back, but.

Speaker 1 (00:11:51):
And it's still going now?

Speaker 2 (00:11:52):
It is still going now, yeah. How does that make you feel? Well,

(00:11:57):
It's quite a weird one. So I don't know how much this is in the public domain, but maybe most of it. So Wayflyer bought, because Midnight City, which is my good business, I haven't gone through this stuff in a while actually, it's like five years ago, both businesses went under because I structured two brands under the same limited company, which is just fucking stupid. But again, just didn't think at the time. I was like 25 and naive and just hadn't dealt with that sort of thing before. So I ended up losing a good business and a bad one because of a bad one, basically. They bought both the brands out. I worked with them for six months on a salary for the first time in my life, actual PAY. I was like, "Fuck this." They offered me to stay with them and I said, "No, look." So I got a bit of money in the end out of that about six months later.

(00:12:37):
And then Jack said, "I'll just back you on the next thing if you want to do whatever that's going to be," which became Space Goods. And then I think around that time, ultimately both those brands got sold onto eComplete Group, which was an offshoot of. I don't know if that's in the public domain. I should maybe check that after before this goes live. But a guy called Paul Gedman, who was early team, or one of the early team in The Hut Group. So I remember speaking to him and being like, "Oh, you're going to buy these brands, whatever." And then ultimately what happened is they shut down Midnight City, I think about a year ago. I looked at buying it back, but they wanted some ridiculous money. I was just buying it back to put in a frame sort of thing. But then Neon Beach got bought by one of my competitors about six months ago.

(00:13:18):
I don't know how much. They wouldn't tell me how much it was, and they tried to get me involved again. I said, "Absolutely not. I'll give you half an hour of advice and good luck." I don't know. It's kind of nostalgic. It's a bit sad, but yeah, it's a long time ago, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (00:13:31):
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And obviously you've got ADHD, you've obviously self-proclaimed, diagnosed. Probably got a lot of things. I think

Speaker 2 (00:13:36):
Everyone's got ADHD these days.

Speaker 1 (00:13:38):
I think I actually do. It's very good for SEO if you've got ADHD these days. But in terms of that, it does mean that you flick around a little bit, essentially. And you can see looking at your history, how much you have flicked around. I call it the magpie effect where you kind of find a new shiny thing.

Speaker 2 (00:13:50):
Not heard that before, but

Speaker 1 (00:13:51):
Yeah, and you go and you're like, "That's what I'm going to double click is, that's what I'm going to do. That's what I want to focus on." And maybe you forget about the mothership or you forget about the businesses actually working. Pros and cons with that. Yeah, fine, you can move quickly, you can go into new markets, you can focus deeply for a period of time, but there's a lot of cons because things do fall down. You say that you can work 24 hours a day and you still don't get everything done. What does it look like when coping with ADHD? You evidently know that you have it. You evidently know that some of your businesses have failed because you've got distracted. How do you cope with that?

Speaker 2 (00:14:24):
Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree. I think looking back, some of the shit I did was very reckless. Even when I was 22 and I started making a bit of money, I would literally buy a new car every other month and so dumb. Literally weird shit like that. Very impulsive. I think it's pros and cons to it. I definitely. I'm not as chaotic as I used to be when I was younger, certainly not with money anyway, far more sensible because I've been burned many times, especially with that previous business. But I don't know, are any founders not on the spectrum? Probably, but I do tend to think. I've got a twin brother, right? It's probably a great example of nature versus nurture. And I think we must be genetically different because he's just so. I feel like normal is insulting, but I don't mean it to be.

(00:15:12):
It's more conventional. He's far more non-identical twins, so I think there is actually something genetically in that so we are genuinely different. But he's just so conventional and probably way happier than me as well. What makes you happy? A person or me?

Speaker 1 (00:15:28):
You.

Speaker 2 (00:15:29):
Probably progress. I don't think I'm a naturally very happy person, but I think the thing that fulfils me is probably progress and wanting to just do cool shit.

Speaker 1 (00:15:40):
Yeah. But do you think then that impacts when you don't hit the milestone you want to hit? Oh

Speaker 2 (00:15:44):
Yeah, for sure. I'm incredibly harsh on myself, and even when I recognise that, I still feel it. I literally compare myself to mates that are doing my annual revenue in a month, and that's extremely rare, but I know three of them. I guess comparatively, most people would probably look at me and say, oh, you're doing all right for your age, whatever. But I just don't feel it at all.

Speaker 1 (00:16:08):
What's

Speaker 2 (00:16:09):
All right for you then? When will you go, "I've made that. I'm happy." Yeah, it's a good question. I think people get all fluffy around money. I think practically money, I think the number's like 15 to 20 million. The reason I think that - In the bank? Well, just personal invested net worth, not on paper. I actually think the number's actually 10 million.

Speaker 1 (00:16:33):
That's what I hear a lot, is the 10 million being that.

Speaker 2 (00:16:36):
The reason it's 10 million is because just the interest alone gives you the life, a good enough life that'd be fine for me. Because what, 400 grand a year is not much you can't do, just passive 400

Speaker 1 (00:16:46):
A year. You buy a lot of cars with

Speaker 2 (00:16:47):
That. Yeah, exactly. But then the reason I'm saying 10 million, I don't have 10 million personally yet, but I'm sure I get there. But then I see Julian from Huel make 400 million and now I'm obsessing over that because I'm like, "Fuck, 10 million's far too small." But the reason I'd said 10 million is I've probably got four or five angels and friends that have made more than that, significantly more than that person, and they all say, "That's enough." So I kind of trust their judgement on that. But I guess I'm probably also self-aware to the fact that even where I am now, five years ago, I probably would've said, "Oh, I'd love to be there." But then you get there and it's never that good, is it? It's like having things is not good. Getting things is good.

Speaker 1 (00:17:27):
The game.

Speaker 2 (00:17:28):
Yeah, and it's true. Obviously that kind of phrase is talking about the journey and all this shit, but even just tangibly, if you're in the market for a new car, which I've been recently, just even going to test drive one is far more fun than a week after you bought the fucking thing and you realise it's just not that good. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (00:17:47):
Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:17:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:17:48):
It makes you happy for a month.

Speaker 2 (00:17:49):
Yeah. And those things are still cool because obviously you'd rather have a nice car, to use an easy example, than be homeless, but obviously. But I do think past a certain point, it genuinely is probably just wanting to build shit.

Speaker 1 (00:18:04):
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(00:18:56):
Thanks so much for taking the time to listen to this. Let's get back to the episode. What makes a good founder then? What makes a good individual to both scale a business but also invest in? Because you buggered up a few businesses, but yet you got investment from the people that took your business from administration into their own organisation. They still backed you.

Speaker 2 (00:19:14):
Yeah. I think there's two sides to founders, in my opinion, probably have to have both to be successful long term. One is just like you have to actually be a good operator, which people kind of almost forget. It's inconvenient. You actually have to have skills. And you only build those through doing things, which is why I think I was much more investible then than when I first started and probably would be now if I was starting the next thing. But I think you also just have to be delusional, which I think is a good thing. You have to be delusional and probably it has to be very obsessive, really, just going to get it done

(00:19:52):
And probably have a massive chip in your shoulder. I haven't come across many founders that I know personally, at least self-made ones, and there's a lot that pretend they'reself made, but then you do some due diligence. And to be honest, that's half of the London founder scene. I'm probably going to offend to people saying that, but it's true, that very much are not self-made. And yeah, fair enough, they built cool businesses, but growing up with a nine figure family net worth, it's not quite the struggle that they portray on LinkedIn. I could give some examples, but I'll save that for off camera. Probably not for now. But yeah, I think having a chip on your shoulder, and I think to be fair, that's easy to have when you don't come from money and stuff. I come from a very normal background, whatever, my parents still have a mortgage and all this shit, and I definitely have probably a lot of fear around money, which is good and bad.

(00:20:34):
And definitely my relationship with success and money probably changed, I would say, probably in a bad way when that business went tits up, because before that I was much more naturally delusional. I thought it was invincible, which again, I think that's pros and cons because I wasn't invincible and I probably

(00:20:51):
Didn't do my due diligence on stuff I should, and that comes with experience anyway. But at the same time, I though I could do anything, and then actually when you put the work behind it, you kind of can. Whereas now it's probably a bit more balanced.

Speaker 1 (00:21:03):
Yeah. I mean, in terms of when you started to raise capital for businesses then, because you started it pretty much organically, straight out of university, grew it, so to speak, but now you obviously raise capital for ssignificant capital for space goods. When's the right time to take in capital, and when did you realise that you needed to do that?

Speaker 2 (00:21:19):
I think the whole raising money thing is super interesting, and I think a lot of people just don't understand the nuance of it. I think it's definitely better to have bootstrapped businesses first before you raise money. And to be clear, I had done that, built from 50 quid or whatever. I actually don't even know how I did that looking back.

Speaker 1 (00:21:36):
Well, that's how I started my business, and that's the one I just sold at Christmas, was completely bootstrapped from nothing organically out of university, and then exited it, so to speak. I get that, because you understand the P&L better, you understand what money actually means. It's very different to raising capital when you're actually playing with someone else's sterling.

Speaker 2 (00:21:54):
Yeah. I mean, where do you want to start on that, geez? I mean, I think a few things. Raising money will not solve an underlying product market fit or unit economics problem. It can certainly help it and actually might expose it quicker. I think especially in consumer, and we saw a lot of that in 2021. I also think it's not all the same. I did a video on myYouTube because those people would ask me, and I think a lot of people naively think, "Oh, I'm starting a brand, therefore I need to do a seed round. If I don't do a seed round or whatever, I can't start it." I'm like, "Fuck off, go and start it with two grand or even less." You can go and start it, you're just being lazy. And especially people that have never built anything. I wouldn't jump to, "I need to raise money." I would say you shouldn't raise money at all, especially if we're just starting.

Speaker 1 (00:22:36):
Yeah. And why is that? Because it gives you a better relationship with the

Speaker 2 (00:22:39):
Business. I think you just understand the tactile reality of one pound in, two pound out, in simple terms. I think it makes it more tangible when it's all yours at the start. It's obviously very hard to raise money unless you've got any credibility. I think, again, you want to build that by bootstrapping something, probably. And most people don't have the networking connections to raise money before doing anything anyway. I certainly wouldn't have done. I didn't raise from my family and friends, like little family and friends round of two million, like a lot of founders.

Speaker 1 (00:23:08):
Million from dad.

Speaker 2 (00:23:08):
I just raised from founders in my network that knew me and believed in me because they'd seen me build shit before, and that took years to build in itself. I guess it gets easier like anything.

Speaker 1 (00:23:18):
Do you think it's easier to raise money when you failed before?

Speaker 2 (00:23:21):
Yeah, probably actually.

Speaker 1 (00:23:22):
Because you know what not to do.

Speaker 2 (00:23:24):
Well, I mean, it's two ways to look at it, but name a genuinely successful founder that's not failed at some point. There's probably not many. Or even failed within the business and then got it right and whatever. Just pivoted. There's actually probably not many that have failed on the level I did at my age in terms of the fucking net liabilities on that balance sheet at the time. But yeah, you live and learn, that was quite an interesting one. And to

Speaker 1 (00:23:47):
PG against those net liabilities back in

Speaker 2 (00:23:50):
The day. That was naive on my heart, but it's also just like. I think there's a lot of finance products that are just not explained well enough to fucking young founders, to be honest.

Speaker 1 (00:24:03):
100%.

Speaker 2 (00:24:04):
Not that I was the victim or whatever, but I just think it's irresponsible. Especially there was a lot of that in 2020, 21, debt was cheap and all this. All these revenue based finance companies just basically throwing money at Shopify stores.

Speaker 1 (00:24:16):
It was Rich's money tree as well. There was the bounce backs and the COVID loans and such very easy. I don't think people knew

Speaker 2 (00:24:20):
What they were signing up for with a lot of that.

Speaker 1 (00:24:22):
It was very easy. It wasn't exactly what it suggested. It wasn't suggested. In terms, I guess of then angels coming in, what are you opening yourself up to when an investor comes on board, be it Angels, VC, or PE?

Speaker 2 (00:24:31):
Yeah. I think of raising money in basically three categories. It's like angels, which typically is the most simple shit. Ideally someone that's built wealth and done something remotely relevant and it's going to be the easiest capital in my opinion, like ordinary shares, no boys, all this shit. Then there's probably family office, which is basically halfway between a VC and an angel in simple terms. And then you've got institutional money, which okay, there's levels to that as well, but really it's VCs in terms of early stage stuff. Obviously you get PE and so on later, but that's more like buying out founders and later stage businesses and all that.

(00:25:05):
Well, I haven't done the family office stuff, but I did a bit of angel money at the start and then done a fairly sizable amount of VC since then. And yeah, definitely comes with different pros and cons, I think. I think it's definitely been net positive for space goods to be clear. I would also do it again. A lot of people have kind of watched my YouTube and, "Oh, you clear don't enjoy it, whatever. Would raise a VC again?" I actually would, definitely. I think you just have to be clear about what the expectations are going in. And I'd never raised money before, so I maybe didn't understand some of that nuance. And it's not even a bad thing because it just comes with the learning of the territory. But ultimately, getting money and other people getting control are not the same thing, but they do come hand in hand with VC money to a degree.

(00:25:52):
Still your business as a founder, but the second someone else has a board seat, it's not just your business.

Speaker 1 (00:25:56):
No.

Speaker 2 (00:25:57):
And that's just a reality. And that's fine if you agree on things generally, but naturally, you're not always going to agree on things.

Speaker 1 (00:26:02):
Yeah. And how do you manage that when you don't agree? Cause obviously it's your baby, you've grown from nothing to something, and now you've got five guys in suits that are saying nothing. I

Speaker 2 (00:26:08):
Think the one thing I've realised, and not even just relevant to VCs, it's a big point around all the previous businesses, it was just me and I had freelancers, whatever, but didn't have a proper team

Speaker 1 (00:26:19):
And

Speaker 2 (00:26:19):
A senior team who had valid opinions on things. I think the thing I lacked, having never done that before, and then quite quickly building, not a massive team, but quite a lot of senior people and that can happen quicker when you raise money because there's liquidity to do it and also pressure to professionalise, which is generally good, but does come with the territory. I just didn't have enough clarity up front because I wasn't sure. I was like, oh shit, do we get an office now? What do I want the culture to be? I haven't really thought about this because

Speaker 1 (00:26:47):
It was

Speaker 2 (00:26:47):
Always just me and maybe a few other freelancers and agencies. It's kind of a bit different because they're not really in the business. And then quite quickly I was like, oh shit, there's like 10 employees. I didn't realise that they thought that's what I thought, but I actually haven't told them what I think because I've never really thought about how to manage a team dynamic before properly.

(00:27:05):
And all that stuff happened quite quick. And then that's probably similar with investors because you just have to get better at aligning people in communication basically. And I think I'm quite a good communicator. Well, quite good. I think I'm quite a practical communicator because I'm very direct and literal, but even that doesn't work for everyone. And then you realise, oh yeah, people have different ways of doing things, different backgrounds and all this. And you just have to obviously bring your natural founder tendencies to the table, but you have to realise that not everyone's a fucking twenty four seven obsessed idiot like you, and they probably shouldn't be.

Speaker 1 (00:27:40):
And how do you deal, because I've noticed that in businesses that I've been involved with that have sold chairs or whatever, and then they have a new management structure come in and things slow down, for instance. How do you deal with the lack of speed from a founder perspective? Because as a founder, you move at a rate of not, so you can pivot, you turn left and you'll go left hard. When you've got management in place, things can happen a little bit slower, for better or for worse.

Speaker 2 (00:28:02):
Yeah, I do agree. I've definitely

Speaker 1 (00:28:04):
Seen managers. How do you manage that? Because actually you can't just say go because you've got other people you have to consider.

Speaker 2 (00:28:10):
I think the honest answer, I found that stuff hard and it's not even necessarily just. Yeah, I do agree that founders naturally are quicker because they have all the context and usually they're like a founder type where they just question convention. A big one for me, just to give a general example, would be I'm always told, "Oh, that product's going to take six months to make by a supplier, by someone else in the middle, by someone else." I'm just like, "Why?" And people go, "Because that's how long it takes." And I'm like, "Why?" People aren't used to an unconventional question like that.

Speaker 1 (00:28:40):
And

Speaker 2 (00:28:41):
Often there is like, that's just how long it takes because you have to ship the ingredients or whatever. But I think that mindset is, I've always thought is valuable, just asking why. So anything that's just how it is. And again, this is probably a bit of autism, a bit of ADHD, and some people can see that as rude, but I also just think my mind just goes literally, why can't we do that? And I'm sure there is a reason and there might well be a valid reason, but let's at least actually question it.

Speaker 1 (00:29:06):
But at school, you don't get taught this, right? At school, if you ask why you get told off. You get sent out to class, you get told

Speaker 2 (00:29:11):
Questions. A lot of people just, without being too controversial, I just think just don't actually have their own opinion on things. Even on politics, I'm not even trying to get political, but I do not care what people think politically. They're all entitled to their own opinions. But a lot of people will. If you actually. I don't know, to give an example, I was at a Christmas drinks with my schoolmates two years ago

Speaker 1 (00:29:33):
And

Speaker 2 (00:29:34):
I don't know, too many beers. Someone brings up a certain controversial political figure or who they thought was controversial that I maybe didn't have the same view on. And their default was to assume that we all around the table though the same, and I didn't on this instance, and therefore anyone that didn't think it was a horrible person. So I said, "Why do you think that?" You get into why, why, why you ask why enough times. Often people just -

Speaker 1 (00:29:57):
Trip up.

Speaker 2 (00:29:58):
Don't actually know why.

Speaker 1 (00:30:00):
They

Speaker 2 (00:30:00):
Just say it because that's the narrative. And that's whether it's politics, anything else, try not to get your YouTube band. There's been quite a few pivotal things over the past five, six years where I think this has been very true. And there's obviously people have different opinions. I don't want to generalise, but generally entrepreneurial thinkers think more critically about blanket opinions in my view.

(00:30:26):
And I do think that's useful. It also gets you in trouble though and it can offend people. I've fallen out with family members over stupid opinions on things that I don't think we even need to talk about, but someone wants to talk about and they assume that you're a bad person if you don't think the same. And not like long-term fallouts, but just like Christmas arguments or whatever. You probably know what I'm talking about. I do. The general sentiment. And yeah, I just think I'm quite happy to have different opinions to people, but at least know why you think that. Not just, this is what I think because. And it's true in any area, whether it's business, something particularly relevant, whether it's life, whether it's your view on a certain country that maybe gets a bad rap on LinkedIn or whatever. Always just have your own opinion.

(00:31:04):
And if you can't even answer why, then it's obviously not your opinion. You're just saying it because everyone else has it.

Speaker 1 (00:31:08):
Just copy paste. Yeah. Yeah, exactly that. But you're famously quite candid in terms of your both feedback and conversations. Probably far too candid. And it has somewhat backfired sometimes. Building in public is a thing that so many people do now with brands, right You obviously - I think I did

Speaker 2 (00:31:19):
It quite early, to be fair.

Speaker 1 (00:31:20):
This is it, but you also then, the Magpie effect, got bored, did something else and you should have double clicked into that. You said that earlier that maybe you should have focused on the podcast three or four years ago more than you actually did. But now you're going back onto YouTube and you're doing vlogs and you're doing an element of building in public again. But you're feeding back quite open, candid opinions on things that are happening in the business maybe before, after, during issues within the organisation and

Speaker 2 (00:31:46):
Getting pulled up from that. Yeah, I

Speaker 1 (00:31:47):
Think it's risky. Yeah, exactly. How do founders build in public completely honestly or do you think - Honestly, you

Speaker 2 (00:31:53):
Can't.

Speaker 1 (00:31:53):
It's fake. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:31:54):
I think you can't do it completely honestly, which is kind of why. I never took a full break from it, but I got less consistent. I think my audience saw me sharing less.

(00:32:03):
And like I was saying before, I think the reason for that is naturally, if you're honest about it, and I've always been probably far too honest, much to my detriment, it's just who I am. I'm very direct and authentic, but in a bad way as well. I've tweeted about my fucking mental health. I've made YouTube videos when I've been severely depressed and shit. It's probably not a good look, but it just was the honest feeling at the time. And in the spirit of what I set out to do with that document in the journey thing, it was meant to be real, for better or worse. But then as the team group particularly, and the other stakeholders basically, team, shareholders, whatever, there were certain times when it's all very well sharing the good things, but kind of the more interesting stuff is the bad stuff

Speaker 1 (00:32:44):
Or

Speaker 2 (00:32:44):
The less good stuff or the in between stuff. And I didn't feel like I could actually really talk about it without just potentially coming off wrong. And then you just naturally. And that did happen a few times where people said I shouldn't have said that. I'm like, well, that's not what I meant. Just more opinions. There's not really much value at that point. It's like, well, why am I doing this? Do

Speaker 1 (00:33:05):
You think it gets harder the bigger the business gets because A, there's more stakeholders, B, there's more at risk. I think

Speaker 2 (00:33:09):
It gets harder to do it the way I was doing it, which was fully raw.

(00:33:14):
I mean, okay, it was fully raw, the stuff I put out there. I never put the bank balance on YouTube because I'm not a complete idiot. But there's a lot of founders and with much probably more interesting content than me. Obviously it's not staged, but it's very selected and curated. That was never my style. I probably should move to that because it might just be better for the next chapter. But I also think when customers start watching as well, because I always thought the audience, and it probably largely still is, and it is to be fair, but it's mainly founders, but it's definitely not just founders now because customers have definitely found my content and then it's like, well, is it good if they see me talking about margins? I don't know. Okay, not many customers are watching that shit and

Speaker 1 (00:33:54):
Thinking

Speaker 2 (00:33:54):
That, but it does leak into a broader audience and then you think, well, maybe I should just make content about a new product release instead of my anxiety over our retention curve. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. And also, I felt it was almost giving too much free game to competitors. And then hold on, I'm not even charging for this. Why am I telling people the biggest mistakes I made and how not to make them?

Speaker 1 (00:34:17):
Yeah, but off the back of the Midnight Pod, a couple of years ago, you said that you started some courses, made a couple hundred grand across a few months and - Yeah, I really should

Speaker 2 (00:34:24):
Have lent into that more. There's so much money in that, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 (00:34:26):
Well, everyone wants to run a course these days.

Speaker 2 (00:34:28):
Yeah. I probably could launch one and do incredibly well now, but it's not my thing.

Speaker 1 (00:34:32):
I mean, do you think people are going into this world specifically just to then sell courses off the back of it? Do you think they actually are trying to build a business and a brand, i.e. The mothership? Or do you think it's very much a vanity project and they're just wanting to make themselves known?

Speaker 2 (00:34:47):
I mean, I know plenty of guys that have never built any actual brand that make a shitload more money, certainly in the short term, selling info on how to do so. But the irony is the real person, i.e. Me or someone else that doesn't sell courses would probably make less money even if they did because you'd be selling how to do it the real way

Speaker 1 (00:35:07):
When

Speaker 2 (00:35:07):
Actually people would rather buy a how to become a millionaire in a week.

Speaker 1 (00:35:09):
Yeah, exactly. Something

Speaker 2 (00:35:11):
Along those lines.

Speaker 1 (00:35:12):
Yeah, exactly. But I mean, it's tricky to trust anybody online really, but actually if you haven't been there and done it, it's even harder to actually fully quantify that. I think looking at patching in individuals to a business when you've sold equity or you've raised capital and you're having to give the reins over to a CEO or to whatever it is, which you have done recently, how do you deal with that? Because CEOs sometimes, if they're career CEOs, haven't founded a company, haven't scaled a company, they've just been patched in to run a company. How do you get your head around that? Because they haven't got that founder mentality.

Speaker 2 (00:35:41):
Yeah, I think it's different skill set. I would definitely say I'm more naturally a zero to one person in terms of phase, and I don't mean zero to one million in revenue. I think zero to one could well be up to 20, 30 million in revenue depending on the market you're in. Whereas other people would fucking hate that and they want to come in and do something where a large chunk of the risk has, I guess, been removed to some degree. There's more of an established entity and they can take it for the next phase. I do think it's a different skill set. Totally different. But yeah, I don't think I fully figured it out because yeah, I'm not the CEO anymore of Space Goods, but I'm still the largest shareholder and I still think I care the most out of anyone, which I would hope is the case.

(00:36:23):
I think you can find. David, who's our CEO, has been a founder, to be fair. I think that's quite rare.

Speaker 1 (00:36:30):
So he was a founder and now he's gone into being a career CEO.

Speaker 2 (00:36:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:36:33):
That is rare. I

Speaker 2 (00:36:35):
Actually haven't asked him enough about that.

Speaker 1 (00:36:37):
That's interesting. Why did he do that? I guess you don't know.

Speaker 2 (00:36:42):
I don't want to speak for him, but yeah, he had a decent exit, I believe.

Speaker 1 (00:36:46):
Did he?

Speaker 2 (00:36:48):
Yeah. I could be wrong on my details, and then ultimately chose to go into other stuff. I guess just preference, right? I mean, it's not fun building shit in the early. I mean, it's fun, but it's fucking stressful.

Speaker 1 (00:37:00):
It is. It is.

Speaker 2 (00:37:02):
Ultimately as well, I think people are at different stages. I don't have a family. I've got a girlfriend, but not married, don't have kids. I can afford to be all in. I can't honestly say, I imagine when I've got, I don't know, three kids and a dog and a wife, I'll be as all in all the time, probably being practical or just a bit of a cunt if you were doing the same degree of all in-ness then. But I guess that's typically why probably founders when they at least have most of their bets are just more selfish. So I think it comes down to career stage and stuff as well. I'm not even just talking about him, I just mean in general. I do think the best time to go all in is probably in your 20s or your early 30s or whatever, but at least to build the foundation, which is typically where most founders at least get started.

Speaker 1 (00:37:49):
And do you think that's why you're scared that you haven't made it to the level you want us to make it to because?

Speaker 2 (00:37:53):
Yeah, probably. I mean, I've

(00:37:54):
Definitely done better than 99% of society. Don't say it in an arrogant way. I say that in the sense that I come from a standard, I wouldn't say working class, but middle class background. Parents still have a mortgage, didn't go to private school. I was not surrounded by wealth. I think it's really dumb when people get a bit of success when they're young and start only hanging around with millionaires, quote unquote, and then pretend that suddenly a million pounds isn't a lot of money. It's like, hold on. My parents' house was less than half of that even in 2026. Do you know what I mean? It's very much not in London. So I think it's good to maintain that perspective. So yeah, it's two sides. I think I'm very aware of compared to. I'm aware that statistically most people would say I've done okay. And I have factually, even just on a personal financial level, but it's definitely nowhere near where I want to be because I'm comparing myself to my mate that sold his business for 25 million when he was 27, which is so unusually rare.

Speaker 1 (00:38:49):
Is it apples for apples or has got a totally different business? Because often people compare themselves to completely the wrong metric and that's -

Speaker 2 (00:38:55):
Yeah. I mean, this one guy I'm thinking of, he had an e-commerce business and his timing was very good. But yeah, I mean, I don't compare myself to footballers, do you know what I mean? Because I've never been good at football. Although I would fucking like to be JudeBellium in the Bloody World Cup everyone's singing your name and you're like 23 on 600 grand a week. Fucking hell, that's got to be the best. Although you could argue then it all finishes when you're 30. At least when you're founder, you're probably just getting started. But I compare myself to consumer brand founders really, guys and girls in my space because I have a reference point and I always say, oh, that could have been me or whatever. And I think comparison is definitely a slippery slope, but I'm pretty bad at it.

Speaker 1 (00:39:37):
You speak very, very openly about your failures and it's actually interesting because in the UK often people don't really speak about the failures as much. US massively, people congratulate individuals. Yeah, because

Speaker 2 (00:39:47):
The US hates. Sorry, the UK, I don't think is very founder friendly in terms of failures.

Speaker 1 (00:39:52):
No, no. Do you think there is a cultural issue in the UK from a founder perspective, from a starting a business perspective? You're in Dubai now, right? You're over there, you live

Speaker 2 (00:40:00):
There. I've still figured that one out, if I'm honest. Dubai gets a lot of hate on LinkedIn for people that have never been there though. I will say that. People

Speaker 1 (00:40:07):
That

Speaker 2 (00:40:07):
Have literally never been there. I think that's quite a UK trait and I love the UK. I'm proudly northern. I fucking love London, all this shit. But I do genuinely think, and I'm not just jumping on the bandwagon, I do think there needs to be more optimism around just creating shit, not even just founders, just entrepreneurship, whether that's starting a fucking band. Do you know what I mean? It seems a bit silly, but even when I was at school, I used to be in a band called G String, which was when I was 13 to when I was 18. Yes, it's a string on a guitar, but it's also something else. It was very funny when I was 13. And I used to make music videos, one direction covers and shit.

(00:40:47):
I had multiple very short-lived careers when I was younger because I was okay at a lot of things, but I wasn't amazing at anything. Music was definitely one of the things I was not amazing at. But anyway, I put videos on YouTube and people just take their piss, don't they? And obviously, yeah whatever, like a teenager in school, but I think it's also kind of true when you start a business. Even I've had family members when I first started out and be like, "Oh, have you got any sales yet?" It's like, "Yeah, I've actually. 22 million this year." But obviously -

Speaker 1 (00:41:15):
I'll pick

Speaker 2 (00:41:15):
That up. I didnt actually say that to them, but do you know what I mean? The sentiment is, oh, obviously it's going to fail.

Speaker 1 (00:41:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:41:21):
And I just think that's really toxic.

Speaker 1 (00:41:23):
But do you not think it's changing now? I know back 20 years ago, for instance, 10 years ago, people thought that being an entrepreneur was almost just being unsure as to what you actually wanted to do. They

Speaker 2 (00:41:33):
Thought it meant drug dealer. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:41:34):
Yeah, because failure all drug dealer basically. I probably

Speaker 2 (00:41:37):
Did more back then because less access to the internet and all this.

Speaker 1 (00:41:41):
But do you think culturally it's changed now, for instance? If you start another business, your parents

Speaker 2 (00:41:45):
Aren't going to fail. Yeah. I don't know the facts, but I would imagine there's definitely more founders now probably largely because of social media the last 10 years. But yeah, I still definitely feel like the UK is not as entrepreneurial friendly as other places. It's just a fact, whether that's economically in terms of the legal and tax structure, but also just a bit of tall poppy syndrome, I think. And I don't think that's good. It's almost like success is, and obviously I'm generalising, but it is true compared to the US in particular. I actually would quite like to move to the US for that reason

Speaker 1 (00:42:19):
Eventually. Just because it's more open.

Speaker 2 (00:42:20):
I just think, to your point around, it's almost cool to have mega failures and just go again. Whereas in the UK it's like I nearly went personally bankrupt when I failed. Again, it's ultimately my fault as an adult, but I don't know. The system isn't structured for that stuff not to be a black mark on your record for a long time.

Speaker 1 (00:42:43):
How do you get out of that nearly going personally bankrupt piece? Because 1.8 million quid PGs is a loss of money, whichever way you cut it.

Speaker 2 (00:42:50):
Yeah. I just had to settle with them over three years. That's the honest story.

Speaker 1 (00:42:53):
So you were paying down the debt over three years. I didn't

Speaker 2 (00:42:55):
Pay it all off.

Speaker 1 (00:42:56):
Fine.

Speaker 2 (00:42:56):
But a decent chunk.

Speaker 1 (00:42:58):
But even that, trying to then get up and start something else when you know you've got.

Speaker 2 (00:43:02):
That followed me into science basics. One thing I've actually never said in the pod is there was a period before I raised venture money where I thought I would very seriously have to sell some of my equity for a new business to pay off some of the previous stuff that was still leaving over me. You

Speaker 1 (00:43:16):
Were going to raise the capital from Angels.

Speaker 2 (00:43:18):
Well, I wasn't going to do that, but as in this came back later, I would never have done that. But there was a conversation about, oh, you started a new business now. Oh, okay. Well, we'll have half of that then.

Speaker 1 (00:43:27):
Really?

Speaker 2 (00:43:27):
Yeah, genuinely.

Speaker 1 (00:43:29):
And how did you manage to circumnavigate that?

Speaker 2 (00:43:31):
Basically politely told them to go fuck themselves, but also just practically I didn't have an income at that point. I didn't pay myself from space goods for the first 18 months, literally.

Speaker 1 (00:43:39):
I

Speaker 2 (00:43:40):
Was doing podcast stuff to be fair, but yeah, I wasn't in a position to be. Yeah. So yeah, that was not an ideal situation.

Speaker 1 (00:43:47):
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(00:44:37):
Let's get back to the episode. I think founders don't realise that everything is negotiable when it starts to go peak tongu, everyone thinks that actually if something's going under, it's done. There's no way of getting out of that. But you spread that debt over three years, for instance, you then managed to carry on and do something else. How did you realise that actually you didn't just have to clear it down here and now? You could spread something, you could start something else.

Speaker 2 (00:44:58):
Oh, ultimately just from a fucking insolvency practitioner

Speaker 1 (00:45:01):
That

Speaker 2 (00:45:01):
Told me that shit. I didn't know what I was doing. I was like 25 and suddenly I'd gone from driving a finance Ferrari with genuinely a lot of liquidity, at least in my business.

Speaker 1 (00:45:09):
What was the Ferrari?

Speaker 2 (00:45:10):
458 Spider.

Speaker 1 (00:45:11):
Oh nice.

Speaker 2 (00:45:11):
2014. Was

Speaker 1 (00:45:12):
It red?

Speaker 2 (00:45:13):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (00:45:13):
Classic.

Speaker 2 (00:45:14):
What's the official colour? I'm going to botch it. It's the proper Ferrari red. Yeah, I'm a proper car guy. That car was ridiculous, but even in that -

Speaker 1 (00:45:22):
You've got a G waggon now?

Speaker 2 (00:45:23):
No, that was rented.

Speaker 1 (00:45:24):
Was it? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:45:25):
I've got a Chinese G Waggon now. I do want to get a proper car though.

Speaker 1 (00:45:28):
What's a Chinese G Waggon?

Speaker 2 (00:45:29):
A Jito T2. I just bought on when I moved to Dubai because everyone's got them.

Speaker 1 (00:45:33):
Classic. Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:45:34):
And they're just cheap and cheerful. I would like to get a proper car again though. I just had a lot of them already. It would be better in Dubai because the roads were always dry and you probably wouldn't get stones thrown at you in a red light. But that didn't actually happen to me in the UK, but I do remember driving that fucking. I drove that Ferrari properly once around London in about seven months. You just feel self-conscious.

Speaker 1 (00:45:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I guess going back to that moment when you had that Ferrari and you thought that you had made it, right?You had a bit of cash. I had to

Speaker 2 (00:46:03):
A degree, yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:46:04):
You optically had made that. All of a sudden it went. How did you tell people? How did you deal with that?

Speaker 2 (00:46:10):
Oh, the first episode of the podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:46:12):
Which is?

Speaker 2 (00:46:13):
Well, that's why I did it back

Speaker 1 (00:46:15):
In 2021.

Speaker 2 (00:46:15):
I basically was like, I need to just come clean on this story basically.

Speaker 1 (00:46:19):
Why did you feel like you wanted to tell the world? I mean, people find it hard to tell their mom, but you went and told the world.

Speaker 2 (00:46:25):
Yeah, partly because there was a Daily Mail article at one point saying that I was a fraudster, which was the absolute categorical opposite of what happened. I had personally tried to save a sinking business by taking on loads of debt in the short term. So it just wasn't true and I felt that was really unfair. And then secondly, I just think most things are better when you're just honest about stuff. I mean, that sounds like a foreign concept. To a lot of people it is, but I think always a few rules in life is bad news first, that just fucking have the conversation. You know what I mean? I felt like that on a personal level. I wasn't making content before that, but I was semi-visible. If you were in the e-comm space, you probably would've known me just because I don't know, had a green Audi already.

(00:47:07):
If you're in those circles, do you know what I mean? Quite niche. But I was on Instagram and I probably looked successful because I was. And I was like, "Fuck, this doesn't feel right to not talk about this." So yeah, I just made the pod. And that's where I started.

Speaker 1 (00:47:18):
How important then was content in the scaling of space goods?

Speaker 2 (00:47:22):
Founder content? Yeah. I actually honestly think not much. At the end of the day, good paid acquisition on Meta was the start.

Speaker 1 (00:47:31):
Yeah. I

Speaker 2 (00:47:31):
Think -

Speaker 1 (00:47:32):
What were you putting in then when you started out? What were you putting into ad spend from a meta perspective when you started space goods?

Speaker 2 (00:47:39):
It's a good question actually. Probably quite a lot from. Pretty sure in the first month the business is like 30 grand, month two, 50, month three, 100 grand.

Speaker 1 (00:47:49):
On what spend?

Speaker 2 (00:47:51):
Probably half of that on spend.

Speaker 1 (00:47:52):
And where did you get that from, yourself or was that raised?

Speaker 2 (00:47:55):
No, so I'd already raised about 100 grand when I started.

Speaker 1 (00:47:57):
Fine.

Speaker 2 (00:47:58):
And then I raised a few hundred K more about six months in.

Speaker 1 (00:48:01):
So you had a run rate of a couple of months to start with, really, until you started to make some money.

Speaker 2 (00:48:05):
Yeah. And I put some of my money in as well. I didn't have that much, but yeah, it's always funny thinking back to when you start something, because you actually technically don't know if the machine's going to work, are the economics going to work, especially when you create a custom product. And to that degree, I'd never done that before. I'd done jewellery and stuff, but hadn't spent. Okay, in fairness, I kind of rushed it and did it quite quick. So I'm a big believer in that, just get it to market, see what happens. But it wasn't like I was drop shipping some random tat from China if didn't work. I'd just change it tomorrow. I'd bought the stock and committed to doing the thing.

Speaker 1 (00:48:34):
How did you go through that development? Because there's obviously loads of founders out there that want to do something that's completely niche there in the architect. It's

Speaker 2 (00:48:39):
Got so crowded as well

Speaker 1 (00:48:40):
The past few years.

Speaker 2 (00:48:40):
Especially just powdered supplements is the biggest thing now.

Speaker 1 (00:48:44):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:48:45):
It was quite unique back then, I guess.

Speaker 1 (00:48:48):
Well, mushrooms were quite unique then. Obviously it's a slightly dying industry now, but space goods was one of the first probably in the market from a mushroom supplement expensive. Yeah, it was.

Speaker 2 (00:48:57):
I think it was also quite early in just new brands doing the all-in-one powdered supplement thing, which obviously AG1, Huel are the classic examples, far more established. But yeah, I remember thinking at the time, wow, no one's doing this.

Speaker 1 (00:49:12):
But why mushrooms? What made you go, "That's it. I'm going to go into doing.

Speaker 2 (00:49:16):
" Yeah, there's two sides to it. One was I'd been microdosing magic mushrooms because I was so fucking depressed, which really helped. That was actually the true story. I get told not to talk about that because it's illegal, even though I don't think it should be, but

Speaker 1 (00:49:26):
That's a

Speaker 2 (00:49:26):
Whole separate thing.

Speaker 1 (00:49:28):
So you microdose magic mushrooms to help you

Speaker 2 (00:49:30):
Now? Well, I did back in the day. I don't so much now, but definitely don't in Dubai. But yeah, that was the inspiration.That's why it's pink and purple. It was meant to look a bit psychedelic. Is that right? All the comments when we launched were quite literally, "Are these magic mushrooms?" No, they're not fucking magic mushrooms, obviously.

Speaker 1 (00:49:44):
Inspired by.

Speaker 2 (00:49:45):
Yeah. So the idea actually on the homepage of the website when I first launched was this is an imitation of a psychedelic microdose.

Speaker 1 (00:49:51):
Right. Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:49:52):
Because my thinking. This is the thing. I wasn't thinking about, oh, I'm going to build a functional coffee brand that's part of this category and maybe Nestle I'll buy it. I was like, "Fuck, that made me feel good. Let's now go and put lions made in my coffee." Not even coffee at the time, it was chocolate powder because

Speaker 1 (00:50:07):
I launched

Speaker 2 (00:50:07):
With a chocolate flavour, which is so dumb in hindsight.

Speaker 1 (00:50:09):
Why was it dumb? I like chocolate.

Speaker 2 (00:50:11):
Because really it's a functional coffee or a coffee plus

Speaker 1 (00:50:16):
Or a coffee

Speaker 2 (00:50:17):
Replacement, if you want to think of it that way.

Speaker 1 (00:50:18):
You wouldn't have it as a milkshake or a chocolate shake

Speaker 2 (00:50:20):
In the morning. I guess you can, but again, I guess I had a lack of a nuanced understanding around how food and beverage and supplements work back then. Obviously it worked, but now if I start something, I would never have done it in a chocolate powder because it just makes it more niche.

Speaker 1 (00:50:34):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (00:50:36):
So yeah, anyway, the magic mushrooms is one side of it. The other thing was I've just seen a brand called Mudwater in America.

Speaker 1 (00:50:41):
I've heard of them.

Speaker 2 (00:50:42):
Who are now not a market leader as far as I know. They're still bigger than we are, but I though no one's doing this mushroom coffee thing in the UK. That was literally it. And I was like, oh, I like the space. I like the economics. I've built D2C stuff before, but never subscription consumable, but I'll figure it out.

Speaker 1 (00:50:57):
Yeah. And that was it. And where did you get it manufactured? How did you know where to get that made? Because that in and of itself is tricky.

Speaker 2 (00:51:04):
I mean, this is where I just think the entrepreneurial mindset comes in. So I'd never built a consumable supplement brand, but I had built things. And this was before the AI boom. I think ChatGPT was probably 2023, this was 2022. It's literally just like Googling supplement manufacturer UK and email 50 of them. It's that simple. That's how you start. And 47 of them don't reply. Three of them do. One of them gives you a good sample and you fucking go and meet them and that's

Speaker 1 (00:51:31):
It. And this is it because people ask when is the right time to start a business? I kind of always say there is never a right time to start a business. There just isn't. You just got to crack on and do it. I think

Speaker 2 (00:51:38):
People that are asking that are probably never going to do anything. I tend

Speaker 1 (00:51:41):
To agree.

Speaker 2 (00:51:42):
I still have mates from school 10 years ago that still message me now and then going, "Bro, I'm going to do it this time. I'm going to do it this time." I'm just like, "No, you're not. I'm just working with my daughter due respect you're not because you would've done nine years ago." 100%. You would've started nine years ago. I'm not saying you should have made it, but at least done something.

Speaker 1 (00:51:57):
And this is the point. Is doing something better than trying to build a business plan? Because everyone goes business, man, business, business. Should you just get into something, figure it out as you go or do you need to

Speaker 2 (00:52:06):
Build a business plan? Yeah. I think there's obviously levels to it. If you're going out to raise your capital and shit, you need to have a financial model and all this, but I'm a big believer in just do the fucking thing. Stop talking about the thing. I have literally met founders before and it's one I'm thinking of. And I don't know where his business is now, but I don't think it's gone as well as he might have assumed it was going to go when I met him. And he spent, this is quite an extreme example. He spent four years, his words, not mine. I didn't even believe him, but he claims to have spent four years developing this groundbreaking product. I was like, "You spent four years developing a fucking product. How many customers do you have?"

Speaker 1 (00:52:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:52:42):
Hadn't launched yet.

Speaker 1 (00:52:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:52:44):
And I think he didn't then launch it. I think it has now launched, but from what I can tell, hasn't gone very big. Because at the end of the day, my view is launch a 70% ready product and get feedback from the actual customers rather than spending another year trying to make it perfect.

Speaker 1 (00:52:58):
Totally. It's

Speaker 2 (00:52:59):
Never going to be perfect anyway, and the market would have moved on.

Speaker 1 (00:53:01):
Yeah. I was speaking to someone over in Dubai a few weeks ago actually, and to be fair, couldn't quite understand how it'd taken so long to get to where he is. Nine years he'd been developing this perfume. So dumb in my opinion. No clients. I don't understand why you burn that much cash. The market would move. Everything changes. It doesn't make sense. I think the guy at Innoc Smoothie said if it's 70% right it's 100% right. And I think that is about - Oh,

Speaker 2 (00:53:21):
I'm glad they agree with me.

Speaker 1 (00:53:24):
I'm sure they

Speaker 2 (00:53:25):
Said it before I did.

Speaker 1 (00:53:26):
It's a fair assumption, right? And I think in terms of, you've obviously had advice over the last couple of years, et cetera. When is the right time to ask for help? When is the right time to ask for advice? Because so many founders just go into something and hope for the best, but never ask.

Speaker 2 (00:53:41):
I never asked for any advice or get any input from anyone really pre-space goods. Honestly, it's quite crazy.

Speaker 1 (00:53:45):
Apart from when you went into administration.

Speaker 2 (00:53:47):
Yeah. And that was too late at that point, I guess.

Speaker 1 (00:53:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:53:52):
I think it's easier now because amount of founders I've given out advice to and I'm like, oh, I kind of wish I had someone like me that was older and had been there and done it a few steps ahead rather than necessarily the founder that had gone and was 20 years ahead. I think that's less relatable. But yeah, social media has changed that game, I think. I think that's why I think it's valuable to have, even if you don't want to consciously have a personal brand, be visible online to some degree. Even if it's just a fucking LinkedIn profile, people that aren't even on LinkedIn or something. I think Twitter's actually more valuable for early stage founders, but -

Speaker 1 (00:54:27):
Why is that?

Speaker 2 (00:54:30):
Reddit? It's not a front. And I think you get literal billionaire founders just tweeting game. What other platform do you have that?

Speaker 1 (00:54:39):
And anything AI on Twitter just gets absolutely rich.

Speaker 2 (00:54:41):
Yeah, yeah. I think Twitter is massively, especially in e-com, maybe for other stuff as well, but I'm not really in those echo chambers. But there's literally the best founders in the whole space just dropping game on there and they'll reply to your DM.

Speaker 1 (00:54:56):
When was the last time that you asked for help?

Speaker 2 (00:54:59):
Probably last week, to be fair.

Speaker 1 (00:55:00):
And what was that?

Speaker 2 (00:55:03):
I asked my non-exec about the situation.

Speaker 1 (00:55:07):
How does that make you feel? Because people don't like to ask for help. People don't like to seem like they don't know what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (00:55:13):
Oh, I'll be the first to say I don't think I do know what I'm doing. Well, I'm aware of the fact that I do to a degree, but it's funny. The more I've actually probably got better at things, the more I've realised I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. And even if I do to a large degree, it's better to have the sentiment in your mind that you don't because actually you should always be learning something.

(00:55:31):
I think I've been guilty of probably thinking I had it too figured out before, and I actually realised that other people are still more proactively learning about new channels or. AI is a big one that I'm literally so obsessed with. I speak to ChatGPT and Claude literally more than my girlfriend or parents and probably any human, which is sad to say if it's actually true when I'm locked in. I ask ChatGPT a lot of stuff. Okay, that sounds weird, but I learn a lot just about practical things. I'm very obsessed with learning. Even stupid shit. I had Starlink on my flight today, right? And maybe this is just a literal perfect example of autism in real life. I spent 20 minutes just asking ChatGPT on the Starlink wifi in action, just the economics of the Starlink business model. And I was fascinated by it. I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (00:56:21):
I just

Speaker 2 (00:56:21):
Had to know.

Speaker 1 (00:56:22):
Do you think there's a level in good wants to be inquisitive then within your own sort of brain, neuro sort of diversity?

Speaker 2 (00:56:28):
Yeah, I just find a lot of things interesting. Often things that aren't necessarily the problem I actually need to solve that's in front of me, although those I do spend a lot of time on as well, but yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:56:38):
And that can be a distraction also as well as a positive, I guess. Yeah. In terms then I guess of what's next, what that looks like, obviously Space Goods is scaling, Space Goods is going super well, but it's your longest tenure within any business period, right? It's going super well. It's probably going better than any other business that's happened. What does the next couple of years look like for you, irrespective of Space Goods? Are you going to get distracted and do something else?

Speaker 2 (00:56:59):
Well, I think at some point I'll definitely do something else. I don't think I'm a one brand fan. I mean, already not, right? But it'd be nice to have Space Goods be a big one or be the big one or be the big one, then go and do an even bigger one. So I'd always want to outdo it, but I'm definitely not going to be like a Ben Francis where I run Gymshark for 30 years. I mean, I'm obviously not on his level by any means, but I'm already not that guy because I've done multiple things. I kind of wish I was that guy in many ways, but maybe that's just impractical because maybe that's a unicorn case and all this.

Speaker 1 (00:57:31):
Space goods could be a unicorn though, if you get it right. Yeah, it could.

Speaker 2 (00:57:34):
It needs to go to the US though.

Speaker 1 (00:57:35):
Why doesn't it? I

Speaker 2 (00:57:37):
Think we need to soon. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:57:39):
Why doesn't it? Because you look at it and I've thought many times with regards to space goods, it could be the next yell. It could be the next billion dollar X.

Speaker 2 (00:57:46):
Oh, for sure. Yeah. I think it could be. I think that's fucking hard to do, but it's definitely possible.

Speaker 1 (00:57:52):
I mean, now you've got a CEO in place. What stopping you just taking a step back and going and doing something else and letting them run the show? A lot of founders would do that.

Speaker 2 (00:57:58):
I think there's still too much more. I need to get it to the next level first, I think.

Speaker 1 (00:58:02):
Do you?

Speaker 2 (00:58:02):
I can see that happening at some point, but yeah, I think right now need to lock in.

Speaker 1 (00:58:07):
Need to lock in. In terms of other founders that are listening to this or people that aren't necessarily founders that are wanting to start something then, what's the most tangible piece of advice that you could give them irrespective of the industry, be it D2C or otherwise, to try and lock? I'll go

Speaker 2 (00:58:19):
With gut feel on this shit. I think don't take advice from people that haven't done broadly what you want to achieve. I just think it's so basic, but your parents probably aren't the best people to take advice from unless they've done exactly what you want to do. And I don't even mean that in a disrespectful way. I'm not saying don't listen to them, but if you want to be a successful founder and you come from a background, a normal background like most people like I did that doesn't have that sort of mindset or that history, please don't listen to the person telling you it's dumb if they've never done it themselves. It's just basic shit. But a lot of people just never even start because of that.

Speaker 1 (00:58:52):
No, no.

Speaker 2 (00:58:53):
Like really. It's so sad.

Speaker 1 (00:58:55):
But it's becoming so much easier with AI as well to just start something, to build something. Yeah, for sure. To get agents to do stuff that you'd used to have to spend 30, 40, 50 grand on a salary for.

Speaker 2 (00:59:02):
Yeah. Honestly, even since the site space, because the game has changed.

Speaker 1 (00:59:05):
Hugely.

Speaker 2 (00:59:06):
I think particularly in the last year. How are you guys using it? I would say now I've got to the point where the whole team is definitely using either Claude or ChatGPT to remove admin from a lot of things. I think there's a few levels to it. There's like, I'll probably butcher this because we've got a wizard internally, a guy called Flo, who's been with me since pretty much day one.

Speaker 1 (00:59:24):
What great name to work out workflow.

Speaker 2 (00:59:25):
Florian. Yeah, he's

Speaker 1 (00:59:26):
German,

Speaker 2 (00:59:26):
But Flo, he's like a fucking wizard at this shit. And he put together some deck internally. I'm going to butcher what he said, but it's basically level one is do the basic admin, get it to check your emails, whatever. Level two is like, it does work with your instructions. So a great example of that is I basically redid our entire website, wired it. I just went and found a mode on Astra and it was me inputting it, but it did it. And level three is like, it just fully fucking does the work. And it's not quite there for a lot of tools yet, but it's definitely got to the point now where there's a lot of areas where I'm like, fuck. That agency's going to be out of business soon. I've genuinely just done in half an hour what they would've charged us five grand for or

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
More. Such as? Have you got any examples tangibly? Website's the best example this

Speaker 2 (01:00:09):
Week. Are

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
You running much through marketing, ads, et cetera, through AI? Yeah, our

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Best ad right now is AI.

Speaker 1 (01:00:15):
Is it?

Speaker 2 (01:00:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:16):
And is that AI UGC as in?

Speaker 2 (01:00:18):
It's like one of those weird, it's like cartoon stories. That's kind of a trend. It's one of those.

(01:00:27):
I think they're better than AI UGC because fucking animations looks like AI anyway. Do you know what I mean? It's the same thing. Whereas if you're trying to be real, but it's not quite real, people know and they're like, oh, you're trying to fake. So you're going to own it is what you're saying. Yeah, exactly. I think the website stuff has come along so much better now. Literally this week, I just went and found our website because I was like, we did a new website a few months ago. I didn't like it. And I was like, I was just going to fucking go deep on this myself. Went down the whole Claude code rabbit hole and even that was, it worked, but it was too complicated for me. And then this Astra model came out and I use Whisperflow for everything. 100%. So voice to text.

(01:01:05):
If you type, you're very weird. Obviously I type certain things, but generally when I'm vibe AIing, I'll speak to AI and obviously it just makes it

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
Better. Totally.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
And I just gave it a five minute brief on my vision with one reference from another website. I said, do that like this in the style of space goods, but changing these bits.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
And

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
It wireframed an entire fucking website in literally five minutes. And it was top tier.

Speaker 1 (01:01:31):
Was it?

Speaker 2 (01:01:32):
Yeah. I was like, wow.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
And that is the new website?

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
It would probably be close to that. I was redoing a product page specifically with loads of new features we didn't have that was taking this agency, not naming them because it's my mate's agency. They're a good agency, but I've been a bit slow on certain things. And I was like, wow, this just did half of that job. Okay, it's not a live site, but it could be a live site in a day. Whereas that was stuff that you might have had a Figma designer take a week to do.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, to get you on this podcast, in fact, until today, we've not used a single human. I got you on this podcast through my agent.

Speaker 2 (01:02:03):
Oh, really?

Speaker 1 (01:02:04):
So prospectors, you found you emailed, you contacted. Oh,

Speaker 2 (01:02:07):
So this wasn't

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Even considered. I thought

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
You wanted to be on.

Speaker 1 (01:02:09):
And now you're here. But how wild is that? How wild is that?

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
Well, so even your WhatsApp -

Speaker 1 (01:02:14):
No, my WhatsApp's real. It

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Becomes

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
Real. My WhatsApps were real. I haven't got an agent to do my WhatsApps. But in terms of the booking schedule and everything else, that was totally AI driven. And actually it just is changing the speed of things. And I think founders can start businesses in a far quicker way and fail far quicker, which actually is a bonus because then you can move on to the next thing.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Yeah.That's kind of why I like physical products though because it's the one thing, well not maybe the only thing, it's one of the few things you cannot AI. You can't replace the thing, but you can replace almost all the processes around it if you become an AI conductor, which is how I think people should think. It's like there's all this kind of negative. I think it's a bit of negative sentiment for a lot of people where I've seen it in people in my team as well. They're like, "Oh, I don't want to use it. That means maybe you're not going to hire this person." Don't think of it like it gets rid of jobs. You should think of it, it should 10X each person.

Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
It's a facilitator. It should make your life easier. Exactly.You should be able to do more essentially with less.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
Yes. Everyone should get better and more output in whatever they're doing rather than it gets rid of people. And it will get rid of you if you don't engage it probably eventually, but just, I don't know, just embrace the technology.

Speaker 1 (01:03:15):
What I find really interesting at the moment is Alex Hormozi. I don't know if you know Alex Hosey specifically or if you've just come across his content, but he is doing a lot more lo-fi content now because AI makes such high-fi, almost fake content. His stuff almost looks like he's being filmed on a Nokia. They like my

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
Well yeah, it is a lot more low-fi, and I think there's an element and a place for dumbing down content to make it more authentic and more real. I don't know if that's something that you guys are looking at.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
I definitely agree. All our best ads ever have generally been, okay, apart from this AI one now, but just super raw stuff. We've spent 15, 20K on shoots before and okay, it looks good for the website, but even that now is 90% replaceable with AI. But I struggle to see why you would spend loads of money on a fancy brand shoot and okay, some of that stuff is good to have high production content. No saying never do it, but the stuff that moves the needle generally could be me filming an ad on the way out of this with an iPhone, probably not after a beer, but if I had a rainbow dust RTD and talking about why I created it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
Yeah. It's reality. In reality, it is reality. No, loved it, mate. We've got to bounce. We've nearly wrapped up on time here. But if you were to, as I said, summarise, tell someone to do something, give them a bit of inspiration, what's the one thing they want to take from this podcast that's actionable that they can actually put in place tomorrow?

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
Well, it's a bit cringe, but the slogan for the space goods movie when I launched it was nothing exists until you create it. And I've always had this thing with these dramatic, I think of synth music and pink lights and you can see a 1980s film starting with that coming over and the girls saying it's motion and shit, which is what we did for the first movie. But the principle is true of just fucking start something.

(01:04:57):
And I hate to give generic advice, but to be more specific, I think I would say start following a lot of founders or decent quality founders. Even Alex is a good example. You coul say he's more of a guru, but he's definitely legit and has really good advice on shit. There's never been an era before where there's founders of nine figure brands, even like Dom, the founder of Raw Nutrition in the US who sold half of it for hundreds of millions, documenting the journey on YouTube. It's free. Watch that shit. I would say stop watching TV for a start. I mean, maybe that's a given if you're a founder, but I'm not even saying that to be hustle porn. It's just like if you're trying to get started, obviously don't watch Love Island, watch Dom building Raw Nutrition in America. And

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
If you're

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Not willing to do that, then come on. You've got time to do that. I'm not saying don't watch trash TV. I watched fucking Married at First Sight with my girlfriend the other night.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
But what you are saying is - And

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
Let's Marry Harry, I think was the one we watched for two hours on Sunday.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
Of course I' watched either of those.

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
But I didn't watch a few years ago. I've got to a certain point where I can justify Netflix

Speaker 1 (01:05:58):
For half hour Sunday.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
What's that?

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
When you were in locking mode, you didn't watch that

Speaker 2 (01:06:01):
Stuff. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I just think there's so much free shit out there that there actually is. Also just get Opal on your phone to get off fucking TikTok. Delete that shit.

Speaker 1 (01:06:12):
Talk to me about Opal. I

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Mean, it's just one of many apps that just blocks social media during certain hours. Basic stuff like that, you lose so much time to just scrolling mindless shit. Scroll if it's inspirational shit or whatever, but I love a YouTube short scroll, by the way, especially at 1:0 AM when I'm wired in bed because I didn't put my red light blockers on or whatever and I'm working too late. I'm obviously not saying I'm a saint or anything, but the amount of people that just fucking scroll instead of just build some shit.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
Yeah. Stop procrastinating, stop scrolling.

Speaker 2 (01:06:40):
Create over consume, I would probably say.

Speaker 1 (01:06:41):
And listen to podcasts like this, right?

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
Yeah, honestly, I think the first podcast I ever listened to probably was Andy Ferseller in 2017. He's like this, probably not for everyone. He's quite like a hardcore character. The MFCEO, which is the motherfucking CEO podcast. I listened to 500 episodes of that when I was getting started and then it changed my life.

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
Yeah. Mine was How I Built Thi by Guy Raz. That was the first podcast I listened to. But no, mate, it's been good having you on the podcast. Hopefully you've inspired, unlocked, built some inspiration in people's minds.

Speaker 2 (01:07:08):
Hopefully,

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
Yeah. And space goods, billion dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
I think so. I probably need to get more delusional again. It's been so hard over the last fucking two years that it just wears you down. Maybe 20 million will do.

Speaker 1 (01:07:19):
Yeah, exactly. Matt, thank you so much, my man.

Speaker 2 (01:07:22):
Pleasure.

Speaker 1 (01:07:22):
Appreciate it, brother. Thank you. Cheers. 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 N-cards using the link in the description.