Navigating the World of Product Design and Entrepreneurship with James Kirk

Hello, James. How are you doing?

I'm very well, thank you, Mike. How are you?

I'm well as well. I mean, it's quite gloomy outside, honestly. I got my window right there. It's raining. It's, you know, it's a casual or a very often UK weather, right? It's just stay at home, do something. So thanks for coming for the show, James, by the way. And let us know who James is.

Who James is. So I am a— I've been working in the world of product design, service design, entrepreneurship for the last 10, 12 years, I think now. I've had a sort of a fairly windy career path that has gone through a few different industries and a few different places. I started my career in advertising, actually. So I studied graphic design and then went into the world of advertising as a sort of classic art director, copywriter, advertising team. And Spent a few years doing that and sort of realized that I wasn't really that interested in selling people stuff they didn't really need for the rest of my life. So, yeah, I was looking for sort of a next step out of that and found— actually went back to study. I found a course at a place called Hyper Island. So Hyper Island is a sort of an alternative education program that came out of Sweden, and that was sort of where I did my MA and got really much more focused on product, product design, developing products, developing innovation. And so since then, I've really been working in and around that world, working with a lot of startups. But also working with various brands and companies across lots of different sectors, everything from banking and fintech all the way through to healthtech and insurtech. Yeah, a really sort of broad spectrum. I like the variety of that. I like being able to jump between different things. So yeah, at the moment there's a few different things that I'm doing, which I'm kind of happy to get into the detail of a bit more. But really, I'm a problem solver working in and around the tech industry and using technology to to solve problems for the clients and the companies I work for.

Okay, thanks, James. So a well-seasoned product person working in tech, that's good. And you had some entrepreneurial ventures as well, 10 years, you know, I'm sure about that. So one thing which I really would like to touch is emotions about running your ventures, because I feel like, you know, when people talk technically about, you know, being entrepreneur, it's always like how you find money, how you launch product, But it's never really a short journey and, you know, it takes time and it's really emotionally draining, at least for me. So from your perspective, like, how do you, you know, manage the highs and lows of your entrepreneurial journey?

Yeah, that's an interesting question. So I mean, thinking back to sort of the first projects that I was involved in, along this entrepreneurial journey. The first real one was a project called Wordio, which was in my early 20s. It actually came out of a competition, and through the competition, we ended up winning some funding and turning our idea into a startup. And, you know, I was pretty young, pretty naive, didn't have any experience really in working within, you know, live product development environments. So it was an amazing kind of learning opportunity, and I learned a lot of hard lessons in that in terms of how to deal with some of the emotional journey that goes with it. And a lot of those lessons that were still very, very true in the projects that I'm involved with today. And I think it's about understanding that there is going to be highs and lows. There's probably going to be more lows than there are highs. It is a tough journey starting a business. Especially sort of when it's a small startup, a tech startup, it can be a real grind. And anyone that goes into it thinking it's going to be a super easy journey path to becoming rich and successful and exiting in a couple of years, it's just not like that. It's challenge after challenge after challenge. Um, so being resilient to that and sort of knowing that that's coming is a big part of it. Um, you know, I think, uh, celebrating the wins is, is, is, you know, is the way that you kind of get through that. And you, you've got to really make sure that, uh, you know, that, that is part of the culture and, and is throughout the team as well. I think, I think, you know, building the, building the right team is, is probably the most important thing, right? You know, and finding the right people to go on that journey with, uh, that I think has a massive impact on the emotional side of, of how those early parts of the process and the journey are going to be. You know, I remember somebody said to me that getting out of a startup relationship, sort of partnership with a co-founder is more difficult and more stressful than getting a divorce. Right. And I, you know, I can see that, right? Because, you know, you're in a really high-pressure situation. A lot of the time things are going wrong. It can be a real tough pressure situation for people. So if you don't get on, if you don't have a really good relationship with those people that you're doing it with, if you're not honest and open with them and you don't have really solid communication, then it can get pretty nasty and that can have a massive impact on, on the emotional side of, of that.

Okay, I really like the more lows than highs saying, James, there, because yeah, people walk into, uh, ventures or creating their own venture, then they think that it's gonna be, you know, a lot of love and a lot of highs, and you know, they'll become rich because they have a, you know, like a next unicorn. And in reality, the 99% of All of people trying, they will, you know, they will be climbing an Everest with really unpredictable results at the end of it. And it's a lot more lows. And the resilience which you mentioned, you know, and motivation, it's fairly— not fairly, it's very important to keep because the journey will be longer. Do you have any more like, you know, like tactical approaches of how you yourself, you know, keep motivated to come out every day and just continue grinding?

Um, so, you know, I, I'm— I've used side projects as a way to, uh, to not only sort of motivate myself but also explore potential business ideas. I thought I've always sort of done that, you know, as far back as I can think after finishing studying. Um, because, you know, I also work as a consultant, right? And I have done for the last, uh, yeah, 10 years. So a lot of the time, uh, when I'm not involved full-time in a startup, one of my own projects, you know, I'll be working with clients, um, but that in itself can be challenging, right? Because you don't have— it's a completely different setup, right? You are, you are providing a service. You are there to do a job. You are essentially working with a team. Most of the time, somebody is giving you a set of goals or targets or things that they want to achieve. So you don't have the same ownership. And I think I've always used side projects when I'm in those situations. I've always used side projects as a way to have something that I have control over. And being able to have sort of total control, or at least a much higher degree of control, means that I feel sort of more motivated to explore those projects. And a lot of the times those projects don't go anywhere, right? I've had— man, I could count a lot of projects like that, like those side projects that have have sort of fizzled out. They get to various different levels of fruition. Some of them don't get past kind of a concept stage. Some of them have launched but kind of not got too far and fizzled out. Some of them get further than that, but all of them have been good, useful, valuable experiences, right? I've learned stuff through all of them. I've met interesting people through all of them. So I never— even if they don't go anywhere, even if they don't turn into anything, I always see them as a, you know, a valuable use of my time. And, you know, and a way to stay motivated, a way to stay motivated to keep exploring things, keep experimenting, um, you know, keep networking, uh, because I have control over them.

Okay. Um, if you go—

would, would go back 10 years, is there any tip you would give to yourself to make, you know, the next 10 years better when it comes to just, uh, you know, entrepreneurial endeavors, you know, launching a product, aka Yeah, yeah, I think, um, I think probably the main one would be to spend more time at the start of projects, um, validating, uh, you know, validating what the problem is, validating how big the problem is, validating that people are willing to pay for a solution. I think that's probably the biggest one, right? I think that's the That's the bit where I see a lot of people falling down with startup journeys or entrepreneurial endeavors. And I did as well, right? I used to get caught up in the idea. I used to get really excited about an idea and think, this sounds great. I think this is going to This is gonna change the world. This is gonna sell loads. But until you actually go out and find people that say, yes, that's a problem that I'm willing to pay for you to solve, um, and you actually get them to sort of put money down, because, you know, there's, there's a difference between what people say and what people do, right? I think we all know that, right? People will say one thing, they'll do another thing. Classic, like, mum test. You know, mentality. You know, you go and interview them or you go and survey them and you tell them about your idea and you say, would you pay for this? And they sort of, you know, smile at you and say, yeah, of course. But, you know, ask them to get their credit card out, you know, that's a different conversation. And I think I wish I'd understood that a bit more earlier on because I think I wasted time and energy, uh, in projects which didn't, you know, looking back on it, weren't going to go anywhere or didn't have the right, um, setup to, to be successful.

I like that. Yeah, that's a big difference between people saying it's a great idea, I would buy it, and actually buying it. Big, big difference. Um, do you have, uh, so how does the ideas come to you, James? Is it like, you know, you're in your life and something happens and you go like, oh, I think that would be a good product, or do you have a dedicated ideation process where you potentially, you know, source information and then you sort of go into brainstorm sessions to see what products, you know, potentially hiding behind them?

I don't have, I don't have necessarily have a sort of set, uh, method or technique for this. Um, sometimes it will come out of my own life, right? You know, you'll, you'll have an experience yourself and you'll think, why hasn't someone fixed that, right? That's just, that's just ridiculous that it's still that painful, or, you know, it takes that long, or it's that expensive, or, you know, you'll see a problem in the world. And I think entrepreneurial people will naturally gravitate towards, is there an opportunity there, right? And that's, that's the sort of mindset I think, um, people that are building businesses have. Um, but, um, I think there's also ways that you can kind of force yourself to think about this, and normally it comes through being in a pressured situation. So for example, um, you know, going to a hackathon week. I went to a hackathon weekend a couple of weekends ago, right? And, and, uh, you know, you're surrounded by people that have got like the seeds of ideas, right? Little nuggets of ideas. And, and, and you can kind of jump onto one of those and develop it and, and, you know, take— see where it goes. Uh, or, you know, maybe there's, um, you know, I talked about competitions, uh, earlier. You know, there's tons of these sort of competitions you know, flying around. Those are a really good way to sort of force yourself to think about problems and opportunities. You know, I did an accelerator program last year called BlockDojo, and to be honest, I came up with an idea specifically to join that accelerator. Because I wanted to have a go going through this accelerator. So, you know, that was a situation where it was like, right, you know, let's come up with an idea. You have parameters, right? So it was a block, it's called BlockDojo, it's a blockchain sort of focused accelerator program. So you try and give yourself some parameters in terms of coming up with what the idea is. I think that helps when you've got parameters to work within. Um, but then you look, yeah, you look for the problems, you do a bunch of research, uh, and you see what comes out the other end.

So I really want to dig into that accelerator, but before we go to that one, a few more questions around that beginning stage, you know, about the product. So you got an idea let's say it came from your own life, you just saw a need, and how do you now go and, you know, check or find the target audience for this idea? Like, what's your go-to process?

Yeah, this is a good one. Um, so there are, there are tons of ways to do this, and I think it's kind of about finding the one that's going to be the most relevant for the idea, for you, for your situation, for the resources you have. And it can range from, you know, the simplest way to do this, which is desk research, right? You know, Googling stuff, looking at data points that you can find for free on the internet. Then you've got you know, the next sort of step up the ladder, which is actually, you know, going out and actively trying to validate something. So, you know, that could be setting up a landing page, right, and trying to push people to that landing page. You can do that with paid social ads, seeing how many people sign up, see how many people actually go to the landing page. You know, you can do that by building an email list, right, a newsletter list. Right? If you're trying to validate that there's an interest in a, you know, a niche or an area, you know, you can start creating content, see how many people are engaging with that content. One thing that I really like for validating things very quickly is there's a platform called OnePulse, right? So OnePulse is a sort of micro survey platform. So you can go on there and you can create a mini survey of anywhere between like 1 and 5 questions, and you can target people, right? You can say, I want people of this age groups or this demographics, and— excuse me, excuse me— You can just pay, right? It's about, it's maybe like a pound a person, right? And so, you know, you can pay £30, £50, get a very quick sense check of, is this an idea that, you know, I'm thinking about in the right way? You know, are people interested in this? Are people, do people feel this pain point? How do people deal with this? Problem at the moment. It's really useful for like all of those, um, sort of quick research questions which, um, which you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out, and it's just a shortcut, um, for a fairly small amount of money. So I'm a big fan of that one.

So effectively, we, we are saying that you likely will need to have some upfront investment if you want to do this quickly utilize some tools. If I don't have any funds, it's gonna be gorilla tactics, right? Just go to your friends of friends, go to the streets, ask the questions, and, you know, make sure you had that statistically important 30 people number. I think, I think it's 30. Like, I'm not really sure now if I'm lying or not, but I think from the science of statistics, like, you have to have a sample of 30 to to be able to draw conclusions and be like, okay, there's no situational bias into that sample.

Yeah. So you're looking for trends with this stuff, right? You're not looking for anomalies. You're not looking for what one person says. You're looking for what 5 people say or 10 people, and they all say the same thing. You know that that's a trend. So it's difficult to do that if you're only talking to 5 5 people or 10 people. If you talk to 30 people or 50 people, then, you know, those trends start to emerge. And yeah, you know, it's tough to do it with absolutely no money. You know, the OnePoll thing I just talked about, like I said, you know, £30, £50, you can run a survey. You know, it's not huge amounts of money. You don't need to sign up to any like a subscription, it's just a one-off payment, you know, that's it, done. Um, yeah, there are ways to do this stuff with no money, but honestly, you know, I think that investing small targeted amounts of money to validate stuff is a good, a good way of spending a bit of money in my mind.

Yeah, I, I do agree. I think people are afraid to put the money way too strongly Like if you actually thinking about launching something and you're thinking in the terms like, you know, like I really want to make that happen, you will be paying. Like that's going to be upfront investments on many things. And if you try to do things for free until they go live, it's just you're going to be ending up with doing everything, which is just going to be not wise allocation of your time and the results will just take way too long and all of the, you know, trade-offs which comes out of that. So, okay, so we got, we got an idea, we validated. Okay, so now we know what we're building. How do you prioritize features? How do you think of how your MVP looks like? You know, it's like, is there a way how you, you know, create a backlog or a roadmap of what you actually need to build and think of the cost at the same time?

Okay, so, so You know, I come from a product design and service design background, right? That's kind of what I do. That's what I consult as. So, you know, there is a very sort of set standard way to do this. It mainly involves validation with customers or users, right? Like, not just guessing, you know. You need data. You need to actually be talking to people, um, to have an insight on this stuff. Uh, and that kind of comes back to what we were talking about before in terms of, you know, finding ways to do that. But, but, uh, it's a, it's a mixture of, you know, user validation but also business goals, right? And, and that, that there can be a tension there sometimes, and there often is. Most of the time there is. There's a tension between what does the business want and what does the user want. And the role of a product designer, service designer, product team, you know, product manager, is to, is to balance that tension because both sides have got to work. Right? If you build a product which none of your users want to use, no one's going to use it. Okay? But if you build a product, if you build a product, uh, and it's not hitting any of the business objectives, then the business fails. So then you can't continue to develop the product. So it's about finding that balance with, with this and trying to maintain a roadmap which works for both sides.

Yeah, that's a good shout. It's always a struggle over there, isn't it? Especially as well of how commercials start selling the product. You know, they often— not often, they always concentrated on making the sale, so they lean towards overpromising around the product capabilities. You know, like if they do a demo or, you know, or the pitching, they go like, you know, here's what here's what I know. And then, you know, questions comes in, what about this? What about that? And they always likely going to say, oh yes, you know, it's coming, it's in the roadmap, even if it's not. And then you sort of handed this like, oh, we just sold this big contract. Like, we need, like, you know, here's what we said and we don't even have this. So there's always that struggle of product going like, you know, we know where we need to go with this. And then commercials potentially selling something else. So the alignment is fairly important on this one, which gives you a good roadmap to work with.

The other thing that I see a lot is pressure from the business to move too quickly, right? To keep building things, move to the next thing, move to the next thing without really making sure that everything is built properly, that it has the time and the resource around it to bake it in, to test it, to validate it. You know, there's normally pressure to, you know, get the next thing out, focus on the next thing. That can be a tough balance. But again, it's, you know, it's one that— that's the job of the product manager. And the product team to fight that corner?

Well, that's actually a good question, isn't it? It's like, how do you maintain that product quality and user experience while you, you know, scaling rapidly, right? Because the selling of the product and pushing the product to the market is, you know, that's the scale, right? You're going to have more funds coming in. It's just getting everywhere. And that speed will require you to, you know, get things out much, much quicker. And you jeopardize, as you just mentioned, on that quality side. They're going to be how the product built, or it's going to be a user experience. Is there ways where you sort of maybe raise a hand and you go like, hey, like, we have some red flags, like, which we need to address? Or maybe a process-driven way of how you make sure that that doesn't suffer in that rapid scale?

Okay, so I would say that, uh, while rapidly scaling you know, at any point of the product lifecycle, but especially when you're in that really fast scaling, you need to have the feedback loops in place. So there needs to be a constant, um, a constant way to validate and talk to users, um, that needs to, to be baked into the product development lifecycle. So everything that is being created, being built, should have already been tested and validated with users before it even gets into, you know, into development. Doing that as early as possible, as often as possible, bringing engineers into those into those conversations as early as possible really helps. So setting those structures up and those, those loops up, I would say, is key. The other thing that I see the most successful teams doing, um, that I've worked with is, is, is experimentation. Having really mature experimentation cultures. So, you know, the classic, the classic reference here is Amazon, right? You know, they, they, uh, have always talked about experimentation. Another great company that do this is Booking.com. So they both have very, very mature, um, experimentation cultures. And, and a mature experimentation culture really is where Product teams have not only the ability but also the complete trust of the rest of the company to be constantly running experiments, live experiments. You know, not just one every now and again, but constantly running experiments to be making data-driven design decisions. So, you know, if you look at, yeah, if you look at companies that do this really well, they've at any one time got hundreds, if not thousands of small experiments running.

Yep, 100%. And it's hard to establish because often it's a question of time and resources where you go like, You know, I feel like you need to reach a certain level where that culture can be, you know, created because you're not, you're probably not going to do this like while you're, you know, startup and you're still sort of finding your foot in the market because, you know, you're going to be all about what do we need to build to actually get the clients or experimenting with, you know, potentially dead ends will just be fairly costly, which leads me to a question. Do you think there's a difference between B2C and B2B and how you approach the product development?

There's definitely some, some differences in how you, uh, build and validate. Um, you know, with, with B2C, in some ways B2C is easier to, to, to build and validate with because there are more opportunities to connect with the people you're building with, right? You know, with, with B2B, you're probably gonna have a harder time getting access to the right, especially early, early on, right? Especially early on. Maybe once you're more established, maybe once you've, you know, got, uh, a bit of a a well, more well-known brand or product, then B2B clients might be more open to you. In the early days, I think B2B can be really tough just to get the right people's attention, uh, to say, hey, look, we're building this thing, you know, can you give us your feedback? Can you test it out? Can you, you know, let us do some validation with your team? I think that can be a much tougher challenge, whereas, you know, B2C, it can be— there's more options available in terms of reaching people, in terms of doing that early validation. So I think that's kind of probably the biggest one, yeah, from my perspective that I've seen is the big difference is just access to validation. Um, yeah, I think that's the one that I would—

yeah, I agree, because there's the decisions to buy, uh, or integrate with products, you know, they, they are being made, you know, much up higher in the ranks where they of course source, you know, the, the feedback from the people using the tool. But, you know, once the purchase is made the communication sort of stays at that level. So you need to go to people and it usually comes in the ways of like onboarding meetings or hackathons or whatnot. Let us show you how to use the tool and then you sort of get that access. But it is much more difficult to run quick feedback loops than it is for B2C 100% access.

Yeah, there was a term that it's sort of a service design term, but you know, when you're, when you're talking to B2B, uh, targets or clients, you know, you think about the buyer, the decider, and the user, right? So the user is the actual person that's going to be using your product on a day-to-day basis. The buyer is the person who signs the check, right? You know, who's whose pot of money is this coming out of? And the decider is the person that, that sort of greenlights just having the conversation, or, you know, being able to say, yes, you can consider using this piece of software, whatever it is. Sometimes the buyer and the decider are the same person, but a lot of the times they're not. So, you know, you, you're having to hit 3, potentially 3 different user groups for validation, which is a bigger challenge, isn't it?

But there, I mean, VCs and accelerator programs, they do love B2B business models. You know, it's like in this market where we are right now, where it's really hard to come by and find funds, the B2Cs are not even being, uh, you know, evaluated that much. It's always like, do you have a B2B idea? Because with B2C, it's a, it's like, it's a volume game. So you're gonna have that J-curve when it comes to revenue. You'll have a big dip, big investments initially before you can actually pick up and make the money. Where with B2B, you know, it's just a different selling process. It's like you can have a product and you can sell a product for a couple of thousand, you know, pounds for a year, which means you need to sell 5 times to have a, you know, good, good revenue to kick off a startup. Where with, you know, B2C, you have like £8 per month, which means, you know, you need to have thousands of people volume to actually hit the same. And that, that beginning is, is, is totally different. So it's a real trade-off, isn't it? It's like if you think about from a sense of, I go build B2C because I'm going to have a much closer relationship with the market, you know, quicker feedback loop, so I'll innovate better. But the business model itself is likely going to be a lot more challenging than B2B.

Oh, big time. Yeah, I mean, having been swimming around in the world of VC and raising money in the last few years, B2C is a really tough sell at the moment. Really tough sell, especially when you're early or trying to raise pre-seed or that. It's tough. It's really tough because exactly like you said, it requires a lot more upfront investment in terms of marketing, in terms of converting enough users to make the model sustainable. Whereas, yeah, B2B, you can have a handful of customers and raise a fairly good amount of money off that. Yep.

And I think that's the line where a lot of, at least young entrepreneurs, trip because they always think about B2Cs and some type of subscription modules because it's just so popular. They use it everywhere. You know, they're likely exposed to things like, you know, Monday, Gmail, HubSpot, and whatnot, which is all, you know, B2C subscription modules. So they, without much planning, they think about similar ideas. But it's actually, it is quite tough selling. It actually takes, you know, at least a year or two years to, to, to reach that area where you have that volume and you, you know, you're walking away from that, you know, dip in initial dip of investments. So, um, before we move to talk about accelerators, James, let me ask you this, uh, in your mind, what is the most important thing, one thing, uh, for the, for any tech venture growth?

Uh, I mean, I think we've sort of been, been speaking about it, but in my mind, it is all about, uh, validation, right? You know, validating, uh, that you're solving a problem that somebody is going to pay for, right? Like, if that is— whether that's a business, whether that's, uh, you know, a person on the street, somebody's got to pay for it. And, and if, if there isn't, uh, somebody that's going to pay for it— and, and depending on whether it's B2C or B2B, you know, you need— you may need quite a lot of people that are going to pay for it— you don't have a business. And you should you should pivot or you should just like kill it and do something else as quickly as possible.

Yeah, nothing else matters, isn't this? Because at the end of the day, it is a business, so you're either winning or you're losing, and it's all about how much revenue comes in. And I do feel that some, you know, tech ventures which have been involved, which are driven by technical co-founders, you know, they, they tend to not see this. You know, they always think about the quality of technical solutions rather than like Does anyone really care about the quality you're putting in that solution? And, you know, I've been part of some buys and sales of different startups, and I can tell you that, you know, people buying other startups, you know, their technology stack, which clients really don't see, you know, it might be like 5, 10 years behind the market, it might be total nightmare, but they're still doing better as a business than, you know, than let's say you with your good tech stack, right? So it's like, at the end of the day, is the product and if anyone's buying it or not. So good job, James.

100%. And, you know, especially at the moment, right? So maybe 2 or 3 years ago, you know, you could have maybe raised some money on an idea and said, look, we're not going to make any money for the first 3 or 4 years, you know, until we start ramping stuff up. Um, that is not going to work at the moment in the current climate. Yeah, even at pre-seed, VCs, angels, they want to know that you're going to be making money. Like, if you're not making money already, you need to be making money very, very quickly, and you need to have a solid plan of how you're going to start making serious money, like, you know, $10 million a year. What's your— what's your road to that? How long is that going to take you? How are you going to do it? How are you going to reach these people that are going to buy from you and how you validate it that they are going to buy from you?

Tough market right now. Definitely tough market to find the money as well.

Right.

So Black Dojo, is that the only accelerator you've been part of? And that's a blockchain one, isn't it?

Yes. So Block Dojo, I joined for Cohort 5. Started last May, May 2023. It is a blockchain-focused accelerator. They are a partnership with BSV, which is a blockchain chain, which is quite an interesting moment in time right now actually for BSV, um, because one of the, the sort of the head honchos at, um, nChain, uh, is a guy, uh, a guy who's come out and, and sort of said he is Satoshi, right? He's, he's kind of said this in, in, in not so many words, uh, and he's now— there's this, there's this court case that's actually kind of coming to a head at the moment, which is going to be a really interesting moment for not only for nChain, but I think for the whole sort of crypto space. It's going to be really interesting to see how it plays out. But the accelerator itself, I think for me it was a really fun experience. I enjoyed the ability to really focus on one thing for 3 months. It was a 3-month Accelerate, 12 weeks. It was just a really nice opportunity to have the time and the space to develop an idea. As I said, I kind of went in with an idea I'd come up with a couple of weeks before, and actually, um, 2 weeks into the accelerator, I went out and I validated that the idea that I'd originally gone in with wasn't viable. So the, so the original idea that I'd pitched to get the place on that accelerator was was all around how generative AI was going to change the whole idea of what identity meant in a digital space. So, you know, with things like deepfakes, even now, you know, what does that mean for people that have a public image? What does that mean for a celebrity or an influencer, and, and, you know, what does that mean in the future? And, um, that was the sort of the idea that I'd originally pitched and went out, and I spent the first couple of weeks talking to, um, people that look after celebrities, people that look after influencers, um, spoke to some actual influencers, and, and to all of them I said, you know, like, what do you think of this problem? Like, what is this something that's on your radar? Is this something that concerning you? Are you looking for solutions? And pretty much unanimously, they all said, yeah, we know this is coming. You know, we know that this whole Gen AI thing is, is gonna change a lot of, you know, how, how things are online. But we don't really feel the pain of this at the moment.

Right?

The only people that are getting deepfaked are the AAA list celebrities, right? It's your Leonardo DiCaprios and your Tom Cruises. So they didn't feel the pain and therefore they didn't want to pay for a solution. So I had to bin that idea in the second week and kind of overnight come up with a new idea. Which was quite stressful. It was over a weekend, actually. And I was sort of really thinking maybe I'm not going to come back because I didn't want to sit there and not have an idea. So I went away and I started thinking about the problems that I saw in the world. And the problems that are affecting me and, um, the people closest to me and people around me. And the problem that I landed on was loneliness. So loneliness is this huge epidemic problem. It affects more and more people, uh, every year. It, uh, actually disproportionately affects young people. Young people are now the most lonely and the most intensely lonely. Um, it has terrible, terrible effects on people's physical and mental health. It's been linked to having the same effect on your physical health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. It can reduce your lifespan by up to half. Um, and it's something that I've sort of experienced through my mother. Like, she's lived by herself for a couple of— two— last two decades. I've seen the impact on her physical and mental health. So it was a problem I was interested in, and I was Looking at it through a technology lens, you know, how can technology help with this? You know, although BlockDojo is predominantly focused on blockchain, they're obviously, you know, interested in AI. So AI was, you know, a solution or technical aspect which I thought, you know, is there an opportunity here? Is there an opportunity to sort of look at this problem area of loneliness with the toolsets of blockchain technology, AI technology. And that's sort of how I spent the remainder of the accelerator program, focusing on that problem, doing a lot of research and validation, building some prototypes. So we built a prototype using ChatGPT and and some other technology. And yeah, overall, I was really impressed by the support that we got during the accelerator. I would say the thing about accelerators is You need to go in there with your eyes sort of really wide open and knowing what to expect. A lot of early stage accelerators, so this Blockdojo accelerator was specifically designed for, it's almost sort of pre-pre-seed, right? It's like idea stage. So they want to take people who are at, you know, an idea. They don't really want people who've gone further than that or developed things because that's where they want to add the most value. So their course takes everything from, you know, validating your concept, you know, branding, design, building some prototypes, There's a big focus on then preparing you to pitch your idea because at the end of the 12 weeks you stand up on a stage and you, you know, you do a showcase pitch, a 5-minute pitch. So there's a lot of practice and development in terms of refining that pitch. That in itself is really valuable, you know, public speaking is a skill that is not one that everybody has naturally. But I would say for some people that have maybe gone through the startup process before, some of it can feel a little like sucking eggs, I think is the term. It feels like you kind of you've done it, right? You know, I don't need to sit through a 3-hour session on, on, you know, product design or UX design because that's what I do every day. So, you know, I'd say if somebody is considering going into an accelerator, I'd really look at like what stage you're at and try and work out what the best type of accelerator is for you, what your background is. Um, the other thing to really look at when you're thinking and considering accelerators is, you know, what is the— what's the deal when you join, right? So, um, so with BlockDojo, the deal is they take 10%, right, and they give you $10K 10% of your equity, right? 10% equity, and they, they give you $10K cash, right? And they say that's, that's for you to do what you want with, okay? So that can cover your living expenses, you can just put that into the business, it's, it's your decision. Um, uh, now that can vary pretty dramatically depending on which which accelerator do you go for, right? So, so you can go— you can find some accelerators that will give you $300K and take 5%. You can find some that will go the other way and not take any equity, not give you any money. Like, you'll actually have to pay them. So there's a lot of different ways that these accelerators work, and you've got to go in um, being comfortable with that, right? You've got to find, find a, uh, a setup that you feel comfortable with. I think that BlockDojo, uh, justify how they've set up their, uh, system, you know, their accelerator, because, because they go for that very, very early idea stage, right? They're looking for ideas that they can take from the earlier stages. And an idea is not worth anything, right? I think, I think we, you know, everybody, if you're in this entrepreneurial world, you should realize that ideas are worth nothing. It's all about execution. It's all about what you do with an idea. I, I heard a quite interesting thing the other day where they said the, the reason why you could, you know, that ideas are worth nothing is because nobody's built a sustainable way to sell startup ideas, right? There's no platform you can go, oh, I want to go buy a startup idea, right? It just doesn't exist. People have tried, it doesn't work because startup ideas are worth nothing until you do something with a startup. You shouldn't feel like you've got anything in terms of value. Um, So that's kind of what they're aiming at. They're aiming at people that have got an idea, but they don't know what to do with it. They don't know how to get that idea and turn it into something that is investable. And I was fine with that. I was comfortable with that. But you got to live with those decisions, right? They own 10% of my company now. You know, that's how the setup is. And there's other things that are part of that package as well, which, um, which, you know, again, you have to understand it and be comfortable with it.

I mean, you mentioned this 12 weeks, uh, you get $12K and you give out 10% of the equity. So how intense is those 12 weeks? Are we talking, you know, you have sessions from 8 in the morning until 6 in the evening and every day is filled? Or is it more, you know, you get like a couple of hours of some sessions and then things to read and you go, you know, do stuff?

Yeah. So, so I'll talk specifically about BlockDojo now. And like I said, all accelerators are going to be different and, you know, some are going to be fully remote, some are going to be in person. You know, you're going to have to figure that out yourself. But BlockDojo was an in-person accelerator based in Stratford, which is 15 minutes down the road from my house. So that was actually a big part of the reason why I wanted to do it, right? Because the other thing about choosing an accelerator to do is you've got to make it work with your life, right? You know, I have two small kids, I have a mortgage, you know, I can't take six months off and not get paid. I can't, go and move to Berlin or, you know, America to go and do an accelerator. This opportunity came up, it was 15 minutes down the road. It's Monday, like BlogDojo's Monday to Thursday sort of in the studio. So they have a really great space in Here East. Um, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday tended to be like workshops and, um, sort of working within the studio. Um, they did a— they brought in a lot of like industry people. So whether that was somebody to talk about, you know, how to raise investment, or like a branding expert, or somebody who was talking about how to build a community, they did a lot of that stuff. Um, and then Thursday would, would generally be like one-to-one sessions, um, with some of the, the, the team. And then they would do like a group feedback and reflection type exercise where you would sort of share, you know, some of the highs and lows of that week and, you know, have a bit more of a social thing. And then Friday was what they call a get shit done day, right? So Friday was no agenda, like that was your day to crack on and do stuff. You know, I think it was an intense experience. I think any accelerator you go on is gonna be an intense experience. Intense experience. And the challenge is often trying to fit everything in around doing, you know, all of the workshops and one-to-one sessions. And, you know, you got to do all of that and also try and build a company as well. So, so yeah, it's going to be a full-on intense period. You shouldn't go into it thinking you can dip in and out of it because you're not going to get the full value, right? I think that if you do that, you're going to miss stuff and I just wouldn't bother. If you can't commit to it, then don't do it. Do it properly or don't do it. Yep.

I feel like that the same applies to any type of mentorship. So when I look at, or how I think about accelerators, you know, outside of everything, the, you know, there's, um, at the core of fundamental, it's a mentorship program. So you're getting someone who's in a position where you would like to be, and they effectively will tell you how to go there much quicker. And then if you look at any other mentorship, you know, let's say, you know, maybe from the broader market, you know, you're hiring mentor. It's like, it's the same thing if you're not really committing, uh, to a, you know, a longer journey, you know, whatever is the, you know, bundle of hours you're going to be getting and going through the process with the, you know, with the open mind of learning and, you know, taking what you're being told and executing so the knowledge sticks with experience. It'd be, you know, becomes a skill. Uh, it's just like, why would you go ahead and do that, right? It's just keep your 10% and You know, do something you think is better to do.

Yeah.

So, um, in general, if you think of like a couple of tangible benefits you got from, from this program, is like, what comes to your mind? It's like, you know, 1 or 3, like, tangible, tangible benefits.

I think, um, well, firstly, I would say, you know, as I touched on before, I think like the, the ability to really focus on one thing for me was, was, uh, super valuable. You know, I'm— I normally have multiple things on the go at the same time, you know, whether that's, you know, consulting, working on startup projects, um, you know, helping other people out, mentoring. I normally have a few things on the go, and actually being able to just go, you know what, for the next 3 months I'm only doing this, that was just sort of an opportunity to do that for me was really valuable. I would say that some, not all of the sort of training or, you know, lesson-type sessions were valuable. For me, I think the most valuable ones were the ones around the pitch training and public speaking. They had a really good pitch trainer, a lady called Niamh, who was excellent and really helped to build my confidence, refine my skills, learn a lot of new techniques in terms of public speaking. And they put on a pretty good show for the end showcase. And, you know, they video it, you know, there's a video on my website now with me doing that showcase pitch. It's a nice asset to come out with, right? To have, you know, a 5-minute really solid pitch when you stood on stage, really well rehearsed. It kind of, it's a good way to showcase your public speaking. So That was a real plus point. I would say the last one has to be something around the network, the ability to open doors. You're surrounded not only by the people involved with the accelerator, like the dojo team, who have a great network, both, uh, in terms of, uh, you know, various startup, um, practices and, uh, you know, involved in their own startups and involved in, um, you know, advising other startups, but also sort of the, the VC side, the money side, right? So there's a lot of connections there, um, that help, um, So being able to sort of tap into that, tap into the network as part of the, the, the program in BlockDojo, they, they do like a, a mentorship matching, um, uh, process, you know, I think the second or third week where they invite a bunch of their network down and you do sort of speed dating with, uh, with mentors. And, and I think I ended up with sort of 4 or 5 mentors during the 12 weeks, uh, one of which I'm still very much, uh, working with, um, Amanda. She's fantastic, um, uh, ex-Deloitte. So really, really, uh, great relationship with her still.

Okay, so there's real benefits even if, let's say, your product idea doesn't end up being, you know, the next unicorn. There's a, there's a tangible benefits outside of that. And I— yeah, the public speaking, unless you actually been on the stage, you know, where there's a couple of hundred people looking at you and you need to deliver a presentation or, you know, or a pitch or whatever, you don't really know what public speaking is. And I feel like that skill by itself is such a valuable skill to anybody to have. Like, you know, people pay huge money just to develop that. And if that's being baked in the program, I think that's like a huge, huge plus for the program. Because if you in accelerator and you have ideas and you have visions or dreams, you know, to become entrepreneur or launch a business, the public speaking will come your way sooner or later. Like you will need to be selling, you'll need to go to events and network and like that. Like if you don't have that skill and you're thinking that, you know, I have idea and it's gonna be a good business, like that's coming, that will come. Probably faster than you imagine. So that's a good skill to have. And I mean, what you mentioned about just having a forum to concentrate, uh, I feel like that's a commitment/accountability, uh, situation which is just being pushed into. And that by itself is very yielding because when people do the, you know, parallel entrepreneurship where they have their day job and they have this, you know, side hustle, a lot of these side hustles, they don't move anywhere because you just don't have commitments or accountability to you know, make sure it happens. Like once you start investing money, let's say, you know, I don't know, you took a loan or you're putting your savings in an idea or you paid, you know, some partnership's money, like all that situation puts you in a totally different mindset when it comes to commitment. And like that's when you mentioned that, that's what came to my mind is just you want it or not, you'll need to perform and that, you know, once you come out out of the process, you know, you'll just be bigger, like you'll grow. So that's good shout to the program, isn't it? I mean, we're not, we're not associated, by the way, for the listeners. We're not pitching. It's just what James experienced recently. But overall, I think the listener could expect a similar setup around these programs and, you know, the values these programs deliver.

Yeah. And I think the other thing that I should sort of balance this out with right, is that, you know, you, you should also go into these experiences, uh, you should go in confident and you should go in believing that you're, you know, that you're, you're going to come out and, and that the project's going to do really well. But you need to also have a little, uh, reality check, okay? And, uh, the, these accelerators they work on a numbers game, right? That's their model. Their model is to pump enough early-stage ideas, early-stage startups through their cohorts that a small percentage of them hit. Okay, that's how it works. That's the reality. So not every company that goes through accelerator is gonna raise money. In fact, a very small percentage of them will raise money. Just to give you some context, in the cohort that I was in, uh, only one company raised the full ticket, right? Uh, out of the— I think there was 8. So, um, it's— and I think that has a lot to do with the current climate as well. You know, I think that 2 years ago they were getting a much higher percentage of of startups coming out and immediately raising, you know, $250K, $500K. But at the moment, it's tough, really tough. And just because you get onto accelerator does not mean that you're gonna come out of that accelerator and be able to raise money super easily.

Yep, that's a very good shout. You should look at this as a not, you know, an end goal you're trying to achieve with accelerator such as raising money. You should look at this as an experience and take it day by day as a sort of like a, I'm going to learn a lot about how to do this properly. And, you know, once you're in and repeat and, you know, again, such a small percentage of entrepreneurs, you know, go into ventures and that first venture becomes something big where they can, you know, build a business out of it. It's really rinse and repeat process. The more you do it, the better you become. The more your network grows, you know, the more connections you make and you understand different areas. And then, you know, eventually you're going to, you know, get that success you're looking for. So money is hard to come by, James, and being creative around that space is quite important. And UK has a UK Innovative Programme, which, you know, I know you applied through this. So could you just, you know, talk us through how did you even find out about that program? Like, you know, did anyone told you? Did you find out? And then, you know, what was the application process, goods and bads around that? And, you know, how everything ended up for you?

Yeah, so, so, you know, I mentioned that the, the idea that I ended up landing on with within that process, the BlockDojo, was, uh, it was a project called Dytone. It's a project I'm still working on. It's gone through a few different iterations, but at that time it was really focused on this problem around loneliness, you know, very much connected with, uh, mental health as well. So it was in that space of, um, you know, health tech, social good. And, um, I was also, you know, I've, I've, I, it's not my first rodeo, uh, as you were saying there, you know, like, um, a lot of it, you're very, very unlikely to, to hit, uh, you know a business on your first go that's gonna, that's gonna take off and, uh, you know, and turn into a unicorn. It's just, it, the chances are, are tiny. Um, but, uh, I've done this a few times, so I was under no illusions that it was going to be really tough to raise money, you know, coming out the dojo. Um, that didn't stop me from, from, you know reaching out to a bunch of VCs and a bunch of angels. But, you know, I kind of had already preempted that potentially going for a grant route was going to be a more successful, easier way to go for this project because it had these, you know, health tech impact investing type aspects to it. So Innovate UK is a grant, government-run grant. It's a rolling grant, so essentially what that means is that they constantly have one open. So when one— I think they do two a year, so when one shuts, the next one opens. I had never applied for a grant before, so this was my first grant experience and And actually, the first, uh, my first sort of, um, uh, experience or exposure to it was, uh, through a company called Grantify. So Grantify are a grant writing service. So they are a platform which provides, uh, support for, uh, businesses, startups that want to apply for grant funding, um, Innovate UK being their sort of biggest, uh, ticket, the biggest, the one that, that most people want help applying for because it's, it's, it's, uh, it sort of has the most amount of money attached to it. So Grantify actually reached out to me and, and said, look, we've seen your, you know, you have a new business 'Um, you know, have you thought about grant funding? Feels like you might be a good fit because of what you're looking at and the business that you're exploring.' And I had a couple of calls with them, and then, uh, by coincidence, uh, BlockDojo ended up sort of partnering with them. So they had, they had a couple of people come in and do a talk to BlockDojo, and also as part of that give like a discount Right. So, so yeah, that $10K that BlockDojo give you, you know, I still had the majority of that left and I thought actually, you know, a good use of this is going to be to, to go for a grant. Right. Because, you know, there's, there's different ways you can do this. You can use a grant writing service. But you will get charged, right? So, so for instance, I think Grantify is about 5 grand, right, upfront. So you pay 5 grand, but they also take a percentage if you successfully get the grant. So I think it's about 3.5%. And there's various other grant writing services which will have variations on that. Like some of them will have less money paid upfront but a bigger percentage if you get it. Some of them will have smaller fees upfront, bigger percentage. There's lots of variations. Grantify, I think it was a fair fee. Obviously, it's not something that everybody can afford. $5,000 upfront is a significant amount of money for someone to invest into an early-stage business. However, what I would say is that if you've never written a grant before, um, do not underestimate how big of a task and how much of a difficult task writing these grants are. This is not something that you can throw together, uh, you know, the night before. It— I think even with Grantify, it took me a solid week like of working every day on, on the grant application. And the value that Grantify gives is that they, they do this day in, day out, right? They have a platform which is specifically designed to extract the right information from you, um, and then format it in the way that, that the assessors are looking for. So they, they know exactly what these assessors are looking for. And actually, the hardest part, one of the hardest bits of writing a grant application for something like Innovate UK is condensing it down. So they have quite small word counts for a lot of it, you know. So, you know, for instance, you'd have to write 200 words on, you know, your competitors or your market strategy. And you think, oh, 200 words, it's easy, right? But you need to hit all of the points that they are going to be marking you against. And if you don't know what those points are, you don't understand what they're looking for, you know, you've got, um, not a great chance, right? And just to give you some context, we— so we went for the grant, um, last— it was at the end of last summer, so we submitted in September. We got the Results back in December, we scored an 83.9, and the, uh, the cutoff for, um, funding was 85.3 or 85.2.

So that's very close. How much would— how much would you have been, um, how much you, uh, you raise— sorry, you didn't raise, but you were very, very close. If you were successful, how much would have you raised?

About $450K.

So like close to half a million then.

Yeah, but the way it works is that it's match funding, right? So they require you to— they don't just give you $450K. You have to provide a percentage of that. And depending on what stage your project's at, they will either give you 70% or 40%. So if you are a bit further down the line in terms of validation, um, then you can go for a grant where they, they'll give you 70% and you have to raise 30%. That's what we were going for. So, you know, we, we would need to secure about $130K in funding, otherwise, you know, you don't get the rest of it.

But that's a match that would be quite easy to go to the, you know, broader market, even angels, and go like, look, like, you put this forward, you know, we get the rest, and, and, you know, we have a half a million, which gives us a runway for, you know, at least a year to actually try this lift off the ground. That's, that's a much easier raise with the broader market when you have that grant, isn't it?

It's a much easier raise. It's still not, you know, a done deal, right? You know, it's not, uh, it's It's not a complete, you know, walk into somewhere and get $130 grand. You know, it's just, that's a scam. It's not how the market is right now. They're still going to want to know, you know, what's your, what's your business model? Where have you validated? Who's going to be buying this? Like, what, like, how does this all work? You need to be able to show some forecasts. But yes, because it's non-dilutive, right? Because that that money that is coming from the government, coming from the grant, they don't take any equity for that. It's essentially free money. That becomes a much more attractive opportunity for an investor. You know, we also have SEIS. So again, you know, that's all makes it very tax efficient. So, you know, the way that these the way that Innovate UK grants work and the way that Grantify works is that you get a second go, right? So you can go again and we've now done that. So we got the grant application back in December, just underneath, annoyingly close, but they give you a lot of feedback, right? They give the assessors, you have 3 assessors, they each give you feedback on each part of your application and say, actually, maybe you want to tweak that here, you want to tweak that there. Grantify as well, you know, as part of that fee, they, they obviously want you to get the money because they, you know, they, they earn when you earn. Um, so they, uh, they give you feedback and they say, look, maybe, you know, you want to think about adding some stuff here or tweaking stuff there. Um, so we've, we've reapplied, and actually what has happened is that we've reapplied in partnership with Brunel University. So, um, you know, I was connected with someone at Brunel University through a talk I did, uh, in Parliament, uh, which is around AI and healthcare. And, uh, you know, they were interested in the project. There was some good alignment in terms of stuff that they were interested in, stuff that we were interested in. So we've now applied as a, a collaboration, which means that they take some of that funding but they provide, you know, services in terms of academic research, in terms of academic evaluation on the language models and the AI elements that we're building. That obviously bolsters our credibility. Um, so I'm quietly confident that we're gonna, um, you know, have done enough to get the extra 2%, you know, that we needed. Uh, we'll find out at the end of March.

Well, all the best, James, all the best. And I imagine how annoying it is to, you know, get the numbers and, and look like, well, that's like, you know, a hair thin away from, from, you know, getting that. So I hope that second one, you know, will yield and we'll see the detail. Being not just a dream but actually being a project, you know, people can install on their apps and, you know, see how they can deal with loneliness or maybe, you know, yeah, just try it out as a project.

Yeah, I mean, I do. Just to sort of give you a little update on it, it's sort of evolved, you know, even since then, you know, what we're looking at now, because again, you know, I'm constantly talking to people, I'm constantly constantly trying to validate this idea, make sure that we're building something that people are going to pay for. And I, I, I spent quite a lot of time, uh, with groups of students over the last few months, um, who was sort of the first, uh, target group that we were looking at, and also spent a lot of time running surveys using OnePulse, right? I think I've surveyed about 1,000 people. And actually, you know, the, the, all of that research has led me to to change some things. And what we're looking at now is, rather than loneliness, you know, we're looking at access to mental health support in a wider context, right? So there's, there's, um, there's a lot of reasons why people don't access mental health support, right? Things like therapy. There's a lot of barriers for people. There's barriers around cost, there's barriers around um, you know, scheduling, finding the right therapist, finding the right support. So Ditto is now sort of more focused on a solution which creates a mutually beneficial ecosystem where we help people find the support that they need, right, in a, in a better way. Um, and on the sort of, on the therapist side, we have a network of therapists and we provide not only sort of ways for them to, uh, you know, access more clients, but also we build tool to help them work more efficiently and more effectively with their clients.

If you, if you're taking a step towards that mental health, doesn't that put you on the regulation, uh, spectrum where you'll need to get, you know, uh, some certification to be able to provide such service?

So we, we wouldn't provide the mental health service ourselves. We, we would work with a network of, uh, licensed and validated, uh, healthcare professionals, in terms of therapists. Um, you know, what we would do— and you're right, there's a real, uh, fine line, but a very important definition between mental wellness and mental health. Mental wellness could be things like mindfulness, right? Uh, mood tracking, breathing exercises, um, you know, all of these things that, that are very important. But, but, you know, it, it's not meant— mental health is a different thing. Mental health is, you know, people wanting to work on specific aspects, often, you know, quite complex things And, you know, certainly what we don't want to do is get that wrong, right? Because, uh, that would be the worst possible, you know, thing that we could do as a startup, as a technology platform. So, you know, try to get AI to provide people with mental health support— we're not anywhere near that at the moment. And any app that claims, you know, that they've got an AI that's gonna replace a mental health therapist should be avoided, in my opinion.

Oh yeah, 100%. Uh, all right, James, I mean, it looks like you— not looks like, I mean, you are definitely well connected, right, through Dojo and just to building your, you know, networks. Do you have anyone in your network which you personally know who you think should be good to come on the show and give us some answers?

Yes, I'm thinking Alex Ball, who is the program— well, he was when I was at Dojo. He was the program director, but I think he has now sort of moved up a notch and is now looking at the global strategy. So BlockDojo have recently launched in the Philippines, um, and I think they have plans to launch other dojos, you know, in, in various parts of the world. Um, so I think he might be an interesting person for you to chat to. Um, he's been an entrepreneur himself. We met, uh, quite a few years ago in the IMG Innovation Lab So I think he might be a good person for you.

Okay, thank you, James. We'll reach out to Alex and see if we can get him on the show. Well, thanks again, James. That was a lovely chat. You know, hopefully we provided some good insights for the listeners and have a good day.

Cheers. Thanks, Mike. Cheers.