If You're A Founder, You Can't Ignore This Shift In 2026

The world is changing. Uh, there's, I call it a cataclysmic change. Every single thing that we feel, touch, see is going to change and is changing. We've got to empower entrepreneurs. We've got to empower governments. And we've just got to cut some of the shit out so that other people don't have access to it. Be very aware that you're going to lose people and you're going to lose good people on the journey. If you're totally passionate and you are trying to do something that nobody's ever done before, It's difficult for people to, to come with you on that journey because they just don't— they can't push as hard as you want to push. The average person on the street cannot comprehend a total lifestyle change or a total system change. It's too hard. It's too big. It's not for them. It's for us.

What have you got on the horizon that you think will impact growth?

I think if you Hi, my name's Mark Jankovic. I am the founder and CEO of Delfos Eco. We are the leading manufacturer of eco-friendly cleaning products in the UK. I wear a few other hats. I'm also a farmer trying to do regen ag and advise various organizations on how to be more efficient and be more sustainable.

Fantastic. Mark, what are some things that you believe to be true that you think other people don't believe or vice versa, other people believe them and you think it's nonsense? What can we pick your brains on here?

Well, I think there's some major things happening. The world is changing. There's, I call it a cataclysmic change. Every single thing that we feel, touch, see is going to change and is changing. 2, the internet is moving faster than we can comprehend. An example of that is I've just been in Dubai and nobody goes to supermarkets anymore. Supermarkets are dead. So if you own bricks and mortar, don't. Supermarkets are dead. Climate change is not for the masses. Everybody thinks, oh, we need to tell everybody and they all need to hold hands and stop being who they are because of climate change. That's never going to happen. And we need to rethink how we do that. It's necessary, but we need to think how we do that. And I think it's super exciting to be an entrepreneur. I think as Churchill said, Never let a disaster go underutilized. And we are living through a complete disaster. So it's quite exciting.

I'll dive into the one in the middle there. Climate change is not for the masses. So what, it's too scary? They don't understand it? We're wasting our time? What? An example of how to put that? And if it's not for them, how do we How do we fix it or is it not fixable?

Do you know that the example I use is, and I'm sure you, you, or all of your people have seen this, is that the running of the migration of wildebeest through the Maasai Mara. It's, they need to go where they are going. Very few people need to be in charge of cutting fences or putting fences in place. The average person on the street cannot comprehend a total lifestyle change or a total system change. It's too hard. It's too big. It's not for them. It's for us. It's our responsibility as business owners and entrepreneurs and creators to put things in place where the animals just are just running and they're just doing what they do and they're living what they're doing. But guess what? Like, like IKEA, you can't buy non-LED lights overnight gone. So your IKEA punter turns up and he couldn't buy non-LED lights. And guess what? The world moves on. So I think that I get frustrated when I go to all these events and people go, oh, we need to get everybody involved. We've got to stop thinking like that. We've got to empower entrepreneurs. We've got to empower governments. And we've just got to cut some of the shit out so that other people don't have access to it. It just, you just stop giving it to them.

Like incandescent light bulbs.

Exactly.

And are there any other things on your list of things we should stop selling?

Well, I mean, where do we start? Where do we start? Food and agriculture is a complete disaster.

Yeah.

And that system has to completely change and be rethought, which I think is very exciting. The notion of let's use cars, and again, being in Dubai, God, 8-mile, 8-lane highways rammed. 24/7. And you go, how on earth is this even possible? And every car is just, you know, belching out diesel instantly. Just make them all EVs. Every single car just changes to an EV and you've got solar panels in the desert and you're just powering the entire city and you're not burning gas. So I think there's some very simple changes that you can go through where you just Don't have to make the— it's not the end user's decision at the end of the day. Just take that choice away.

And what, and in your own product, you've recycled plastics and you've got a brand which is non-harmful to the planet cleaning products. So you've given consumers a choice.

Yeah, I think it's super disappointing that you've got the likes of Unilever who still sell bleach. It's mad. I mean, it's banned in Europe because it's really bad.

My wife loves bleach.

She loves bleach. Yeah. But she doesn't need to use bleach. She can use other products that do exactly the same thing.

So we're not taking anything— Why is bleach bad?

Because it deoxygenates the water. So basically when you put it in, the chlorine whitens, so it doesn't necessarily clean. So if you put it into the loo, it makes it all white, but it's basically taking all the oxygen away. And then when it goes, when you flush it, it keeps deoxygenating as it's going along and takes all the oxygen out of the water. And it's got loads of phosphates, which you can't clean out of it. In a sewage system, phosphates go straight through the other side and straight into rivers. So there are loads of, we're not taking away the ability for anybody to stop cheating. There are just better choices.

And so it's just one of those things, if the government would legislate, then people wouldn't have a choice and they'd just get used to it. They'd find someone else pretty quickly and they'd stop complaining about it.

Yeah. And if they just said everything needs to be made from recycled plastic, there's an infinite amount of plastic that can be recycled. There's a 70% reduction in carbon by using recycled plastic. It's a super simple instant decision. It'll fundamentally change the world. Easy. And Mrs. Millions doesn't need to think about it. She just buys a product, but behind the scenes she's buying something that has a 70% carbon saving.

Because we said to supermarkets, you can't give away non-recyclable bags and People just have got used to it. Nobody goes, oh, it's so disappointing. I wish I got a free carrier bag anymore.

Yeah.

Okay.

Take it easy.

The EV one though, I was talking to my taxi driver the other day, Martin, and I was asking him if he was thinking about moving from his diesel taxi, which, you know, he does airport pickups from down here in Wiltshire. And he said, His understanding was he'd be going through a set of tires in 12,000 miles and not 48,000, and didn't fancy that. And his insurance would be 3 times the price because if you get into an accident in an EV, it's much more likely to be written off, said his insurance company.

I've heard the tire story. You and I both know that I, as the cynic, I would love to check that statistic.

Totally.

I would absolutely love to know who was spreading that going, oh my God, don't buy an EV because they're so bad. I've also been told that Heathrow's going to have to returf the entire Heathrow because EV, you know, all these Priuses are now turning up and they're too heavy. Bollocks. utter bollocks. I mean, they've got massive trucks going there every day. It's not because of some little Prius that's turning up. So I could kind of question some of this stuff. At the end of the day, is the direction of travel right? Yes, it is. So should we be going in this direction versus encouraging more diesel engine power? Of course not. So, you know, we've just got to keep going in that direction and better stuff will come along for sure.

And so what took you to Dubai?

We've got a wholesaler out there. Yeah, some of my learnings in go-to-market strategy, this is one of the good and the bad ones. When we got a Royal Warrant, I, you know, Royal Warrants, Middle East, Far East, you get hoodwinked by, oh, the, you know, the grass is greener. I went out to Dubai and there's some actually some very interesting business out there and it's been a bit, it's taken a lot of time and effort. But in all of the years that I've been to Dubai, I'm obviously very old and when I left university and joined the city, everybody said, go to Hong Kong, go to Hong Kong, go to Hong Kong. You go live in Hong Kong and you base yourself in Hong Kong and then you push into mainland. 30 years later, go to Dubai, go to Dubai, go to Dubai, go to Dubai and go to Riyadh. They are desperately looking for people who are educated, who've got initiative, who are driven and who want to make it happen. I've never, I mean, I'm still completely blown away by a week in Dubai last week. It's insane. The, the having gone there for years and years and years and you, you felt that you were, and, and I say this respectfully, you, you knew that you were in a country that was quite strict from a cultural perspective.

Yeah.

And you respected that. You could not buy a beer unless you were in a very specific place. Walking along the waterfront, there was a Stella Artois bar on the sand. It's changed. And they're basically going, we need Westerners, we need foreigners, we need people to come here to help us grow this economy and to push it into the, into that entire region. So they're very excited. Lots of hotels, lots of people, and they have a very strong sustainability desire. Speaking to one of their senior, one of the senior locals, they went, Dubai's hot. We can't afford the world to get 5 degrees warmer. It's, we need to stop this, right? So they completely get the end of oil is coming.

And you said supermarkets are dead. Tell me more about why supermarkets are dead.

That's one of the great things of traveling and seeing different markets. I went, I was invited to, I went there for COP in 2023, December 2023. So I went back, so 2 years later, and I remember seeing these guys on scooters and there were a couple of guys on scooters, kind of delivery types. It is now, there are just millions of scooters. And, you know, I was asking, you know, how do you, where do you go and buy your There's a Waitrose equivalent out there, and we're obviously talking to them about supermarkets. And every single person I spoke to said, we don't go to supermarkets anymore. We do not shop for any household products in a supermarket anymore. We go very specifically and look for certain things, but 99% of the stuff we do not shop for, it gets delivered on a motorbike, gets delivered on a scooter. And they went as far as saying, we don't even go to petrol stations. Petrol comes to us. So we have to do a separate— How does petrol come to you?

They come around in a mini tanker and fill your car up?

They drive on a van and they fill your car up. Same price. Oh, I like that.

I would do that.

Remarkable. And that's why when I say the internet is changing the world faster than we can comprehend, there's an example. You don't go to the supermarket anymore. You have an app and it arrives.

Are the scooters electric or are they two-stroke?

Well, they're all two-stroke at the moment.

Oh, that's horrific. I was in Cebu recently and you go running in the morning and you got to go before the commute starts because there, it's actually not so bad in the UK to run down a reasonably busy road. You don't feel like you're getting gassed anymore, but two-stroke? That's miserable.

Yeah. That's the 8-lane highway and the scooters. You don't want to be running. But yeah, it's just, it's super interesting that it's a modern city with modern technology, with modern thinking, and that is just going to permeate across the world, right? So And I, I, I've always thought if you look at Amazon, you look at how Amazon is just exploding and expanding in the UK, they are eating Waitrose, they are eating all of these supermarkets. And I think that there's always going to be a place, but it's going to be very niche.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, lots of change.

So, uh, so on your business, um, Delphis, what was the genesis of this business? You were working in the city and then what? You jacked it all in and did this instead?

I did.

I did. Are you still married?

John, I've been asked to consult a few times and my standard line is, don't do what I did. Do not do what I did. The learning curve is way too steep. Yeah, it just, there's a coincidence I think I've said before where I, we were on a family holiday and I saw this lady pouring soap suds onto the street, a cobbled street in Italy, and the water came gushing past me and went into the harbor where we just had lunch. I mean, back to the hotel, I started Googling, which is how good are cleaning products and how nasty are they? And transpires that they're all super nasty. And at that point, David Attenborough's Blue Planet 1 had just come out.

Yeah.

And it's early 2007, 2006. And I was sitting there going, do you know what? If you remember back, the market volatility in 2006 was out of control. And I was doing some investment stuff for the bank that I was working for, and I just went, this is super dangerous. I'm not very happy. And I saw that and I worked out that cleaning products were really bad. And I went, I'm out. I'm going to resign and go off and try and do something a lot more sustainable.

Change the world.

Which is brutally hard because back then when I was Googling, does anybody know anything about sustainability? Does anybody know anything about eco-friendly cleaning products? There was tumbleweed. Um, so it was really tough. It was really tough. Um, 20 years later, nearly 20 years later, um, there's a lot more, uh, it's a little trendier now than it was 20 years ago.

Yes. You were in that mindset of, they will build it. If I build it, they will come.

Yeah. And as my younger brother said, he said, Mark, you want to be at the cutting edge, not the bleeding edge.

But you were saying before we were recording though, you reckon you're looking forward to some growth in 2026. What's What have you got on the horizon that you think will impact growth?

I think if you're an entrepreneur and you've lived through the last 5 years, you deserve a massive medal. It's been the most brutal 5 years in the 20 years that I've been doing this. I mean, 14% interest rate rise on the pound, 2 wars, Inflation, cost of living, you name it, we have taken it. COVID. I mean, it has just been lockdown, not lockdown, lockdown, war, lockdown. I mean, just brutal. And going back to city stability and/or visibility is really important. So understanding, is there a bit of stability or is there a bit of visibility? It doesn't matter if it's volatile, But can you see kind of the journey? And I, it feels like we've kind of computed the wars, we've computed the cost of living, we've computed that it's tough out there. And it feels like the one thing that has landed in our world is the notion that we need to get to net zero and carbon.

Mm-hmm.

So how do we, How do we as individuals go, actually, I need to reduce my carbon impact, or I need to just behave a little bit better. And we are, you know, we are very, very lucky that we've had some unbelievable customers call us up and say, you know, we'd like to use you, which is, which is—

Fab.

You know, I always pinch myself and go, you know, you know, you're doing something right when a when a global brand calls you and says, oh, we've heard of you and we'd love to use you. So, and the business has been B2B historically.

Uh-huh.

More recently, again, all these lessons, you know, note to self, we've launched a retail brand. So we're now kind of, the retail brand is going, but it's hard. The B2B business Sticking to your knitting is, there's a lot to be said about that. Trying to go into the more racy stuff and retail is much more racy. It's much harder and you're swimming with big sharks. But touch wood, that's starting to work, which is good.

And on the B2B stuff, I mean, one of our clients has a SaaS application in the commercial cleaning space, which improves productivity of cleaning. But You know, we were chatting, we were doing a strategy day a couple of weeks ago and, you know, some, they said the biggest thing that happened in cleaning was microfiber cloths, right? You know, and like innovate, and that's a little while ago now since somebody invented that. And it feels as though that, you know, it's not an industry that necessarily is searching or has much innovation in it. And is it really hard to get people to just displace the product that they know with your product? Is that your, they're not saying, oh, I really, need eco-cleaning products. And so you're going, here's a thing. And so they're buying all of their products from a supplier and you just got to breaking that cycle's really hard.

In our world, it's crazy hard. Luckily for us, there's the contract in the cleaning world, And within the catering world, there's obviously lots of cleaning, right? You can't cook if you can't clean. So what we have found is, yeah, when you go to a factory and say, hey, would you like to use eco-friendly cleaning products? They think you're from Mars. They really don't care. But if you go to an exec chef, And you go, do you know where your button mushrooms come from? And do you know where your fish comes from? And would you prefer to use cleaning products that are not going to poison where your, you know, everything that goes onto your plates come from? The answer is absolutely. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Okay.

So we are very lucky in that we, you know, we have lots of traction in the restaurant world, in the catering world, in the hotel world. where they do care. They have to, and whether they care, and yes, they, I think they all do. They also have a responsibility as well because your average guest is looking for that kind of thing as well versus cleaning in a factory. Nobody cares. So that side of the business, we do have factory cleaning clients who are are wonderful and are market leading, but it's not often. Again, I'm giving them a hard time. Similar story. I slightly lost my will to live when I went to the cleaning conference of whatever. And the innovation of the year was, you know, those guys that clean windows with those long poles?

Uh-huh.

Um, from outside, the innovation was that somebody put a tap on it so you could actually turn the water off. It's like, you can't, you know, having left the city and going, oh my God, is that the innovation? Wow.

Okay.

Interesting.

Very good.

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In terms of your leadership journey at Delphis, what, you know, when you started, it was just you. What did you have to do to get back your time so that, you know, you are able to go, the business doesn't stop when you go to Dubai? What are some of the things you had to do to make that happen?

I think the main thing for us was, and remains the same today, is let the machine do the work. So automate as much as we possibly can and have been, we've been very, very not advanced, but we've been pretty advanced from the beginning because we were a new business. I was looking for digital disruption technology right from the beginning. Um, and how can we embed tech into what we do so that we can give ourselves time? Because it is, it's quite a, it's quite a, um, labor-intensive business, right? You've got factories that make your stuff. You've got clients where you actually physically need to go there because there's a, a regulatory requirement to go to restaurants and go to sites where they're using cleaning products. But yeah, but tech, tech right from the beginning, we've embedded in everything and everybody knows hands off the machine. If there's anything that's repetitive, it has to be done by a machine. So I think that's been, that's massively helped us. And when I had kind of circa 200 people working for me and when I left banking, I went, I never want to have more than 10 I think that, that was foolish. The reality is between 20 and 30. An example, I, you know, Richard Branson, if you Google Richard Branson and Virgin, it says he's got 60,000 employees. He doesn't, he has 37.

Uh-huh.

Everything's outsourced. He's got a super tight team of very smart people who know what they're doing and they just manage suppliers. Yep.

And so that's what you've got. And in terms of that, how have you been able to build your leadership team? Have you got, you know, is the team that you have now the team that you had 10 years ago, or have they kept pace with the business, or have you had to trade up or go into the transfer market?

I suppose the message for budding entrepreneurs is Be very aware that you're going to lose people and you're gonna lose good people on the journey. And not everybody, if you're totally passionate and you are trying to do something that nobody's ever done before, it's difficult for people to come with you on that journey because they just don't, they can't push as hard as you want to push. So you are gonna lose people and you're gonna lose some good people. But that's part of the journey and remain friends with all of them. I mean, I always look for, do you have initiative? If you have initiative, you're smart. Are you a nice person? And do you have a can-do attitude? And if you've got those 3 things covered, it doesn't really matter about anything else because they've got the right things to push through the business and with the business. But there's not the— being an entrepreneur and trying to disrupt a very old and massive industry, you've got to move very, very quickly. And that's hard for lots of people.

And what took you into working for the Cabinet Office and advising the government? What made you want to do that?

Yeah, good question. Look, it's a huge honor to be invited by the Treasury to come in and sit on a panel and advise the Treasury. And it is a huge honor. And in the, you know, the 7 years I think we've done it, we've done some stuff. We've instituted legislation where the government has to spend a certain percentage of all their tender value with SMEs.

Uh-huh.

Um, it's been quite tough because the way the government works is you have a minister and the minister kind of sets the, sets the, the direction of travel. They've always been supportive of SMEs doing more work with the government, but as you know, in the last 7 years we've had like 55 prime ministers and Every single day, every single day there's a, there's a new minister, um, and they're there for 30 seconds. So I really feel for the, for the civil servants. I mean, they are, it's, it's tough trying to execute with such transition, but they, but they, they're good people. Um, and I think they desperately need outsiders to come in and and support them and encourage them. And a lot of them are incredibly bright, but just not very commercial. So you've got super bright people, but they just have no street cred or no street smarts.

Yeah.

So I've always thought the team in the Treasury were amazing and just pushing them a bit harder, but get the politicians out the way. My God. Useless. All of them. All of them useless. Useless.

Oh, fantastic. So you are fab, right? And what about the South African thing, which you mentioned, the rewilding of unproductive farms? And so the question I have, I remember years ago, I was doing some work with somebody who was heavily involved in supporting Zimbabwe, farmers in Zimbabwe. And you had productive farms made unproductive when they were handed over as a cooperative. Is the same thing happening in South Africa or are these just genuinely farms where the land is pretty rubbish?

It is happening in South Africa. I mean, The project there is that you've got lots of unproductive land and you've got sub-commercially active land. Every farm has sub-commercially active land. So how do we take that land that has negative value and give it another purpose? So how do we rewild that and, or how do we turn it into something that is just a whole lot more useful than it getting beasted every single year with another crop and another set of chemicals. And in some of these farms, it's quite big land, right? So you can actually convert that farmland into something that's much more interesting. And is it? Back in, back when I say back in the day, probably 3 years ago, 4 years ago, Nobody was talking about regen ag or how do we do carbon sequestration or how do we, can we actually convert land into something that has an economic value, which is now becoming, it's coming outta COP. So it's quite exciting that people are going, actually, do you know what? If we sort out soil health, We, I think the statistic is if you, if we can improve soil health by 0.4%, it'll sequester all the carbon that's in the atmosphere around the world in a year.

Yeah.

So we sort out, we sort out carbon instantly by looking after soil health. Um, and I think that's quite exciting and I think we, we can do a load more and I'm, uh, I have a, we have a very small farm in, in Wiltshire and it's, how do we, there are 3 things that I think are broken, 3 big systems that I think are broken. Obviously farming is broken, education is broken. It's a complete disaster. And there are more kids that are being excluded from schools than ever before. And then climate's broken and we, everybody knows that, but has anybody pulled them together in a van and gone, okay, actually they can start fixing each other? So with farming being broken, if we get kids that are, you know, about to become graffiti artists, can we put them on a farm? Can we teach them BTECs? Can we teach them in a totally different way? You know, it's not, it's, it's, it's a bit, it shouldn't be a surprise, but most chefs are dyslexic. Yeah. They hate school. they're super creative people and loved getting on with stuff, but actually school wasn't their thing. So can we go and find those future chefs, put them on a farm, let them help the farmer, let them learn about food and a love for food? Then nature starts to recover because the farmer doesn't need to beat the land as hard as he beats the land. So you've got farmer becomes profitable, profitable. In that vein is a corporate. So what I'm doing is I'm taking all of our kind of corporate restaurant clients and going, let me build this model where you sit in the middle, you work with a farmer, we link in kids that are falling outta school and nature as a natural recovery. And, you know, one of the, one of your questions around books and book recommendations is, The Prince of Wales wrote a book called Harmony, which I, every single person I speak to, I say, you've got to go and read His Majesty's book on Harmony, which is all about how do we think in harmony? How do we live in harmony? How do we think in systems? And it's just genius where you sit and go, that just makes perfect sense. And it was written 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Actually, there's, I think it's Amazon are doing a movie on him and Harmony next year. It's coming out next year.

And is this farming corporate sponsorship excluded children? That's a project that you've started and it's up and running?

Yeah, it's up and running. We've planted an orchard. We've got corporates that are now working with market gardeners. So the market gardener has got an acre, the market gardener supplies the corporate, corporate gets veg, they bring their clients, they, you know, the market gardener gets help from kids that are struggling and/or need to be outside. Lots of people super lonely. So there's a social value element to that as well. Um, and we're working with some, some big corporates to go, how can they scale this globally? Because if you're a farmer and you're, I mean, the maths is very simple. Above 1,000 acres, you probably make money between 1,000 and 500 acres. You probably, you might make money below 500 acres, 100%, you lose money.

Yeah.

And I think it, I think the statistic is 60% of UK farmers are below 100 acres. So there's 100% chance they're losing money.

Yep.

So how do we take very small-scale farms and how do we link them with corporates and how do we link them with these kids and how do we link them with harmony and social value on a very small scale? And actually they can make a load of money.

And what's your, uh, what's this enterprise called?

The farm?

The thing that you're doing. So if people want to look it up, we'll put it in the show notes as well.

Um, the farm is called Savernake Park Farm, but, um, the, the system is, is kicking. We're building a, uh, we're building a learning center for His Majesty. So we're going to call it the Harmony Learning Center.

Okay.

Um, as I said, the orchard's in, we've got a bunch of corporates that are now taking, taking space. So yeah, if anybody wants to volunteer, uh, I have a group of volunteers turning up to Work in the orchard on Saturday, about 30 people, which is quite fun.

I'm going to put you in touch with a guy called Jim Holland who has an organization called Karma. And what Jim does is he's an ex-serviceman himself and he takes ex-servicemen who are struggling to reintegrate and he takes them and they plant hedgerows and trees. And then there's a climate change carbon sequestration thing. I'll put him in touch with you after the show. But again, it's that how do you put people outside doing stuff together? Because that has a really powerful impact on the people that do it and corporates looking for interesting things to sponsor and spend some money on. And in fact, often in his case, the corporates send people out as well.

Yeah, it's remarkable. I mean, nature, I always tell everybody that the market garden, the orchard was a field that used to, in the previous owner, it used to, they glyphosate. Glyphosate is a horrible, horrible chemical. And they—

That's on your list of bleach, isn't it?

I never knew this, but they glyphosate every single year. They literally kill the crop. I never knew that. And then they plow. So this field has been glyphosated since the beginning of time. And the year we came in and stopped that and planted the orchard, within 6 months, you just couldn't believe what had happened. I mean, the wildflowers and the birds and the butterflies and the bees and everything in 6 months. I mean, just remarkable. So, and then the people that come and help are all volunteers and it's brilliant. I mean, it's cathartic for everybody. So your man, Jim and Karma, I understand completely what he's doing.

Totally. So Mark, what books have you read along the way that have helped you that you think other people might find helpful? You mentioned Harmony. What else have you got on your shelf?

Being dyslexic, for me to get through a bunch of books, I listen to books. Yes.

So do I.

So do I. And John Elkington is an absolute legend and I've met him a few times and I told him that he nearly killed me 3 times. And he was a bit shocked. And I said, well, I was listening to your book riding my scooter home through London, and you said something so profound that I nearly had an accident. So that happened 3 times. He said, well, please don't listen to any more of my books. So John Elkington and Green Swans, very, very good. A slight, slightly One that I absolutely loved is called Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. That has a harrowing start. I also would tell everybody, listen to it, don't read it, because there are a whole bunch of different characters. And I think it's a brilliant, brilliant Ministry of the Future. And then a podcast, John Richardson is a is a comedian and he has a podcast called Future Nauts. And the premise is, how fucked are we? And then they make fun of it and go, do you know what? We can fix this. So yeah, the world's pretty shit, but you know what? We can fix this. And it's very funny and they are complete legends. And Jon Richardson and the Future Nauts is brilliant.

What was it about John Elkington's book? What were the profound things that made you nearly fall off your scooter 3 times?

John, I mean, John's big theory is that every 80 years there's a fundamental shift in politics, in systems, in change, and has been since the pyramids were built.

Wow.

So if you kind of track back every 80 years, there is a paradigm shift. And just listening to him explaining how these paradigm shifts come, and he talks about waves and the people that think they're sitting there all comfortably just get washed away. And as this new This new wave comes crashing in and you can feel it. You can feel there's this completely new wave that is happening. Whether we talk about education, we talk about kids, if we talk about AI, we talk about technology, the old farts that are sitting in the room are going, this is really weird. Everything is different to the way we experienced it and how we grew up. So there is, without a doubt, a completely, a massive wave crashing in. Politics, none, no politicians have got any idea what's coming and/or how to deal with it. So, and he talks about the scenario. So the green swan, instead of it being a black swan, you can turn black swan scenarios into green swans and gives examples of that. So if anybody wants to follow a And incredibly bright future thinker, John Elkington is one of my heroes.

I'm looking him up now. Fantastic. Brilliant. Mark, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you today. Thank you very much indeed for coming on.

Thanks for inviting me.

Next time.

We built AI models that beat a lot of American competitors that had raised 4 or 5 or 6 times the amount of money that we had raised. We were able to make them work. We were able to get them into production, shipped, work in market and being successful, which is ultimately what we required. I don't believe we would have been able to do that had we had the same cost model or the same hiring restrictions that some of the other startups were following. Another big advantage is, I think in today's world more than in the past, when you work in a distributed way, you have to be better at asynchronous work. You do your work individually from me. pass it to me, I do my bit and pass it back to you. In the world of AI, whatever, I don't think you can give up relationships with people. It's so important to spend time nurturing those, and I think it's so valuable.

What are some of the things that people should be thinking about in terms of async that maybe because they're mostly office-based, they just haven't had to confront?

Yeah, well, I mean,