You can sell your company for £ multi-millions and still get nothing - consumer brand deep dive...
In this segment of the interview, Matthew Kelly and the guest dive deep into the operational realities of scaling consumer e‑commerce brands, especially in fashion and subscription spaces. They argue that creative, a strong product offer, and retention are far more critical than ad‑account structure alone, and that agencies add value through repeatable methodologies rather than simply buying media. The conversation covers channel allocation (Google vs Meta), the pitfalls of over‑specialising agencies per channel, and the importance of viewing all channels as an ecosystem. They discuss seasonality, cash‑flow, and stock management in fashion, highlighting how mis‑aligned channel focus can damage new‑customer acquisition. The guest outlines their ideal client profile: high gross‑margin (≈80%), lean teams, and founders willing to give autonomy. They explore the tension between building a founder‑led brand versus preparing for an exit, emphasizing the need for operational independence. The dialogue moves to market sizing (TAM, SAM, SOM), product selection, and the challenges of expanding from the UK to the US, including logistics, duties, and proper testing. Quick‑fire metrics such as daily CAC monitoring are mentioned, along with the belief that product development is the biggest lever for growth. Throughout, they stress simplicity, data‑driven decision‑making, and avoiding ego‑driven over‑hiring, while acknowledging that macro timing and category trends can outweigh execution at scale.
Chapters
And I'm gonna try and take you back deep into the weeds of e-com a little bit because I know you like to— you like— I feel like you like the high-level stuff.
Yeah, I just talk shit about loads of stuff. But yeah, I reckon put me in a room, the laptop, I can still scale. Yeah, scale solo.
Yeah, you can see. Well, there you go, scale solo. So you've obviously done it, you've obviously run up brands twice before, bootstrapped on your own.
Yeah, yeah, quite a few, but never for very long. Well, that's always like a year and a half because you're at Dropship Vibes.
You were, you, you were running them until they were rattling.
Well, yeah, Midnight City was, I guess, where we first worked together, right? Was it? Did you work on that? That's right, that's where I met Brad. Yeah, you put me in touch.
Yeah. And then Neil—
who did I meet first, Brad or you?
Me.
You, then Brad, when you're both working with Danny Buck?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Back on Brand Builder days in like 2018, '19.
Long time. We've known each other for a very long time.
Yeah, it's crazy at this point.
It's nuts. But you've raised money for this one.
Yeah, too much.
Why?
Why to which question?
Why did you— not too much—
why did you raise money for this one? Yeah, I probably have to be careful what I say about some things. I mean, I'll caveat even that caveat by saying there's nothing necessarily bad to say, but I do think— I mean, I've spoken about raising VC and raising money on my pod, probably not as much as I would find interesting to other people, just because when you've got investors, you have to be respectful of not talking shit about them. Not that I even want to, but just by default speaking about something which then gets taken out of context and clipped. I think raising money has pros and cons, like a lot of things. I've learned a lot from it. I think, I think raising money is like a 2-hour pod in itself, right? But it's the one I won't make because I just don't think it helps. It doesn't help me. It's too valuable, honestly. Like, it's been too painful to me to learn the hard way about certain things.
Yeah. And you've done the journey on both, right?
Yeah.
You now— you have now the full picture because I think you always get— people have the grass is greener syndrome. You have the bootstrappers that are like, oh, it's— Yeah.
And I'm very honest about all of it. Like, yeah, maybe much to my detriment. I mean, again, I think the honest answer is there's pros and cons. I mean, maybe you can ask specifically what you want to go into, but I think the one thing that raising money doesn't solve is the fundamental unit economics problem, right? A lot of people think, oh, if I only had— I've had people even say to me like, oh yeah, but like I would scale to that if I had £5 million. I'm like, go on then. So A, Go and raise some money then if it's that easy, because it's not. And B, and I've found this myself, even with having like a lot of money or whatever, a few million quid or whatever comes into the business, doesn't solve necessarily the core problems. It can accelerate finding out the problems in many ways because suddenly there's pressure to grow.
Yeah.
There's a lot of nuance to that in itself. I think it's a super interesting topic. The founder of Grunds actually, so Chad, which is the ultimate name for someone who scaled to $1.2 billion in 3 years.
He scaled hard.
He's clearly a fucking scaler. demon Chad Scale, in a good way.
Yeah.
But he actually put on LinkedIn the other day. And I sometimes wonder, did they have a ghostwriter for this shit? Or is AI really well trained? Because it comes out so well. But he basically said— it was effectively— I'm going to botch the quote, but it was like 500 words on raising money. Because he was calling out the fact that— and it's so true— all founders debate, like, oh, should I build a business that raises? Should I just bootstrap it? Is it a lifestyle business? And he said, at the end of the day, It's the same business in all of them. As in, you're pursuing the same thing, which is good growth, strong team, strong margins, strong longevity.
It doesn't change product market fit. It doesn't change product. It doesn't change demand.
Yeah, exactly. And he's basically saying by that, the business that is bootstrappable is also the one that most investors would like to be in, because therefore the economics are good. It's the one that most buyers would want, with some nuance around if you're bootstrapping it, you tend to have a smaller team, and maybe it's more founder-aligned, and so on. It's not like I don't know you raise money, you raise money, and therefore it should be a different business. Even though in my case, I think it has changed the shape of it, which maybe we can get into a bit. But fundamentally, you're trying to build a business that got good unit economics, good product, category leadership, whatever. So many different things, right? And I guess what's interesting about him—I don't know him—but I've just watched a lot of podcasts. He was a VC. Yeah. So he was in all these big brands, and I think Gruns or Groons, have you said? looks to me like a textbook. Like, if you could tick all the boxes, yeah, of like, this is how you should scale a business to exit, it's probably done that because he learned it from experience.
I would imagine he knows the outcome.
It just looks like he did everything almost perfectly. Yeah. And it must have done most things perfectly to get to that sort of outcome. So—
But I think VC money always changes the shape of a business. Yes, it does. Because people assume that when you get VC money, you must then become what I would say is like more professional. office, immediately get more people because you've got more money because you've just raised. They want to put it into people, and those people don't always, always come out to be a net positive ROI. They always end up— from my experience of working with people that have raised, they always end up with these big teams that like maybe 6 months ago they just didn't have.
But yeah.
Nothing changes in their key KPIs, their unit economics, and they end up just lev— they end up just losing a little bit of leverage that they had that got them to the point where people actually wanted to, to raise. And VCs look at these brands, they're like, oh, perfect, tick, tick, tick of all the things that we would like to put money into. Then put money into it and then change everything that got them ticking, everything that meant, oh, we'll definitely put money into it. Because I reckon most of them, if they would look at the post-VC money structure of a business and then they went if that business came to them initially before raising, they probably won't put money into it. They'd be like, no.
I think there's a few things to unpack here, right?
Yeah.
I think— and I've learned a lot, but I knew nothing about raising money at all before I raised money. And there's— I think I did a video on this on my own channel about a year ago.
Yeah.
Which probably maybe sound way smarter than I am, but a lot of this is also just me, you know, speaking what I've learned from other people that are actually really smart, as well as my own experience. Um, but There's basically 3 ways to raise money. There's angel money, simple. They buy old new shares. It's usually smaller ticket, usually people you know. Maybe it's another founder or whatever. Then there's sort of the middle ground, like a family office or whatever. Then there's— well, it's probably 4. Then there's like VCs, which is high risk, comes with a lot more complexity, board seat, preference stack, all this. Much bigger money, typically $1 million plus, up to like $20 million. Then you've got PE, like private equity, which is similar to VC but later stage.
Mm-hmm.
more where a founder would take money out of the business, full exit or whatever, which is, you know, what's things— well, I guess actually there's 5. There's PE, which could be like, um, something— example of PE fund, like Piper Private Equity. Yeah, quite well-known one in consumer. They wouldn't invest in like a million-pound revenue business, but they might invest in a 15, 20 one and take it to 100, right? Like they did in Ancient and Brave, which is a Collinger brand. Yeah. Then you've got like strategic acquirers like Unilever, but that's different though. That's not raising money, that's like selling the business.
They're selling.
So the first 3 are really the most relevant to like startup brands. I've done kind of all 3, but mainly the angel money at the start, which is usually much lower valuation. Call it a million quid valuation. You raise 200 grand, whatever, like get it off people you know, that sort of thing. That's like probably what I'd say to most people if they want to start raising money. That's probably the only route they have anyway, because VCs won't come into a day one business unless you're like— it has happened, but typically won't.
Yeah.
Um, that comes with no handcuffs because ordinary shares, you won't have a board seat usually, just buying shares, whatever. And I did that at the start, raised a few hundred grand. I kind of wish I hadn't done as much in hindsight, but at the time, whatever. VC money, and this is— I mean, I think I didn't get screwed, but it was just normal. I didn't probably know what I was getting into fully. Not even necessarily in a bad way, but you just don't know what you're getting into because I'd never done it before.
And it was pre-Claude. So like—
It's pre-Claude, yeah. It's pre-Claude.
Everyone knows about everything now, but pre-Claude—
It was pre-Claude.
That's one of the key points, right? You just stumbled on it. There was 3 people in the team when you raised. I bet you did not have 3 people in your team 12 weeks later.
It took a while actually, but probably a year later it was about 15 people in the team, right? But the business was not 5 times bigger.
Well, this— and this is my point. Yeah, this, this is, this is my exact point. And I think— and did— and did— and for that, yeah, did Cat come down?
So this is where I think in hindsight I've had the— like, and at the time— and again, I'm not saying I would have even done anything differently, I'm just saying I've learned a lot of the new ones.
These are the lessons. You'd have probably— you might have acted the same still, but these are lessons.
There's 2 ways to spend money when you raise it, at least in my experience. Some people might disagree, but there's basically— you double down on basically marketing and just like putting fuel on the fire of the machine that already exists. That's probably the best way to do it at the start. There's actually probably 3 ways. The other thing is like investing in like the actual products. And like, say you're a business like, I don't know, Tallow and Ash publicly raised like £7 million. Great business.
Product being the biggest needle mover.
And they had loads of Machinery they bought. Yeah, that was a part of it because they manufactured in-house, etc. So that's the sort of thing, it has like CapEx, you need money to invest in that. Yeah, I didn't have that sort of business. I probably could have gone down the rabbit hole of spending a lot more money and time making the product better, which in hindsight maybe would have been a better thing to do.
Without a doubt.
And then there's the other thing, which is like just structural costs, basically people. I do think that one is the lowest ROI, if I'm honest. 100%. I don't mean you don't need people, But I do mean that you definitely don't get the same level of— like, you could 5x the team, you very rarely as a result 5x the business.
No.
When you do it in a traditional way.
Yeah.
And that's partly because, especially these days, like, ultimately, say you're running an ad account, to 5x the business, in theory, you just 5x spend, generally speaking, right? Especially below a certain threshold in revenue. It's a lot harder when you get older, and it's more like retention, all this.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But 5 times more people these days, at least hypothetically, generally speaking, like, it just adds more complexity. Yeah, more complexity means less clarity, 100%, less focus, and then actually probably worse results.
More opinions. Yeah, yeah, definitely more opinions, which means you're not as flexible, you can't move as quick, and everything takes long. Now you go from 3 people, yeah, where things happen, you've got 3 people that are in charge of probably 3 separate things and they make decisions immediately, and now those things happen immediately. To 15, and now there's people talking to people about things from other people that they need to decide on. And then all of a sudden things now take weeks to just decide.
Yeah.
Versus act on.
Yeah.
And then you've got— and I don't think— I don't think— yeah, I also, I also don't— unless you're a huge, like, an enormous brand, I'm talking like 30 mil plus, I don't think a brand should ever have a person that manages a person. No, I agree. I actually don't. I don't know what they're doing because there's not enough— like, even down to, you know, if you've got full-time growth strategies, right, you shouldn't have a head of growth managing a growth. It should be a head of growth managing the account.
You want doers in the team.
100%. People that are like hands-on doing. That's what all brands should have. And unless you're 30 mil plus and you're, you know, you're, you've got, you know, expanding your products and designs or your fashion and you need, you know, more designers coming in, it's like, there is nuance to it, but I just don't think brands which is a cash-intensive game and a, you know, small margin game, should have people that manage people. Because— and those people often cost the most, the ones that manage the people. Senior. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. And a lot of money goes into that, and, and it doesn't net move the needle.
I'm not saying it was a disaster, I'm just saying like these are some of the, the learnings of like what inevitably happens. I've seen a lot of other businesses as well. I think also the thing that a lot of people— and I just didn't understand the nuance of this as well. And again, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It does just come with the territory— is a VC investor is looking for a VC return.
Which is?
Which is hundreds of millions in terms of where your business needs to go. I don't mean every business that— generally speaking, right? Anyone can fucking watch a YouTube video on this. This isn't like inside knowledge or anything.
No.
But a fund might invest in— 20 brands over the course of their fund, which might be a 4-year cycle, right, from a £100 million fund, to keep it simple. So in that case, they put £5 million into each. It's never that linear, but hypothetically, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Generally, one will be the big winner.
Yeah.
Maybe 2 or 3 will do all right, and the rest will either stay flat or go to zero, generally speaking, right?
Yeah.
So you need an outsized return from one or two of them.
Yeah.
To pay back the reality that most don't win. Obviously, by default, all of them you're going to shoot to get an outsized return, which means you need to get it to $50, $60, $70, $100 million revenue and try and sell it for strategic. I guess a good example of where that's really worked is a brand like Wild Cosmetics, right?
Yeah.
I think they were almost exactly 5 years old when they sold last year to Unilever for £230 million or something, which is like 3x revenue, which is a strategic crazy multiple, especially in this market. It's a good outcome. And they'd raised only— because it is relatively only for the The outcome, £12 million or something, mainly from Jam Jar, I think. Um, and that's like, it just worked really well. Right place, right time. Um, yeah, good product. But then on the other end of the spectrum, there's brands like, uh, I think this is public domain, but there was a very well-known vegan food brand.
Crazy.
Which is like—
How did they get—
Yeah, I mean, I don't know the insides of that business, but cash— well, 2021 valuations. Yeah, well, and there was a lot of those, right? Like Casper Mattress was one. Yeah. I mean, I'd probably get the wrong examples, but there was a lot in the US especially. Yeah.
That market's definitely changed. Yeah, it's definitely changed. Cash was readily available in 2021.
But the other problem as well, and this is where I actually probably got it right, is I've got really good investors. They've got really good track record, but they're also not delusional. Which sounds— because you do get investors that I would call like unicorn hunters. I've met them and they're looking for like a £5 billion outcome. And it's like, well, that's great.
Yeah.
And usually as a result, they'll invest at a higher valuation. And founders always think, oh, The valuation, I want it to be as high as possible. The problem with the high valuation is you're then underwater for anything below that valuation, or like much— because say someone comes in at— say your business is doing $1 million in revenue, just completely hypothetically. Someone invests at a $30 million valuation, like really high.
Yeah.
The founder thinks, great, maybe you're only diluting by 5%, whatever, depending on how much is going in. But then your business isn't worth— a venture valuation is a venture valuation. It's a forward-looking valuation that works for the cap table and the mathematics of where it might end up. It's not a cash-out. exit valuation. They're different things. So then your business has to actually become a business that's actually worth much more than that. So you kind of want to raise money at a pretty reasonable valuation, i.e., not crazy. Because even though it's more dilution, it's going to put you in a stronger position to not be underwater from investor money, basically. And also because generally VCs will have preference shares. So if you go on Companies House, you can see in the UK, which I find still quite crazy— it's all public information, right? Even my business.
Yeah.
you'll see like seed preferred or whatever. So let's just say I've raised £5 million, and it is about that amount for VC money. Just easy maths. Let's say I've raised £5 million at a £30 million valuation, call it. It's not exactly that, but— and then the business sells for— say the business just doesn't work, right? And you have to sell it for £5 million. The VCs get their £5 million back first.
Yeah.
You get nothing. Yeah, that's what preference share means, right? Ordinary shares, you would split the pro rata percentage. So you've got to sell £30 million.
Yeah.
Ideally more, but like just to be not underwater, right? Which is— and that's fine in like any scenario other than a downturn.
Yeah.
But that is what preference shares mean in simple terms. The other thing is a board seat and control ultimately. Like money and control are very different things.
And the pressure that comes with it— and this is what I was going to say— one of the most difficult things we found when working with brands that are VC-backed is the pressure that—
Have you got a few of them?
Well, we've got a few, yeah. We've had a few in the past. We've got a couple that are on now. And one of the problems is, um, one of the most difficult things is the pressure that comes from them in regards to every month must be up and to the right.
And certainly every quarter.
Often, yeah, they want, um, they want CAC to come down as revenue goes up. And it's like, you know, I've sat on calls with them before and been like, this is quite simply impossible. Like, you can you point to anything on our key KPIs, soft metrics all the way through to our hard metrics retention, LTV, cap? Where is it going to come from? Like, what are we going to do? You can't just send a forecast over with with revenue going up and cap coming down and have no foresight into the plan that's going to go into it, right? Are we going to are we going to double create volume? Are we going to enter a new category to bring and cap down because you're going into a new TAM or to increase your TAM? Are we going to go into like what is it? Because they often just send Well, we need to do this based on our investment. This needs to become reality. And then they send it over, and then the founder starts flapping, and it's just like, we we need to do this. This needs to become reality. And then you end up making so many bad decisions because of the weight that comes with it. And even down to what's going on in the ad account, and we need to do X and Y and Zed, and changing what what got you to the dance because you're like, we well we can't do that because we've got to get this down. Like you can't take that. You got to get. And also the decisions slow down. everything just becomes like a bit of a mess, right?
And, and I think I've seen a lot of it myself.
The weight of the pressure is, I think, where it comes from, because it's like you have founders that go from being like, you know, extremely confident in their own decision-making and direction to they are— they're fucked. Like, mentally, they just question everything. As a top line, Phil, opinions do cloud judgment. They just do.
There's 3 things there, and I probably forget what the second 2 are because I spent so long on the first. Like, One thing is, I think a lot of VCs ultimately—
Yeah.
A lot. Not all of them, but a lot. And I'm not speaking about just my own investors. I've spoke to a lot of investors as well, obviously, before we raised money, whatever, and others. I'm just interested in this space.
And brands that you know.
Yeah, exactly. And I have heard some horror stories. I think one thing is most investors— when I say investor, I mean the people in the team that will be on your board or whatever— have never run businesses. That's just a fact.
And also, an e-com business is wildly different to a business—
I'm sorry, 2 things. Have never been in a consumer brand actively. Exactly. Yeah.
wildly different.
Yes, having seen successes is a useful view, but it's not the same as being in the weeds in that specific business at that time in that market. I also think referencing businesses from 10 years ago that did well is borderline delusional now because the market's changed, the economy changed.
So like everything's changed, even the technical side. There's that.
Yeah. And they're very much not in your business. No. So it's so easy to sit and send an email and say, to your point, drop CAC this month, obviously. No shit. Yeah, I hadn't thought of that.
I've kept it in the drawer. Yeah, waiting for this email. Now you've sent it.
Yeah, CAC and increase revenue. Yeah.
Okay, why has nobody done that?
Like, if it's that easy, yeah, you're welcome to come in.
They don't know the technicalities of e-com. They don't understand, like, everything's—
everything is easy on a spreadsheet. It's much harder in real life. Spreadsheets drive me mad. And when you have bankers, which a lot of investors are, their life is through a spreadsheet. Yeah.
And they don't understand how auctions work and the fact that 90% of most of these businesses are getting their sales through paid, right? And it's like, when you understand the nuances of how paid works, what you've just sent over does not happen.
It doesn't happen. So it is an interesting predicament. I think the other thing there is— it's kind of a second point to that one— is a lot of investors— and again, I'm generalizing, and I'm— there are really good things as well, but a negative is a lot of them come from more traditional backgrounds such as banking, such as legal, whatever, which by default have higher headcount, they have slower processes, just more traditional and less contrarian, I guess.
Yeah.
And that kind of all goes hand in hand. I think the other thing is, and I've realized this massively, I almost feel like I should put half the shit behind a paywall because it cost me so much to learn. It's like maybe really obvious, and in a way it's actually kind of stuff that I already knew But then you sort of go through the process of learning it. It's like, oh, I'm just back to what I thought at the start. Maybe that's because I'm like severely autistic Chad-scale founder at my core, as most founders are. And then it doesn't really go very well with like conventional ways of doing it.
As all mega brands are.
Yeah. But, um, you can't pour more money onto a, a business, an economic machine, which is what business is, and just expect that more money is going to fix the problems. And to your point around pressure, that's very true. Like, when you raise money, especially in the early stages, you're probably expected to triple next year, if not 5x, like generally speaking, right? It's your early stage. Um, and you can normally achieve that by just throwing more money at ads.
Yeah.
But almost always what happens, as anyone knows that's actually in the space, the more you spend the money— the more you spend on ads, sorry— the less efficient it gets. Just generally speaking. That's just—
It's because you go into another tier of spending. Every tier of spending—
And then at what point are you willing to say, ah, like, we're not quite ready to 5x our spend or 4x our spend? Even though we need to hit these revenue numbers, but actually our retention is not quite good enough yet. CAC's creeping, so we're kind of buying revenue a little bit here. And that's the trap you can easily fall into. And it's because of the pressure.
It is.
And it's because also, often, you have hired a lot of people that you now have a bigger cost base, that you now have more complexity. So then we need to be a bigger business now. And actually, if you look at the reality of usually your retention profile, which is the most important thing generally, especially in subscription, but even non-subscription businesses, Still LTV is the game these days. If you look at the reality of that, normally that's why you're struggling to spend more. It's the same with any business. It's just more pressing in a venture-backed one usually because your expectations and almost requirements to get much bigger sooner exist. Whereas if you're bootstrapped, you say, oh, who cares if we grow 30% this year? We'll just make it more profitable. We'll fix the product, whatever.
100%.
There's no rush.
There's no rush.
And then we could rush when it's really working rather than rush when it's working but—
Yeah.
It's probably not as efficient as it needs to be. And that's the trap that I definitely got into for about a year.
Everyone who gets VC money gets into that trap.
But it's because of everything I just said.
Yeah, it's because of the weight that it's got.
It's so obvious in hindsight.
Yeah. And the money doesn't solve a unit economics problem, right? Sometimes actually the work that needs to be done is really unsexy operational work.
And the category reality as well.
Well, yeah, that's—
Because that has a macro cap oftentimes.
100%. But when you're looking at the, the operational side of things, right, like gold standard fixed cost for e-com brand is like 10%. Yeah, even lower at scale these days if you, if you can keep it around there. Yeah, we've got brands that— we've got a brand that's been with us for like 4 years that'll do probably £28 million this year. Yeah, they've got 2 team members outside of the, the 3 founders. Yeah, 2 team members, 2 girls that all they do is content and socials, email, and they do, uh, partnership ads. They just get us partnership ads for fun.
Yeah, do what?
They get us partnership ads.
Oh, partnership ads.
Yeah, yeah. So creators that come on, so, and they get them on retainer and they're super good at it. And they outgrow most of our brands every year. And what they do is, is they just stay super lean and they look for leverage everywhere in their OpEx. Like, they were paying a lot for manufacturing, they brought in-house.
Yeah.
They renegotiate with 3PLs and suppliers and they go and see everyone all the time. And all they're trying to do always is chip away at their OPEX so they can afford a higher CAC so they can grow next year. All they ever do is spend all year looking everywhere they can in their business at everything to try and afford a higher CAC because sure as death and taxes, CPMs will go up and it will get harder next year.
Yeah.
Yeah. And that's what a lot of brands have, even bootstrapped, VC, all of them this year have struggled with, is there's been a decent-sized leap in CAC.
It's basically who can spend the most on CAC wins.
100%. And you also get to a point where you end up with— there's a term I see on Twitter of like natural CAC.
Yeah, I agree.
And it's true.
It is true.
It's absolutely true. And you're at a point where it's not going to come down. And if you want to go further, it's only going to go up.
And then you've got to build at the other end of the candle, so to speak, which is retention. On your retention, which is way harder to move than people think.
Way hard to move. And people— it's not sexy, so people don't work.
But it's the actual name of the game, and it gets way harder at scale.
CAC to LTV. Yeah. What is yours?
Well, you can, but that's— we've gone down a slippery slope of trying to do that by—
I think that comes with new product.
Yeah, it does. And we got all that wrong last year.
But yeah, um, that's the only way you can dramatically—
I almost— I would rather like you aim to have a higher CAC because it means your retention is so much better that it allows that CAC to work. I don't mean literally aim for a higher CAC. I just mean, so our CAC is X now. OK, could drop it by 20%. I'm not really sure how because we've done a lot of things. But I'd rather just improve retention by 20% and find more scale there. But again, that's really fucking hard. But also, that's what a good business needs.
Yeah. And they're all the right things to spend your time on. But instead, people look at hook rates and click-through rate and the first 3 seconds of the video. And if we just focus all our time on X, Y, and Z of this creative, CAC's— won't. When you're at the point that you're at and you've got 1,000 ads live, yeah, just throw them in.
Yeah, I agree.
Like, trying to iron out one ad out of that and being like, this, if we just continue to do this, and then you'll get it. You'll do something similar and nothing happens, right? You— the game is creative diversity at volume, yeah, and then just load it in. Just make sure that you're covered on problem aware, problem unaware, all the different shapes and sizes, formats, and different creators, and look visually different creators as well as what they're trying to sell, and different times and different angles, right? Which, which is where all the game is, and you should be doing that all the time. But it gets to a point where actually that just keeps you at a baseline CAC. It's not— you're never— you might, yeah, come across a— what, an outlier ad, yeah, and you put it in, it's like boom. But nothing about all the time you spent looking at your creative will be why that ad goes in there.
Yeah.
It won't be. But they, they have teams upon teams that spend hours upon hours looking at this and nothing happens.
Yeah, I'm actually not a mega fan of internal creative teams. I've kind of gone full circle on this.
Yeah.
And that's— I've seen some of the biggest scalers I know have like 10 agencies on retainer.
Do you know why that is?
Well, I think it's primarily for variety but also competition.
It's, it's without a doubt diversity. There is nothing more diverse.
They're getting paid regardless for a start. Yeah. Which is kind of the problem with ROI-heavy roles like creative strategist, as in like you need an ROI. Yeah. Um, if you've got an employee, they're getting paid regardless. I'm not saying you shouldn't have any employees in creative. I'm just saying I'm a big believer now in, yeah, just have multiple agencies.
Definitely. It's because nothing's more diverse than different people doing it. Because each agency will have a way, and each team will have a way, and each person has a way. So having 5, 6, 7 creative agencies and recycle them. We have some brands that come to us on cycle where they'll just go between us and another one or something like that, and then they'll come back and then they'll, they'll be like, oh, we're launching a thing, we need you guys for this. And then they, and they just, they just, and they openly cycle them. And it makes so much sense, so much sense. But it's not— and, and I think it makes so much sense, and ultimately you always need to do it. But like, looking into it, like, we had Sam Vening on, we spoke about this yesterday.
Much bigger scaler than me.
Well, yeah, $100 million, $100 million a year brand. Yeah, looking to go further, bootstrapped. Uh, he heads up growth. He puts 400 video variants a week into his ad account and told me he never looks at a soft metric. Like, they don't—
Yeah, but it's just CAC, isn't it?
He looks at NCAC. What's it cost us to acquire a customer? What he doesn't do is be like, you know, I'm gonna launch these 400 ads and I'm gonna go and I'm gonna go searching for what each one of them's done. He launches them in and he moves on.
Yeah, I used to have this weird thing where people were like, oh, what's the conversion rate? I was like, to me, that's also a soft metric.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, I used to sell neon signs at £400 a pop. The conversion rate was 0.2%, but it still worked.
Yeah, because, because the AOV—
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And it was 0.2% because the thing that worked on ads was just running really broad top of funnel. So therefore, yeah, the quality was like— the traffic was low quality and so on.
Perfect product for top of funnel. Yeah.
Because like, I wonder if that would work again now.
Maybe, maybe bring it back. Where do you stand on creative volume versus— you have— you see this argument online all the time of like Create volume versus—
I feel like I'm less close to that now than I used to be because it's always higher agencies. Um, create volume versus diversity and quality.
No, just versus quality. You see this, there's this weird chatter which I think is BS of volume versus quality. Yeah, if you have too much volume—
I mean, the one thing I will say is the one thing I always see in the biggest scalers is definitely volume first. Like, you literally just go in the ad account of any big brand, it's 1,000+ ads if not more minimum, sometimes 2,000-3,000 for the US ones.
Yeah, actually, can you imagine how many they've been through?
So you can— we know for a fact it's volume. Um, yeah, I guess they're all gonna be decent quality. I'd probably say it's both, but I'd say volume first, right?
But I don't see why—
Depends how you define quality though.
I don't see— yeah, also I don't see why you can't have both. I don't see why it's a trade-off. People talk like if it's volume it must be crap. It's like, no.
Yeah, they probably just mean is it like super high prod or this shit versus not. But generally that stuff don't work that well anyway.
No.
Maybe this is the highest prod you'd get, like a podcast.
Well, no, nobody knows what works. I think this is the thing. I think if you went and got all of Space Girl's ads from now since the time that it started—
We're running some pretty weird shit right now.
And you looked at the outliers that have really moved the needle, there's probably no congruency to what they are.
And a lot of them would be Brad in 2022.
Yeah, for sure.
Some of the founder ads for me recently.
Yeah, you are— I know you had a good founder ad once, but then you had one in the black t-shirt on the chair.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to get people saying he looks like he's stoned. How is this a coffee product? You've got to be accepting of Online abuse to run founder ads from your, from your, um, yeah, I think you're quite listed.
If you go anywhere online, like, you have to, you have to—
I don't care anymore.
You have to accept some kind of abuse. What does your, uh, NCAC to ALV look like?
CAC's higher than ALV.
Really?
Yeah, which I reckon is true of all subscription supplement brands, by the way.
I reckon it's true to— of most, I think, of the ones of your size. So we're talking actually relevant Yeah, then definitely. But I think the 0 to 10, it shouldn't be higher.
Well, it completely depends. I think, again, I'd say that's an irrelevant soft metric. It's just LTV to CAC, isn't it?
Do you reckon?
Well, payback's relevant, which is where VC money comes in.
Surely if your NCAC's lower and the LTV's the same as someone whose NCAC's higher—
Yeah, obviously that's better.
Yeah, 100%.
I think it's like— what I mean by that is you get— A lot of investors will say, oh, but like, I don't know, this dog food brand has 60% month-to-month retention. Yeah, but it has 20% gross margin. Yeah, yeah. So it's not apples to apples. And it's also a dog. No. And the CAC is 200 quid. So what I mean by that is like retention gets— retention itself is only one of 3 important metrics, which is retention, CAC, and gross margin, which nets out to LTV to CAC. That's the only thing that matters really. Retention itself is directionally important, yes, because if you have shit retention, you haven't got much of a brand.
No.
But similarly, you might have great retention because your pricing is too low, and therefore you've got no fucking margin.
Yeah.
And you might also have really high CAC, which is also a challenge, right? So that's why LTV to CAC— and I mean margin to CAC. A lot of people think LTV is revenue. That's one way of looking at it. But I call that LTR, lifetime revenue. Lifetime value to CAC is the most relevant thing, which is your gross margin per customer relative to CAC.
Yeah.
And that's really hard to move, but it moves with a combination of those 3 things, right? Drop your CAC, improve your margin, improve your retention.
What do you see on, um, I think a lot of subscription brands miss the mark on, and this is gonna sound really weird, but like being obsessed over subscriptions. Because sometimes on that first buyer when they're super piping hot, if you can get them to buy 3 months or 6 months up front, that's often better than their LTV if they can subscribe.
Yeah, we do a lot of quarterly now. Yeah, but they don't, but people I think people don't do enough 6 months, but we don't do that right now. I think we tested it. You should. Yeah, even 12 months.
And I see good brand— I mean, we spoke about yesterday Mars Men, the upsell on Mars Men, right? You— first of all, they do try and push you to a 3-month first order, which is great, but you can subscribe for 1 month. But as soon as you go to the next page, they give you a nice discount after checkout, after checkout, to get 3. You should do it. You should do it.
Are they using, um, what's it called? Checkout Champ. Checkout Champ. You heard of that?
I don't know. I've not— I've not heard of it.
I've heard of it from a few like mega scalers and I'm like, why is no one talking about this?
Yeah, just post-purchase upselling. So they try and push people to get 3 to 6 months on that first— on that first order because they know people are piping hot. Yeah, we should do more of that because often it's not as sexy but it will outrun their LTV.
Oh sure.
Yeah, without a doubt.
Especially— and that's partly because They haven't tried the product yet.
Yeah, 100%.
Well, I'm not even that late because that implies the product's bad, but like, even if the product's really good, there's still always a reason to churn. Like, I didn't use it, I was traveling, I got distracted. Commitment from the person. Exactly.
Like, they could have something financial come up and the first thing they're going to get rid of is supplements that, you know, ultimately they don't—
You don't need it.
Don't need it.
You want it the same way you would need like—
it might improve your quality of life, but you don't—
medication or something.
Yeah, they don't, they don't, they don't survive on it. So as soon as they have a downturn in whatever, or it's mid-month or whatever, they can, they People are like, no. But if you've already realized the cash from them upfront and you get the cash immediately, you don't have to wait 3 months. So if you could sell immediately a 3-month trial—
But it also shortens your payback, right? So you can just put more into CAC and then just fire away.
Yeah, because your cash conversion cycle is way better on it.
Exactly, yeah.
Way better.
That's the other thing that less people talk about on just the whole LTV to CAC and retention thing is payback is also super relevant. That's how quick you recover the cost of CAC.
Yeah, cash conversion cycle.
But the lower that is, the more you can scale.
Yeah, 100%.
In simple terms, regardless of what your LTV to CAC is. You have great LTV to CAC, but if your payback's 12 months, which by the way, a lot of pet pet food brands are, or like it's larger because the CACs are high and the margin's low, but the long tail retention is huge. That business has to raise VC. Yeah, it's literally impossible to scale otherwise. Yeah, yeah. Which is why businesses like Untamed, who came on my pod, um, Butternut Box, which is probably the biggest one in Europe now, dog food, um, all raised a shitload of money.
Yeah, to try and outrun it.
Yeah.
But I, I think— I don't— I think a lot of subscription brands need to look at that. Like, they focus so much on getting that first order or that person to subscribe I think they need to give more energy or run more tests. Like, have your campaign that's for subscriptions, fine. Have another campaign that's like consistently trying to work on how many people I can get to buy 3 upfront or, you know, 5 upfront, 6 upfront, whatever it may look like depending on the products. Like, definitely be putting money towards that even at a small budget because if you find something that works, like, the realization of the cash is so much better than consistently just looking for that one subscription. And especially if you're a subscription brand that does, uh, you know, a first order, you know, discount on even the subscription discount, which quite a lot of them do. Like, you're just giving away margin for the hope that one of those makes it towards 2 and 3, but they don't always do it.
Yeah.
It also gives you a bit of leverage when you get to Q4 as well, because like, what do subscription brands do in Q4?
Might have to launch a 12-month upfront offer now.
Well, why not? But, but here's the thing, is like, why not?
I'm gonna launch that today.
You get small budget and you do a— you, you will have a subscription campaign, a 3-month, a 6-month, 12-month. Why not give a proportion of your creative volume to that every week? Small budget, because if you unlock it, it's massive for the business. It's huge cash upfront, done.
For sure.
AOV is big. You don't have to worry about the retention because you've got it, you know. And some of them who will commit to it because they put more money in it, there's more intent for you. If I give you £20 Yeah, you know, it's not a big— it's not, it's not a big outlay, right? If I go and commit £120, there's a good chance I commit to the product because I'm like, I've just spent £120 on this.
Yeah, psychologically.
I'm going to do it. And then they might become better buyers for you down the line anyway. You're gonna launch it?
I'm just, I'm just thinking, yeah, taking my, my granola notes here. We're actually— I'm trying to think why. I've definitely spoke about this a million times with the team. I don't know why we haven't done it. It's probably people saying, oh, that no one will take that. We should definitely try that.
You should definitely try it.
We've done 6 months before. I think we've also tried 12, but it's not currently on our PDP.
Yeah, and like with any test, don't just put it in to put 20 static ads in and then just be like, this doesn't work. It's like, that's not, that's not a test. That's just you putting something live on your site, doing some half-ass static ads, and then completely writing it off as a, as a, as a bundle offer. It's like, you have to give it the same effort you give everything else. Just iron out 10%, you create volume that goes towards it every week and see if you can unlock it. Yeah, which is what you need to do. Um, did you launch TikTok Shop?
Like 2 years ago. Relaunching it now.
You're relaunching it?
I don't know much about TikTok Shop. It's always felt foreign to me. TikTok Shop, for 2 main reasons. We did it for like a week, literally in 2024, and then sacked it. I think at the time they didn't do subscriptions, and I thought it was a race to the bottom on price, and I was like, just didn't feel like it made sense for like a largely single SKU brand at the time.
I feel like it's had a glow up.
Yeah, I feel very naive with TikTok Shop. I should probably spend the weekend looking at fucking YouTube videos explaining it all. It's, uh, or just get Claude to explain it to me. Yeah, which would be easier in many ways.
The thing is with Claude though, it like, it tends to just pull from like shitty online articles and stuff like that. Yeah, my clients we have now sending us, uh, what we should do in an ad account based off of Claude.
Yeah, do you know what I do sometimes? I ask Claude and ChatGPT the same question just to see how similar they are. It's almost always the exact same shit. Just written in different ways because they obviously have the same models that are feeding them probably in the background.
But notoriously, it's terrible outdated advice when it comes to the stuff that we do. It'll tell you to turn off your high CPA ads, for example. It'll tell you you need a retargeting campaign. You've got no toss. It lacks human nuance. It lacks context, nuance, and like the most— the thing is with our industry, it moves so quickly, it won't have that available information. And it also doesn't know the right way. There's a million ways people tell you to do it. Most of them are wrong. it doesn't know the difference. It just knows what's online and goes with the most popular one.
Yeah, I would say every fucking business is different, right?
Yeah, 100%.
Blended general advice is a good starting point, but at the end of the day, that's why, like, if someone doesn't know their shit, they'll just regurgitate the textbook, right? Yeah, similar to, like, I don't know, an investor that says, surely do this, having never done it before.
Um, so TikTok Shop relaunching, what's the plan?
I believe we relaunch it like next month. Yeah, yeah.
Are you gonna do anything exclusive for it?
I think the plan now is, because we're in retail, it's basically going to mirror almost what retail does, or somewhere in between. Because the challenge is now we've already got 3 channels, right? D2C, main one, and then Amazon and retail. And retail is now overtaking Amazon, which is good. Um, but then, well, retail has always been different. Well, hasn't always been different SKUs. It has the pouches, which has always been the main thing Holland Barrett. Yeah, but then now we've got the 7-day box and the RTD, which I should have had here on— let's pretend.
We'll put AI in.
Yeah, would have had here, which is new for retail. Yeah, I think TikTok Shop, we're gonna just do what's in retail, maybe with some shit that's from D2C.
At what price?
Well, this is the thing, like, it needs to be a lower price point. I mean, we never really tried it with the £40 pouch of powder before, partly because it wasn't subscription. But like I said, the reason we kind of pulled after a week was because the price at the time didn't seem to make sense. Um, so either you could put, I don't know, certain flavors on there, maybe, maybe use it as a clearance channel, maybe use it as just a get people to 7-day trial pack. What you need to do— basically now we have cheaper SKUs that work in retail. You can also do that on TikTok Shop. Yeah, instead of just discounting the fuck out of the brand.
Are they gonna have— what you set on TikTok Shop, are you gonna have on .com? Are you gonna have what's on .com available on TikTok Shop but for cheaper?
No. I don't think so. That's one way to do it. And that's originally what we would have done 2 years ago.
That's what most people do. I think it's a bad idea.
Yeah, exactly. Because then it just basically cannibalizes what's on D2C.
Yeah.
I also think— I'm questioning if Amazon even has a place, to be honest.
Why?
Especially because we're a subscription-first brand now. I mean, Amazon is a convenience channel, in fairness. But I'd be interested to run a test of turning Amazon off just for like 2 months or 3 months and see what happens to D2C.
What is the percentage of D2C retail Amazon? As a sales channel.
Oh, it's still mainly—
Why would you turn Amazon off then? Are you—
Because—
You run any ads on it?
Small amount, like defensive ads, right?
So why would you turn it off?
We've done the whole bullshit DSP stuff in the past, you know, top of funnel Amazon. I've always said it was a scam. An agency pushed us to do it and I proved that it was a scam. You spend 10 grand a month, doesn't do anything.
No, because all your demand's coming from Meta.
Yeah, exactly. Amazon ads is basically Meta. You run that to like brand protection, like brand keywords.
It's a demand capture platform, right?
It's not a scale platform in itself.
You've got demand gen, you've got demand capture, but People often make this, this mistake, and it's so easy to make, and I get it. But you turn Amazon on, yeah, yeah, your .com gets worse and your ad account gets worse. Yeah, everyone forgets you've just turned Amazon on.
So the reason I want to try turning it on is just basically try and answer like, how much is it impacting DTC? Yeah, because I think a DTC customer is worth more than Amazon customer to us because you own them and it's subscription. And I think the thing with Amazon, it just— you also, every time someone lands on it from your ad, they're looking at competitors that are right beside it and cheaper.
Yeah.
So it's kind of like, well, are they doing— that's just the nature of a marketplace.
But are they doing that anyway though?
Yeah, they for sure are. It's just like, what— I haven't run the test for 3 years of what happens if we turn Amazon off. You basically can't go down £5 and therefore we can spend that.
Yeah, you basically want to understand whether there's a proportion of Amazon—
is it relatively better?
Yeah, that wouldn't buy .com, they're only buying Amazon.
Yeah.
And it— and, and ultimately you can only run that test with either an incrementality study or the world's best incrementality to be turning it off.
Exactly.
Right, but then you could starve the brand. And I mean, at the volume you're doing, you could run that test in like 14 days.
Yeah, probably. Which I think is partly because the offer's better D2C. You get starter kit subscription.
Well, that's good.
Um, and also just competition on Amazon is more and more.
Could you not—
There's other like decent brands, but there's also just like, you know, the sort of, I don't know, Chinese brands.
Sometimes it's a bit of a risk, and this is, you know, our experience with TikTok Shop sometimes is it can be a bit of a race to the bottom.
Yeah, exactly. That's why I didn't like it before. No subscription, it just seems like a discount channel. Well, a lot of the brands that do big volume on there, at least the SKU that's doing big volume, is usually sub-20 quid.
Yeah. And for Amazon, could you not just run it as like a bundle platform then or something?
Yeah, I was thinking about doing this, which is the other way to go, is to make it just more unique and just do it bulk buy basically. So it becomes a convenience, like discounted bulk buy channel.
Yeah.
Which to be fair, yeah, I should probably do that.
Yeah, your version of Costco.
Yeah, exactly. Like even old stock. Like if you look at Athletic Greens, who had— I think they've come under fire now for launching this gummy, at least like Grunns seem to hate them for it. But, um, they launched the Next Gen Athletic Greens. We're doing something similar in a few months, which we're going to have a similar strategy on Amazon. You just keep the old stock on Amazon.
Yeah.
I think they only— they still only sell, from what I could find at least, their original, like non-Next Gen AG1 on Amazon, whereas the website has the Next Gen, the new version, and their pro versions. The latest stuff's on the website. And then Amazon becomes like, not necessarily clearance, but just older stuff, bulk buy, convenience.
You need to just not cannibalize DTC.com.
Exactly. Because retail does that as well, though. And that's a harder one to control because it's retailers deciding what prices stuff are.
Yeah.
And they also run ads.
Yeah.
So I reckon that's a harder one to test. But I actually reckon in hindsight we did retail too soon.
Really?
Because it's just— it adds a lot of complexity as well, to the point around complexity. It's another channel. It is another channel. It's still tiny relative to D2C. However, it's definitely higher barrier to entry, and you need it long term if you want to be like— well, I think if you want to be an acquirable brand, you almost definitely need it. Everyone says that these days, and it is true.
And I know a lot of subscription brands go into retail to save the D2C, right? It's like they— it's a more profitable channel for them. Yeah. And it covers it up. You have one P&L, it's one business.
It's a lot more profitable for us as well. Yeah. In isolation though. Because if you turned off D2C or D2C never existed, retail wouldn't exist anyway. The only reason we got in in the first place was D2C presence. Yeah. And then the only reason it didn't work—
There are some brands that are only retail though, so you can go deep into it.
I would hate to be an only retail brand. Geez, it takes like a year to get a listing. Yeah, it's just so slow. I'd be like old and retired by the time I'd done everything.
Everything's slow. But I think you shouldn't cannibalize .com because ultimately that's where you own it. But I would just think that with— I mean, now TikTok Shop, you can do the subscription, so it makes more sense. But like with Amazon, I would just try and have it as a bulk buy so that you own the subscribers. And the best deal is on .com where you own them and you get the margin, right?
Yeah, I think basically you want to have different— not necessarily different SKUs, but different offers on different channels.
That's exactly what you need to do.
And in retail, actually different SKUs, and some of like the RTD.
Some of the brands that are killing it on TikTok Shop do, uh, exclusive products for TikTok Shop so that they don't cannibalize .com again.
Yeah, right. Like a 7-day pack's perfect for us for that. Yeah, £9 price point. That's also in Tesco now. But that's the sort of thing that could work well on TikTok and in retail.
Yeah. And I think that's what ultimately what you need to do. And people need to understand as well, as you open up these new silos, right, don't think that your ad account and your .com's broken. You're gonna have leakage.
It's gotta look blended.
Yeah, 100%. Every time you add a channel— Amazon, TikTok Shop, retail— understand that .com is going to get worse. And because of that, your ad account's gonna get worse. but it's not actually worse. They've just leaked. They're going over here.
In isolation, it looks worse.
In isolation, it looks worse. But what happens is they launch them and, and they think that these things are separate. They're like, there's no way my Meta ads are going to TikTok Shop and Amazon. It's like, that's exactly where they're going. Yeah. You think these people that see your Instagram ads are not scrolling TikTok every day? You're mental, right? And the same stuff. So then the same algorithms looking at the same shit that ultimately is relevant to the brand. So they're going to come across Space Goods and they end up trying to fix the .com and the ad account problem when ultimately If you look at it as a blended, your numbers are almost the same. You just get more volume.
Yeah.
But they try and fix a problem that just doesn't exist. And they email me about it being like, what's going on with the ads?
The other thing I sometimes think though is like, is there benefit? What could we have scaled more if we were just DTC with one product the whole time? Like extreme focus.
Extreme.
There's always arguments either way and you never know unless you did it. So it's kind of an insolvable question. But well, I do wonder it.
Like, um, obviously creative volume. They do have a big in-house team now.
Yeah.
Yeah, they do. Well, I say big, I say big, it's actually not that big, but they just hire— Sam's a super operator and they hire killers. So like, he's very good at hiring. There's a whole nother point, like most founders are not good at hiring.
I've made a lot of mistakes.
They're not good at hiring. They, they're like, I'm gonna get rid of this agency, it's doing well because it's cheaper to hire in-house, and they hire someone that's just ultimately bad. Yeah, like, and, and they— this person knows more than what the founder does about media buying, but actually it's not good knowledge and they have to change ultimately what they come into because that's the point. And then anyway, yeah, well, that's a whole nother thing. But he focused on that margin, product innovation. They do a lot of deals with vets, but vets specifically— well, not deals with vets, they've got a lot of vets on board.
But it's just a team in the US.
It is now, yeah. They were remote and now it's all in the US. Now it's US and UK.
Where in the US? Miami or something?
I don't know. They've got, they've got an office in London. Miami's class.
Didn't you live there for a while? Yeah, 2 years. Why'd you come back?
Um, a few reasons really. Mostly, mostly personal. Um, mostly personal, to be honest.
Girlfriend didn't like it? Well, wife didn't like it.
Wife didn't like it. Um, was she your wife at the time? I moved there because of COVID Yeah, so it was lockdown and right, it was a long time ago. Well, that's because people come and they go to the Palm. Yeah, and they're like, oh, it's pretentious, it's expensive, it's like, you know, it's crazy money. But you can go move to the communities and stuff where we live and it's, it's completely the opposite. And actually you drink way less here because it's just not everywhere. Where'd you live now? Uh, Dubai Hills.
Have you been there a year already? I was there and then Then you come. Okay. Yeah. Then you come back in Jan.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So I've always decided where I'm living in five weeks. I don't know yet.
You don't know yet.
Too many options.
Well, let me ask you. Do you ever turn ads off in your ad account?
Well, I haven't touched an ad account myself in about two years. No. I'm actually a big believer in agencies for ad accounts. Yeah. Yeah. Which you'll probably like me saying. But yeah. I honestly just think it's one of those.
You're buying data.
Yeah. I think it's one of those roles as well where like without sounding too cunty, it's like someone's really good media buyer. Why they don't want to get a nine to five job for you? No, they probably would be better off starting an agency, and then at least that person has oversight of the team that might run it eventually. Yeah. Or being part of an agency to get more exposure to multiple ad accounts. I also don't think it's a full-time job.
It's definitely not a full-time job.
Well, let me be clear, it's not a full-time—
No, it's definitely not full-time.
Like, growth is, but running an ad account is not.
No. And also, like, for one person as an agency now, running an ad account shouldn't be the thing you do.
That should be like Yeah, it's creative, it's offer, and it's basically creative and offer in terms of what an agency can—
It's also upstream. It's like diagnosing where the problems are that you, you can fix as a partnership with, with the brands, right?
Yeah.
It's like, we are not a media buying agency anymore. That's like the bottom barrel lever that you can pull, right? There's like 4 things above it that we work on with a lot of our brands. Like, the ad account stuff is just mental. It's, it's quite literally, you know, and I believe what Sam Vening says, it's like load as literally as many high-volume creatives as you can in there. And don't look at it.
Yeah.
Don't look at it. Look at it for like, uh, you know, direction and like, uh, indication of what's going on. Like, you still need to know if your click-through rate's crap because that will ultimately be the judge if you've got high quality.
I mean, it's basically the hierarchy. I think someone posted this on Instagram the other day. It's like obvious, but it's just so true. It's like product at the top, then your brand layer makes it premium, whatever. Then it's the offer, like the subscription starter kit. Well, you could swap creative and offer.
I, I would not.
And then it's retention.
I would not put brands anywhere near the top of that list. No way. You think people give a shit about your brand? They don't.
I think maybe that's a more holistic view rather than just talking about media buying. But like, how are you— how do you create like something to be attractive, right? Because if you get the same product and put it in, I don't know, clear plastic bag with handwritten, this is a fucking coffee.
Yeah.
Or you can get something that builds—
But if it had the same ingredients as a sexy one, was £5 cheaper, I know which one everyone would buy.
Yeah, but I did— you can need both though.
Yeah, you, um, yeah, you do need both. What I say, I won't put it at the top of that list.
I put it in there Yeah, sorry, I mean, that was more like holistic building an e-com.
Oh yeah, yeah, those are them.
Rather than in terms of media buying. Yeah, it's creative.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
But you also need a good offer and good retention to support that creative.
Product offer, obviously if you subscription retention for sure. Yeah. And then, you know, you'd look at creative and then maybe you'd look at brand and then ad account stuff is right at the bottom. People that come to us and during the sales process is like, yeah, we, we just think the reason we're not you know, 5 million above where we are is because our ad account structure is wrong. I'm like, no. Yeah, I can guarantee you if we come in and just do what we do, that's going to get you 10, maybe 20%, and it's going to be— you'll feel that, you'll realize that benefit immediately, and then it'll flatline.
Do you still run ad accounts? Me personally? No. Could you?
No. I'm in them.
Someone throw you the keys?
Yeah, I could do.
Yeah, I'm in them all the time, but like Just because if you're launching your own brand, would you be in the ad account? Would you hire your own agency straight away?
Without a doubt, give it my own agency.
But do you think your team would be better than you running it?
I think my team will be better than me if they didn't know it was my brand.
Yeah, why? Because if they thought it was yours, they wouldn't care?
Other way around. I think they do stuff that they wouldn't normally do because it's mine. Yeah, like they would, they would spend too much time overcomplicating stuff because it's not as natural. Whereas we just have a repeatable process that works. Like, we're— the, the whole reason you hire an agency is because you hire their operational methodology.
Yeah.
It's like, yeah, I believe that the things that you do are right, so I'm going to hire you to do them. Yeah. And the worst relationships we ever have are the people that hire us because of our methodology, and then when we do it, they're like, oh no, no, we, we don't do it like that. It's like, yeah, that's why you're here. Yeah. Like, that's why you're here. We do it this way. That's how we're going to do it.
Do you prefer running creative as well?
Yeah, definitely.
Do you ever just run the ad account?
No, never. Always comes with creative. Yeah, everything we do comes with creative. Otherwise, anyone out there at all that's paying for just media buying, immediately look elsewhere. Yeah, immediate look elsewhere. Because what are they doing then? Just building ads in? Yeah, it's the least— that's an AI job. It's the bottom barrel move and it adds zero value.
Do most of your clients have you run all their creative or just a chunk of it?
Um, well, no, because they'll use others as well and they'll do it internally. And we, we advise, you know, our teams and our clients to like get as much creative as physically possible.
Yeah, I do agree with you should have a core agency do your media buying, ideally all channels as well. At least Google and Meta, but ideally all.
Yeah, we do all channels.
I don't understand brands and founders that have different agencies or freelancers per channel.
No, and then you have ego.
I just don't understand it. No, naming no names, there's some like big shot freelancers I know and Well, agencies, but yeah, I think of one person. Yeah, yeah. And they charge like ridiculous money. They're like, no, I only run X channel. Crazy. But bruv, how could I ever— A, the numbers are crazy because then you start having multiple retainers. Yeah, yeah. But what if like they're optimizing for X but they don't see what's happening on Meta?
It's an ecosystem.
It doesn't make sense.
It's an ecosystem and they all can join and they all have to do a certain job, right? So I've just had— this is a real life example— fashion brand that will probably do like 12 to 15 mil this year. They left us for Google, right? Because they said, uh, we think you're leaving money on the table for Google. Yeah, they're saying, you know, well, because we weren't spending much, because we were just picking up land. We believe that for them— because you have to look at Google as, as a unit economics thing, right? It's like, can I get more business? Yeah. Can you afford it? No. Yeah, right. Can you afford what that's going to cost you? No. So—
Same with Amazon, I think.
Yeah, we have it at you know, between 10 and 20% is what we'll spend on Google because ultimately our game is new customers for all of our brands.
10 to 20% of spend?
Yeah, of spend. Yeah, because our belief is that our core reason for people working with us is we need to get you new customers. Yeah, NCPA, NCAC, all that, that's, that's what we're here to do. That comes from Meta. So they— but they came to us and they said, right, we're going to leave because you're not— you know, we think it should be 40, 50%, like we should be number 1 on Google for X, Y, and Z.
And then they do that, the account doubles.
So what happens? Well, they left, and I said to them, if you do this, I'm gonna tell you exactly what will happen. Because they think that— the bit we've been within agencies, we've done this test 1,000 times, but they think they're the first person to ever spot—
Yeah, that's the benefit of a decent agency.
Yeah, that Google ROAS is high. And I said to them, do you think you're the first person ever to spot that Google ROAS is abnormally higher than in-ad account meta ROAS? Yeah, right, come on. And we use incremental attribution, so our ROAS looks terrible in ad account, but it means we get more new customers. So they left, they scaled Google. What happens when you scale Google? CAC goes through the roof. What happens? We have to pull back Meta. Yeah. So what happens in that decision is they immediately start acquiring less new customers because Meta's gone backwards and more existing customers because they're hammering Google. Yeah.
On brand terms and stuff.
Because they need to try and make it look better. Yeah. Right. And what happens is, is the scale— the spend went up by 40% and the Google attributed ROAS just went down. It just plummeted. Right. And they're like, but it's still higher than Meta. It's like, but nothing's happened on the back end and you're losing more new customers. Rolls into month 2, they carried on doing it. Month 2, they had their record low new customer volume in over 2 years. Yeah. Which was last month. So July. Yeah. They then handed the keys back to us at the start of August and I said to them, you haven't even felt the problem yet.
But when they gave Google away, you were still running Meta? Yeah, but you have to do it differently.
But we had to pull it back because of what happens on Google. And I said to them when they came back, I said, you haven't even felt the outcome of what I told you about yet. That's going to happen in August, right? The worst month to do it because people are away, it's a heat wave, and now you're going to realize the pain of 2 really shit months on new customers. Yeah, and that's exactly what's happening now. Then the returning customers are 40% down month on month, year on year even worse, and their revenue's in the bin because the existing customers for fashion brands, never hotter than the first 90 days. They're the cheapest ones to acquire because you get them on the back end, right? It's all email, SMS for fashion. It's super hot, right? And you just hammer them over the first 90 days.
Yeah.
They buy chinos, you send them polos. They buy polos, you send them chinos. Like, super easy to do on the retention side to get those come back. You've now got way less of those, and you're going to realize that pain in August. And they just, they never understand how the ecosystem works. So I never get it when brands want to have— they say, oh no, I like it to be separate because they'll spend more time on them all. And it's like, that's not how it works. That's just not how it works. So now they're going to feel that pain. Now for the whole of August, we've now got to acquire new customers for more expensive than we'd like to because they need new customers through the door, which means August is going to be a shit show.
What's the best month for a fashion brand?
Obviously— what?
I would hate the seasonality.
Talking margin— well, actually, the seasonality can be good. They've got a lot more to talk about than what you do.
It's Q4 and summer.
Yeah, they've got way more to talk about.
I think fashion's a horrible business.
It's a horrible— is it?
I did it like 8, 9 years ago, not to a huge scale, but like, fuck me, the sizes.
It's a horrible business.
The competition.
Yeah.
Fashion, like, I just love basically single SKU subscription.
It's a hard business. The best, the best months are the ones when you have the drops. It's a good business because they've always got something to say, right? And it's very—
Cash management must be brutal in a fashion brand.
Cash management.
Cash and stock management.
But what is good is when you get a SKU that works. So let's say you get this t-shirt Yeah, um, and it starts to— it starts to slap, it goes out. You just bring it out, 12 t-shirts, 12 colors.
Yeah.
All right, well, you're fucking—
you're, you're super cool. Do you reckon brands can add value to a white t-shirt and still be competitive?
They don't add value, they just add colors.
But well, yeah, I guess that's probably a different question, but like, do you think a new brand can like put a new angle on a white t-shirt anymore given how competitive it's got? I feel like every brand is the same shit now. The amount of brand owners I see saying this brand stole my design. I'm like, bruv, it's a black and white t-shirt.
Yeah, bro.
No offense, but you didn't invent that either, man. I'm very far away from fashion.
Don't even get me started.
I've seen a few of those.
Yeah, it's crazy. And the thing is, in fashion—
Big ego fashion founders.
Massive ego.
No offense, they seem to always have the biggest ego.
They do.
That's why they're in fashion.
No, they definitely do. They have the biggest ego. Like, they can't understand why, uh, certain products they design don't sell.
Yeah, you've seen it.
And it's like, you know, ultimately, you know, I'm gonna— I'm not gonna tell you your product's good or not, right? You've designed it, that's fine. The market will tell you whether this is good or not. Yeah, and what happens is when they sell out of their key items, they're like, oh, but we've got all this stuff. And it's like, that stuff didn't sell in the sale.
What do you think makes a product or collection bang in fashion in the brands that you've seen? Um, is it creative in the same way it is— I guess it's not quite the same as like a supplement, like problem solution.
Yeah, creative is very easy for fashion because it's just making—
What is the creative that works in fashion?
Like I say, a men's fashion brand, the best creative that works is when people go and do shoots, right?
So like, you've— you're just like sick images.
Yeah, so like, for example, you do models. Yeah, yeah, you do spring/summer, like you go and do a shoot in, uh, you know, Miami, for example. Yeah, like it's making it look aspirational so that people actually want to wear it.
But is it always generally more that than it is, say, an unboxing of, look at this, it's got this?
It's all of it. Yeah, it's all of it. You need all of it and you need it often. And one of the key things is you need different people. People buy what they see. I want to see someone that looks similar to me— size, stature, age— in the stuff. Yeah, that's going to get me to buy it more than it would be, you know, uh, a mixed-race 18-year-old that's 6'4 and absolutely whammed. Yeah, because I'll be like, well, you know, every JD model. Yeah, yeah. But, but, but ultimately that's what you make a decision on in fashion. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. And can you differentiate it? Yeah, look at what True Classics did. Yeah, they just found an angle.
I feel like there's like functional clothing, do you know what I mean? I view True Classics—
It's a t-shirt.
Yeah, I bought— but as in, I buy a lot of it but not because it's cool. because I like the fit.
Well, there you go.
I think— yeah, I don't know, I don't know their business that well, but it just seems like they're not trying to be fashion. It's trying to be like a solution to men not finding fits.
Yeah, but they're more than just— they are monsters. Like, have you seen their site?
Some of the stuff they do, like, like they've got hardcore upsells, everything.
They are monsters in the game. Yeah, but they're different to like a sexy fashion brand. Yeah, sexy fashion brand will never do anything anything like that.
Do you think sexy fashion brands can, can scale? Because I spoke to a few people in the space about it, and it's like, feels like almost one of the most— probably it's— there's massive market for it, and it feels that you could scale it quite quick. But like, the challenge with fashion, and I'm not an expert in it, is it feels like once it gets big, it's then not cool anymore, which by default defeats the point of being a cool fashion brand, right?
It's, it's cyclical.
Which even brands like Represent, I feel like, have started— I mean, I'd They're obviously crushing. But like, I used to buy Represent in 2016 when it was small.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not saying I don't buy it anymore because I still buy like their shorts and stuff.
Yeah.
Like, I wouldn't be into the Team 24/7 stuff.
Okay.
Because partly because I see every fucking—
Tom DeCanari.
Cringe high rocks rich kid, to be quite honest. The London rich kid archetype, the 28-year-old who has all the gear and no idea.
Yeah, yeah.
Who has like, you know, it's a classic stereotype. They run a 5-hour marathon, but you look like an elite athlete.
Yeah, yeah.
And that kind of killed it for me.
Yeah.
And now I'm a bit like, so I like their basics, but—
It's, it's fashion cyclical, right? So it goes in cycles. So they'll have the moment in the sun and then they will ultimately tail off. The reason they tail off is because they scale too hard.
I mean, I think they're definitely still printing, but just, it's a good example.
Brands, brands can D2C bootstrap, like they can scale too aggressively into their own demand, right? And then they become everywhere. One of the biggest problems that I see brands do is go into retail. and then you're too easily accessible. Yeah, because people like to ultimately go and shop still and, and try things on. And, um, you know, there's a fashion brand that we work with that did £24, £25 mil last year. They ultimately wanted to try and get to £34, £35 this year. And I was like, first of all, you, you're not gonna have the cash to even do that.
So just because the stock—
Just because, yeah, to actually have the, the cash to put into the stock to actually realize £34 million worth of sales is massive in fashion, right? Um, and, and second of all, you're gonna— you're also going into retail this year. Yeah, you're gonna scale into demand that either is not there or you're going to become too easily accessible. What fashion brands should do when they get to that point, or one of the routes that they can do— look at Reese Witherspoon. Yeah, an absolute monster in the fashion game. Yeah, stood the test of time.
Saw their store in Battersea Power Station every week.
I was The most profitable fashion brand out there for sure. That's D2C. Yeah.
Well, it's retail now, isn't it?
Yeah. But his own retail. Yeah. He's not done it through— yeah, his own retail, his own shops. Yeah. He never went into retail because he didn't want to become a commodity. Yeah. He didn't want to become too much. What he did every year was elevate the brand slightly. Yeah. And he's definitely way more premium now. But what he's done is he's realized that on the back end— and he's super smart— on the back end is unit economics. He realized that if, if he puts the price up, his volume drops, but his revenue stays the same.
Yeah.
So he's actually doing less orders, so less commoditized every year because he's putting his prices up. Yeah. But he's doing the same revenue, and whilst doing that, getting better margin. Yeah. Every year getting better margin, better unit economics, better everything. And if you look at his company's house in the UK, one year I think he went to like £24 million. The following year he dropped it back down to £18 and made more profit. What he's ultimately realized is, well, if I go here, yeah, my margin disappears and I'm almost becoming a commodity. So if I, if I pull it back down here, sort my back end out, I can be— this is the point of which I'm ultimately the most profitable as a fashion brand without driving into demand to be like, okay, now everyone's got MDV on, like, I don't want to wear it anymore. And then he went to the States, did the same thing.
Yeah.
Blown it up. But what people tend to do, and again, fashion, massive ego, is every year is like, I want 10 more mil, I want 10 more mil of growth, I want 10 more mil of this, I want 10 more mil of that. And a lot of them shouldn't do it because you're just gonna drive into demand that makes you become more unpopular. And they start to go into certain retailers like JD, and then a certain segment of customers are like, I'm not buying that now.
Yeah.
Yeah. Or they'll go into like—
You've got those JD brands in there.
Yeah. Or they'll— Next. I mean, they'll go into Next and then people are like, you're in Next and JD, like, yeah, I'm gonna move on. And it is one of the most competitive spaces and it's hard to differentiate. And the best ones are the ones that have a creative founder who ultimately designs.
Really have to love fashion, not just got a little fashion to be in fashion.
Yeah, yeah, gotta love fashion.
Fuck me, it's complicated.
You gotta be a founder that's into design and garments and, you know, but even still, every drop is—
What do you think about the athleisure and like Um, gym brand space, you know, Gymshark, the OG, at least in terms of this generation. I like it. Now it feels like— I mean, again, Gymshark, obviously a mega business and still growing, but like they get a lot of shit on like Twitter and stuff. I find that quite funny, you know. For what? People talking shit about the youngest self-made billionaire in the UK's like company's house looking less good or something because they're like less profitable, even though like I think if you actually dig into it, it's probably tactical. But it feels like there's— what's that brand like, um, Abel's one? I'm not really hot in the space. Uh, Alo, Define. Yeah. Um, there's all these like women-focused brands as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know, I just feel like every brand that seems to launch in that category just fucking rips. Who's that other one? Montyrex. You see their Montyrex numbers? Like, yeah, kind of in between, isn't it? It's like not fashion, but it's not— it's probably more sports athleisure.
It's athleisure. That's, that's what—
to me, that's the classic JD brand. I think that, um, it's like your average sort of bricklayer customer, if you will.
But it, but it's not though, it's everyone, right? And when you go to the States, that's all they wear. It's mental. Like, it's athleisure every day. In Dubai in the winter, it's—
Yeah, I mean, like, Montrex more specifically, it's kind of like— oh, I'd call it quite chavvy.
Yeah, Montrex, definitely.
No offense.
Yeah, Montrex, obviously a great business, but that market in general is good. And it's good because the LTV is good. Like, people buy loads of it, they wear it to the gym, they wear it every day, it runs out, they like it. because they're wearing it every day, so they're just gonna buy more. So it's just bringing out new colors, and ultimately it's all plain. Now there's a new brand coming through called Condition.
Uh, he's a— Condition, not her then.
Yeah, he's, he's, he's a good operator. They're a cool brand, but they ripped.
Is that similar sort of shit?
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, plain stuff. It's what I was wearing yesterday when we met. It's just, it's quite literally just plain, plain stuff.
But do you reckon that makes it harder for a brand to scale when you don't have the branding all over it? Because I didn't notice that.
I mean, yeah, I don't think people want branding everywhere on their outfits.
No, I agree.
I don't think they want it though. I want— if, if—
I just wonder if that— if it had conditions. Remember Hera back in 2016?
Yeah, well, that's 2016, obviously.
Yeah, not really here anymore, but it got popular through Geordie Shore.
I mean, yeah, the most fashionable people, you know.
Yeah, just like a block text.
Yeah, quite literally. Well, I don't know, fashion's a very tough game for, for products. Ultimately, every drop's a bet. You have no idea whether it's going to work or not. Um, my advice—
So much deadstock in fashion would worry me.
And the worst thing about the deadstock in fashion is the founder doesn't want to Yeah, sell it because they, they love it. So they have this cap, you know, instead of getting it back in. What you should do is— and there's a brand called Rave do this really well, um, and Arn do it really well.
Arn's the other one I was thinking of.
So when you, when you launch your drop, like let's say you do 10 items for easy maths, you know, 3 of them slap, 5 of them are selling okay, yeah, and the others just aren't moving, put them in a sale immediately. They're just not gonna sell, yeah. If you give them a few hundred creatives each, yeah, and nothing's moving, they're ultimately not gonna sell. So liquidate that stock, get cash back, and then bring out a new color of the ones that are slapping.
Yeah.
So if you just do white, green, and navy, go and bring out gray, light blue, powder blue, whatever you want to call it, whatever cool name they come up with. Mocha, right? It's brown, like, you know. So, and, and then, and then go deeper on those ones. But ultimately what they don't do is exactly that. It's because they're like, oh, it'll start selling in a minute. It won't. It, it just won't. You've sent email, text to your buyers your customers who like you as a brand, and they're saying no.
So it's like, is that where most of the drop revenue comes from, existing customers?
Definitely.
So where does Meta come in typically for like a fashion brand? It's a bit different than supplements. Yeah, of course. I just mean like in terms—
like, never spend on existing customers on Meta for a fashion brand. Just don't do it. It's new customers. Yeah, it's new customers. And it's, it's, it's a lot easier game on the Meta standpoint because it's just loads of different creative with different people wearing it into the ad account in every different format. UGC works.
What do you think is easier, guys or girls fashion and clothing in general? I don't know if you've worked on both.
I think— I reckon guys are not in that space. Guys are harder. They like their brands and they tend to just stick with them. Like, you've probably got like 5 brands you buy from all the time. Yeah, I'm the same. Yeah, I find a fit I like and I'm like, yeah.
I feel like clothes just run out so quick, don't it?
Yeah, so you're like, yeah, I'm gonna stay with them. I think women Uh, there's, there's definitely more female buyers and they're definitely open to trying more new stuff. Um, but their returns are way higher. Female returns are way higher for sure because it's all different.
Geez, returns in clothing. Don't people like say like 20% or something is typical? Was it? I don't even know. Higher? I've heard 30%.
People say that 20% is good.
Wow. Yeah. What do you do with that stock? I guess you have to resell it. Yeah, but then someone's tried it on. How's that work?
Well, they, they have all those things, don't they, where it's like if you remove a certain part—
Yeah, if you remove this, you can't return it.
Yeah, then you can't return it, you can't keep it. But yeah, returns are quite high.
What brand would you start? Are you going to start a brand? I always take the piss out of— I say people that can't run brands run agencies, even though agency is actually a way better business for most founders. I genuinely believe that agency is a way better business, way better cash flow for most people.
Also, in general Yeah, just a better business.
It's more durable because, yeah, you're quite— by default you're diversified across all the clients.
And it gets easier the longer you've been in it because you've operationalized your methodology and then you just have to change bits of it. You have like a belief system that actually works, proved by data. And it's, it's easier as you get older because obviously we've got loads of data now. So like when we talk to clients, it's not opinion-based anymore, it's just our It's just data. So you're not sat there being like, I think. It's like, look at this, you know, 70 mil of spend says this. So if, if you disagree, you're gonna have to tell me why you disagree with that, because this is backed by a lot of numbers. Do you know what I'm saying?
You're gonna start a brand?
I will start a brand.
Would you ever start— do you ever think you'd find a brand that you were so bullish on you'd quit the agency? I guess it would make no sense, right? Because you just use the agency to run the brand.
Yeah, I wouldn't need to. Ultimately, the biggest leverage is that, um, you don't pay for marketing, you don't pay for an agency.
Yeah, like, well, and Andy Bull's got all the insights, right?
All the insights, creatives, data, everything. Reason I haven't done it in the past is time. So I was a solo founder, obviously, and being a solo founder of an agency that had like 40-odd clients is time-consuming, especially when I'm the guy that— I'm the guy that leads the service side. That's like what I'm passionate about, that's what I'm into, obviously, as you can probably detail, like the deep weeds of e-com. Um, and I really hate the growth side of things. I could never be asked for sales calls and stuff like that because 9 out of 10 are tire kickers. And when you get into the details of what they put on the sales form, they've lied about most of them, right? And you're looking for the ones where you're like, okay, if we apply our methodology to this, it's like boom, win. Because what we don't want is one in, one out, right? No sooner are they in, it's not going to work.
There's a lot of brands I speak to, I'm like, yeah, this is probably not Do you reject brands based on how bullish you are on whether they can scale?
All the time.
If it's worth your time?
Yeah, because pound per stress, yeah, is a phrase I use all the time. I look at, or we look at now, brands based on the founder and the business, yeah, and be like, if we bring them in here— our team attention's super high, and it's because we don't let people in where we're like, we don't believe this will work if we run it through our methodology, yeah. So if they've done a lot of what we would say before Or if they're like, we haven't got, uh, the capacity to pay for you and go and get lots of creative on top, and we know that's what they need. Or if the margin's not good enough— brands that come through, the margin's like 45, 50, 55%. It's like you've realized all of the TAM for your unit economics, you can't grow any further now. Like, ultimately that's not going to happen. So we reject brands all the time. It's the best way to run an agency because then your, your cat's relative is massive.
What's the best sort of brand, not necessarily type, but like what's the best like High gross margin. Yeah, what's the best— like, high gross— I don't know what word I'm looking for. The sort of brand that would—
Yeah, yeah. So like, so like our ideal client profile. Yeah, yeah, it is— we're looking for brands that have got high gross margin. Yeah, so in around 80% for us is great because it means they've got longevity into scaling. They're not going to come in and go scale once and then you're just flatlined, right? They've got longevity to go. So high gross margin is, is definitely one of them. Ideally for us, a lean team, right? Because then there's less voices. Um, one point of contact so that we're not sat on a team call with 8 people on there and they've all got an opinion on stuff that they ultimately know less about than us, which is why they've come here. So we like to ideally work with the head of growth if that's somebody that's— that they've got there, or the founder, so things can just be like boom. And people that are going to give us autonomy as well, right? Yeah. It's like, don't come for what we do, the case studies you've seen, everything you've seen on our YouTube and online, all this kind of stuff, and then come and tell us that ultimately it's not right. It's like, you may as well not be here. So having those conversations up front and then just making sure that they've got the stock to scale and all the bits to like actually move the needle, because ultimately brands come to us to grow, either get more efficient or grow, and we need to make sure that they can do both. Otherwise, there's no point coming.
So what brand would you start today? Or at least like general—
Has to be a subscription brand. Yeah, yeah, it's got to be a subscription brand. I like the simplicity of, of a one SKU brand, right?
And the flavor these days, isn't it?
One SKU brand subscription, done. One SKU, as many angles as physically possible. Yeah, so it can resonate with multiple personas, multiple, um, markets, and it's got TAMs within TAMs, right? So it's like ultimately there's a lot of different people you can appeal to and they've all got their own TAM. It's like the, the bigger that is, the better. Yeah, that would without doubt be what I would do.
And how, like, within that, hypothetically, if you're looking at stuff, how would you pick a product basically, or like pick a, you know, a niche? Would you look at something that's already really big and proven, for example like greens, and put a new angle on it like Grand You know, that's one way. Or would you go like, oh, there's like a wave happening here but it's not really been done yet?
Yeah, well, we've got an internal brand that came over as part of the merge, right?
Oh, really?
Yeah, and that's done, uh, that's got 15,000 active subscribers.
Is that the one we spoke about?
Yeah, 15,000 active subscribers, um, and its CAC is lower than its AOV, um, and it's scaling pretty aggressively. And we just applied our methodology to it. Um, oh, the CAC 12 LTV is 3 to 1. Yeah, so it's healthy, it's good. Yeah. And what, on a margin basis?
1 to 3.
Yeah, yeah, it's super profitable. It's so profitable, it's good.
What is that, single SKU?
Single SKU. Yeah, yeah, a few versions of the single SKU.
So that was owned by the other guy that came in?
Yeah, yeah. And now that's part of the internal— that's part of the, the group, obviously. Um, and it's scaling aggressively, and that's just using our methodology. It's from the day we launched, it has had, uh, 100 ads a week put into it. Yeah, minimum. Now it has way more, uh, just covering all that.
Is that UK or US?
UK. Has— we've never turned off an ad since it's been live. It's 18 months now it's been live. Never turned an ad off, not one. Some of the, the ROAS on the top spend at 0.2. Yeah, yeah, in our account. Yeah, we'll never turn it off.
All subscription? All subscription. Subscription only?
Or subscription only? Yeah, never turn it off. I will, I will. And it's dirty. Yeah, no, it's not, it's not. This, this year it'll probably do, um, 6 mil. Yeah, so it's still in the— this is gonna sound mad to say, but the easy stage, right?
The— yeah, I think sub-10 mil in the UK brand is easy stage.
You're in the glow-up stage. Yeah, we're like, especially when you have the right methodology, it's got leverage in the fact that it's got unlimited crates going in there every week from us.
Is it a trending category right now as well?
I would say so.
A hot category?
I wouldn't say it's hot, I would say it's trending. Yeah, so, but the next one that we're, we're probably looking at doing, I would go— and it was hot when we joined it. Yeah, the next one I would go for something that's just coming up. I mean, yeah, we spoke about yesterday, but—
Oh, oh, oh, we're giving that away?
No, I'm not going to give it away, but ultimately one that's one that come up. Yeah. And it's a single SKU and it's got so many angles. Yeah, so many angles to go up. It's super passionate niche and it's not fad. It's something that has been here since the test of time, the problem that it solves, and will be here forever. It's just right now there's an epidemic of it. Right, I agree. Massive.
I do think macro timing for categories— timing for sure. I actually think like the macro factor of what category you're in, timing, product niche, whatever, is I would say more important than execution past a certain point. There is— assuming you're getting the baseline right.
There has been brands, yeah, that we've worked with.
Yeah, I know.
So I'm gonna, I'm gonna name no names, yeah, whose founders have known nothing, yeah, and not— and they're not like a Sam, yeah, who's like, you speak to him and you're like, I know why.
Just right place, right time.
I know why you're at 100 mil. Yeah, that they are right place, right time. Yeah. And they, they know. And what's happened because of it, they're almost like a crypto trader. They've got to—
they haven't built the skills.
They've got to $12 mil and they've got no idea what to do. And they don't know how to fix problems and they don't know how e-com works. You don't know all this. And they're just like, well, well, we just did this last time. It's like, that's not going to cut it now. Like, that's— that ship has sailed. Do you know what I mean? You've probably met loads of them, loads of DTC people.
For sure. I know 2 guys in one category, naming no names, that Both had a bit of a boom and bust. You worked with one of them.
I worked with one of them. Yes.
Fuck. Um, and that category is dead now.
I don't know who that would be.
Well, I'll say afterwards, but yeah.
Yeah.
Um, maybe not dead, but it's not, you know, neither of those guys are in those businesses anymore.
Yeah. Oh, I, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah, I know.
There were 2 identical businesses.
Yeah, yeah, I know exactly what you mean. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I would do those. And we would do it exactly the same again, same methodology. We just flood the ad account. We would get as many high-volume, high-quality creatives, as diverse as physically possible, into the ad account. We'd probably eventually have a campaign per persona so that you can kind of iron out who's actually working and who's not, um, and look to scale into those. Would definitely do the 3, 6, 12-month thing. That's why it was top of mind because I've been thinking about it.
I literally think it's almost a playbook. I give much better advice on this stuff. I'm like, much better. I can just— if I had a piece of paper, I was like, what would I do? I'm very clear. Yeah. And it often feels so much easier to do that. Yeah. From a blank sheet of paper than it feels like to enact that in a business that already exists with baggage and opinions and retail channels and expectations. And that's why I think I'm better at zero to one. Yeah, I would do zero to one being like, could boot you up to, you know, 20, 30 mil. But like, yeah, the stage of zero to one where it's aggressively simple.
I think also just— but I don't think after one needs to become not aggressively simple. Yeah, I think people just, they get bloated with ego and they start to hire big teams. They do stupid stuff and they stop doing what got them to the dance. I mean, you had— did you have Purdy and Fig on your podcast? Yeah. How simple. Crushes.
I think they're quite a big team now. I don't know, I don't know what they're up to now, but yeah, it's a great business by the looks of it. I don't know the inside out, but Crushes.
But he's— I actually watched that podcast. He's obsessed about all the right stuff. Yeah, yeah, all the right stuff.
Autistic simplicity is almost always the case. There's this like curve where, yeah, the midwit meme. Yeah, stupid person, average person overcomplicates, expert person, quote unquote, does the simple shit that, you know, seems too simple.
100%.
That's what works.
And they just— there's just so much BS in e-com that you can get dragged into. There's the, the silos, things we talked about with different channels and not understanding that actually it's all one. There's the creative thing, which is like You know, I just— if you're going to go into an ad account on, let's say, today, yeah, and be like, right, well, the— I'm going to judge it based on the last 3 days, and these ads are over this CPA, so I'm going to turn them off. In 3 days' time, when you go back in there, those ads will be under the CPA that you need. Do you turn them back on? And if you turn them back on, in 48 hours' time you turn them back off again.
Yeah.
When the CPA is too high. I think when you're a smaller brand, that sort of stuff can work because you need to control where some of your spend goes. But I think when you get to your stage, being— going in, spending all of your time time in this ad account looking at these creatives and ultimately deciding that 5 of them are the reason that your CAC's too high is mental. It's, it's just, it's just not going to be the thing. And there's so many other things like that, that hook rate— no one's ever shown me any data that hook rate means your brand's making more money.
I think it's just one of many things where you're just looking at the wrong thing and overcomplicating it.
100%. And what happens right at the start is you don't look at any of that stuff. You just load it with more creative because you don't know about it. So you're just throwing stuff in there and being like, right, well, I'll spend more money on this and do more of that, and I need more creative. And you don't have time to get into the weeds. And then you grow and you're like, right, now I know all of my key KPIs, I'm going to try and improve all of them. Whereas in actual fact, they should just work on the back end of the business more.
Agreed.
Product's the biggest needle mover, and most of— most brands spend the least amount of time on it, which I find bizarre.
You ever had a brand get a big exit that you work with?
We've had a few brands.
Because that's the one thing I would counter on the super simplicity, like founder-led forever. And I definitely think you need to do that for a while. is if you do want to sell it, that it does have to not rely on the founder, right? Eventually.
100%.
And that, that is a thing that— but that's— I think, I think that ethos is what investors do understand. I think they can apply it in the wrong way and too soon and so on, as we've said. But like, at the end of the day, if you've got this— I know loads of brands that like Chad scale and like— but, but if the founder like disappeared tomorrow, the whole thing's fucked. And then it's like, it's not an asset. It can still be a great business, by the way. Yeah, but a lot of people talk about the exit, the exit. I think that's actually the wrong focus anyway. in many ways. But yeah, I just think sometimes where—
Why is that the wrong focus?
To think about an exit?
Yeah.
Because I think if you're optimizing for an exit, you're not just fucking optimizing the business. I think, well, there's 2 sides to it. I think it can be good to think about optimizing for an exit, which is what VC— to bring it back to the start of the conversation, the last bit maybe. I've definitely learned a lot about what a business might need to look like for an exit, I think, which is good. Because you're like, are we— and not just in the team, but I mean going into retail. Are we thinking about the right margins and stuff? Which I think can overcomplicate it in the start, but at some point is relevant. And it's good learning.
Yeah.
Speak to buyers and met someone from Nestlé's acquisition team, all this shit. That's access you get from certain— and that has value, but less value than just growing the business at this stage. But at the same time, I think if you think about it too much, which I think also comes from the same source in my case of having investors, is that you end up doing things that I would argue do more to just make the business look good than actually make it be good. As in, like, let's hire a senior team in X role that we wouldn't normally do, but it looks more investable and it's less reliant on the founder. And then the flip side of that can sometimes be— and maybe this is too controversial— but you get to a point where, like, OK, the business can run without the founder, but now it's got none of the energy that it originally had from the founder.
I think—
You know what I mean? So it's a very fine line. Obviously, businesses and teams have to mature. I just think— I think basically focusing on exit too soon is probably the better way to put it.
Yeah.
Can crush the business.
I would agree with that.
And that's the ultimate irony, because it can crush the very thing that is going to get the exit in the first place.
You need to get to the numbers before you even start doing that.
Yeah, exactly.
I think the 0 to 1 that we're talking about, not the 10, is like, don't even think about it. Just get to 10, and then start making your EBIT look—
Yeah, I think the other thing is, what are you trying to build a business for? Yeah, right. You don't have to want to build a massive business and sell it for loads of money. Yeah, you could just want to run a fucking lifestyle business, leverage AI, and build some sick product. Yeah, and most people just don't know, and they start something, then they kind of fall into like a scenario.
Well, they let other people decide for them. They see you raising, they're like, oh, I should raise. Yeah, they're like, just because you've raised, they're like, I should raise, rather than being like, do I want to have other opinions in there?
Yeah, exactly, you know.
But they're led by—
well, obviously your opinion can change as you grow and get older, and mine certainly has in certain areas. But like, at least make the decision based on what you actually think at the time.
Yeah. I also think, um, with founders timing and launching a brand that we're talking about, um, I think more people need to take a look at TAM before they get into a market.
Oh, for sure. Because if they want to build a big business, you can't outrun it.
But everyone gets into business to launch a big business. Go and open a cafe if you want to, if you want a passion project.
Yeah.
Or a Pilates studio.
Yeah, yeah, true.
You know, but, you know, or, you know, whatever else it might be. I think everyone that gets into D2C gets into it because it's sexy and you can do big numbers. But I've never met anyone that's like, oh, it's a lifestyle business.
Dropshippers who work 2 hours a day and just spend Amex points. I've definitely been there.
Yeah, but, but I think more founders should look at TAM. Like, do you think you've realized your TAM in the UK? Like, how many— how— for your main SKU? How many people are in that TAM now, really?
I think also, well, TAM is one thing, and TAM that works at a certain CAC is another thing. I think officially that's called SOM, like, you know, serviceable operation.
But then there's also competition, right?
Or SAM, sorry.
People are chewing into your TAM every year with new products.
As is in every category, right? It's just like, yeah, you kind of want a category that's big enough, but category is also like, it's the type of products and the product within it, but also like the market you're in is as relevant, if not more, than just like the product category. You want one that's probably established enough that like there's been proof points and maybe you can still add newness to it rather than— I don't know, I would say probably hydration, the ship has sailed now. Yeah, to give an example of a massive TAM that's probably overcrowded. Um, but arguably there's still new ways to do it, but the CACs in that category are probably so high now that I would imagine it's very hard.
Yeah, I think past, past the 10 mil.
But there will always be something new because categories move on, opportunities come, other brands die, etc.
I think with certain products in the supplement space, you can get competed down to zero because it's the same, you know, the game ultimately. And this is why first time in and first, first mover advantage and stuff plays a, plays a big part. Because ultimately in the supplement space, I can just bring out what you bring out. It's the exact same product.
Yeah.
And I, if I can afford for it to be £5 cheaper, if I find a way to make that happen, I'm going to win. Or if I can find a way to pay £10 more for a customer, yeah, you can, I'm going to win, right? So I think, I think that— what, what would you even class Space Cuds as now? Like, it was obviously mushroom.
It's functional coffee brand.
Functional coffee brand now.
That's kind of what it was from day one. I mean, yeah, I made a lot of mistakes.
I think the name's changed, right? Like, it was a mushroom. It was like—
I never thought of it as mushrooms.
You didn't?
But everyone did. It was, you know, it was a mushroom coffee essentially. But like, I used to even say 3 years ago, we're not a mushroom brand, that's too niche. And I'm right, by the way, because the mushroom category is shrinking. That's a fact.
Oh, really?
Yeah. And I think brands naming their names that are very mushroom-first in our category are dying as a result.
Yeah, it's not sexy anymore.
Well, it's also just, you know, a trending ingredient, I think. Whereas functional drinks and coffee plus functional coffee is not— that's not trending. No, it's less trending. You know, it's— coffee's not going away. No, it's still— it's just positioning, right? Um, we've done a lot of changes on that recently and Can you say what you're gonna do?
Can you say where you're going?
Well, I mean, I know you're changing a lot. There's a few things we did. We started as a mushroom brand back in day one. Kind of the life cycle, I think, over the last few years was mushroom brand, then it was mushroom coffee brand. Yeah, yeah. Then last year was the worst. We just went into being like mushroom powders and for different use cases. That was fucking dumb in hindsight. Could have worked, but I think it was dumb for us. Yeah. Then we were like, actually, we're a focus energy brand because that's kind of the call. It could be do energy drinks and this and that and the other. I mean, we did actually make one in the background, and then I just decided, fuck it, we're a Coffee Plus brand. That's what we were on day one in 2022, basically. That's how I thought about it. That was the use case for me. So let's just go deeper on that. So now we're going a lot deeper onto new stuff, new formats, but all in coffee.
Are you in the States yet?
No.
Why?
Well, to come back to where we started on this conversation is a large part of that.
Ah, yeah, it's crazy that you're not over there.
Yeah, I think it's crazy too.
Crazy. They have got—
The pushback is always CAC's going to be higher. We're not ready yet.
They've got more money. They've got way more.
My counter is I don't know a single brand that scaled to like the big numbers, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 a month just in the UK. Not a single one. Not one.
No, no, no one.
I've— I also know founders— one I know doing 20 million a month for the brand. Well, kind of— I would say it's a slightly gray hat brand, but it's a brand. And he said himself, if it's—
if you're saying slightly, then it's definitely—
he couldn't do 10% of that in the UK, in his opinion.
No, they've got more. So that—
so, so CAC is higher, but my— and yeah, it definitely is. We did test a little bit and just kind of, it was too soon. It's like a year ago. And then, but then I think retention's higher, AOV is higher.
Retention's higher, AOV is higher. They're also, they're also more, uh, accustomed to trying something new. They're always ahead of us in regards to like the health and wealth stuff.
The next thing I do, I do US day one. That might come back to bite me, but certainly, yeah, I just think you're not working any harder by being in a bigger market. No, it's as hard to fucking serve, I don't know, the Central African Republic or some niche like— okay, maybe that's a bad example, but any small countries, it's the same work. Yeah, it is literally the same work, same needles. The economics is the only variable, and that I don't know, but obviously it's worked for some brands over there. Some UK brands are going over there now.
They should go over there because ultimately—
One that just raised loads of money.
But, um, there's a, there's a, there's a conversation to be had like the Mané de Wai one for SpaceKud, where it's like—
I think our brand looks American as well.
Yeah, I mean, it definitely suits it. But is there a conversation to be had where you're like, well, maybe the revenue just stays here now forever and we make it as profitable as physically possible, and then we go to the States and try and get the growth there?
This is another thing where that makes the most sense. Different investors gives you variable opinions on that.
But I mean, that would make the most sense.
Yeah, probably. Get as—
get as— if, if you're, if you're thinking that you, you might have potentially realized your TAM. Yeah, because also you've got all the side— you've got all the side—
I think we have with this current product, but there's new stuff coming that's better.
Well, the CAC that you can pay in that TAM. Yeah, right. And all the sidewards products that are coming out at the minute that are also competing with you that aren't Coffee Plus or Mushroom, but, but they're in there. Yeah, there's a question for all brands where they— especially in the UK, where it gets to a point where it's like, should we not now just be, you know, if you do some deep research into your TAM, should we not now just be trying to make it as efficient as possible in the UK and just go and actually do another market. Because, um, you can tell me what your US tests look like, but most of the brands that I know that say we've tested the US launch a campaign in Meta, ship from England. Yeah. And expect that people are going to want to buy a product that takes 3 times longer to arrive.
How would you test it?
With duties on top, you've got to go all in. Yeah. Because that's honestly gray hat way of testing it.
That's the problem, because then it's not really a test. Yeah, but a commitment—
yeah, a gray hat way of testing it is you could say that they're going to get it in 3 days and then just refund.
Yeah, for sure. That is the best way.
And spend, and spend a lot of money on doing it. And yeah, you're gonna have some customer services and a few problems there, but ultimately that's the best way to test it. Also, just logically, will your product work in the US? Are other people making it work? Yes. You need a 3PL, you need to go over there, you need to get— treat the creative the same way as you treat UK creative. Like everyone's test is setting up a campaign with UK creative, shit shipping, and a more expensive product. And you know, it didn't work. It's not going to work. Why would I buy your product that takes 3 times as long to arrive and I'm paying these duties? What are duties? Yeah, they're like, why am I paying duty? I don't understand what's going on. Yeah, no one's gonna buy it. It's a terrible test. Yeah, your site's not US English. Like, do it properly. Send 1,000 SKUs to a 3— like when you, when you initially launch the brand I launched it with £2,000.
Yeah, yeah, £3,000.
It's £3,000, right? Cool. Send £3,000 over to the US to a 3PL and launch it like you launched it here. Loads of US-based creative. You've got the benefit of knowing what works in the, in the UK. You've got the benefit of you can use a US agency, right, who's going to be like, here's what's working, we've got experience in it, and do it, do a proper launch. But I think there's too many brands that try to— the 5% growth that they're going to get in the UK will cost them too much in EBIT. it's not worth getting it. You may as well leave that 5% at the table, let everybody else have it, be as profitable as you can with EBIT, and go to the States. Yeah, go and do it. We'll do it properly. Don't ship it from England and wonder why nobody's buying it. Bad idea.
Probably right.
Bad idea. But then again, back to what you said, opinions I'm sure differ on this one. Yeah, but I've seen it play out on both sides, and the brands that do do what I've just said Then realize a lot more growth because the States is massive and more often than not becomes their biggest market because it's a bigger market. It's like common sense. Yeah, yeah. Especially when your product travels as well as yours does. Fashion's tougher because like, do the States like the fashion the UK people wear? Maybe, maybe not. Cool. So quickfire questions. One metric you check first thing in every morning?
CAC. New customer CAC.
And CAC. Yeah, yeah. Okay, how long do you leave it before you make decisions when it's above the threshold of where you need it to be?
Probably too long. I'd say at least a week, if not a month.
I wouldn't say that's too long. A month would be too long.
Yeah, at least a week. At least a week, then I probably start to panic.
Yeah, because you, you have a lot of market stuff that goes on, right?
Yeah, also a lot of returning customers, and, you know, there's a bit more of a buffer.
So best money you've ever spent on space goods? Outside of when you were paying Oz?
Um, that's a good question actually. Um, wow, I've not thought of that.
It is a good question.
Uh, wow. I would— I think— but it lets my team get offended, I'm not saying them.
That's because it's—
I mean, I'd say in the early stage it was just getting flowing to run operations.
Yeah.
Simple stuff like that. I'd say now, and I hope it turns out to be true, it's not even a lot of money. It's more just like time. It's probably just reformulating the product.
Yeah.
Making the product better. I just think that's so obvious, but everyone spends years. And all the talk on Twitter is about acquisition, acquisition. I just think—
It's because it's sexy.
Products is the most important thing.
The biggest needle mover.
Because it's the one thing that moves retention, which is the one thing that allows you to spend more.
It moves everything.
If you ask why enough times, they're like, why is it not working? CAC's too high. Why is CAC too high? Well, because we can't afford a CAC past the actual— why can't you afford that? Why can't you afford— retention's too low. Why is retention too low? Oh, because we don't send enough emails. No, it's not that. Why is it actually too low? Oh, the product doesn't taste very good. Okay, there we go. You know, like, and you ask it again and again and again, you probably realize it's not just the flavor, it's the ingredients.
Do you know why people do all the stuff in between?
Because it's easy and sexy.
Because it's way easier.
It's fun.
It's way easier.
Whereas, yeah, reformulating a product for 6 months is boring.
Yeah, but Sam—
And facing reality.
Sam said the exact same thing. He said product. When they reformulated their product, it changed the game for them. Yeah. So they made, so they made their product way better and it changed the game for them. Yeah. Yeah. He said he gave the exact same answer. And I think a lot of founders need to actually sit down, remove their ego.
It's painfully obvious in hindsight. And I really kicked myself.
Ask yourself the question, is you, would you subscribe to your product for a year? Yeah. Or would you buy those clothes and then go, go, go, go away and look at products. Right. And also when you're launching new stuff, Launch it with a problem in mind that you're going to fix. So if you're a fashion brand, your margin's not great, your next product you should launch should have really good margin. Yeah. Or if—
It's meant to be quickfire.
Oh yeah, sorry, it's supposed to be quickfire. I'm doing a you.
Yeah, exactly. I talk too much.
The D2C brand you give flowers to right now and why? Who do you look at?
It's a bit of a cringe statement. When people say give you flowers, what do they mean? Just like give props to? Yeah, admire. Yeah. Um, it's a good question. I would say there's one I should say, but I'm not going to say because they're technically a competitor.
Um, most overrated piece of D2C advice in 2026? So what's like— what are you seeing a lot of people—
Honestly, I would say overrated— this might be controversial maybe because I never cracked it— is like doing a fuckload of landing pages. I'm a big believer in just double down on a solid PDP, optimize it, and focus on your creative because then you remove variables. Especially at the start.
Yeah, at the start I would say landing pages.
Now there's AI tools, what I'm looking at, that can like whip them up in like 10 minutes or 2 minutes apparently off the back of a creative.
Yeah, I've never cracked that for personas. I think you should. So go back to Mars Men.
They do it. Sorry, a better answer to that question would be to nail organic content because— and this again may be controversial— A, I've never nailed it, but B, I don't know a single mega-scale brand That's all that has either nailed it at all or certainly focused on it. Because— and I listened to the Miles Men podcast with, I think, Zach, one of the founders, the other day. It's so true. And I've been saying this to people for so many years, and every time I get, I don't know, an investor or someone that seems like, oh, we've never nailed organic, let's like focus on organic brand content.
It's a waste of time.
I'm like, even a video that gets— and I've literally seen this in other brands— they can get 20 million views and it drives one sale. Just fucking run better ads. I'm not saying branding or content doesn't matter, I'm I'm just saying, no, it doesn't matter. Over— people overvalue it relative to other stuff.
The ROI that they think it brings back is, is, is way overestimated in regards to what it actually does.
It's required, but it's not needed. My quickfire answers are also not helping your quickfire.
Well, I did point that out. Would you rather bootstrap to $20 mil owning 100% or VC to $100 mil owning 30%?
Depends what the outcome is. What makes me more money? I don't know the answer.
So if you had to pick one?
Too many variables. I probably, I probably lean towards bootstrapping, but I think there's— I also like the speed that maybe venture can help with. But again, it would depend on the outcome. Yeah. And also, what can I build like a just a bigger like market-impacting brand with? Probably is the venture route. Yeah. Objectively, if you serve more customers with a good product, you're having a bigger impact.
Last one. If you started a brand again now, Would you raise? And if you would, when?
Yeah, I would raise. I just—
At what point would you get not to?
I wouldn't raise it pre-revenue.
1 to 10?
No, because then you lose, because that's the most expensive time to raise.
Okay.
Just naturally, because it's an idea. So I want to self-fund it at the start entirely. I think you should only raise when you have genuinely good product offer and underlying economics that show a clear path to mega scale, but just cash is in the way. Okay. Which naturally happens with consumer businesses because you just need cash to scale them. Yeah. Past a certain point.
Dubai, London, where are you gonna pick? Honestly, I, I'll even just say, even just say you could say UK, Europe, or Dubai. If you had to live— if you had to put your flag in the ground now. Yeah.
Yeah. The answer for me is I have to have a bit of all of them. Yeah, genuinely, it sounds like a cop-out, but it's— I've literally— the amount— you will not believe the amount of time I spend in my head thinking about it. Not even just my head, like talking to Claude about this.
Yeah, and office versus remote. You love that.
Office versus remote and where to live. I've debated for 10 years and I still haven't got an answer. And the answer is there isn't— there isn't one answer.
Yeah, there is. Remote for sure.
Remote first. But to me, yeah, that was a bit cleaner, that one. But even then, I need more in-person time than I currently have, just in general, even if it's with other founders, not necessarily my team, whatever. But yeah, the answer for me has got to be— it's got to be mixed. I'm too— I'm not a one place forever person. No, I'm definitely not.
Dubai is not one of those places where you can just stay. Uh, you do get Dubai—
It's August right now and it just feels too hot.
You do get Dubai fatigue, right?
Oh, for sure.
You need to go and see some nature.
Yeah, yeah. But then the irony is, that's what's greeny for me. I love it. I was in Europe for 4 and a half weeks, and by the second week I was complaining about stuff being inefficient Like, you know, there's always something.
Yeah, because you can't get it all, can you?
I was in Mallorca, like, a Prius Uber was £100 for 20 minutes. I couldn't believe it. I was like, that would be £5 in Dubai.
You could probably get a halal taxi to pick you up.
You could get a Rolls-Royce to pick you up for £100 in Dubai.
You could get one of the taxis here off Kareem's pick you up from Mallorca and take you where you want. It'd be cheaper.
Probably. Probably get private jet. But yeah, the honest answer is a bit of all of them. Yeah.
Cool.
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