Interview with Sheldon Mydat, CEO of Suppeco

Welcome to ChainTech, the show and podcast focusing on the latest trends in supply chain, procurement, and logistics technology. My name is Max Henry from the Global Supply Chain Council, and together with my co-host and special guest, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in supply chain. From early stage to unicorns, And from cutting-edge technology to the people using it to help drive more innovative, agile, and resilient supply chains around the world. This is ChainTech. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of ChainTech. I'm your host, Max Henry, from the Global Supply Chain Council. Thanks again for joining us on this new episode of the show as we continue to host some of the most interesting chain tech founders and discuss the rapid rise of supply chain logistics and procurement technology across the APAC region, in Europe, and elsewhere. As we jump into today's conversation, I want to make sure that again, you are aware of the ChainTech platform that we have recently launched. You can visit it on chaintech.net. And you can also find all the previous episodes and interviews of the ChainTech Show on the website on chaintech.net. So today I'm joined by Sheldon Meelah, who is the CEO of Supico based in the UK. Hi, welcome Sheldon. How are you?

Hi Max, lovely to be here. I'm well. Thanks for having me.

Great. So we always start with our episode, our interview with, you know, a little bit on your background. So can you tell us, you know, where are you from? You know, how was, you know, maybe tell us more about the early part of your life, okay, before you start, you know, your company.

Wow, sure. How far back do you want to go? I was born in London. I jumped straight into business. I was a self-conscious kid. I wore glasses. I couldn't wait to get my glasses off I was so self-conscious. Patch, you know, wore a patch when I was a tiny little kid. So I went through my early years quite self-conscious, my own image, etc., etc. I guess that's quite common for most kids. But as soon as those glasses came off, I started wearing contact lenses and I became a very outgoing and quite gregarious person. So that was a big changer for me. That really did change things. Long story, you know, jumping forward, my first business I started aged— it's my first real business because I was always into doing, you know, certain little things like trying to run tuck shops and, you know, all these sorts of things you do as a kid. I started my first company when I was 17 years old fitting car stereos from the boot of my mother's old Honda Accord at a number of Peugeot dealerships around London. And I grew that company, actually. We grew it from that. We grew it to a number of different branches or garages in Northwest, North London, and West London. We hired a bunch of agents running around fitting car stereos, electric windows, central locking, tow bars, you name it. The thing about cars back then, none of them had anything factory fitted. It was all retrofit. So we tied up some very big contracts with Peugeot and then ended up doing all of the retrofit electrical work for Peugeot Motor Company at all of its factory-owned dealerships for 6 years. It was a great first experience.

So you actually didn't go to university. You didn't study. You went straight working at 17.

I know it sounds really trite to say I went to the university of life, but I kind of did, to be honest with you.

Okay.

I got— I jumped straight into the commercial world and I started building myself from there, learning. I didn't have any academic tuition around auto electronics and I was halfway through my career in that industry. I was known as the doctor fixing a nature of different electrical repairs as well as doing electrical accessories. Indeed, our invoices were recognized by Peugeot Motor Factory, and we did all of the electrical warranty repairs for the factory in the UK. It was a very, very different time, very old school. So my earlier years were somewhat of a real learning curve for me.

So what happened after 6 years then? The running of his business.

I said, so that took us up to 1989. There was a big recession in the UK that hit. Interest rates, mortgage interest rates went up to 16%. I didn't own a property at the time. In fact, we were, we were doing very well for ourselves and weren't concerning ourselves with buying property back then. I was still only 23. And so we saw the writing on the wall and we decided to close. The thing is, as the recession hit, we were really, really busy because we were so busy on fleet contracts being paid £14 an hour, which sounds a lot back then. It was a lot back then.

Yeah.

£14 an hour for electrical repairs, £28 an hour for electrical repairs and accessories fitting respectively. So we were really busy on fleet contracts up and down the country because these fleet contracts are still being renewed. 5,000 companies going out to the BBC, for example. So a lot of work. Meanwhile, the retail mechanics were standing around a lot of the time being paid £5.50 an hour. We were paying a lot more, being paid a lot more. So essentially, the mechanics were taught to do our work. We then became a little bit more redundant to requirement, as you can imagine.

Sure.

And the writing was on the wall. We saw things slipping away. We decided, um, being the age that we were— it was actually my brother and I, he was my partner— uh, to, to get out. Uh, and I went off to America. I also went off to Israel. I studied in Israel. I studied a Hebrew diploma in Israel. Uh, I also worked in a concrete factory. That was my first, my first, uh, um, corporate job. Well, well, it was a concrete factory in the desert. Uh, not something that you'd say was very health and safety nowadays, but wow, it was an interesting time. That was my first dip into supply chain, if you like, really working in this concrete factory called Spancrete. And then I got a job working in the motor trade, of course, fitting electrical repairs. And I did that for a year and a half. Then I went off to America, had lots of fun out there doing a few different things and meeting some friends. It was a fun time. I was 23, as I said, and then I came home to London. My father was very stressed, me being in the US. This was around the time that there were— tourists were notoriously being mugged on their way out of Miami Airport, and I was in Florida. And although that was very isolated, it didn't seem that way when it was reported on the news back in the UK. And my dad was very stressed, and I ended up Coming back home to London.

Okay. So what did you do then back in London? What was your next venture?

I started working as a business manager for Peugeot Motor Company. I started running one or two other organizations, building, creating one or two other organizations. I was also a promoter in the entertainment industry and promoted a club night that became very, very successful all around London. It was called Utopia, became a very, very well-known— I like to call it a rave night, but I guess back in the day that's exactly what it was. It was a very, very popular event. I did that for a while, good fun, got out. It wasn't really a career. It was something that wanted to do. And I've always been into music and entertainment anyway, to be honest with you.

Yeah.

And I married a musician, a singer. And I also ended up— well, I decided to make another change and go to work in IT for consultants, essentially for a recruitment company. That was, as all recruitment companies are, that was trying to become more of a consultancy than a recruitment company by rather than just winning body shopping pieces of work, it was trying to secure pieces of work, projects that it could take away entirely and deliver against. So I joined that company to do that and I joined at the bottom of the ladder as the newbie. And I was the first person in that company to successfully win 3 pieces of work, actually from BT. Okay.

Yeah.

And one of those pieces of work, bear in mind, this is a while ago. So one of those pieces of work was to was to take this proposition, to take a big chunk of their business model and put it online. So this was essentially to become BT.com.

Yeah.

As a fully fledged operating space online, which is what we know today as the standard, really. But it wasn't then. Then websites were brochure stands. They really were. They were little more than brochure stands, even for companies like that, because it was quite early on. I would have been about 30 at that point. I'm a little bit older than that now. Okay. So we did that and very, very, very successful. We also helped— my background was in Siebel Systems, working for this organization sourcing Siebel Systems. And one of the requirements that BT had was after having purchased a lot of BT, a lot of Siebel kit from Siebel, But they didn't necessarily have the the resources to unpack it and install it. So I helped them with that by flying off to California and bringing back the skills, not in me but in others. Okay. And back they helped me run these programs and for a couple of other programs. And I made a bit of a name for myself at BT as they used to call me the. the person that could find a 3-legged monkey from Outer Mongolia. And there's somebody that— one of the directors of BT Retail, major business— I still have a very good relationship with now.

Okay.

I still know a lot of the, the, the, the guys that, that, you know, from BT back in, back in the day. I'm very much a relationship person. So that's what I did.

Okay.

That was pretty much the precursor to what would come next. Um, because I did that, I did that for, for a couple of years, and then I got headhunted, uh, into a company called Blanville, which was a small company. It was, it was probably turning at a revenue of about $1.5 mil. Um, um, they asked me to come along and rebuild my business. But, you know, they offered me a great package to come along and help grow and own and grow, you know, part ownership and grow the company. So I did. And we turned it into a Times-listed Fast Track or Tech Track 100 company winning twice in a row. Taking it up to, I think, £11 million in revenue in year 3.

What was the name of the company?

Blue Anvil.

Okay. All right. And what were you doing there? What was the main, you know—

I was doing exactly what I did. I was building relationships with organizations like BT and helping them to reshape some of the external partnerships that they had with other organizations. So we would look at We would look at the proposals that other organizations had, their kind of strategic partners, if you will, were submitting.

Okay.

And we would take those proposals away and we would extrapolate from them the key resource. We would then bring those key resources— so their proposals would still go forward, but we would remove the key roles. Rebadge them through Blue Anvil. They would essentially have Blue Anvil blood running through their veins, but they would then be passed into BT to push ownership back into BT, to give BT far more visibility of what was going on through their strategic partners by pulling those senior roles out and pushing them back in directly into BT. And we did that for a number of years. It was called the Accountable Managed Resource Programme. And it was responsible for saving BT many millions of pounds. It was a very successful program. I did that for 9 years through BT and a number of other companies. And the company, as I said, won a number of awards and accolades for doing so.

So what brought you to start Supercovent?

So, uh, after doing that with that company for many, many years, I stepped away. Uh, I wanted a rest. Uh, I, I, I, I just, you know, staff and, and, and big company structures, etc., etc. I decided I'm gonna have a rest from that. Um, and so I, I, I did have a rest, and then I played a bit of golf because I wasn't into cycling back then. I was just into golf. I wasn't very good at it though. Um, And, uh, we used to do annual BT golf events. We did, we did a BT Blue Anvil BT Classic every year, and we used to nominate charities, and it was really, really good fun. Anyway, um, I was still no good at golf. I even had professional lessons whilst I was there so I could perform at these annual events. Didn't do any good. Um, anyway, so, uh, you played some golf, and then I decided to, to go out as a consultant working for organizations like BT or enterprise organizations that were going through— to continue the kind of things that we were doing, advising companies on transition modeling strategy, whether they were going through outsource or divestment or merging or acquiring or being acquired. And my specialty had always been focusing on transition modeling of these organizations, taking large large volumes of contracted services and moving them from A to B whilst ensuring service continuity, but not just service continuity, but an optimized level of service. Because what happens is you transition through these kind of exercises and everything kind of— you can just about keep the lights on some of the time. My view was, for me, it was always about let Let's focus on really driving top-line value through these engagements rather than just looking down at the numbers, ensuring that the contracts, you know, the lights stay on. I mean, the contract typically contains anything from 10% to 15% de facto pre-negotiated margin. There is an opportunity there, but it's quite finite. The relationship space, typically upward of 25% over term if you explore what comes through that top line in terms of innovation and collaboration. Shared R&D, all of these things that come through mature relationship management. But there are all sorts of additional values that can be found short of going totally strategic and really driving shared agendas. There's still a ton of stuff that you can do together if you focus on having a better relationship. So I did that for a number of years, a number of years, and a lot of the companies that I had worked with Including Lloyds and Fujitsu Services and T-Systems, for example. As I was involved in some big projects, I was the IT, the TSA lead, Transitional Service Agreement lead, for all the IT contracts in the Verdi divestment of Lloyds Bank, which was where 41% of Lloyds Banking Group was bailed out by the public and then had to go through a regulatory divestment. to actually create a new bank with that money, with that 41%. So involved in some great pieces of work. And a lot of these companies, as I said, cities are very, very good templates in terms of transition modelling for these sorts of exercises where we are moving large volumes of services and contracts from place to place. It gives us an instant insight into where the exposures are, where the gaps are, where the opportunities are. in a real dynamic way. And they also looked at the different opportunities for value that came out of the same exercise. So obviously those organizations adopted some of these templates. Fujitsu used to call it their PAN account— I can't remember what they call it now— their PAN account toolkit. And it used to help them, used to use it in their pre-bid exercises. Because it gave them so much more insight into, into, into a client in a pre-sale setting, uh, into a client's estate, um, which is invaluable. Um, so I thought, well, this— there's clearly a big market. There's a market for SRM anyway. There's, there's no tech that does SRM. It's all spreadsheets and PowerPoints. And I spent years working with these organizations creating formulas with spreadsheets that would emulate subjective behavior type, you know, activity. And you can't really measure that. It's like nailing the proverbial jelly to a wall, isn't it? So, um, we used to take that— I used to rack my brains over these formulas that would turn this behavior into something objective, because once it's— now if it's objective, we can measure it and drive value from it. But again, no tech to do it. So I created the tech. That was my mission.

Okay.

I was kind of fed up of the old normal. So I thought, right, we're going to do something better.

So Supico was born, right?

So Supico was born. Yes, that's right.

All right. That's a long process. You have a very rich and diverse background.

So just give me a little bit. Yeah. I was going to say, a lot of these platforms, they, you know, they— if you're a business founder, I mean, Max, you'll have spoken to so many people like myself. There are tech founders, there are non-tech founders. If you're a non-tech founder, it's because you've got great— you've got experience of business and what works well in business, but you have no idea of how to implement because you're a non-tech founder. So I mean, I would put my hand up and say I sit in that category.

Can you tell us what is Supiqo doing in just one sentence?

Supiqo is a collaborative relationship platform for supply chain and the ecosystem.

Okay. So what problem are you solving today with Supiqo?

What is the biggest, the biggest problem in resilience? In my view, I could think, I think you could say one word, maybe even two. For me, the biggest challenge to resilience nowadays is visibility. Sure, we can go off and we can talk about all the different things that are going on, but all these things are going on, but unless we know about them, we can never do anything about them. So that— so, so, and you can boil all of that, all of that down to one word: visibility. But if we boil it down to 2 words: actionable visibility Now you're talking, because now you can do something about it. Because having a shop window into the damage, into the resilience, into the disruption, or into the outside world is no good unless you are empowered to do something about it. And so visibility is great. Actionable visibility is, is the pièce de résistance.

Okay, so what are some What are some of the biggest benefits that your solution is bringing to your customers right now? If you had to pick one or two, what will it be? And maybe give us an example to go with it so people can understand it.

So we provide an equitable platform for the customers and the suppliers to come together to deliver on to deliver or to deliver products or to deliver services, to spot the problems, to work on the problems, the challenges together. I'll give you an example because we could go on and on with these different examples and we'd end up going down into the minutiae, which I know isn't a lot of good for a radio show or a podcast. We have, we have situations where suppliers are on the platform and there is increasing legislation.

Okay.

Increasing legislation means increasing compliance.

Okay.

Historically, legislation, if you, if you listen to Ecoverdis, did a study, they said that 100% of the suppliers that they surveyed said that the CSR clauses that were pushed out into contract weren't worth a paper they were written on because they had no bearing on reality. That's history of CSR. And if you think of CSR, you're kind of talking about the S in ESG, right? So that situation needs to change because as legislation is increasing and increasing and increasing, so is compliance, but so is whistleblowing, okay? Which means— and with whistleblowing, comes an increased risk in reputational damage. Companies don't want branded merchandise found in landfill. They certainly don't want to be associated with unethical trading practices, child labor, etc., etc., poor health and safety, you name it. Very, very serious. So how do you get from a place of legislation and box ticking, as we know used to exist, and something that is an assured way of trading? So This is what one of the things that we do. The customers are on the platform, the suppliers are on the platform, they have their produce or service lines on the platform, and they are able to— and so are all of the legislative requirements such as the Smeeta reports, for example, or SA800. There are so many, to be honest with you, and as more legislation increases, there are different standards that are being introduced as well. So It's important that companies are able to upload— companies on the ground, down in the footprint. Okay, so compliance needs to be down in the footprint, not up here where the glossy slideware lives, because that's not true. That's not real. So suppliers are able to log onto the platform into their product lines or service lines on an individual basis, individually, all of the stakeholders, the entire community. Is able to access a very data-controlled, data flow-controlled omnichannel environment where all of their produce and service lines live, and they can upload compliance evidentiary imagery that, for example, it could be evidence of eyewash facilities in a chemical factory or decibel figures in a print factory Or photographic evidence of ergonomic space at an industrial sewing machine in a garment factory.

All right.

All of this stuff is very, very, very important and it can be uploaded into the platform. And in seconds, in seconds, and this is down, this is specifically a change that came in through customer requests. We want to be able to bring our third-party auditors straight into these product lines. Okay, we don't want to have to go through hardware, software build, vetting. Bring these people online with accounts, it takes a month. This compliance needs to be now. So we want to bring— be able to bring these third-party auditors straight into this product line in under 30 seconds securely so that they can upload certification and validate by way of driving traceability the assurances given or evidence on the platform. That is end-to-end traceability and something that we do very well on our platform. for a number of customers.

So all that information we get uploaded by the suppliers gets verified by a third-party person before they actually reach— before they reach to the customer?

No, it all happens online. It all happens in Vinnies. I know, I know. It's end-to-end visible to the customer as well. As well.

Okay.

All right. Because the customer needs to see the route taken, not just the end result. They want to be able to see the collaborative corrective measures that maybe take something from a place of non-compliance to a place of compliance. That process is very, very important because the narrative is very important. And that's something else that's key on the platform. So another customer, BAE Systems Digital Intelligence, one of our customers, they I mean, there's a case study, a really good case study out there with BAE. In fact, we're just celebrating our 3rd year with BAE and a deepening of our commitments. And I think there's a new piece out in Supply Chain Digital in June, which will be really, really interesting. But their mission was to become their suppliers' customer of choice because they recognized You know, obviously we all recognize the the the damage from COVID the disruption. Obviously there's a lot more than just COVID that has really shaped the way things are now. We with with with obviously with the Suez Canal and all of these other things that have happened relentlessly, enduringly, with no let up.

Yeah.

At all, which we can we can talk about that another another time. But the you know the the market forces that have been have come out of that, they're very important. But I mean, the BAE said, the CPO at BAE said, coming off the back of the pandemic, category management strategies aren't going to do it alone. Because they're focusing on the pre-de facto 10-15% margin. And then you think about the global conditions at the moment, we say we're in recession or not, certainly things are very, very challenging— cost of living crisis, etc. Margins shrink because businesses shrink.

Yes.

And if you're focusing down on the margin and your business shrinks, simple math says your margin is going to shrink too. The only thing that isn't going to shrink is your value target. It's going to be— it's like inflation, it's up there still. So how do you explore that? And that was the comment from the CFO. We're going to need to find other ways to explore the value target. We're going to do that by collaborating. And by nurturing innovations with— by exploring innovation with our suppliers. And our supplier— and this is the pertinent point that links it back— the suppliers are going to want to do that because they're good at collaborating. They collaborate with many customers. So just linking this back to the question about logging in and uploading compliances, because it's all related, relationship management and social audit compliance are completely related. You can't impose CSR on your suppliers. You've got to bring them on the journey.

Yeah.

Only way to do it, um, to bring them in, give them an equitable platform that they can log in and score KPIs and upload collateral and create the narrative themselves. And what— that was one of the things that BAE said, we love the narrative behind the KPI scoring because a KPI dashboard doesn't really tell us very much apart from what's green and what's red. The narrative tells us the journey we're on and that's important. That's what we do.

Okay. So Sheldon, I want to jump quickly into the competitive landscape. What kind of solution or vendor are you competing with right now? Because there are a lot of SRM collaboration tools out there. So would you compete with, and what makes, you know, what makes you different with the other solutions? Very briefly, because I want to cover other things.

Yeah, there is competition. And isn't it amazing? If there was no competition, quite frankly, I'd be worried because that means there's no market. Clearly there is a market. Fantastic. There are other companies. Do you want me to name one or two?

Yeah, yeah, please do.

I mean, look, there's Visible is one, KodiakHub is another. Both great platforms, know them well. And, you know, they come at things their way, we come at things ours, and that's great. You know, so do you compete with ERP players like SAP who has also S/4HANA or SAP Ariba? Not really, no. I mean, they're more spend anyway. They're one of the bigger kind of monolithic suites. And to be honest with you, we are asked whether we can— so look, we've created an orbit of partnerships where We, as a best-of-breed solution, you can't be a best-of-breed solution and sit there as an island. You have to be able to create an orbit of partnerships.

Yes. Yeah.

And talk in the ecosystem. Otherwise it doesn't work, right? So that's exactly what we've done. And that includes ERPs as well, whether it be SAP or Oracle. We, the only thing we haven't done, let's put it this way, we're an API-first Azure architecture, so we are inherently API-friendly. We also work in the aerospace and defense sector, as you know, and so we haven't gone as far as advertising our endpoints, let's put it that way. I just think that would be for us.

Okay. Give us a size of that market. for the type of solution you provide? How big is the market right now for these kind of tools?

Huge. Let me— all right, so let me— I mean, I could go really— I could go big picture here, okay?

Briefly, give me some quick ideas.

What, company size or global market?

Yeah, global market. We know the market in Europe.

The global market, the global enterprise B2B market is about $8.5 trillion.

Okay.

So if we apply the— let's apply the 80/20 rule to that, you know, so you've got this $8.5 trillion market of B2B companies with an 80/20 rule, you've got the top 20% is 80% of the volume. Okay, just, you know, just for user perita.

But in your space, Sheldon, you know, how big is that market?

Yeah, so this is what I'm coming to. So you've got— that's a big chunk of companies. Okay, now the top 25% of the companies across that, this is typically where we would have been leading. So these are the enterprise-type organizations that run, you know, complex supply chains across multiple sectors, across multiple geographies as well. The platform works for companies that operate nationally or globally. But I've got to say, the enterprise market is a very, very big place. Interestingly, okay, I say I see the mid-market as a very, very important area. The mid-market has a lot of the same challenges that the enterprise market does. Okay, why shouldn't they have the same solutions and benefits available to them. Um, I think it's very, very important. And as a market, it's a bigger market anyway. If you think of the market like this, as a— using my hands, I know we're on a podcast— but if you think of a market like a pyramid, um, with the enterprise sector at the top, obviously the mid-sector, the middle of that pyramid, is, uh, it is is a bigger market for us. And we actually launched officially to the mid-market in November this year, although we are speaking to mid-market clients now as well who are approaching us.

Okay, we have 10 minutes left and I also want to jump in very quickly. What is your revenue model? How do you make money right now with Sipico?

We're a true SaaS.

Okay.

We're a true SaaS company. Most of the companies that use the platform at the moment are all— they've invariably gone for an annual purchase.

Subscription?

So it's a true SaaS subscription service, yes. But we are— we have built a subscription frequency optionable based on, you know, uh, you can pay by, you know, monthly, quarterly, etc., uh, for, for the, for the, uh, for the mid-sector. Uh, it's all been built, just never been used because it was all enterprise. It was interesting. We bought— we, we've initially built our solution and it was fully integrated with a payment gateway, etc., etc. Uh, you, you, you put in the details, it spins up the the Azure environment, webhook straight out into the gateway. Everything happens. It's beautiful. And the first customer said to us, well, we don't want to do that. We just want to give you a— we want to give you an invoice. Give us a purchase order.

Okay.

So, and look, and to be honest, it's quite typical of bigger enterprise companies that they don't want to set up a direct debit. I just want to give you a purchase order. That's fine. So we then unpicked some of the integrated auto gateways and whatnot and webhooks and created a manual version. Works exactly the same way, it just doesn't push out to the gateways. So yes.

Very briefly, what has been the impact of the pandemic on you and your business? It's been good, bad, mix?

It's a brilliant question, brilliant question, because we launched to prod April 2020. So we're a young company really, aren't we? We're still a startup. Um, so we did all this prep, we trialed across different organizations, we did 4 live trial product fit trials across BAE Systems as well, across the group in the early days. Really, really, really well done and very successful. But then the pandemic happened. So we launched, so I thought, great, what do we do now? Everybody's going on furlough. No one's going to buy anything from us. We're a complete unknown. What do we do? So we thought, right, we're not going to try and sell anything, but who's going to buy anything from us? As I said, they're all going home to work. Well, not to work, they're furloughed. So we decided to hire a PR company and double down on PR by building our brand awareness without selling anything. I'm not going to waste money, and it would have been a waste of money on sales. It just would. No one was buying anything. So we sponsored shows, we did talks. I've been in the industry a long time, as you now know, so they kind of wheeled me out to do panel talks and keynotes and the rest of it. And I did all of that, and it created a really good backdrop for our company. And what that did was to generate inbound.

Yeah.

And in 2021, we first licensed BAE Systems. Halfway through the year, we, we did our first case study with BAE, and then we did another PR exercise. We did a press release wrapping it around the case study, and we pushed that out to market in conjunction with a big kind of PR exercise of shows and talks. And then again, created this wave of inbound, which is— and if you're going to create this wave of inbound, you've got to ensure that you have a backdrop of collateral that those inbound interested people are going to see that is going to convince them to push a, you know, explore button, say hello button. And that's what we did. So it's been a very unique experience for us. I would— the part that, you know, pandemic aside and the horror of that, it was in fact a uniquely— can I say enjoyable experience?

I mean, a very unique experience.

Yeah, unique. Yes, be very unique experience. Um, but it, but it, but it's, um, but what it does— I'll tell you what it does. it ensures you build a solid foundation.

Okay.

Because a lot of companies, as you know, if they are a very, very, very sales-driven company and they're a startup, that normally comes at the expense of building everything else. Sales, sales, and that can expose a number of other challenges when maybe sales drop and you've built a big— you've built a bit of a heavy fixed overhead because you've been sales-driven. Suddenly your sales drop, you've still got the big fixed overhead, then what do you do? And so we built things in a way that means we're very capital efficient and have got a very good runway.

Okay. Talking about challenges, you know, what would be your biggest challenge today, what really, I mean, I know you have probably hundreds of things that you have to worry about, but what would be your biggest thing that keeps you awake at night right now?

Another pandemic.

In running and growing your business?

It's interesting. So, the biggest, so, the Ensuring that our R&D, our build and our R&D can keep pace with everything coming in the front door. Okay, because you don't just sell and build new partnerships and sell on the basis of what you've got now. You constantly iterate, you're constantly driving through. new innovations and tweaks and changes and customers that come on, they want all of that and I completely get it because that's what we're offering. But you've got to be able to get that relationship right and it's not easy to do that. It's not easy to get your backend machinery to ebb and flow with your frontend. It's difficult.

Yeah. But how do you— I mean, I know you're getting feedback and for improvements on new features and from your customers and they want certain things, but as a SaaS company, you cannot implement everything that your customers are telling you to do, right? So how do you prioritize? Do you get people to vote for it or how do you evaluate how important those new improvement of features are?

We have a We have a product team, we have a CTO that's also a product manager. I'm also— that's the other thing about being a non-tech founder. You are, at least at the outset, you are the product manager.

Yeah.

You are everything. You make the tea, you're the product manager, you do everything when you start as a non-founder. We've grown since then, but I still have an extremely vested interest in the product, so I'm involved in that. Alistair's involved in that. We've got other guys that are involved in that, Kevin. We've got all these different guys that feed into what's good. We call it— the test is ultimately, is it so what functionality? If it's so what functionality, then it gets parked.

So how do you see— we've got a few more minutes. Very briefly, how do you see Supaco in a few years from now? Where do you want to be? In one sentence.

We want to be the trusted, the number one trusted relationship platform for companies and suppliers everywhere.

Okay.

All right.

What would be your advice to a founder who wants to start a company today in the field of supply chain?

That's a great question. I don't know how long I've got to answer it. Okay, I would— I, I'd say do it. Okay, I would be— do it with your eyes open. It's not easy. You're going to have sleepless nights, but it's— if you've got passion for it, do it. If you don't have passion for it, do not do it, because the passion is what's going to get you through. It's going to get you through. No passion Forget it, do something else. That's the first thing I'd say. It's so important because it is a very, very, very tough thing. There's no doubt about it. And just because you grow and get some success, it's still tough. And there'll be other decisions that will keep you asleep, that will keep you up at night. You know, you've got to have passion and, and, and almost— you've almost— you've got a passion got to have a North Star, really understand your vision and your mission, as you just asked me. You've got to have that, keep it there, because— and know that it's there, because on an ongoing basis it will be there, but you'll forget about it because you'll be so into the detail sometimes. And you've got to stay true to that. And because— and what I mean is, you've got to have a degree of pigheaded stubbornness about you.

Yeah, in a way, I agree.

It's a crazy thing. Passion, pigheaded stubbornness, whilst knowing, whilst you are being pigheaded and stubborn, that your North Star is there and you're still heading towards it. Yeah, because if you're pigheaded and stubborn and you've ignored your North Star and you're going over there, then that's a different kind of pigheaded and stubborn, which isn't helpful. Yeah.

So a lot of discipline as well, right? You need to have discipline.

Yeah, tons and tons and tons of discipline. I would say, at a time like this with where we are, you need to ensure that you build a capital-efficient model, keep your burn rate as low as possible. If you are speaking to institutional investors, well, any investors, they will want to see a capital-efficient organization. They want to see a decent burn rate and to see that you're running things efficiently and well. And also say, look after yourself as a founder.

Yeah.

Because if you think of that passionate, stubborn person that's pigheaded and head down and In the craziness of it all, that does kind of describe someone that might have some wellness issues, doesn't it?

Absolutely.

And they may well do, but you've got to look after your health as well. It's very, very important.

All right. Thank you, Sheldon. So I've got a few more questions, quick ones, and then we can wrap up this interview. Cats or dogs?

Dogs.

Window or aisle?

Oh, I am.

Okay. What's one— can you name one movie that you've seen that you really like recently? One movie that comes to your mind right away.

Oh God, I just, I just saw John Wick.

Okay.

All right. John Wick 4.

Okay.

I felt I was in the middle of a video, like, oh my God, it was pure violence from start to finish, literally start to finish, pure violence, being in the middle of a video game.

Okay, I didn't see it. I'm not a big fan of John Wick. What is your favorite sandwich?

Cheese and tomato toastie at the moment.

Okay. What's your most used app on your phone? The app that you always use, always open?

LinkedIn. Isn't that awful?

Okay. All right. What's your favorite tool to build your company?

Do you know what my favorite tool is? Canva.

Oh, really? Okay.

Love, love, love Canva. It's fantastic.

But you're not a designer, so you know—

I love it. I love it. I love playing with it. Brilliant. All right.

What will be the rest of your life after you retire and you get much older? In just a few words, what do you want to be and what do you want to do?

I will consult I will carry on doing what I'm doing now. This is what I do and I love it, whether it be running Sopico or consulting or consulting for Sopico or consulting in the industry. And I will be riding a bike.

Okay.

Because I'll keep cycling. Okay.

Where will you be riding a bike? In the UK or in other countries?

Hopefully up Ventoux or something like that, which I've done before and it's a lot of fun. So hopefully somewhere on the continent. Or maybe in California because I've ridden my bike. I did the coast of California and it was the most incredible bucket list thing I've ever done. So I'd like to do it again.

All right. Thank you very much, Sheldon. That was a great interview. You know, we spent a bit of time on your background, but it was quite interesting to know how rich and diverse, you know, and how many things you've done before setting up So again, thank you for your time.

That was really enjoyable. Loved talking through that with you, Max. Thank you very much.

Thanks again for listening to us. This was again Chentech podcast with our guest today, Sheldon Midar, CEO of Supaco. We look forward again to see you, hear from you. If you have again any questions for us, please do get in touch and we'll see you again at the next episode. Thanks a lot, Sheldon. We'll see you next time.

Thanks, guys.

Bye now.