Asif Ahmed, Head of Early Stage, Tech & High Growth @ Cooper Parry

Welcome back to another episode of The Grad Guide. Today we're joined by Asif. Asif, welcome to the podcast, mate.

Thank you, thank you for having me.

So, uh, a good place to start, uh, is just what is Cooper Parry and what's your, your role within it?

So Cooper Parry is a large, uh, now private equity-backed accounting firm. Uh, I am a partner that looks after the early stage tech and high growth team. So my focus is working with predominantly venture capital-backed founders who are sort of navigating seed to Series A.

And what is an early-stage fast-growth tech startup? Like, for a student that is trying to learn what that means, they'll see sort of what's happening in the VC world, but what is that? And, uh, and, and yeah, what do you think really makes a founder stand out in that arena?

Yeah, um, so I mean, I guess to start with your first question first, what is an, uh, an early-stage startup? So The best way to describe it, I think, is where an entrepreneur has an idea and they want to try and build it and see if they can actually make it into a proper business. You know, it typically is technology-based or technology-backed, and they need some help with recruiting talented people to fill all the gaps that they have. So if they are not a technical founder themselves, they will need to go and hire people to help them build a proof of concept and hire hire people that are— that specialize in things like go-to-market strategies, for example, to see if they can actually create some demand for that product. And all of those things obviously have a capital or money requirement. Um, and the investment community, which— of which venture capitalists are just one component, uh, are there to help these founders put together an amount of money to help them build all of these things and actually create all of those experiments to see if it can actually be turned into a business. And that first round of money typically is known as either pre-seed or a friends and family, or a seed. I mean, to be fair, you can attribute whatever name you want to it, but it really just refers to the first amount of money where a founder is trying to build effectively a research project to see whether they can actually turn it into a business. And that is the community that I look after.

Okay, and then Obviously there's an element of needing to be at the right stage of your idea, but also needing to be the right person to build it. How can you assess that at such an early stage?

Um, well, that's, that's a very big question, I think, um, because loads of successful founders have been successful for different reasons. Um, some are really great at selling, uh, and I think that that is never a bad trait to have. As a sort of first principle of building a business. Others are technical, but are really good at recruiting. And so they know what they are good at, but they are deeply humble about what they're not good at. And so they are able to find the right people and get them excited about joining the journey as well. And I think if I had to find one sort of reductive way of understanding what makes a good founder at an early stage, probably the latter, which is, do they understand what skills they inherently don't have, um, and do they have the humility to go and seek out that help or seek out that support?

That's interesting. Yeah, I think— where do you think people are going wrong in, in that journey? Because I know a lot of young founders will see VC, they'll see the glamour, and, and they'll kind of try and build a company for that, right? Um, instead of really focusing on You can't really focus on experiencing a problem. But most great founders, especially early stage when it's your first company, the thing that really makes it stand out is your desire to want to do something about it, right? Where do you think some pitfalls are that students might not know about?

Yeah, I think that's a good question. I think particularly for your audience, where they might be assessing what a good opportunity looks like versus a not-so-good opportunity. And I think that the best explanation I have is that there are some founders that are passionate about solving a problem, um, and there are some passion— and there are some founders, sorry, that are just enamored by the concept of building a startup. Now, I wouldn't suspect if I was a graduate I would necessarily have the skills to be able to determine which one is which, but I think those companies that are building around a purpose or about— around building, um, a problem-solving business, they tend to stand out more, in my opinion. And it's sort of wrapped up in the DNA of everyone that works there. If you speak to people, they are— they don't find it difficult to articulate what they're doing and why they're doing it. That's probably a good litmus test. You know, speak to someone else in that company, see how long it takes them to articulate what they're doing and why they're doing it. And you're right, you know, there are people out there who are sort of playing the game, as it were. But there are many out there also who are really building revolutionary things. They may not be the most glamorous businesses to work for, at least at the, you know, in the earlier stages. But it's sort of, it's worth your while to seek out those kinds of opportunities when you're trying to think about joining an early-stage business.

You started your career in the corporate world at PwC.

I did, yeah.

Do you think that knowing the startup world now and the ecosystem, that you would still have done that? I know accounting, there's a lot of benefits to doing that, right? You get trained, like, uh, you know, you, you basically, once you're qualified, you're always going to have a career, right? But, you know, working for the company you do now and, you know, bringing on people, you know, graduates as well.

Yeah.

What would you have done now?

Yeah, so I was, I was really fortunate that my career sort of spanned a period of time where there was a transition happening. And I think that's why if anybody looks at my career arc, they would probably say that I've replicated that transition. I've sort of embodied that transition because I started in the corporate world. I then took an entrepreneurial journey in that corporate world to then create my own firm, um, you know, then have that firm acquired by the firm that I work at now, only to then sort of you know, in the most meta way, end up working with founders. Um, and so it's— I lived that life of transition where the corporate world was sort of the thing that everybody aspired to, to then sort of seeing the emergence of entrepreneurship, but then making that my corporate career, if that makes— if that makes sense. I think to your question, um, around would I have done the same thing now, um, It's hard to know. It's, you know, hindsight's sort of 20/20. Um, the startup ecosystem now I think is a place that everybody can build great careers. That was much more of a gamble in 2006-7 when I graduated. Um, a gamble that, you know, I certainly couldn't afford to take at that time. I don't think that the, um, I don't think starting in, working in startups now is you know, in the startup ecosystem at least, as much of a risk. I think how you go about it though, it definitely needs to be intentional. So, um, you know, and then it goes a little bit back to the— what we were talking about a little bit before. Um, you know, you can go and work with some really well-established startups that maybe really shouldn't even be called startups anymore, but, you know, businesses that were built within the last 10 years, they are pretty much corporate organizations right now, but they probably still have quite a lot of that entrepreneurial culture that you're looking for. Those are great training grounds to sort of pick up all of the skills of how a fast-moving business works. You know, maybe try and try your hand at different parts of that business to see what resonates with you, whether you're more of a marketing person, more of a finance person, more of a salesperson. And then maybe when you feel like you've got the experience to, you know, help somebody else with those things, you might decide to, you know, move further down the chain and go and work for an earlier stage business and be part of that journey from scratch, or maybe start your own business. Um, that, that sort of pathway is finding itself right now, where a little bit— where when I was at university, when I was at school, it's very obvious. You go to a good university, you get a good degree, you join a good grad scheme, you stay there for 10 years, and you basically make your life, right? And that was, that was the conveyor belt that everybody signed up to.

And that was what I was told at school, right?

And I think the equivalent conveyor equivalent conveyor belt is emerging now if you wanted the same sort of career arc in startups. I just don't think it's as well defined. And maybe, you know, businesses like Graduate Guide will do that. Is to say that, you know, where you used to want to go and work for a big professional services organization, now you should go and work for a big startup. Go and do these things at that big startup. You know, and I don't mean as big as Google and things like that, but there are plenty of other really well-funded, successful, profitable, revenue-generating businesses that have hundreds of employees just really great training grounds, right, for, for, for people to, um, go and learn the ropes.

Have you come across Daniel Priestley's idea of the entrepreneurship, uh, apprenticeship?

Yeah, yeah.

So yeah, I was looking at this quite a lot this week because it's something that I accidentally did but is now being coined as a term, right? Is that as much as I thought I was entrepreneurial and could be a founder, like, the concept of putting yourself out there as a founder at the age of 21. Yeah. You have to be pretty mad rickian to just say that you are one, right? And for me, The Graduate was this passion project. I never let anyone call it anything more than that, right? And so I was employee number 1 at a water filter company called Water2, and that's since gone on to exit to Bear Grylls. Major learnings there. And then I worked as head of events at a blockchain education company. Each one taught me very different qualities about myself. And like, I learned startups in completely different ways. But I bet you have a lot of people that are coming to you now that are like, no, I am a founder, I'm a founder, and they haven't done anything else.

Yeah.

How do you know when to lead someone down the path of, like, go work for startup, go see, you know, or at least like vet that opinion?

Yeah, I think, I think that it it boils down to that distinction we made earlier around people that want to build around a purpose versus people that just are enamored by the idea of entrepreneurship. Um, I think a lot of people confuse self-employment for entrepreneurship, is that they just say, I don't want to work for anyone.

Sure.

And then assume therefore that by default means they are an entrepreneur.

Lifestyle businesses, digital nomads.

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, people that are digital nomads or people that are freelancers people that contract at various different places, you know, they are the middle ground, right, between being an employee and being an entrepreneur. But being an entrepreneur is a very real thing, and being a founder is a very real and specific thing. And so I think the first question that some of these people that, you know, you asked me about need to understand is whether they are making that distinction clear. You know, not wanting to work for someone doesn't therefore de facto mean I am a founder. It means that you might just want to be self-employed. Um, and, and yet, you know, those that are really building around a passion and building around maybe a curiosity that they have or a specific insight that they have around a market, an opportunity— like, I would never go as far as to say go and work somewhere else first and learn the ropes because they have the, you know, that, that 1% of passion that most other people won't have, or maybe they have that 1% insight that nobody else will have, and that is the 1% that will be the edge as to why they will win. Um, because when you have a passionate founder that has a specific edge, the world kind of finds a way of coalescing around that person to— for the money to work, for other people to work. Um, and that's how you get some of the sort of really, you know, really great founders. Um, but yet someone that just says, you know, I want to try and figure out a way of working in entrepreneurship is probably needs a bit more work.

I like that term coalescing. Yeah, that's, uh, that's interesting because I think that is the key, especially at an early stage, right, is being self-aware enough to know what to look for and, and also being curious enough to, to ask the questions so that people can actually help you, right?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. I think, um, you know, it's, it's, you know, without getting too philosophical about it, I think that you know, this entrepreneurship thing, it had some— it has a little bit of a gravitational pull to it. Um, and to some extent, if the gravitational pull is not pulling in your direction, there's some introspection and some work that needs to be done. Um, you know, money tends to find its way to good opportunities. Um, and so I sometimes struggle with some founders that are consumed by the idea that if only, you know, a venture fund or an investor gave them an opportunity, they would build this fantastic business. If the, if the, if the opportunity was that fantastic and if they had done the requisite amount of work, there will be an investor out there for you. Um, and you know, that's not to disparage people that, you know, you know, ended up having to do 300 pitches before they got their investment. Yeah, they did the 300 pitches, right? That's probably the difference between them and someone that's sitting at home thinking, you know, well, why, why didn't it work out for me?

Yeah, it's still related to like mental bandwidth, right? Absolutely.

And you're like, yeah, having your personal life dark snored, all these kind of things. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so yeah, so I think that gravitational pull is a real thing. Um, the ecosystem, if you are working in a large startup hub, is pretty, um, pretty well defined and pretty easy to work your way around. Yeah, fair enough, if you're not living in a major startup, startup hub, then it's a little bit more difficult. Um, but I think, yeah, I think the world does kind of have a way of coalescing or gravitating towards good opportunities.

You wrote a book?

I did, yeah, inspired by Daniel Priestley actually, who convinced me to write it.

Oh well, there you go. Yeah, little Easter egg there. Um, yeah, okay, so it's all about giving your playbook as an entrepreneur, especially in financial world, but also just, you know, on the topics we've been speaking about. How much of a percentage does finances play in the success of a business?

Yeah, big question. Um, I think finance is a broad term, and so let's chunk it down a little bit. Inherently, why— the reason I wrote the book was because I felt that a lot of early-stage founders didn't have access to this information, right? Inherently, the tried and tested path is find a good accountant and give it all to them. But I think that in you know, in modern-day entrepreneurship, that's just like an inexcusable way of going about your business. Um, why? Uh, well, just because, because there, you know, the access to information is, is all there. Um, so much of how you build your business is rooted in the fundamental understanding of basic finance concepts. Um, and actually, the outsourcing of processes, um, in my opinion and this is someone that's coming from an accounting firm, it to a large extent atrophies or stunts your ability to build that muscle internally, or it delays the process of building that muscle internally, uh, which is something that you should aspire to.

So, um, both co-founders in the relationship— should everybody on an executive level have the same or a good understanding of finances?

Yeah, I mean, I think everyone on the executive level should have a good understanding of finances. Whether it's everyone's responsibility is another question. I think that, you know, intentionally working with external advisors insofar as, here is everything that I understand, here are the things that I don't understand, and here are the things that I don't want to understand, that spectrum basically helps you figure out what are things that can be outsourced or automated or et cetera, et cetera. But the reason that I wrote the book was that I had just found that there was such a big gap between maybe someone that was a founder as a graduate, versus someone that had been a founder, having worked at various places before and seeing how things were done. And the bridge from getting from this level of knowledge to that level of knowledge was just too expensive. And the problem with trialing your way through that process is you can end up making some pretty catastrophic mistakes. And so what I hope to do with the book was effectively, you know, in a short and quite simple read, say, here are some best practices around how you should be thinking about these core topics. Um, and it just saves you the hassle of having to do a lot of trial and error and making a lot of expensive mistakes.

That's a good point though. I mean, I'm going to take it back from purely finances, but more just as a founder or even just an individual in general.

Yeah.

Is, is there a way of really learning something before getting slapped in the face by the reality of the truth? It's something I've think about a lot. I think I just run around in circles with it because, yeah, you do just need to live a lot of them, right?

You do, yeah. And that's absolutely right. Um, however, it's, it's nice to know, you know, that there is a way of being able to find out what these things might end up being. Um, and therefore you're not completely flirting with, you know, being on the edge of a knife all the time. Um, you're right though, and to be fair, that's my main challenge as an early stage advisor is to try and get some founders to understand and appreciate concepts that they might think it's too early to think about. One of the, one of the sort of USPs we have in our tech and high growth team is that we are the only large accounting firm that will work with early stage founders all the way to the point that they may IPO or get an exit. And it's very rare for a professional services firm to be able to do both well. And my main challenge there is to sort of get a— if I'm talking to an early stage founder, let's say they're 22 years old, and I'm suddenly talking to them about, you know, international tax risk, and they're sitting there thinking, I don't even know if I can pay my salaries next month. It's quite a big gulf between where my mind is and where their mind is. But ultimately, you know, you do need to have an appreciation for the fact that you, you know, what you don't want to do is end up delaying some of these problems to the point where it's irreversible. And a lot of these getting slapped in the face moments unfortunately happen at the point of wanting to get acquired or at the point of wanting to raise money, which is the worst possible time to get slapped in the face. Yeah. Because you could just see all of your hard work evaporate in front of your eyes. And so it's a balance. Like, you know, we definitely don't want founders, you know, sacrificing all of the good work they should be doing and just worrying about finance. But it's at least being able to have access to resources where they can know, you know, where to look for this stuff if they need it.

Watching the founder go from the very beginning and not even having raised investment to exiting and, you know, changing their life, you must become pretty emotionally attached to their journey, right?

Yeah, for sure.

You must have seen so many amazing stories. Do you have a favorite?

I do have a favorite. I wish I could talk about it, um, and, you know, there are some that are currently circulating in the, in the press at the moment which, you know, are— everyone would know if I'd mentioned, um, but, you know, out of respect for them, we won't say who they are.

Sure.

But yeah, I mean, it is the— it's like the best part of the job, basically. And to be on, you know, in our vantage point where we were able to be part of so many of those journeys, it's just amazing. And, you know, again, I find that particularly gratifying because I'm working with them at the very earliest stages. So literally, you know, at the point at which, you know, we're talking in a coffee shop somewhere and then suddenly you see them raise a you know, multi-hundred million dollar round or some, you know, some something crazy like that. It's just the journey is insane. Um, but yeah, no, it is the most gratifying part of the job.

I have quite a lot of friends from UCL who have— I want to say fallen into, but they've picked accounting in the beginning because it was safe, right? But what you've been able to do with your career, and like you said, you, you embody this change that's happened, but there is this new possibility of what you can do of an accounting qualification. But I feel like because you're so deep in that world, you probably aren't able to step back and really realize the potential of what you could do, right?

Yeah, possibly. Um, that— I think so. I think, you know, I can only speak for myself, but I assume that most people go into doing it, go into doing an accounting qualification because they want to keep their options as wide as possible. And the great thing about large professional services firms, including Cooper Parry, is that you can then use that experience to experiment with many different sectors also. So if you want to work with— in tech and high growth, or if you want to work for the not-for-profit sector, and, you know, all of these things are experiences that you can get within the four walls of the organization that you work in. And I think that's a really unique, um, a really unique benefit that large professional services organizations will always have. Is the ability for people to sort of tourist their way around different things before they really want to understand what it is that they do. Um, but to be honest, I think a lot of people that make a career in professional services, they also don't love the monotony of just working on one thing.

Yeah.

And that's a really inherent part of their character, that they like change and they like to see different things and they like new challenges. Not to say there won't be new challenges in doing one thing, but sometimes if you are working on just one idea or one business or one project or whatever, it can be, it can be a little bit suffocating for a certain type of personality. Um, so yeah, so I agree, I agree with your, your point in that, you know, it's hard to be able to step out and see what else might be, uh, but at the same time there are just as many opportunities to leverage.

I think one of the, uh, best places that hasn't really made its way down to our generation. Yeah, yeah. To find out what you can do in a career and actually meet the people that can make it happen is LinkedIn, right?

Yeah, right.

Why we're here together today. And you've built a sizable following on LinkedIn. Why? As a first question. Yeah. But then also, what— how can people actually do it in their own way? Because you have a very specific style and you deliver a very specific value. But I think for a lot of people who are like whether they're a founder or a student just looking to build their career, they just don't know where to start or why they're doing it, right?

Yeah, and, you know, and I think that's a great point, uh, and I would always encourage people to, to leverage LinkedIn or other tools. Um, you know, to your question as to why I built, or I build, um, and, and sort of post on LinkedIn, it's because I increasingly had a, a sort of problem from the perspective that there are so many early-stage founders out there that I would like to connect with or talk to or advise or help impart some of the things that I'm seeing in my daily work, um, that at, you know, just between me and my team, there's no way we could get across all of them, or at least even a small percentage of them, by just filling up meeting slots in our diary.

Yeah.

Um, and, you know, whilst, you know, I do have a pretty packed diary during the week, just again meeting new founders. Um, the world is becoming an increasingly smaller place, um, and there are many founders for whom, you know, either we could work with in a professional capacity, or I could just lend advice to from some of the things that I'm seeing in my day job that might be sat in the Middle East or in Africa or in South America. And, you know, how could I amplify my voice to get to those founders in the best possible way. And for me, I found LinkedIn to be the best way to do that. And the connections and the people that I've met through there, it's just been incredible. Much like yourself, I imagine. It's the— I sort of try and live a life of maximizing the surface area of serendipity. And LinkedIn feels like a really sort of exponential way of maximizing that surface area. Um, so yeah, so it really is just an amplification, I guess, of what I do in my day job, uh, on a level that I wouldn't otherwise be able to do.

It's such a refreshing and rational perspective because, you know, it's one of those ones where, you know, it is what you make of it. And that is just social media in general, but really like LinkedIn. Um, and when I first went on there as a student, it was successful people congratulating other successful people. It was emojis flying everywhere.

Yeah.

And it was, you know, AI-generated messages being flung away. And, and I think, yeah, like, you can't— I mean, I do have one question because I, I'm going into the LinkedIn offices on Thursday. Okay, nice. Into the head of careers there. Nice. Which is exciting.

Yeah.

I want to ask her real questions. Sure. You know, that we want the answers.

Of course. Yeah.

Is there something you wish was changed about LinkedIn, or do you think they could do better? And if so, what is that and how?

Um, I think— well, I haven't really given this too much thought, to be honest. Um, I, I think that there is definitely probably, um, something around the curation of what you see that could be better, maybe. I think that— but I think that they're genuinely trying to work on that.

Yeah.

Um, you know, sometimes, as you say, you may end up just seeing a lot of the same stuff. And, you know, they have created, you know, the unfollow button or the mute button if you don't want to see certain things, or whatever the case may be. But, um, they're, you know— but there is a, there is a sort of thread of the things that I'm interested in seeing. And I don't know how you do it technologically, but, uh, it would be interesting to see if they are developing the curation of that feed, uh, in a slightly more thoughtful way. Um, yeah, look, I think you're right. It, you know, it is what you make it. And there are a lot of people on there, and, you know, some might say that some of my content is, is, is similar in that way. But I, you know, I'm not trying in everything that I post to necessarily change the world or people's opinions. I'm just trying to present one idea, um, that I think, oh, I've— that I've come across in my day, in my daily work, or whatever the case may be, um, and ultimately really just trying to connect with people. Um, so I, you know, I, I don't like to— some people just like, just like to project. Um, I like to try and engage, um, which is a slightly different way of going about it.

Yeah.

Um, I'm infinitely happy for— to converse with people and, you know, for people to get in touch with me and take the conversations off the platform, etc. Um, So yeah, that doesn't really answer your question very well, but yeah, I think that's— it's something around that.

Yeah, I think, you know, just while he was talking, and I haven't put that much thought to it, and so, um, this is useful for me, sure, given that it's in 2 days. But, um, I think, yeah, it's that tailoring to the right demographic. Yeah, from like quicker, right, from, from inception on the platform. Yeah, how can you be tailored to your stage you are in your career.

Exactly.

Yeah, is something that I'll maybe probe on. Um, but you have been a wonderful guest, and I have my final question to you. I'm making a conscious effort in 2025 to really like hone in on my interviewing style. I was getting a bit comfortable, so yeah, yeah, I felt like I could almost do it in my sleep. So sure, I'm not going to ask the, the same question, but it's going to be similar. Normally I ask, what is your definition of success and how has it changed since the beginning of your career? Yeah, I want to know from you what you think that founders should consider success and how can they look at it in a, in a healthy way.

Yeah, that's a, that's a big question, um, but actually one that I think about a lot, uh, I guess maybe just because I'm at an age now where you become a little bit more introspective, but Um, I think it will— the answer will be different for founders at different stages. Uh, but I do fundamentally believe— so I'm not going to answer your question directly.

Okay.

I'm going to jump straight to how I think people can approach answering this question for themselves. Um, a playbook? No, no, I'm done with playbooks. Um, I, um, what I would say is I would get— I would ask for everyone, including me, to be very literal and intentional about writing down your goals and what success looks like for you.

Not typing.

No, write them down. Yeah. And the reason for that, and I'm just as guilty of that as anybody else, is that if you write them down and you keep adding to them and you keep amending them or whatever the case ends up being, it actually gives you a chance of acknowledging when you've achieved them. Otherwise, you just end up in this constant pushing the goalposts back further and further and further, and you end up in a situation which basically just never, never incorporates gratitude or the ability to just pause on what you have achieved. And I say that because when I was 21 years old, 22 years old, my, my goals were very different to what they are today. I now have children. I, um, I have a large team. When I was 21, I, I just wanted to survive and make it, right? And so I wouldn't— I don't even have the same brain, um, as that person. Um, but you know, when, when you are intentional about stating that I just want to be known at 21 years old, my— literally my state— I'm happy to say my stated goal was I just want to be able to earn enough, um, to be able to support family. I got married quite young. And that was such a visceral goal that it was easy for me to recognize when it happened. Um, from that point onwards, my goals have been entirely flaky, right? And, um, and I've just not fully taken the time. So I'm just as much on the receiving end of this advice as I am on as giving it. Um, but I will say, rather than trying to define what founder success should be, All I would say is founders should take the time to write down what success means for them.

Love it. So thanks so much for coming on.

No worries, thanks for having me, man.