Kabir Bali, Co-Founder @ Jumpstart

Kabir, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you for having me.

If you could just start off by telling us a little bit about your career so far and the company that you co-founded, Jumpstart.

Yeah, sure. So I graduated back in 2016, um, I had no idea what to do. I looked what everyone else was doing and everyone seemed to be applying for law jobs, banking, or consulting. I thought law sounded like so boring I couldn't even bear to even apply. Banking sounded like pretty boring as well. Consulting seemed like the least worst of them, so I just applied for that. I mean, I literally just applied for all the same firms everyone else was doing. I ended up spending 4 years at Monitor Deloitte. So Monitor's a kind of strategy group that was bought out by Deloitte, quite similar to sort of EY buying out Parthenon and stuff like that. So it was— I mean, it'd be quite easy for me to sort of just like completely like shit all over consulting. I don't know if I can swear on this, sorry. But you know, there were definitely some benefits from right? Like, I think I work with some really smart people, which I think is really important, whatever you end up doing. I work with some cool clients as well. But I think I ultimately found it quite intellectually dishonest. Um, I still remember there was one time when we were working with a big media client who I can't mention the name of, um, and we were sort of advising them on how they should be like running new ventures and like building up new revenue streams and being very innovative. And I looked around the room and it was just like a load of people like me, basically, who'd gone to a good university and then gone off and done consulting, no entrepreneurial skills whatsoever. There's so much talk in consulting about digital transformation and being innovative and all this stuff. And you build these slide decks, and they all look wonderful, but no one has actually done it. No one's actually built a product. No one's actually made stuff happen. No one's ever actually had to ship something out there and get it tested. So I found that quite frustrating because you feel like you're not dealing with the real thing. And yeah, I think secondly, I found it quite slow. There's a route, you know, you join as a consultant, you become a senior consultant, you become a manager, and it's like very laid out for you, which I think is quite— some people quite like. I find it kind of disheartening because you just sort of almost know, like, if you stay there, where you're going to be in 5 years or 6 years or 7 years. Um, and yeah, I think I found that quite frustrating. So kind of made me think, is there better options out there? Me and my co-founder Matthew both looking for jobs in the startup world, found it a nightmare, like really difficult to find jobs out there. We did a lot of talking to friends, and, you know, luckily we had good networks, so that did help. We found the whole thing was run through word of mouth, despite the startup world growing massively. Like, investment has grown so much over the last 5 or 6 years, the number of companies has grown over the last 5 or 6 years as well, but it's just so hard to get into that world. And so we thought, rather than kind of try and hack through ourselves, why not create something that can, you know, actually solve that problem? So provide a route for graduates or people who are young in their career to get into the startup world but still get some of those structured benefits of, you know, being part of a cohort that I was at Deloitte as well, which was great, you know, with 10, 15 other people, you get training, you get support, you get mentorship, you know, provide all that other stuff and help people into that world. So that was kind of, you know, where Jumpstart came about, I guess, back in, I think it was around January 2020, we came up with the very basic concept. So yeah, I'm going to pause there because I'm not sure if I've answered your question or not.

Yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, and I'll just start by saying I love Jumpstart, I love what it can do for students like us, and I don't think there's anything quite like it, so yeah, well done on that. Thanks. Yeah, I'm sort of curious, so you're in Deloitte and you have these feelings about, you know, wanting to do something in the startup world, but have you, you know, for starters, always felt a bit entrepreneurial, or did that come in your time at Deloitte? And then also, just how long was the gap between having that initial first thought, I want to change, to actually going ahead and doing it?

Yeah, so I think the first thing I would say is I would not describe myself as entrepreneurial then or now. I'm quite small c conservative, I would say. I'm from like an— my parents are both Indian. They're traditional background of like, you make sure you get a proper job. And I think part of that has always been there. Even with Jumpstart, for example, I was very reticent to quit my job or do anything until we'd spoken to lots of people. So Matthew and I spoke to lots of graduates, students. We did things like putting fake landing pages on student pages and seeing the number of clicks we'd get. We talked to loads of startups. We must have spoken to about 100-odd startups probably before we even thought about it, launching the idea. So we had lots of validation. So I didn't really feel like it was a risk at that point. So I was always trying to de-risk it at every stage, which I think is sometimes quite a good thing, to be honest. I think you get these like serial entrepreneurs, um, and I always find that quite an odd phrase because it's just like, so you just go around just like making up random ideas that don't have a problem that needs to be solved? Like, I find that a very odd concept. Like, for me entrepreneurship. I don't really like the phrase, but it's, it's really about understanding like problems that people have, really articulating them well, and then finding solutions. Whereas I think people think it's like coming out with crazy ideas and it's like Steve Jobs, you know, being very charismatic and kind of having this like persona that's an entrepreneur. I don't think that's really what it's about. Um, so I think for me it's like being very clear about what the problem is you're trying to solve and then spending a lot of time understanding it better and then coming up with some ideas and and testing them. Um, so I don't think I've ever been very entrepreneurial. I wouldn't describe myself as particularly entrepreneurial now. I'm quite careful and logical and quite sort of, I'd say, considered about what I do. Um, and I'd say my co-founder is probably slightly more what you traditionally call entrepreneurial. So I think we balance each other out a little bit. Um, so I think that how I approach it, and again, that's also how we approached it when we were working on the ideas. So we, we came up with the idea in about January or the area we wanted to work in, and it was only until like April that we actually kind of quit our jobs. And even then we took sabbatical, so time off for a short period of time, and then we quit fully kind of actually towards the end of 2020. So it was quite like carefully orchestrated.

Yeah, I find it fascinating what you're saying about sort of de-risking entrepreneurship, and you know, that's something in your career before, you know, you've gone to Oxford, you've gone to the Deloitte, which in our universities that's signs of ultimate success, that's the pinnacle for some people and what they can do, whether you think that or not, that is what we've— and then startups are notoriously hard to control the success of it. You start it and you said you've been trying to gear it so there's less risk in doing it, but how have you found that adapting from somewhere where it's much more in your control to achieve success to now it's very much up to you and there's no one telling you what to do?

Yeah, so I think the first thing I would say is that this is, this is the like least risky time to be an entrepreneur. Like, I think you can actually do a hell of a lot like with an idea and a concept without actually quitting your job, or whilst doing it whilst having a job. If you think about it, like 40 years ago, if you wanted to start a business, you basically had to go raise a load of money, pay for some servers, like hire a CTO, like hire some office space. Like, you'd have to do all of that, which costs a lot of money, and you'd basically have to raise a lot of money. You have to quit whatever you're doing and do that full time. Now, you know, I can literally set up a a G Suite account tomorrow. It'll cost me £10 a month to set up a website domain name. I can set up a free website on, you know, um, Square— Squarespace or whatever. You can do all of that without spending more than like £30 or £40 a month. You can go and test users. You can use things like Notion and even Notion AI, and you can create landing page. Like, you can do so much without actually quitting your job. So I think anyone who actually wants to be an entrepreneur or has an idea, like, I'd really encourage you to like do as much as you can without spending any money, because actually there's a lot you can do. And, you know, there's a lot you can do to test ideas out with users and that sort of thing as well. So that's the first thing I'd say. Secondly, in terms of, like, transitioning from more, more kind of— to actually answer your question, transitioning from a very structured to an unstructured environment, it's obviously quite tricky. But I think if you're, like, if you're ambitious and you want to, like, solve problems, like, you quickly get bored by the kind of stasis of a consulting firm where, like, Basically, if I didn't turn up for work for a month, like, it wouldn't really matter. Like, it literally wouldn't. Like, when I left, for example, like, it just didn't matter. Like, it was, you know, people are nice and everything, I'm not having a go at them, but like, just the way the company is set up, like, your impact is so small. So like, I think after a while, if you are quite ambitious, you just naturally want to do something else. Like, most of my peers in my year group, like, in consulting, have all left and gone off and done other things, generally working in startups or tech, because you can just have more impact there. So I think if you have those instincts, like, you just you want to get out of that world because, you know, ultimately there just is a real impact limit to the impact you can have, and you want to apply the skills that you've learned there to something where you can actually make a difference. And obviously it's more risky because it's less, it's less stable, um, you're less sure of revenue and customers, but at the same time, like, you can actually see what you're doing each day and how it's making a difference, for good or for worse as well. Um, yeah.

And sort of whilst you weren't able to deliver that impact that you really wanted to whilst at consulting Would you say your time at Deloitte did prepare you for the startup world, and did it equip you with the right skills to tackle that challenge?

Actually, on the first one, because I really hate like phrases that people use like making an impact, and I've just said it, which I hate myself for doing. What I mean by that is not necessarily like changing the world or like, you know, solving cancer. It's just more just like my action, actions that I do have some sort of consequence. Like, I think it's quite depressing when you do that, when you just think terrible or you just think great And either way, like, maybe there's a little bit of impact in terms of like the project gets pushed forward by a few days or whatever, but like when that's limited, it's just like I find that quite frustrating. So I'm not talking about impact in like a massively glorified sense, I just mean like in a day-to-day like consequent cause and effect kind of way. But yeah, to answer your question, so I think there was— there definitely are like things that help for me a little bit. So I think it helps you think in a very structured way, it helps you organize your if you're dealing with a very complex situation, break it down into certain parts. But I would say that actually you can get that from lots of things. And actually, I've seen a lot of our grads working who are now working in startups, who've started their career there, and they develop those skills working in those companies with the right founders and mentors in place. And obviously we help with that as well. So I don't think it's not like exclusive to consulting that you can get those things. I think you can get them in other, other ways. But like, I did, I did get them through consulting. And I said the other thing is working for smart people. I think like most of the stuff that I learned was like sitting next to people and like learning. I remember my first project, that there was a guy who was a really like good financial modeler, like he was an absolute whiz. I just sat there just like watching him and just like seeing what he did and like annoying him and asking him questions. And that's kind of how I learned. And so if you're with smart people, which you generally are, to be honest, in a lot of these firms, then you pick up. And if you're inquisitive yourself, you will pick up those things. And it's also why I encourage people who are working to to try and go into the office as much as they can when they first start, because I know it's maybe not the most popular thing to say, and I appreciate work-life balance and flexibility is important, but you don't really learn those things in your room sitting on Zoom. You need to kind of be there and soak it in. So basically, yes, I did learn things through consulting, but I would say that you can get those things in other ways as well now that you wouldn't be able to do before.

You mentioned your co-founder earlier. Matthew, and you said that he was naturally more entrepreneurial, but he also, he was at BCG before, right? So you both came from a consulting background.

Yeah, yeah.

I'm interested in the delegation of responsibility within your company. Like, so he might have more entrepreneurial vision, whatever, but how do you actually work out who does what and make sure there's the most efficient allocation of your time?

Yes, I mean, the first thing I'd say is I've actually known him since I was 12, so we know each other a very long time. So That helps and hinders in some ways, but in terms of allocation of work, it's quite intuitive, like we've known each other for a long time. So we split our roles very clearly. So I work— if you think of our business, it's like a platform, and I should probably explain what Jumpstart does in a second as well. But essentially, we have our graduates or our applicants, and then we have our startups, and then we have the program that binds them together. So Matthew basically looks after all the startup-related activities, and I look after all of the applicant-related activities and the program side of things. I probably do more of that with his, obviously, support as well. So that's kind of how we split our activities. So his job is more of what you would call like business development or sales, whereas mine is more kind of around operations. So that's, that's kind of broadly how we split it. Obviously we talk about everything like our strategy and the team side of things, but to be honest, it's like, it's pretty like demarcated. If anything, we should probably be more integrated in how we work. But like, yeah, I think it's actually not that much of a problem for us. And that was just how we started initially, and that's kind of how it's grown. So yeah.

Yeah, and you've moved from a team of 2 to a team of 10 now.

Yeah, 8, but we will be 10 quite soon.

Yeah, so you've said how you and Matthew have delegated responsibility. How would you then bring people on and make sure they're adding the most to the company that they can into your team?

Yeah, I mean, because we are a— I mean, because of what we do, we have a belief that giving young people a chance. Like, if people have a lot of potential, rather than hiring someone who's got, you know, loads and loads of experience, bringing them in to do a certain job, our belief is that hiring people with a bit less experience but have loads and loads of potential and giving them that, giving that chance to grow is actually much better because A) they're more motivated, quite frankly, because if they're coming into a situation where they're being able to basically expand their skill set and grow and progress you're much more likely motivated than someone who's coming almost horizontally, right? Because you're really— you can see that kind of pathway going forward. So that's the first reason. And secondly, I just think that, like, it's— so it's— I mean, frankly, it's cheaper and it's a better return on investment from our point of view. But I think from my side as well, I think sometimes people who don't have that experience but are keen to learn actually end up doing better anyway. I mean, just to give an example, One of our— the people that we hired, Caitlin, so she joined on Matthew's side of the company, so on the kind of startup side, and she'd done maybe a year or two of experience post-university, but pretty junior, and she's just— she's been incredible. Like, I mean, all of our staff have been incredible, but I think just to use her as an example, she's now running one of our cohorts. So we do graduates, generalists, and we also do a commercial cohort, so people working in sales roles in startups, and she's running that whole process, like, literally from end to end, you know, making sure we have the right applications, making sure we're selecting on the right criteria, making sure we have all the startups in place, organizing the program itself. Like, she's doing all of that and she's, you know, a couple years out of uni. I mean, that's the sort of thing you'd be expecting someone with 5 or 6 or maybe even 7 or 8 years experience. And I think, you know, that's just because we've given her the chance to grow and we've seen her potential and we've been like, okay, no, just because you're young doesn't mean you, you shouldn't do this. Like, go off and do it. Like, you can, you can really— we know you've got the skills to do it. And I think we do that with all of our employees as well, you know. Ellie, who we brought in, she kind of came in as our marketing sort of support, so to help out a more senior marketing person, and now she's kind of grown into a marketing lead role where she's taken on a lot more responsibility. So for us, it's actually like you basically find people who are great and have potential and give them the chance to grow and make mistakes, and ultimately they will, you know, they will be able to do it. Yeah, I love that.

And I'm just sort of curious, when you say find people that are great, what does that look like in practice?

Yeah, so I mean, Again, it's probably— I probably should explain like exactly what Jumpstart does at some point as well, but we— for us hiring young people in startups, there are really kind of, I'd say, 3 things that are really important, and we test these quite carefully. One is proactivity. So in a startup, you're not— it's not like joining a consulting firm where you turn up on day 1, it's like these are the, these are the 3 things you're doing today and these are 3 things tomorrow, blah blah. It's like, no, this is the overall goal of the company. It's ambiguous, but we don't know how to get there, and you're going to have to work it out yourself. So you have to kind of be the sort of person that always creates their own work. So we look for people who've shown that in their own kind of careers today. So whether it's university, starting their own podcast, or, you know, having their own side hustle, or running a society, or doing a load of extracurricular stuff, that is the kind of thing was like, okay, this person is— likes to kind of create their own work and do things themselves and not be asked to do things. They know what to do themselves. So that's the first thing. Second is around— what I would say is just like, I think being able to be logical and structure things is really important in a startup, particularly because they're particularly unlogical places and can be quite sort of chaotic. And actually having the ability to take all the chaos and order it and really think through things methodically is really important, probably even more so than in a corporate where things are already kind of set up for you. And the third one is what's often— again, I don't like the phrase, but kind of what we'd often be called growth mindset, which I think is basically just like, are you the sort of person that either, you know, a non-growth mindset is I give you some feedback on how you're not very good and you take that very badly and you get upset and push back, or are you a growth mindset person, which is here's some feedback, do better, and you absolutely take it on the chin and you kind of improve and you take it as a kind of a learning opportunity and get better the next time. So it's people who have that mindset. So those three things— proactivity, kind of logical thinking, and that kind of growth mindset— is what we look for. And it's interesting because actually a lot of people who are really smart and are very accomplished often don't have that growth mindset because they're so like, you know, I've done everything brilliantly and I've always got A*s and first-class degrees, I could never possibly be bad at anything. So actually finding those people is quite hard because they're kind of naturally not very humble or not very naturally very keen to necessarily be told they're wrong. So it's a challenge, but that's what we look for. And once you find those three things, those people will fly and really do well.

Yeah, it's fascinating because there's a lot of people I know that say, oh, they want to go into consulting or banking or whatever and get that office experience where they're sort of taught, you know, and then they go into startups where, you know, startups don't normally have as much sort of cash to spend on students and have to train them and then get them to a working environment. So your job is to if you're selecting people straight out of university to sort of look past that and find that before they've even got it, you know, know people that will be able to adapt to it quickly. Yeah, so just sort of moving on to a little bit more about you. At Oxford, you know, you were one of these people that, these A-star students, or, you know, you did history.

Maybe.

But it is a very competitive university and a very competitive culture. How did you find that whole experience, and how has that helped or hindered you now?

Yeah, I think, I mean, it's a difficult one. I think there were some great things about it, like I think the tutorial system is a very, it is really like having to spend basically a week where you have to learn on a subject, so history, like I'm just taking an example, like 8th century Carolingian Empire, which I didn't know anything about, read 10 essays, 10 books on it, write an essay on it, and then try and Somehow put your case forward to an expert who's been doing it for 50 years. Like, that does teach you how to, like, A, bullshit, to be honest, which is quite a useful skill, and B, how to kind of like basically take on lots of knowledge very quickly and assimilate it. So I think those are all— but those are things that everyone knows about, to be honest. I think the thing I found very frustrating about it is it's a very, like, I would say almost complacent place though. I think from an entrepreneurial innovation point of view. Nothing has really changed. I remember actually, I don't want to call people out, but having some quite conversations with the career services there. And I would say there wasn't necessarily, I'll just put it politely, a keenness to explore entrepreneurial opportunities for students. It was very much, no, no, our graduates must go off and do this and that. That's what's happened for the last 40 years. And that's how we do things here. And I think that permeates the university a little bit. And I do think they'll be in trouble if they don't really kind of think about like how the world of work is changing. And you know, people aren't just going off to the big corporate programs. All these startups are doing things in different ways. I mean, ChatGPT, like things are changing, right? Like if you're not kind of on the ball about what's going on in terms of the workplace and you think everything's going to be the same, everyone's going to be doing PowerPoint and Excel and going into banking and consulting, like I'm not so sure that's going to be the case anymore. So I think I found that complacency quite frustrating. And I don't know, I mean, I was there a long time ago, so maybe it has changed a little bit, but that's something I've I found frustrating about it, albeit obviously there were the good things about it or the helpful things about it.

You said sort of the complacency that was within the Careers Service, but—

Yeah, again, I don't want to sort of be too harsh on that, but I think it's probably just the UK top universities in general. To be honest, I'm sure that's the case in lots of other top universities because they're at the top, they have great people. That's what they're used to. That's what they're used to, right? Necessarily criticism of one or the other.

Yeah, I wonder, sort of outside of that, were you able to find sort of a community of like-minded entrepreneurial, uh, individuals? I know maybe at that stage of your career you weren't really thinking about it.

I was really not. I was like the most like uncreative person. Like, you know, I went into consulting. All I wanted to do was go into consulting. I didn't even think about startups. I didn't even know what a startup was, to be completely honest with you. Like, I mean, I'd be completely lying if I said I was doing anything entrepreneurial there. You know, I did love— I played quite a lot of sport and stuff like that, but like I I mean, I'd just be lying if I claimed any of that.

And were you still able to create a network that you've been able to draw on in these later years or not?

Yeah, I have. I think that would be unfair for me to say otherwise. And I think there are, when we look at it now, a lot of founders who have been to those kind of universities. And obviously, that does help. We haven't raised any money ourselves. But I know that people who have raised money, if you've been to the right institutions, the right universities, it does help. I think that's kind of a shame, to be honest, because that's not really how you should be allocating capital. But, um, that is— that tends to be how it works. So yeah, it definitely probably has— it has helped. But I think, like, there's plenty of— if you try and rely on that, like, you're, you're completely screwed. Like, you really need to just work hard and get a great product that people like and talk to lots of users. And yes, there are doors that get open for you, but generally they only get open once you've done something quite good or people have heard you've done something quite well and then they want to reach out to you. They never want to reach out to you at the start when you've done nothing, right? Like, so yeah, it's, it has helped to some extent, but I think you still need a bit of a spark for people to even be interested in chatting to you.

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Absolutely. And you've spoken about creating that great product.

Yeah.

Do we want to touch on sort of what is, what is Jumpstart, as you said, maybe more of a deep dive into the actual process, what applicants can expect from that process?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know how you went from great product to Jumpstart. I'm not sure. I definitely wouldn't describe this as a great product. We've got a lot of work to to do. Um, but yeah, I mean, I'm happy to talk through it briefly. So, uh, in terms of what we do, we're basically a program to help people into the startup world. As I said at the start, we run lots of different programs now. So we have a kind of graduate program. We used to focus explicitly on kind of fresh graduates. It's probably more like people with sort of 0 to kind of 1, 2 years experience. So we do— it is a bit broad there. Uh, we then have a Switchers program, which is kind of meant for people more senior who want to transition from corporates into startups, um, a bit like how Matthew and myself were back in the day. And then we have a specific one for, uh, commercial, um, kind of graduates and early careers people, so people wanting to go into commercial roles. So there are 3 programs you run. They all have kind of the same structure. So the structure is twofold. First part is helping you get a job, and the second part is helping you kind of on the job. So in terms of the first part, it's like a 4-week process. Um, so the first week, once you've selected the cohort, is what we call the Spotlight Week. And I think this is my favorite week of the whole programme. This is where you essentially hear from 50 founders who are all hiring for particular roles, and you basically get a crash course into the startup world. I mean, you could know nothing about startups or AI or e-commerce or climate tech, and by the end of that week, you'll have heard from all these founders in those fields, and you will be— I wouldn't say an expert, obviously, but pretty well immersed in it. You then select the top 3 to 4 that you really like the sound of, having spoken to the founder, having heard from them. Before you interview there, we have some training. So the training is really designed to help you prepare for startup interviews and case studies, which are quite specific. So we actually get alumni to come in and basically run mock interviews and grill you all, which can be quite daunting, but I think is basically the best way to practice anything. I think what I find frustrating about training is often it's just like you read stuff and you read a load of pages or watch a load of videos, but you don't actually get to practice it. So actually practicing interviews and case studies is what we focus on. Then there's a few weeks of interviewing with the startups. So we support you with that as well and help you with negotiations and all that sort of stuff. And then once, once you do get an offer— so not everyone— it's worth saying it's not a guaranteed job. Not everyone will get an offer. Most people do who go through the program, but it's not guaranteed. And in terms of support as well, actually, if you don't get a job the first time around, you can join another cohort without any questions asked. But then, yeah, second phase of the program, once you've got a role secured, is where the kind of more long-term support comes in. So again, there are three parts to this, and we are working more and more to make it more structured, but it's broadly 3 areas. The first is around training, so providing ongoing training, sort of courses and also individual sessions that we run. So it can be things like, you know, how to negotiate your salary, for example, or kind of be more hard skills like how to run analysis and projections that we do as well. Then there's more around the kind of mentorship side of things. So we now have a really good network of people in the startup world through the program So we basically have a system where you can sign up and take on a mentor who's working in a similar field or role to yourself with obviously more experience. And then there's the third part, which is the community side of things. So that's basically running events. So last summer, we did a big summer party on a boat where we had a band and a free bar and everything, which is great. And yeah, what I like about those events is that actually everyone we have through our cohorts, they're all pretty entrepreneurial. They're all pretty interesting, which is great. And we also have specific— networking groups within that, so if you're in a particular role or particular industry, you can join that, that kind of sector. And we also have a Slack group which people use as well, and we're developing a lot. That's just the start, there's a lot more things you want to do, but that's kind of how the program fits together as a whole.

Yeah, yeah. And I think for any students listening, they should definitely check out and see what it can offer. And I, I really appreciate the honesty that you have spoken about, yeah, route into entrepreneurship and your whole career so far. But it's interesting having had someone who was 19 and founded a multi-million-pound company dropping out of university, and then also having Tessa, the founder of Oleo, who didn't start it until much, much later and did a very long corporate career. There's no one route into it. There's no one type of person. And they also both had different motivations for why they did it. But I think one thing that I've noticed as a common theme is that you have to have the right intention and the right idea when you're starting it. So for you, it was very clear. You couldn't even find the startup that was right for you when you wanted to leave Deloitte. But you found what was wrong, and then you started it. And obviously, it's paid off. Yeah, I want to dive a little bit more into when you were looking for those jobs. Those startup jobs while you were in your consulting career. What did that actually look like? Because you have a section in Jumpstart for people converting, switching careers. For those kind of people, what are the challenges they face?

I mean, it didn't go very well, hence why we started Jumpstart. I mean, I didn't think I was— I wasn't as— so Matthew, actually, he was looking for ages, and he really found it hard. I was looking for a bit, and I was like, this is a bit difficult, and then I kind of gave up, and then that's when we started my Jumpstart. I didn't look super hard, so again, I'll be honest about that. But yeah, I think I think the difficult thing for people at that stage is you— it's so much of it is trust. Like, you don't really— people don't trust recruiters. Like, people don't really like recruiters. I'm saying that as someone who works in the industry, honestly. I know it's true, people really don't like them. And you end up just trusting kind of your friends or people you know. And so you end up doing a lot of things through word of mouth, which is great. And that's obviously, you know, a major way through which jobs get done and taken, but it's not very A, it's not very scalable. B, it's not particularly diverse because you end up just hiring your mates. And you do see this, the startup world is famously not very diverse. And I think, I don't want to get into the moral argument there, but I think just in terms of a space where innovation is important, by definition, if you have people from different backgrounds and different points of view, that's going to give you a competitive advantage, even if you don't believe in or you're not that bothered about diversity per se. If any industry needs diversity in terms of ideas and thoughts, it's is the startup world. So yeah, I think basically it's really tough and word of mouth becomes a default, and that leads to those, yeah, slightly suboptimal outcomes.

Yeah, and one thing that isn't really talked about at university but is what gets, you know, appreciated most when you're applying to jobs is this concept of just having done loads and doing stuff. And, you know, you went into Deloitte, and maybe you talk about, like, your time at Oxford, there was no entrepreneurial spirit there or whatever. But what do you look for for people in Jumpstart? Like, how would you recommend them to just start doing things? Because from my experience at university, doing things is the only thing that's paid off for me. You know, actually just thinking about things for ages did nothing. Like, just doing.

Yeah, I mean, I think I agree. I think just like whatever you, whatever you have any idea about doing, just go out and try it. And if it's a failure, like, it literally doesn't matter. Like, I think What I, what I actually often quite like is people who've tried to start their own business while at university, and it's like, obviously inevitably it's failed because like that's just probably just going to happen anyway. But like when you're 18, like the odds are against you, but like the fact that you've gone out and done that, I think is just like a testament to someone's character. And again, testament to that growth mindset thing I mentioned earlier. Like if you're so perfect that you don't think you could ever— that you don't want to fail, then you'll never try anything particularly outside the box because you're like, no, I have to continue doing all the being brilliant and getting A*s and first-class degrees. I think the academic— I don't know whether it's changed, but I know that like speaking to people who went to university ages ago, like went to Oxford ages ago, like, oh yeah, it's become way more academic now, like everyone's like just wants to get a first-class degree, which I think is like— I definitely saw that a little bit, like there was a bit of a lack of people wanting to do other things, particularly in the college I was at, which is kind of a shame because actually no one really cares that you got a first. Like if you've got a 2:1 and you've started your own podcast and and you've, you know, worked, you've done a load of charity work, you've helped out on your JCR student committee, you've been running social media for this other society, like any— for a startup anyway, I can't speak for corporates because that might not always be the case— that is like, that's great, right? You've done all this other stuff, um, you know, even things like, you know, you've spent your summer working for a founder because you emailed them or you messaged them on LinkedIn, you did a bit of free— that sort of stuff is That route I think is really important, like more so than, you know, you've got an internship at this corporate which is, you know, you got through a friend of a friend, like that's, you know, fine, but like generally that stuff is not you going out and doing it yourself. So it's like, what are the things that you've done yourself that you tried? It doesn't matter if they fail, they went terribly, and they probably will go terribly, just like do whatever you can to try it. And like, you know, I think that is— it doesn't have— it can be societies, it can be charity, it can be selling things on Depop. It doesn't really matter what it is, just something a bit interesting, something interesting about you that isn't just like, oh, my dissertation, I did this, or my degree, I did this. Yeah, everyone has to do a degree. That's not particularly interesting to me or anyone else. So yeah, just something else, something out there.

Yeah, so we sort of covered what you might look for in a student. And the other side of your company is for startups, right? And I saw in another interview that actually You interestingly said when you first started, you didn't really take much care about the side of the startups. You were mainly focused on students, right? So now, how are you approaching getting startups, convincing them that your program is something they should be involved with, and what can they get out of it if there are any startups looking to upscale their team?

Yeah, I think, I mean, basically our proposition to startups can be boiled down to two things. One is, if you're a startup, right, and you've raised loads of money, you've got investors breathing down your neck and you need to hire people fast. Like, you need to get them involved, you need to be selling, you need to be really showing that growth. And as a startup, you don't have that brand name, right? You don't have a, you know, even forgetting, you know, your Big Four or your consulting firms, you don't have the brand name of a Monzo or a Revolut or an Olio, right? They, at least even that's at that smaller stage, they still have got brand recognition. And so if you're at a seed or Series A stage, you don't have that. And so It's very hard to attract people, and it just takes a lot of time to find people. So we basically short-circuit that process, and through our program, we can attract people that, frankly, those startups wouldn't be able to do through their own recruiting because they just don't have the means. They don't have the brand name. So that's part of it, so quality of people. Second is time. So as I mentioned, these startups don't have loads of time on their side. They often have lots of money because they've raised money. They don't have time. And so rather than having to sift through thousands of applications, we've now got a process which is— it's still not 100% at all. But pretty— has a pretty good track record of finding great people, which we're testing and iterating all the time. And so rather than relying on 1,000 CVs that you apply to come through LinkedIn, you get a shortlist of people who are come through our cohort who have actually selected you from a list around 40 companies having heard you speak in a spotlight. So they're already very, very invested in what you're doing. So you've got a very qualified shortlist of people of a caliber that you wouldn't get otherwise. So I mean, We think that's a fairly convincing proposition for startups. And in terms of how we find them, I mean, word of mouth has been massive. You know, we probably— 70 to 80% of our startups come through word of mouth, so inbound, which is great. We also have very good relationships with some VCs, some of the top VCs in Europe and the UK, and they obviously have a portfolio of companies that they'll share our kind of programs with. So that's kind of the main routes. And I think We were very careful at the start to have smaller cohorts but with really unbelievably high quality, which meant that once people did find our graduates, they were very happy and they talked about us to their other founders. The startup world is very word-of-mouth driven, right? People chatting in bars or coffee networking events or chatting with their VCs or posting on Slack or whatever, that's kind of how this world works. So once you get that word-of-mouth engine going, it can be really, really powerful, more so than any other form of cold calling or cold emailing, I think.

Yeah, well, the fact that you've managed to get that word-of-mouth distribution of—

It takes time.

It's very telling of that you're doing a good job, right? And so that's why a startup would be keen to join Jumpstart. So you've talked about what you look for in students. I'm sort of curious about why you seem to attract top Russell Group university applicants to Jumpstart. And how have you managed to do that? Because, you know, like you said, everyone looks for Deloitte, everyone looks for these big companies, especially when they're such high-taining people. And how have you convinced these people to take a gamble on Jumpstart?

I think we, again, I think word of mouth is again really powerful. Like, we've done, I mean, in terms of how we get out applicants, right? There are basically 3 main routes. One is word of mouth and referrals. The second is through, um, basically LinkedIn, so LinkedIn posting and LinkedIn Jobs that we, that we advertise. And then there's kind of external jobs boards and career services that we go through. And I'd say that word of mouth and referrals make up maybe 15-20% of our application pool, but actually they are— tend to be the highest quality applicants. They end up making sometimes even half of our cohort composition. So you can see that there's a big ROI there. So we, we take that very seriously. So our actual applicants who go through our program are our biggest advocates. We don't tell them to do anything, but often they're the ones who are— you know, I was speaking to one of our guys the other day and he's like, it's lovely, but every time I go to like go back to Bristol or whatever uni they're at, you know, I go on a house party and 10 people are asking me like, how do I get onto Jumpstart? How do I do this? So like, um, I think they become They've become advocates for us, and we're very grateful for the work that they do. But I think they do it— I think I'm big on their behalf, obviously— because they have actually had a great time through the program, and they've learned a lot, and they've enjoyed their jobs and stuff like that. So I think ultimately, you probably know, you're more likely to trust someone who's just left university as to what, you know, they're up to and what they're saying than someone who's like, you know, maybe in his 30s, like from a big company, telling you you should join, you know, Deloitte or McKinsey or whatever it's called. So that trust between people who are a similar age, I think, has really helped us. And yeah, luckily, people have really enjoyed the program and are happy to talk about it.

Yeah, and you've got this position that you can do within Jumpstart called a brand ambassador. So for students or anyone looking to make some extra money on the side of their studies or whatever it is, would you say that comes under the word of mouth, or is that—

Yeah, it's quite new, so it's definitely part of that. Whole thing. It's definitely a new thing, so it's not particularly well established, I'd say. Yeah, basically it's a program that we have at university. So obviously one of the issues that we find is that a lot of people come up to us and say, oh, how do I— I'm in my second year, my first year, and like, how do I get involved in the startup world? And actually, internships are a really hard thing for startups to do, because if you think about it, you're a small company, someone comes on for 3 months, you know, it takes them maybe 1-2 months to actually even get to a point where they're providing value. And as soon as they're providing value, they suddenly leave, right? It's a very difficult— that's easy in a big company when you've got lots of resources. In a startup, it's quite hard. They don't tend to hire interns or summer interns. And so, you know, it's a bit frustrating because everyone comes to us and says, we want to work in a startup, do you do internships? And we have to say, no, sorry, we don't. So we're trying to come up with something a little bit different. So part of it is, you know, helping spread the word about Jumpstart, but also, you know, if you're an ambassador, you can obviously talk to Matthew and myself about startups, and if we do get any ad hoc opportunities, we can share it with you. Obviously no promises or anything like that. We also run events for our— and you can be part of our Slack group as well, where you'll get to kind of interact with some of our graduates who are going through that process as well. And obviously, as I said, you get to practice a lot of those entrepreneurial things like setting up events. We've had a few events, I think, with King's— sorry, I'm allowed to say that about myself— podcast, but lots of other universities as well. People have set up entrepreneurial events, and we've had some of our grads come back and speak. And so it's a great chance to practice those skills, that stuff I mentioned, like doing stuff, doing things that are not in your usual remit. So yeah, it's a new program. You can sign up on our website. And yeah, we're still working out the exact details of it, but it's hopefully quite exciting and a chance for you to get somewhat of a taste of the startup world.

And you sort of spoken there about how startups may be a bit against the idea of an intern, as they need to wait for these interns to add value and they leave. And I think you previously also touched on the fact that startups often want these fresh grads to actually stay on for a longer period of time once they join than maybe you would at a big corporate. So how often do your— how long do your grads normally stay at their first placement? Maybe when they do leave, where are those sort of places that they end up going?

Yeah, so I mean, just to be clear, they're not placements. They're all full-time roles. So we'd expect them to stay for a long— but I don't— I mean, to be honest, I don't know if they actually stay longer at startups than big corporates. I think we did some research on this. I think the average graduate stays in their first job for like a year and a half. So I think that's— and I don't think that's startup. I think that's just across the board in the UK. It's a little bit hard for us to say how long they stay because We've only been around for about 2 years, so I'd be kind of— if I made up some stat around like 90% are still in their jobs, that would be a bit disingenuous of me, to be honest. But yeah, I mean, a lot of them are still— most of them are still in their jobs. Some of them have left. Sometimes it's just, to be quite honest, maybe not the right fit. I think a startup is an environment which isn't for everyone. If you aren't— there's a lot of chaos, and some people like that, some people just really don't like that. And that's not a good or a bad thing. That's just how it is. So sometimes it's just not the right fit, and I think that's, that's fine. And some of them have gone off and worked in corporates, and I think that's— we've helped though to some degree because they've worked out that what they're not— what they don't like, and therefore that's helped them work out what they do like. So I don't have any like qualms about mentioning that. I think it's really important, like, you know, sometimes we get it wrong. A lot of them have— and some of them have gone off to join some of the accelerator programs out there, which has been really exciting. So I don't know if you've heard of any of them, but companies like Antler and Zinc, which are basically quite prestigious programmes where you apply, it's very competitive, and they kind of help you find a co-founder and get investment for an idea. So that's quite exciting for us because, you know, they're using their skills they've learned in a startup to then actually launch their own entrepreneurship journey. So yeah, those are some of the things they've gone on to. A few of them have gone on to work in kind of VC, so obviously stay in the startup world but on the investment side as well. Yeah, so I think— and a lot of them, as I say, are still working in their startups, but we hope that they stay within the startup ecosystem because we think that's actually where the exciting things are happening. But yeah, that doesn't always work out.

Yeah, I think there might be some sort of students out there considering corporate or joining a program like Jumpstart, and they might be thinking, oh, maybe I can go into the corporate world and later join a startup. But if they go down the startup route, find out it's not for them, how sort of easily do you see that transition back into the corporate world, and are there those transferable skills that you can bring across and are valued by certain employers?

Yeah, like, I think for sure. So I think 30 years ago, I'd say no, there probably wouldn't be. I think now, definitely. So if you think about a lot of these— I'm going to take consulting as an example. So if you look at companies like BCG and McKinsey and Deloitte as well, when I was there, a lot of the trend has been kind of how do we create companies, like build new ventures. And new venture building and the kind of Lean Startup method has become this, like, Bible which is ironic because none of them have actually ever created their own startups. They're all consultants. But anyway, this has become a new thing, right? How do corporates want to become more like startups? They want to become more agile and flexible and want to run new ventures. And so a lot of these companies have now got these venturing units. So I think at BCG, they have BCG Digital Ventures. At Monitor, we had an innovation ventures group. And all of them have these new offshoots that have come. And they've all discovered, lo and behold, that actually, your traditional management consultant is maybe not the best person to be running a venture, a new venture. Venture studio at a big corporate, and they've actually been starting to hire a lot of people who are from the startup world because, yeah, lo and behold, those are the people who've actually built stuff and actually created things and done things. So we've seen a lot of people, not necessarily through Jumpstart, but, you know, through the wider ecosystem, having worked in startups and actually going into those positions in companies like BCG Digital Ventures. So actually, in some ways, having that startup experience and having built and shipped product and actually created stuff puts you in a better position for those kind of roles than, than a more traditional consultant. And again, with things like venture capital, traditionally obviously mainly hire from banks and top-tier consultancies, but actually if you're someone who's spent years in an operational or in a startup, you have a pretty good idea of what makes a startup work and what doesn't, and you probably have a perspective on an investment that someone who's just spent years building massive financial models at JPMorgan maybe doesn't have. So again, I think there are actually lots of benefits that you can bring that someone from a more traditional background won't necessarily have that can benefit, you know, these companies that are trying to be more flexible and innovative and, you know, using Lean Startup and all that sort of stuff.

Absolutely, I think it's great that those companies now beginning to identify and sort of look into that talent pool, but for those that do sort of stay within that ecosystem, startup ecosystem, I think Maybe there may be some, uh, sort of questions around what does their, this progression, what does their future look like at a corporate? You've got a very set out structure. What, what may that look like in a startup career?

Yeah, look, I mean, it would take me hours for me to kind of map that out, and I think part of what we're doing is trying to— that pathway doesn't exist, and we want to almost become the company that helps not make, map it ourselves, but help kind define what those pathways look like. In terms of our graduates, that's probably where I'll start because that's the easiest. A lot of them go into these kind of founder associate roles. That's the main role that we focus on. And that's essentially like the right-hand person of the founder, so helping them with fundraising, helping them grow the operations of the team, helping them with hiring, just like basically almost like doing all the projects that they're working on with them. So I think, A, that's a great taster if you want to become a founder yourself because you kind of almost see it from the right-hand side, and then you can go off and do it yourself. So that's one route for sure. Another maybe kind of common one is the chief of staff. So that's a role that's become very— I mean, it's initially kind of a military political, like a political role that has existed for a very long time. It's now become quite popular within the kind of startup and the scale-up world. So a lot of our grads would potentially go from a founder associate role into like a chief of staff role at maybe a slightly bigger company. Like a scale-up or somewhere like a Monzo or Revolut. Maybe that's a little bit bigger than we would expect, but, you know, in that kind of slightly larger range. And there you're basically doing similar sort of things but with higher stakes, so like helping run teams, helping build out teams, maybe even dealing with investors, you know, doing founder associate type stuff but at the level above. I think at that point there's so many things you can go into. So people go often go into things like product roles. So obviously, given that you're working cross-functionally with the founder, with the tech team, with the customer team, you're well placed to understand how you can bring those all together in a product role. So that's a very, I'd say, quite a common one as well. And anything operational, so operation managers, operation leads, COOs is another one that I'm not saying that our grads are going into because it's only been 2 years, but there are pathways that are definitely out there for people with those backgrounds. And then obviously investing is another one as well. Yeah.

Yeah, there's a question we like to ask all of our guests, and having got to know you a bit, um, off camera or off mic, I was like, yeah, yeah, um, and listen to you speak so far, I don't feel like you're probably going to give like the— it will make— I don't feel like you're one for motivational quotes and, you know, wishy-washy stuff, but we like to ask what your definition of success is and, and how that may have changed from your time at Oxford, your time at Deloitte, and what it is now.

Yeah, I mean, God, it was so boring. But I mean, I literally was— I would have said to you, when I was in my final university, it would be like, get a first. Like, that's the only thing that matters. Like, get a first, work for McKinsey, like, go and do an MBA. Like, I mean, I'm kind of embarrassed saying that now, but that's almost certainly what I define as success. Because the problem is with the British schooling system is you're just taught to like, do— it's like, get A*s, get a first, like, get a great job. Like, it's just like you have to tick, tick off all these things, and it's almost easy, but you have to worry about actually thinking about what you want to do because that's potentially just like too difficult, so let's just like keep going down this pathway. So that's what I would have said like 4 or 5 years ago. I think what I— it's quite funny because sometimes people say to me like, oh, it must be so rewarding like helping people into these great jobs. And like, it's obviously nice, like I really do like love working with our grads and stuff, but that's not really what makes me like excited, and it's not the main thing that drives me. Because if I would, then we would just be a recruiter and that would that'll be fine. But I think for me, I love like the feeling of solving a problem, and it's quite hard to define. But when you, when you've identified a particular issue, and it can be a small thing like with our training, for example, at the moment trying to work on a few things and basically trying things out, experimenting, seeing what happens. And when you see that click and you see the results come in and they're strong, that is just like, that basically is just what gets me going. And I, that's, it's quite hard to explain it, but when you know something has worked and you get the feedback that it's that it's that you've made a change and it's made a difference. Like, you just want— it's almost like a drug. You want to kind of keep working towards that. So that's the way I define success myself. And I always try not to look too far ahead because I think often with these things, like, people say, oh, you've got to have a vision and all this stuff. And it's so funny because I guarantee you, when Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook, he didn't start with a vision to connect all the world's people. Like, that's obviously not what happened. He was like, there's this problem where, like, people on campus can't connect with each other. Like, I think I can solve it with this piece of code. And it worked, and then it was the next thing, and then it was the next thing. I think that's, that's probably— that's how I like to see it. So it's like, what's the next problem I'm looking to solve? Can I solve it? Can I tweak it? Yeah, great. What's the next thing? What's the next thing? Next thing. So I look at it like that. That's how I look at success.

Yeah, definitely. You know, that's, uh, I'm very appreciative that you were so honest like you have been throughout the whole episode about it and not just said something generic, because, you know, that's what we look for. You know, I feel like I think some people will resonate with other things, but for the people that do have that sort of same thought process as you, that'll be great to hear. And just to sort of wrap up the episode, is there any sort of overarching message you want students or young people to take from this podcast? And also, if there are people sort of teetering on the edge of, oh, should I go into the corporate world and play it safe, or should I go into startup world, what's your final message to them?

Yeah, so let me start with that. So I think that in itself is almost like a false dichotomy. So I think if you're, you're young, you're 21, you're just about to leave university, like, it can often feel like this massive thing, like, do I go down startups or corporates? Like, it's your first job, like, you will— whatever you end up doing, you'll be doing something else in 3 years' time. So like, don't worry about it too much. And actually, whatever you end up doing, you'll be learning. My one piece of advice would be, in terms of risk and reward, right, like, ultimately, if you take more risks particularly early in your career, you're probably going to learn more, but then there's obviously going to be that higher risk level, right? I think when you're young and you don't have things, you know, you may do, but it's probably less likely that you have a family, you have a mortgage, you have those things. You can probably afford to take that higher risk that will then give you that high level of learning. And then as you go, you know, later in your life, you can probably— you probably need to dial down the risk a little bit more. So yeah, the startup world probably is a bit more risky. It's probably less risky than people think, to be honest, particularly if you're in a venture-backed company that has a bit more runway. But you'll, you'll probably learn a bit more. And even if the company fails and doesn't exist in 2 years' time, you'll learn a hell of a lot more before that through that failure, of the journey of failure, than going into a steady corporate job where things are pretty, you know, pretty solid and pretty kind of staid, I'd say. So that'd be my advice. But, you know, there's also— it's also, you know, whatever you do, you'll learn from it as well. It's not the end of the world if you end up and you don't enjoy what you're doing. Um, in terms of my other general piece of advice, I think It's kind of linked to the point I was saying around problem solving. I think there's this real, like, sort of zeitgeist today that, you know, everyone should be thinking big and everyone should be mission-driven. You know, this phrase 'mission-driven' and 'change the world,' and obviously that's a great thing, but ultimately the world doesn't change because you tell everyone that you're interested in climate change and you want to, you know, save the planet from global warming. You've got to find a specific problem for a specific set of people that isn't being solved and try and solve that first, and then you can move on to into the bigger things. I think the argument, the sort of ethos that we need to change the world and social impact is great, but you really need to start small first. I think that might sound quite almost unmotivational, but I think actually that's actually how things have changed, right? Like small-scale, pragmatic, one at a time rather than everything at once. So I think that'd be my main finishing point, I think.

Kabir, thanks so much for coming on. Really enjoyed this episode.

Thank you.

No worries. Thanks for having me.