Moments: Season 1's Highlights

your upwards trajectory. Um, it's only going up at the moment. You're very busy these days. Are you finding— are you almost daunted by the future in terms of how busy you might become considering the lovely trajectory? The events you're getting booked are getting bigger and bigger. Um, what's your plan, or do you have one?

You know, that's a really good question, like really good question. Um, yeah, I'm trying to find the balance at the minute of like not burning out. It's not just me, like it's a lot of my friends as well. When we do see each other, I'm like, babe, are you okay? Like, are you eating? Are you sleeping? Um, because you know, these 2 AM sets and playing after midnight, and you don't necessarily get home straight away. So a lot of it, um, you do need to make sure that like you're rested and you're recuperating. So yeah, I've been trying to find a balance with that. So, um, in terms of being a bit worried, yes, absolutely. I don't have the best health. Um, it takes me a lot to sort of recover from the shows, like, even physically, but yeah, like, mentally as well. I remember there was one point, um, when the show started becoming more regular, and I would just, like, come home or go back to the hotel, wherever I was, and I would just sit on the floor and cry because I was just so overwhelmed. But, um, Yeah, I think the way that it's sort of going now, I'm playing at least 4 shows a month, and some of them might be international. So I am a little bit worried, I'm not gonna lie. I feel like a very small fish in a very big pond. Um, but obviously I don't have a plan B. This is sort of— I'm just gonna try and give it 100, try and go full speed for as long as I can. I think as long as I can do it, I know that my heart is pure and my intentions are its best, and I'm making a positive impact on people, and I'm making people happy. You know, something that really motivates me as well is when I see these people in the club and they come up to me, or people DM me. Like, I very much do reply to the quote-unquote fans, and just hearing people say like, this mix means so much to me, or your high-energy mix motivated me to get out of bed— like, that's why I do it. It's another reason. Like, I imagine those people that are going to hear it and come to the shows and stuff, so that makes it worthwhile. But yeah, I think, um, I'm gonna try and just do as much as I can whilst maintaining my health and my happiness. It's a very sort of, um, it's a very sort of sensitive ecosystem, you know. If one of them goes, it's sort of— they all sort of rely on each other, do you know what I mean?

Definitely. Yeah, and if diversity inclusion is something that's very important to you as a company, I imagine something else that is very important is sustainability, given the nature of your company. Why is that so important to you? And how important do you think it is for all future founders to have that in mind whenever they're starting anything, as you know, for their mission statement to be sustainability oriented?

I mean, I just can't be more frank about this. The climate crisis is enormous. Things are way worse than we have collectively woken up to, and quite literally the fate of humanity is sort of on the cards. And I really passionately believe there's nothing more important that we need to work on. I also believe that the sustainability revolution will make the digital revolution and the industrial revolution before it— will make both of those seem like walk in the park. You know, the Industrial Revolution took place over centuries. We're going to have to completely reinvent absolutely every part of our work and our lives, and we're going to have to do that in decades, not centuries. So I believe that there will be no business within the next 10 years, say, that unless they have profit with purpose, um, at their core, unless they are well on the way to being truly sustainable, I believe they will lose the license to exist. Society will no longer tolerate businesses that are extracting profits at the expense of people and planet.

Yeah, definitely. And it's important for everyone to stay educated. What about yourself though, in terms of Oleo? You had this sort of light, lightbulb moment in a way in 2015, but was this— did the sustainability come with that? And if so, did you know about the problem as much? Or did that come later, knowing that you could solve that?

Or not solve that?

So, yeah, so I can remember at university learning about climate change and global warming and all those sorts of things. But then I sort of went out into the business world after that and largely forgot about it all because it just was not being considered or discussed anywhere as part of mainstream business or lifestyle or culture. Thankfully, that has started to change really quite rapidly, I'd say over the past 2 years, really. But certainly for me, when I founded OLIO, I had that experience with not wanting to throw away food. The first thing my co-founder Sasha and I did was to research the problem of food waste, and that was what then took me on my sustainability journey. So with the problem of food waste, we discovered that globally, 1/3 of all the food we produce each year gets thrown away. Which is worth over a trillion US dollars. Alongside that, we have 800 million people who go to bed hungry every night, who could be fed on a quarter of the food we waste in the Western world. And the environmental impacts of all that food waste is absolutely devastating. If it were to be a country, food waste would be the third largest source of greenhouse gas emissions after the USA and China. And that's because a landmass larger than China is used every year to grow food that's never eaten. So that was obviously a hugely sort of shocking experience. It then opened my eyes to the concept of, I guess, kind of waste more broadly, the climate crisis more broadly. And I'm now absolutely convinced that in addition to having the climate crisis, which broadly is sort of discussed about in terms of sort of a carbon problem, we have two other equally pressing crises that need to be addressed. We have the biodiversity crisis. So, you know, we have basically destroyed and driven to extinction, roughly kind of 70% of, um, of other species. Uh, and then we have the resource depletion crisis. So at the moment, humanity is consuming resources as if we have 1.75 planets. And so Earth Overshoot Day is on the 29th of July, and so that's the day in the year in which we've used all the resources the Earth can replenish in a year. So the current status quo is clearly unsustainable, and This is something that myself and Sasha, we've really kind of committed our lives to addressing and changing. And that's why, as we've been on our, our own personal journeys of learning about the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, the resource depletion crisis, learning about sustainability more broadly, that's why the OLIO remit and proposition has extended beyond just food waste. So we now connect people with their neighbours so that they can give away other household items as well, and they can also lend and borrow everyday items instead of buying them brand new. Because the reality is we don't all need a cat carrier and camping chairs and disco balls and air mattresses. We need to be lending and borrowing things instead of buying things, and we need to be using the resources that already exist in our local community. So yeah, it's been quite a journey. And then on a personal level with my family. I've spent the past 5 years trying to dramatically reduce our footprint on the planet, trying to lead an increasingly zero waste lifestyle, which has really transformed the way we eat, the way we shop, where we live. But the great news is it has made us healthier, wealthier, and happier.

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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 delight, which in our universities, that's signs of, you know, 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 know. You started, and, and, you know, you said you've been trying to gear it so there's less risk in doing it, but like, how have you found that, you know, adapting from somewhere where it's much more in your control to achieve success, to like now it's like 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 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 a job, or 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 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 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 like 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's 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.

Yeah.

Yeah, and in those high-value restaurants, one of the things that happened there was that Bella Hadid was pictured using that, and obviously that's great publicity. What did you think about that when it actually happened, and what have you learnt from that promotion that you got from it in terms of how it can help develop your business?

Um, I went— when it happened, I remember going to my phone and seeing like the messages. Um, I smiled and I sort of just put my phone down because I thought, okay, I didn't— I actually didn't know who she was. I knew she— I saw she had like a million followers, so I was like, that's cool. I didn't know who Bella Hadid was. I couldn't name like a supermodel. Um, I was like, okay, that's cool. And then I saw my friends later that day, and they were like, wow, this is like the best thing you've ever done. And I was like, no, the best thing I've done was I secured this restaurant deal with a restaurant you've never heard of around half the world, which should bring in much more revenue and clear sort of tangible benefits. But consumers and people don't care about the internals of a business if they see Bella Hadid with your product. That's a great thing. So in retrospect, it's something I'm proud of, and it's certainly something we've really used to its fullest capacity. Like, she has no commercial relationship with Gelco at all, and she didn't even like mention our name. She just happened to take a photo and the product was with her. So in retrospect, it's one of the things I'm proud of. And I guess it's like clout, which actually does matter in consumer brands. But yeah, it's kind of like PR. Business owners know none of PR is real. That's not to say it's fake, but it's just a distortion of reality. What real businesses are based on are P&Ls and balance sheets and this sort of thing, not if you're in Forbes or if Bella Hadid has your product. So it's nice, but it's just not, it's not real.

Yeah, as mentioned before, I mean, a lot of problems we have are because we compare ourselves to one another, and social media, other factors have exacerbated that, and going to university. But maybe what are some advice you can give to love oneself and to be happy with yourself? And maybe even practical tips in terms of reinforcing that?

I mean, I'd probably, um, move more towards sort of trying to accept oneself and, and support oneself rather than necessarily— I don't think we can always love ourselves. It's complex. And, you know, sometimes I might be frustrated with myself or a bit disappointed with myself, and maybe that's okay, but Probably the best thing I would say is sort of if you can try to treat yourself like you treat a good friend, that's probably a good way forward. And often that's a quick sort of shortcut because you can think about in any situation, what would I say to my friends? And often we have kind of a really good instinct, you know, and, you know, that allows for us being a bit frustrated with a friend or annoyed with a friend. And, you know, I suppose it's a bit more realistic than wanting to love ourselves or to be happy all the time, because again, I think in this, this world that we all live in, maybe that's kind of, that's unrealistic and can get us into problems if we're expecting to be happy.

Entrepreneurship is just one of the experiences you can talk about when you're going into an interview, and albeit a great one, but you've also done a lot of other experience, you know, be it Spring Weeks or internships. What do you think is the importance of doing so much experience at university, and would you have done anything differently?

Okay, so I think like my— this will be my number one message of the whole podcast— is like, you should look, especially if you're in first year right now, you should look at your life and you should be thinking, how can I live my happiest version of my life while boosting my career or my CV or whatever it is at the same time? And so I think internships, especially spring internships, are the easiest way to add credibility to your CV, immediate credibility, because you'll have brand names on there. And I think people often make the mistake of in first year, especially at the top universities where spring weeks is like a culture there, of applying to the hardest ones that everyone's talking about. But I think actually applying to the ones that are slightly further off the beaten track mean that are actually also ones that you're more likely to get. They give you the same level of credibility, um, at a much lower cost to you, and also it's a much lower risk. So that's my number one, like, the first thing that I want to say. And the second thing is, in terms of like building yourself, um, through university, um, while also having a good time, I think like there are so many hacks you can put into your life that make your normal day-to-day life something that's suddenly appealing to a company. And so just running through like ideas of how to do that, I think if you analyse the things that you take pleasure in doing, you can actually very easily find ways to turn those into things that are gonna then be impressive to companies. So I, for example, play in a fivE-A-Side team every Tuesday evening, and LSE, the uni I'm at, doesn't have a fivE-A-Side football team. So if you were trying to boost your CV while doing exactly the same thing that you do already in your normal life, you would set up the LSE Fiverside football team, and you would just continue business as usual, and then suddenly be able to demonstrate leadership. And there are so many other things like that. So any case of like, if you go to the gym, you're better off instead of training 5 times a week in the gym and having no recognition outside of like a fantastic rig, you should be aiming to to have, um, some sort of sport that you can put that effort into, um, be it like the weightlifting club at your uni, because again, that demonstrates to people that you're doing it through the formal institutionalized channels, um, and I think that's like a, like a massively beneficial way to live your life at uni and get sort of, um, credit for things that potentially other people aren't getting credit for.

What do you think for students and young people now, like, you know, if this is the education system, what kind of things can they be doing to prepare themselves for the workforce better? You know, things to get them inspired and passionate about what they might be able to do in the future. And, and finally, what industries do you think, as somebody who's in a tech company right now, and, you know, you do a lot in sustainability and everything like that. What is the up-and-coming industries that people should be looking out for?

So two parts to that question. So first of all, what my advice is to play, you know, figure out what you're interested in and go play with it, kind of figure it out, right? If it's content creation, start a podcast as you guys have, or a YouTube channel or a TikTok channel or whatever you're drawn to, you know, start filming your gaming and put it on Twitch. You know, that's a, that's a creative discipline. If you're interested in a business, start one. Don't talk about it, just start one, right? It's super easy to do. It's 30 quid to register a company. You know, you can create a website in about 45 minutes using Squarespace or Wix, and just play with it and make the mistakes and sort of celebrate those mistakes when you make them. And many other examples. So the message there is to play. Think about what what draws you, what excites you, and play with it. You know, it's surprising where that will take you, and at the very minimum, it will give you something to talk about that's really a source of passion, a source of passion for you. In terms of the emerging industries or sort of areas, I did a post on this recently on LinkedIn. You know, I think there's— I'm a technology geek, so I come with that bias. Might interest the violinists and the painters amongst your audience, but I'm fascinated by a few emerging trends. You mentioned sustainability, so let me start there. I mean, it's an existential challenge that we have as humanity, and, you know, there's an emerging sector which is sort of around climate tech. Carbon sequestration, carbon storage. It's around alternative energy sources and energy security that's sort of come to the fore in rather tragic circumstances recently, whether that be battery or hydrogen or other forms of alternative greener energy, and many other sort of elements. There's hardware components, so how do you equip our power grids to cope with sustainable energy and much more. Unpredictable patterns of usage. So green tech, I think, is a really interesting thing. Quantum computing is definitely the next generation of the physical or physics side of computing. You know, we're still, even with the most powerful computers in the world, operating essentially with ones and zeros. So these little transistors that work in a binary way, and the idea of quantum computing is to detach from that sort of binary one or a zero and take advantage of the quantum physical principle of superposition, where you can be a one, a zero, or any kind of combination of that. And that turns out vastly increases the processing power of computers. We had an event that we declared in, I think it was October 2019, with a quantum computer called Sycamore with just, I think it was 56 qubits. These are the superposition sort of units that make them up, that solved a mathematical equation in 200 seconds that would have taken the most powerful supercomputer available today 10,000 years. So that gives you a sort of sense of the step change. It'll take some time for quantum computers to be stable and reliable enough to use in a practical way, but it's definitely a sort of quantum leap, forgive the pun. Artificial intelligence, you know, obviously that's in the public eye at the moment in a, in a big way. The computer science has been around for a long time and it's in the public consciousness only recently because, you know, we've got these little sort of beta tools that are being released, but they, you know, that style of computing has been around for some time. And I think computers just have this ability to spot patterns in data that human eye can't and won't. And the most exciting applications, in my opinion, are in the medical field where, you know, AI can be used, for example, to spot early signs of malignant tissue in female breasts, or to spot early signs of macular degeneration or diabetic retinopathy and stop people from going blind. You know, these are very meaningful. And more recently, protein folding, these 200 million basic building blocks of life whose shape is as important as their, their chemistry and amino acids to defining hitherto unsolved, uh, incurable diseases, right? So I think there's some really exciting applications there. I could go on, but I'll, I'll leave it at that.

Yeah, obviously it's, it's an ongoing thing throughout everyone's life, you know, this definition of success. Everyone sort of battles with what it is, but you Yeah. What is something you would have told yourself at university then about, you know, not just defining success, but generally just like how much you should sort of look forward into the future about, you know, your career? Because I think a lot of people sort of close off options, you know, they've got this degree which, let's be honest, they've usually picked because they're good at A-level without ever actually considering what else they could be good at. Yeah. What are some things that you think you'd tell yourself?

I think the first thing is just enjoy the experience more, like enjoy the present more. Like, you get university once, you get that experience once. Stop worrying too much about the future, like things will sort itself out. It might not be perfect in terms of the way you want it to go at the beginning, but you'll get there in the end, you'll get there eventually. So like, for me, you know, I was obsessed with getting this banking job. I didn't actually get it whilst I was at uni, it was only while after, once I, um, started in consulting that I reapplied for banking, and that was a painful experience, but I got there. But there's just so much more to enjoy about uni than, than like work. Like, you're like, if you really deep it, you're like 20 years old, right? 21 years old. You've got your whole life ahead of you to work.

You—

everyone will get there eventually. Like, everyone, you know, everyone, everyone has a different path. Some people get there really quickly, some people take a bit longer, but you kind of got to let things happen naturally. So I would say like enjoy the moment more, and it's something that I definitely didn't do at times. Like I used to get really upset about when I, you know, when things didn't go my way and I didn't get what I wanted, and I used to really let it get me down. But like reflecting back, I would just say enjoy the moment more. Like you're at uni once.

Yeah, and when you're trying those things And this is sort of a feeling that I have, maybe you can relate to it. There's a very fine line between I'm doing a lot, I'm trying a lot, and actually just feeling lost, like as in almost the more you try, especially if it doesn't come off, it can add to that confusion and feeling lost in your career. How do you sort of look at that? What do you think about this feeling of being lost and confusion in reflection, having graduated 3 or 4 years ago? How do you reflect on that whole graduation period?

Good question. I can't remember, I can't remember if this is Steve Jobs or Barack Obama, but someone said, someone said, um, and I'm also going to butcher the quote, so maybe I should just like claim it as my own at this point, um, but someone said it's so much easier to connect the dots looking backwards. I think you will feel lost Um, I don't now, but like for a good 2-3 years after I graduated, I felt completely lost. But I now look back at it and it makes sense. Like, I, I look back and I'm glad I did each of those things. And sure, it might have been hard to explain to my granny at the time, like, why I had a different job for the second time in a year, or was working on a different project for the third time that month, or whatever it was. But it will make sense looking back. And I think you just have to have than that. I don't, I don't think it will make full sense at the time.

When you think about the feeling of being lost, and, you know, you have this feeling, and maybe you're actually reflecting on it now, you saw it as a good thing, or maybe an opportunity to, like, dive into different things. And, and you also said that you didn't feel this sort of pressure to, like, go into this big consulting job, or, you know, maybe follow, like, somewhere like UCL. They really promote just, like, you know, getting that industry experience straight off the bat. Like, what actual tools and, like, practical things do you think students can be implementing at a younger age so that when they graduate they're doing something they're passionate about without that feeling of being lost?

Good question. Might not be such a practical tool, but definitely a good reminder. I think it's— there's a lot of comparison that happens when you graduate. And I think you have to be quite resilient to shoulder that. Um, I think, you know, there was a point when, when I was going through that accelerator, I had moved back in with my parents because I was earning peanuts. Like, quite literally didn't have to pay tax for a year because I was earning that little. Um, and like, it was mentally really hard. And I think one thing I did is just kind of block out the outside world, if that made sense, because I just wanted to, A, 100% focus on what I was building. And so 4 months— this was like beginning of 2021, so like lockdown 3 in the UK— for 4 months, just like basically went to this hole. And obviously like stayed in contact with close friends and had some really supportive people around me and all of that, but like really just avoided any chance for comparison. I think comparison is the thief of joy. Um, and so I like deleted social media and just like really tried to give my mental health the best chance of like, like making out okay. So it was a pretty, it was a pretty difficult time. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself and like was just like on a really slow path to burning out, which is one of the reasons that that startup didn't kind of like take off after the accelerator. Um, so yeah, I think like a tip would be just avoid that comparison at all costs, both you comparing yourself to others but other people putting that comparison on you. I remember so many discussions when I graduated of being like, oh, did you hear this person's got, you know, XYZ starting salary, as if that was the measure of success, or even that we were all aiming for whatever your individual measure of success was at the age of— I was, what, 20? Um, which I think is just kind of insane. But that's— I think a lot of people were stressed out, and so we were all just like comparing people's different plans to each other. So yeah, I don't know. I think if you— the, the danger to feeling lost when you graduate is that you will try and feel secure by picking a path that seems like the norm or seems like the best route to everyone else but isn't necessarily the best route for yourself, right? It would be very easy to be like, oh, okay, uh, I don't know what I want to do, but, but everyone was going into consulting, so maybe I should just do that because they seem to have it all really figured out. Um, and so maybe I should just, you know, go try and get into McKinsey or whatever it is. Um, and that would have been a mistake. So I think, yeah, just avoid comparison, both like from other people on you and also from yourself, and as I said, kind of give yourself permission to feel that way and just like move through it.

It's interesting to see you've obviously attributed a lot of your, a lot of your success to your own hard work and whatnot, but then a lot of it also to networking and having the right people around you. Advice to people our age, you know, 21, about to graduate, how do you get in those right circles What are some things people should be doing now to sort of develop that network?

Well, you know, as you said earlier, people are generally a lot nicer than you think they will be, firstly. So especially if you're passionate about your hobby or your, you know, your vacation, like whatever you want to do, don't be afraid to ask the questions. As I said earlier, you know, don't be afraid to like— anything which feels awkward is probably actually— there's a reason it's awkward, is because it's going to be the right thing to do, and actually people aren't gonna respond in the way you think they may. They're probably gonna be a lot nicer even if they do say no. Secondly, like, you've got to realize that with these opportunities, one thing coming your way opens up a whole, whole flood of other contacts. Like, I've now got, like, just— I was looking at it because we're trying to get a guest on another podcast next week and I was like, who should we get? And I was just flicking through old WhatsApp chats and I'm like, what, like, why the fuck do I have like just the most incredible people? Like, I haven't even really spoken to them. And that's all came from like one sort of little offering. So I think you shouldn't be scared to like put yourself out there firstly. But how do you get into the circle is the main question, right? Like, how do you get into that? It's a hard one because we've all got our own backgrounds. Like my mum's played a huge part in opening doors for me initially in the podcasting world, but then that didn't necessarily attribute to— I mean, gave me Andy Wilman, who, you know, is the top producer in Grand Tour. Suddenly through that, he said he really enjoyed what I did. He then gave me a little thing. I mean, I think it comes from like one opening. That's all you need. You need one opening and that can literally open— it doesn't have to be a network, which feels like, you know, Sometimes when you listen to a podcast like this and they go like, your network, you immediately think like, oh, they're constantly buzzing around you. Like, oh, they're a network of people who are always there. It's not true. Like, a network is like one contact to another to the next sometimes. So like, as soon as we had this one big South African guy on our pod, I just said to him like, mate, just give me this, give me Siya Khalisi's number, will you? And he's like, okay. And then Siya came on and I said, oh, Siya, can 'Could you give me, you know, fucking James McConaughey's number?' Whatever. Suddenly, before you know it, you've got like 40 people, and then you will do a good job with them, they then, you know, give you 40 more. Before you, you know, in my industry. So I think it's just like making sure that you, and also don't, like, it comes back, and you know, I said it earlier, and I've said it 1,000 times, don't be afraid to ask the question. If I was too scared to ask one of these guys for someone else, I wouldn't have had about 60 opportunities and they all come from the next. As soon as you milk one, milk the other, milk the other, milk the other, but make sure you treat them well and like they have a good time because they're the guys who like, you know, just open up the doors because they're the ones who know everyone and they may only know 3 people but those 3 know 4 and then suddenly if you're the one person who can keep going through their network then you're just gonna be okay.

I do history like you mentioned and you did something that doesn't directly lead into into what you want to do. So it's, you know, say you do medicine, you do law, it's, you're doing that and more than likely you're wanting to do that as a career. How do you balance at university finding what you want to do in the future, you know, be it internships or just researching what you want to do with the actual degree you're doing, getting both done? Because I feel like most people find that a challenge.

Yeah, oh definitely, that is a challenge. I think the one thing I didn't appreciate at university that I was told when I was at university is the time you have. I had a lot of time and I did waste, not waste, 'cause I had a great time and that is not to be undervalued or understated, but there was definitely, I could have got a better balance of having a good time, sport as well, and doing some stuff in the right times to have a better chance of a better career or whatever. So for me, I managed to do a lot of things in my summers. So I managed to do, even if it's a week experience, it's so worth doing. I've spoken to a lot of people, tried to help a lot of people post-university who've come out having not done anything in the summers, maybe done like some, you know, teaching tennis or working, you know, that's a terrible example, but you know, whatever their sport is or whatever. But they haven't got like a, they haven't done any career stuff or anything like that. And it's very difficult to then go, you know, whatever job you apply to, you need to show some form of skill or interest in something to be able to back yourself up. Whereas if you haven't done anything, it's very difficult.

Yeah.

So try and do, even if it's a week or 2 weeks, I did give context in my first year, I did a month at Deloitte. In Switzerland in their consulting practice. And then in second year, I did 2 months there. And the third year, I graduated and did startups. And then in the mid— and I also did a couple of weeks at a private equity company. And I mean, I was very fortunate and worked hard for those things. But I'm not the smartest bloke. And I just worked really hard and managed to get those opportunities. And the earlier you can do that, the better. And even yourself, doing this, as we sort of spoke about briefly, is a great thing to be doing because at least you're doing something. You can talk about it and you can relate it to jobs and it's useful for yourself and for other people.

You know, I can massively relate to what you're saying because even with something like this podcast, yeah, I would always have conversations with people about my career because I'm very interested in it. I want to find out what I want to do, but I would never record them. And why would I not put it out? And this isn't, you know, this is with no intention of getting a job, but it will look good on my CV because I'm doing something different. And, you know, it will be an interesting thing for someone to latch on to when they're reading your CV that doesn't just say, oh, you've done the internships, you've done this. Like, it's something that it doesn't— you know, you're a founder now and you have to hire people that you'd probably find something that stands out and you're like, oh, what's this? I'm going to look into this. Something interesting to look at on the CV compared to No, I think— Conventional route.

That's so true. So many CVs I get look the same and so many people have done, they've done an internship here, they've done a couple of internships, they did well in that, they did well at school and then it's like, well, that's great but I don't really care about that. Tell me about you. And then I stalk them on Instagram and I always do this and then I stalk them on TikTok and I stalk them on Instagram and they have to have both then they're like not the Bee Gee clientele. When in the most recent job I posted for, I like sort of, I've got it wrong hiring people quite a few times and so I was like, I know I really specifically want someone that can do all of these different things and when people, this is just like a top tip, but when people put, if they've got skills, instead of like listing your skills, put the app like cover photo, like the logo of the app because I then look at that and I'm like, oh, those are all the apps that I use and I don't wanna use, as in I want someone else to do them. And it's like, well, I can do these, do you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely.

And also making a CV visual is so important, like making sure your CV looks good. But also, another thing you can do, which is completely free, is just find out if you're good at everything nowadays, it's gonna have something to do with online. So like, make sure you're good at computers. You don't need to be like good at Excel, you don't need to be like an Excel whiz, but like, if you're doing something creative, dabble with graphics, like play with Canva and like the graphics apps and that's something. Or like even now you're about to go off and like edit this, you could be a radio producer, do you know what I mean? Like everything interlinks into each other.

If we sort of go back a little bit into what you just said about other people's biases of various of your characteristics. I mean, and how your view of yourself has changed in entrepreneurship and this journey that you're going on. How do you— that— how do you just like let or not let other people's biases affect how this like views yourself? Because obviously that's a bit of a challenge, um, or at least it seems as such.

So if you go look at the studies of biases that people have. Uh, female entrepreneurs are looked upon as risks and threat to their capital, to investors, and male entrepreneurs are looked as opportunity. So how investors or how people frame question— normal people as well— I've seen in LinkedIn comments of different people how if a female female entrepreneur is presenting her business, even in a comment, how other people react to them. And if a male entrepreneur is, um, pitching their business in a comment, in LinkedIn comments, and people react to them, right? Uh, an example of this would be, how will you acquire customers, right? If this is a good question. And how will you hold on to them, right? They're asking about go-to-market and etc. The investors are asking. So this is a question for female entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, whereas a female— a male entrepreneur is going to be asked questions like, so what's your go-to-market strategy and where are the opportunities? The first question is, how do you plan to acquire customers and how will you hold on to them? Is kind of obviously looking at you as a threat, as a risk, right? That it's going to be difficult for this person to acquire customers and it's going to be more expensive for them to hold on to their customers as well.

So it's critical.

It's critical. It's a prevention question. It's, it's a very preventive question to female founders. And these are like, you'll see them everywhere. And then if you ask that male founder, it's the same question in a different position, like, what's your go-to-market strategy and what are the opportunities? Right now you're going to be like, oh, I'm gonna have hired 10 people, I'm gonna pay them this much, I'm gonna put our name in front of these, these, these partnerships, and this is what we're expecting, and this is how we're going to grow this business. So, you know The questions that are put forward to you as well will also change the answer.

Yeah.

Even if you want to know the same thing. So those are the things that I have learned that happens. And yeah, we are very far, we are very far from training the investors or training people to see how do you get rid of that unconscious bias of looking at women as a risk to actually like look at them equally.

The company.

So everybody played games as a kid.

Yeah.

And it's something that, you know, I'm passionate about. You were passionate about as a kid. How do you get into esports then? Like, what is the avenue? So you like games. What's the next stage there?

See, that's exactly where we sort of started in the space was, you know, we didn't see like a correct transition into the space for you know, the next generation or people who are just really passionate and enthusiastic as children and wanting to see sort of the commercial side and elements of it. I mean, just diverting the question, I will come back, but, you know, it's such a massive industry. It's larger than the music and movie industry combined, which is, you know, obscene. If you look at Call of Duty, for example, as a franchise, it's larger than Star Wars or Marvel, which are the largest movie franchises out there in terms of net revenue. But how would one really get into it? For instance, work that we've really tried to advocate has been a lot of non-for-profit work in our main federation, which is British Esports Federation. We have partnered with Pearson and we offer a variety of A-levels, GCSEs, and soon-to-be university qualifications across the nation. And that being said, we also do a lot of national championships, which you can start in your school and play against other schools, just to sort of build out the ecosystem and infrastructure and engage children from a younger age. Because the career opportunities are really, really endless in esports. Keep in mind, you know, when— from the development of a game to an actual tournament being produced, it requires everything from marketing to business to the music industry to the production side of things and the movie and film. So yeah, I mean, there's just plenty of avenues. What would I say going out to someone looking to get involved in the space? I believe it depends what entrance you want to go in. Graphic design, you can come into a lot of esports teams or companies or merchandise going as a designer, and that can lead you up the rank if you want to go through there. Or if you want to come in from the production side, you can come in as a games tester Or if you're at the top-end level and really have that time to practice and put in the hard hours, you know, you can really be a pro player, which, you know, is what everyone dreams of, I think. I mean, I can— yeah, I'm sure you did as a kid. Likewise. Sadly, I wasn't top of my game for too long. I'm blaming bad Wi-Fi for that one.

Yeah, it seems you're a very naturally motivated person. But there have been times in your career where, either during your education or in your actual career, where you've been juggling a lot of things, doing a job on the side or doing education on the side of your work. How do you prevent burning out from too much work? What are some habits to keep you sort of motivated and healthy?

So there was a moment, I should say that it wasn't that— I wouldn't say it's a burnout, but rather that I felt that I couldn't add a lot of value or that I was taking the wrong decisions all the time. And I think that had to do with self-esteem. And that was something that I had to work aside. It wasn't because I wasn't capable. I was realizing I wasn't capable and I was hurting myself so much because of taking bad decisions. And I didn't realize that sometimes as an entrepreneur, you have to take not only one, but a lot of decisions. So you as an entrepreneur, and that's what I realized later, that took me like 1, 2 months, I would say. But anyways, you realize you want to reach this point and you will take a lot of decisions and maybe the first decision will not take you straight to that point and it will just move you a little bit and you realize that you're not really on the right direction and you have to take another decision and it's not a linear path. So rather you will be taking a lot of mini decisions that will bring you to this point. The important part is not that you're taking bad decisions and doing this, which was what I was doing, but rather that you're closer to the point and that you you are aware that these decisions were not as good as you thought about, and then you have to go back. So in my case, some people would have said, okay, that's, I mean, that's straightforward. You should have realized that. But in my case, because I was lacking maybe that self-esteem and I thought it was because of me and all that pressure I was putting on me, just me, myself, nobody else, I was unable to keep taking decisions. So I stepped a little bit aside and I did more regular work. That didn't involve to take decisions. And I spoke with my two colleagues, José Miguel and David, and I told them, hey guys, please, I don't wanna take decisions throughout some weeks. Like I need you to support me, which I suppose this brings me to the point of starting a company with or without teammates, which I obviously, and as you can imagine right now, I would suggest to do it with somebody else also. Because sometimes this can happen throughout the way. You will find that your energy will not be as high. And then your other partner, then the magic is that when you are down with your energy, they will be up with their energy. So you're somehow doing the work together. So this is also something that brings me to being sincere with you and also with your partner and with the team and with the client. So right now I'm not in the position to take decisions. But of course I realized that, that was at the beginning of the company. It wasn't a huge impact and it took not that much for me to realize, like 1 to 2 months maybe. So it wasn't a huge impact. But then of course I took much more into account how I was feeling and not letting me reach that point of like burning. And so right now what I do is raise my hand whenever I see that something is not going okay with me, like 'Hey, I feel that this should go this way,' or 'That one, I think we're not going the right way,' rather than seeing everything not going how it should be. I also think that lowers the bar a little bit. I tell my colleagues, 'Do you feel the pressure? I'm starting to feel the pressure,' right? And that is helpful because you realize you're not alone and that the rest are also feeling pressure too. So I mean, it also helps you to decrease the level of that. So, I mean, you make fun of it, you tend to just lower it. Of course, like exercising, in my case, I love hiking. I have two dogs, so they help me a lot. So it was like, I need to see my dogs. So it really depends. I think there's not a magic answer to this. I think it's realizing and knowing yourself. So working a lot on yourself, maybe a coach, maybe you, or having a colleague that helps you throughout the way, improving how you are personally.