Peter Wood: Founder and CEO of the Graduate Guide announcing his new startup after getting acquired

Hello, welcome. I'm here with Peter Wood, Exeter founder of The Graduate Guide and now founder of his new thing, Caliber.

Thanks for having me, Seb. Pleasure.

It is such a joy to be here. There's amazing news, you've been acquired.

Yes.

How does it feel?

Oh, I mean, it's one of those ones where I think now the journey can really start. It's taken so long to get here and I think what we wanted to build with the graduate guide and what we wanted to offer the world in terms of a real solution to the talent issues. Like, now it finally feels like we can start trying to solve it. But to take what was a university passion project, just like an idea that I had when I was at the pub, and, you know, see it now and like all the people that are supporting it, is, it's crazy to be honest.

So let's, let's go back to the very beginning. You said university passion project.

Yeah.

Where did it come from?

Well, so I went to UCL for context. I was doing a history degree, and I think, you know, I picked history because there is no career straight after history, and I should become a history teacher. And so I was kind of always pushing it back, you know. I thought I'd find out what I wanted to do while I was there, and nothing really, like, felt right, you know. Consulting, banking, and law, the sort of general options you get. And then I saw the world of startups, and this was back in 2022, and it felt like a really intangible, difficult-to-access space, and I didn't have any network in it. And so I thought, you know, everybody is starting a podcast, but nobody's doing it for these people, for the students. No one's giving this generation a voice. No one's trying to solve what I could kind of envision it's going to be a graduate career crisis. There wasn't anything at the time, but you know, with AI coming around the corner, so I literally just, I invited my old head boy, with a bit of Dutch courage at the pub, onto a podcast that didn't exist, got my brother to make a logo, and next thing I knew I was in some random studio recording a podcast, and I was awful. I mean, yeah, I know you're on your own content creation journey, but when you first start, like, there's nothing that can prepare you for it, and I'm just so glad I did start it because I didn't know what it was going to become. It's taken so many different shapes, and yeah, to have it where it is now is, yeah, it's a good feeling.

Have you ever looked back at some of those early episodes?

We were actually doing it in the last week, sort of reminiscing on the whole Chaplin journey, Yes is the answer. I remember I used to like cut out the bits where I'd go, um, or like, and it just sounded ridiculous. But, you know, I really think I just, you know, I didn't know any better. I was so youthfully naive, and I think that was such an addictive and amazing energy that only entrepreneurship can really give you. Like, there's no red tape, you know, there's no expectations, and I was just able to throw myself at the wall of entrepreneurship and, uh, yeah, see what stuck really.

How did you find it in those early days?

Do you know what, like, I know there's a lot of cringe associated to anything, sadly, like in, in the UK and Europe, like sort of putting yourself out there at that age is quite a difficult thing. But I felt, you know, generally speaking, although people didn't understand what I was doing or why I was doing it, they were supportive of the fact that they could see me as a person. Like, I'm a very curious person, I care a lot, and, you know, I did always have, you know, sort of delusional ambitions with my career. And I think part of me where I wasn't doing anything, like where I was kind of just stagnating and nothing really felt right, like, that didn't look good on me. And nothing was really happening for me, and I think my friends wanted me to see me happy and doing something. So I think having that support of the close people around me and not caring about how, you know, the metrics or, you know, how many impressions I got. Like, I didn't— just did not think about that at the time. I just thought, can I meet incredible people that may be able to, you know, support me in building my career and nowadays business? You know, many people have sort of become investors and advisors off the back of it. And yeah, I just think you never know where creating content can get you.

Oh, for sure, yeah, it's definitely been my own journey. How did you find— did you suffer from that, like, cringe at the beginning? Was that something you had to get over? Did you find it difficult to put yourself out there and put your content out there?

Yeah, definitely. I think LinkedIn in the beginning, um, no one teaches you how to write on that platform, and if you just go off what you consume, I think you can very quickly start developing a voice that isn't actually your own.

Yeah.

And you know, you can sort of, especially nowadays, you can hide behind AI and I think like actually you're kind of missing the whole point when you're trying to run away from cringe. Like you're not actually helping you mold and shape your own voice and I think at some point along the journey I just realized that I'd kind of, I'd made my bed and so this whole sort of content journey for the last 3 years to now somehow having sort of a LinkedIn Top Voice badge has all just been, I don't know, yeah, just a refinement of a very authentic, like, natural voice that has grown with me through all my different stages, you know, from this lost and confused history student to now hopefully someone that can actually make an impact on what I believe to be a graduate career crisis. I think there was cringe, of course, but I think I let it sort of separate me, if that makes sense. I let that use my ability to sort of confront it, become a distinguishing factor. And, um, you know, if I didn't have a voice, I'd think this would be a really difficult career route to go. Yeah, no sort of online reputation, it's difficult nowadays, right?

Well, I think what you've done amazingly well is you've built— you've turned your content into a community, and you've now turned that community into a business. And now you're entering your next phase with the business now being bought and you're kind of launching a new venture within that. At what point did you realise that your content and your community could become something more and could become a business?

I delayed it for so long and I think truthfully you don't know, you really don't. And even when you think you do, like the ongoing weeks and months are always way less predictable and straightforward than you think. But I think it was actually, you know, I was lucky enough to be involved in some pretty successful businesses while at university, which, you know, I met these founders through the podcast. And sort of, I scaled this water filter company which ended up doing very well and being sold. And then I worked at a sort of blockchain education company putting on events in the US, and I was doing all kinds of strange what weird and wonderful things after graduating. And I was in this events job and I was thinking, I'm not, it just didn't feel right. Like, not in this like, oh, I need to be an entrepreneur kind of way, but I felt like there was so much unfinished business with the Graduate Guide. And it was kind of, I still think it was before the days that, you know, people were making playbooks of build a community before you build a business. Like, it all just felt very, sort of make it up as you go along.

And were you still working on The Graduate Guide in your own time at that point, or had you kind of paused things?

Well, I'd actually, with the support of a now very good friend of mine, Ingmar from Hustle, he basically funded 4 students to keep the brand going. They continued interviewing, and yeah, we just basically empowered a bunch of students to do what I did at university, and one of them was Marleen, who is now my co-founder. So that's how I met Marleen. She was a student host in the beginning. Yeah. And yeah, so basically just did everything to keep it going. And then by the time that I sort of was getting a bit, you know, a bit impatient with working for someone else and just realizing that everything I was doing for them I could be doing for my own brand. I just, yeah, I took that leap and yeah, I think I really, like, I really didn't know what it was going to become and it was kind of, it was still, it was quite a blissful feeling though, you know, in the beginning. It's so many people will give you support and help you, give you a direction, and I think like you do just need patience for this kind of thing, right? Like I, we've been, you know, we were raising investments since sort of January, you know, we're now talking in September, and I think like, when you go into raising investment, for example, similarly with when I went to go build it into a business, you just want it to happen, you just want to prove people that you can do it, like, you know, you see people putting all these posts out, and big headlines, and big numbers, and like, I think I belong in that, But I think you do just need each idea and each founding team and each market you're entering, it does require that, like, it just requires patience, yeah. And this is the thing that I'm coming to learn is that you can only force and fast-track so much. And so lots of big learnings, but I think when I, yeah, when I started getting impatient, that's when I knew I had to go full-time.

Yeah, were there signs early on of you going full-time, where you're like, okay, this is starting to work, I'm starting to see some early signals that I could, I could build a career here and build something here?

What I realised is that I'd started posting on LinkedIn as a social media before it was cool to do it, right? Like, and students didn't post because, you know, I remember being a student thinking, what do I have to say on this platform? Like, I don't have a job to announce, I don't— I haven't done anything in my career really. I could talk about a work experience or an internship, but you know, I think I remember like at the beginning for some reason, you know, the podcast obviously helps because it gives you content and allows you to, you know, prop up other people that do know who they're talking about even if you don't. But I would like— I was being weirdly vulnerable sort of from the beginning talking about therapy and all these kind of things where I think I kind of just started getting this, this following that, you know, I know everyone likes to call their following community nowadays, it's like the in thing to do, but genuinely they're all real people on LinkedIn and I could reach out to them, they could reach out to me, and I could really like feel that tangible sense of support for what I was doing. And, and so I think By having that voice, yeah, it allowed me to make posts and do events that in terms of where traditionally I was at in my career, I had no right to sort of get that reach, get that sort of support. You know, we had one event that we did where I rented out a football stadium up in North London, had loads of people come play. It was Founders, CEOs, students, all just playing football, barbecue. Um, and on LinkedIn it got 250,000 impressions, like thousands of people asked to sign up for it. I was like, what is that? What is going on? I, I don't know. I had nowhere to channel them. I didn't have a, you know, course to sell them or jobs to place them in. I was just like, this is just like a bunch of people. Yeah, just come play some football.

Yeah, yeah.

And I think it was moments like that where you're like 'Yeah, surely there's some momentum, there's something here that if left unexplored, it just, it'd be that big what if.' Yeah, there's definitely something tangible that you can funnel into something, I guess, that you can create.

And what did that look like, I guess, for The Graduate Guide in your early days? You know, how did you go about signing partnerships, commercialising?

Yeah, I think partnerships has always been the thing that I've been pretty obsessive over. And, you know, I think bootstrapping is such a blessing in disguise for learning that skill, because you do have to get so creative with who you partner with. Like, how can you give yourself credibility that previously you don't have? How can you reach people that you can't spend on marketing? And I think the best thing about that early stage was because there were no expectations and because, you know, I was this, you know, delusionally ambitious, you know, youthfully naive individual, you know, there were some people that just went, "Alright, mate, like, sorry, sorry, like, I can't, I don't have time to support you on this or come on this podcast," but for the most part, like, there's so many different reasons why someone would want to support a young person just giving it a go, like, It could be that they only ever speak to the same age people and they never get any different opinions and, you know, they love getting asked questions by someone who's just completely outside of their world. Or it could just genuinely, you know, rubs their ego a bit, you know, they get some content to post on there. I don't— it's hard to know why people are coming on the podcast or wanting to collaborate on events, but, you know, before you know it sort of big brands do just sort of, yes, like Google and NatWest and those kind of people start knocking on your door because you realize that there aren't many people that have captured, you know, if you found a niche, and I wouldn't say students is exactly a niche, but you know, like really there aren't many people representing that voice.

And so there aren't very many students doing it, right? Like young people who have just been through that.

And yeah, and you'll find this as well, right? Like, you know, For ages it just felt like Europe was kind of stagnating, or no one was speaking on behalf of it, and now it feels like, you know, the US sort of started doing it, right? Like really getting creative with content, how they can speak on behalf of a whole tech ecosystem, and now people like yourself, it's sort of, it's crazy, it makes so much sense once you do it.

Once it's done.

Yeah, but before that it's like, I remember just thinking there is no guide for graduates. Yeah, like, for people like me, right? Like, you know, there's this new whole job market and entrepreneurship coming up, but no one's talking about it. Yeah, everyone's just still applying for the same jobs. And yeah, so I think it's, uh, yeah, in terms of partnerships and collaborations in the beginning, it's, it's just getting creative. And ultimately, if you're not having fun doing it, like, there is just no point because you don't get paid for it, so you've got to at least enjoy it and feel like it's getting you somewhere.

And what kind of lessons do you have from those very early days when you're bootstrapping, scrappy? Are there any things that you look back on and you think, 'God, I got that so wrong'?

Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think, well, I mean, you know, 'wrong' is quite a, yeah, it's quite a big word, it's quite loaded, like, because all the different shapes that The Garage Guy has taken, and you know, the time that we've spent on things, even when it felt like, oh okay, this is not going anywhere, and you kept beating it a little bit more. They do mold and shape you into this like very unique, and ultimately gives you that moat as a business, right? Like, and that learning experience that no one else can take away from you. So I'll preface what I'm about to say with that, like, so I'm grateful for all the experiences, but I think we entertained partnerships and, you know, even offers and investments, and basically I think we were victim to other people for too long. You know, some ways this whole journey has felt really short. Like, a lot has happened. Like, I've come so far, the brand's come so far in what feels like a short period of time, but also, you know, 3 years now we're talking, like, that's a long time. And I remember, you know, weeks and months where you're just waiting for someone to say, "Yes, you can do this," or, you know, "Yes, we'll give you the money, we'll sponsor this," whatever. And you kind of just, you know, you wish you just didn't let yourself become so subservient to other people.

Got it, okay, so there's a time where you were waiting for other people to, like, give you sign-off or approval Yeah, and like, you know, ultimately I think that was what was always great about the podcast is there was always—

I could always revert back to that. Like, if a day felt slow, like, you just pick up a book, you know, the content carries on, right? Yeah. And, and you keep— and you can always end the day and feel like I've had a great conversation with someone, I've learned something, I've built rapport with someone that I never could have gone for a coffee with, etc. But in actually building a business, like Yes, like in tech and all these kind of things, you could ship things out and get product feedback and whatever, but you're always kind of subservient to people in a way. And I think in the beginning, what I wish I could have done differently is just kind of like trying to understand my level a bit more and, you know, understand who's going to be giving me energy, who's going to be allowing frictionless things, who's going to be my sort of the crowd that I just go all out things with. And yeah, I mean, I'm so lucky to have people like Molly and my co-founder in my life and my producer that was been there from the beginning, like filming scrappy podcasts with iPhones and lack of storage and basements and all kinds of mad stuff. And I wouldn't say those are things I did wrong, The thing I did wrong was kind of, yeah, not trusting that I can just go at things a bit more, I think.

Just carry on.

Yeah, just crack on. I just, you know, I'm not gonna say I've done nothing in 3 years, but I just think everyone should feel like this energy more that they can really do stuff now. Like, if you want to be high agency, there's never been a better time to do that.

And is that advice that you would give to graduate students today?

Listen, it's— I don't like to prescribe advice to anyone because ultimately, you know, I have friends who work as lawyers or consultants, whatever, and they love it, and it's their dream job, and the stability, and there's all these kind of things, and, you know, they are productive and all these kind of things in their own way, um, and I quite like that sort of that attitude, but it's just, it's not me, and it became very apparent pretty early on in my university journey that I was never going to be— I couldn't compare myself to people like that. So I think you really have to double down on knowing, like, if you were in a small team, like, what would be your role within it, you know, what would be your value add. If you're doing a university project, like, what opinions are you bringing, like, What's your work systems like, you know? Are you somebody that only needs 1 hour with the right people and being really creative and brainstorming, or do you need to be sat down on your own for 8 hours, like, being very analytical and doing a lot of due diligence? And these are, like, very small nuanced things, but I think it makes up yourself, and I think employers are impressed when You really can go into an interview or even into a coffee chat and say, "You can't tell me I am or I'm not that person, 'cause I've done it, right?" Like, I know myself that I am an awful producer, I can't edit, I have no design skills, but you can't tell me that I can't do partnerships 'cause I've done it, do you know what I mean? And it's like not letting anyone pigeonhole you in your career is huge, and that's my advice.

Yeah, I think that's one of the, that's definitely one of the things that I struggled with you know, as like a graduate or like in your early 20s, it is figuring out your skill set, the things that you like doing, the things that you love doing, and trying to find a career that kind of matches to that. Yeah, which I think is really challenging, especially when you're like a young person without confidence and no experience in the working world. On the other side, you've worked with a lot of companies that are looking for graduate talent. Yeah. What are you seeing that they're looking for in graduates?

This is the hard part, right? Because, you know, with the sort of acquisition, I guess we'll get on to that more, we've given ourselves an absolute vehicle and engine like no other for supporting companies, like, and, you know, really like, you know, a huge ecosystem of different portfolio companies that offer across sales and AI and data and leadership and marketing, you know, training of talent that is already in the company, whether that's apprenticeships or commercially, you know, and we can help them assess talent and acquire talent. But attracting the right talent and being able to tell them, like, who they need to be, like, in order to get each individual job, like, that is the absolute minefield that no one truly knows. Because especially in startups, it's not like it was corporates where you could kind of be like you know, do X, Y, and Z, tick these boxes, and you'll give yourself as good a shot as possible to get that job. And if not that one, then, you know, you go to a lesser one, or less— like, it doesn't work like that in this new job market. It just doesn't. And, um, people like to just throw around words, especially in job descriptions right now. Um, they put, you know, high agency, they put entrepreneurial mindset, they put these kind of terms, and I've really challenged myself to dig in to when founders say that they're looking for that, what does that actually mean? And it's interesting when you start getting those answers because you realize it's either the company hasn't created their own culture and so they don't really know what they're looking for in a grad. Yeah. And so that's where you need to support them, or they have it and it's about how they express it, right? When we start increasing the transparency on that side, then it'll get much easier to be able to tell a graduate what employers are looking for, right? Because I just don't— if someone says they know the answer now, like, I just think they're lying. Because I could say grit, determination, resilience— what does that actually mean, right? Like, in practice, I think you just have to, as I said, double down on knowing absolutely down to a T as much as possible If you were to go into a company, what would you like to be empowered to do? You know, what kind of questions that can you ask? What kind of rebuttal can you provide in a team that no technology, no, some, someone more experienced, they could not do that? Because this is like you being unapologetically yourself in the hardest place to be it, yeah, in the work, the workplace.

Yeah, okay, so let's, let's go on to the acquisition because I feel like that's Yeah, it's wrapped up in a new venture. So The Graduate Guide officially acquired by, uh, The Apprentify Group.

Yes.

Can you tell me a little bit about how that came about?

Yeah, so January this year we decided we want to raise investment, and in the beginning we thought we'll do angel investment because, you know, we don't see ourselves as a VC business. It's like, I'm sure you know, like VC is very intense, fast scaling. And when you're still kind of working out exactly what you want to become and what product you want to build, it's not the time really to raise VC money. Um, and so we went all in on angels, and luckily, you know, through all the interviews I'd done, um, and just being in the space for a long time, I had a lot of really amazing people I could reach out to to either invest in us or build warm intros. Um, and Honestly, I kind of loved the raising process for about 3 months because it felt like free consulting from industry experts. Like, in a way, you know, that's a very positive spin because the other side is that it's also the most mentally taxing and confusing and vulnerable thing you'll ever do. Yeah, but basically we found what happened was we had angel investors putting in checks, like, saying yes, supporting us, but they didn't really know what we wanted to build. Couldn't understand the sort of nuance and depth of it. They just thought as founders we would eventually succeed somehow. I think Marleen and I knew in the back of our head that we needed real support, like, we needed not just an injection of money and capital, we needed a huge amount of experience and expertise on on this very difficult problem that we're solving. And, you know, at our age, it's not about, you know, for me, I'm very mission-driven. I wanted to build something that actually made a difference, that didn't already exist, and, you know, something that is better, not just sell something better than anyone else, right? Like, that was the goal. And so we kind of, we actually started saying to angels, we're like, you know, we're not actually going to take your check because we've had a joint venture, you know, sort of offering from this company called Apprentify, and we didn't really know what this could end up being. Like, it's not what we had set out to do, but we thought we have to entertain it. Like, they've got all these amazing clients, they've got huge, you know, ex-founders from before, and yet, like, the people that I had met within the group I got on really well with, which is pretty important, or at least I think undervalued when looking at exit opportunities. I mean, you're going to be working alongside these people for a long time, and I think their ability to actually look at what we had and not just say what we wanted to hear and go like, we want to give you money or whatever, and go, why do you think that would work? Like, you know, really pushing back on elements of the business. That was when we realized we were in the right place. We're like, this is These are the people we're going to work with. We're going to make it work somehow. And, you know, we never stopped building the Graduate Guide, and we really started actually getting noticed a lot by working with huge brands like Vodafone, you know, signing exclusive partnership with NatWest, and, you know, thousands, thousands of people coming into the community. And I think at that time we realized this community that we built, this is what their group didn't have. This voice, this access to talent. Like, it's not a recruitment company, and it never was meant to be. It was meant to be a guide for graduates, and I think it's— you actually have to have built it over 3 years. It's not something that you can just kind of set up, right, and inject money at. Like, this is like— we realize this kind of is gold dust, right? And so luckily they did as well, and that's kind of where the acquisition came in.

Were you looking to them for investment initially, and then it became, as you spoke, it became possible or like apparent that something bigger could be done here?

Yeah, well, I think, you know, we'd been doing recruitment, talent acquisition, employer branding under the name of The Graduate Guide. You know, if you go on our website, that's what it says we do, but it always felt wrong doing it under that brand name, and I think we realised actually what we should do here is separate the two. Brands. So we have this new company called Caliber, which is all about, you know, high-caliber talent calibrated to your team and your— the new world of work. And I think it was really— I mean, we've— it's not been done very often, but to have this community that the whole group has access to, this, this talent pool, and actually have a new entity that targets what I believe to be the market that needs the most support, right? Like scale-ups, companies that have just had loads of money injected into them, you know, these huge growth targets, and they live and die by talent. Yeah, they do. And so far, all the support they've got is, would you like to see some talent, like, in our talent pool? And like, that's all they can do. And they need to somehow have developed the leadership experience to make the most of all this talent that they're bringing in. And We looked at that space and we just saw this huge opportunity to take what is genuinely industry-leading expertise working for the biggest companies in the UK and bringing that to the companies that, yeah, like I said, live and die by talent. And so that's what we're bringing to the market, and to have that funded by Apprentify, to be working under them on this project, like, it's, yeah, it is, you know, I think people will throw this around lightly, but from 3 years ago when I started imagining what this could become, this is, you know, is a dream come true because it's the opportunity. It's the opportunity to make a difference.

Yeah, to do the mission that you wanted to do from day one. So, the Apprentify Group, Apprentify, they're acquiring the sort of the Graduate Guide community that you've built, and that's going to be used by all of the kind of the different groups within Apprentify as a sourcing pool.

Yes.

And then on the side you've got Caliber, but that's sitting under Apprentify as well?

Yes, yeah, so it's all sitting in the same ecosystem, um, and yeah, uh, as I said, the, the rest of the group is made up by companies that specialize in AI, data, tech, marketing, sales. They offer also like government-funded upskilling that we are offering via The Graduate Guide, which is free courses where people can, you know, learn how to integrate AI into the way they work before they go into a job and develop their entrepreneurial skills. And these are made in partnership with companies like Intel, for example. And I think from every different angle, whether that's for the employers or The graduates, or just early talent in general, I think it's so nice to see that we have, across the whole spectrum, we have a way of supporting them. You know, we have the community side, we have the, the upskilling before you get the job when you need that support, and then we have when you're in a job, making sure that you're onboarded correctly, making sure that people are making the most out of you, making sure there's continuous development and continuous assessment, and This is like the bit where we just, I don't think we've seen the evolution of the people space, and especially not in the scale-up and startup space. So yeah, that's how we're going to sit within the group.

And from outside looking in, it looks like what they're bringing is amazing training and kind of resources across that element of that. Was that something that was really important to you when they were kind of like pitching either, you know, acquiring you or working together?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that was honestly everything because we looked at the market when we decided to raise investment and we wanted to focus on upskilling, but it's such a— I mean, they've been around since 2017, they've been building these capabilities, you know, backed by private equity and, you know, huge amount of experience. As I said, for us as, you know, 2 24-year-olds who knew the problem and had been able to get into the space and upskill ourselves, we had a bit of understanding, but it was such a big leap. And like I said, like, no amount of money really could have got us to where they are now.

Yeah.

Um, and it's, it's everything. Like, the skills gap is a real thing. Like, it's, it's, it's there. Like, and it's getting worse. It's getting seriously worse at a rapid rate. And I'm You know, AI, for example, I use that as a— that resembles the skills gap the most because people are learning how to get outcomes, but they aren't learning the inputs. For example, they're not actually learning how did I get this result and how can I build on this and replicate it. And that is like brain decay, right? Like, that's your brain decaying. And I think we're going to start seeing those that learn how to not just prompt it but really understand it, and those that are just getting shortcuts. That skills gap is going to keep widening and widening and widening. And I think everybody should have access to training, whether that's in or out of work, that allows them to utilize it in their career the best way. And right now it's not happening.

So not just— yeah, have it brought your brain Yeah. And so how are you, are you still going to be involved in The Graduate Guide from, you know, from now on?

Yeah, I mean, like, as far as events and speaking on stage and developing content and materials, like, that's one of my favourite things to do. Like, genuinely, for The Graduate Guide, like, I mean, I've done it for long enough not making any money, like, it's the kind of, it is almost like a non-profit, right? And it's not there to service clients, like, yes, we partner with brands, like, partnered with LinkedIn recently and partnered with NatWest, as I said, and that's amazing. But really, this is a new chapter for myself, right? Like, I've never been a salesperson, really. I've never been a CEO. I've never built a team, and there's all these new jobs and roles which I'm so excited to do, but You know, it's the, the transition from the whole journey that we've spoken about, like that youthfully naive guy throwing himself at the wall, learning what skill sets he has, to now, like, this is my opportunity to really see what I can do with the support of Apprentify.

What are you most excited about?

Getting back into content is going to be something I'm really excited about because there is something really weird about the raising investment period where although people could be messaging you like, "Oh, you're smashing it," or whatever, like on the inside, like you can't tell them about anything you're up to. Like, you know, it's all this kind of stealth stuff. It's like, yeah, I can't— I was itching to sort of put this, this, this baby that I've been working on into the world. And finally, yeah, I can kind of enter back into the content space as an exted founder and not a lost computer history student. And so that content piece, it's called Understanding Ambition. It's exploring 3 different themes in a documentary style. You've got individual ambition— how can you make your ambition work for you and not against you? You've got collective ambition, which is how can you make other people believe in your mission and build a team around your mission, right? And then you've got cultural and national ambition. How can you reignite the ambition and yet ultimately get UK pumping again? And we're going to be doing that by speaking to what I believe to be the most ambitious founders and sports people and, you know, variety. To hopefully produce something that nobody's seen before and meet some companies while we're at it. Quite a shame, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, you've built your career on content, right? You're taking that with you to the next stage of the journey.

Yeah.

Why did you choose ambition?

I mean, I've always had a weird relationship with it because I think the funny thing is that— so I'm 24, and over these 24 years, I know for a fact that some people would have met me at different stages going like, this is not an ambitious bloke, like, this is a degenerate, like, you know, out drinking every night. And I think that is almost a suppression of ambition, like that escapism, you know. And whenever I wasn't working hard or, you know, constantly like striving, This, you know, sort of 15-year-old me listens to me saying this and it's like, oh, what a loser. But like, that 15-year-old me would also, you know, when I was in bed at night, think like, this is all I've ever wanted, is to sort of be living life vicariously as yourself and doing shit, do you know what I mean? Like, absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel that. It's interesting when you talk about your 15-year-old self being like, oh, what a loser.

Yeah.

It sounds like that's almost all like a peer group You know, that's the thing that's always held me back is being worried about what other people think or being seen to be cringe or keen or trying too hard. I think that's definitely a problem that we have in the UK, and that's why I kind of really understand the mission. Is that something that you've experienced from your own peers or friends or family, this sort of attitude of don't take yourself too seriously, don't work too hard, stay in your lane?

Yeah, I mean, I actually think it's so important who you're surrounded by, right? It is genuinely, it's everything actually, who you're surrounded by, your immediate people. And I've always luckily had the support of my family to not just take, you know, the well-trodden path. I have an entrepreneurial father and yeah, being exposed to him from a young age, even if I didn't fully appreciate what on earth he was doing until relatively recently. That was a huge, you know, necessary thing to happen to enable this journey. The other side of it is that I know universities get stick for, you know, the courses and the value they can provide, etc., but getting into UCL or a university in that region was everything to me. I became completely obsessed. And this is as someone that was not naturally good at school. You know, I pissed around for a lot of it. But I just knew, like, if I'm not surrounded by ambitious people between 18 and 21, even if it's not entrepreneurially, I wouldn't, like, none of this would be a complete non-starter, this whole career that I'd dreamt up for myself. So, The earlier in your life you can understand the significance of, well, one, people— nobody cares as much as you think they do, right? Like, and I think even if you're surrounded by ambitious people, just like, it just doesn't matter. And like, ultimately that ambition is what people end up finding cool and start asking about anyway. So it's trying to like kind of visualize that version of yourself. But then, you know, secondly, I think there is no point doing this journey if it's on by yourself. Like, I know some people are like, you know, they can make entrepreneurship this very lonely, like no one gets it, you know, constantly working, yeah, at your desk. But I would just argue kind of what's the point to some extent, like, or at least the way I like to live my life, it's It's that collective part, which is why I felt it was so important to have it in the series, is how can you make other people produce something better than you could do by yourself, right? And so these are all important skills, and just, yeah, never let your peer group hold you back. Understand that everything is about getting the right people involved.

And how have you maintained a sort of a peer group that you fit in with after university?

LinkedIn, you know, like it just is like, it's quite shameless at this point. But I mean, honestly, I don't know if you grew up with LinkedIn being this sort of professional cringy platform, but it now is just, it's just a social media. It's what, it's exactly, it's completely what you make of it. And you know, we've met because of LinkedIn, like, my team has met because LinkedIn, so many founders I now consider friends and, you know, do not care about what they're building at all and we just go for a pint. Like, these kind of people are, they're on the platform and they're there to be reached out to, they're there to, you know, for them to reach out to you, to create content, to put your most authentic version out there, not just because you could get sales from it or whatever, But I actually think, you know, the best thing I ever did with my content was like doubling down on the fact that by building an online reputation, the real takeaway that not enough people talk about is that you can just skip, skip the bullshit. Like, in the conversation, there's so much fluff in the beginning, there's so much small talk, and When people meet me, I can tell that they've got this— they feel like they have more of a right to ask me things or say things or bring emotion in or all these kind of things that much quicker. And that's when the fun starts in conversation. It's when you can start developing real relationships, getting businesses really interested in what you want, like, you're selling. And yeah, like, that's genuinely how I've maintained this kind of peer group as I've continues to go through my life.

Yeah, I think it's definitely the biggest value out of content creation, whether it's LinkedIn, whether it's podcasts, it's just like meeting like-minded people.

Yeah.

And getting on with them. And you're right, you kind of, you skip all that boring stuff and you go straight to the stuff that you have in common, straight to the stuff that you're both really, really interested in, um, which I think is amazing. So, so back to like, back to Caliber. Yeah, it's your new venture. Who are you going to be like targeting, trying to work with, and what core problems are you really going to try and solve for them?

For all things training and development, we believe that Series A and sort of 50 people plus, when you really start scaling, that's when you need genuine support. And listen, you could hire a Chief People Officer and you could be completely reliant on them executing this huge plan of how they'll make sure all the different parts of a business function and that they're continuing to bring talent through and they're passing their probation and they're continuing to develop at the rate that you need to, to reach your very ambitious sales or growth or product development goals. And that's, you know, that's one way of doing it, but you could even bring in someone fractional, right? There's different ways of doing it, but where we're coming at it from is that The opportunity risk of getting all this stuff wrong is, you know, getting the wrong talent, not developing them, you know, not having leadership, getting the most out of them, not just managing them, right, and making sure they're doing things, actually getting that— I call them ingots of gold, you know, they're in this generation and a lot of it's confidence-based and actually leadership nurturing ideas and confidence out of them There's all these nuances within this that, you know, I've been exploring so deeply for the last 6 months, and it's so impressive. You know, one of Apprentify's clients is Microsoft, for example. Microsoft are using Apprentify to upskill their company in AI, and it's like, you'd think as a tech company they'd be able to do that, but it's that outside perspective coming in and offering this whole holistic support Where, you know, I don't care to throw shade at people in the recruitment space, but one thing I would say is innovation in that space has meant selling to more people in different areas. They never question that companies are dying or slowing down, or, you know, they're not— they actually, as long as they're fulfilling a very unique and small job of making sure that somebody gets put in that seat, in that desk, yeah, job done. Oh, you knew that, you know, they didn't, they weren't quite the one, it's fine, we've got more. Yeah, that's genuinely the attitude of the industry. And like, for me, I just, I don't care to be, you know, it took me long enough to say I even did anything in recruitment because there was kind of, there was genuinely a shame attached to it. But now it's like, this isn't recruitment, this is like your company living or dying. Like, that's what it is.

And it's huge. The first startup I was at, I think, really struggled as they grew from sort of like 30 to 80 people because they weren't quite sure on their culture and who the right people were. So I— and actually, a lot of the founders I speak to say that from that spot between like 50 and 200, yeah, it's so dangerous because you grow quickly and you lose all your culture, and it's really hard to maintain that. So I can really see it, and I think it's really exciting.

Yeah, thank you.

Are there any things that you look at and you think, I guess, like, what's your biggest concern when you look at Kaliber and you look at the next stage of your journey? Is there anything where you're like, that's the thing we need to get right, that's the thing that's like keeping me up at night at the moment?

I have a role within this, right, like, and I've always been aware that I, like, me and myself, I can pitch I can tell somebody everything we do, and I can tell them all the fancy logos, but the real challenge is taking all the amazing training development that's been applied to more corporate structured companies, right? So like, you're talking thousands of people, right? But ones that, like, let's take the BBC as an example. If they mishire, or if they, you know, don't develop one person, where's the BBC going to go? Nowhere, it's going to exist still. Yeah. The real question for us is, can we develop a, well, first of all, a sales pipeline, a marketing pipeline that, you know, functions quick enough from finding out about us to actually having the experts within our group speaking to the founding or the people team. Can we make that happen quick enough? And once we've made it happen, can we execute on a plan and adjust it and build it with them in a time that their business doesn't collapse, right? Like, and I say, you know, collapse is quite aggressive words used with Series A+, which is why we're targeting them and not, you know, companies on a shoestring. But yeah, I mean, I'm so excited for it because, like, I know for a fact no one else is doing it, so why not give it a crack?

Love it. Well, look, Peter, we're out of time.

Yeah.

But thank you so much. I'm chuffed for you. I think it's an amazing outcome. When I was doing my research, I could see why you've kind of, you've joined together in this and they're really going to, I think, complement you and take you to the next level. And I'm looking forward to seeing it.

Yeah. Thanks so much, Seb. Pleasure. Cheers, mate.