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Founder Friday with Michael Calver of Amutri.com

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Amutri is the Canva.com of the 3d visualisation world.  

It democratises the ability to render 3D visualisations in seconds, empowering architects and designers to understand and explore their spaces, engage with stakeholders and respond to the needs of their customers in a different way.

In this first episode of the new series our guest today is Michael Calver, the sole Founder and CEO of Amutri.  He perceives his journey is to build a unicorn company.  At this stage the company is releasing the MVP and seeing it in the hands of real users.

Amutri.com is also in the process of raising a seed round of GBP1.5M.

Based in Cornwall, Amutri and has been formed as part of the Falmouth University Launchpad program.

Michael shares his thoughts on motivation, finding a co-founder and reflects on the trials of the journey to date.

Key highlights 

  • 1:45 What amutri.com is all about
  • 5:35 The inspiration for Michael in building this idea
  • 10:35 Lessons learned from his journey
  • 15:20 Why Michael chose to be a Founder
  • 22:20 The journey to find a co-founder
  • 29:15 Advice for first time founders

Total run time : 32 mins
This episode was recorded in November 2022

Host: Stewart Noakes

https://www.linkedin.com/in/stewartnoakes/ 

Guest: Michael Calver 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelcalver/

https://www.amutri.com/ 

https://www.falmouth.ac.uk/launchpad
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UNKNOWN:

We'll be right back.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello and welcome back to Founder Friday. I'm Stuart Noakes and I'll be your host for this new season. I'm also one of the co-founders of Canopy, the community for entrepreneurs and innovators all over the world. It's wonderful to be back and in the chair looking after this series and thank you for joining as we interview Michael Calver today. So he's an early stage founder who's on a journey to build a unicorn and he's been, he's come through the Found with University Launchpad program where I'm involved as an EIR and I actually teach as an academic on the masters as well. So it's been great to meet him and see some of his journey. And it's wonderful he's been able to share it with us today. I think some of his reflections are really interesting, particularly as he's at that stage where he's launched an MVP, he's seeing it in the hands of real users, and he's in the process of raising his seed round of around 1.5 million. It's a great chance for first-time founders particularly to see what is a year or two ahead of where they are now and kind of reflect on what he has struggled with and how he's addressed certain problems. So thanks as always to our sponsors who've helped make this possible today, and that's High Yield. That's Boardroom Advisors and that's Damia Group. And if you get a chance to go and show some love and support for those sponsors, really appreciate it. It's with their help that we keep this podcast series going. All right, fantastic. We're back with a new series of Founder Friday, and I'm really pleased to say that our first interview is with Michael Calvert from MUG. Welcome, Michael. Great to have you here. Thanks to you. It's awesome to be here. And obviously, we know each other through Falmouth Launchpad, and there's going to be a demo night there on December the 7th. But you're not taking part, are you? Because you're a little bit further on than most people.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah,

SPEAKER_00:

I would love to, but yeah, not this time. No, fantastic. And I guess the best place to start, really, is just help everybody understand what you're working on at the moment. What is a moot tree?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So we're building a first-of-its-kind product that always points to 3D visualization. So for those of you listening who aren't 3D experts, 3D visualization forms a crucial part of the design marketing and sale of the world around us. It then enables architects to bring more work and design spaces and places that meet the expectations of end users. The other issue is that it's incredibly complex and expensive to create content. It takes years to master and there's significant financial investments in specialist skill sets and on-premise IT hardware. Ultimately, Amushi automates the whole process and it's the first product to the market that provides a simple path to 3D visualization. This means that architects and designers can present ideas and designs with certain visuals without having to spend days or weeks creating content and therefore win more work, design faster and meet clients' expectations and user expectations.

SPEAKER_00:

I can tell you just got back from slush and you've had to tell people that a lot of times. That's 25 pictures in two days. Yeah, it's a lot of practice. Fantastic. So if I put it in like my speak, it's when I looked at it for the first time, it's basically you're taking very architect-like drawings, two-dimensional stuff, you're turning it into something that looks very much like I'm going to walk through it in a games environment. I mean, I think you're using the Unreal Engine in the back of all this, right? And suddenly there's this 3D visualization, whereas an architect or most importantly as a kind of commissioning person you can step in you can walk around you can see everything but you're doing it incredibly fast and that means that we can make changes and look at those things incredibly fast and we can share them with people and get them all engaged incredibly well right

SPEAKER_01:

exactly yeah it's taken sort of 3d visualization and virtual reality and all this awesome emerging tech and just making it super low entry points cost effective and super fast which yeah that's it's going to be one of the top barriers to entry that i've noticed over the last few years and we hope to just provide a fictionalist barrier free energy point to

SPEAKER_00:

all this awesome stuff really. Now, we've known each other for a while, but I didn't fully get what you did until we did this stuff in Lisbon with the executive MBA class. And those people from Disney were basically the people that you were aiming for, right? And in this open innovation forum, they stood up and said, this thing is game-changing. It absolutely blows my mind. And I was like, oh, okay, now I get it, right? Now I understand. Because I'm not your customer. I'm not an architect. I'm not somebody who has to worry about hotels or buildings or whatever. So, yeah, it was really interesting to see their faces. And it was the emotion in their faces as well. Because you talk about tech, but they were like, this is my job and you've changed my job. by what you do, right? It literally makes my job better to use your tool. And I was like, wow, that's pretty special, right? That's not just geekified. That's good.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, yeah. It was awesome validation for us as well. And yeah, we're looking forward to getting those guys on board in the next couple of months, really. We've just released Amutri and started to onboard our first few hundred adopters. So we're looking forward to welcoming them to the product. Yeah, it's exciting stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

All right, now for anybody listening, what is the URL that they need to go to if they want to try this stuff out and see if it works?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so it's www.amutri dot com you can just go ahead and sign up you can get 30 days free access see how it works see how it doesn't work and let us know and we'll fix it so it's amutri.com okay and we're also about to sort of three courses away through an investment round we're hoping to close it out in January so if there's any investors listening we're certainly keen to hear

SPEAKER_00:

from you thanks Michael always be selling I love it I love it so stuff like this as I say I'm not your target market I know some people that are, but this is quite specialist, right? What has been your inspiration for this journey? How did it all begin?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's pretty much started almost 20 years ago. So I've been building over the last couple of decades advanced 3D visualization and simulation capabilities across various industries, such as Formula One and automotive, architectural design, aviation, the list goes on. And in doing so, it really helps to pioneer the use of gaming technology for non-gaming applications across many industries, which is something I'm really sort of passionate about. Whilst I was successful in doing so, I really sort of noticed that each of the technologies and products that underpin this incredible technology of 3D visualization all have incredibly high entry points, all require years to master and significant financial investments. So this means that many people and organizations just simply are precluded from adopting it, which isn't ideal. And the rest face significant financial overheads in in using it. So this already just stifles the successful design, marketing, and sale world around us. So I thought it would take some years to sort of step out of industry and try and change all of this, really, with a low entry point product, which is Immutri, which we're calling the convert of 3D visualizations. So there are other solutions available to produce 3D visuals, but we're offering a solution which is much faster, it's cost-effective, and enables more people and organizations to adopt some benefits from this analogy.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, did you start this because you were curious or did you start it because it annoyed you that it didn't already exist? Like, what is the kind of motivation in there?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it was frustrating. So one of my sort of, yeah, I guess earliest experiences of... Just seeing the problem was sort of six years ago when I was working on a project out in San Francisco to help to design what is now the most accessible office space in the world, specifically for those living with sight loss. And we kind of saw that sort of virtual reality and 3D visualization was able to form a crucial part of the design process of that space. but was super expensive, super sound consuming, and we couldn't leverage it to its full potential. And then we had sort of similar projects, which all encountered the same problem. 3D visualization is super useful, but it just takes too long and it's super expensive. We can't possibly keep doing this. So I saw this problem repeat itself over the last six years. And I thought, you know what, this time, sort of first startup along the line, I will just focus on this problem of the super high-end plans of 3D visualization and enable more people to adopt it and save some money for those already using it, which kind of means that I can use it to essentially with more success. So by making it faster, it doesn't obviously make it more cost-effective, but it also means that companies can leverage it in different ways. So it can be used to sell a plan. It can be used to design more accessible, more inclusive spaces and places. And the list kind of goes on. So I'm really interested to see the use cases of 3D visualization once we make it much faster and we also democratize the whole technology space. It's kind of exciting.

SPEAKER_00:

I like the way you've kind of tied that in a sort of Canva approach, because I think where they started was the disruption around Adobe, right? And just that it was expensive to access. You tend to need specialist skills. It was frustrating to get stuff done. And what they wanted to do was empower the everyman to democratize it to every level and to make it cheaper to access and actually easy to do stuff. So even I can create reasonably good looking social posts or good presentations or whatever, even with my lack of creativity and my DNA. for visual stuff. And yeah, it's quite an interesting parallel. So how big a kind of frustration was this for you? I mean, how much have you committed into doing this in terms of time and energy? And how much have you been driven to do this?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I will say with Amitri, I've pretty much gone all in on this business. So yeah, I've had to derail a lot of my life and existence. personal life and sort of invest myself, pretty much pull myself entirely into this business to make it work, really. So that's in terms of product design, development, raising funds. So, yeah, I would say the frustration is, yeah, it's huge. And I've seen this frustration shared by pretty much every single person I've worked with over the last 20 years. So I thought, well, this has to be, you know, this has to be something that we can fix, right? without hopefully too much stress. I was wrong. It's taken way more stress than I'd ever imagined. But we have essentially an MVP online, which is delivering value. It's automating 3D visualization. So yeah, we're kind of almost there. We've got an MVP online. We're getting feedback and all feels pretty good right now. But yeah, it's been a huge investment of energy, time, sacrifice. Yeah, the

SPEAKER_00:

list goes on. Well, that segues really nicely into my most important question for today in terms of what are the kind of lessons, if you've got two or three lessons that you can reflect back on and say with the benefit of hindsight, you know what, I've really learned these the hard way.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, goodness me, absolutely. I think sort of the first one that comes to mind is to build resilience in different ways. So, you know, physically and mentally, I would say it's a marathon, not a sprint. Without a doubt, this is something that you need to be well and physically fit and mentally alert for a long time. So definitely, you know, find a floor that works for you, you know, is healthy, maybe look at an exercise routine, Meditation can help, but I just think mental and physical health really needs to be looked after. Also, the hardships in entrepreneurship I really talked about. You really take a mental and physical beating for the journey. It's a lifestyle, not a job, I would say, and it depends a lot, and sometimes doesn't give a lot back. You really have to have a thick skin to endure all of the stress and unpredictability that comes with entrepreneurship. I guess the second one would be to, you know, sort of stay true to your vision, you know, for parts of a pretty large ecosystem. And I would say that advice is great, but too much action of advice can be destructive. So I'd say just cherry pick advice and maintain your North Star, really. I'd say maybe just, you know, absolutely validate as soon as possible, you know, early and often advice. you know, build, measure, learn. I think I said those three words at least 10 times a day. You know, build something robust and sufficient to get feedback iteratively, you know, move from there. You know, and make sure this is all built in some sort of tech stack that is scalable and stable. So it ultimately becomes the foundations for whatever your product becomes. So that's kind of the top three things.

SPEAKER_00:

What sort of things, I mean, you mentioned the physical and mental wellbeing. Have you got any things that you personally have chosen to do to keep yourself together?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. So I, yeah, the doctors are pretty, maybe obsessive, but slightly, well, it has been useful, sort of healthy eating regime. So just cutting out kind of, as much sugars and alcohol, that sort of thing from daily

SPEAKER_00:

intake. Can I just check from a personal perspective, coffee's still in there or not in there? Where do you stand on the coffee thing?

SPEAKER_01:

I will say coffee is my one vice. It really is. Unfortunately, I can't function without it. That is the one thing I have to have a constant influx of, really. But yeah, definitely exercise helps. I find it sort of resets me mentally every day as well. It just means that, yeah, I'm, I think it's, I think sort of physical wellbeing facilitates mental wellbeing and all facilitates a healthy startup and

SPEAKER_00:

yeah, I'm successful. Okay. Very good. Very good. How do you find the time for all of this? And one of your lessons wasn't how to manage time, right? Speaking as somebody who ends up sacrificing the healthy eating and the exercise stuff for all the other things that go on. Yeah. How do you manage to balance all that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. I mean, I think the things that sort of time sort of boxing kind of helps, um, I think it's being hyper-organized and just working, you know, a week or two ahead of yourself, really. So just having the weeks laid out and super organized. I find that, yeah. Yeah, I think you have to dig deep sometimes and find energy just to sort of keep on, sort of keep it on. And yeah, I think it's almost like, you know, with exercise, it's an investment of time, but it pays back in dividends. So yeah, I put like an hour, maybe an hour and a half a day into exercise routine, but actually that gives me a way more back than I'm putting into it. So all people ask me, how do you find time to exercise? I'm like, how don't you find time? It's really, it's worthwhile. It

SPEAKER_00:

really helps. I have to say, like, I'm always looking for the diagonal asset approach where I can do one thing and achieve multiple outcomes. So I do a lot of driving and travel every week, which means I do a lot of podcasts and then I do a lot of thinking. So I get three things done at the same time. But I can't exercise very easily in the car. You got any tips for me? Like, is there something I should be doing? I can't really carry a dumbbell while I'm in one hand. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

that could be quite dangerous, right? That's a good point. Yeah, I guess if you're, goodness, yeah, if your entire free time is traveling, That's challenging, isn't it, really? Goodness, what can you do? I mean, I'm assuming you have time to obviously walk, take longer routes, avoid public transport and walk instead, that sort of thing could help.

SPEAKER_00:

I do try and embed it a little bit. Yeah. And I do make myself go for like even five, 10 minute walks in the middle of the day. Just if there's a little break, I just get, get out of the building and walk around a bit, but interesting. All right. So you've mentioned a lot of stuff there around stress and commitment and time management and stuff. So one of my questions I love to ask in these, in these founder Fridays, and I'm so glad to be back kind of hosting the series again. It's like, why have you made the crazy decision to be a founder and an entrepreneur and a solo founder of that? Right. So you've, you could get a great paycheck. You were getting a great paycheck, right? You literally gave up a great paycheck to do this. Why are you

SPEAKER_01:

so

SPEAKER_00:

nuts,

SPEAKER_01:

man? Oh, yeah, that's a good question. I guess that's a question for my therapist, I guess. But I think in terms of entrepreneurship, I think from my point of view, if successful, it is the most direct and impactful way to create positive change and achieve enough financial freedom to sustainably keep doing this. So we personally sort of provide sufficient autonomy to develop and execute a vision of almost any kind. So it could be, you know, a tech startup, a small to medium sized enterprise, our community interest company, whatever it is. I think entrepreneurship really enables us to action our dreams and visions really like, like anything

SPEAKER_00:

else. And I mean, you're at Falmouth launchpad, right? You've seen a lot of founders come and go while you've been there in the program. And during this phase, do you, do you see them thinking the same about it or, you know, what other viewpoints are you coming across?

SPEAKER_01:

No, it's interesting. I think there's a lot of, there's mixed ambition, which is interesting. It's, yeah, it's kind of interesting. So I've seen a lot of founders, you know, So I've come here without maybe experience in startup, without an awareness of what is possible with startup and entrepreneurship. So it's sometimes interesting to see them sort of start here with maybe a slightly smaller scale ambition, which is absolutely fine. There's something wrong with that. But it's kind of interesting seeing the guys become aware of what is possible with entrepreneurship and watch them try to reach

SPEAKER_00:

for that. It's fascinating. Do you have other people in your family who are entrepreneurs or people that you know around you in your peer group and stuff?

SPEAKER_01:

No, I'm certainly the first in my family to, yeah, go to university, to do any of those things, really. First of the business. So, yeah, I'm not exactly sure where it's come from. But I'm very thankful that I have, yeah, I guess that sort of North Star sort of drives me towards it, really. I'm very thankful.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, is there something you can point to in your childhood or your background where like some seed was sown towards this? Or did you just wake up one day and go, oh, I'm going to be kind of crazy and start my own company?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I will say, yeah, I didn't really start cooking until I really started working in the industry. It took me a few years to, I guess, master what I was doing, which was 3D visualization, which is what we're trying to automate with the Mewtree. And quite quickly into doing so, I kind of realized that that the current way of doing things isn't quite right. And that it took me a decade of trying to fix it in different ways, in different organizations and different industries. And I sort of stepped out of full-time employment some really high-profile companies about, what was it now, about eight years ago. And so it was my first startup, which was semi-successful. The second one was really unsuccessful, unfortunately. And the third one, hopefully third time lucky with the mutual, will hopefully reach the stars, fingers

SPEAKER_00:

crossed. Do you feel like you started it because it was a great way to kind of accelerate your career or do you feel like you started it because you were, you just couldn't find another way to solve the problem so it just needed you to kind of step up?

SPEAKER_01:

It's definitely the latter. I just felt there was no other way. I just, yeah, I didn't feel there was a way whilst working to build somebody else's company or somebody else's dream to solve a problem that I noticed and experienced for many years in the industry. It did take me a little while to sort of realise entrepreneurship And startup specifically is essentially a road to achieving that. But yeah, I got there eventually. That was back in 2015 and I've been trying ever since.

SPEAKER_00:

And how do you feel when you go to somewhere like Slash? and you meet some incredible people, right, all over the place, like, who are doing things 20 times bigger than any of us have ever done and other people that are just starting out. How do you feel with all this stuff around you now?

SPEAKER_01:

I feel truly inspired and, yeah, extremely thankful to be around them, really. The energy at events like Slush is just intoxicating. Yeah, I'd love to... spend more time around uh those people really it's it's fascinating but um i think it's certainly something to i guess for me personally it sets my sort of benchmark really it sort of keeps raising that uh every single time i go to slush really it's it's a fantastic event and yeah just um engaging with staff who have successfully raised several funding rounds and how they've done that and uh yeah it's yeah it's fantastic um yeah And it's also helpful with a little bit of validation as well. Obviously, we've engaged with investors there. And yeah, it's been super helpful for us just to understand the first time we went to Slush, to understand what investors are looking for in startups and how the second time, which was this time, we sort of went back with everything that they've asked for and said, hey, this is it. We've built it. It's deployed. We have some traction. Do you want to invest?

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

That must have felt good to actually go back prepared, right? Do you feel for, well, you feel going to somewhere like Slush is important or do you think it's just basically a party, an excuse for a party?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'm really sort of sensitive with events because time is so sparse, but Slush is the one event that that I feel like I just must go to, especially as a startup looking for funding, as well. Well, a startup isn't looking for funding, but it's almost for me like startup Christmas. It's like the one thing you just have to attend and sort of go to and be a part of. Just engage with a lot of investors at Slush. It's kind of an expectation that all startups that are currently raising should attend Slush, and if they're not, then are they even taking the serious thing? Which is interesting. I don't know if anybody's subscribed to that part of the process, but that is... A common theme at Slush,

SPEAKER_00:

yeah. And I mean, it's kind of strange reflection, isn't it? The Slush is basically a big place to get everybody together, but entrepreneurship can be quite a solo sport. So why do we all then rush to a place to hang out together? I mean, obviously, I don't go to Slush. I went to Web Summit and I wouldn't go to two such things in the same month. But yeah, you got any thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_01:

That's interesting. I mean, I've also just watched most of the start-ups I think everybody is still very much isolated, even at Slush. Yeah, everyone's in the same space physically, but mentally, they're still very much isolated from each other. So everyone's very much in their own worlds and chasing investors. And yeah, it's kind of interesting. But yeah, I mean, this is kind of an after party where everyone sort of comes together, but generally Slush is very, even though there's thousands of people there, it's still very isolating, which is kind of

SPEAKER_00:

interesting. Yeah, it feels like maybe we should be doing a canopy demo night on the fringe of Slush as well as a web summit, right? I think so,

SPEAKER_02:

yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So one question that sort of leads me on to before we get towards the close of our chat today, and it's been great, by the way, to have this opportunity to talk things through with you. Thanks for making time. It's the co-founder journey. Can you tell people what sort of journey you've been on as looking at co-founders or even thinking about having a co-founder and why you've ended up as a solo founder?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's interesting. So I did sort of trial about six or seven co-founders with Mutri. I just find it really difficult to find co-founders with the right skill sets, with the right work ethic at the back point in their lives to commit to a startup. I mean, it is quite a unique set of, yeah, skills, experiences, and circumstances, really, with entrepreneurs. That timing piece, right? Is that what you're saying? Like the right timing in their lives? That's the one. Yeah, timing is super important. Yeah. Yeah, I did have founders where if it was a different point in their life and a different time in their life, it would have been suitable, but they just couldn't commit, unfortunately. So I ended up, yeah, essentially moving forward as a solo founder, raising enough funds to bring in the most incredible team, execs and developers, customer success specialists, sales specialists and beyond. And yeah, I'm very thankful to fund those people, really. So yeah, I found... an exec team who, yeah, with the right skills and the right experience, it's also the right time as well for them, which is fantastic. And they act almost like co-founders, which is absolutely

SPEAKER_00:

perfect. I mean, you make these reflections, but you've been part of a Venture Studio programme as well, right? So you would have thought that lots of people would have been arriving into the Venture Studio with skills and experience and timing kind of aligned. but yet you've been through six or seven of these kind of conversations or iterations and still come out solo founder. Does that say more about you or about them or what? I think it could

SPEAKER_01:

be both. I would say that I'm, yeah, I have clearly, I know I hold quite high standards in myself and for team members. It is, I would say that, you know, I'm usually at quite high entry points when it comes to working for the business. And so I think it's really important to build a team That is essentially a state team. It has to be. With this sort of thing, we have to be smooth, fast. We have to be in sync, you know, and super organized. So I think, yeah, my ambitions in this ecosystem is to build a high growth startup. Unicorn essentially was not shared by a lot of the co-founders that I was working with initially. I think a lot of those guys might be looking to build I guess, smaller businesses, maybe from lifestyle businesses, which is, again, absolutely fine. But I guess my aspirations was to come here, but a high growth startup that was going to essentially, yeah, create hundreds of jobs and some economic growth in the Southwest, I think, of the UK. Do you really feel like you're building a unicorn? I feel like it. Absolutely. Yeah, I... have made a lot of commitments and sacrifices to this business, and I'm very much all in in this. So I know the market opportunity is there. We have an MVP, which is the true foundations for high-growth SaaS products. It's designed for scalability. It's super robust. It just needs, essentially, an investment. a stronger market base, basically, which is what we're working on right now. So I feel like all the pieces in front of us with customers and collaborators and the problem in the industry, it just needs a little bit of cash to connect those dots really and make it happen.

SPEAKER_00:

I know you've got somebody who's working with you now in a kind of co-founder model. How does it feel to have somebody who can hold their own? It's incredible.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, to actually be able to hand over responsibility to a team member entirely and not have to worry about it and it will get done to your expectations or even greater is an awesome feeling. So, yeah, I would certainly, yeah, as a bit of advice, I would just say to everyone, just, yeah, try and find those people. Just doers who, you If they say they're going to do something, they do it on time to a high standard

SPEAKER_00:

every time. That's super important. And do you mind just talking through with people how you met him and how you evolved a deal structure or an approach with him? You don't need to go into any details you're not comfortable about, but I think it's a very interesting story for people to understand.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely. Certainly, in most platforms, it's elsewhere, actually. Thank you for original events and my attendance out in Portugal. I met my now COO at an event, had the opportunity to essentially workshop and engage with some exec MBAs, which is Absolutely incredible. We've got some super useful feedback and endorsements from those guys. And at the same time, we spent a couple of hours with when our COO in that team. And he was, yeah, he was blown away by the products and the value proposition. And then from that, we just kept in communication. We basically, you know, sort of dated as like a setup term for about six months. Having tried seven co-founders, I became quite, you know, risk averse. So I have to say that. I think that's one

SPEAKER_00:

of the most understated things you've put forward today. Yeah, a bit risk averse. Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And yeah, having engaged with him for six months or so, it just became super obvious that But yeah, absolutely perfect for the company. Absolutely on-point experience and commitments and work ethic, really. So it was a complete no-brainer. So yeah, thanks, Jim. It's appreciated.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. The events we've been running, they bring people together and the serendipity is the important part. And then you guys found each other and found the way forward, that piece from meeting to the point where you're both committed into a venture is a very difficult journey, which none of us can be really fostered or made happen for you. You guys found your own path through that. I'm glad the serendipity we brought to you helped. But yeah, it's that moment, isn't it? It's that commitment moment. And some people, you know, you talked about dating, some people talk about it being like marriage, et cetera, but it's that moment where you're basically saying our combined forces now are going into this thing. We're both boots in. We're absolutely going to make it happen. And I'm now really going to suffer or if you don't do your bit, just like you're going to suffer if I don't do my bit. So we are like linked now. It's a huge moment, right? It is. Do you think you're a good, bad or indifferent co-founder to him? I would hope good. I

SPEAKER_01:

hope that I deliver on expectations and yeah, I hold myself up to the same standards as everybody else really. So if I'm not doing something right, I would certainly look for constructive feedback criticism. I was hoping to improve early, so I would love to think that I match in his extra season skills. I would hope.

SPEAKER_00:

We should get him on there next time and see how it's

SPEAKER_02:

going.

SPEAKER_00:

All right. So the closing thing for the first in the new Series 4 of Founder Friday is... Just imagine you're a first-time founder listening to this. What kind of advice could you give them? Think of yourself as like a godparent to this fictitious first-time founder.

SPEAKER_01:

What are

SPEAKER_00:

you going to say?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's interesting. I think I'll just... try to, yeah, I would hope to allay any sort of fears and concerns and just say, you know, jump into it. Obviously, find resilience, find some cashroom ways to sort of make the whole process as least stressful as possible. But I would really say just from, sort of building three startups with varying degrees of success. I want to say that, you know, I've got no regrets, have no regrets, basically. So, you know, I've certainly not had a perfect run, you know, far from it. But I would say I'm a kind of a no regrets kind of guy. So, you know, I've learned so much along the way and I've had so many experiences along the way that I'm very thankful for. It's almost a case of whatever kind of happens with a startup, it's super worthwhile experience. they can feed into the next one, really, or anything else in life. I just think the learning that you can get out of a startup is second to none in terms of, you know, building a business from scratch, building tech, building the products, recruiting people, building teams, taking the products to market, managing financials. I mean, you learn a lot in such short amounts of time because you have to. Otherwise, you're in a bad situation. So it's an interesting one. It really levels you up, I would say. So I would say have no regrets. Go through it. And worst case scenario, you're going to have a blast and have some awesome experience for the next thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you very much for that. Really appreciate you sharing your journey with us today and being the first of the new series of Founder Friday. Look forward to catching up with you when I'm back in Launchpad next week. Thanks, Jim. It's

SPEAKER_01:

been

SPEAKER_00:

awesome to be here.

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you.

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Stewart Noakes

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