#91 - Seed strappping to life changing outcomes

Speaker A: Welcome to the Building and Growing podcast. We're delighted to have Matt Williamson, who previously founded and exited Vizly with us. Welcome Matt.

Speaker B: Thanks Lucas. Good to be here man.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's it brother. It's raining uh, a bit today, but we made it in safe and sound into the studio. Too easy. Matt, you got a fantastic story mate. Uh, you know, it's always good to come across these gems, uh, when you're in WeWork, you know, just over a beer. Um, but let me hand over to you to introduce yourself, uh, to.

Speaker B: Yeah, no worries man. Um, cool. Yeah, so I guess kind of like where to start. But um, I previously founded a company called Vizly, which was customer facing analytics for B2B SaaS companies. So started that with my co founder, uh, um, James Bowers. In the start of 2022, uh, was fortunate enough to be accepted into YC, went out to San Francisco uh, for uh, the program and a month after to try and fundraise, brought it all back to London. Try and build um, uh, build to state of profitability. Kept the company super, super lean. There's only um, a couple of employees including not including James and myself of course. And then was fortunate enough to receive a handful of acquisition offers. Um, at that point we kind of knew as well that ah, we could either go down the series A route and go big down the venture pathway or we could try and take uh, decent acquisition that would give us significant upside and kind of go down that pathway essentially. And um, that's what we chose to do. So we exited to WPP in October 2024. Uh, ah, and since then been working with the WPP team and just helping them kind of integrate visually into one uh, of their analytics offerings.

Speaker A: Amazing mate, what a story. And uh, we're going to dive into quite a few of the things that you mentioned, um, uh, in terms of path, ways to exit and you know, B2B SaaS, um, uh, later on in the podcast. But you know what, what did you do before uh, becoming a founder? What was your pathway to becoming a founder?

Speaker B: Yeah man. So like I think when I was like 18, 19 I kind of had this kind of underlying desire uh, to be an entrepreneur. I don't think I knew at that point what a founder was.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Um, I just kind of wanted to, to work and I kind of, you know, run my own thing and an expression of creativity, ownership and um, wanted to build something.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but before I got into any of that I was a tennis coach.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: And so I was coaching tennis. Um, haven't played a lot growing up, um, ah, county level, but also playing things like British tour events. It was a pretty kind of um, to me at least anyway at that point in my life was pretty serious.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, so tennis coaching and then went to go and work for a ah, software company out in Auckland, uh, New Zealand that was building um, booking and scheduling software for tennis coaches specifically.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: So whenever that work we're just on the phones every day trying to sell this thing to tennis coaches. And that was my entry point into software. Right. Essentially just like a glorified sdr. Yeah, but it's great. Like the team there was like fantastic to work with. I think everyone in that startup has gone on to build uh, their own business which is quite cool.

Speaker A: That's like such a key KPI. I know at Revolut they always said like big KPI for the company away from like core businesses, how many employees go and found businesses and now you've got the revolution mafia.

Speaker B: It was just a really entrepreneurial culture.

Speaker A: Right, sure.

Speaker B: Like you know, that was probably like revolution steroids.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and you know that company in itself didn't go on to do so well. But I think what it gave me personally was um, everything. Um, and ah, yeah, at that point really kind of returned back to the uk, back to Scotland where I'm originally from, um, went to go and work at Skyscanner. And so the job at Skyscanner basically was um, building and selling uh, data products. So that would be like uh, data APIs, um, maybe helping airlines um, plan networks more effectively based on what people are searching for, what they're booking, how much they're willing to pay, uh, that kind of stuff. But also building like um, more SaaS based products like analytics, tooling.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: So people who aren't necessarily kind of technically literate can still benefit from the data offering.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and so that, to be honest, that whole experience, I can go into more detail, uh, shortly was where the kind of idea for Visly came from. It was like how do you help a B2B SaaS company?

Speaker A: Um,

Speaker B: basically you kind of build and go to market with a analytics offering, uh, quickly, without compromise. Um, and then after Skyscanner went to go and work for a company called Duffel, ah, looking after business development and sales there, uh, um, and that was like a flights API focused um, on um, something called ndce. So uh, providing direct connections to airlines, helping travel merchants, selling um, flight content, flight tickets, bypassing the gds like Amadis, Travelport, Sabre, um, yada yada. Yada. Uh, and then was really fortunate to meet my co founder James there.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Um, who's just, yeah an absolute machine. And so learn a lot about what it means to have good developer experience at Duffel. Um, learned heaps there that you know, didn't necessarily have too much exposure at ah, whilst at Skyscanner. And then I think the kind of combination of um, uh problem space that I was exposed to a Skyscanner plus understanding the benefit and value developer experience at Duffel is what really has kind of you know, combined together to create what visly was essentially.

Speaker A: Indeed. That's amazing. And look, I guess just going back a couple of steps to um, what you mentioned about Skyscanner I think you know like previously when I worked for an airline, um when they were planning a route, um, they'd be looking at um, sort of uh, economic data between particular cities, how many potential corporate clients they could have, how many passengers travel between city A and city B at the moment via transit. Whereas what you were bringing to them was real time sort of intent data which is super interesting and it was

Speaker B: completely proprietary as well. I don't think there are many other providers um, that could offer that level of global coverage.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: In terms of what travelers were searching for, um, again like what they're willing to pay, um, there's obviously various other meta search engines uh, like Kayak, um, at the time Google flights wasn't really that prevalent.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so Sky's kind of pretty much had a kind of um, essentially a monopoly over that search data space.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Which yeah was like obviously made my job as a salesperson um, that bit easier.

Speaker A: Indeed. Yeah.

Speaker B: Like learn heaps.

Speaker A: Yeah. And look, and then just in terms of the work at Duffel as well, um, you know, I mean for those in the audience that don't know um, what uh the GDS global distribution systems uh are effectively whenever um a ticket, particularly a long haul ticket, um, sale is made via a travel agent or a third party commissions would get sent to these gds um, players um, and the number of fares and fare classes they could offer was limited. So the NDC or new Distribution capability also acronyms. Yeah, that's so many acronyms. Um, uh, the outcome of that should be better um priced tickets um for

Speaker B: uh, consumers, uh, better price tickets, um, more complete offerings with more ancillary services exposed like bags, seats, um, like voluntary involuntary changes, that kind of stuff.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: But like um, yeah, the Duffel offering I think um, caught my attention super early. I actually reached out to the company because I Was like, um, yeah, love the product, love the concept.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And just wanted to be part of the rights. Um, they received some, um, backing from some incredible investors. I think, uh, Michael Moritz was an, ah, angel investor there. Um, pretty early. And all, uh, the signs indications were pretty positive, I think, from a market sentiment point of view. And I think, you know, um, at that point in my career, it was definitely more concerned about just being surrounded by people who were hungry to learn and do cool shit.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Instead of trying to, you know, optimize for like the biggest salary I could possibly get.

Speaker A: Gotcha. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, look like it's, uh, yeah. You're either learning or you're earning. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: My dad used to say that all the time.

Speaker A: Did he? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love it, love it. It's so true. That's fantastic. Look, you know, what an introduction, mate. Um, let's, let's dive into Visly again. Um, why don't we go through sort of. Yeah. A deeper dive into the problems that you set out to solve for businesses when you founded Vizzy.

Speaker B: Yeah. Cool. So I think like, the problem that we started with was really just trying to help B2B SaaS companies, um, build reporting or analytics offerings, um, inside of their applications, uh, quickly without compromise. And so what I mean by quickly without compromise is obviously you can go to market quickly through a kind of no code, low code solution. But the problem with existing embedded analytics offerings was that they're incredibly rigid. Like, cool. You could maybe build, uh, a dashboard in Tableau and embed it in an iframe inside your web application. Yeah, but it's not extensible with code. It's also like, pretty slow upon rendering. Um, yeah, you can't communicate to the contents of the dashboard with code. And generally you're going to be pretty limited from a kind of product experience perspective. And so what we wanted to build was this kind of hybrid where, yeah, sure, there's like no code elements, but there's still a heap of, um, developer involvement, um, obviously a much lesser extent as there would be if you were building in house.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: The point was that you could kind of, um, go to market in a couple of weeks instead of six months, uh, and at the same time maintain full control over the product and user experience.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Yeah, that's amazing. And you know, you mentioned that you went out to do YC with Visly. Were your first clients in the US or back over this side of the world?

Speaker B: Uh, we were pretty US centric from like day one. Um, YC was Probably, you know like YC was, was quite an experience for us. I think we had a very soft pivot, um, a couple of months in same ah, problem space. Just I think we're just trying to solve it in more of a kind of no Cody way before you realize the importance of developer centricity.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, we were lucky enough to kind of sign on a couple of design development partners, however you want to term that. Basically people that would be happy to pay us to solve this problem before we had product.

Speaker A: Okay, okay.

Speaker B: Um, and they were all in the U.S. yeah. Uh, I think the appetite to pay, the appetite to take risk is obviously, you know, um, a bit more prevalent in the US than it is in UK or Europe.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and also just like the ticket sizes man. Yeah, Like I remember negotiating with, with one UK prospect and it was like one or 200 bucks a month. Uh, uh, you know, just like what am I doing?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, it's almost consumer level pricing,

Speaker B: you know, like one Earth. Anyway, like I think our first design slash development partner in the US paid us like a thousand bucks a month. M And we had no, again it was just basically to go in a call every week or two and shape this product around that use case. Of course we ensured there is like several prospects or customers that shared that same set of requirements and we weren't just building blindly against this one use case. But uh, yeah, the appetite to pay was obviously kind of like just significantly higher in the US than it was in the UK or Europe. And so that was like a very, very conscious decision. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: Fantastic. That's great. And um, you know, you mentioned that, uh, I guess within a sort of two year period from when you went, you know, when you founded the business, um, ah, you know, you started to receive acquisition offers. Um, I think what would be good to explore is, you know, why were companies interested in not acquisizing acquiring M that type of technology? Um, you know, how would that benefit them?

Speaker B: Yeah, um, so we had like a variety of different types of acquisition office. Right. Um, so we had two, what I would describe as micro private equity firms. M. Um, those deal structures are so, so interesting. Um, one of the offers were you know like fucking terrible. Pretty much just like pure seller backed financing. Um, to be honest, like I only entertain that conversation because I was just fascinated about learning like how on earth that world even works. Yeah, like zero interest anywhere near that deal. Um another one was, was, was pretty kind of cash heavy. Um but so those are two types of offers we, we received and Then another one was a competitor. Um, I won't name names. Um and then uh, the other one was, was, was I guess you would call a strategic acquirer which was wpp. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. Um

Speaker B: and yeah I think each of them had different motives for, for acquiring us. One wanted to take us off the market or at least maybe absorb our customer base, maybe even parts of our product. Yeah, pes probably just wanted to you know we were pretty kind of um. Um I think we did quite well from like a revenue perspective considering the size of the team. We had like a really good kind of rpe so revenue per employee and so uh, you know the appetite from micro PE firms was um, made sense. And um, then wpp, um absolutely huge company like plc. Um we are uh. That I guess was more them integrating our product and our technology into their stack. Yeah. Um and so uh, that's obviously happened this complete the transaction finalized in October and now we're just going through the process of, of um realizing uh the reality they um uh had envisioned. And yeah what we're doing WPP now is building a um, marketing effectiveness and attribution platform.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker B: Um, uh and some of the clients are kind of crazy. It's like DoorDash, HSBC, Airbnb. It's kind of fun working with that level of brand.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: Bizly historically it was all about helping growth stage startups. Uh and probably companies and brands you've never heard of.

Speaker A: That's it. And I mean that's the benefit of getting acquired by such a large organization that has those enterprise clients which can be two year sales cycles. I uh, know previous company, uh, I worked, worked for had a contract with WPP and they you know like the pitch like took months you know like it was, it was nuts.

Speaker B: So it's just a different world.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's it. But you know they've, they're kind of the only like agencies which are able to effectively offer a ah multi service offering M to those enterprise clients. Uh because yeah because through their own in house capabilities or through companies they acquire they can service every need.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, exactly, exactly. And be. To be honest like um, you know the guys at WPP know this like I know almost nothing about ad tech. So like um, for me that's been a bit of a learning curve. Um and yeah the whole thing's been a bit of a learning curve to be honest. Even like this is the first company I founded.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Um, selling a company end to end, mad learning curve but also selling to a publicly listed Company.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Uh, apparently, um, I didn't necessarily appreciate this at the time. It was probably the hardest, most difficult path we could have taken.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm glad, you know, we're exposed to all that pain, uh, I suppose, like relatively early in my career.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and so, yeah, moving forward, I'm sure I'll, you know, start another company at some point. Yeah, um, it's just good to have all that kind of experience, uh, and learning in the kind of back pocket. So moving forward, it'll hopefully kind of reap its rewards.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. And look, you know, it's interesting that you mentioned that that was the hardest pathway because, um, you know, we've just kind of come out of a, ah, an interesting stage in, you know, like the tech and VC world where pre covered, you know, money was flowing. You know, in London in particular, we had like the big fintech boom. Um, you know, like, uh, there was money just kept flowing during the pandemic and then come sort of 2022 with hyperinflation and you know, I, a bit of unemployment rising. Um, we saw things dry up. Um, you know, VC now seems very, very focused on AI, uh, you know, kind of what made you decide to sell as opposed to pursue the Series A route. Yeah.

Speaker B: So I mean like our growth is okay. Right? We're probably doing like 15% month to month. I think that's pretty modest, uh, for a VC backed company. So I think just, yeah, sure, we could maybe have sustained that and sure, we could have raised a Series A, maybe taken a small secondary.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, but I think what, you know, I don't think a lot of founders, uh, starting out necessarily understand the dynamics of what raising A, uh, Series A means. So yeah, sure, if you're lucky enough, you can take a small secondary, but you get put back on a vesting schedule.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and there will be more expectation, less control. I think there is a sweet spot between seed and Series A where your revenue and your, your kind of, um, economics are maybe in a really healthy place and you are open to acquisition offers that can create massive upside for you as a founder. Like life changing upside for you as a founder. Yeah, um, and sure, look, maybe you are growing at like 30, 40% month a month and Series A is absolutely for you.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you know, you got a home run or I mean like, it's not that simple, but you know what I mean, like, you know, things are in your favor and you can dictate terms and you can make sure those terms really do benefit you. Um, I think the position that we were coming from was probably, you know, speaking honestly and openly. Probably, you know, wasn't like that. Um, we had good traction, consistent, healthy growth and an opportunity to take money off the table. And that's what we did.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And um, yeah, look, we. We originally went down the venture pathway. Uh, uh, but we also had like a really hard time fundraising our seat. And we went out to market to raise twice as much as what we actually took.

Speaker A: Wow. Uh, yeah, which.

Speaker B: That's what forced us to go into a, um, uh, like customer acquisition mode super early. Yep.

Speaker A: Ah.

Speaker B: And like trying to source design development partners to work with us and pay us to help take some of the pressure off from a kind of Runway point of view. But like, um, I suppose it's kind of that whole thing around theory of constraints. Right. Like if you over fund a startup, you probably become a little bit more complacent.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: We were probably underfunded and just fucking panicked a little bit.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And because we panicked a little bit, just became like, um, yeah, super, super focused on the bottom line, probably prematurely maybe. I know some people have different thoughts and opinions about the benefits of design and development partners and et cetera. But for us, um, that's the pathway that we took. Um, and it created an environment of visually in a way that even the engineers were really excited. New customers really engaged in the Slack channel, shared Slack channels with, um, incoming existing customers. And um, you know, every time we kind of bumped up the revenue metric, um, AR metric, you know, engineers would get excited about it and like, that was the type of environment, um, that we created at visually, but again, very small scale. Very, very small scale. But, um, I think also like, I mean, everyone's talking about it now, but like AI and just the ability for you to create, um, and run, um, great products with great revenue lines with a small team.

Speaker A: That's right.

Speaker B: M. Right now is probably kind of. And probability of that being a reality for many is just much more realistic now than it was maybe kind of even five years ago.

Speaker A: Indeed. And look, I mean, that was literally going to be my next question in terms of the impact of AI. Um, you know, I know, like, particularly during the sort of real, like bubbly, um, uh, fluffy startup days, ah, number of employees was considered like, you know, a key success metric of a company. Whereas now do you think that, you know, like, um, well, the expectation around revenue per employee, uh, do you think that that's changed as a result of AI?

Speaker B: Um, I think founders are probably thinking through the lens of Revenue per employee. I don't know too much about maybe how VCs are looking at it. Um, but I think a lot of founders these days are kind of realizing that, you know, like you said there. Right. Like it's not, um, there's. I suppose there's a kind of lot of, um, uh, hype around how much you've raised, how many people you've hired. Um, and it becomes this mad kind of dick swinging competition. You know, at least it was maybe kind of five years ago.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And now I think a lot of founders are waking up to the reality that actually do you know what, like what's really cool is building a company with, um, fantastic revenue per employee. There's like super lean that gives you maximum control.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and yeah, I think that's definitely becoming more popularized with AI.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. Ah, indeed. I mean, I think in terms of bootstrapping like this, if you compare it now compared to say 10 years ago.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Like what you can do with, let's say, I don't know, $50,000, $100,000 has increased at a multiple that we can't even quantify as a result of, you know, AI driven tools. Yeah. Um, particularly when it comes to what you can build, uh, without a development team. Um, now with 50 grand as opposed to.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Previously with.

Speaker B: I've also like read a lot about, um, this idea of like seed strapping or I think there's like another term for it or whatever. Like, um. But anyway, like you know, 50 grand still a lot of cash, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And like to bootstrap a company, even if you hear, you know, like the upfront Investment required is 50k is still a lot of cash. Um, and so I think I'm also seeing a lot of folk, uh, a lot of founders talking about. Right. Well, like what if I just raised that a little bit at the start.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Just to get me off the ground and then just see how much damage I can do with that.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Um, that seems to be kind of, um, a bit more popularized these days as well. Um, yeah, I think the hard part there is finding investors who would willingly give you like 50k, 100k, 250k, knowing maybe the kind of ROI on that is pretty low. I think obviously the way we look at investment, like angel investment, vc, angel investment, less so is maybe you have a portfolio of investments and you kind of expect the top 3% to return plus more. Um, and then there's a long tail of investments that just kind of maybe tail off, maybe produce 1, 2x but those aren't really the ones you're kind of hoping to attract or invest in. Right. Yeah, I think there's probably, you know. Yeah, it's probably a little bit still. Still a little bit misalignment, I think, between like founders and investors angels or VCs.

Speaker A: Yeah, indeed, indeed. And, um, you know, AI is moving super quickly. Um, do you have a view on what could be defensible against AI?

Speaker B: Um, I mean, I think things obviously like having proprietary data, I think that's a fairly well known one. Um, but I think what AI has done is obviously reduce the barrier to entry from a technical and engineering perspective. Yeah, I still think it's really, really bloody important, uh, if you are a founder, to have a technical co founder. This does, in my opinion, um, and I'm no expert, does not necessarily replace the need for a technical co founder. Yeah, um, I can't tell you or describe how much value um, I got from having a technical co founder, um, for more reasons than just someone to churn out code. Um, but I do think, uh, it does put more emphasis on softer skills. So designing really fantastic product experiences or being really strong in the distribution and go to market side, um, that now seems to be more of a kind of differentiator. Then, um, is this technically feasible? Can I technically build this? And so I think it's just maybe moved a little bit more emphasis onto, yeah, soft skills and then, uh, yeah, just competent, different, a different set of competencies, I suppose. But I don't think it obviously does not eradicate the need for having like a really strong technical base and a really strong technical co founder.

Speaker A: Indeed. Certainly like the kind of like glut I see in the market, or I guess the shortage, I should say, um, that I see in the market is when like commercial, um, you know, stakeholders like the two of us, you know, vibe code and get projects to a certain point when then they're like, all right, actually now I need someone to come in and, you know, and fix this or make it scalable. Um, uh, and so it'll be interesting to watch that space when it comes to, you know, developers and engineers.

Speaker B: It's great for prototyping. Oh yeah, there's a bad. Maybe you're gonna like, you know, um, whether it's like lovable or Claude or whatever.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Um, just having a bit of fun with. But like, yeah, in reality would absolutely require, you know, a strong technical co founder to. Yeah, you know, um, bring it to fruition.

Speaker A: But definitely, yeah, I mean it's kind of like, um, you know, if you think about like in the past, maybe a group of consultants go to a company and they collect the requirements, um, for a product and then, you know, they go away with the product team and the developers and they come back in six weeks with an mvp. Um, now they're able to do that

Speaker B: like whilst you're on the sales call.

Speaker A: Exactly, yeah. Typing it in. Um, yeah, it's, it's like the time to market for a prototype.

Speaker B: That's so, so true.

Speaker A: And even the time to market for, you know, an enterprise scalable product as well.

Speaker B: And I founders iterating on ideas, you know, like literally just like, hang on a minute, let me see if you know. Yeah, and then maybe you send them the kind of URL to the kind of demo you've created and just I suppose, kind of test evaluate whether the appetite's there for something like that. Instead of, like you said, spending six weeks developing some sort of kind of mvp. Yeah, but, yeah, like, um, yeah, don't get me wrong, I'm again like, I am not against AI LLMs M. I think there's a huge, massive, massive benefit. I just absolutely think uh, having like a really strong technical co founder is still like quintessential.

Speaker A: Oh, agreed. I mean, look, like, let's say commercial stakeholders like US can leverage AI to get 10x, someone with technical expertise can get it to 100x. So yeah, yeah, like I, I agree with you in terms of that. Um, so, you know, just to tie up the commercial side of that, you know, what do you think the big impact for commercial stakeholders like us, uh, is going to be with AI?

Speaker B: I think like, probably. Look, there's so many, um, I have like a ton of this shit in my LinkedIn feed right now and it's like AI SDRs, you know, eradicate the need for SDRs, um, or at least like reduce it, nullify it, whatever. Um, I've used a few of them, mate, and have had like no luck. No results. Yeah, actually, like, I sound like I'm proper kind of like anti AI at this point, but like, nah, I just don't have. I just haven't heard it has to be, you know, I haven't had much luck in that department. Yeah, I do think though that like, go to market perspective. Um, I think content's a really strong play. Like obviously with kind of, um, LM Generated content or LM Assisted, um, generated content, uh, that opens up um, so many doors. Productivity, um, enhancements are insane. Um, I think content for us at Vizly was Uh, super strong play.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: Um, content SEO obviously takes time to develop. Um, it's expensive from a kind of human resource point of view. There's massive gains being made there obviously through the use of LLMs. Um, but yeah, I think even like just workflow automations, um, making sure that uh, CRMs are filled um, with data that, you know, it's probably kind of before LLMs would be relatively unattainable if not like an absolute pain in the ass to get inside your CRM.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Stuff. Um, like that. But I think the whole idea around um, eradicating SDRs. My work function. Yeah. I don't buy it. At least not at the moment. Maybe I'll be kind of proven wrong in a couple years or maybe even a few months time.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean it'll be interesting to see how the STR function develops because will it be an SDR that's able to kind of, I don't know, outsource a whole lot of the work when it comes to understanding why they want to engage with the prospect and then focus their time on the relationships which actually ah, is then going to get them high quality leads. Because as soon as something becomes so democratized, like how do you stand out from the crowd? Um, exactly.

Speaker B: Um, I guess this thing was called outbound as well. Right. Um, you know, it's dead. Is it dead or is it just ultra? You know, kind of saturated box is a fucking mess.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, yeah. So things like that definitely have to kind of make you think and wonder and it probably does put a heaps more emphasis again on soft skills, on relationship. Um, relationship is probably going to become like much more important, much more meaningful.

Speaker A: Indeed.

Speaker B: There's obviously industries where that's already the case. If you look at like aviation, travel, shipping.

Speaker A: Yeah. Banking, mining.

Speaker B: M. Mining. Um, and so yeah, like maybe that would just become a bit more prevalent across other industries that uh, have historically been a bit more transactional.

Speaker A: Indeed, indeed. That's great. Look Matt M. We've covered a great deal. You know, we've spoken about your past. Um, we've spoken about Visley and the exit, different exit pathways, um, that you know, people could take AI, um, uh, and you know, sort of a bit of defensibility as well. Um, is there anything else that you know, you want to add or you want to speak about?

Speaker B: Um, I think like so, um, after ipp, uh, and kind of wondered what on earth to do with myself outside of working hours. Started uh, to write a little bit on just in substack. Just.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and Nothing too serious. But uh, one topic that I kind of naturally gravitated towards was this kind of concept of a middle path between bootstrapping and vc. And I think it's one of those things that yeah, sure is becoming more popularized that we said before. Um, but I do think I'd like to open the uh, eyes of founders more to that. Uh, that we can create life changing outcomes. Uh, it doesn't don't necessarily have to bootstrap and you know, remortgage your house.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Ah.

Speaker B: And you don't necessarily have to go down some crazy venture pathway for 10, 15 years. You know, like there is a middle ground and it is like raising a little bit and finding investors that are kind of like happy with those outcomes.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And just being really, really honest with yourself based on what you value. Right. Like um, spoke with one founder, um, again, won't name names, um, at this retreat asked uh, him what his number was.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: And I think he says something like 100 plus million. Are you saying that if I put 5 million in your pocket right now you wouldn't take that cash in your pocket? Um, and I think especially for first time founders, 99.9% would probably take, you know, um, 5 million cash in the pocket right now.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: As opposed to 100 million in 25 years time when you're 65 and you know.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Um, so I, look, I'm a huge, huge respect for all pathways bootstrapping venture. I just think that um, there's massive opportunity in that middle space, uh, for a lot of founders to make really, really good money and life changing outcomes. Um, and yeah, it's something I'll probably continue to write about a little bit as well.

Speaker A: Fantastic. Amazing. Look Matt, thanks so much mate. That's uh, that's fantastic. And uh, we look forward to. Yeah. Following your writing and journey.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I can't wait. Anyway Lucas, thank you very much for having me, man.

Speaker A: No worries mate. My pleasure. Unfortunately it's too early in the day for a beer, but we'll wait a couple half an hour. Yeah, that's it. Thanks Matt. Cheers.