A Retrospective Guide to Founding an App Company with George Fairhall (WAC)

Andrew Maeer Welcome to byProduct Live, where we unbox everything SaaS and product. We talk with experts and leaders in SaaS and product to understand their approach to leadership and ways of working to share their knowledge and understanding. Andrew Today on byProduct Live, I'm delighted to be joined by George Fairhall. George is the founder of WAC, a startup based here in Leeds.

WAC gives more control to hourly paid workers and combats issues such as underpayment, is a big problem in hourly paid work, which is often undertaken by younger people. George founded the business four years ago and has been on a journey from then, made all the more interesting by the fact that George is a non-technical founder. When George isn't working on WAC, fundraising or raising the company's profile at events. She's mum to two very cute dogs and enjoys swimming to wind down.

Today, we're going to talk to George about her journey as a non-technical founder in a SaaS business. The challenges she's faced and importantly, we're going to run through what George knows now that she wished she knew four years ago. Hopefully, this will help other founders who might be thinking of starting something or who are on a journey and need some inspiration. Welcome to the show today, George.

How are you doing today? George Fairhall Fab thank you, thanks for having me Andrew Cool, so I think a really good point to start today would be if you just give maybe a quick overview of kind of your journey and importantly I guess why you decided to found WAC George Fairhall Yeah, of course, it's super important to me because it was a problem that I experienced myself. I went set out on my own little mission to try and solve it. And it was because I was underpaid.

consistently throughout many hourly paid jobs over the years that I worked it, whether it was through like college or university, or whether it was after university, when I actually realized there's more people that are doing it than just the average student. It can be sometimes, you know, parents, can be retired people. There's lots of different people that are relying on these jobs. And I was sick of trying to keep track of my hours and my earnings.

was sick of getting underpaid and I felt like nobody cared. I, yeah, tried to go on a mission to fix it by building an app that would essentially solve that problem and become a tool and actually a support network as well for people that are in that type of workforce. So yeah, it started four years ago and we are well away now, which I never thought would be the case. Andrew Cool.

And as you've mentioned, you're obviously not a technical person. You don't have a software engineering or a product or even a SaaS sales background. So what kind of challenges has that presented to you in your early days that you've worked your way through? George Fairhall Yeah, so when I started, I had gone to law school, so I had a bit of an idea what you had to do in businesses.

And I had kind of built that out a little bit to help me in what I thought might be the start of the journey. So picked like company law and IP law and different things that would kind of match building this solution in this company that I thought. Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall But I had no idea how to start it.

I didn't know anyone that really had started a business. I didn't have funding to do it. And I definitely didn't know any technical person that could be maybe a co-founder or a CTO or I just had this idea that I wanted to start an app that would do this. And it was literally just kind of doing one thing at a time until I unlocked the next stage.

And it was building a network and. Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall learning every day and looking up to other businesses and founders that had done it and just figuring it out along the way really like I think a lot of founders do. But I think the scariest thing about it was I knew I needed to outsource the product because I'd kind of done the first steps that I had felt were needed to start in the business and then got to the point where I knew I needed to reach development, got some quotes in the UK and knew it would be absolutely impossible because there was no way I could get that funding at that point.

And so I knew I'd have to outsource. I'd had loads of stories about outsourcing. You know, there's like so many horror stories that people have heard about IP, getting, you know, different IP issues and the communication and whether the processes are right for your business, the time. Andrew Yeah.

George Fairhall difference, the quality, et cetera. So it was quite scary for me to go into that, not having a clue about that technical side of things. So really it was about me finding the right people, the right team, and spending a lot of time doing that to start to be trusting in those people to start to build out the company. And I was lucky enough that I actually went and found that.

So that's really the kind of one thing, outsourcing and not understanding any of the processes. And then secondly, was raising funding. Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall We've raised a million to date now and we just closed some more and we're opening up our seed.

And it's quite difficult. Obviously, investors want a good team. And if you're... Andrew Of course.

George Fairhall a non-technical founder sitting there on your own, especially as a female and sole founder, it's not the greatest reactions that you get. So it has taken a lot of persuasion and proof that we are good enough, even though we haven't got those positions in the business yet. So yeah, that's probably the biggest challenges that I've had and had to overcome, which so far have, but obviously we're still kind of early on our journey, so who knows. Andrew Yeah, absolutely.

So gone from winging it to knowing what you're doing now. George Fairhall Yeah, I can, I'm not taking that I'm fully non-technical anymore. I'm technical now. I just can't code and I'm not as good as some CTO co-founders, but yeah, the amount I've learned, I've had to, you know, to be able to stand in those investment pitches and be able to hold my own and persuade them and say, I am good enough and I have got a good enough team and look at our product.

And the only way I've been able to do that is to learn, you know, enough to be able to stand there alone. Andrew Yeah. So that's a really good background for us and I think some really important context for what we're going to talk about now. So one of the things you've done is obviously a bit of a retro and a reflect on that journey and you've kind of put together some steps that you think if you were going to take that journey again that you would do and that you would obviously recommend to other people.

And I'm guessing if you'd have done this you'd have probably got ahead a little bit quicker because I guess the failure points would have been less where you've had to then go back and reconfigure or redo things or a stage that you've maybe missed out. So what's the number one step that you would recommend to people who are considering setting up a business or maybe on the journey and a little bit stuck at the moment? So where would you advise people to start? George Fairhall Yeah, it's so difficult.

Obviously, this varies for every business, but from the experience I've been through, so obviously I've got an app company, it's a service to a consumer. it's obviously reaching a huge market. It's building a platform that needs to be suitable for. Lots of people and there's lots of competition out there.

You're going to have to market. You're going to have to stand out. You're going to have to prove product market fit at quite a heavy scale. So you're going to have to get that traction to be able to raise funding.

A lot of the time for an app company is. pre revenue for a long time, because you have to prove that there is product market fit before you can even start charging a user. So it's quite a long process. And I've definitely now kind of learn that best process and what's what, what made us reach this point.

And it really has been a case of like, do this and then you unlock that. And then once you've done that, you unlock that. And, that's obviously worked for us so far. So I do get a lot of people coming to me now asking like, well, where do I start?

And obviously it's, it's something that. that lots of people think. It doesn't matter what background you're from, what school you're from, what, you know, there's, I came from somewhere that didn't know anyone that started a business. And I think just understanding the very basic steps of just like kicking it off.

is really important. So I love being able to share this now of kind of what I did. And first of all, step one, I planned. So really, I got myself on an accelerator course or just something that gave me really basic knowledge of starting a business.

You can do that or you can speak to someone that's done it. But essentially, it's sitting down and planning out your business and figuring out what's the problem, what's the solution, who's the market. And there's lots of different sections. Andrew Yep.

George Fairhall so you can get out on a board on the wall. And the model that I used was the business model canvas and you can. Andrew Okay. George Fairhall you can find that there's lots of different ways of doing it.

I have made kind of my own version of it based on what I've known that has got different steps to it. But essentially, without going into too much detail, it's segmenting out the business and starting to understand what are those parts of the business and where do you start really so you can literally have it all out on a wall and see the individual sections of it. Andrew Yeah, so it's taking the business at a high level and then breaking it down into manageable components that you know that you need to take care of.

And I guess there's some difficult things in there that if you don't plan it out, then they might get left behind and bite you in the backside later down the line. George Fairhall Yeah, exactly. Cause you kind of, think, like I had a problem. was like, I want an app to solve that, but you don't really know what else do I need?

So, you know, there's different people you're to have to get involved, like getting a development quote and there's maybe a marketing agency or maybe there's a co-founder or like, you know, there's all these different things that customers have you actually thought about who's who those customers are? Yes, you're starting it. Yes, it's a problem for you, but like, have you thought about all those other things? So it's just a good little template to make you think about stuff that you maybe wouldn't know at first.

So yeah. Andrew Yeah, cool. And then once you've got everything planned out, think next stage is around competitor analysis and understanding what you're putting into the market is going to be viable. And is there anybody out there that's already doing what you do?

How did you go about that? George Fairhall Yeah, so I think this is probably one of the most important steps. It certainly shocked me, but it also is the step that no one comes back to me after once they've got an idea. Because it is a bit of graft.

You do have to really do some research if you're going to do it properly. But it's so important because I thought, you know, there's nothing out there. There's no competition because I couldn't find something. Andrew Yeah.

George Fairhall when I was a worker. So I'd often go on the app store. I'd often, you know, I'd have to track my hours on my notes. I'd have to build Excel sheets.

So for me, I kind of started thinking there isn't any competition because otherwise I'd have found it as a worker. But actually when I really dug deep and looked at things that are maybe like indirectly like competing, maybe other B2B businesses that are kind of doing something that has got good features and stuff. Or there's maybe I wanted to be able to track my rotor and my hours, but maybe there's just a rotor tracking app. You know, there's all these things that you can look and if you really do spend some time, you do dig some stuff out.

And it's about looking at them. It uncovers. So much stuff that will help you then make those next decisions. So about the product, you might have an idea, but obviously if there's something else in the market that's doing it, I'd look at the one star reviews, the five star reviews.

I'd look at what features they've got, what price and model they have, where their HQ is like all these different things that you can pull out from these competitors that, you know, some are really rubbish, but actually have got some great five star reviews that you can learn and go, you know, I'm going to build the product to have that maybe more. Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall Or there's some that are really, even I'd look at apps that had the same market as what we were looking for and down to like MyFitnessPal or Uber Eats or, know, like it's the same sort of market and it's like, what are they doing that's on trend?

What do they have within their app? And they spend millions figuring that out so you don't have to, and you can go find that out, you know, so you can see what they're doing. It really does help with you figuring out your product, making sure that you are going to stand out for the market and have a USP. But also sometimes you then realize actually it's oversaturated or there's too many things.

No, I can't be bothered. I'm not finishing the professor analysis. Andrew Yeah. And I guess there's two angles to this.

One is validation that your idea works and there should be a need for it. But I guess also it may show you that the idea you have right now is not right for the market or somebody's already doing it or you need to look for a different angle. George Fairhall Yeah, definitely exactly that. And I think until you've done those two initial steps, just basically planning it out and then doing that research and competition, I don't think you should, you know, take any big steps to register businesses or be telling anyone or putting loads of money anywhere, you know, that it's, it's free to do that.

And it's just a bit of time that's needed, but it will really help you then be able to make those next like serious decisions about the business. Andrew Yeah. Yeah. And I guess once you've done those two stages, is there some kind critical criteria that you need to have ticked off before you think about continuing?

George Fairhall Yeah, definitely. So I think you need to have done it properly because no, going in, yeah, finding one app or just like do it properly and put some time into it. Cause it's only you that's going to suffer later. like I, I spend days, like hours and hours, doing that compressive analysis.

Like I just did it in a Google, Sheets doc, like, just literally listed it out. It took so long, but honestly, we still go back to it now. Andrew Not blagged it. Because you're only blagging yourself.

George Fairhall You need to make sure that obviously your business is solving a problem, which that business model canvas will help you do. It really does have to, it sounds simple, but it's got to be something a problem, but you're not going to get product market fit. And if you think it's a problem, fine. But does the rest is your customer?

Does the market do, you know, does everyone else, does it stand out from the market? Obviously you want to be able to go into that. You're probably going to have some competitors, but you're going to want to go in and dominate it, hopefully. So what are you.

Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall going to do to make it stand out or does it already. It might be the case that actually your idea was based, you know, just a simple problem, but actually from the competitor analysis, it's now grown into something a lot bigger and you figured out what you can do to stand out from the market. and also that that market's not oversaturated because there's a lot of the times where I will get people come to me, you know, and because I'm in the world, I understand like all lots of different startups that are doing that.

Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall thing. But maybe, you know, you as an everyday person that hasn't been in the technical world, you don't know they are. So you've really got to go and figure that out.

Because if there's people that are ahead of you, and there's like 100 companies doing it, and you're quite behind, you don't want to, you know, waste too much time if it really is already oversaturated. So it's definitely something to figure out before. And if that's all happened, then I'd say you can can move on. Andrew Yeah, and I guess it's at this point where things start to get serious.

You've kind of done the research. You shouldn't at this point have worried necessarily about setting up a company or software development or building a product. what comes next in the process? George Fairhall Yeah, so I think next it's like kind of figuring out who would be involved in the company.

So it's all of the things around starting a company. So that's where it obviously gets a bit more serious. I didn't know that you could go on a register a company online. Do you know what I mean?

Like that's as basic as it gets and you can Google it and it comes up with other people charging you to go register your company online. There's so many silly little things that just with a little bit of research into what is... Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall is required to set up a company.

And there's great things that you can use now, like chat GPT and things that can help you along your way and give you those things. But it's really starting to think about that, know, understanding it a bit more. How do you set it up? Do you need a landing page?

Do you need some social media? Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall Is there going to be co-founders? Is there any funding you already have?

Like making sure that that setup is done properly and just spending a little bit of time to research it. And then once you've done that, you can then move on to setting it up. But I would, you know, rather than make any impulsive decisions, which I am known for, but didn't do in this case. And it's been the thing that I've been good at is just taking it step by step.

Andrew Ha ha, no way. George Fairhall really understand what you're getting into. So first do that and then you can start going through, setting it up, registering it, building your landing page and doing things like that. Andrew Yeah.

And I guess there's a really important part here in the company setup which could become a problem further down the line is to make sure you've got things like share capital allocation correct. If there's more than one person making sure that you have the right documentation in the background so that if you are lucky enough to make an exit further down the line, it doesn't cause arguments but actually doesn't cost you a load of money as well in. I mean to pay different people or pay more tax than you need to.

George Fairhall Yeah, exactly. There's some really silly things that can be done. It's obviously not silly when you're first starting because you don't know, but later down the line, like you can think, my gosh, if I just did that one thing. it's spending that time on that bit, which often people don't do, but it's so important.

Andrew Yeah, cool. And then I guess you can start and get into the interesting part of this because you're wanting to build something, build a SaaS product. So where should people start with their product development journey? George Fairhall So I actually accidentally did this, which is why this is so valuable because I realized I did this and it was so important and what such a great step I took to actually start that development process.

So I actually started to just draw out what I wanted as a product. So I started listing the features. I'd obviously done the competitor analysis. I knew a lot of the things that were from that.

And I just literally got. piece of paper and a pencil and just started doodling. Like, what does it look like? know, what sort of app is it going to look like, a certain app you've seen before?

Like, I was really inspired by Monzo because I had recently got it. It was a product that made something that was pretty boring, banking, very simple. Andrew Yeah. Interesting and easy to use, George Fairhall Yeah, so like I really use them as like inspiration for how to like kind of build out the app again knew they were putting a lot of money into that research.

So, so I just started to draw it out. And then I ended up actually getting into a competition at that point. So obviously, along these, these steps, you can be trying to do stuff in the background. And it might be the accelerated courses or competitions or anything that can help you get that validation definitely going on in the background.

I did it for that. And I had to mock up some of the images at that point, because I had to build a presentation. So I have my little drawings. I had an idea, but I was like, right, I can't take a picture of my drawing.

I'm going that on the deck and start presenting in London, like my drawings. So I ended up, my friend was a designer. I was like, can you turn these into something that looks like an app? Just literally mockups of it.

Paid him in beer. He was like, yeah, just give me some points. Did that. Andrew Yeah.

Yeah, just take a photograph. Yeah. Yeah. George Fairhall got some, some just vision of what it would look like.

That was enough to pitch, you know, we did, I was at the idea stage. I wasn't saying that the product was developed. and then from that, I was able to go out and test it and go and get feedback on it. So I then went out to a load of bartenders and said, what'd think of this?

This would be screen one, this would be screen two. And I just did like a little, Andrew Okay, yeah, yeah. George Fairhall survey, is it type form survey, whatever it was, know, and just send that with it and just said, can you mark out five, 10 or whatever and, and give me any feedback. And essentially I'd built a prototype, which was literally a few mock-up screens.

You can now do that on different apps and there's websites and you might be able to get one, but actually I didn't need to. And I got the feedback I needed. Andrew Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think doing it hand drawn is really interesting as well because of the nature of that process. You're going to keep it as simple as possible because drawing out loads of different processors and making something really complex, you'd be able to feel that when you were writing it out or drawing it out rather than trying to create it on some kind of mock-up tool on a computer. George Fairhall Yeah, definitely. Like some of them I've seen are amazing, but yeah, they're not simple.

And actually you just need really early stage feedback at that point. Like if we had these features, would you like it? You know, is it solving the problem? So I guess you could build on it and you could then do after that first bit of feedback, you could then go and do like another prototype and one that's made up and like...

Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall that's also fine to get more feedback that way. But for me, I didn't need to do that. It was enough to have just some simple designs.

I got it tested. I ended up sending it out to about 500 bartenders. And from that, I changed two of the features. I added one.

And that was it. That was the basic level of products that I needed to then be able to go up. Andrew Okay. So that was whack 1.

0 basically. George Fairhall Yeah. And, and like, it saved me so much time because, know, again, quite often people come and say, have you got an intro to development company? And I'm like, have you done all this stuff that I'm talking about?

Because you're just going to have to do that later with someone. So which you'll be charged for. So I think you don't realize that you can do it at such a basic level yourself and just put in a bit of effort and get the feedback you need to be able to then go to a development company, start the next step and. Andrew Yeah.

George Fairhall literally save so much time and so many questions because you've already gone and got those answers from something really simple. Andrew Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I think that's super advice for that early stage part of the process. So when we get to step number seven, this is where things get interesting.

I guess as a founder, probably one of the more challenging parts. And whilst we've got this in as a single step, I'm not sure it ever ends. we're talking about fundraising. George Fairhall Yeah, it's definitely been the most challenging thing for me.

I think mostly because we are traditionally a high risk B2C business, like B2C is obviously... Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall is known for being high risk and costing potentially a lot of money in marketing and stuff. So this has been very personal to me, but obviously I have been going along this journey with a lot of other founders that have different products to mind that do find this a very hard stage.

And unfortunately it starts to become that, yes, you can do all of those steps I've gone through before. You can even get the wireframes done from a company, which I did before I I actually started development. I found a development company. then got the design phase, like the wireframes done and separated it from the development.

So it would save me a bit of money. So I could make sure I definitely liked that before I spent loads of money for development. So certain things you can do before, but obviously when you start getting the product developed, you then have it more as a project. based development work where you then get it launched.

And then obviously you have to think about maintenance and stuff after which you don't even know exists at that point. So it's going to cost a lot of money and it all then relies on that funding. having that plan and understanding what things are going to cost you in, like what I said, the development, then what happens after you've launched is super important because it's a lot of money. Andrew Yeah.

Yeah, and if you don't have very deep pockets of your own or money that you can rely on, sources of funds have you been able to achieve so far? George Fairhall So you have to be the world's best hustler. Which I now am. am, I am, don't mind saying that.

I found that the best way to do it is to stick with angel investment as long as you can. So that's finding a, individual investor that likes what you're doing. And that is also again, why all of these steps before are so important, because if you can go to an investor and say, I'm only just fundraising now, but so far I've done this, this, this, this is this, this is what the product looks like. This is the research I've done, you know, it just makes you look great and very investable.

And that's the situation you want to be in. So yeah, for me, that's what I did. And I had to just raise really what I could get that. that amount of investment in have a very clear plan and objective.

So I follow like an OKR model where I have a very specific objective. I get that done with that money and then I raise again. And that's how I found the best way to do it with this type of business or product, because you can, you can prove yourself that way more easily. Whereas if you get, Andrew Yeah.

George Fairhall that funding in and you don't manage to get to the stage that you kind of have promised, then it can mean that you won't get that next amount of funding. So I think following that strict process is definitely the best way. Andrew Yeah. And I guess in a B2C environment, it's hard to go out and get institutional funding right away until you've proven that the business model and the product is viable.

And I think you recently got to pretty big milestone in terms of numbers of users and downloads. Is that right? George Fairhall Yeah, definitely. So, yeah, we're just under 350,000 installs now, which starts to perk up the years of VCs.

That's literally around that point. It's that or a lot more or revenue. So again, one of the great milestones we've just got to is becoming revenue generating. So we got to the point where we had proven early product market fit.

We've proven the problem was there. We've proven the market was willing to that wanted our product. Andrew Yeah. Yep.

George Fairhall We proved that the product we'd built was being used and was sticky and we were retaining our users. And so then the next stage was then revenue. So there's a lot you've got to do and a lot you've got to survive to prove all of that. And it's a lot to do with development because you've got to listen to your users.

You know, we built in a whole feedback process where we were just obsessed with getting feedback. You know, just tell us, tell us, tell us how can we make it more sticky? How can we make it quicker? Andrew Yeah.

And how did you get that feedback? George Fairhall So we would put stuff, we'd do emails, that's not like super successful. We'd ring people, we'd do voice notes, we would put stuff on the app, we put surveys on the app. We found that doing an in-app survey rather than a survey on an email was a lot better.

Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall Super simple, three questions, yes or no answers. And we got some really great feedback back from that. We also just really focused on building a community and taking them on the journey with us.

like we would, you know, put out our story quite often, you know, telling them about where I've come from and that we are a relatable business and we want to build a product that solves the problem and help us make it become part of it. And if you involve them on your journey, they've even, you know, we've got a cohort of testers now. So we've got a group. Andrew Yeah.

Yeah. George Fairhall of people that want to test it, they want to get on there first before we've even launched the update and they want to test it. Like people love it if you involve them and then if they start to see that some of the feedback they're giving is actually like being integrated into the app, it's like they're amazing and they literally stick by you and they fight for us you know so I think that's really important as well is to involve them on your journey at that point.

Andrew Yeah, and I guess this is one of the big benefits of being a non-technical founder is that you are a founder from industry. So the people whose problem you are trying to solve, they can really relate to you and your journey and then you then become almost that beacon for the business. George Fairhall Yeah, definitely. There's been so many points to like the business where I've realized that that was so important.

And I think sometimes with, if you're super technical, obviously you're just very focused on the product and that's super important. Like obviously one of the most important things, but like to be able to get that community, to be able to get the users, to be able to create the messaging that people really care about and to bring investors on and to keep growing. And like commercially it's having them on your side. like actually having them care about the product beyond just the simple solution itself, like the customer service and everything.

So I think that's definitely helped to be aware of if you are coming in as a technical founder, you know, even having someone within the business that is like really good at that and being relatable and understanding to the users and creating that right messaging is, definitely like very complimentary to be the technical side of things and getting the product right. Andrew Yeah, definitely. And as we kind of look onto the next stage, once you have some form of funding in the business, the next stage is really the challenging part because building an app is expensive.

Whether you do it here in the UK, whether you go offshore, that could obviously be a real danger point for any tech business to be able to then get the product out to market. how did you touch on it a little bit when we did the intro, but how Did you go about building the app? What was the process you went through? Who did you use?

George Fairhall Yeah, so I started by getting, even though I thought that getting development in the UK probably wasn't an option, I did still get as many quotes as I could from recommendations, like all different places, because it gives you somewhere to start and it helps you actually gauge, you know, right, if it's hit that in the UK, this is what they're saying the stages are. So you start to understand it a bit more. And then I had so many conversations with them. offshore businesses, it was crazy.

And I just, went with my heart on it, to be honest. was like, you know, I had a lit, obviously I had a list of things I was like, they need to understand my vision, they have to understand the problem and solution. I want them to come on like the long term journey with me. I want them to, you know, work the same way I work with anyone in the UK, like the different processes and level of communication.

I wanted them to understand where my Andrew Okay. George Fairhall when what my values were and what I expect in terms of quality. And so you can do all of that. had all these things that I was like, this is important and unless, but you know, a lot of companies are gonna say yes to all of that.

And so you have to like really make sure you spend time with that company. And, and actually what I decided to do, which everyone at the time thought I was mad and which I think is a really important part of this process. If you are. Andrew Yeah.

Yeah. George Fairhall going to an offshore company is getting to know those people before you make that decision and making them aware that that's really important to you. So I actually went to India with my little drawings in a pile and literally everything I'd done like just stacked up. Andrew Yeah.

Yeah. pile of wireframes. George Fairhall and went over and spent time with them and went through all of that with them. Like, obviously I'd had a lot of like phone calls with them before, but I was like, I want to work with you the same as I would if we're working in the UK.

I'd made sure that they understood that if we did hire internally, like obviously we're a Northern business. We want to build out our team here. want, you know, developers and we want that to happen in our UK team. But, I asked those questions, you know, what happens if we want to do that?

And they were, they were very willing to help us migrate, you know, the company to an internal team. but ultimately they obviously want to be valuable enough that you don't need to do that. And there'll always be a team in term, even in like maintenance level that support you. So there was all these things that I went through with them and it was really only from that trip that I've had the confidence to say yes.

Andrew Yeah. Of course, and I guess it's about it being a partnership rather than them being a supplier to you and you just telling them what to do. So it's about that collaborative arrangement and I think that's absolutely critical. George Fairhall Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. Like they're still with me now and they're amazing. And I actually don't know if I hadn't have spent that time getting to know them. They actually knew the journey they were coming on with this crazy hustling underpaid hourly paid worker on a mission to just like take over the world.

That maybe they wouldn't have said yes. Like, do you know what mean? But so I went and did that. And then obviously one of the biggest parts was the legals.

I had gone to law school to potentially take that path. Andrew Hehehehehe George Fairhall So I had a bit of an idea, but we did actually remake the legals. They were willing to agree with most of the things that we said. And it was going through that at like a personal level, know, sitting there with them and telling them what's Andrew Yeah, and I guess that shows that they're prepared to be a partner if they, you know, when it boils down to the legal element of things, because there are so many companies that just have terms and would just like take it or leave it.

And I'm not sure that's a good starting point for a relationship. George Fairhall Yeah. No, definitely. So, I mean, I don't know if it's the case in all cases, but go meet them if you can and spend some time with them.

And that was really a really, really important step that I took that I didn't realize at the time. Andrew Yeah. Cool. So we've started to build a product.

We're starting to get user feedback. And I guess then we're starting to move into the final stages of the process. So I guess we've not really talked anything about marketing at all. So how did you approach getting, I guess, the name, the mission, and the problem you were solving out there?

George Fairhall Yeah. Yeah, so kind of the final step then is the products being developed. You've obviously got to then start planning your launch. How are you going to do it?

We didn't start marketing for around six months after launching. I went back out to those people that I'd gone and tested my little drawings and mock-ups to and got them to test the app. And we basically went out to as many people as possible and said, break it, try and break it, do everything you can. And then we were in the position after we'd fixed those bugs, anything that was exposed where we felt we could then put a small amount on marketing.

But at that point, I hadn't raised loads of money. that... the budget we had for marketing, you really do have to plan because it's so easy to go out and go, right, we're going to whack this on social media and you can lose it. it is one of the biggest and worst steps where after you've all of that, you've done like all the right things, you then just blow your final budget.

your final pennies in the bank or marketing and don't get anything from it. And then you're like really stuck to then have to go raise more funding, have to redo your marketing strategy. So it's just spending the time doing a proper marketing plan. Andrew Yeah.

George Fairhall I don't think you need to get an agency at that point. I did get some consultancy from an agency. Some people may have built into their business, like a co-founder that's got marketing background. You may be having an investor that's got marketing expertise, which is really a good thing to think about when you are raising funding.

Can you start targeting people that have got the expertise you'll need as part of your journey? But it's just making sure you plan that out and just do some really low budget testing at first to start to test it and figure it out. Andrew Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think as we spoke about before, as well as a founder of a business, you are also chief sales or revenue officer. So it's about you being able to get out there and sell the business. And I think, you know, there are so many platforms to do that on now.

I think you had a little adventure on the tick tock, didn't you, to try and raise the profile. George Fairhall Yeah, we love TikTok. I mean, I'm going down the whole icky day in the life of a CEO. It does get the, it does get traction.

So there's lots of things you can do. definitely. Even as you as an individual, because yes, you can get some help around, I knew who that customer was. I had come from that problem.

I had done the research. I knew where they worked. I knew they lived. I knew where, so you can do it.

Andrew Hahaha. Yeah. The weather, yeah. George Fairhall And yeah, as you said, you're going out selling most of the time.

even if it's to businesses or consumers, like it's, it's founder led really. but it's just making sure you've planned it out and Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall and doing some organic stuff. Like, you know, is there a bit of pressure you can get?

Is there a TikTok profile that I can build? So me, you know, our business account has done incredibly well. And that's where most of our downloads come from. We've got, I think nearly 45 million views, I think, on our business account.

So I realized like quite quickly, we're getting some views here. I'm going to start a TikToks. So I'm just going to start documenting me as a founder. And obviously then people start following you and then people start wanting to know what your business is.

Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall and that's it, it's organic acquisition. So yeah, it's really about sitting and just brainstorming, like how can we get us out there now and having that plan rather than just jumping straight in. Andrew Yeah, so we've kind of worked our way almost.

I was going to say through to the end, but of course now it's not the end. You're at the start now. So is it the end or is it the kind of end of the beginning type thing? So you're in that cycle now of maintenance, development, new features, and continuing that journey.

George Fairhall It's the start really. Yeah. Yeah, it's... It's definitely the start of a different section.

It's something I actually didn't know, know, cause you think like, I want to start an app or I want to start a product. I want to build this. I want to start some sort of software. You don't, you don't, well, I didn't and conversations I have, you don't really think about that next bit.

think, right, how do I build it and how do I get it out there? So by what we've spoken about, we've built it and we've got it out there, but like what comes next? And I didn't realize I was essentially going to have to have a tech team. available constantly.

So you can do that in different ways. If you've got like say one developer that can, that's already part of your team and just does it all, that's fine. But obviously they're going to have to be there through after that launch. For me, it was having this tech team that worked with me just for the product.

I'd paid for the product and now it was like, right, what are we looking at in terms of maintenance? And we started to learn like, right, these are the different bugs we're getting back. This is the feedback we're getting. based on the investment we've raised, how quickly can we start introducing some of the other features that we'd like to enhance yet?

Because obviously we had really launched it as the most basic version. We had loads of really cool ideas and cool features we wanted to do later, but... Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall It's really just about getting an MVP out there, proving it at its most basic level, getting the feedback and then doing those extra additions.

So you've got to gauge all of that. And I was doing around, I think a hundred hours of maintenance on a monthly basis afterwards for a very long time. And then with investment that increased and increased to now having a full-time tech team of five. it's, it's, yeah, it depends on the funding.

depends on how well you've built the initial product, but I think as long as you've really built it as an MVP and the solution, you know, based on the feedback you had from prototype stage, as long as that's covered and you're starting to get that product market fit. It depends on how quick you can then kind of scale the product after that. But yeah, it's exciting point because you started to get such cool feedback. know, like people are like, this is amazing.

Love that. Like, could you add that? And we just literally added feedback in Italian almost so that every time someone said the same thing, it would hit like 10 people have said this. And then we'd have a monthly meeting and going.

Andrew Yeah. then you could think, actually, it's worth implementing that. Yeah. George Fairhall Yeah, but you can act fast at that point, much faster than you can later, but you still don't want to unless there's actually enough of a problem, because you can end up going, let's put everything in.

But it's actually, well, two people have said it. So it's good to kind of, tally it like that and then take it to a review meeting and then decide, right, this month, we're going to take this one enhancement and do it like that. And that's how we've done it for four years. And the product that it is today is nowhere near what it was when we launched.

It just, yeah, it's built, it's got more and more users as we've gone, so. Andrew Cool, so this has a super interesting chat and actually appreciate your honesty as well through that journey because I think not everybody would be prepared to be open. So as we wrap up the conversation, one of the things we like to do with our listeners is give everybody kind of three key takeaways. So what are the kind of three key things that you'd like people to take away today?

Like we said at the beginning of the conversation, if they're thinking of founding a business, if they founded a business and they're they're finding it difficult and if they're on that journey at the moment. George Fairhall Yeah, So I kind of touched on all of them throughout. I'll keep them as short as possible. I think number one is building a strong network.

I definitely couldn't have done what I'd done being a non-technical founder, but also being a first time founder. And no matter what place you're coming from, I could not have got to where I have without. just being open about how I have on this call. I didn't know, I've never founded a business.

Like I'm prepared to learn and I've sat in every situation I can and any opportunity I have and said. How did you do that? What did you do that? All the questions that I've got going around my head that I think are stupid questions I've asked them and now and then I learned that the answers very quickly and having those people around to ask those questions and having people to you know, even on the bad days when you're like, my god I don't know why I've done this like is it is it actually good enough?

You know having those people to be honest with you or to be supportive or It's so so so important. So definitely build out that network and also if you can't reach someone get them to help you reach them. you know sometimes you'll have someone that's like not got the time or the knowledge but you can say who do you know that has and actually within two or three intros I've got to the person I need so that's really important. Secondly about having resilience and confidence like you know running out of funding as many times as I have.

Andrew Yeah. Yes. George Fairhall There's been times, like thankfully now we sit strong and we've got to where we need to get where we can have those, do those pitches and get the funding. And we've proven ourselves, got that product market fit, made it to revenue generation.

But that, those early days are really, really difficult if you don't have access to funding. And some of the times that I've, you know, run out and I've thought. I can't do this. I don't know how to get out of this.

You know, there's just no way we were getting downloads. We were getting like hundreds of downloads. You know, it was happening. We knew the product was working, but we just didn't have the level of traction to de-risk it enough for investment.

Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall And therefore was in the situation where a good product could go under. And I know it happens all the time. so if you know, you've got good products and those getting those downloads were important.

we weren't, then that could have been a different decision. Yeah. You've got to have a product that's working and it is getting product market fit. Andrew Yeah, that's the critical part, right?

George Fairhall So I had that to fall back on, but just having that resilience and going, nah, I know why I did this and I'm going to keep fighting. And now I look back and obviously go, thank God I didn't give up because I got through it. And all those times I thought I'd never get through, did. So just keep pushing, but make sure you have got something worth pushing for.

Andrew Yeah. George Fairhall and lastly, doesn't matter your background. I know I'm still early in this whole thing. And as we've just said, I feel like I've just ended a point and, but you are, I'm now like, I've basically just opened the shop doors.

I've just built the shop and I've opened the shop doors because it's only now we're actually getting money. so I am early, but to get here, it's been hard. And, if you kind of survive this three, four year mark and get, get to revenue generation, you've definitely got over a lot of hurdles. So, Know that even if you are non-technical or a female or so you felt a sole founder or B2C the highest risk or a market that apparently won't pay and all these things that had against me, just keep going because you can and anyone can learn to do it for sure.

Anyone can become a really good leader. yeah. Andrew Cool, that's a brilliant point for us to finish on. Thank you very much for joining us today.

It's been a really enjoyable conversation and we'll speak to you soon. George Fairhall Thanks so much. Thank you. Andrew Maeer Thank you for listening today.

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