Pod Insights The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch 20VC: From Penniless Printing Shop Offices to Public Company and One of the Largest Entertainment Companies: The Story of LADbible | The Future of Content & Social Media | US vs Europe: Is Europe F****** with Solly Solomou About this episode Founder and CEO of LADbible Group, Solly Solomou has built one of the largest and most engaged digital media entertainment companies in the world. Under his leadership, LADbible has grown to reach two-thirds of 18-34-year-olds in the UK, with a global audience of over 494 million followers, including 141 million in the US. The company’s content now has a total reach of over 1 billion people worldwide. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: From Printer Shop Office to Ringing the IPO Bell: How did Solly start LADbible with no money and no experience? How did a moment with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube show Solly that he had something special with LADbible? In the expansion of the business, what new products did not work? What did Solly learn from the failures of products? Why did Solly always want to build the business without an external funding? What are the top 3 pieces of advice Solly gives to young entrepreneurs starting a business today? The Future of Content and Social Media: How does Solly see wearables changing the future of media and social? Does Solly agree that the friendship graph has been eradicated by interest graphs? Does Solly think TikTok should be banned? Why does Solly think TikTok Shop is the most interesting product in social today? Europe vs US: Is Europe F******: What are the single biggest differences between doing business in the US vs Europe? Why did Solly decide to go public in London on The London Stock Exchange? How tough is it being a public company in London? How important are local liquidity markets if Europe is to regain competitiveness? If Solly were advising Keir Starmer on how to stimulate growth in the UK, what would he say and advise?
Transcript 11,375 words · 3 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 00 All I knew was I had to make more money than I spent and that was what I had to create. I didn't really understand the concept of taking on investment and growing a business. So from day one, we were profitable. If I was to rewrite the script, I definitely would have started the business in the US. The size and scale of the market, it's huge. As we grow and build our US business, a dual listing might be the way to go.
0:28 Harry Stebbings? I mean, I am so excited for this episode today. Our guest has gone from founding the company with a small office above a printing shop with no money to being one of the largest and most engaged digital media entertainment businesses in the world and a public company. Solly Solomou is the founder and CEO of Lad Bible, which under his leadership has grown to reach two thirds of eighteen to thirty four year olds in the UK with a global audience. Check this out of almost half a billion followers, including one hundred and forty one million in the US. The company's content now has a total reach of over a billion people worldwide. This is such an incredible success story. But before we dive into the show today, Secureframe empowers businesses to build trust with customers
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1:55 Harry Stebbings? And speaking of trust and intelligence, let me tell you about Harmonic. Did you know that half of the twenty seven companies started last year by OpenAI alumni are still in stealth? I discovered this on Harmonic, the complete startup database used by Excel. Menlo and hundreds of other leading VCs as well as go to market teams from the likes of Notion, Brex and Google to find the best startups and founders even in stealth. Few things annoy me more than missing a round where we know the founder and should have led the round, but now this is a problem of the past. Harmonic maps everyone your team has ever met, emailed or connected with to the source of truth for startups. So when that company that was just a little too early suddenly gains traction, you won't be too late.
2:39 Harry Stebbings? Or when you find the perfect company for your thesis or product, you'll know that Sarah just happens to know their CTO. How does Sarah know everyone? Who knows? She's a genius. Learn how VCs and GTM teams find the best startups six months ahead of the competition on harmonic.ai. And while staying ahead of the curve is crucial, so is capturing high quality content. So let me tell you about Riverside. Did you know that every virtual 20 VC interview you listen to? Yes, including with incredible guests like Mark Benioff and Sam Altman is actually recorded using riverside.fm. It's the one tool I genuinely cannot live without. Riverside delivers incredible audio and video quality and it's just ridiculously easy to use. And the best part, my guests love how simple it is.
3:23 Harry Stebbings? They don't need an account or software, just a simple click and they're in. When you're hosting someone like Mark or Sam, it kind of really matters that it's also really reliable, which it is. And Riverside doesn't just stop at recording. Their AI editor is a personal favorite. They make it so easy to create shareable clips, turning an epic interview into bite sized moments that go viral on social media. If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your current setup, trust me, this is the way to go. Check it out at riverside.fm/20vc and see why I can't live without it.
3:56 Speaker 00 You have now arrived at your destination.
3:59 Harry Stebbings? Solly, this is so special for me to have you in the studio. You've become a friend. I'm in awe of the Lamb Bible journey. Thank you so much for joining me today.
4:08 Speaker 00 Thank you for having me on. I feel very privileged. This is my first and exclusive episode on a podcast, so I feel very privileged on that basis that you've had me on and I'm very pleased it's with you.
4:20 Harry Stebbings? I'm so excited that you made us your first. Tell me, I want to start, you know, it's 12 year journey. And I read that it started above a printer shop in a tiny, tiny office. So can you just take me to that? How did you come up with the idea for that Bible?
4:32 Speaker 00 I guess if I take you back to me growing up, I was the kid who was selling sweets at school. So I was the guy who understood exactly which sweets were going to sell and which ones weren't. And then I went and negotiated with the newsagent or the different places which I'd buy the sweets and buy them in bulk and then bring them into school and sell them. So I was that kid growing up. I also had clothes that I would buy and sell. Sometimes I'd have a knock on the door. It'd be one of my friend's parents coming around to buy some clothes. And so growing up, I always had this urge to do business, I guess. I didn't even know what the word entrepreneur was, but I had this urge to go into that avenue.
5:14 Speaker 00 Felt natural to me. I followed the course of going to university where I started the business. I was going down this path of I'm going to go and do a business management course. I'm going to go and work for a big business and that's my career. This thing I was doing before university, the sweets, the clothes, all of this kind of stuff. You know, maybe that's not quite the career. Exactly. I need to be serious. So that was the mindset I had going into it. Coming into my third year of university, we had to go and pick a business to go and do a year in industry. As we got closer and closer to it, I had all of these ideas of different businesses that maybe I wanted to do. And I was chatting with my enterprise department, Professor Nigel Lockett, absolute legend.
5:58 Speaker 00 And he said, I've got this idea that I would like to potentially give people like you the opportunity to start your own business in a European industry. Would you be my guinea pig? Which was completely exciting for me because obviously I can take this idea that I have, bring it to life. The university supported me with mentorship, funding and other things like that. If it didn't work out, I'm going back to university, which just felt like the dream. I've got this opportunity to start something. Without the risk of not knowing where I'm going to go afterwards at such a young age. And with Nigel's brother as a mentor and a load of other support around it. So this was just amazing to me.
6:42 Speaker 00 In terms of actually trying to explain it to my parents, that I was going to go and try and start this online student community, recommending different bars, clubs, cafes, all of this kind of stuff was a bit like, you what? You've kind of gone down this path of education, gone to university. We kind of thought you were going to go down this route. We got over that hump and in fairness to them, they were completely supportive.
7:05 Harry Stebbings? Do you think you would have taken the risk if you hadn't had the mentorship, the funding, that year of blunt knee kind of guardrails around you to allow yourself to do it without the risk?
7:15 Speaker 00 I believe I would have found my way into that path. At the time I didn't know, but you just find your place, your natural place. And for me, ideas, creating something, building something was something that I was passionate about. Before I knew it, this online student community was something that I had to bring to life.
7:35 Harry Stebbings? So we started, okay, like day one, do we have any money? Who funds this and how do we actually start it?
7:42 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I guess through my endeavors, early doors, I'd made a decent sum of money. So I had some money that I'd saved up from not the sweets, that was probably smaller play, but certainly the clothes and a few other endeavors. And I invested that into, I also got some funding from the university.
7:58 Harry Stebbings? Can I be blunt, how much did you invest?
8:00 Speaker 00 Straight away, I probably had to outlay about three, four thousand pounds to facilitate doing the year in industry. So obviously I had accommodation and I decided to get an office space straight away, which was above a printer shop. And it did look like a prison because it had like prison bars across it.
8:18 Harry Stebbings? But all in, you were paying about a grand a year for it.
8:20 Speaker 00 Exactly, exactly, exactly. I had to keep the cost base low. But I didn't understand the concept of getting investment. All I knew was I had to make more money than I spent. And that was what I had to create and that was my mindset from the off. I didn't really understand the concept of taking on investment and growing a business. So. From day one, we were profitable, even with the first business, which the online shooter community was rating these different bars, clubs, cafes.
8:47 Harry Stebbings? So that was the first product for Lab Bible?
8:49 Speaker 00 It was the gateway to Lab Bible. So I was doing all sorts of crazy things to market this thing. It was like chicken and egg where you've got, I need audience members to come to my website and consume this from leads. And I then need customers to advertise different cafes, bars, clubs, et cetera. So I needed to get the traffic, which I was doing all of these. I was utilizing the printer shop by getting these bags printed off with a logo, sending them all around the different takeaway companies. I was doing flyers, all of that kind of stuff. And then I was going around the cafes, bars, clubs, and selling them advertisement space. So I had to kind of get both of these sides operating. And my grandad,
9:31 Speaker 00 who's an important figure for me, this is a funny story. He bought me this suit. I think he always wanted me to go into business and his associate, it was, it was where they said, it was a big suit, like, you know, sort of drain pipes, the kind of old school suit. I remember for the first couple of weeks, wearing that suit to go and see the bars, clubs, cafes. Quite quickly, I realized it probably wasn't a good idea. And I should put it away. I guess I was just figuring it out. It was so raw. And I was trying to figure out, how do you start a business? I remember sitting there thinking, what do I do with a whiteboard out, you know, sort of trying to work out, what's a business plan? How do I write this thing? How am I going to get that traffic? How am I going to get this advertisement money? I guess where it really kicked on is I was exploring
10:15 Speaker 00 different forms of marketing to really ramp up the traffic. And around the time, everyone our age was on Facebook. So this was 2012. Facebook at the time hadn't even listed. It was still the dot com. And you remember the old website, the blue and white. And I think it moved past the Facebook to Facebook. However, it didn't even really have a mobile app. Everyone was on Facebook. I explored email marketing, TV marketing, magazine marketing. It was all too expensive. And then I came to Facebook. Everyone was following this page called the Lab Bible, and it had half a million. People on it. And I thought, do you know what? This is interesting because mainly based around students and it's got half a million people.
10:57 Speaker 00 This could be a really interesting angle to market this website over here. So I got chatting to the person who created it, Alex Partridge. We were chatting away and I thought I'm going to offer to buy it. So I did. We had a bit of back and forth. He accepted, bought the lab Bible.
11:13 Harry Stebbings? How much did you buy the lab Bible?
11:16 Speaker 00 Uh, so it's in the low thousands. I won't say specifically how much, but it's in the low thousands.
11:20 Harry Stebbings? Were you nervous? Cause now it's like, that's a great deal, but like, I'm sure at the time.
11:25 Speaker 00 So for whatever reason, and fair play to my mom, I couldn't transfer that amount of money from my bank. I don't know why, I just couldn't. I used my mom's bank and I had to explain this to her. She was like, what is Facebook? What is this thing? I was like, don't worry about it. It's all good. So she transferred the money. We got access or kind of came across. And I remember just lay there on my bed thinking, what the hell have I just done? What the hell have I just done? I've just spent a huge amount of money, you know, sort of at this point, I was burning through maybe like sixty, seventy percent of the money that I'd saved up from previous endeavours, the funding, et cetera. And I remember sitting there thinking, I've really got to make this work. I don't know how I'm going to make this work.
12:09 Speaker 00 But I need to make this work. I need to figure it out.
12:12 Harry Stebbings? Before we go to the next step, I do just have to ask, when you think about, I have to make it work.
12:16 Speaker 00 Yeah.
12:17 Harry Stebbings? It's in stark contrast to that. I had the guardrails of a year. I had the mentorship, the funding. Do you think you operate and do you think entrepreneurs operate better in environments where there is a downside protection? Or in a do or die, you have nothing if this goes wrong?
12:33 Speaker 00 Completely. I believe entrepreneurs are creatives at heart. And I think if you have too much to go out, if you have no constraint, that creative process is ruined. For me, I believe in that pressure that creates the output. So I'll never forget about a year down the line. We'd shifted focus to Lad Bible as the business. So one day I woke up, our Facebook page went down. It just disappeared. No email, no nothing, just disappeared. Obviously my heart sank. So went to work on thinking, right, how, how am I going to speak to someone in Facebook? How am I going to speak to someone who can help me sort this out? And in fairness, it wasn't too accessible to speak to them and.
13:18 Speaker 00 I remember going across LinkedIn, messaging all sorts of different people. We managed to get through to the CTO. We spoke to the CTO who very kindly spoke. He didn't have to take the call. He took the call and a week later it was sorted. A week later, he explained what it was. We sorted out some paperwork. It ended up being verification. And the funny story on that, it was actually my dad's account was also linked to the Facebook account. And we were using that to post as well as others. So we just had this extra account to post from. And we had to verify some of my dad's friends that he went to school with about 40 years ago to get the account back. And I remember being on the phone to my dad saying, Dad, can you see this picture?
14:03 Speaker 00 Is that person this name? It was that multiple choice. I don't know if you remember these kind of like security checks and all that kind of stuff. It felt like the future of the business was hinged on this moment on my dad being able to recall this random person, if he's not in touch with anymore, from school and get it right. Thankfully, we got it right. So we went through all sorts of challenges along the way, whether it was figuring out how to get the account back via the CTO, going through this verification process, or trying to figure out how to deal with that level of traffic that we were generating. Because we'd have these huge spikes.
14:39 Harry Stebbings? Well, I just want to go to that because you, you know, you acquire it from Alex and you know, it's already got half a million. But now you're in charge, you have to make sure that you can maintain traffic and grow traffic. How did you do that?
14:51 Speaker 00 We, very early doors, brought in some brilliant people. At university, they send bulk emails sometimes accidentally to everybody in the business school. What I did is I took all of those emails, sent a note around saying, who would like to do some work experience? I had a huge amount of applicants. So even in the early days where we had this office above the printer shop, I had like five people at a time on rotation coming through doing work experience. These are really smart people helping grow the business. I guess as we got further along, we then started to find out people who had created their own accounts on social. So as we start to grow the business, we start to get more advertisers,
15:34 Speaker 00 generate more revenue from the website, which happened really quickly.
15:38 Harry Stebbings? How did you first start to make money?
15:40 Speaker 00 It was through two means. So the first was consultancy. So we had all sorts of people getting in touch with us saying, can you help us grow our Facebook account? If you remember that time, everyone was saying, is a Facebook like worth a pound? Is it worth fifty p? Is it worth two pounds? I always remember those conversations. So everybody knew it was a thing that they needed to be on to reach millennials and young adults. However, no one fully understood where it was going to go. And so we had a few companies that approached us. We put deals in place that said, okay, if we help you grow your Facebook account to this, we will get this fee. And we did that. And we did it a number of times. And again, back to that profitability since day one, that was always important to us. And we got some annual deals in place.
16:25 Harry Stebbings? Do you think that's a good thing? Because if I was like your investor, I'd say, well, you're sacrificing the growth of Lab Bible Court channel for consulting on the side to grow someone else's channel.
16:35 Speaker 00 Even our business model today has a big aspect of consultancy.
16:40 Harry Stebbings? You should have worked with Jaguar.
16:42 Speaker 00 I mean, no comment. I mean, the new car, have you seen the new car?
16:47 Harry Stebbings? It looks terrible. Sorry.
16:49 Speaker 00 You know what? Matt Black, I'd have it.
16:51 Harry Stebbings? Matt Black, you'd have it?
16:52 Speaker 00 I'd have it. Matt Black. I'd take it in Matt Black. Maybe famous last words, but.
16:56 Harry Stebbings? If this show reaches 10 million views, I'll buy it for you with Matt Black.
17:02 Speaker 00 Okay, okay.
17:03 Harry Stebbings? Do not watch this show. That is amazing. So going back again to those early days, so we have consulting there, and then we also have the advertising. Can I ask, on the core channel, when did it really hit? When were you like, oh, my God, we have something that could be very big?
17:19 Speaker 00 I remember this moment. So we're in Manchester. Our team was probably about 25. We had the best, best people who understood how to create the best Twitter accounts, Facebook accounts in the country, I'd say. We had a group of them working in Manchester. Some moved up. Some were based in the north.
17:35 Harry Stebbings? How do you hire them? It is really hard to find these people. That is probably my single hardest job in the media company to find people who truly understand social.
17:43 Speaker 00 We all knew each other. It was like a community. So back then, we were like DMing each other on Twitter, chatting with each other on different messaging platforms, et cetera. We were in groups together and we all knew each other. One was in a call centre, the other was working in a nightclub and all of these different places. So this was super early doors where, don't forget, Facebook was launched in two thousand and four, YouTube was launched in two thousand and five. Facebook had only just listed in two thousand and twelve. TikTok came in two thousand and sixteen, Snapchat two thousand and fourteen. So this was early doors where people were not making a living out of something that they loved doing. For us, we brought them in, gave them a career. They loved it. They still love it. Lots of them still work for us today and we've continued that on.
18:27 Harry Stebbings? I think that's why this is tougher though, because bluntly, anyone who is really, really freaking good at content creation can create it themselves and make a lot of money.
18:34 Speaker 00 Oh, absolutely.
18:35 Harry Stebbings? And this is the hardest thing. Why would you go and work in social media for NatWest or Halifax or BT or any of these companies? When it's like, I can go and create my own, like how I am, what I do in a day, food reviews, you name it.
18:47 Speaker 00 Oh yeah, absolutely, Spawn. I mean, I saw a statistic that said that eleven percent of the US population classify themselves as content creators. Eleven percent. So obviously, people who create content is much higher, but eleven percent, and that's because of the democratization. Still, for a lot of them, unless they get lucky with a big brand deal or have a partnership in place, for a lot of people of that eleven percent, it's not a career. A lot of them fail. But just going back to the question that you asked me on that moment, so I remember being sat in Manchester in the McDonald Hotel. We managed to get Ice Cube, Kevin Hart and Stormzy, who was not big at the time, in a hotel room doing a rap battle.
19:28 Speaker 00 So we had Kevin Hart and Stormzy doing a rap battle governed by Ice Cube, the one and only. And it absolutely went off. So I think for me, that moment.
19:40 Harry Stebbings? When you say it went off, like when you released it, it just went nuts.
19:42 Speaker 00 I mean. I think it's on like 10 million views, but this was before Stormzy was big before, well, Kevin Hart and H Q were obviously massive, but Kevin Hart has become huge. For me, that moment had been sat there in a hotel in Manchester, getting two huge names in a room, having a rap battle with this up and coming UK star. And them doing it for Lab Bible was a big moment. You know, we had like 25 people, but from an audience perspective, it was huge. And after that, we started to really build out the portfolio. So we built out Sport Bible, we built out Gaming Bible.
20:19 Harry Stebbings? Talk to me about the thinking behind that. Like, was that like a, okay, wow, we see the audience growth on the back of this. Audience growth aligns to stature of people. We need to have ballers on our platform and that's what we should focus on.
20:32 Speaker 00 We didn't realise it at the time, but we were on this cusp of a massive wave that was forming. Magazines, newspapers, even traditional.com as we know it was changing. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, and the emergence of these platforms over time. We understood better than anyone how to interact with, at the time, millennial audiences. Give them what they want. For us, it's understanding culture, understanding those audiences, understanding how to connect with them in an authentic way.
21:02 Harry Stebbings? I'm literally just like getting a tree of options of where I can go, which I, I want to do every branch of this tree. So we're going to take it one by one. You mentioned kind of Sport Bible and different verticals.
21:11 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:11 Harry Stebbings? Did each of them work very quickly? Because I think the biggest mistake that people make with content is they don't give it enough time.
21:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:17 Harry Stebbings? They start two months in, they don't have that many followers and they're like, no, no one wants it. And it's like, no, no, no, it takes time. Did each of them work very quickly?
21:25 Speaker 00 It took time and investment. So first things first, get the right people. The people who are living and breathing those different passion points, whether it's gaming, sport, tech, whatever it may be. Get the people who understand those audiences inside out, understand the platform and how to speak to them. Then empower them with tech and tools and dashboards and data that helps them make better informed decisions. So very early on, we had a tech team from the beginning of the company. So we had a couple of person. I think it was our fifth hire that we made. We grew that and built it, our data insights and tech tools. Empowering these creatives, which I guess in a traditional world, you'd have the creators on one side of the room. Then you'd have the data people on the other side of the room and they would just butt heads.
22:10 Speaker 00 For us, we very much encouraged and actually hired people who embraced creativity and data as one. I mean, you know, this a good thumbnail can be the difference between a million views or thousand views. Really mastering the art and it's the same on every single platform. If you put the content forward in the right way, it can make a huge difference. So getting those people who understood those passion points, understood the platforms and really scaled it out. And we have just been relentless at this. And I often say in our world, you've got the legacy brands. Then you've got the meme players in between here. You've got a few successful people who've created brands that people resonate with, know and love.
22:51 Harry Stebbings? Did any of the verticals not work when you look at the expansions that you made?
22:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, we we definitely had failures.
22:57 Harry Stebbings? Which one? What what happened?
22:59 Speaker 00 I forgot. I forget the failures. That's it for me.
23:03 Harry Stebbings? I always think that you learn. I mean, my my biggest fail, honestly, and this is terrible is we waited eight years to do YouTube. And that is criminal.
23:10 Speaker 00 We've had a ton of failures.
23:12 Harry Stebbings? What was the biggest?
23:13 Speaker 00 Probably not going into the US sooner. If I was to rewrite the script, I definitely would have started the business in the US. The reason for that is the size and scale of the market. You're talking a $400 million market versus a 70 billion pound market here. It's huge and we've been very successful here and the UK market is integral. We want to be market leaders in entertainment in the next five years. However, if we did the same thing in the US, different scale. So we've corrected that and a couple of years ago, started our office out in the States. Someone who's been with us for 10 years went and started it organically. And then through being a listed business and having access to capital, which we did three years ago.
23:57 Speaker 00 It really gave us the firepower to accelerate that journey. So I would say if I could rewrite the script. And do something slightly different, I'll do it the other way around.
24:06 Harry Stebbings? Do you think you would have won in the US like you have done in the UK? We are actually in a relatively similar position. I often think back to when I was eighteen, I was offered jobs in the valley. I would be surrounded by very different people and very different types of companies. And the honest truth is, I don't know if I would win though. This competition is so different, the multitude of players is so different. I can win Europe.
24:27 Speaker 00 Yeah.
24:27 Harry Stebbings? I don't know if I can win the US.
24:29 Speaker 00 You can.
24:31 Harry Stebbings? Well, now I really regret it.
24:34 Speaker 00 I believe that we could, yes. And the reason for that, in the UK, we're very conservative. But we have a nice chat before we talk business. In the US, in particular, New York, it's straight to it, straight to the hustle. And they celebrate success in a big way. If you're hungry, ambitious, willing to roll your sleeves up, what a place that is to do business. Now, I love the UK and sometimes it's a bit much. When you go to the States, you go to New York and it's straight down to business. And you don't have those chaps. But I believe it's a great environment to grow a business and the culture there is supportive.
25:12 Harry Stebbings? What did you not expect about expanding to the US? What was the surprise?
25:16 Speaker 00 I mean, it's like a lot of countries in one massive country. Each one has such a different culture. The views are so extreme. Again, back to the left and the right, what you're interested in, a niche is not a niche over there. It's huge, it's huge. My brother has these old school cameras. And I would never see anyone walking around in the UK with one of these. It's a niche. We were walking around in New York and we saw like five people over the course of a week who had these same old school cameras. And that really clicked to me that this place is huge. You really have to pick something and be the best at it, even if that's a niche.
25:57 Speaker 00 So to go in there and think that you could just take the UK style and repeat it in the US, it's not gonna fly.
26:04 Harry Stebbings? In terms of expansion to US, that's what you didn't do that you wish you'd done.
26:07 Speaker 00 Yeah.
26:08 Harry Stebbings? What did you do that you wish you hadn't done?
26:10 Speaker 00 Over time, I had this mindset that. All about the vision, it's all about the technical skill set and put no emphasis on culture. And this was early doors, I had no understanding of it. So sometimes what I would do is sometimes hire very, very quickly. Bring people in the business and think this person's got an amazing, amazing technical skill set. Or they've got an experience that we just don't have in the business. Without thinking about, is this person gonna gel with that other person to the left of them or to the right of them? And really taking all of those elements into account. Because when you're creating a team, one great individual for sure can make a massive difference.
26:53 Speaker 00 But when you've got a team who are working together and trust each other and create something amazing together. That is something else. So for me, putting more emphasis on taking a little bit more time with hiring. Being clear on what the culture is and also accepting that maybe that person with that additional experience. Or that additional technical skill set is probably not the right person on the basis that they under index on the cultural fit. And therefore they're going to create chaos. So I think from my perspective, that learning over time on understanding who we are and what we are. And what kind of person works within our business is probably the thing that I've got wrong a couple of times. Well, lots of times.
27:34 Harry Stebbings? When did you realise you hired too fast and how do you correct for that?
27:38 Speaker 00 The pandemic, as many talk about, is the classic one.
27:42 Harry Stebbings? You went on a hiring spree?
27:44 Speaker 00 Yeah, we went on a hiring spree at a time that was difficult to measure cultural fit.
27:48 Harry Stebbings? I've heard this before.
27:50 Speaker 00 And we grew. So I won't dwell on this one.
27:52 Harry Stebbings? No, no, but Jason at Discord was like, we went from 200 to 1,000 in the pandemic. I was like, whoa. I put out a tweet this morning that I'm getting a lot of love and hate for. I said, honestly, we all just chat shit about culture. The only thing that matters about culture is that you have momentum, that you're moving forward and that you're successful. I've never met a really successful company with a shit culture. Revolut is a great example of that. It's not a fluffy culture, but the company is humming. The IPO is in sight and the culture is on fire. You can have. A lovely culture and the company's going to shit. I don't think so.
28:26 Speaker 00 I think that's it. What you talked about there, my definition of culture, what we hold of high importance is people that want to grow and evolve. We often talk about whether it's the mountain and the further up you go, the lower the altitude, the less oxygen, the harder it gets. Where we want to go is from, let's say, a quarter of the way up the mountain and get as far as we can to the top and to the pinnacle of the mountain as we possibly can. For us going from quarter of the way up the mountain to as close as we can get to that pinnacle is going to take some serious work and we're going to need people that are ambitious, hungry, want to grow. Every year their job is not the same. Every year that has gone on, my job has been different.
29:08 Speaker 00 Whether that's been a private business, going to a public business, to having an American element to our business, to growing to five hundred from a hundred. Each element of our business and the evolution of it has meant that my job has been different and we need people that want to embrace that, that are excited by that.
29:27 Harry Stebbings? I think values are important and I think everyone gets them wrong because like you have to be for or against values. Like our values is like direct is never rude. If I sit down and say, Solly, this is shit. You can't go, oh, that took me so much time and I really feel hurt that you don't. It's never rude. We're all here to win. We're all here to grow. Some people disagree that direct can be too rude. Another one is like longer hours leads to more success. The harder you work, you just are like more likely to be successful. Some people disagree with that too. Oh, you're more strategic if you have more time off. Bullshit. All this stuff. I think that's a massive problem, which is that people create values that no one can disagree with. Hit me with a value.
30:01 Speaker 00 Coming back to trust, do you trust when you pass the ball to that person, they're going to do their part to deliver what they need to. If you trust that and know they're going to do that, that's one aspect to it. The other is, can I be open with you and you take that in the right way? Can I trust you to take that in the right way? And then have an open conversation on how we work together to make that thing better or improve it or change it or whatever it might be. For me, that trust element is so important.
30:33 Harry Stebbings? Do you really think we can? We live in such a woke, left culture where like you can't say anything without upsetting someone.
30:40 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, I think that's why the US expansion for you is going to go very well. It's going to go very well. It's the perfect environment.
30:48 Harry Stebbings? Do you worry about that as a leader though? Like constantly upsetting someone?
30:52 Speaker 00 We're a professional outfit, you know, to get to where we need to go, we need to have high standards. And if those standards are not met, we need to address them and change it. So another element of something that I hold of high value is excellence. Whether that's for the audience who are our customers or a client who are our customers. We have over 500 million followers now across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube. We generate over 3,000 views every second. And in order to produce that, you need to be living and breathing and understanding that audience. To really nail that and grow an audience base of that size and scale, 500 million people,
31:34 Speaker 00 over half of UK adults consuming what we do on a monthly basis. Two thirds of 18 to 34s in the UK, you have to operate with excellence.
31:44 Harry Stebbings? When you mentioned size and scale of audience and then also the excellence of the team. I think to a constant dilemma that I think about, which is to a word you said earlier, you said democratization. And I think about this a lot because I see your Sam Sulex, for anyone who doesn't know, he's like, you know, real kind of bodybuilder style, huge, very amateur camera in corner on iPhone. No captions, no beautiful visuals, no nothing. And then there's, you know, we have amazing visuals, amazing video teams, much bigger and much more so. But are we in a world of democratized content where Sam Sulek can put a phone up and do what he does? Or are we actually in a less democratized world, which is more players like us win because of resources, skills, teams?
32:28 Speaker 00 I think there's different circumstances that require different elements of that. So we recently worked with Tesco, brilliant, brilliant clip of Father Christmas picking up his meal deal at Tesco. Really quick fire behind the camera, works perfectly and has absolutely flown. That's a way in which you can weave brands into culture in a way that doesn't necessarily need to be ridiculous. Production value, TV advert, and I think AI is going to be so interesting on this. When Sam Altman came over to the UK, he demoed their version of video creation, the ability to pop into ChatGPT, a visual and a video that you may want to create.
33:13 Speaker 00 And it is mind blowing where things are going. So for us in an entertainment business, you can imagine a world where we're creating movies. And because of that democratization and the access to technology, using and embracing technology like that, the cost of creating a movie where maybe 25%, 30% of it is AI generated or assisted.
33:36 Harry Stebbings? I'm worried that AI will create an infinite supply of content. And what happens, obviously, if you as an economist, which you know, I'm not for sure. But as a venture investor, I proclaim to be one, it reduces like price. Infinite supply will also mean discovery is inherently more challenging. I am worried what happens to discovery in a world of infinite content supply.
33:56 Speaker 00 I'm an optimist, so I'm excited.
33:59 Harry Stebbings? You are not British.
34:01 Speaker 00 I'm genuinely excited by the movement forward in technology with the introduction of the likes of AI, allowing you more time for the creative process. So there's some things like desk research that have just become way easier. Sub-editing, language translation, I mean, some of the tools that are available on dubbing.
34:19 Harry Stebbings? Amazing. We actually turned one of our, our sports shows, we've got a sports show. And we turned it with the Australian cricket captain into Hindi. It got over 200,000 views in a day, which was, I thought, pretty impressive.
34:30 Speaker 00 Yeah. And I think that's it. I think if you're willing to adapt and embrace it, it's an opportunity. If you're wanting to go against the tide, I mean, the world has never changed on that basis. Anyone who has lent in to change, I think Meta have put something like $30 billion into AI. The list goes on in terms of those other players. They were making their big bet in the Metaverse and other areas. What a pivot that is.
34:55 Harry Stebbings? What do we think is crazy today that will be like, yeah, sure. But I always think back to like, you know, putting your credit card online. Never do that now, obviously.
35:04 Speaker 00 Yeah.
35:04 Harry Stebbings? I'd never find my husband or wife online now, obviously, one in two. What is, do you think, crazy today that will be very standard?
35:11 Speaker 00 Mobile phones, they're going to be this clunky item that we carry around right now and look back on and go, why did we hold that thing? Why did we do that? We're going to have wearables that are going to make it way more seamless. So it's not even anything other than extension of things that you'd normally wear as we're seeing with watches, as we'll see with glasses, maybe ten, fifteen, twenty years. That's what we may be looking at as wearables become more advanced. As you're able to put more processing power into smaller things. I believe that the phone will become something that we look at as a clunky item and look back at, why did we ever do that?
35:54 Harry Stebbings? I want to go to the IPO. This is an incredibly special moment, like the dream of an entrepreneur is to take your business public.
36:01 Speaker 00 Yeah.
36:01 Harry Stebbings? Why did you decide to take the business public when you did?
36:04 Speaker 00 So yeah, it's coming up to three years in a couple of weeks' time, which was a bizarre experience. We were meant to go to the London Stock Exchange and for the whole pandemic madness that was going on, we couldn't do that. So I remember sitting on the sofa with my wife and little boy ringing the bell on the sofa on this Zoom. It was madness, not the experience you think. However, in terms of the reasons why we did that, we believed in the opportunity of the US growing our business out there. So we have over a hundred million audience members out in the States and we know that we've done the hard bit. It's then about establishing the business and growing out there and accelerating that.
36:50 Speaker 00 We believe by being a listed business, having the additional firepower, the paper and the status, it would enable us to accelerate us forward to growing and expanding the business. And so far, in terms of the Betches acquisition and also having that firepower and the options and the PLC status, it's definitely given us a leg forward in terms of going after what we believe we can be.
37:17 Harry Stebbings? How much money did you raise in the IPO?
37:19 Speaker 00 In total, around one hundred and twenty million.
37:20 Harry Stebbings? You have a hundred million audience members in the US. Why not list in the US?
37:25 Speaker 00 That could be an option in the future. As we grow and build our US business, a dual listing might be the way to go, but we need to build on the success of what we've started with the Betches business and our organic business out there and really continue to build, expand and grow that. And as we do have a bigger US business, it may start to make more sense to us to have a dual listing and look at what that might look like.
37:51 Harry Stebbings? How has being a London listed business been? I know a couple and they, you know, say it's bluntly very, very hard.
37:59 Speaker 00 Yeah. Talking from personal experience, it was a big learning curve on going from being a private company to being a listed business, having a set of stakeholders that think and want information in a certain way whilst also running your business. So adapting to that and learning and growing and understanding how to manage that was a whole learning curve in itself. And look, I'm, I'm hungry, ambitious, I enjoy learning. So for me, there was points in which that was challenging. However, the learning curve has been amazing. I would never look back and take any of that away. So from that experience of going through it, it's been fascinating. Certainly the benefits that I mentioned before have been brilliant. So.
38:44 Harry Stebbings? Do you think pension funds support the UK public market like they should do?
38:48 Speaker 00 I had a, a great chat with Julia Hoggatt, CEO of the London Stock Exchange, and she's got some interesting plans. Those plans are going to take time, but I believe some of the steps that they're putting in place certainly revitalise and rebuild some of that UK investment that maybe isn't there right now and that is going into US markets and other places. However, I believe the steps have been taken to revitalise.
39:14 Harry Stebbings? What was the most exciting step?
39:16 Speaker 00 Again, it comes back to it. It's that investment back into the UK market. There's a huge amount that is sat in ISAs, that is sat in low return pension funds that could be utilised to grow at higher rates, but also stimulate and encourage more innovation and more businesses in the UK market.
39:35 Harry Stebbings? Keir Starmer joins us, okay? And he is our Solly, you know, brilliant public company CEO. Love your advice on what I can do to stimulate growth in the UK economy. What would you say to him?
39:45 Speaker 00 I think we really need to embrace tech in a bigger way here in the UK and hero it further.
39:51 Harry Stebbings? How could we do that?
39:53 Speaker 00 We need to look at the environment and we need to think about why is it that businesses consider moving to the US versus being here in the UK? And think about how we can replicate certain elements of it to compete. And there are lots of pros of the UK markets, the stability, the structure, and all of the disciplines that come with the UK market. However, we probably need to look at the way in which it can evolve. Mentorship.
40:19 Harry Stebbings? Do you think the best founders want to build in London? Ten years ago, I mean, when I started and it was like transfer wise, it was Monzo, it was Revolut. And actually, there was a series of kind of financial regulatory, not loopholes, but freedoms that meant that London was a great place to build a fintech business. And we've seen the fruits of that. Fantastic. Now, I do not think the developers or great founders want to build businesses in London. And I would like to be changed my mind on to.
40:42 Speaker 00 I think when you start a business, and this is just my personal experience, location isn't even on the mind. It's just survival or moving forward. So I think we could do more to help along that journey here in the UK. However, I still think it's a fantastic place to grow business. I know so many entrepreneurs who've been successful. I know so many emerging entrepreneurs who have been given opportunity to grow and build. Would they be bigger in the States? Well, you're talking a 300 million population country versus 70 million here. A market that in some ways is nearly, you know, five to eight times the sizes here in the UK.
41:24 Speaker 00 So you do have more opportunity in a place like the States. However, we have been the home of some really successful businesses. Whether it's something like Dyson and you look at a business like Dyson and the innovation and the products that they've created and the brand globally is phenomenal.
41:40 Harry Stebbings? Before we do a quick fire, do you just have to touch on platforms? TV, we spoke before about kind of like 70%. I think of internet advertising, water advertising is now online. Is TV dead?
41:52 Speaker 00 TV has its place. I guess it depends what you. Categorizes that I'm a massive believer in connected TV and the likes of YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, all of these different subscriptions that we have, and we've all got too many. I believe that that's the future and where things are going. And I don't think that's going to be news to anyone. Audiences on traditional TV are reducing down, behaviors are changing where even when you are watching a TV show, whether it is on a traditional broadcasting channel, it's on a Netflix or an Amazon Prime, you're still dual screening. I don't know. I don't know how many times I get told off when I'm watching a show with my wife Jess.
42:32 Speaker 00 I'm just there scrolling on my phone. It's just a habit that we've created. And in some ways, whether you're watching sport or whether you're watching some sort of series that you want to connect with with your friends and you're in WhatsApp and you're talking about it and you're talking about a score or you're talking about something that happened or whatever it may be, it does enhance that experience. So I believe that behaviors are changing. Traditional TV, newspapers, magazines, et cetera, the numbers speak for themselves. That market has gone from being seventy, eighty percent of the market down to twenty percent. Digital is changing the game. And for a player like us that has a huge amount of attention and eyeballs across that young adult demographic, that's a great thing. And for those businesses that adapt,
43:17 Speaker 00 again, that's a great thing. Should TikTok be banned? Another big question. I feel like there's quite a lot of political political underneath that. So I think TikTok is a great product, great product. It's just the stickiness of the feed and the understanding of you and serving you content that you love. The integration of shops really smart. That is something that I'm fascinated by. In the next five years or less, it's expected to be a one trillion market. The TikTok shop, social commerce world overall is expected to be a one trillion market. In China, it's already massive, absolutely massive.
43:59 Speaker 00 But I know so many people now, millennials and Gen Z audience bases who are buying from TikTok shop. It's a really interesting time where for creators, it's an opportunity to monetize through affiliates across TikTok shop. So one of the things that they've been able to nail is not just selling directly to consumer. They are selling to consumer via creators. So that whole thing, they want to be the next Amazon. I was speaking to a friend of mine who's over at Snap and he was saying those guys are two steps ahead. They want to take on Amazon and they are paving the way. From my perspective, they are someone you cannot ignore from the quality of the product and what they have on there.
44:44 Speaker 00 But also the innovation through shop and other aspects of that. And I see us showing up in ways around entertainment across that. I see TikTok shop being a part of our ecosystem and how we play in that in the future. And we've done some experimentation and we can see that being a part of our ecosystem and how it could evolve.
45:02 Harry Stebbings? That was a very elegant weaving around the actual question. Should TikTok be banned?
45:08 Speaker 00 From a product perspective, no.
45:11 Harry Stebbings? You don't think it ties back to China and data?
45:14 Speaker 00 From a product perspective, it's moving things forward and I'm looking at it through that lens. In terms of is it being abused and the data and information, it's way above my head. I don't know.
45:24 Harry Stebbings? Do you mind your children having it?
45:25 Speaker 00 So taking me back to my youth now, I was thinking the minute you tell me you can't do it, I'm finding a way, I'm getting it. VPNs weren't a thing back then, but I mean, I am finding a way to get it. So I think that needs to be carefully managed and my kids are two and four. So I think I've got the best years to come where I have to manage that kind of.
45:47 Harry Stebbings? Will you let your kids have social?
45:49 Speaker 00 I would, yeah. I'm obviously aware of the pros and the amazing things that can come from that, but also the cons, you know, bullying. Some of the things that you can get access to, but this was no different to when we had dial up. You know, I mean, I remember sitting on the computer and I think my, my parents were on the phone and I was shouting down the step. Can you get off that? I'm trying to, I'm trying to do my MSN and all this kind of stuff. But you know, the stuff that you could access and things that could have been said across. It's no different, but I think back to this kind of making sure that we're thinking about an environment and how to make it safe is really important.
46:23 Harry Stebbings? I think people demonize social in the way that diet can be demonized. Which if you go on my TikTok, Instagram, you name it, there's protein recipes, there's inspirational talks from Tony Robbins and Alain de Botton and great thinkers. There's baby videos, I think baby videos are hilarious. I have curated a feed that's really happy and inspiring. I learn. And just like you can have carrots or donuts, you can curate your own feed or diet and respectfully, it's up to you. You are an adult with responsibilities.
46:51 Speaker 00 Completely, and I'd love to see what your top 10 towels are. It says a lot, it says a lot.
46:57 Harry Stebbings? Have you not seen that it's like what girls think your Instagram is and then what it really is. And what it really is is like protein recipes, you know, sure, workout routines.
47:07 Speaker 00 Completely, but it's just that whole motivational video.
47:10 Harry Stebbings? Final one, I'm probably too old now, but like Snap for our generation is like, who uses Snap? What do you see with Snap, given your purview?
47:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, they are huge amongst the younger demographic is it's the number one messaging platform.
47:25 Harry Stebbings? I'm so sorry, for word messaging, for like ephemeral photo messaging?
47:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, like their version of WhatsApp, they have WhatsApp, but it's also iMessage, it's their version. And that whole disappearing, that privacy element of it, what Snapchat offer is massive for them. Also the maps, I don't know if you've been on the maps and you can see where all of your friends are in the world on the maps. If you've got it turned on, like there's so many cool features in Snap and they've got some brilliant technology, brilliant innovation. They've always been innovators and quite often you've seen, obviously they've been taking some features from other platforms and other platforms are taking features from them. But Snap have been brilliant innovators. I believe Snap is an interesting place over the next five to 10 years.
48:11 Speaker 00 Whether it can compete with the TikToks and the metas at this scale. I mean, these players are huge and we've seen what they've done in AI, we've seen what they're doing in e-commerce and these kind of bets that they're making, they are massive. I believe it will be a place for innovation, a place for young adults, in particular Gen Z, and we'll see how they they connect to Gen Alpha. It's an interesting product.
48:34 Harry Stebbings? If you were to buy and short one of the incumbent social platforms, who would you buy and who would you short? So you've got Instagram, you've got YouTube, you've got TikTok, WhatsApp, you've got a Facebook.
48:45 Speaker 00 I I would say TikTok, I I would buy.
48:48 Harry Stebbings? Yeah.
48:49 Speaker 00 Meta, I I would buy on their big bets that they've made. Yeah, those would probably be the two.
48:55 Harry Stebbings? And you'd short?
48:56 Speaker 00 I would short, can we short X?
48:59 Harry Stebbings? Ah, what?
49:01 Speaker 00 We could we could ensure X because.
49:03 Harry Stebbings? No way. You, I mean, you go against Elon.
49:06 Speaker 00 So as a product that will evolve and the whole AI product he's creating and all these other aspects, it'd be hard not to back him on that front. As a platform as it is now, I believe it needs to evolve. And as a marketing platform, again, I think it needs to evolve.
49:26 Harry Stebbings? Listen, dude, I want to move to a quick fire. So I say a short statement. None of them are politically leading or like dangerously difficult to navigate. So what do you believe that most around you disbelieve?
49:37 Speaker 00 I believe probably that the impossible is possible. Sometimes I'm sure there's certain things that I say, such as us moving up the mountain, getting as close as we can to some of the biggest companies in the world. I'm sure there's lots of people that probably doubt that. I'm sure there will be lots of people that would probably question the ambition early doors on where we wanted to be and where we are now. So I I'm a hopeless optimist in that sense around ambition and what can be done and what humans can do and achieve. So I I think maybe that is probably the one sometimes. I do have to check myself, make sure I have the right people around on that front, but.
50:17 Harry Stebbings? What's the hardest thing about being CEO of Lab Bible?
50:20 Speaker 00 I'd say it's the it's the constant change in evolution. Every year is a new job. It's a new job. I I'm understanding how to navigate the US market. I'm understanding how to navigate a public environment. However, I enjoy that change. I enjoy the variation. I love challenge. I'm one of these people where if I wasn't doing Lab Bible Group. I've been trying to like climb Mount Everest or Kilimanjaro or something like that. I just need a challenge. For me, Lab Bible Group fuels that. It fuels that challenge. It tests me, it pushes me, it challenges me, but I enjoy that.
50:55 Harry Stebbings? The heaviest things in life are not iron or gold, but unmade decisions. What unmade decision rests on your mind most?
51:03 Speaker 00 It's a fantastic quote, you're right. Unmade decisions. There's so much emphasis on the importance of making the right decisions in our jobs. You just have to sometimes make a decision. That is sometimes the paralysis that you can end up where you take too long to make a decision, you aim for perfection, but sometimes you just need to go with the decision, back it, make it quickly, trust your gut, trust your intuition and go for it. And the moments I regret is not listening to that intuition and leaving it too long, questioning myself too much. So that connection of intuition, gut feel, and making a decision on it generally is a thing that I constantly check and balance myself.
51:44 Harry Stebbings? What have you changed your mind on in the last 12 months?
51:47 Speaker 00 Being a dad is the best thing ever, and it can also be the most humbling thing ever. I guess going from someone who my daughter loves and is obsessed with as a two-year-old to being someone who she feels, who I feel she hates, and the ups and downs of that roller coaster where you love, you absolutely love this human more than anything. And that experience of the ups and downs of that is mind blowing. I guess taking it outside of business, it's that up and down of being a dad, having something outside of business that humbles you in different ways.
52:32 Speaker 00 That's something that is an emotional roller coaster in itself, but a very special thing.
52:37 Harry Stebbings? What's your favourite consumer brand and why?
52:40 Speaker 00 My favourite consumer brand, I mean, Apple. I think Apple has to be up there. Let me expand it. I'd go Apple, Nike, Disney, these kind of businesses.
52:48 Harry Stebbings? Do you think Nike's lost?
52:49 Speaker 00 No, I think it's a very, very special brand and I believe it's lost its way and sometimes businesses do. And we work with them. They want to understand Gen Z in a better way and we're working with them on that basis. But I do not, I think it's got too much heritage, too much equity in the brand that it's built. Um, you think back to the Michael Jordan advertisement, whatever it may be, but Apple's special. If you look at brand, products, the way they've expanded their products, the quality of what they do, that's special. So for me, I'd probably say Apple, but a bunch of the others in there too.
53:24 Harry Stebbings? You can be CEO of any other company for a day. What company are you CEO of?
53:29 Speaker 00 I'd probably say Disney. I'd want to see inside Disney. Coming back to entertainment powerhouse, Disney have achieved that status and they've managed to evolve from this animation TV show to Disneyland, to Disney Plus, to Marvel, to Pixar, to some of the greatest movies experiences that you can possibly experience. And the whole feeling that comes off the back of that. So I would like to be inside there to see that magic and how it all ticks. And go back into the history of what I know and see how it looks underneath the bonnet. That, that for me would be a fascinating company.
54:09 Harry Stebbings? What character trait?
54:11 Speaker 00 Yeah.
54:11 Harry Stebbings? Are you kind of ashamed of, shy of, embarrassed of, that also makes you really quite successful?
54:18 Speaker 00 I am extremely goal focused. I can really lock in on a goal. Everything else moves out the way. The great thing about that is being able to lock into that goal, home in and go for it. The downside of that is you miss things on the periphery sometimes. So it's good and bad. And I have to check and balance myself on that basis, but I would say that's probably the, the two sides of the coin to that one.
54:43 Harry Stebbings? Final one for you. What question have you never asked by employees, by, by anyone? Could be a journalist, could be public marketing mass, that you're like, I don't know why no one asked me this.
54:54 Speaker 00 What's it like being a dad and a CEO?
54:57 Harry Stebbings? No one asks you that.
54:59 Harry Stebbings? What is it like being a dad and a CEO? Well, how does being a dad make you a better CEO?
55:04 Speaker 00 Before I had Alfie, our first boy, I would roll the dice on every decision, put it on the table, no problem. Having Alfie made me think about things very differently, that it's more than just me and Jess. It's me, Jess, and this little human who's dependent on us and what we do. And every action that we take, whether it's a mannerism, a word that we say, they're taking it in. And they can replicate it all the way through to safety and making sure they have a life that you want them to have. And I would guess in terms of the the biggest thing for me is pushing me to be a better role model.
55:47 Speaker 00 It makes me think about who I am, how I show up. And I often look at it through the lens of how would I feel if Alfie did that? So I would say that role model piece and thinking about my actions a little bit more is the is the good thing from it.
56:03 Harry Stebbings? Solly, this has gone from inspirational to politically charged, which you did very well on, to inspiring at the end there. Thank you so much for putting up with my kind of meandering pause and this has been fantastic.
56:14 Speaker 00 Amazing. Thank you very much, Harry. Really appreciate you having me on.
56:17 Harry Stebbings? I mean, I want to say huge thank you first to Solly for giving up the time, but also for the friendship. Solly has become a dear friend since we met about a year ago or so. And I'm so grateful for the conversations we have for the discussion today. And if you want to check out the episode, you can find it on YouTube by searching for 20VC. That's two zero VC on YouTube. But before we leave you today, SecureFrame empowers businesses to build trust with customers by simplifying information security and compliance through AI and automation. Thousands of fast growing businesses, including NASDAQ, Angel List, Doodle and Coder, trust SecureFrame to expedite their compliance journey for global security and privacy standards, such as SOC two and ISO twenty seven thousand and one, CMMC, NIST standards and more.
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58:22 Harry Stebbings? And while staying ahead of the curve is crucial, so is capturing high-quality content. So let me tell you about Riverside. Did you know that every virtual 20 VC interview you listen to, yes, including with incredible guests like Marc Benioff and Sam Altman, is actually recorded using Riverside.fm? It's the one tool I genuinely cannot live without. Riverside delivers incredible audio and video quality and it's just ridiculously easy to use. And the best part? My guests love how simple it is. They don't need an account or software, just a simple click and they're in. When you're hosting someone like Marc or Sam, it kind of really matters that it's also really reliable, which it is. And Riverside doesn't just stop at recording. Their AI editor is a personal favorite. They
59:04 Harry Stebbings? make it so easy to create shareable clips, turning an epic interview into bite-sized moments that go viral on social media. If you're thinking about starting a podcast or upgrading your current setup, trust me, this is the way to go. Check it out at Riverside.fm/20VC and see why I can't live without it. As always, we so appreciate all your support and cannot wait to bring you an incredible episode on Monday with Jonathan Ross at Grok.
Previous 20VC: Monzo: The Greatest Turnaround in Tech: From £40M Revenues, Layoffs, Downrounds and Low Employee NPS to $1BN in Revenue, Profitable and 10M Customers with TS Anil, CEO @ Monzo Next 20VC: NVIDIA vs Groq: The Future of Training vs Inference | Meta, Google, and Microsoft's Data Center Investments: Who Wins | Data, Compute, Models: The Core Bottlenecks in AI & Where Value Will Distribute with Jonathan Ross, Founder @ Groq Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
