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In this episode of 'all about business' with James Reed talks with the sibling duo, Richard and Archie Hollingsworth, founders of Fixer AI.
They discuss their journey from bootstrapping a $5 million agency to spearheading an innovative AI personal assistant tool which they say can give you an hour back every day. They share insights from their transformative stint in Silicon Valley, reflect on the impactful role of AI in modern businesses, and highlight why 2025 is a pivotal year for AI adoption.
04:24 building Fixer AI
07:00 success and growth of Fixer AI
21:05 the accelerator experience
30:04 moving to San Francisco: a family decision
31:02 cultural diversity in the accelerator program
32:13 lessons from the American business culture
33:14 the power of being direct
36:27 adapting to the American market
38:05 building a strong team
41:34 brothers in business: trust and dynamics
44:46 hiring and scaling up
54:09 future goals and reflections
Follow Archie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/archie-hollingsworth-a07168152/
Follow Archie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-hollingsworth-444b8589/
Visit Fyxer.AI: https://www.fyxer.com
Follow James Reed on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chairmanjames/
[00:00:00] James: Welcome to all about business with me, James Reid, the podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests of bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture.
Well,
[00:00:30] James (2): today on All About Business, I'm really pleased to welcome our first sibling partnership, um, Billed as the Hollingsworth Brothers. And, uh, we have Archie and we have Richard Hollingsworth. Uh, with us today and you know a lot about AI, which is why I've invited you and you've got a fabulous new business called Fixer AI, which you're going to be talking about.
And AI is everywhere. It's in the news every day. Even the prime minister's giving speeches about AI. Um, and people are in varying degrees, I think, excited and sort of worried about AI. And I think many workers. I'm worried that AI might be coming for their jobs. Should they be? Richard, I'll start with you.
[00:01:18] Richard: Yeah. So, um, I probably start by saying, I, I think there's been a lot of hype about AI in the news and there's a lot of press about it, as you say, even the prime minister's talking about it, but I'm seeing less of it actually being applied really valuably in companies day to day. I struggle when I think about companies that I know that are really ahead of the curve.
Um, how many of them are actually using AI materially? And I think that worry that you speak to is for people who are further away from AI than, than are close to it. Um, the closer you get to it, the further away you realize we are from AI actually being able to ever replace the creativity and tenacity and initiative that humans have.
So you shouldn't be worried about it taking a job, at least not in the short term, or at least not most jobs. I think the key thing is, is. Learning how to use it and work with it, it's not going to go away. So the kind of common phrase in this world today is, uh, you know, AI is not going to replace you, but a human who knows how to use AI is, and I think to a degree that's really true.
[00:02:26] James (2): A human who knows how to use AI. It's going to replace you if you don't learn to use it.
[00:02:31] Richard: Yeah. I think that, that absolutely people adopting AI is the biggest hurdle that it's got for sure.
[00:02:37] James (2): So
[00:02:37] Richard: that's
[00:02:38] James (2): interesting. So Archie, I'm going to ask you, so, so how do humans use AI? How should we be looking at it?
Thinking about it? Adopting it, making it a sort of part of our working life.
[00:02:48] Archie: Yeah. So Rich and I ran a services company ourselves before starting Fixer AI. And to bring ourselves up to speed with AI, we actually just watched ourselves working. We said, what are we doing in a day? And then you can look up tools like ChatGPT or anything like that, and just start asking AI itself, like how it could help you.
And so just take a note at the end of each day and ask yourself what you did that day. Maybe then put that into chat TPT and say, how could you help me? Or how could other AI tools help me? And then maybe set yourself a goal of by the end of the month, maybe just doing one or two tasks in that month with AI, and you'll be further than most people in the entire world.
And I can really understand the anxiety that people were feeling, um, about where this is going, how fast it's moving, particularly when it's just everywhere in the press, you know, who's really feeling the anxiety. People like you, James, people who are at the top of the company. And I spend a lot of time with those people and they're saying to me, Archie, what's happening?
And what they love is people in their company who are adopting AI and telling them. And so if you take those learnings from your role, and then go to the people at the top and say, look, this is what I did, this is what I learned, they are going to adore you in your role. They're going to think that you are invaluable to the organization because they have as much anxiety as you do.
So two,
[00:04:09] James (2): uh,
[00:04:10] Archie: so
[00:04:10] James (2): you're, you're depositing anxiety on me. Two, two things came to mind when you were telling me that. I mean, one was I met a young woman at a dinner the other night who was working in PR. And she said that she'd started putting all the press releases she was working on or asking AI to help her create the press releases for clients.
And her manager had recently said to her, your writing's really improved, which I thought was interesting. And then I asked my assistant the other day, I asked her, so could you do a bit of research to find out what jobs are most at risk from AI? You know, what jobs are most likely to disappear in the long term, I guess we're not saying in the short term because of AI and she came back within about three minutes with a list.
I said, that was a bit quick. And she said, I used AI. Oh, there's one job. You're talking about assistance here. And, um, of course I say that in jest, but it is become, uh, that's your business. It has become a very valuable. Very quickly, assistant to people, if they know what to ask, how to, how to use it. So talk me through your business idea, Richard.
[00:05:27] Richard: Yeah. So we're building an AI executive assistant and we started working on this. Probably eight years ago when Archie and I started the services business, he talked about a second ago and that business is. Was a human executive assistant agency. So that was the services business. That's the services business, yeah.
[00:05:47] James (2): So it was remote assistance. Yeah. Someone to answer the phone for you if you were self employed. Exactly. All that sort of thing.
[00:05:53] Richard: And we worked on that business for about six years and saw this opportunity with AI come along and understood that our insight into how executive assistants did their job would be a big advantage in the market versus other people who were trying to solve the same problem without that experience necessarily.
And so probably two years ago, we started working on building Fixer AI. We brought our third co founder on, Matt, um, who's our CTO. He got to work actually building the product itself. And we took all of the insights and knowledge and learnings that we had from the first business and built a product, which we released at the beginning of last year, uh, to beta users and then to paid users in the middle of last year.
Um, and have just seen absolutely crazy traction. Um, so you say crazy traction, come on, tell us what's your, how's your business growing? This week we just crossed 3 million in annualized revenue, um, which is
[00:06:52] James (2): starting from scratch last year.
[00:06:54] Richard: Starting from scratch last year, we're starting launch to paid users in the middle of last year.
It's taken about eight months. So to get to 3 million. Yeah. So that's going to get people's
[00:07:02] James (2): attention. Yeah. It's moving very fast. What's your sort of growth rate at the moment? Um,
[00:07:06] Richard: It's a good question. We're adding about a million dollars a month in revenue, so have a good degree of confidence of hitting 15 million.
this
[00:07:15] James (2): service, huh?
[00:07:16] Richard: Yeah, and actually really importantly with this is What's happening with a lot of AI tools, and it speaks to the point at the beginning about, um, this kind of short term thinking with it is lots of tools people pick up, they use them, have a kind of excitement, fun playing with it. Lots of people will have experienced this with chat GPT, and then a month later, they're not using it anymore.
And what we're really excited and most excited about our business is. Underpinning the growth is really, really exceptional retention. So not only are we seeing customers stay with us, but we're seeing them use the product more and more and most importantly, share it with their team as well. So
[00:07:56] James (2): I was talking to our producer Frankie at lunchtime before you came in and she said, your product is fantastic.
And she was using it, you know, not only does it do your email to you, but it sounds like you and it sort of sort of adapts so quickly to. What she wanted it to do, which I'm not just saying that as a plug, I just think it's really interesting that you've achieved that in such a short period of time. And it's such an effective and she said to me, and I don't mind sharing this, that she could imagine.
Someone like her that runs her own business, saving him an hour a day using this product. Yeah. That gives you an extra day a
[00:08:27] Richard: week to do other stuff. That's what we're aiming for. Absolutely. Um, there are like lots of applications for people who are, uh, self employed or work for themselves, but there are also lots of applications at a team level as well, which we're really excited about.
[00:08:42] Archie: Um, and it's important to know that when we decided to build this product, we had our team in our agency business did. Nearly 2, 000 different tasks in every month. We've actually only picked off three so far to do. Um, and so So what are the three you picked? The, the Firstly, it's just organizing your emails.
All the people that are trying to reach you, James, and taking your attention and going through the clutter of all that marketing noise, we organize for you. Um, we then help write replies in your tone of voice. And then we also attend your meetings to take notes, um, for you and, um, yeah, take your actions and follow ups.
So
[00:09:23] James (2): how do you attend my meetings? How does that work?
[00:09:25] Archie: So it literally like, like a human assistant would joins the meeting with, uh, do I have to switch something on switch? If you're in person, you press a button, but if you're, um, yeah, if you're. If you're joining maybe via Zoom or whatever tool you use, it will just appear in the meeting and take the notes.
It knows your diary. It knows your diary, exactly. It knows where you're going to a meeting. Yeah. So, so people
[00:09:52] James (2): really appreciate that.
[00:09:53] Archie: Exactly. And it, it helps when someone says, James, are you free next week? It knows if you're free. Um, it knows when you like meetings.
[00:09:59] James (2): I might want to be free for some people, not for other people.
Well,
[00:10:02] Archie: yeah, it's, it's good at detecting if this person's a customer or if they're a relationship there's, it knows the history with the person. And so it can better understand. So if someone's trying to
[00:10:11] James (2): make a cold
[00:10:11] Archie: call, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:10:13] Richard: Prioritize people who you previously prioritized. Um, if you've never met them before, then it will be like, which is an important
[00:10:20] James (2): role of a human assistant.
Exactly. That gatekeeper
[00:10:23] Richard: role is super, super important, particularly for, you know, somebody like yourself.
[00:10:27] Archie: And I think it's just important to note that took a good, a good example where most of our customers didn't have assistants before. Um, And now because of the cost of this, we're able to then serve it.
Assistance is a very small market. Maybe again, people like yourselves can afford them, but, um, the majority of the market can't. And so, yeah, it's just enabling. So everyone can have an assistant now? No, everyone can have an assistant now. Why wouldn't you want one? It's a dollar a day. It's a dollar a day to have an assistant.
Well, that's quite cheap. The key thing is
[00:10:58] Richard: that the focus of it is just on these three tasks. Because actually what we learned in our executive assistant agency in the previous business was That every single person, every executive's needs are different. Your needs for your system will be totally unique to anybody else.
So you can never build an AI tool that's going to be able to replicate that experience for you. But if somebody, everyone who is a customer of Fixer AI has the same problem with a really high volume of emails and meetings, so that's something that we can just laser focus on. Exactly. We could just laser focus on that, those problems alone.
Um, and that. Satisfies the needs of, uh, lots of customer facing people typically, um, who otherwise wouldn't have access to an assistant. And it's great for self employed people. Exactly. Yeah. And
[00:11:46] James (2): entrepreneurs who are starting out, I imagine because it takes a lot of headaches away.
[00:11:50] Richard: Yeah. Exactly. When you don't have a team around you to support, it's really, really helpful.
I've got
[00:11:54] James (2): a friend who's an entrepreneur. He told me, I was shocked. He said he does 300 emails a day. And I said, why are you wasting your time doing that? So I'm going to tell him about this. Yeah, please do. That might take all day. Yeah. I mean, what are you doing? Typically
[00:12:06] Richard: our users will have something like 50 a day.
Um, which is still a lot to get through 300 is
[00:12:12] James (2): going to write a reply to everyone. Well,
[00:12:14] Richard: normally they reply to about 20%, something like that.
[00:12:17] James (2): Yeah.
[00:12:18] Richard: Because lots of them are just, you know, marketing and that sort of thing.
[00:12:20] James (2): Yeah.
[00:12:22] Richard: We're delighted that
[00:12:22] James: you're watching this episode. Please hit the subscribe button if you'd like to receive more insights and actionable advice that will help your business and or
[00:12:32] James (2): career.
So, okay. So that's your product, which I think. You've described very well and um, sounds appealing to me and I can see why lots of people would be interested in why you're growing as fast as you are. But going beyond your product and just looking at the AI space, you mentioned that, you know, people should be embracing it, getting going, trying it.
Partly you said to, I think, impress their boss, but really to be more effective at work. What, what, what types of activities are particularly suited? to that. You know, what, where do you see people using AI most effectively beyond your product?
[00:13:12] Archie: I actually think that it's, it's still really early. Um, we, so Richard and I have just come back from San Francisco.
Um, and we were amongst some of the most sort of impressive startup founders in AI, um, growing companies. And it's, it's amazing. I, I, I put a message out to everyone and just said, could anyone explain how they're actually using AI? And it was, it was amazingly rare how even the most people who are the most interested still are actually using it.
So I think the lesson and the takeaway I have of that is, it's still really early. And so if you're feeling this anxiety of, well, maybe it's a bit late, have I missed the moment with AI? It's still very early that you can actually get involved. And so I would, again, kind of follow the process of what do I do in my day specifically?
So if I'm a marketer, um, at Reed and what am I, what am I doing with my day? Um, Maybe I'm writing social media posts. Um, I'm trying to build up the awareness for social media. I'm trying to reach, um, potential partners or pr and so probably email writing or, or copywriting is a big part of my day and could I then condense down an hour?
Could I get back an hour from using different AI products? Um, and you could really just Google those or ask friends or even ask chat GBT and just say, okay, could I get an hour back a day? Because. I think the mistake people are thinking is that AI is going to suddenly, that it's so far ahead. It actually really isn't, um, when you look at like where people are really applying it in their day.
Um, and the other thing with AI is thinking about it as a first pass. So, like, Rich and I over this year have started like writing LinkedIn posts, but the worst thing you can do, I think, for your personal brand, Um, and why you want to tell your story is actually look like AI just wrote it all. And it's really obvious.
[00:15:00] James (2): offers you that opportunity. They actually, yeah, they do. Click it and AI rewrites your post. I always refuse to touch it. Exactly. It just feels, it's just so obvious. Yeah. And I've got a bit of a format. It becomes formulaic.
[00:15:11] Archie: Exactly. But they might be able to give you good, it might be able to give you good ideas.
It might be able to help like reshape an idea or reformat an idea. You know, if you're not great at spelling, it's probably help with spelling. Like thinking about. Yeah. Yeah. Instead of being like, okay, how am I going to do AI in everything I do just an hour, two hours a day back is what we feel is like the achievable goal and what even the best people in the world and the most informed people in the world are doing.
Um, it's yeah, still very early. So where you,
[00:15:43] James (2): where you were framing that Archie, or at least what I heard is that a good way of thinking about it or starting to apply AI is just how can it help me save time? Yeah, I think so. So the tradable is time ultimately, which is so precious.
[00:15:58] Richard: Exactly. Yeah. I think it's about, as you say, like first becoming really aware of what your workflow looks like.
And we all kind of just go into work in the morning and just. Start our day and aren't necessarily consciously aware of the process that we follow in, in doing that and becoming aware of that in the first instance was, was what we did with our, uh, in order to build our product. So we just started with what are the consistent flows that everyone is following, and then looked for ways to be able to automate those.
[00:16:31] James (2): So that works, Richard, both at an individual level, but also at a corporate level. You know, as a, as a. CEO or business manager, I could be looking at the organization thinking, how can I apply AI? And you'd be looking at systematic.
[00:16:45] Richard: I think, I think that generally people are asking that question of how do I apply AI as though that's the answer or that's the goal.
But actually the, the goal is how do I make my team more efficient, more effective, etc. Do an analysis and AI is one of the tools available to you that potentially has wider reaching applications than other tools have historically, but not having AI is the goal. I think that's a really important
[00:17:13] James (2): point you make actually is how do I improve the business?
How do I make the team more productive? It's the means, not the end. How do I make people happier? How do I give a better service? Yeah. Yeah. Better outcomes.
[00:17:24] Richard: Yeah, we really tried to focus on, we really tried to focus on the customer and the product, um, and not on the tech, maybe so much that's behind it. Um, the tech that we have behind it is exceptional, but focusing on the customer problem really helped us like narrow down just to these few workflows, because it became really aware to it really obvious to us that these workflows for our customer type are burning problems.
And technology, of which AI is a part of, is really capable of solving them to a high degree of accuracy, but it wasn't starting from a, how do we build an AI product, if you like. Yeah, so what's the problem to be solved here? Exactly, yeah. And then you use it to help
[00:18:10] James (2): deliver the
[00:18:10] Richard: outcome. Yeah, exactly. As Arch alluded to, you know, we just spent four months in living in Silica Valley, and I think that can too often be, uh, how do I build a AI company?
How do I build an AI product? Um, as the first question, as opposed to, you know, how big is the problem that I'm seeing in front of me?
[00:18:30] James (2): So let's talk about that. Yep. So you, you're based here in the UK, London, I believe, but you decided to go to America for a bit. Who had that idea and why?
[00:18:40] Richard: Actually, I mean, I, I'd love to take credit for it, but it was totally Archie's idea.
Um,
[00:18:46] James (2): Is Archie your older or younger brother?
[00:18:47] Richard: He's my younger brother. That must be hard for you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, he has plenty of wins. It was Archie's idea, plenty of wins. That's good. He, Archie came to me and said, you know, this is where all. All of these companies that are trying to do what we're trying to do are based in, in San Francisco, 70 percent of our customers are based in the U S we should be out there meeting them.
And the context we had been, uh, probably four months. This is probably July or August four months since we launched the product for paid users. So we're starting to get traction. We're really excited. We were probably doing 300 grand in annualized revenue at that point. And we were really excited about what was happening, but, um, we're really.
Still doing it in isolation in London, so we took a week out to go to Boston, New York, and then San Francisco and my abiding takeaway from the trip, which we ended up staying there for four months, um, just, you know, much longer than the week we had planned was that in America. It seems that magic happens.
I haven't experienced in London before. And when I landed in New York, uh, the first person I met suggested that we have a call with an accelerator program that was in based in San Francisco and it's quite an unusual concept. JFK
[00:20:05] James (2): airport. You mean the first person you met? Yeah. No, the first, the
[00:20:08] Richard: first person I had a meeting with.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Not the passport control or anyone. I thought that really would No. The first person that, but you'd arranged a meeting with this person? Exactly. And they helped progress. They suggested that we go and do this, um, that we go and do an accelerator that's in San Francisco, and so they.
Connected me with the founder of the accelerator. And we had an interview and they said, can you be in San Francisco in the next four days? And I said, you know, fortunately we are actually planning on being there in four days with my two co founders. And, uh, we arrived there to an interview that we were told in advance would take 10 minutes to decide whether we would get into the accelerator or not.
And it's part of the deal with that. You would receive a million dollars on that day. Well, the accelerator is an investment program. Exactly. Um, and. Can just from us stepping outside of the speed and intensity at which London moves into this was, it was already very exciting. Um, and we came out of the interview 10 minutes later with the offer to a million dollars and for us to join the accelerator, you had a
[00:21:14] James (2): 10 minute pitch for a million dollars.
So,
[00:21:16] Richard: who did what? Uh, actually it was an interview format. It was an interview? Yeah, where they asked us Exactly. What did they ask you? They asked us, um, a series of questions, faster than I've ever been asked questions before, and we were cut off. Come on, give me a couple of examples. The first question they asked us was, uh, As you walk into the room and when you only have 10 minutes in an interview, there are very few niceties that are available to be made.
It's like spending
[00:21:42] James (2): time with an inexpensive lawyer. Yeah. You just like sit down and here we go. Yeah. Um,
[00:21:46] Richard: and it's back to back. The first thing they asked us was, um, what are you building? And so they're looking for the like short one minute or 30 second tagline. We said that we're building an AI executive assistant for professional service people.
[00:21:59] Archie: Then they jumped in and said, why won't Google do that? And then they
[00:22:04] Richard: would jump in again. What We said that Google focus on building, uh, features for a billion people rather than for, you know, a hundred million. And that's what we're focused on. And they said.
And you know, who's building this. And we went to our, uh, engineer Matt and they're like, you know, what keeps you at the company? Um, you know, what, what allows you to move faster than your competitors? And he said that the insights and the data direction that we got from our first business is our guide.
And this allowed us to hit product market fit instantly rather than having to wait a year to hit it. Then he said, then he
[00:22:39] Archie: jumped in and said, yeah, but what about this product, this other startup product or this product. And you're like, well, the answer to that is that we're actually not from Silicon Valley.
And what's interesting is that the previous SAS, so software revolution was really focused on technology hubs like Silicon Valley selling to a lot of each other. But now actually the big opportunities outside of that is that how do you get the everyday person to use AI? And so we just played to our strengths about not being from there for that answer.
[00:23:07] Richard: Yeah. Cause we think the big market in this space is how do you, how do you go after people who don't use technology today? Um, you know, you can just sell to other tech companies, but it's only 10 percent of the market. Everyone uses technology to
[00:23:21] James (2): an extent though, right? I mean, we all have phones and laptops.
[00:23:23] Richard: Absolutely. And those companies have done, have done what we're looking to achieve. That's what you're trying to achieve. It's not unprecedented at all. Yeah. You know, the way in which Apple has, uh, immersed itself into, you know, my grandmother has an iPad. Um, is a good example of. Uh, you know, in the business software, if
[00:23:41] James (2): you can afford them.
So I want to finish off on this, this 10 minute clip. So you walked out with a million dollars after obviously answering these questions. We
[00:23:49] Richard: actually had to accept the offer, which is the first thing, but I
[00:23:51] James (2): want to know what they got then. What did you have to give them?
[00:23:54] Richard: So the, um, I took just for a second,
[00:23:58] James (2): walked out with a share in your business.
[00:24:00] Richard: Yeah. They get a share up front of the business and the million dollars is uncapped. So what's that mean? That means that. They invest, at the end of the program, you go out for a funding round, and uh, they will invest a million dollars at the price at which you achieve the funding round at, exactly. Right.
They see it as like early access. So but they get a stake, do they? How big a stake? So they get a stake as a part of that. They're a million dollars. You don't want to tell me what it is? You don't want to tell me, do you? Uh, I'm not entirely sure what I can and can't share at this point. But it's
[00:24:39] James (2): interesting because you might look back on that and think that was a great
[00:24:42] Richard: deal.
You might look back on
[00:24:43] James (2): it and think, what did we do that
[00:24:44] Richard: for?
[00:24:46] James (2): You're right,
[00:24:46] Richard: you're right. But actually I think the So I'll just talk about the accelerator itself is kind of unusual and the concept of it is that our biggest enemy in building a company is distraction and So often in normal life We are distracted by the ten things in our business that we don't need to do but draw our attention Or indeed just general life chores.
So the premise of what they do is they build it's very San Francisco in this but They call it the monastery, which is, uh, they have, it's the second largest private residence in San Francisco, 10 companies all move into the residence and you live there with 30 or so other people building your company.
And they take care of absolutely every aspect of your life so that you need to do nothing except work. So all your food is cooked and cleaned for you. Your clothes are washed for you. There's a gym in the basement. And the concept is that you. Essentially just wake up in the morning and work 16 hours a day, seven days a week or just over three months.
So you were in
[00:25:54] James (2): the monastery.
[00:25:55] Richard: We were in the monastery. The monastery said, Oh, the food is amazing. God, the
[00:26:07] James (2): monastic life isn't too bad. Yeah, you're right.
[00:26:09] Richard: Yeah. It's, it's monastic in name only. I would say it, uh, they do a fabulous job of American people. I think, uh, Of like really going for it with those sorts of things.
So the equivalent, you know, It's a bit like
[00:26:21] James (2): being on The Apprentice, isn't it? You get shot away in a building with a bunch of people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually like,
[00:26:26] Richard: um, probably quite like that. And so. During the process of that three months, we took our revenue at the time, which was 300, 000 in annualized revenue, and we got up to two and a half million when we left three months later.
So we, we knew that this system of just laser focus was how we like to work. Um, so this was the three of you. There was, we, we have one additional employee who joined us. So you're
[00:26:52] James (2): recreating this monastery here in London. That's exactly what we're trying to do. Why don't you create it for lots of people?
You could create a monastic setup for all the other entrepreneurs.
[00:27:01] Richard: That's what they're trying to do there. Actually. Yeah. That's exactly what they want to do. I have to say the, like the role of, you have to be a kind of facilitator of. Of the monastery, which is a job that you'd be not good at that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so years ago
[00:27:22] James (2): I was lucky enough to go to Harvard business school. You reminded me of this joke. And someone, someone used to say, uh, the people were being rude about Harvard business school. So it was a bit like being in a monastery. So instead of thinking about God, you thought about your wallet.
But what you're doing here is thinking about your new venture and it's service to its customers. And nothing else by the sound of things. They
[00:27:46] Archie: do something that there were a few things that were taken away. We haven't taken away the, uh, 16 hours a day, seven days a week. We think that some, some breaks are helpful as a moment in time for that type of intensity.
So you're
[00:27:59] James (2): keeping that up?
[00:28:00] Archie: No, no, no. You're not? No, no. So
[00:28:02] James (2): this is interesting because America is known for its work ethic.
[00:28:05] Richard: Yeah. I think, we tried to bottle that up, but actually this was, this was the crucible of that. It was. So intense, you can't do that. Yeah, it's not a family. They're open about that. They talk
[00:28:17] Archie: about it as your kind of sustainable Exactly an unsustainable moment in in time for you and a bonding between your kind of founding team as well
[00:28:26] James (2): But do you have big family commitments?
You're both young the first call
[00:28:30] Richard: I had to make after we got the offer was to my wife and my My nine month old son. Oh, this is quite tricky to ask them Whether they fancied moving to San Francisco, uh, for the three months. I was amazed. My wife just immediately said, yeah, let's do it. So you
[00:28:47] James (2): can take your wife to the monastery.
Yeah. Well that's different. Well, that's good. They, uh, they left her so she came with you. That's good. Yeah. The child was young enough to be able to, we had my nephew school. We
[00:28:59] Archie: had my nephew in the office every day, so it was really sweet. 'cause we were all next to, yeah, next to each other. Were you able to do it quite, yeah.
Was there was a Yeah. Good. The, the team were kind of, were really ready for it. Um, and. Yeah, we
[00:29:12] James (2): wouldn't suit. I mean, lots of people at different stages of life would not be able to do that. You know, we've got children at school. Ironically, we were the youngest team. You were the youngest. We were the youngest team.
So people there had sort of given up everything to go there for a bit.
[00:29:23] Richard: They had. I mean, So they were showing a big level of career from then. Of the ten companies that are in the program, I would think six of them or seven of them maybe had kids. Yeah. People with, you know, people with kids in their team.
And. For the most part, the, the, um, parent that was in the program would leave their family at home and they came, you know, often from countries like China and that sort of place. It was an amazing
[00:29:47] Archie: mix of cultures. We had two Chinese companies, one Vietnamese company, a kind of. A kind of mixed company of like German, Indian, we had us as the Brits, and then we had the rest of Americans.
[00:29:58] James (2): That must have been an amazing learning
[00:29:59] Archie: experience. Amazing.
[00:30:00] James (2): Yeah. You'll never forget it. Um, so, so, so what else did you learn from sort of, I mean, it's interesting to me cause I've often observed that ideas come from America to the UK to Europe and we started a website more than 30 years ago now based on, you know.
Things we picked up from America and like you're doing now, this next generation of technology. Um, what, what else did you learn there? I mean, our listeners are predominantly going to be in the UK. There are quite a lot in the States, but what have you brought back to London with you think, well, we need more of this or both as a company, but maybe more widely in our business
[00:30:36] Richard: community.
Um, the first thing when we touched down, uh, you know, in first day in the accelerator, it became very clear that. Our kind of British habit of being self deprecating whenever we've done something good. Um, would need to go very quickly. They just didn't have any time for it at all. And, uh, we would each week have to pitch in front of everyone else what we'd done that week.
And we would be loudly abused for, uh, not speaking loudly enough. For, uh, being too long and drawn out, not being direct enough. And, uh, also for just, for any self deprecation that wasn't relevant to the piece. You know, it's just sort of A real English habit to, whenever you've done something good, to then qualify it with why that's not down to you, for example.
Um, that was the first thing that they really tried to get out of us as much as they could. It was quite a battle. What was the second thing? Oh, I'd say the second thing
[00:31:38] Archie: was The power of being very direct with people and while that, again, for English people can feel quite uncomfortable because, um, people in America, yeah, teach you that you're very, very direct and I'll give you the best example was we, um, we had an amazing opportunity come up during the program at almost the most opportune time, which was two weeks before our big presentation at the end where, um, the largest real estate broker, um, realtor for American listeners, which Um, was, had people using our products and was very interested to look at rolling this out.
And we said, well, what if we could get this deal to happen before our presentation day, which was two weeks away, something that felt like unimaginable to when we were in the UK, but this kind of feeling that magic can happen out there. And, um, we went to the guy who runs HF0, the accelerator. And I said, look, I've asked him, does he want me to go see him?
Because I'd be happy to go see him. And he said, here, you just don't ask, you just go. So he then rewrote an email for me, which said, by the way, I'm going to be in Ellingham, Washington tomorrow. I'll be there all day and I'm ready for a deal to happen. Let me know if you'd like to meet. Otherwise I can just work from there.
And then he booked the flight with me then and there. And I arrived in Washington not knowing if I had a meeting. This was a, uh, eight hour travel to get there. And it was that kind of magic, and we ended up getting the deal done, that happened there. And it was a, you don't ask, you just do. Um, and I think, you know, there's obviously limits to that, but there's just this, this magic.
It takes out the British prevarication or whatever. Exactly. I'm here, I'm keen to do a deal. Keen to do a deal. And that phrasing. I'm afraid I'm not. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's kind of direct. Exactly. And just being direct and trying to apply that. And, and actually when we had, um, uh, a team member come out during the program and we had switched from this kind of Uh, British to kind of U.
S. British. Um, and one of the things, the first thing we said to him, we said, we're gonna be unapologetically direct right now. Um, we're gonna, we don't have time for it. Because every week we felt like we were competing. Um, with people who are our friends that we'd have lunch with and dinner with, but really there was an element of competition about on Monday nights when you stood up, you wanted to be the company that had had the winning week.
And you just, when you're working to such tight deadlines, you just have to be very direct and we kind of inducted him into that directness when he joined us for the program. And yeah, I'd say being direct, being unapologetically direct and asking people, should we have a deal versus letting deals just run.
So
[00:34:29] James (2): are your, are your friends getting used to this?
[00:34:32] Archie: I think maybe it's more my family.
[00:34:35] James (2): Must be a bit of an adjustment for people who know you. Yeah. I think it requires a qualification
[00:34:39] Archie: at the
[00:34:40] Richard: beginning of, um, we've been in America for four months in America.
[00:34:47] James (2): Well, that's interesting, isn't it? I mean, I think that that's a valuable lesson.
What I found when I lived in America is quite a long time ago. There was a great sort of optimism. And enthusiasm around ideas and entrepreneurship, which I found infectious. And it's interesting. Now you look at the American economy, it's growing much faster than the UK. And there's also a real preference for dynamism and growth, which feels more qualified in, in the UK these days.
Yeah. Do you
[00:35:16] Richard: sense that? Do you
[00:35:16] James (2): sense that?
[00:35:17] Richard: Absolutely. Yeah. I feel it's certainly when you're starting out particular, the, when you just have an idea, That idea is, in England, seems the first thought is to pick out what might be wrong about that idea. Rather than picking out, you know, what could win, like for us, when we first started out, everyone just said, Oh, what if Google do this?
What if Google do this? It was always the first question. And well, you did get asked that
[00:35:44] James (2): question by the accelerator. That's true. Yeah, but it wasn't the first thing they asked. It
[00:35:48] Richard: wasn't the first. And that's the point I suppose. Yeah, exactly. It's, it's a good question to ask, but it's not the most exciting thing about it or the most interesting thing about it.
And it's the obsession with what might go wrong rather than what could go right. That I thinks. Um, so the questions
[00:36:03] James (2): always, the other side of that question is, what if they don't?
[00:36:07] Richard: What if they don't do this Google? Yeah, exactly. They don't do this. Well,
[00:36:11] James (2): neurons were a real winner aren't, I mean, why would you take that chance?
Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Google got a lot on their, on their plate, haven't they? So,
[00:36:19] Richard: yeah, exactly. Yeah, they're very busy. Yeah, very busy. I dunno. Yeah. And so if it's temp on their list and
[00:36:25] James (2): first on mine, you know, quiet, I mean, there's a lot of space there. Anything else you took away from America that you'd like to share for our listeners who are predominantly entrepreneurs and business people?
[00:36:37] Richard: I think the game is set up for success there as well. You know, the market is so much bigger there that if you're not selling in America, you're limiting yourself so much. So you'd advise British entrepreneurs to try and get into the American market? I mean, the way, yeah, the way that we're looking at it is, is so I'd heard for the first time that while we were out there, this term called Brit shoring, which is when Americans utilize British labor, because we are now half the price.
Brit shoring. Brit shoring, yeah. I've heard of off shoring
[00:37:08] James (2): and near shoring, Brit shoring. Because
[00:37:10] Richard: we speak the same language. We speak the same language. We're really well educated. We need to learn to be more direct. Tick all the boxes. We need to learn to be more direct. Uh, at half the price, they can, they can stomach it.
I mean, certainly compared to Silicon Valley. So you're a
[00:37:23] James (2): technologist you're talking about or, yeah, it's actually,
[00:37:26] Richard: it was, it's kind of across the board, but, um, it was a term used and I don't know where the Britain knows that that's how we're now being seen. And so we're, we're sort of looking at it like that, that we're going to have our team based here, this excellent talent here, but the market you have to sell into is the U S because it's 10 times bigger.
So your limitations that you're putting on yourself by only selling in the UK is really significant and to build a really successful business is, you know, you guys have done so well, um, in the UK is, is much harder than doing that same thing in the
[00:38:01] James (2): US. One of the things I think as well, though, if you're right, that the sort of the average person is less inclined to sort of start something because.
They're being put off by these negative questions. If you do start something, maybe there's, you've got less competition, you know, so that you, you know, if you can bring a great idea or develop a great idea in Britain, you can actually do really well.
[00:38:23] Richard: That's true. If it's, if it's geographic, you know, if the American business can't come here anyway, then that's definitely true.
[00:38:30] James (2): So, but your message is there's a big old market out there in the West and it's called America and you should be thinking about it, certainly anyone in the technology space.
[00:38:38] Richard: Certainly in technology. I mean, not least because Americans willingness to pay is so much higher. 30 a month, you know, a dollar a day is less to an American than it is to a Brit.
Um, so yeah, particularly the way the dollar's going and the pound's going. The dollar's going against the
[00:38:53] James (2): pound, unfortunately. Yeah. I mean, it seems like a no brainer if you can have an assistant for a dollar a day to me. It does the things that you describe it does, as well as I've heard it works.
[00:39:04] Richard: It does, but it's, I mean, you know, you're going
[00:39:06] James (2): to have other people coming into the space, I guess, competing with you.
[00:39:09] Richard: Absolutely. Yeah. Um, it's a really big space, so you kind of expect there to be, um, so for people listening,
[00:39:16] James (2): how do they find your service? If they wanted an assistant for a dollar a day.
[00:39:21] Archie: F Y X E R dot com. Uh, you can sign up free trial. You're not going to get tricked with any credit card. Um, like you would Netflix and then they're going to charge you after seven days.
You can just sign up without a credit card, try the entire product and then decide if you want to pay.
[00:39:38] James (2): Very good. That's very clear. Thank you, Archie.
[00:39:40] Archie: You are the chief. Revenue officer. So I
[00:39:44] James (2): thought that was the case and your brother's a CEO. I think it's all right. I said to you, I, before we started talking, I like for a relationship office.
Yeah. I think I might start a relationship with all these people who aren't paying anything to start. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There are lots of precedents of brothers or siblings, but especially brothers being successful in business. And my sort of analysis or take on that is because. Ultimately, you trust each other, you know, you've got the same mission or goal or objective and you know that you're working towards it in the same spirit, is that, would you agree with that?
[00:40:19] Richard: Completely. Yeah. I think that's why it comes down to more than anything, I think families
[00:40:23] James (2): are very strong in that respect. If they work, you know, as long as they get on well, then they're working towards the same goal.
[00:40:29] Richard: I think, I think that's the key thing. Often. Some people will come up to me and say, Oh, you know, you're so lucky you get to work your brother.
I wish I could and other people go, I can't believe you work with your sibling. I can't imagine working with mine. And I think my takeaway is, you know, there's so much that can go right about it. You need to focus slightly on like, you know, is it the right dynamic? What could go wrong? And the key thing there for me is Archie's and I am, we're both willing, the best test I have is.
We're both willing for the other one to take credit for something that I did. You know, I'm willing for Archie to take credit for something I did. And he's willing for me to take credit for something he did. And that's super important if in business context, um, and often, uh, siblings could not quite imagine being able to do that.
Um, so your advice of siblings who are thinking about this is you've got to be able to do that. I think you've got to be able to do that. Yeah. Um, and not get uncomfortable about them succeeding off of your hard work.
[00:41:34] James (2): What about decision making? I mean, we touched upon it, but yeah, decision making is such important.
Part of what happens if you really disagree on something, how do you resolve that?
[00:41:45] Richard: That happens all the time. We disagree on how to approach situations. We usually agree on what the outcome should be, but we have different, very different styles as you might have, you know, the slightly more reluctant American sitting here.
Um, and your East coast is where it's actually, um, so. I think the, how we approach things is different. And that's where the dictatorship piece is so important because if it's my decision, it's my decision.
[00:42:15] James (2): But that's understood by you both at the beginning that you're We actually agreed that when we first started the first business.
[00:42:22] Richard: I've, I've seen, um, brothers do it in different ways where they have a kind of co CEO relationship. Um, and I've seen that done successfully. I don't think that would work for us because, uh, uh, the volume of disagreements we have about how to approach certain situations. It, I think it would lead to the kind of paralysis really, but we like this, this system seems to work for us.
[00:42:46] James (2): Okay. So I'm observing that you have a good relationship. You have a business that is in an exciting space that seems to be growing, you know, very, very, um, briskly, which is good news. So you're going to have to grow your team, aren't you? You're going to have to bring in new people. We are. Yeah. Where are you going to start and how are you going to make sure you get that right?
[00:43:11] Richard: So when we finished, uh, the accelerator program at the end of last year, um, and we closed this deal that Archie flew, um, you know, eight hours to go and close the, it became immediately obvious that we, it was now time to start hiring. So we actually got to work on that over Christmas. Uh, we were a team of four people, we're now a team of nine people, um, we'll be 10 by the middle of February.
So, so what sort of people are you looking for and how do you know? Senior leaders. So what we want is the, to take the main functions of the business off of the kind of four existing team members, take them to the best people that we know in each of those areas. Such as? So what functions? Marketing, for example, was historically done by Archie in quite a light touch way, but it's an enormous function with.
An enormous budget behind it now it needs somebody who has done that before so we hired the best consumer marketing person that we know and who actually joined us for the end of the accelerator program as well. Um, so that was
[00:44:14] Archie: on you already knew or someone you went out into the market this is something that's useful about I mean one of the lessons of just stepping back a little bit which was.
When we started our first business and a mistake that I've seen a lot of people make is, you know, maybe you can just instantly out of college, start a tech business that's going to, you know, grow really fast. I saw a lot of people do that and fail and burn out and really give up on entrepreneurship. And actually what's nice about building a services company is because it's not technology, it just can't grow as fast.
And so, but you can get going on a fairly low budget. Um, you can, I remember you, James, when we came to see you in 2019, you were like, well done. It was your first, our first few years in, but we weren't making enough profit. We took that advice and went and made some more profit and you know, you can learn a lot of the basics.
Um, but one of the things we did was along that journey of six, seven years, we met thousands of people. And so we built this network of people and so we've kind of had people in our, our network kind of actually not knowing it really proactively, but who then came to be obvious choices for us, people that we trusted, um, and people that we always kind of dreamed of working for us, um, and with us.
Um, yeah, we hired, uh, um, uh, head of marketing CMO, um, from our network, our, uh, uh, chief customer officer as well. So all in charge of customer success, customer support. You've got a lot
[00:45:39] James (2): of chiefs in your business. You're going to need some foot soldiers. Yeah, that's, that's absolutely
[00:45:44] Richard: next. And we want them to be the people that
[00:45:47] Archie: hire those.
So they're joining on the, on the assumption that it might have a fancy title, but yeah, it's a, it's a roll up, roll up your sleeves. Like I think one of our values who we kind of haven't fully formed values or anything from the company, but one of the things that made us succeed, I think against the other companies in our space is just the willingness to like roll up the sleeves and do the really boring jobs.
So Matt, our co founders like, like read and labeled and organized millions of, uh, I think they have 50, 000 or so emails. Um, I've, I've gone through thousands of customer support tickets and asking and speaking to customers and sorting out problems for them when things are breaking. And so we're hiring the senior people.
The last year Archie
[00:46:28] Richard: spent, you know, he's, he's the person that you reach when there's a problem with the product. And so he's having dinner, he's at the pub on a Friday night and the phone goes and he's got to answer, you know, customer support tickets. So can you get
[00:46:42] James (2): AI to do that? Well, you can do, but then you don't learn how to do it yourself.
Yeah, that's the problem. So you need to do that first, is what you're saying. Do it yourself. Yeah, do it yourself. Exactly, yeah. And that's
[00:46:52] Archie: when we're hiring these people on the assumption that, yeah, they kind of, they need to have a, they, And the understanding and a low ego to be able to, for the next, while we're still in this early phase join, but also getting senior enough people that can grow with us.
Um, and that, that's how I'm thinking about on the, on the chief. Is that
[00:47:09] James (2): hard to find someone who's low ego, as you put it, but grand title and roll your sleeves up.
[00:47:16] Archie: I think the mistake we made in our first business, um, is trying to appease to the needs of the candidate or the wants of the candidate to win them.
Versus actually being very upfront with about what we're doing and our values and how things will work and saying you don't have to join us. Um, and it does help having a fast growing exciting product, um, in a space that people are interested in, but actually being very direct with the person that this is the expectation.
And again, a bit of, uh, American sort of directness about, like, this is just how it's going to be, was something that we took into our secondary. So what are
[00:47:54] James (2): the sort of things of just how it's going to be that you share with candidates straight off so that there are no misunderstandings?
[00:48:00] Archie: Yeah, I think, yeah, Rich did a presentation this week actually for new people, but just being like, we're willing to do the jobs that other people aren't.
And again, just giving those examples of me willing to do the customer service tickets. I gave a real life example to the person who's going to be chief customer officer, and she was even saying it in her interview, which is a good sign anyway, but she was like, Oh, I'll be spending the first, you know, week or two just reading through those tickets and answering tickets myself.
And it's that kind of job, um, of like the, yeah, a thing that they might've done 15 years ago in their career, they now need to do because it's just great fundamental learning and being like in the trenches with everyone is. How do you build your value to the
[00:48:40] Richard: team as well? The team mostly respect the people that roll their sleeves up.
Um, so that's kind of first port and call when starting. So at the moment there's a lot of that going on.
[00:48:52] James (2): Yeah, I went once years ago, I went to where the Royal Marines do their training down in Devon. And one of the things I learned when I was there is that if you want to be an officer in the Royal Marines.
You have to do every assault course, every run that the regulars do, but faster
[00:49:08] James: or
[00:49:09] James (2): quicker. So everyone respects the officer because they know they did the same thing that they had to do, but they did it faster. And that's the only way you can be an officer. And it's what you're sort of describing is the same.
That's, that's exactly, you wanna be a real leader. You've gotta show that. You can get into the, that's a
[00:49:24] Archie: great example, into the thick of it. Also, people love, I think working in small companies and the, the longer that we can have, you know, we don't need people to be doing completely useless tasks, but if they're willing to do more of a 360 role and.
And really get their hands dirty, then we can be part of a smaller company for longer that can be part of a high performing culture and not become a bloated company. A lot of people are coming to us from, oh I joined this company, it got very big, it got very bloated, and we just went to meetings and nothing really happened, and, um, I just got, they lost their enthusiasm, and so.
That's the big thing which we're going to try and retain. Where nothing happens. Exactly. So, so
[00:50:05] James (2): is that your goal? That you want to keep this sort of lean in terms of numbers of people, but grow. As much as possible, yeah. Technologically. The,
[00:50:13] Richard: the team last year, we were four people, you know, doing two and a half million and we wouldn't, that pushed us to our extremes, to the limits.
We won't try to replicate that, but we want that mentality going forward around. Being really, really specific and really careful when we hire somebody because what they bring is so much more than the work that they do and wanting to make sure that all the things fit. We run
[00:50:35] James (2): a, I'm the chair of trustees of a charity called Big Give which uses a lot of technology and we call it PhilTech, philanthropy technology.
It's interesting to me that we've kept the team really small deliberately at the Big Give. And it's only 10 people, but they raised 60 million pounds last year. And yeah, it is exceptional. And it's the biggest fundraising platform now, but we've kept the team really small because there's so much you can do with technology.
And I think that the culture you retain as a small team is. It's more focused, but also the, the donors like it, or the people, the customers like it because they know that their money is not being wasted in business. I think if you have a small team, you can offer your service for less. Yeah.
[00:51:20] Richard: I think it's really easy when things are moving very quick to just use hiring as an answer to solve problems, rather than, as you say, being like, what if we took a week to automate this process as much as we could, or decide actually to stop doing this process.
rather than hiring somebody to fill it in.
[00:51:37] James (2): Yeah. I mean, I think there's a, it's a question. What, what I heard from you is that you were being sort of thoughtful and strategic about that rather than just it just growing and designing. And I think that's interesting because there are occasions when it's obviously a good idea to add people and you.
Definitely. You can support the service. Particularly if you get somebody
[00:51:54] Richard: exceptional.
[00:51:55] James (2): And I think, because I think it'd be important in your business that the customers have a good experience and a good service. And sometimes they're going to need to talk to someone whether it's watching a pub on a Friday night.
Yeah. But you know, whoever it is, and as it grows, there's going to be more need for that. Exactly. Absolutely. Um, so that's, that's interesting. Um. Yeah. Yeah. Anything else brothers in business related that you'd like to share?
[00:52:18] Archie: Rich said it already, but having different skills and kind of this, this need for each other.
Um, yeah, it allows you to.
[00:52:26] Richard: Yeah, we have very little crossover. There's nothing that I'm doing that Archie wishes he was doing or, or vice versa. You know, it's just very clear who should be doing what. So, so, so
[00:52:37] James (2): just to sort of wrap this up from a business point of view, we talked about brothers in business being in America.
So what, what's next for fixer AI, you know, sort of top three objectives. What are you looking to do now?
[00:52:49] Richard: It, um, the main thing for us is. We were a team of four operating incredibly effectively, and we're hiring a whole bunch of people into our team at the moment. The thing I wake up every day thinking about is how do we maintain that same degree of effectiveness and team gelling and.
energy and drive and sort of tenacity that we've had in the last year with a larger team. Because if we do that, then nothing else, we don't need to worry about anything else. Um, so yeah, we're spending a lot of time just gelling the team together as much as we can at the moment. Going back, I
[00:53:26] Archie: use the framework of the, it's like, You need a really great product.
So, first and foremost, the whole energy and the focus is around the customer. Like having a great product that people will then tell people about. Number one, get a great product. And so just huge energy and efforts into that. You then got to sell that product. You know, growing is, is powerful for the customer.
It makes us allow us to invest more into the product. It's great for the team. It's great for everything. Um, and then the third thing is not running out of money. So, yeah, us three co founders really take each of those roles, um, of building the great product and selling it and then not running out of money.
And those are the It's quite
[00:54:10] James (2): expensive running AI, isn't it? It is, yeah. So obviously the finances of this, we haven't explored in detail, partly because Richard refused to tell me what to do with the accelerator. Yeah, I might be a bit more generous. What, what, what, I mean What is it? Because you have to pay for the The computer system to give you the output.
Yeah, it's,
[00:54:30] Archie: it's not nearly the same margin as, uh, other, uh, technology tools that don't have AI involved. Um, there's a huge amount
[00:54:39] James (2): of computing power. There's a huge amount of computing power, yeah. Which costs money. You need to,
[00:54:43] Richard: you need to buy that from a provider, you know, like OpenAI or something, something like that.
You, you can't do that yourself. Um, so yeah, you are the skill from a product perspective is not only building an incredible product, but building one that uses that resource efficiently.
[00:55:01] James (2): And pricing that in a, in a intelligent fashion.
[00:55:04] Richard: Yeah, I think, I think, yeah, the pricing thing is really interesting because at the moment you're, we're pricing ourselves in the same way that software tools have done over the past.
You know, 10 years or so, um, the same kind of formatting. I think there's going to be loads of innovation into how people do that with these tools, because they're adding significantly more value than, uh, traditional software tools have done. So there'll be some new way of pricing it. Um, you've got any thoughts around what that might look like?
We thought like, I mean, Ideas like tasks completed, for example. So, you know, if you, if we create an email for you that you end up sending, we could charge you for that as opposed to just dollar a day, you know, so our interests, therefore are more aligned. So it's output related. Yeah. Yeah. And where they are, you can do that much more effectively than you might have been able to before.
So it's not an area I'm sort of really knowledgeable on, but I just think there's loads of opportunity there that people will be trying new things. Well, if the cost is,
[00:56:06] James (2): is directly related to usage, there's an argument for making the price also directly, but you're just putting a margin on it, I suppose.
[00:56:14] Richard: There is. But
[00:56:15] James (2): maybe that's not the best way of selling it.
[00:56:16] Richard: Yeah, we try to avoid thinking, because the environment that we're operating in is one where the cost of this computing power is, is coming down so dramatically. So if one thinks too much about the cost today and does pricing based off of that, you can miss the opportunity because actually in six months time, we know that it'll be half the price.
So when you're getting those kind of rates, you want to try as much as possible to focus on the value we're creating for the customer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's what we're trying to do. Um, but when we're building the products as quickly as we are, that, that changes as well. So yeah, it's such a
[00:56:52] James (2): moving space.
You're hiring people who know about AI is pretty difficult because there aren't many, are there? Because it's been around, I mean, you've been involved with it for as long as anyone. We're lucky in
[00:57:05] Richard: London, actually, of all places, in the, particularly the technologists, London's a got a really big depth of talent here.
And that's globally recognized as, you know, a universal truth because companies like DeepMind were founded here. And so people have a lot of, um, prestige towards London AI talent, um, but absolutely it's pretty nascent for everyone. So, um, certainly like this new wave of it.
[00:57:30] James (2): Yeah. So your message is have a go.
[00:57:33] Richard: I think have a go. Yeah. Have a
[00:57:34] James (2): go. You just qualified that in a British way.
My question, my question here, maybe Richard, you want to take it is you would have heard a lot about AI where at the beginning of 2025, it seems like, you know, a lot of companies want to adopt it, but they're not sure how, and people are thinking about how to use it still. But is this a make or break moment?
Is 2025 the year of AI or not in your view? Um,
[00:58:07] Richard: I think my, um, to my earlier point, I think that lots of the companies that have deployed AI, AI so far, people aren't getting huge amount of value from. I think 2025 will be the year that startups start to really add value with AI, that startups create products that people really start using.
I don't think it'll be a make or break or. Consumers and companies to be adopting those yet, but it'll be the start to be the point at which we can see how people are actually going to get value from AI rather than have it as a sort of shiny sticker on top of an existing product.
[00:58:45] James (2): Um, and why do you think there are going to be lots of startups?
Is that something you've already seen? Can you see them coming
[00:58:49] Richard: through? I think it's more about looking at the combination of the incumbent, uh, tooling out there that is just putting AI on top of what they've already built. Um, and saying they're an AI company, um, we probably all experienced this with, you know, whether it's Outlook or it's, um, you know, Slack or all the tools that we use now have a shiny little button in the corner that you can click and do something with AI.
But people who aren't really using those very much, um, it'll be startups that are people that are starting afresh and saying, how would we build this product entirely with AI that are going to be the ones that start delivering in 2025. Very exciting.
[00:59:29] James (2): I like the sound of that. That's good. I'm glad I asked that question.
We might have something to show you later this year.
I'm not going to say any more of that. So I think that really, that concludes very helpfully where I was hoping to go with our discussion. But I just want to ask you, I'll ask you both these questions, but questions I ask everyone. Kind enough to come into the podcast and the first one I'll start with you, Archie, is what gets you up on a Monday morning?
[01:00:03] Archie: Um, I think what we're doing is really fun. So like work with people I really like On an interesting problem. It's at a pace that I love It's just you don't know where you're gonna be by the end of the day let alone by the end of the week and so yeah, it's really rewarding and Yeah, just sort of making sure that you actually have a laugh during the whole process is really easy to forget to do.
Uh, it was again, a lesson we took from our first business. We had amazing times there, but just actually making sure that you're having a good amount of fun during it, um, really helps on those days where things are not going well, um, which, you know, for anyone who's thinking about starting their own business needs to recognize that that's going to be the majority of the time.
Um, and, um, yeah, so having fun.
[01:00:51] James (2): Richard, what gets you up on a Monday morning?
[01:00:53] Richard: Um, I think it's just the pace at which we're learning is so fast, and there's like no other job I could do that I get that. Um, and I sometimes wake up on a Monday and look at my calendar and think, Oh my God, I have all these meetings that I don't know how to do.
And I have no idea, you know, how I'm going to close this deal or get this, this, do this one right, etc. And I look back at the last week and go like, I did. All of that last week, um, you know, I can do it and I love that feeling of accomplishment that I get each week.
[01:01:31] James (2): Sounds very exciting to me. And I like the fact that you have a laugh as well.
That's important. And what about I set the final question, um, which is one from my interview, but why you, I'm looking forward to your answers to this one is where do you see yourselves in five years time? I'll start with you, Richard.
[01:01:51] Richard: As a company,
[01:01:52] James (2): well, yeah, just personally as a company, I mean, I was guessing or assuming you'd still want to be doing this kind of business, but maybe not.
Yeah,
[01:01:59] Richard: absolutely. Um, I think the goal last year, we felt like we were the most exciting company, uh, in our accelerator. Um, this year we want to be the most exciting AI company in London. Um, five years feels like a really long way away. That's a good goal from Archie. You sort of got out that answer.
[01:02:22] Archie: Um, yeah, I share that goal.
I think, um, there's, there's something to be said about being in a team where people really value your skillset, your. And you really value theirs. And so, the team we want to build, and my team, and the team I'm a part of, is part of that. Um, yeah, I'd love to just be in the position that I'm in today, where people feel valued and you're playing to your best skills.
[01:02:50] James (2): Well, thank you both very much for coming to talk to
us. so much.
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