A relentless, deeply involved management style. It’s laser focussed hands-on mentality drives founders to push their vision forward during the early stages of building companies.

It’s seizing opportunities and creating something from nothing with limited resources.

Paul Graham, co-founder of Y-Combinator, wrote a piece recently titled “Founder Mode” here. It outlined a clear distinction between how founders should lead companies versus traditional managers.

Airbnb founder Brian Chesky triggered debate this month claiming successful companies require the founder stay closely connected to its core functions, even after scaling. This contrasts with “Manager Mode,” which encourages delegation, pyramid hierarchy and operational distance. Bosses’ vs Employees!

In my case as an architect (designing buildings) parachuting into tech as a first-time founder without a business MBA, no access to capital or wealthy relatives. This is equivalent to swimming across the English Channel without a wetsuit into Europe and hiking to Everest Basecamp wearing flip flops carrying a camel on your back. And that’s just the commute to the starting blocks.

The upside, 4 years corporate experience at one of the UK’s top residential architectural practices, designing multi-million pound projects like this from spas, one off homes, 40 unit extra care apartments like this and masterplans. Working side by side key stakeholders, clients, planning authorities, surveyors, structural engineers, m&e, to white van site meetings offered a baptism into corporate manager mode beauracracy.

“Founder Mode” requires strong leadership in every aspect of a company, wearing multiple hats from product, dev, marketing, to customer support. Startups require a magician, a hustler and a do’er, someone who will grab the bull by the horns. A solo founder must be all three of these.

You’re the lead singer, the tambourine guy and the hype man, on tour 365 days a year.

Being an architect in Founder Mode prepares you to pitch in an elevator or a rush hour train to an investor with 50 people watching. Then show up 24 hours later with a fully designed functional feature, strategy and presentation.

Am I qualified to share an opinion at 41?

I have bootstrapped @mipic_app from a market stall in Liverpool to global print platform and seven figure Tech Venture with customers in 80 countries by utilising “Founder Mode”. miPic Shareholders include lead investors of Starling Bank / Addepar and exited founders from the UK and US who sold their own companies from $30m up to $500m.

Back in 2009, I visited an art shop every other Saturday to ask the old Irish owner about his frame mouldings, pricing and paper types. He gave me a nickname:

“You’re a rottweiler with a bone, relentless.”

This was Founder Mode DNA years before I knew it existed.

I see this more as ‘instinct’ than a user manual or mindset to teach. It combines vision and urgency, intense obsession and hands on problem solving to go from zero to 1. Are you fast, creative, resourceful, agile, and most importantly resilient?

Founders don’t just simply ‘manage’ and clock out at 6pm, we are required to fight in the trenches and navigate challenges in real time 24/7. My most creative moments historically come during these intense chapters.

Founder Mode is similar to the role of an Architect. We draw the first line, create the masterplan with thousands of moving parts but must know every detail down to the millimetre. My 10 years in architecture was a great foundation for building miPic.

If you admire the achievements of Steve Jobs, Brian Chesky, Zuck, Elon, Jeff Bezos, Whitney Wolfe, Larry Ellison and Jack Dorsey – this group are my references and who operated in “Founder Mode”.

Founder Mode refuses to accept rejection. Just 3 months after quitting my job, I arrived at Virgin HQ for a 9am founder day during grey torrential rain, soaking wet 💦 . Reception told me the event was cancelled, but I refused to leave – until I was dry after some stubborn light hearted humour with security. The lady on recepetion saw our company logo and said “they’re gonna luv it, go upstairs and wait. I’ll see if anyone can speak to you” 4 weeks later, I was standing in front of Richard Branson pitching miPic live on TV to win an innovation award.

There is no luck or secret sauce in Founder Mode other than maniacal persistance and your ability to embrace the rain.

Founder Mode energy and vision is impossible to replace with standard corporate management practice. Paul Graham noted many founders report that when they attempt to shift into a more detached hands off, managerial role, they feel like they are “gaslit” by Venture Capitalists into hiring ineffective “yes men” executives, which often damages companies.

I experienced this first hand. One pre-seed investor insisted we hired a portfolio engineer, whom he titled “the best engineer he had worked with”. This proved disastrous and my most regrettable decision as CEO agreeing to it. It created direct comms between shareholder and exec engineer into our team.

Other team members complained about being blocked by the engineer who split our codebase into a new language to suit their own resume. Software releases went from three times per week working with me directly to every two weeks. Delivery estimates extended with this ‘recommended hire’ who shipped buggy features before being released.

The problem with hiring “corporate professional fakers” as Paul Graham calls them, they jump jobs every couple of years for that salary increase and say absolutley anything in Board Meetings and interviews to appear great, land the title, yet there is lack of real hunger to build a great product (unless their own) and do what’s best for the company’s long term future and founder vision.

Remaining intimately close to the action as CEO and decision-making is critical, bypassing layers of organisational bureaucratic fluff to connect with the do’ers directly. Steve Jobs was famous for “skip-level” meetings with employees working within small pods, retaining their startup DNA.

Founder Mode works best for Creatives or highly Technical founders, offsetting time to reduce the expense of building product without using ‘guns for hire’. In our case, 1 product owner (me), 1 full stack (Ash) developer and 1 IOS engineer (Shab) working evenings for 18 months on a $10,000 budget was our warmup. Retaining 1 product owner covering Dev with 1 Senior CMO and mid-level assitance works well with teams up to 15. Growing above 20 demands more delegators, less technically aware of the details.

Founders must be connected to the customer experience inside-out. I designed our UX & UI in 2014 with one assistant by studying every screen and button of marketplaces Ebay, Amazon, Etsy, Redbubble and printing services like Photobox before sketching hundreds of app screens on graph paper with a pen ✍️.

Without top-level oversight, founders run the risk of quality and standards dropping to the tolerance of it’s PM’s who’s goal is to ship and hit a deadline. It’s fundamentally critical for founders to resist the shift and not delegate absolutely everything until far beyond Series B when teams become large armies.

Reading Brian Chesky’s take on founding Airbnb from their early cereal hustle to a scaling unicorn in a hands on way, echoed by Pauls knowledge at Y-Combinator provides insightful and thankful perspectives of my own journey decisions.

My vision for miPic is to become The Internet’s Print Button, (watch the video) combining social commerce with retail store galleries next door to Apple. I’m going to have to spend more time around founders like these, some steps ahead who have got the t-shirt hiring experienced senior exec operators who have built from early stage to scale and not joined a company at the lunch buffet and Friday yoga class bonding stage.

NOTE: Founder Mode – is not a catch all strategy to operate indefinitely, there are pitfalls. Striking balance is essential, 70% Founder Mode thinking versus 30% Manager Mode in practice, feels appropriate to maintain a driving force of innovation and tenacity from startup phase to scale and growth.

Founder Mode is a superpower that can turn a vision into reality, it creates moments of magic like nothing else. I’ve lived it first hand.

It’s encouraging Paul Graham predicts that as more founders adopt this mode, it will become more accepted and recognized as a valid management approach in growing companies and less labelled “micro management”, in reality is more atone to ‘relentless execution’.

Disclaimer: The photoshoot we did (not AI) for miPic mimicking Apple’s famous Steve Jobs pose is something which architects are notorious for in their portrait photos. The turtle neck pose is satire and homage to my profession. 

Founder Mode Drawbacks:

• Life Balance – Doesn’t exist. We work 12-18 hour days plus weekends. Comparing yourself to a friend who does a 9-5 and takes 2 hour lunch breaks, is a quick way to depression.
• Sacrifce: during Pre-Seed and Seed stages I’ve been homeless twice, lived out of a suitcase for 18 months and barely paid myself appropriate salary.
• Delegation – I was clear on day one I didn’t want to code. I’m a generalist, I don’t care how it’s built so long as it’s efficient, repeatable and someone else on the team can easily pick up.
• Your Body – Knowing when to sleep, how long to rest. Exercise 3 times a week is essential. Maintain focus and clarity, limit time spent drinking and definitely stay away from drugs. 
• Investor alignment – Operator experience and value add, network affects alongside the long-term vision. Avoid all attempts of shareholder hires.

Positives:

• Agility & Pivot – quick decisions are essential unencumbered by bureaucracy or complex decision-making processes, allowing the company to grab opportunities as they arise.
• Resourceful – Do more with less, find creative ways to stretch budgets, maximize productivity, and leverage resources to full potential. Staying lean mentality helps get through tough conditions.
• Problem Solving – firsthand knowledge of the challenge and tackling it  directly through deep understanding of the company’s inner workings.
• Customer Centric – Attuned to the needs of users and customers and tweak products or services rapidly based on feedback. Closeness to both the product and the end user enables the company to deliver real value.
• Grit – High levels of resilience and determination to push through obstacles, setbacks, and uncertainties, which can be critical during moments of chaos.
• Culture building – Set the tone by instilling a sense of urgency, passion, and creativity in the team, alongside incentive which becomes part of the company’s DNA. A strong culture can attract and retain talent aligned with company values and goals.

✊🏽

12 years ago, I received a phone call at 5am telling me a close friend had tragically died.

This later became my ‘why’ and purpose for building a company.

12 years ago today, I received a phone call at 5am telling me a close friend from home had just stabbed himself repeatedly in the stomach with a kitchen knife in a moment of rage, love, depression, drink and drugs. Yes, as horrific as it reads.

His girlfriend, brother, mother and father were all present in the room when it happened, desperately trying to comfort him praying the ambulance would arrive in time.

After arrival at the hospital, he lost too much blood and didn’t make it. 27 years old, gone.

The most unthinkable information my brain has ever received.

I took a call in the middle of the night from one of the guys back home. Bizarrely that evening, returning from dinner I couldn’t get to sleep and scrolled through a property app looking at flat shares for what seemed like hours before falling alseep.

I was staying at a friends house that night on his sofa on the other side of town, I woke 4 people up shouting in tears at 5am after receiving the call. It was surreal.

When the sun was up I walked for hours from Bethnal Green to Waterloo trying to make sense of it.

I moved to London in 2010, I’d speak to him almost daily. We’d laugh at what I was doing, my childhood ambition of designing buildings in London to enrich peoples daily life was complete.

We spent a large part of our teenage years and 20’s together in Liverpool, from starting University, holidays with the guys at school and enjoying the city’s night life. Yet he was silently suffering, without purpose and confused at which path to pursue after Uni.

Growing up one of few black kids at our senior school in a predominantly white afluent neighberhood, dealing with racism in Liverpool. I can’t begin to imagine the thoughts going through his head following the jokes and obvious awkward moments. He was one of us.

As we got older, being 18-27 in Liverpool during the 2000’s was both hilarious and eventful to say the least.

I first picked up a broken nose, standing alongside him in a street brawl with 7 idiots who decided to use the N word. An enjoyable end to an evening with friends leaving a restaurant, minding our own business, turned into one drunk moron deciding to shout racist abuse to an Asian guy and then turned to my friend and got a reaction.

As any good friend would do, I stood alongside him with 5 others when the brawl broke out. Growing up around a boxing gym, I was able to defend myself until getting punched from behind by 2 slippery chaps who joined in and caught me right on the hooter.

Fortunately, I wasn’t knocked to the floor and managed to continue the scuffle defending myself until we heard police sirens and the brawl dispersed. I jumped in the car and drove straight to A&E with a face full of blood and tissue hoping they could do something to fix it.

Ade was typically very relaxed, always laughing, but anyone who crossed the line knew about it.

He had a streak of ferociousness about him which I saw often on the athletics track, sprinting and winning 400m events for years.

We were both competitive in our track sports, I focussed on long distance being the lanky skinny kid and him on explosive sprints.

At 19, our tele-sales evening job at the Royal Liver Building, gave me the confidence to pick up the phone and pitch to people.

Being told repeatedly “No Thank You”, nine times out of ten before disconnecting, developed me a thick skin patience to redial and keep on knocking.

One week night leaving the office at 10pm sitting in traffic, a police car pulled up alongside us. The officer beeped and pointed, “put your belts on or pull over.” So we buckled up, gave them a thumbs up thanks and drove off.

Two minutes later, we were involved in a  head on collision thanks to a car jumping lights at a junction turning across us. I braked for a first car, then a second cut across me and hit us head on.

We were talking with the music on, casually heading home for the evening. On this rare occasion we kept our belts on for those 2 minutes, saving all of our lives.

A ringing sound and cloudy dusty daze, after the airbag had bust my nose again. I looked left and saw Ade okay and behind me to see Steven awake, both conscious.

Our immediate reaction was to kick the doors open, jump out and hurl swear words at the driver of the other car that caused the accident. He was trapped in a smaller car coughing blood. The ambulance arrived soon after as we gained an audience of people or so at the junction leaving the city centre.

Steven was very lucky to move seats from the middle to behind the passenger seat before the crash and did not have his belt on when the crash happened. He trapped a nerve or blood vessel in his arm which began to go purple.

My neck stiffened up as the adrenaline began to wear off so I was wheeled into the ambulance on a stretcher.

Rolling into an A&E room staring at the ceiling is a bizzare feeling. I could hear everyone talking about our accident and how lucky we were to get out of the car with scratches.

On the night Ade passed away, I can’t imagine the fear and pain he must have gone through and the distraught his amazing parents and family experienced. To this day, I’ve never got to understand the details of how his final night unfolded and cry for help, taking his own life in that manner on drugs or alcohol.

Ade never told me what his dream was. So I ended up creating one for both of us.

I can only relate on a far far lesser level, a feeling I once had of imposter syndrome. Being a Liverpudlian (or Scouser) working in London at Hampton Court, the posh part of Surrey. The constant north/south divide jokes of being dodgy, working class and wearing shell suits created an appetite to prove something and push my boundaries further.

The summer Ade died, I was working my ass off in the evenings completing my Part 3 examination (after Masters) to become Chartered. The shock of mortality in losing a close friend forced me to take work extremely seriously with new dedication.

After a decade marathon of study and all nighters, I received my ARB & RIBA chartered architect status, but the satisfaction simply wasn’t enough.

The domain I bought in January 2011 was mipic.co and it continued to nag at me like a pestering itch. My collegues in the office would joke, what are you scribbling in your sketch book at lunch?

I decided to hire 2 engineers after Part 3 finished and continue the maniacal evening job of building an App.

I had no business degree, no startup experience other than selling muffins at the school yard, DVD’s on Ebay and a market stall selling my own art.

Four months after quiting my job, I was stood on stage at Richard Branson’s house with a life changing 90 second pitch, thinking…

“what the f**k am I doing here.”

• 300 hundred companies entered
• I made the initial cut to 20 startups
• Our 60 second video made the judges cut to 10
• Semi Final – A public Facebook and Twitter vote saw miPic lead votes moving into the final 3 startups.
• The Final – 90 second pitch at the Founder of Virgin’s home in front of 200 people, live streamed online.

For the two weeks before the event, I practised my pitch to strangers on the tube, the bus and at the gym. Literally stopped people and asked: “Can I pitch my business to you, I have to do it to Richard Branson next week.” Everyone obliged.

During the practice day we met in Soho with the Virgin team to do some filming and a test run of pitches. My attempt was f**king awful, disastrous.

I’d spent 10 years presenting buildings to architects ranging from 5 people to 100 on little sleep. But pitching to 6 other founders and Virgin’s PR team, I flopped.

My nerves got the better of me on practice day. I felt waves of blood pressure pumping through my arms and fumbled through the pitch sounding more like a stuttering Harry Enfield Scouser impression.

The day before the Final, I took a train alone to Oxford and sat in a hotel garden thinking about my pal Ade.

I was doing this for him. To show others that no matter where you come from, the colour of your skin and how you sound, anything is possible. I was mad enough to dream this App into existence so I had to go out there and deliver my pitch unanimously with zero doubt.

Coming from a family of sportsmen, boxers and footballers I treated the Final event more like a title fight or cup final.

I was in the zone, the morning of the pitch listening to rap music, doing squats and burpees naked in the shower, shouting out the 90 second pitch like Eminem.

I turned up at Richards house feeling like Mike Tyson heading into a ring. No chit chat with anyone, I needed to be focussed and not let the nerves consume me, listening to the recorded pitch audio on my phone.

Twenty minutes before going on stage, I was calm. Sitting alone watching the other founders reading from pages and pacing up and down. I kept telling myself, “this is it boy, now or never.”

An hour later, I was called up on stage by Richard, the Founder of Moonpig Nick Jenkins and Not On The High Streets Holly, naming miPic as the Innovation Winner and People’s Choice awards.

The sweat patches soaking my shirt was pretty embarrasing, all I could think about was first taking a selfie with Richard, an entrepreneur who’d inspired me since childhood but my thank you speech remained as determined as my pitch.

“I am going to create a global brand and help people make money selling art.”

At this point, I had about £4,000 in my account. No investment, no routes to capital, yet I believed in my vision.

Losing a friend forced me to jump far far outside of my comfort zone. To do more, demand more, learn more, love more, live more and help empower people worldwide to earn money from their pictures using mipic.co.

My ‘Purpose’ and the company Mission was created from tragedy and has been used as my fuel to overcome the odds ever since.

I’m a non-technical Founder from Liverpool and can say:

• I founded a tech company with a £12k bank loan.
• Secured £30k Virgin StartUp Loan to fund Year 1.
  
• Raised £170k on Crowdcube from a standing £0 start without an anchor.
• Count 90 shareholders on the cap table raising £1.8m
• One of only 6 UK founders to receive Venture Capital funding from:
• Harry McPike’s Venture Office MGFO a 25% seed investor
• Achieved organic six figure revenues from users worldwide before paid marketing.

The chances of this ever happening were 0.0000001% or less.

The platform miPic now has users in 210 locations globally and customers in 80 countries before marketing spend. With 140,000 creatives choosing miPic to launch their store.

Our brand, tone of voice and mission resonates with people. miPic has a soul and a story. 

miPic – The Internet’s Print Button is for everyone, premium quality prints, affordable and accessible globally to compliment creativity on Instagram and Twitter.

Being crazy enough to believe my idea as a Founder and speak it into existence, is the most satisfying achievement I could ever imagine. My old friend Ade is to thank for the years that followed, providing me with purpose and a real warrior story worthy of his name.

He would have turned 40 last year and will never be forgotten ✊🏽

“Until you go through a near death experience.” 

Says Hayes Barnard – Cofounder of Goodleap (via Forbes)

I read this post by forbes on what a real CEO is, so sharing this experience of my own.👇🏼

June 2021

I was in the UAE to present miPic to venture investors and the goal was to meet the key people in the region to provide miPic a strong marketing budget to scale.  

On June 1st, I sent a Company Update email to @mipic_app shareholders and team sharing great news of an investment term sheet received from a #Dubai Maktoum Royal Family Office of £1-2m.

48 hours later our Servers went down on the Friday evening, killing our entire infrastructure. I was in the middle of presenting the app at a restaurant and noticed something wasn’t working. I called the guys Shabeer and Ash, immediatley left my seat and spent the evening diagnosing I passed out for the night.

The next day at 3pm, I received a call from my mother crying to tell me.

My Grandmother had passed away.

 Sat next to her in a care home after a 7 year battle with Alzheimer’s. I cried for an hour and forgot about work.

That afternooon I went back to the laptop to rescue an entire infrastructure, like life depended on it. Copying and pasting code until 4am for a week and then another week.

Our Server was killed, to prevent the venture investment.

As the eldest grandson in the family, I was expected to carry my Grandmothers coffin. Instead, I couldn’t leave my desk, watching a funeral stream alone from a hotel room in Athens trying desperatley to bring our infrastructure back to life and understand exactly what happened.

miPic had not seen any downtime longer than 24 hours since I launched the company in 2014.

miPic was not only dead and offline for 3 months, but it was deliberate. Our Agency partners in the US confirmed a breach of IP and DDOS attacks. We spent the next three months attempting to recover services. This cost me personally £30,000. 

I was the only family member unable to attend the funeral, which angers me today.
I arrived back in the UK to attend my sister wedding later that month, miPic was down and the loss of our grandmother was still hard to hide.

The company was due to launch our second Crowdfunding campaign, this was paused as a result and 210 investors who had pledged £700,000 were made to wait. 

The Dubai and Abu Dhabi investment opportunity would have been used as our anchor to launch the Seedrs campaign. 

Instead, every day for 3 months from an 11 meter squared hotel room in East London diagnosing and repairing with Engineers until 2am.

My body lost a stone in weight working 14-18 hours a day all summer, unable to support my parents and be home. But, the system was finally restored and 75 shareholders investments of £1.8m was saved from a deliberate sabotage.

This was my biggest achievement to date as a CEO. I persevered through what was undoubtedly the toughest summer of my life and focussed on solving the problem removing any emotion. 

We relaunched the platform in September, much to the pleasing comments of Artists and customers who were left wondering what was going on all summer. This incident has taken 2 years to document and delayed the road map significantly investing in marketing.

I am however glad to some extent that this force majeure experience happened looking back, as we were able to expose a bad actor trying to prevent company success which we’d been anticipating this for some time. 

I made a pledge to family.

That those responsible for the disruption to our service would be held accountable for blocking completion of this investment opportunity to scale our great brand.

My management style has always been to lead from the front, encourage people positivley and believe anything is possible.

When the sh*t hits the fan, some guys run,  some guys stay. Surviving this ordeal, losing a grandparent was undoubtedtly more of an acheivement than completing the actual investment itself.

I’m a real CEO… and a proud grandson.

What was the hardest challenge you overcame?

Founders 🚨 If you’re building a Product or Startup? Read this…

My phone showed me this picture memory. The chances of this memory ever happening were pretty much impossible.

A few December’s ago.

🏕 I was reluctantly living out of a suitcase from a friend’s new home in Ilford, London.

👵🏼 The previous old lady left behind a master bedroom, like a scene from Austin Powers, the carpet, the walls and the curtains, bright purple! 🕺🏻 🟣

🛏 The new mattress my friend treated me to, was like sleeping on weetabix, a spine buster. The fresh coat of white paint was pungent and nostril burning. 👃🏻

This temporary bedsit had a very clear objective: Solve a Problem

After what can only be described as living a childhood fairy-tale, 8 years to become a Chartered Architect, specialising in residential, sustainable hi-rise design and parametric modelling.

In 2009 before moving to London, I designed a 25 storey tower for Manchester which incorporated a lattice diagrid (X) system and double skin micro climate. The tower had similar engineering cues poignantly for this post to Norman Foster’s ‘The Gherkin’.

During my fourth year in London I decided to flip into a different universe; Software.

I set up a company, built a website, iPhone app and platform in Beta while working full time  for 12 months. I didn’t tell anybody outside of my family and a couple of friends.

This 🔥 in my belly, had to be explored.

1) Leap of faith:

I quit my job… Two months before the app went live. 

2) Sacrifice:

Eleven years in architecture.

3) Risk:

Skin in the game. £45k Bank Loan for London survival.

For context, I’m a non-technical solo founder (I didn’t code) originally from Old Swan in Liverpool with a real scouse accent. I don’t come from family wealth, didn’t attend Cambridge, Oxford or MIT. 

Within months of going Live, we gained traction and Users in 50 countries, piggy backing onto the existing hashtag #mipic – A Spanish word, “my-picture” Three national startup competitions were entered, miPic won every one and received a nice feature by INC.com.

I then popped my Crowdfunding cherry raising £170,000 with Crowdcube which enabled miPic v1.0 designed in Brick Lane, built it in Buenos Aires after a life changing day at Richard Branson’s house. This whirlwind 6 months followed with an exciting hello invite to Accel Partners.

And then… Suddenly, the handbrake was pulled.

A back seat driver got excitable and demanded we bizarrely franchised the company, blocking new investments. 🤯

I felt punch drunk, like I’d just done 10 rounds with Tyson Fury. 😵 🥊

I was told “you shouldn’t have mentioned your Accel meeting.” In simple terms, we over performed our six month plan and ears were burning wanting more equity.

I then lost 10 months of our Roadmap untangling over emails, distraught with worry how I would pay the team or buy my own food shopping.

I chose to leave my apartment in Clapham minus a traumatised burnt-out ex girlfriend. I was operating on instinct and first time founder naivety. I told everyone, “don’t worry guys, I’m going to solve the problem.”

The new bedsit in Ilford. The first train station walk was eventful.

An angry looking chap appeared from a tower block, running in my direction crossing the road, swinging a machete.

🔪 YES, A MACHETE… Shouting at two men I was walking towards.

🎒 I held onto my straps and continued walking, I didn’t cross, I didn’t stop or turn, I kept moving and walked past them. I heard screams and shouts putting my key into the door thinking “what the hell have I signed up for here.” Founders often ask themselves this same question.

That same ‘machete week’ in December, I was invited to meet a couple of gents at their office near Liverpool Street. Yes, you guessed it – The Gherkin.

The Holy Grail and icon for Business in London

I visited the Gherkin many times before, studied its engineering in detail but never been inside, behind the curtain.

The Gherkin is the architectural postcard and pinnacle of business in London.

This was not an episode of The Apprentice but as real as it gets, I was walking into the exact visualisation I had dreamt a thousand times.

We grabbed coffee and went upstairs to the 12th floor, to their floor!

I met with Marcus Traill and colleagues at Quantres about chapter one of miPic’s story and my vision for the company.

8 weeks later, Marcus and Craig Mawdsley both Directors at Starling Bank became 5% Shareholders in miPic. And just like that, I’d ‘solved that Problem’ and inadvertently arrived at a much more professional investor table.

Marcus, Michael and Craig of Quantres.

I had no real insight into what Quantres or who their solo founder was, Harald McPike is a self-made entrepreneur and financial trading adventurer.

I sold 25% equity in miPic
to Harry and his team for £1,100,000

From meeting to completion in 6 weeks over Skype. Where I’m from that’s not loose change.

But this miPic investment, insignificant to the bigger picture, at less than 1% of Harry’s £130 million investment into fellow solo founder Anne Boden who has created an incredible brand and FinTech disrupter in Starling Bank now valued at £2+ billion just a few years later.

Investing in Technology businesses requires serious capital, scaling a product to millions of people requires much more than just Code. Brand building, tone of voice, a Consumer end product, logistics and most of all creating a talented happy Team.

Architects design Master Plans, Infrastructure, Buildings, Layouts, the Look and the Feel. For it to stand up, we rely on Engineers and Technicians to play their part… Correctly.

Architecture was the perfect foundation and baptism into the startup game. Taking an idea through design, iteration, construction and delivery, bouncing through revisions and criticism along the way. Nothing ever runs in a straight line.

Founders!
Develop a Thick Skin Immediately

The simplest and most elegant of products are often those working the hardest within. The Gherkin’s beauty is made possible thanks to it’s column free floors and diagonally braced engineering.

❤️ At the Gherkin’s heart, multiple concrete core lift shafts act as the buildings linch pin cantilever. Each diagrid lattice (X) connects to the heart and Cores discreetly within floors, resulting in a masterpiece of column-less open spaced architecture.

The Building works in a trapeze of balance, tension and compression.

Building a Tech Startup holds similar parallels alongside my brief stay in Ilford.

Your Core Mission and Values must be able to withstand an earthquake.

Prepare for challenges, massive sacrifice, heartbreak, road blocks, maniacs, sleeping on sofas while remaining upbeat. Keeping a level head during the absolute 💩 shi*est of times and calm during the most ecstatic of celebrations, is a necessity. ✊🏼

On the day Harry’s £1.1m investment arrived in our account, I took our iOS engineer Shab to Sushi Samba in Heron Tower at 2pm. 3 glasses of Champagne and 2 courses later, I’d had enough. I didn’t entertain calls to go out and celebrate.

During the Uber ride back to the purple bedsit in Ilford. I was content and smiling, knowing that this working class kid from Liverpool’s dream had come true.

I never gave up when several people told me it was impossible to solve the problem. I kept pushing from the bedsit slash building site with courage and belief, 18 hours a day until the job was done.

My advice for Founders, document absolutely everything along your journey.

You never know when it will be needed. As Architects, it is engrained in our brain to be meticulous about detail, a screw that came loose or a pixel not aligned. All while seeing the forest from the trees and birds eye view of the Masterplan from above.

Being able to reflect on these memories is priceless and a reminder how far naivety and tenacity can take you through difficult periods onto the next chapter.

If you think this Chapter was wild, wait until you hear the next! 😱

I continue to share my mission of building miPic, a crowdfunded company in public. To join our journey with 80 other shareholders, check out our pitch page below.

Godspeed to every Founder pursuing their dream. ✊🏼

Carl

Are you a founder?
Share and tell us about your hurdles below

Coming Soon…

After reading a Wired article which struck a chord, I felt like getting out the fountain pen for UK Founders, we’re apparently too posh.

Let’s start from the beginning…

My father was a Japanese shipping clerk turned manager who earned a modest £40k until retirement, my mother worked in the probation service and NHS on not much less. I’m from Huyton in Liverpool, (a savvy part of the city 😉) Comprehensively schooled, before Art college with a childhood ambition to become an architect and design buildings.

My entrepreneurial journey started subliminally before A Level. My mother was called in by the head of school and warned “Carl has lots of ability, but we will have to refuse entry unless he chooses 5 subjects with us”. I didn’t want to waste ‘time’, my idea was Art, Sculpture and Architecture.

So I did some Googling before Google existed and requested to split my A Levels with a 2D AutoCAD course at night collage, where I’d be sitting amongst a room full of receding middle aged Architects at 16, learning how to technically draw buildings in 2D, on a big ugly computer. I eventually received a YES from my Head Teacher and that was my first experience of entrepreneurial negotiation, creating my own career path away from the expected lineal education. Apparently I was the first kid in my school to be bold and ask to do something differently. I enjoyed being the black sheep.

Fast Forward 15 years, tons of coffee and all nighters later.

To get any notable level of validation, traction or funding when launching a startup without being ‘posh and connected’ in London is hard, very hard. If you’re outside of London and where I’m from it’s impossible. With no access to friends and family donations of £20k let alone £200k, here’s what I had to do as a Sole Founder.

I found myself across the table from an ‘investor’ (same age) whose dad gave him some cash to play with on crowdfunding. When attempting to put £100k on his ‘grocery card’  (yes literally)… I was told, “Carl you don’t need a salary, you’re the Founder who owns all the shares of your company”.
His lawyer looked at him wide eyed- “How is Carl going to sleep in London and buy a pint of milk?
The response “Oh, okay, you can have £40k salary, but if you don’t get a million downloads in 6 months, you will drop to £30k.”

I excused myself for a toilet break, staring at the mirror I drowned my face in cold water thinking:
WHAT THE F*CK am I getting myself in too. In any other circumstance I would have stood up and left. There was no bank of mum and dad to call, I had to make sacrifices.

Six months after that delightful meeting, I was invited to present Version 1.0 of my product to Accel Partners, the big dogs. That same fellow then attempted to block new investments to franchise my business and demanded 30% equity, become a Group CEO to show his friends he’d made it!
I was told “You should never have mentioned Accel”. We then lost 8 months of my roadmap wrestling over email, I became homeless and broke trying to keep things moving.

Prior to that baptism of fire ‘investor’ meeting, I’d spent 18 months building my Beta doing the nightly 8pm to 1am shift with two developers, alongside working long hours as an Architect.
My £35k salary in London and Net take home barely escaping the overdraft, but I scraped together £5k. And still, my close circle and network were risk averse from limited exposure to entrepreneurship and dreaming BIG. I was told to focus on the day job.

I listened to them for all of five minutes and instead took out a £12,000 bank loan, quit my job and 8-year university marathon, a first class Master’s degree and architecture career to launch miPic. Just four months after getting Chartered at an award winning UK practice, lunatic! 

The loan gave me 5 months of survival money to turn the Platform on from the kitchen table in Clapham surrounded by 4 housemates. By month 5 we had Users in 30 countries and I was standing in Richard Branson’s house in Oxford presenting to him and 4 other Dragons in a garden marquee to 200 people. I had 90 seconds to change my life and it was televised live, ‘don’t f*ck this up now Carl’.

“I won a national pitch competition presenting to the ultimate entrepreneur Richard Branson! ”

The main reason I was on that stage in the first place, wasn’t down to me being any good, posh or lucky at all. Six weeks prior to Rich’s house I refused to leave Virgin HQ reception following a cancelled 9am business plan Founder event, it was pi**ing down with rain outside. 

“I’ve come all this way to Paddington, I’m not leaving and getting soaked until I see someone”

before the very fun receptionist from Brixton asked what I did staring at my business card. She shouted;

“MyyyyPiccc… They are gonna luv it bruv! Go upstairs and sit in the canteen”.

After an hour of people watching in the lounge, I ended up having a two hour one on one with Virgin’s finance manager who invited me to enter the competition alongside 300 other applicants. Refusing to be told no, is the reason why I won.

With my tail up after wooing the judges, I took a further £35,000 Virgin Startup Founder Loan to advance, with a plan for larger investment and no clue where it would arrive from. Following the Virgin Pitch to Rich seal of approval, this finally enabled me to raise enough eyebrows and door openings to land a board room seat at a Private Equity firm. At the top of The Shard on Xmas eve, joined by my app developer (no. Alan Sugar wasn’t there).

We received an offer of £150k from an investment fund for 25% equity in the company, plus a bill of £12k due diligence and £1k management fee per month thereafter.

I felt like a rockstar for a minute, but, No Thank You, I politely declined the money without a Plan B. I continued my door to door flogging for months and met some absolute sharks at pitch events in London which steered me nicely towards a crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube. I closed miPic’s first seed investment round of £170k… Wait for it:

Thirty months, after I started the Beta!

I’d attended most startup events or conferences in London and even flew to San Francisco for Tech Crunch whilst dead on my feet, pitching to everyone in the room looking for that break through or next partnership. I watched Dhiraj Muckherjee, the Founder of Shazam on stage at Startup Grind present to 1000 people his startup story, for him to then miraculously appear standing next to me on a rush hour train three months later at Waterloo.

I chased him down the carriage like a mad conductor tapping his shoulder and spontaneously pitched avoiding the weird looks. He saw something in me and my product enough to invite me for coffee and became an informal mentor who encouraged me (without investment) to overcome the toughest of obstacles building a tech company as a solo founder.

This nostalgic memoir is by no means a gripe wishing I was ‘posh and connected’ or schooled in Oxbridge, but more about ‘time’ and how long things actually take when you have to bootstrap and hustle hard dealing with scammers to obtain any proven investor attention.

In my case, architecture gave me a solid foundation of persistance, a tolerance for criticism and all nighters coming into an industry with zero contacts or leg ups. I’ve had to make ridiculous sacrifices along the way, lost a girlfriend demanding children and been homeless twice to earn my stripes. But still, I thrive amongst ups and the downs and enjoy every minute of it.

We’ve since gone on to close $2m investment from  ‘the Crowd, Angels and lead investor of Starling Bank Family Office building a custom E-Commerce print platform as a Solo Founder , a platform strong enough to be a huge disruptor in this space. I’ve managed dev and product teams big and small in Argentina, the Middle East, London and Canada and learnt far more stuff as a Founder & CEO than I ever cared to know.

The Platform and App has Users in 200+ countries generating six figure revenues, with happy customers in 80 countries continent and Artists/Sellers earning thousands in passive income before Digital Marketing spend has begun. Organic global revenue before marketing spend, I must be crazy!

I meet founders who raise millions from a pitch deck, with no mileage on the clock, no product or users. Connected friends and family rounds on a £10-20m valuation.

And genuinely a massive good luck to them – I’d bite anyone’s arm off to be dealt that hand, so would you. I’ve met others who’ve spent £5 million on marketing like it was 50 quid on huge customer acquisition campaigns with no qualms about the funding tap running dry.

In reality, for every ‘posh and connected’ founder out there burning cash there are thousands of founders taking the scenic route with no access to capital, serious hunger and undeniable ability who don’t make the cut. It takes huge effort, skill and most importantly ‘time’ getting into the starting blocks, but requires buckets of ‘speed’ and capital get out of them successfully.

I’ve witnessed first hand how investment ‘managers’ some less qualified than founders live or die making smart decisions and then interfere.

Investor behaviour and performance is never questioned, it should be. While Founders are scrutinised for our every move.

I recently asked for Pitch Deck feedback from someone who gets Founders in front of the right people. I was told – “it’s the best pitch deck I’ve seen, EVER!” Another Partner at a Central London Investment Fund told me this month I was one of the most impressive founders he’d met in 5 years and asked, ‘why I’d not raised £20m yet.’

Over the last 12 months I’ve presented the company confidently to a family member of the Saudi Bank who hinted at building us a factory in Riyadh, was offered millions from a UAE Royal Family investment office and watched an Abu Dhabi fund manager’s eyes roll in amazement when presenting, to be told to “pick a number 3, 5 or 7 million” like an episode of Bruce’s Price is Right.

To finish poignantly on something from Wireds article which prompted this post.I once received a compliment by an investor of supposed authority, ‘ You’ve created a regal product, this is a billion dollar company Carl if you give it to me.’
In a more recent meeting flanked by two shareholders, this same person spluttered;

“Maybe it’s your working class mentality from Liverpool of never knowing when to give up.
Maybe your next idea will be the big one.” 

This time, I left the meeting without flinching. Later that month, miPic was featured by Forbes, We were invited to meet Apple’s App Developer of the Year and now PE companies are knocking on the door about acquisitions before we’ve spend on marketing.

miPic achieved +550% revenue increases during the pandemic with zero CAC cost, spending just £1000 on marketing in a year and is now close to profitability.

Have I earned my stripes yet?

We’d like £100,000 a month for marketing to provide our Creators with the best possible rewards.

If you’re a founder reading this who is obsessively ambitious, skilled and don’t crumble under a challenge. Posh or Not, anyone can make things happen. One door will open from a hundred and most importantly don’t take the majority of negative noise seriously. It’s often the folks who’ve had things easy who really want to be seen as the ‘hustlers’, yet notoriously are the first to drop when things get tough.

The Tech industry over the last 10 years has enabled anyone from anywhere to create a business and there have never been so many routes for funding. In my case, it was the scenic route.

More should be done at secondary school and college level before Uni to provide entrepreneurs the crucial knowledge of writing business plans, company setup and access to genuine sponsorship without doing it blindfolded and stripping founders of 25% equity before getting to the starting line.

I’m from Huyton in Liverpool, statistics show I shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing, but I have. The chances of receiving investment from a Venture Office were less than 0.0000001%.

Hopefully by sharing my experience of not being so ‘posh and connected’ captures a new audience who might well want to connect and join our team. 

If you’re a founder and this post resonates with you in any way, please share and tell us your hurdles.

I was 6 months in from quitting my day job in architecture. My £12k bank loan and survival funds were quickly drying up.

It was clear that building a website and app for a year was one mountain to climb, the next would be to build a team, launch a company and start shouting about it. This required cash! Or what the industry calls: Angel Investment. I had spent the last 10 years in Architecture designing buildings and drawing pretty pictures– I had absolutely no clue about Angel Investment, nor did I know what an Angel Investor looked like or where they hung out. 

I was fortunate that just 3 months into my sabbatical, miPic was invited to apply to a Virgin Startups competition called Pitch to Rich– now rebranded as VOOM. Read about my 90 seconds in front of Richard Branson – here. 

As a result, we gained some good PR exposure and this validation gave miPic visibility. This in turn meant Angel Investors were keen to talk to me about investment and asking to see our business plan. What I quickly discovered was that for every Angel Investor in London there is a million brokers. These people can take you to the promised land and golden gates– for a small fee… Obviously. 

Things got interesting.

I was introduced to various people involved in early stage seed investments funds. These investments ranged from anything of £20,000 up to £200,000. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, I was invited in to meet someone and present our plans for miPic. Armed with my investment deck and a huge shot of adrenalin (coffee), I rattled through like a 10 year old on sherbet feeling invincible.  

The outcome of this meeting was yet another invite to a private investor evening where 10 companies would pitch to a room full of cash-oozing pockets– Angel Investors! Hallelujah. In order to attend this event and present my slide deck, I had to pay a discounted £200 fee for the privilege of standing on stage and begging for their money. 

So I took my founding team of two developers along for moral support asking for an investment of £150,000 in the business. Thankfully my time in architecture had versed me, I have fond memories of being fresh from an all nighter in the studio standing in front of 100 other architects on zero sleep and presenting our project to 3 professors without collapsing. More often than not there were grillings, questions that made your veins pop out of your arms and piercing eyes thinking “what are you doing here boy”. Architecture served me well.  

On this occasion the audience questions were almost flirtatious. One man stood up, half drunk from the free booze and shouted ‘If there’s anyone with any money in this room, they should give it to miPic’. As you’d expect for a first time founder, I walked off stage with a slight swagger.

Oh… They’re a different animal.

So the pitches had finished, we all hit the dance floor in what seemed like a river dance to everyone’s favourite Startup of the evening to talk numbers and exchange business cards. It’s hard enough remembering people’s names and what they do, so imagine after the adrenaline crash of a 15 minute pitch and having to tell everyone individually your story all over again.

Suddenly something grabbed my attention, I was presented by a big man and his sidekick standing in front of me. A well spoken chap making jokes about me being ‘Northern’. His first proper words were: 

“How about a £1 million pound investment from a Middle Eastern investment fund”

My ears popped up like a Siberian husky, eyes focussed on this duo like I’d found my first love. He had our attention, as you’d expect, I swiped their business cards and agreed to follow up. On our way out that evening, I asked the event host and investment manager about these potential million pound investors – he looked at me sternly and said “talk to them, they’re a different animal.” Going home that evening as a startup founder was quite satisfying, i’d collected over a dozen cards and was excited to begin meetings with these Angels. 

In the weeks following, I met with several smartly suited gentleman from the event with the reward of… more introductions. Some of these fellas may have been genuine, some of them were definitely full of shit. And some were just looking for jobs themselves as non-execs within startups. What was clear though, the Angel Investment game is one hell of a rat race. 

Then the big fish got in touch. 

We were asked to meet for coffee in Park Lane and talk business. It was clear to me that there was a different vibe to this, one of persistence and consistent business questioning. I checked them out on LinkedIn and searches online, both came from reputable backgrounds, all pretty cool and exciting- says the internet. 

Discussions progressed and it was evident that the two front men I was dealing with weren’t the actual investors or the fund managers, again brokers. I was told that any investment offered would be include a broker fee of 5% cash to them which we thought was reasonable, seeing as £1m was on the table. 

The Pitch

Following multiple canceled meetings and over 6 weeks talking to this team, alongside working on the actual business, finally we had a meeting with the Fund Manager. This time at a lawyers office in Mayfair. Our pitch meeting included the two chaps from the event – now overly friendly, a very pretty business analyst and the elusive fund manager. A guy who appeared to have just stepped off a plane from the mediterranean, dressed sharper than a butchers pencil, ice white shirt and a solid suntan.

I presented miPic to the room assisted by my developer and he liked what he saw. After a few questions he nodded to the others and said “I think this is a good one” then left. On our way out we said our goodbyes to their team and bumped into the original pitch event organiser who invited me to the evening. Somewhat abnormally, he didn’t say hello, just nodded and raised an eyebrow in reception. 

We left that office and walked through Mayfair high-fiving each other that day, just 10 months after turning on the first beta version of our website v1. 

The Offer

£2 million pounds in return for 25% of the business… F**k we were pumped!

We went from speaking to investors for £50-150k investment to £2m. How ridiculous does that sound. 

I later received a couple of calls from the well tanned Fund Manager that week who said in order to proceed with the investment and to complete due diligence before sending over a Term Sheet from the investors, they had to carry out extensive background and CRB checks on myself and each of my team. This would cost approx £2000 per team member which miPic had to pay. Doesn’t that sound baffling!

I was told a £2,000,000 investment was within two weeks away and in order to complete the formalities before sending over a term sheet, they wanted– the founder of the cash strapped startup to send them a few grand. Hang on a minute! I may have been a rabbit in the headlights and new to the game but, do I look stupid! I wrote an email to the team that I was unwilling to send precious funds from our cash flow and politely declined. 

Tactics 

The chilled investment manager, a pleasure to meet in person and over the phone, quickly changed his tune over email with a bit of heated type and psychology. 

I was quickly made to feel like an absolute moron and guilty that the amount of effort and time invested in me over 8 weeks was a huge leap of faith which the Middle Eastern family were willing to take. They were shocked I was unwilling to contribute to this exercise with payment of thousands, so they wished me luck building our product and left us dangling. My team went into meltdown, my web developer Ash, the most laid back dude I’ve ever met, lost it. “How could you turn this down and not pay them, are you mental!” We had a huge row, I was distraught asking my friends and advisors for advice whilst looking at my girlfriend in despair. 

Now lots of people give sole founders a bad rep because the responsibility on our shoulders is enormous but one thing I believe helped me in this situation was exactly that. Myself and Ash could have seriously fallen out if we held equal shareholding. I didn’t want to send any money because we were almost broke and no matter how much the team asked me too, my ‘Liverpudlian’ gut said don’t do it. 

We agreed on the diplomatic approach and attempted to continue the investment discussion and ask for proof of due diligence checks and proof of investment funds etc. But the response was the same, asking for payment up front to advance. Only this time the name at the top of my email wasn’t addressed to me, it was someone else’s name. How could he get my name wrong, was it a typo or was it a copy / paste job? 

The Exit

I decided not to reply to his last email. I went silent, so did they. Strange. The two blokes that were so jovial and friendly for 8 weeks vanished off the face of the earth and didn’t email me again asking about my plans to follow up. The organiser of the event who originally encouraged me to pursue their funding, also went silent.

I spent 8 weeks speaking to these people. Consider my time as equally as valuable as theirs, from pitching at events, writing emails until 3am each night, to meeting investors in Mayfair all for a £2m quid investment which turned into a hoax. I should have billed them. 

You’ll be surprised how much mental and emotional energy goes into these things. London is full of people trying to piggy back onto deals, make some cash or just f**k people over. For every truly good Angel Investor who genuinely wants to invest cash into great ideas and founders, there are 100 devils. 

Like an episode from sitcom Silicon Valley, this post could be completely fictitious and exaggerated, but I strongly advise Founders to really do your own due diligence on Investors and sniff people out as early as possible.

Learnings

1. If it’s too good to be true, it is!

In my case I was told to explore these investment opportunities and trusted people. Although internally, we did wonder why there was a huge difference in investment size.

2. Do your Due Diligence on investors

Investors can often come sugar-coated as a helping hand, when in reality that may not always be the case.

3. Never send anyone money if you’re seeking investment from them!

This does sounds ludicrous, but it happens. I was offered genuine investment from an SEIS fund and their Due Diligence fees were outlined in the Term Sheet and deducted after completion. Never pay anything before a deal closes! 

If this post resonates with you in any way, shout me in the Comments below! Did you overcome a challenging period which seemed impossible?

Learnings

1. There is always a way

When you’ve no room to negotiate with investors, find an alternative angle.

2. Savour every moment, including the tough ones!

3. Never Give Up!

Behind every stressful moment there is an ecstatic moment waiting, keep knocking on the door!

If this post resonates with you in any way, shout me in the Comments below! Did you overcome a challenging period which seemed impossible?

I was at a conference a couple of years ago watching Dhiraj Mukherjee tell his whirlwind story to a thousand people of co-founding his startup, Shazam, that music app we all use. Little did I know, the impact his inspirational words would have on me personally and our own journey for miPic.

At the time, I was extremely exhausted, probably depressed and unquestionably burnt out, living out of a suitcase at friends’ houses. I faced a very serious realisation that miPic was just a few months away from closing before we’d even got started due to an incredibly difficult situation that seemed impossible to solve. What was a year of pride and ecstasy building our company and brand became a nightmare as new investment in the company was blocked.

Two months after watching this man on stage at Startup Grind, I was standing on a train at Waterloo in London, slumped and dazed when he stepped onto my carriage next to me.

During Dhiraj’s talk at the conference, he gave a little anecdote from the Shazam story which stuck with me that summer. Back when the company was in its inception, the founding team were really struggling with the functionality of their product– specifically the algorithm which detects the song and sends users the artist, title and so on. They were short on funding, each of the founders were looking at ways to support the business or step out and go back into full-time work. They almost gave up. Their lead Tech Scientist asked to be left alone for some time while he gave it one last shot at building the code. Some time later he reappeared and cracked it. Shazam was born. They kept persisting, kept pushing and found a solution.

Background

Just four months before the conference I was unbelievably ecstatic–  we had just launched miPic v1.0 after six months of hard and ridiculously long hours, getting the product out in time for Christmas. With our small team in London and an agency of 10 developers in Argentina, f**k it was fun.

We turned on the new website to much relief and in January 2016 received a few nice surprises. The company was recognised by Inc.com and featured by The Next Web. We were also invited in to meet one of the industry’s notorious Venture Capital Investors, who’d previously invested in the likes of Spotify, Kayak and Facebook. We were all on a high, the team was bouncing and it seemed like we were on track… in the blink of an eye our whole plan was derailed.

(This deserves a post of it’s own, so I’ll come back to that later.)  

A surreal couple of months followed, what was once a very exciting time quickly flipped into fear, anxiety and inconsolable heartbreak. Our roadmap for the year was to build and launch the platform, fix any bugs over the new year period and start marketing with a new round of investment. I made the decision not to accept a proposed new round of investment because it would have killed us, so I was suddenly out scouting critical funding, with a product ready to market and no budget to operate, or to live.

The Train

To give ourselves a fighting chance, I decided to sacrifice my own living expenses, leaving my home of 5 years in Clapham to stay with friends and sofa surf. I would use the remaining Crowdfunding cash left in the tank to hire a marketing assistant to lighten my load so I could focus on chasing down new investment. On this particular day, I chased Dhiraj, right down that train carriage and stood next to him.

“Hi.”

Fight or Flight – When our back is against the wall we do things without deliberating or finding excuses, it’s instinct. No matter how tired or burnt out I was that day, there was no way I was leaving that train without speaking to him. With nothing to lose I said “Hi, excuse me”. I introduced myself and thanked him for sharing his Shazam story at the conference. In twenty or thirty brief seconds I presented my business to him and showed him our app –  miPic. He raised an eyebrow and agreed to meet me for coffee, so we swapped business cards. That evening I sat on the River Thames in Wandsworth eating dinner with my ridiculously excitable Argentinian friend ‘Caro’ and a new found energy, one that wasn’t scared but fuelled and inspired.

The following week, we met in Pret a Manger and I told Dhiraj my problem which halted our progress. With his head in his hands on the table shaking his head in frustration, he said he wanted to help. One sentence that stood out was “you have to pound the pavement Carl and don’t stop”. 

The next day he wrote an incredible heartfelt email to his closest friends in the startup community with a rallying cry – the email subject read ‘Help a fellow founder in need’. It finished on “I don’t know Carl personally, but this is an opportunity to help someone in a way they will never forget.” Now I’m not embarrassed to say as a 36 year old modern-day man, when I read his email, tears rolled down my face for about half an hour. (Thank god, my friends weren’t at home ?)

Keep Going!

That period was the hardest emotional and physical struggle of my life and there was a glimmer of hope. I met all of Dhiraj’s contacts that month for coffee, all great guys but were unable to help directly to solve my problem. This show of support from total strangers gave me the extra kick I needed to keep pushing 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for months. Dhiraj kept in touch over email throughout the autumn with encouragement and intros and it went right to the wire. Thankfully there was a solution that most didn’t think was possible, and we did pull off a miracle to give miPic the future it deserved raising £1.3m investment 6 months after meeting Dhiraj.

The moral of the story is to never doubt your ability to make things happen, even if your exhausted on a train heading home for dinner. With belief, positivity and obsessive hard work, it’s all possible. 

I lost a few things that year but never gave up, I pounded the pavement as Dhiraj asked. If you too are a founder going through hell– keep going, you may surprise yourself at what is waiting for you around the corner. Or even on a train… ?? Meeting Dhiraj really gave me that turbo boost of motivation and restored my faith in human beings when I needed it most.

Startup Grind – Fireside Chat

Three years after meeting Dhiraj on that train, on Thursday, August 8th 2019 we shared a fireside Q&A in association with Startup Grind London.

We discussed Dhiraj’s journey with Shazam from inception to exit and how our chance train encounter empowered me to push on and enable miPic to overcome a mountainous hurdle, saving me from despair that summer. Our talk gave a real insight into the pitfalls and ecstatic moments we encounter founding startups, from seed funding, to crowdfunding and VC investment.

Just tap below to watch the full Startup Grind chat!

Learnings

1. Be prepared for banana skins when you least expect it

If you have investments in the pipeline, there’s a chance things may change, never be desperate and don’t stop pushing until the deal is done.

2. Never be afraid to say – Hi!

When you need help – ASK! Everyone you know and more. Don’t be afraid, the worst that can happen is they say no.

3. Be Positive, magic can happen

Be persistant and be relentless. Exhaust every possible option towards your goal. If you push hard enough, the universe will make it happen

If this post resonates with you in any way, shout me in the Comments below! Did you overcome a challenging period which seemed impossible?