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

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.

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?