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PLUS: Monzo — Music — Wah Nails — Petrol stations — Interns — Beavertown — Adult gymnastics

J U N / J U L 2 0 1 7 I S S U E 1 7

Doubleacts

What goes into formingan invincible duo?

FEATURING

DishoomFrame

AmaliahIt’s Nice That

Echo

Seeing doubleJust before writing this, I sent Jeff (my business partner) a text. He’s been bouncing between Reading and Edinburgh all week, deep in client work and keeping various plates spinning.

The two of us have checked in with each other at the top and tail of each day. A business-like call first thing; and an evening catch up (more cathartic than anything else).

‘How’s things? [Scottish flag, smiley face].’ ‘Surviving. But it’s sunny [sunglasses face].’

I sent over some PDFs of pages in this issue to get comments back.

We exchanged a couple more messages (office admin, more catharsis) and got back to our to-do lists.

Both of us have been operating

in a frazzled state for what has felt like months. There’s been one question we’ve kept coming back to: how in god’s name does anyone do this shit solo?

People do – and it’s little short of mind-blowing. Yet founders without a partner do often confess how much they wish for one.

Perhaps this is why people in sole charge often elevate a senior person in the company to be a de facto partner, a co-founder in all but name.

Being able to share responsibilities and gain a different perspective on big decisions undeniably lies behind this yearning, but it’s as much about the need for an ally to share the failures, uncertainty, hope and joy.

A VC I spoke to explained why getting a business off the ground takes such a huge emotional toll on a founder. He believes it’s because of the conflict between the need to project a picture of



J U N / J U L 2 0 1 7 I S S U E 1 7

Doubleacts

What goes into formingan invincible duo?

FEATURING

DishoomFrame

AmaliahIt’s Nice That

Echo

success to the world, and the self doubt and instability that lurks inside.

Having that constantly swirling around in a single jittery mind with no outlet can’t be easy.

The format of dual heads at the helm of a company seems to have become more common in recent years. We explore the dynamic in this issue.

The stories of double acts behind companies like Dishoom, Echo and It’s Nice That reveal the huge variations in founder relationships; they’re as diverse as the companies themselves.

Something often overlooked in running a company is the need for emotional intelligence. It especially comes to the fore when you consider what’s required to nurture the most valuable asset in a young company – the force that exists between the two people driving it.

I’m certainly looking forward to getting my business partner back.

EDITOR’S LETTER

Courier Jun/Jul 2017

courierpaper.com

@courierpaper

Publisher Jeff Taylor

Editor In Chief Soheb Panja

Managing Editor Tomas Jivanda

Senior Reporter Amy Lewin

Reporter Sarah Drumm

Designer Simon Kuhn

Subbing Harriet Fitch Little

Advertising and Commercial Tommy Seres Francesco Fiori

Creative Partnerships Luis Mendoza

Contact [first name]@wearecourier.com

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Illustration Jonny Wan Alessandro Apai Aleksandar Savić

Photography Jasper Clarke Tomas Jivanda

Interns Charlotte Irwin Tom Rees

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Work with us [email protected]

Cover Illustration: Jonny Wan

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All rights reserved. © 2017 Courier Holdings Ltd ISSN 2396-9334

34

29C O U R I E R L I F E

C O V E R S T O R Y 07

W O R K S PA C E

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18 P E T R O L S T A T I O NThe £92m service station reinventing the model.

19 M O N E T I S A T I O NA newsletter with cheap flight tips goes freemium.

05 C O U R I E R I N D E XLife science startups continue to attract VC cash.

A N A L Y S I SThe power of the ‘direct to consumer’ model.

07 C O V E R S T O R YThe magic dynamic between business duos.

14 C O U R I E R T A L K SIs the music industry really making money again?

16 L E A D E RPersonalised services aren’t always a good thing.

17 G U E S T C O M M E N TThe relationship between interns and startups.

24 P O R T R A I TTom Blomfield, Monzo’s CEO and evangelist.

26 D I S PA T C H E SIs Berlin’s VR scene more creative than London’s?

29 C O U R I E R L I F EWild garlic, colourful chairs and working out.

34 W O R K S PA C EBehind the barrels at Beavertown Brewery.

27 L O W D O W NQ&A with WAH nails founder Sharmadean Reid.

LEAP

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21 T U B E A D SWhy startups love advertising on the underground.

I N S I D E T H E I S S U E

3

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#berlinfashionweek www.fashion-week-berlin.com

20174–7JULY


20174–7JULY

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Courier index

Investors appear undeterred in their backing of UK fintech startups, despite the fears that losing so-called ‘passporting’ benefits as a result of leaving the EU will stunt the growth of this active sector.

Beauhurst provides data and insight on UK startups and high-growth companies.

Funding from Google Ventures will be used to help cross-border payments company Currencycloud expand further into the US and Asia. The company, which was set up in east London in 2012, has recently expanded to New York.

Stand-out raise Currencycloud

£20m

Three venture capital funds put £19.5m into the digital bank. It raised a further £2.5m on Crowdcube from over 6,000 investors. The cash will go towards fulfilling the capital requirements demanded by the financial regulator in order to operate as a full-service bank. (See Portrait, p24).

Monzo

DEALS129

NUMBER OF

INVESTMENT£398m

TOTAL BIGGEST DEAL

£60mCELL MEDICA

Fundraising hit a recent high in March. Venture fundraising rounds accounted for the largest increases in value, more than doubling the amounts compared to the same period last year. Significantly smaller amounts are going towards seed- stage companies: the total amount of funding at seed stage has fallen by 19% year-on-year.

Biggest deal: ApcinteX £14mThis startup out of Cambridge University is developing a drug for haemophiliac patients. The haemophilia treatment market is estimated to be worth £8bn.

Biggest deal: Pulmocide £24mAnother life sciences company, Pulmocide will be able to invest more into research for treatment for respiratory infections.

Biggest deal: Elvie £4.6mElvie produces a wearable, Bluetooth-enabled pelvic floor exercise device for women. It has motion sensors and is linked to an app.

Biggest deal: Cell Medica £60mCell Medica is a company manufacturing drugs to treat infectious diseases and cancer. It was valued at £100m at the time of this raise.

SEED

VENTURE CROWD

Deals 61Total £34m

Deals 49Total £183m

Deals 31Total £21.9m

GROWTHDeals 19Total £182m

FEB /MAR

Snapshot on UK investment deals with data compiled in partnership with Beauhurst.

Number of dealsInvestment (£)

Investment deals (London)

2080m

40120m

60160m

80200m

100240m

120280m

140320m

360m 160

51

Oct 16 Nov 16 Dec 16

62 38

Jan 17

40

Decoding the rules of‘direct to consumer’

ANALYSIS

SP OTLIGHT

£22m Banking

The American retail giant Target recently made a £780m offer to buy Casper – a four-year-old mattress startup.

It could be the £155m worth of mattresses which Casper has sold since in 2016 which prompted the bid. But Casper isn’t the only mattress startup making waves. Simba and Eve are having a similar effect in the UK.

Substitute mattresses for watches, suitcases, razors and spectacles, and a similar pattern can be seen.

A whole range of consumer startups are attacking sectors by deploying a startlingly similar methodology.

Dollar Shave Club and Warby Parker were among the first to demonstrate that it’s possible to prise open the once seemingly unshakeable strangleholds of big companies.

Startups are already taking chunks of market share, attracting young shoppers and, most potently, threatening to undermine the very business models that have upheld the enduring success of the incumbents.

Sectors with fat and inefficient supply chains and out-of-touch brands are being appraised for their disruption-worthiness.

There are four fascinating dimensions to the direct-to-consumer phenomenon.

1. Slicing through distributionSpectacles startups are an example of the potential that lies in ripping out the layers of people taking a cut in the supply chain: designers, manufacturers, lens makers, brand licensers, distributors, wholesalers, and retailers.

Stefan Howle, the founder of suitcase startup Horizn, calls this ‘the verticalization of trade’. For him, this ‘v-commerce’ model takes the supply chain efficiency pioneered by the likes of Ikea and Zara, and combines it with e-commerce learning from Amazon and Asos.

2. It’s not about productGillette has spent years researching what it takes to make the best razors.

The average consumer would struggle to say if or why the frames from Sunglass Hut are any worse than those from Warby Parker.

Startups may demand good design and materials, but that’s not what gives them an edge.

Even the suitcase startups with their USB charging ports and GPS tracking are already being copied by Samsonite.

Instead, simplification is a meaningful product difference. Consumers are either overwhelmed by choice (over 350 mattress types at John Lewis), or exhausted by it (the spurious upgrades on a razor blades).

3. Brand disconnectEstablished brands are failing to resonate with young consumers. ‘They’ve somehow got their brands stuck in a previous era,’ says Oliver Bridge from UK razor startup Cornerstone, pointing to macho imagery and sponsorships of gurning sports stars.

Bridge believes honesty and authenticity have been more important in racking up 110,000 razor subscribers in the three years since he launched than any structural factors. ‘People are sick of getting done over and lied to,’ he says.

The watch industry with its notions of luxury and aspiration seems especially mired in a values chasm with modern consumers.The luxury watch market was down 10% last year.

4. Over-deliver on serviceWarby Parker said its most important metric is its Net Promoter Score – a retail standard used to signal customer satisfaction.

Startups focused on service, with total control of every stage of the customer experience, are vastly different from the established players.

The challengers talk about making every stage ‘frictionless’ and ‘Uber-like’. Being born from e-commerce gives them the ability to do so. Gillette, meanwhile, is at the mercy of retailers like Boots which ultimately control the critical point of interaction between the product and the customer.

TR ACKER

HIGHLIGHTS

SECTOR: FINTECH

Feb 16

48

Mar 17

81

This is Bloom and Wild’s fourth round, bringing its total raised to date up to £7.2m. The three-year-old flower subscription company will put the cash towards its plans for expansion into Europe.

Bloom and Wild

£3.75mFlowers


20174–7JULY


20174–7JULY

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5

Apply for your chance to win at creatorawards.wework.com

WeWork is giving away over $20 million in eight cities to those who are thinking in new ways, building fresh

projects, and achieving real change.

We’re headed to London!

GOT THE NEXT BIG IDEA?

COVER STORY

In 2009, the Blackberry was so popular it was being referred to as the Crackberry. It accounted for half of all smartphones being sold. It was even credited for

single-handedly facilitating a political revolution in the Middle East.

Earlier this year, it emerged Blackberry’s 50% share of the market had evaporated, down to a piddling 0.04%.

This almighty crumbling was attributed to tough competition from Apple and Google.

But what the story missed was the collapse of the relationship between the company’s co-CEOs, Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis. Having steered Blackberry to its highs, the pair then clashed and split the business between warring commercial and product teams, effectively strangling any momentum. They stopped working as a partnership and it ultimately led to the downfall of the company.

The format of dual heads at the helm of a company has become more common in recent years. It creates a fascinating dynamic where two people, brought together by history, friendship, circumstance or design, are thrown into a profoundly intense relationship on which prosperity, creativity and sanity are all staked.

What is, in theory, lost in decisiveness with a single owner is compensated for by having someone else to share the responsibilities, as well as the good times and bad.

At its best, having two complementary

individuals with a common bond and strong emotional qualities can create a seemingly invincible force.

There are examples in virtually every sector.One of the fastest-growing companies in London right now is Transferwise, a facilitator of international money transfers that has just broken into profit and is on course to hit £100m in revenue this year. The relationship between the two Estonians who run the company is credited with powering that success; they share a common goal and enemy (big banks and their egregious fees).

The balance between the outgoing and enthusiastic Taavet Hinrikus and his partner, the more detail-oriented Kristo Käärmann, is a template that is so ubiquitous as a business double act it borders on caricature.

But will the Transferwise founders, and the thousands like them, avoid the relationship breakdown of Balsillie and Lazaridis?

The answer appears to lie in whether founders can successfully grow their business into something more than the sum of their talents. Big companies are much less reliant on just two people, points out Ondine Smulders, a pyschotherapist. An established business, with systems in place, can continue to grow even when the bosses disagree. ‘With two or five or 20 employees, when two owners get into a fight, it can cripple the whole thing,’ she says.

Lots of startup founders, especially tech ones, are increasingly seeking professional conflict therapy or the kind of relationship counselling more commonly associated with married couples, she adds. ‘Lots of people think because they’re friends, it’s going to be okay and they’re never going to run into problems. If you don’t put proper agreements in place, you’re setting yourself up to fail.’

The line between a business relationship that’s almost magically effective and one that’s dysfunctional can be a fine one. A considerable amount of practical guidance is given in the coming pages around defining responsibilities in the early days, swapping roles and working out how to give each other space, while also making the most of strengths and covering for weaknesses. But many talk frankly about the emotional dynamic, and the need to fuel the relationship with the kind of trust, respect and affection required when it feels like a business is taking on the entire world.

TWO IS THE MAGIC NUMBER

It can be the most emotionally demanding

relationship in a person’s life. It can also be the

factor which determines the success or failure of

a company: The double act.

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projects, and achieving real change.

We’re headed to London!

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7

COVER STORY

In every Dishoom the attention to detail is almost fanatical. In the Carnaby Street restaurant, the screw heads in the lobby were replaced midway through construction – they didn’t have Phillips screws in 1960s Bombay. In King’s Cross, guests queueing outside the madly popular Irani-cafe-inspired Indian restaurant are handed umbrellas if it starts raining. The fifth, and most recent, site in Edinburgh has been designed as though by Patrick Geddes, a Scotsman who lived in Bombay in the 1920s, although in reality by the restaurant’s actual founders, cousins Shamil and Kavi Thakrar.

‘We found this character, and then imagined a day in his life, his story, and then imagined him imagining opening an Irani cafe, and then opened the Irani cafe he would’ve opened,’ explains Shamil.

Dishoom has been a runaway success in the last seven years. In many ways, it epitomises London’s transformed food scene: no bookings, queues around the block, a traditional cuisine that’s been steadfastly modernised while retaining something authentic and egalitarian.

That success can be attributed to the cousins. They clearly love what running a business like Dishoom enables them to do: both speak animatedly about their team, training schemes, and employee benefits; the food charities the business supports; the way in which Londoners of all ages and incomes come together to eat the famous bacon naan rolls.

Left brain, right brainShamil, the more talkative of the two, covers the strategic and creative side of the business. He previously ran their family’s business Tilda, the UK's biggest rice company. Kavi, who spent four years at the World Bank, is responsible for the operational side of the business and is, unsurprisingly, the practical one.

‘I tend to go off on flights of fantasy and have quite crazy ideas,’ says Shamil. ‘But I will always sense check [an idea], and say, “Is this stupid, is there any point in doing this?’’’

Being family makes asking for, and receiving, those reality checks easier.

‘It’s trusting the other person to spot your weaknesses or your blind spots,’ says Kavi. ‘If I’m not thinking about something that Shamil’s concerned about, he’ll say, “You know what, I know you’re taking care of this, but just think about that.’’ And I’ll do the same to him, give him my five seconds. Growing up with that relationship together anyway makes you more aware of each other’s sensitivities. I think it’s an enormous benefit.’

‘We have quite different strengths and weaknesses,’ says Shamil. ‘I’m a bit more wacky and left-field, whereas Kavi is quite grounded.’

‘But I think we need that,’ adds Kavi. ‘You want both in what we do, because when you come here, hopefully you leave feeling a certain way; you feel looked after, and you’ve enjoyed yourself. Ultimately [that comes down to] the creativity that goes into the design and the story-telling and bringing it all together, but you also need to make sure the team have the structure they need around them to look after you.’

While their roles are now split fairly evenly between ‘left brain and right brain’, they were fairly ‘amorphous’ at the start, says Shamil. At that point, two other founders – brothers Adarsh and Amar Radia – were also involved in running the business.

‘We’ve got into a rhythm of working together much more closely,’ explains Shamil. The pair share an office close to Dishoom’s Shoreditch site with their senior management team. They are both heavily involved in the opening of each new restaurant, taking multiple trips to Bombay together to research the story behind a new location, and then sourcing furniture with their designers. ‘We go through archives and museums and look at architecture – we’ll surreptitiously take photographs of hinges and staircases – and then take these design

ideas and pull them into a very authentic environment,’ says Shamil.

They say most of their ideas, no matter how ridiculous, have been executed.

‘There were many restaurateurs who wouldn’t touch King’s Cross, because it was just too difficult a site,’ says Shamil (the restaurant is located in a former railway warehouse). ‘But Kavi had a mental idea, looked at me, and said, “Can we do this?’’’ The result: a floating mezzanine level which breaks up the space and, unusually, houses the kitchen.

Nowadays, Dishoom’s senior management team of five provides an additional sense check.

‘We’ve definitely come to a consensus once or twice,’ says Shamil. ‘And the team has said, “That’s crap. You shouldn’t do it.’’ And we’ve said, “Ok’’.’

‘I’m a bit more wacky and left-field, whereas Kavi is

quite grounded.’

1 DISHOOMShamil and Kavi Thakrar

Shamil and Kavi Thakrar are unlikely restaurant revolutionaries; prior to Dishoom, neither had any experience in hospitality. But with a shared fastidiousness and creative vision, the cousins have created an impressive dining machine.

Kavi Thakrar (left) and Shamil Thakrar (right)

8

2 FRAMEJoan Murphy and Pip Black

As Shoreditch fitness studio Frame has grown up, so too have the lives of its founders, Pip Black and Joan Murphy. With several sites, kids and employees to manage, they’ve had to become more structured in the way they work, and work together.

3 HARRY’SJeff Raider and Andy Katz-Mayfield

US razor startup Harry’s was founded by business school friends Jeff Raider and Andy Katz-Mayfield. They’ve borrowed tactics from Raider’s last company, glasses startup Warby Parker, and played to their different strengths; Raider is the more emotional of the pair, while Katz-Mayfield is more rational.

When the first Frame studio opened in 2009, Pip Black and Joan Murphy were involved in everything: sandblasting the walls of the ex-carpark, fixing the plumbing, managing the accounts. ‘We were really young, and had all the time in the world, so we both did everything,’ says Murphy who, like Black, was working in advertising, boozing hard and struggling to fit in serious sport when they met.

‘It was totally not time efficient,’ Murphy says of their hands-on approach. ‘But we got a lot of experience under our belts.’

Their roles are more defined now they have a 25-person full-time team and five sites to run – Murphy, ‘more handy’, covers construction, buildings, teachers and timetables, while Black,

Did carving up who does what fall into place immediately?

Jeff Raider: Because of my experience at Warby Parker, it was fitting that I would spend more time on brand and customers:

technology, customer experience, service, front

of house. Andy was more around operations: factory, supply chain,

research and product development.

Are there any areas where you work together more closely?

JR: We align on planning. He will push for timing, and there is a bit of back and forth. I trust him to make really good decisions to make product, and he trusts me to get products into customers’ hands. We’ve known each other so long, I know how Andy’s thought process is evolving, so we can be really efficient. I can get more done in 15 minutes with Andy than I can in an hour with someone else.

Give me an example of where the emotional/rational contrast manifests itself.

JR: I sometimes take negotiations more personally. Andy sees it more as sport.

AKM: He’s better at negotiation than he gives himself credit for. He likes to throw me in there! Jeff has very high emotional intelligence and he can identify and explain how people will be

impacted by a decision and what they will be thinking. He really helps me create awareness and deal with people and organisational stuff.

JR: Andy thinks and acts in a very clear and straightforward way.

AKM: Jeff’s positive spirit can lift me up, and encourage me to be more outspoken and bring energy to a situation. It’s been so important for us, especially in the early days when you’re living on optimism and spirit.

What about each other’s weaknesses?

JR: Andy likes to get information and make a call. I think sometimes you need to get into the weeds a bit more. That takes a lot of time and emotional energy.

AKM: I suppose for Jeff, it’s just the flip side of being an emotional guy. You know when he is very stressed out. I like to think I can be a calming influence.

What are the challenges of working so closely together?

AKM: Maintaining a friends’ relationship.

JR: It’s hard to get past Harry’s; it’s the baby we had together. It was the same at Warby Parker. The 10 minute walk from the Little League our kids went to would be a Warby Parker meeting.

Have you had any major disagreements?

JR: Andy was really up for international expansion, while I thought it was [too] early. But we did it, and I’m happy we did.

‘an in-detail person’, leads on marketing, brand and legals. They don’t have an office, and try to avoid sending too many emails. ‘We’re quite structured,’ says Murphy. ‘We have a weekly meeting, and if you’re working on something and want an answer we Whatsapp, because you don’t want to hold each other up.’

For specific projects, they allocate each other tasks. ‘That’s a really easy way of getting through lots of things,’ says Black. ‘There are so many different things going on – you have to divide and conquer.’

‘We work because we have full trust in each other. If the other person says they’re going to do it, they’re going to do it,’ says Murphy. ‘So you can plan forward and you can move quickly.’

Forced to focusOver the last three years, as three new sites have opened and both have taken time off for maternity leave, they’ve drawn back from most of the day-to-day running of the studios and put a senior management team in place. ‘It made us start going through a process of looking at where our skills were, and where we wanted to concentrate time,’ says Black.

‘You become a lot more focused, and question the superfluous stuff,’ adds Murphy.

However, the shared and in-depth knowledge

‘We were really young, and had all the time in

the world, so we both did everything.’

of all aspects of the business that they picked up in the early days has made it easier to cover each other’s roles when one is away.

‘Back six years ago, we couldn’t both go on holiday at the same time,’ says Black. ‘We’d even schedule a night off. Now, we could both be on maternity leave and it would continue to run.’

‘But we wouldn’t have the element of new, evolving, interesting stuff,’ she adds – like the pre- and post-natal classes and yoga teacher training course they’ve just launched. ‘When Joan was away, we still spoke once a week – but there were so many things I wanted to do, and I couldn’t get as many of them done without Joan there to keep pushing everything forward.’

Did you have the same vision for Harry’s?

Andy Katz-Mayfield: I called Jeff when I had this frustrating experience in a drugstore buying razors. A big difference [between us] at that point (and still to this day) is my mind went to ‘there is this big opportunity’ – Gillette is this evil overlord taking advantage of consumers and there is an opportunity to disrupt and provide better value. Jeff saw it from more of a consumer perspective: to build a brand that connects emotionally with guys.

Joan Murphy (left) and Pip Black (right)

9

COVER STORY

you. And what was hilarious, we both had our laptop screens open…

NB: And we’d be on the same Google Doc – ‘He’s chatting nonsense, please don’t even let it subliminally enter your mind…’

SB: Or, ‘Really good idea, love this guy’. And whenever one of us had that gut feeling, we both had it.

Were you in-sync even as kids?

NB: Interestingly, even though Selina’s seven years older than me, I assume the CEO position, while Selina takes care of the community, writers, on-boarding, marketing…

SB: The mother.

NB: And I think that stems from our personal relationship, because even growing up, I was the disciplinarian out of the two of us. And I think that has gone into Amaliah as well.

SB: I was that older sibling like, ‘Oh mum and dad have gone on holiday, shall we get our second ear pierced?’

NB: I don’t think we’ve ever felt like, ‘Why are you the CEO, why aren’t I the CEO?’ We know very clearly what our roles in the business are, and what we need to be doing. I think for some founders, that’s a very difficult thing. On the accelerator, there was a trip to America, and only one person from each team could go. Some of the teams hadn’t distinguished who was the CEO, and you could see there was real tension. But for us – Selina was eight months pregnant anyway…

SB: But it was a given [that Nafisa would go].

NB: I would hate to be doing the stuff Selina does… But that’s because she’s really good at community building, talking to people. She’s the funny one, the warm one.

I guess that’s why I’m good at building business relationships, because they don’t have to be intimate and personal.

SB: And as sisters, you’re cheering each other on. You’re each other’s fan girl.

Nafisa, you’re off to San Francisco for two weeks. How does it feel when you’re separated?

SB: It’s a bit emotional, actually.

NB: It is, and because Selina’s also talking at the Southbank Centre [while I’m away], I really want to be there and hear it. We want to be there to support each other.

And when we're communicating what we’re doing, it comes across better when there’s both of us. We have different perspectives, and we cover very different demographics. We’re almost like activists, and I think both of us in the room together is very compelling.

4 AMALIAHNafisa and Selina Bakkar

Last year, sisters Nafisa and Selina Bakkar founded Amaliah: a curated fashion site and community voice for Muslim women. Decades living together has made pitching and dividing business responsibilities easy.

Tell us more about being on the Ignite startup accelerator.

SB: You have to be very strong – as a team, as co-founders, as a company. Because you do see people crumble. We were a double act; you have to be able to command a room, and you have to have that synergy between you.

NB: People were really compelled by the fact that we were these two sisters on a mission. I would do the unveiling of the site, and the demo. Selina would do the speech about the community, and how the Muslim voice is really taking off.

SB: There were certain sentences you had to get in.

NB: It’s like speed dating, so you’re going to see 12 people, and you’ve literally got 20 minutes...

SB: And some people are going to chat shit to

Three founder fallouts:

Planet OrganicCo-founders Renée Elliott and Jonathan Dwek disagreed over how their food store should be run. As both were equal shareholders in the company, they got lawyers involved to end the dispute. After a 14-month court case, Elliott bought out Dwek for an undisclosed amount.

GoogleIn 2013, it emerged Sergey Brin was cheating on his wife with a Google Glass employee (who was the girlfriend of another Google

You’re sisters. How does that make working together different?

Selina Bakkar: We don’t have to over-explain things. It just kind of clicks. She’ll finish my sentences or say, ‘I’ve already had that idea’.

Nafisa Bakkar: And there are no pleasantries.

SB: The first three months, on the [Ignite] accelerator, were very intense. We were constantly messaging each other, voice noting each other – got this great idea, talked to this investor… That ease of communication, being available to each other all the time, has allowed us to move relatively quickly.

NB: Even when we’re at home, at family gatherings, we have to actively be like, ‘Don’t talk about work or everyone’s going to get pissed off with us’. Because it’s so easy...

SB: The barbecue!

NB: I was going to say that. Everyone was sitting around, talking about how Ramadan’s around the corner. And me and Selina looked at each other, and she was like, ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, content?’

You can’t help but have work blur into your personal lives.

executive). Brin’s co-founder Larry Page was reportedly so scandalised by the whole episode that the pair stopped talking. The two had been friends since their college days at Stanford.

Seenit Emily Forbes has lost two co-founders. She split with the first over the direction their production company should take. When she founded video collaboration tool Seenit in 2014, she hired a technical co-founder, Max Werner, to help build the site. He left a year later.

Selina Bakkar (left) and Nafisa Bakkar (right)

10

‘It’s normally quite high energy,’ one guy tells me. Looking around the half-empty room at Google Campus, I am unconvinced.

It’s 8.30pm on a Wednesday night. I’ve been sidling up to strangers with my best awkward party side-shuffle for an hour, and I’m yet to find anyone I really want to give my business card to, let alone start a company with. This, it seems, is founder dating.

Speed pitch Before the networking and sizing up can commence, I’ve had to sit

'A meat market for coders'When Courier’s senior reporter

went speed dating.

through a talk on branding and growing social media fans from a guy with 188 followers on Instagram. I then stayed firmly seated while about 20 others queued to brave the ‘speed pitch’; 30 seconds to sell yourself or your business idea, with time marshals armed with water guns ready to shoot down ramblers.

The event – ‘Hipsters, Hackers, Hustlers’ – is marketed as a way to find ‘co-founders or connections’. Yet it has all the trappings of a skin-shudderingly embarrassing team bonding session, albeit

without the teams or, it would seem, much bonding.

Developer demand The problem tonight appears, in part, to be the wildly varied businesses present. It feels like the evening could benefit from a more focused approach.

On stage, a pair hoping to start a ‘Shazam for fashion on TV’ are followed by the founder of a robotics seed fund and a woman with an idea for a dating app for people of African descent. There’s one dreadlocked man from the Netherlands on the hunt for female ‘impact philanthropists’, a politics app hopeful and a food delivery startup founder. If they have anything in common, it’s that the majority are looking for the same thing: a developer.

For richer,for poorer

For co-founder couples, pillow talk can be a professional minefield.

In the second ever issue of Courier, we talked to Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer, who were a year into their new London restaurant Honey and Co. ‘We do argue, but we just fight it out and move on,’ said Srulovich.

There are countless couples who wake up and work together, ricocheting between two emotionally-intense powder kegs. Hospitality, fashion and retail have the most examples: the Firmdale hotel, Lonely Planet, Mr and Mrs Smith; Prada, Clements Ribeiro, Preen; Toast, Tiger and Links of London, to name a few.

Most pairs echo Srulovich’s sentiment: personal and business disputes demand immediate resolutions by sheer necessity.

A barney over putting a red sock with the whites or blowing the budget on someone to run the Instagram account simply can’t linger

when home and work lives are entwined. To exacerbate matters, founders’ moods always weigh heavily among staff in a company, especially in a small one. Tension is palpable.

Separating work and playTaking time off is a recurring gripe for couple founders. It can become impossible to take a holiday together, and consequently shut down the business for that period. Maternity/paternity leave, weddings and honeymoons become even more complicated.

Couples fall into one of two camps on the subject of demarcating work and home. Many are evangelical about creating clear divisions; others say it’s impossible to choose strict ‘no work talk’ time.

Sonu and Eva Shivdasani are the husband-and-wife partners of the Soneva group of hotel resorts. Sonu says: ‘Eva would read emails in bed at midnight… and refer to what she was reading or [ask] questions. That clearly didn’t work.’ Since then the couple have established ‘clear boundaries’ around work and life but, Sonu says: ‘It’s difficult as Soneva is our passion. So we discuss things like design and concepts but not day-to-day working issues.’

In the book The Art of Marriage, Tom and Ruth Chapman – the pair behind the fashion retailer Matches – explain they have a similar rule. Tom says: ‘We don’t talk shop after 8pm

Essentially, it’s a meat market for coders. Here, people with ideas (‘hustlers’) hunt for people with the technical skills to build those ideas (‘hackers’). I’m just not convinced that this is the best place to catch a coder.

Decent developers are a rare and expensive commodity. They rarely have to apply for jobs, let alone attend meetups to hawk their skills – and many want to do more than simply build somebody else’s idea.

So what calibre of developer, then, would bother coming along? There wasn’t even any of the obligatory free booze or pizza.

‘You have to kind of separate the wheat from the chaff,’ says Rob, a startup founder who’s been to this event a handful of times and says he’s lucky if he meets one useful person each time. There was the one occasion when he got chatting to an ex-Google and Deep Mind developer. Tonight he’s had no such luck.

Yet every two weeks the show goes on. And it’s not the only way founders date in town. Practically every evening there’s a networking event where potential CEOs and CTOs awkwardly size each other up. Entrepreneur First, the London-based tech accelerator, is more upfront; it forces participants to buddy up to continue on its programme, and proudly match-made Magic Pony’s co-founders.

Clearly then, these arranged marriages can end happily ever after. But after my first brush with speed dating, I wouldn’t forget about the idea of forming companies with friends or tried and tested colleagues just yet.

otherwise I’ll be up all night worrying.’He adds that certain qualities – such as

‘noticing every little detail’ – that make Ruth an exceptional asset for the business ‘became hell as a wife’.

Fears for the futureInvestors can be nervous about backing couples who might split up, which demands confronting unromantic questions over what would happen to the business. Investors also tend to ask founder couples about their plans for children – invariably directing those questions at female founders.

Gender stereotyping extends to the roles the founders take – the assumption being that the creative founder will be female, the commercial founder male.

One half of adtech firm Unruly’s founding team, Sarah Wood, says she was once assumed to be attending a meeting as the PR officer, despite having been introduced as the CEO. Her partner Scott Button takes a more product-led role as co-CEO.

However they divide the roles, couples say the biggest advantage of working together is being able to reconcile their personal ambitions with the aims of the company. They may want to work on something forever, exit when they have a family or sail off into the sunset together.

11

COVER STORY

5 IT’S NICE THATAlex Bec and Will Hudson

University design blog-turned- media business It’s Nice That has just celebrated its 10th birthday. A decade in, founders Alex Bec and Will Hudson say their student friendship has morphed into something much stronger.

6 ECHOSai Lakshmi and Stephen Bourke

Sai Lakshmi and Stephen Bourke founded repeat prescription app Echo, in July 2015 – despite never having worked together before. A few ego clashes, two investment rounds and several hires later, they’ve found their roles.

‘It’s a funny old thing the relationship we have,’ says Will Hudson, who’s been running It’s Nice That with his university friend Alex Bec for 10 years. The days of voluntarily hanging out together at the weekends are long past; now there are kids, and the two live in different cities. Despite that, they often spend more time with each other than they do with their partners.

‘Are we best mates any more? Probably not,’ says Bec. ‘Do we have something completely different? Yes.’

Trust and autonomy While their roles have shifted over time, Bec has always managed the day-to-day running of the company – from events to client work. ‘What we’ve learnt is Will is good at starting a new thing; he’ll get his head down and not care if people really doubt it. Whereas that would derail me,’ says Bec. ‘What I like much more is analysing what we’re currently doing and going, “Have we made those things better?’’’

Each is entirely responsible for his area of the business. ‘A reason why it works and we run a successful business is that we trust that the other one is wholly invested in what we’re trying to do and where we’re going. It doesn’t require a daily check-in to go, “Right, what do

you do? Where did you get to on that thing?’’’ says Bec.

Hudson agrees: ‘You couldn't question what someone was doing – that would drive me insane.’

They have a regular 8.30am meeting on a Monday morning to run through what’s happening. ‘It’s a time we will make available for each other to chat, almost always in-person,’ says Hudson, who works remotely half the week. ‘It gives us an opportunity to have a

‘Are we best mates any more? Probably not. Do we have

something completely different? Yes.’

Before starting Echo, the two of you hadn’t worked together. How did you decide who took what role?

Stephen Bourke: When we started, it was a lot more contentious as to who did what – because we had less to do. The trivial stuff we argued about at the start…

Sai Lakshmi: Macs or PCs? That was a good one.

SB: Just so much bullshit. I look back at it now and I think, what the fuck were we wasting our time on?

I was the GM [at Lloyds online pharmacy], running my own thing. Sai was coming in with the vision, so there was a natural clash.

By the sheer fact of being a startup founder you have to have an ego. So there’s always going to be that friction. Difference is, can you wake up the day after you have a fight and come back into work and say, ‘Fuck it, we’re going to do this’?

When I saw Sai, I saw someone who was tenacious, a guy whose ambition and energy matched my own, and who wanted to get stuff done. I think that’s the main thing.

SL: I had a skill set that Stephen didn’t, and vice versa. It’s kind of like… The machine needs to turn and we’re the cogs that fit together. But you need to figure it out, it’s kind of like dating.

Now you’ve got a team of 21 and £1.8m in funding. What’s different, day-to-day?

SB: Now we have so much to do our roles are really quite fluid. We have support coming in, but sometimes things take a certain complex knowledge so it’s easier to just do them ourselves. We sweep up – we’re like the company’s janitors.

SL: We do whatever needs to be done. I do people, money and vision. Stephen’s in charge of customer experience – a combination of product and marketing.

SB: We talk every day of the week, Saturday and Sunday included, and hang out a lot both inside and outside of work. Sometimes we don’t say anything, just ‘uhh, I’m so tired’.

Now we don’t so much have different opinions, but we’re looking to each other for answers, because the questions are so big. We’re so busy with so many things that frankly you’re glad to have someone to take a decision.

SL: You have a problem, come up with a solution, go to the other person, say ‘what do you think?’ Most of the time, you do the logical thing, and the logical thing you agree on.

How much do you lean on advisers or speak to other founders?

SL: One of the best people I’ve ever worked with is our lead investor Ophelia Brown. She’s a fantastic sounding board. If she comes to the same conclusion as Stephen and I, that’s three people aligned going forward.

sounding board before anything get actioned,’ adds Bec. ‘There’s no agenda necessarily; we bring things we want to talk about.’

Having someone to check decisions with is invaluable, says Bec. ‘If we weren’t working together, I wouldn’t be quite sure of some of the decisions I was making. I slightly lose conviction.’

‘When [Will’s] on holiday, the thing I miss more than anything is just someone to go, “Am I being a complete dick about this?’’’ he adds.

Will Hudson (left) and Alex Bec (right)

Partner content: Courier + AirbnbPARTNER CONTENT: COURIER FOR BERLIN

In the second instalment of our sector-by-sector series on startups in Berlin, we take a look at the German capital’s fashion scene.

FOR MORE INFO VISIT: www.fashion-week-berlin.com

© P

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3: J

uerg

en H

olze

nleu

chte

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2,500fashion

companies

200,000visitors to Berlin

Fashion Week

£3.2bnAnnual turnover of

Berlin’s fashionindustry

Germany has generated more than its fair share of world-leading fashion designers and brands: Karl Lagerfeld, Jil Sander, Hugo Boss, Adidas and Puma are just a few of the fashion greats to emerge from the country.

But Berlin is where fashion truly rules. In the early 2000s, it hosted the fi rst Bread & Butter, Premium and Mercedez Benz Fashion Week trade shows. Today, Berlin’s bi-annual Fashion Week has expanded to include more than 10 trade and fashion show formats. Each season, Fashion Week is attended by more than 200,000 visitors, adding over £100m to the city’s economy.

Forget the fashion rulebookIt’s a rather unassuming fashion capital. Unlike Paris or Milan, fashion hubs synonymous with old-school haute couture and luxury, Berlin’s experimental approach to design is something startups are using to their advantage.

‘When you think of fashion in Berlin it’s more or less a white page,’ says Aymeric Malfait, who moved from Paris to Berlin earlier this year to join fashion-tech company Elektro Couture. ‘In Berlin, you can set new standards.’

Angela Spieth and Michael Oehler founded their fashion footwear brand Trippen in 1992. The Berlin-based company doesn’t replace its collections every season, keeping styles

available year-round. Its progressive designs have been a hit at home and abroad; the brand has collaborated with high-profi le designers like Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto.

‘The people in Berlin do not care too much about fashion itself – they like to follow unusual concepts of creativity,’ Oehler says. ‘Following the principle of “form follows function” in our work, it’s a great help being based in Berlin.’

Where fashion meets technologyGermany’s industrial heritage does shine through, however, where fashion and engineering collide.

Elektro Couture is one of many Berlin-based startups exploiting Germany’s manufacturing prowess. Its projects include luminescent outfi ts that react to sound, and vegan-leather fabrics. The company has turned to the city for artistic direction as well as tech know-how.

‘Berlin is a place that’s really bridged both worlds,’ Malfait explains. ‘When you bring [artists and engineers] together, it’s something completely new.’

Room to scaleThe merging of the fashion and tech worlds, the expats who have moved to Berlin to join them, and the vibrant nightlife where creatives and

entrepreneurs meet and relax are all things that demonstrate Berlin’s open-minded nature.

But it’s not enough to be surrounded by creative minds. Fashion startups need space to design and manufacture their creations, which Berlin can o¡ er at an a¡ ordable rate.

Herbert Hofmann, creative director of Voo Store and originally from Austria, moved to Berlin over nine years ago. Based in the city’s hip Kreuzberg district, the concept store stocks a curated selection of fashion, art and design brands.

He says Berlin’s cheap rents are what allow businesses to take risks on new concepts.

‘[In Berlin], you have a business idea and you just try it,’ Hofmann says. ‘In the beginning for Voo, to fi nd the furniture, pay the rent and all the necessary parts to actually run the shop, all these costs were so low.’

1

2

3

41 and 2. Voo Store in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. 3. Angela Spieth and Michael Oehler, founders of fashion footwear brand Trippen. 4. A light-up gown from Elektro Couture’s ‘#MarleneGlows’ collection, a collaboration with Swarovski.

The city with2,500 fashionbusinesses

1312

Partner content: Courier + AirbnbPARTNER CONTENT: COURIER FOR BERLIN

In the second instalment of our sector-by-sector series on startups in Berlin, we take a look at the German capital’s fashion scene.

FOR MORE INFO VISIT: www.fashion-week-berlin.com

© P

hoto

3: J

uerg

en H

olze

nleu

chte

r, O

tten

soos

2,500fashion

companies

200,000visitors to Berlin

Fashion Week

£3.2bnAnnual turnover of

Berlin’s fashionindustry

Germany has generated more than its fair share of world-leading fashion designers and brands: Karl Lagerfeld, Jil Sander, Hugo Boss, Adidas and Puma are just a few of the fashion greats to emerge from the country.

But Berlin is where fashion truly rules. In the early 2000s, it hosted the fi rst Bread & Butter, Premium and Mercedez Benz Fashion Week trade shows. Today, Berlin’s bi-annual Fashion Week has expanded to include more than 10 trade and fashion show formats. Each season, Fashion Week is attended by more than 200,000 visitors, adding over £100m to the city’s economy.

Forget the fashion rulebookIt’s a rather unassuming fashion capital. Unlike Paris or Milan, fashion hubs synonymous with old-school haute couture and luxury, Berlin’s experimental approach to design is something startups are using to their advantage.

‘When you think of fashion in Berlin it’s more or less a white page,’ says Aymeric Malfait, who moved from Paris to Berlin earlier this year to join fashion-tech company Elektro Couture. ‘In Berlin, you can set new standards.’

Angela Spieth and Michael Oehler founded their fashion footwear brand Trippen in 1992. The Berlin-based company doesn’t replace its collections every season, keeping styles

available year-round. Its progressive designs have been a hit at home and abroad; the brand has collaborated with high-profi le designers like Issey Miyake and Yohji Yamamoto.

‘The people in Berlin do not care too much about fashion itself – they like to follow unusual concepts of creativity,’ Oehler says. ‘Following the principle of “form follows function” in our work, it’s a great help being based in Berlin.’

Where fashion meets technologyGermany’s industrial heritage does shine through, however, where fashion and engineering collide.

Elektro Couture is one of many Berlin-based startups exploiting Germany’s manufacturing prowess. Its projects include luminescent outfi ts that react to sound, and vegan-leather fabrics. The company has turned to the city for artistic direction as well as tech know-how.

‘Berlin is a place that’s really bridged both worlds,’ Malfait explains. ‘When you bring [artists and engineers] together, it’s something completely new.’

Room to scaleThe merging of the fashion and tech worlds, the expats who have moved to Berlin to join them, and the vibrant nightlife where creatives and

entrepreneurs meet and relax are all things that demonstrate Berlin’s open-minded nature.

But it’s not enough to be surrounded by creative minds. Fashion startups need space to design and manufacture their creations, which Berlin can o� er at an a� ordable rate.

Herbert Hofmann, creative director of Voo Store and originally from Austria, moved to Berlin over nine years ago. Based in the city’s hip Kreuzberg district, the concept store stocks a curated selection of fashion, art and design brands.

He says Berlin’s cheap rents are what allow businesses to take risks on new concepts.

‘[In Berlin], you have a business idea and you just try it,’ Hofmann says. ‘In the beginning for Voo, to fi nd the furniture, pay the rent and all the necessary parts to actually run the shop, all these costs were so low.’

1

2

3

41 and 2. Voo Store in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district. 3. Angela Spieth and Michael Oehler, founders of fashion footwear brand Trippen. 4. A light-up gown from Elektro Couture’s ‘#MarleneGlows’ collection, a collaboration with Swarovski.

The city with2,500 fashionbusinesses

1313

labels from early on. Apple sits outside of this – music is just one thing Apple does.

CP: Spotify has an advantage in that they never had a service before. Apple struggles because it had iTunes. You'd think it’d be a strength because it already has everyone’s credit card details, but in reality it’s very clunky.Google seems to be held back by Youtube; it’s difficult for it to build a credible alternative it can charge people for.

Spotify continues to lose money, though.

BB: Right now they have to pay out such enormous sums to labels to get that competitive advantage over Soundcloud.

It feels we’re getting too good a deal, like we’re in a period of experimentation where we’ve got just such an extraordinary music discovery experience. Maybe that won’t survive long-term.

How have labels responded to streaming services?

CP: We’re here to make music, support artists and amplify their vision. I’m not in the retail game; I’ve got no interest. Labels will

continue to have a role as long as they’re the main people developing and backing new artists. I don’t think Apple or Spotify want to get into the market of developing acts. I think they want to be in the market of taking acts that are quite well developed already and buying them up. But I don't think they want to be down The Dublin Castle [pub] teaching a band how to play guitar.

How has the business of running a label changed in recent times?

CP: There’s a growing gulf between the majors and the indies. Going back 15, 20 years, if you wanted to be a recorded artist you’d have to

Courier: It seems the constant gloom surrounding the music industry might be changing (see box). Is this a picture you recognise?

Caius Pawson: Streaming this year finally overtook downloads – we’re about to hit a golden period of recorded music. I'm feeling very optimistic about the situation. Having said that, I got into the industry 13 years ago, so I’ve seen 12 straight years of decline.

Tom Mansbridge: When you benchmark it, this is the year of success; we’re seeing the consolidation of what technology has done to the music industry.

Blaise Bellville: There’s more music being made, more different types, and a far larger audience for each of those types globally than there has even been. Someone told me MTV had an audience of 80 million at its peak. Now billions of people consume and watch music.

To what extent has the industry resisted new technology?

BB: With the birth of the MP3 it went from being a very controlled, well-distributed, monetised ecosystem to falling wildly out of control.

TM: Technology was generally seen as a threat. Streaming is something that’s come off the

back of labels feeling they have to be more open with technology. They can’t slow it down; they have to be part of that future instead of trying to stop it.

I don’t think fans ever saw it as the enemy. Technology has radically changed the relationship between fans and labels – the fan has the power now.

How does money move around in streaming?

CP: It’s similar to how it was before. But let’s say you sold a CD before for £10, £4 went to the label and 20% of that went to the artist; those are big chunks of money at the beginning of your career. Now, although there’s a long tail, payments are considerably lower.

Labels love Spotify because their entire catalogue gets revived. All those Steely Dan records that Warner Bros have are suddenly making far more money than they were before.

But young artists and small labels depend on that cash injection. The majors quite quickly worked out how much money they were going to make, but small independents fought against it because they rely on the cash flow.

Are these economics fair?

CP: Every artist has a different deal with their label. If you’re small, you're not going to be making very much money. But

Full stream ahead for the music business 2016 was recently revealed to have been the best year for the music industry in nearly two decades. At Spiritland in King’s Cross, Courier talked streaming, live events and brand money with three people celebrating the news: Blaise Bellville (Boiler Room), Caius Pawson (Young Turks) and Tom Mansbridge (Lost Music).

CAIUS PAWSON

YOUNG TURKSIn 2006, Pawson founded record label Young Turks as an imprint of XL Records. The label’s big break came in 2007 when it signed The xx – the band went on to sell more than three million copies of their first two albums.

TOM MANSBRID GE

LOST MUSICMansbridge co-founded Lost in 2016, after 15 years working at ad agencies for clients like Adidas, Sony and Universal Pictures. The app aims to streamline the music listening experience – from discovery to streaming to booking live event tickets.

BL AISE BELLVILLE

BOILER RO OMBellville started broadcasting club nights live on the internet in 2010, allowing people to experience a rave in Warsaw in their room. Boiler Room now reaches over 72 million people a month and broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of content a year.

you probably weren't making much money before. Where it gets dodgy is when the labels have non-disclosure agreements on the deals they do with the streaming partners.

TM: It seems the conversation is more around the relationship between the label and the artist

rather than between Spotify and the labels. Universal have just renegotiated with Spotify, and managed to get a good deal [where artists can release music to premium users first, allowing them to make more money]. It does feel like it’s going in a fair direction, empowering the artists.

How do the different streaming services – Apple Music, Spotify, Soundcloud and the rest – compare?

TM: They’ve all built their businesses in different ways. Soundcloud built a huge customer base and then started working with the labels. Spotify involved the

COURIER TALKS

Malaysian dubstep brought to you by British American Tobacco? -CAIUS PAWSON

14

either learn how to play an instrument or sing, then you’d have to work out how to record your music before the label could find you. Now all you need is access to [Apple’s music software] Garage Band.

It means artists are being exposed to the public at a much earlier stage, not as developed as they were before. The majors aren't really interested in acts who haven’t developed themselves, so there’s a space for the indies to come in and develop acts.

BB: This is an extreme hypothetical, but if you took back catalogues away from labels, they would serve very little role beyond providing support for musicians to develop. So the labels doing well, the ones you’d invest in, would be the ones being innovative and playing a genuine role in artist development. Like Young Turks, with how they position artists and the distribution, you’re a much more bespoke package.

If you took back catalogues away it would expose the majors’ value to artists, which I think seems fairly minimal.

CP: There will be some artists who don’t need labels. But not many. The main reason that people go with labels isn’t just the money or the fact they’ve got a big catalogue, it’s because you want to build relationships with people who might help further your career. That could mean anything from artistic development to working on the music, the marketing, the promotions. It’s different for each artist, and according to the stage they're at in their career. What established artists need compared to what they needed on their first

record is completely different.My advice to artists would be to

find a great team. It doesn’t have to be a label, but it can be.

Let’s look at live music. The hypothesis is that live used to be about promotion, and listening was the product. Now, that’s been inverted. To what extent is that true?

CP: The live industry is much bigger than the recorded music industry and has been for a long time. It’s easier to discover information about artists, and people’s connection to artists is stronger. So there’s more of an appetite for live experiences.

If someone can find a way of digitising that experience, then there’ll be a crash.

To be honest, I thought the live industry could have died after Boiler Room (see profile).

BB: We always get journalists asking, has Boiler Room replaced the live experience? But when DJs talk about why they value Boiler Room, they’ll always say, ‘I got bookings in countries I wasn’t being booked in at the time’. Like Caius said, it’s piquing people's interest.

From an outsider’s point of view, it seems like a lot of money coming into music at the moment is brand money. Is there a conflict of interest there?

TM: Brands have always been involved in music. Things have come a long way in terms of matching the right type of brand with the right type of artist. If the brand is appropriate those partnerships can work.

BB: Sometimes it’s a dud and you’re just taking the money to do the thing you want to do, and sometimes you’re smart and the brand is smart, and you invest it back into something that’s actually of value. I'd say we’ve probably had about a 50/50 success rate with our brand partnerships.

CP: We’re at an interesting juncture. Kids aren’t really watching TV or reading magazines, so you’ve got to reach them in another way. Music has always been something young people are interested in.

I don’t think something like Boiler Room would have been possible 10 years ago, not just in terms of the technology but because of where brands were with spending money.

BB: A lot of the time when we talk about this we’re being really idealistic. We work with a lot of brands that artists, musicians and fans wouldn’t touch with a barge pole until they’ve been endorsed by Boiler Room or a credible artist. CP: Malaysian dubstep brought to you by British American Tobacco?

Imagine. Seriously though, have you seen any real examples of terrible collaborations?

BB: Mixmag did a partnership with HSBC last year, where they were sponsoring a golf tournament. They had DJs playing with a HSBC banner behind them. On a golf course. It was just nonsense.

This is a condensed and edited version of a conversation that took place on 3 May 2017.

Left to right: Blaise Bellville, Tom Mansbridge, Caius Pawson, Courier's editor Soheb Panja

Why 2016 could mark the year streaming saved music

For the past two decades, the music industry has endured sustained decline. Labels have tried and failed to protect their traditional sources of income and pursued legal battles as downloads, then streaming, became the norm for how people consumed music.

Yet things appear to have turned a corner last year.

For the first time in 19 years, the world’s music industry saw its income grow in 2016. Sales rose by £850m, 7% year-on-year. Music was worth £12.4bn.

Half of that total came from streaming; a medium which not that long ago was considered the mortal enemy of the music business.Investors in Spotify are nevertheless still holding out for the company to turn a profit; the dominant streaming company lost £133m in 2015.

Digital downloads meanwhile fell by 20%. Peer-to-peer file sharing was once the music industry's bugbear, but MP3 is now widely assumed to be a moribund format.

15

The push for personalisation

Bespoke isn’talways best

‘You liked that, so you’ll probably like this’ has become the modern day sales pitch. The films we watch, the music we listen to,

and the stuff we buy is increasingly funnelled through some kind of recommendation filter.

Recommendation of this sort is being heralded as the stepping stone to something much bigger: personalisation. It spans everything from suggesting products to letting people design the thing they’re about to buy.

This sweep of personalisation has been a buzzy business theme in the last few years. It’s not yet clear, however, that personalised always means better.

Lots of startups, in particular, are attempting to usher in this new era. On the surface, it makes sense to personalise some things. Others less so.

Production to customisationIn fashion, Grabble, Trunk Club and Stitch Fix offer punters customised selections of clothes by filtering their body shape, style and, of course, previous purchases. Meanwhile, Mon Purse, Myswear and Unmade give people the chance to contribute to the making part: customising the colour or material of bags, shoes or jumpers.

The cosmetics startup Functions of Beauty is offering 12 billion unique shampoo combinations, while supplement seller VITL promises to post its customers vitamins that are perfectly calibrated to their seemingly unique profile.

Vita Mojo does personalised lunches. It adjusts ingredients around a person’s weight and gender and whether they are looking to bulk up, lose weight, or train for a triathlon, for example.

Founder Nick Popovici wants to sell Vita Mojo’s software to other restaurants. He says it moves food ‘from mass production to mass customisation’.

He points to what he believes is a broader shift: ‘The millennial wants customised things: not a newspaper but their [own] newsfeed; their own trip, rather than a packaged holiday.’

GimmickryThis may well be true, but it’s worth noting companies have a bad record in trumpeting ‘structural changes’ in consumer behaviour which later transpire to be fads. A lot of Fitbits are certainly collecting dust. Companies also tend to mistakenly place a remarkable amount of faith in how much thought customers put into the stuff they buy.

As things currently stand, the need for personalisation in most categories (except perhaps health) isn’t particularly persuasive. It’s hard to see anything but gimmickry in many of the products being touted as game-changers: just how much better are they than the tried and tested shampoos, snacks and shoes already on the shelf?

In lots of areas, people like buying something because it’s cheap (the scale advantage mass production has makes the case for personalisation hard), or well-designed (deferring to the talent of the designer). Even recommendation sometimes falls down; our choices aren’t always so predictable or algorithmically determined.

God’s eye viewIn fact, it’s hard not to see the push for personalisation as a Trojan Horse designed to mine what is often deeply

personal consumer data. The Economist recently billed data as the

most potent commercial commodity in the world today; dubbing it the new oil. Companies, it pointed out, can accrue a ‘god’s eye view’ in what is rapidly becoming a data-driven economy.

An early pioneer was Dunnhumby, a company set up by a west London husband-and-wife team back in pre-internet 1989. The founders extracted vast amounts of information about customers on behalf of their clients and were the architects of the loyalty card. In one of the couple’s early meetings with Tesco, which became their biggest client and ultimately bought them out, then Tesco chairman Lord MacLaurin said: ‘What scares me about this is that you know more about my customers after three months than I know after 30 years.’

Popularising personalisationToday, there’s an entire industry claiming that the data-for-bespoke product or service exchange is a fair one. A retail research company, iVend, put out a report in January this year which claimed ‘18% of UK shoppers wanted retailers to leverage online data to provide a more tailored in-store experience, while 71% said they would happily share their purchasing history with a retailer if it meant they would receive a more customised experience’.

Many companies and analysts are eager to push the view that personalisation is the future. Yet beyond issues of privacy, the personalisation industry needs to convince more of us that there is inherent value in bespoke. So far, it’s offered little more than a sticker with your name on a jar of Nutella.

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LEADER

16

COMMENT

The intern equationYoung companies are desperate for talent and smart students are itching to roll their sleeves up and get experience in the real world. It should be a dream match, so why do so many interns wind up making coffee and tidying cupboards at startups?

GEORGE JOHNSTON ON MANAGING INTERNS

‘You have to support interns beyond just giving them enough work to do’

ALEC DUDSON ON THE IMPORTANCE OF PAY

‘Don’t shut out people who can’t afford to become part of your project’

We’ve been taking on interns for three years, but only in the last two have we been serious about providing a structured programme for them.

That first year, we didn’t realise quite how much support interns required. We were just two founders trying to run the company – it was too much of an ask.

We’ve since hired several associates and they manage the interns. It’s a lot better; the interns get to do more and, in turn, they are an invaluable support.

We focused on three key areas to improve our intern experience.

1. Set goals What are interns going to get out of their time with you? Tech City Ventures is a network of companies, all at different growth stages, so our interns get a lot of insight into what it takes to run a business.

A stunted economy and breakdown of traditional industries birthed not only the era of startup, but the proliferation of unpaid internships.

Taking on unpaid workers is a tempting strategy. The idea of someone being so into what you’re doing – or so desperate for experience – that they’re willing to gift time and skills is particularly seductive for businesses starting out or growing apace.

Along with the pressure to make a company profitable by any means possible, if a few middle-class kids work for free along the way no-one gets hurt. Right?

Considering how expensive and difficult good recruitment is, it surprises me that so few companies take a long-term view when working with new talent, even interns.

Bringing an unpaid intern into the workplace

DANIELLE GOFF ON WHAT INTERNS WANT

‘Don’t treat interns like interns’I’m studying Theatre, Film and Television Studies at Brunel University. As part of my degree, we’re encouraged to intern, and my most recent placement was at Frugl, an events discovery app.

Even though I was an intern, I wasn’t treated like one; it’s something more companies should do.

It’s frustrating to be seen as a youngster who doesn’t have the experience to get stuck in. If a company has selected someone it thinks is a good candidate, it should treat them like another employee.

It will give the intern the tools to succeed after graduating, and the company will get more out of them as well.

Interns should be paid, too. I come from a working class background and, fortunately, Brunel provides grants for student interns; I couldn’t have given up two months of my time for free.

The right environmentI previously did work experience at a much bigger company, the Polka children’s theatre, based in Wimbledon.

Polka does everything in house, so I was able to experience most aspects of the business, from production to set building, but I was only picking up little bits of what they were doing.

As a startup with just two founders – Tikiri Hulugalle and Suzanne Noble – Frugl was a totally different environment.

Working with the people who actually founded the company and put their money, time and energy into it made me feel passionate about the project.

It was a lot better than hopping between departments each day

Internship vs ownershipI worked intensely with Suzanne, helping film videos for the website’s relaunch. She had a list of places she wanted me to film, and let me deal with everything. When I filmed at the Covent Garden Comedy Club, I arranged my own filming permits and negotiated with the venue’s management. I’d also go out looking for shoot locations, and did some photography work for the website. It was much more exposure than you’d get at ITV or Warner Bros, where you’re typically one of a crowd of interns who are all on week-long placements.

I also got to do things that were outside of my role as a videographer, like working on Frugl’s social media. I use social media in my personal life, but it was a new experience doing it professionally.

Staying in touchSuzanne has become like a mentor to me. We’ve stayed in touch since I finished my internship last summer.

She’s worked for Channel 4, Warner Bros and Universal, and working one-on-one with her gave me a lot of insight into the industry that I can take away and use in my studies and hopefully my future career. She’s also been able to help me find more work through her other projects; I recently did some filming for her online magazine, Advantages of Age.

Danielle Goff studies Theatre and Film and Television Studies at Brunel University.

We set out key goals for our interns so they know what they’ll achieve in the three months they’re with us. It helps them see their progress and for us, if there’s an opportunity to hire, it’s easier to evaluate them.

We also found that allocating interns to projects, rather than vague roles like marketing or sales, helps them to do more productive work.

2. Social responsibilityThere’s a moral obligation to support interns beyond just making sure they’ve got enough work to do.

Have they just moved to London? Do they have accommodation? You need to have that conversation with them – you don’t want a situation where an intern suddenly has to leave because they don’t have a sofa to crash on anymore.

A proper welcoming process where you cover these things off, as well as

the basics such as setting them up with a desk and an email, is essential. Make sure they’re invited to any social events, too.

3. Money mattersFinally, there’s the question of pay. When we started taking on interns we could only pay expenses, although we were transparent about this with them from the start. As we’ve grown, we’ve increased our offer to a salary of £1,000 a month, plus expenses.

Then there’s the technical bit: tax. Are you going to take on interns as contractors, freelancers, or short-term employees? In most cases our interns are contractors, so we teach them how to do an invoice and what their tax obligations are.

George Johnston is founder and CEO of Tech City Ventures, a startup organisation network.

and training them up, only for them to inevitably leave when they find a pay cheque elsewhere, does nothing for company morale, reputation or productivity.

Recruiting carefully, teaching someone all about your business and providing the conditions (financial and otherwise) for them to grow can produce skilled, loyal and tremendously valuable team members who will rise to the challenge when the company scales. If there’s no budget for a full-time living wage, it’s better to take someone on part-time and make it possible for them to stick around and be part of what you do.

Unpaid internships stymie diversity, too. To my dismay, the moral argument for a diverse workforce doesn’t get through to many businesses and the individuals behind them.

Scott E. Page, a University of Michigan

professor, used a computer simulation to show how diversity and productivity go hand in hand. He set two test groups the same series of mathematical problems: one consisting of highly competent yet similar problem solvers; the other with varying levels of ability.

While the homogenous group got stuck at similar parts of the problem, the diverse group found solutions faster by using different approaches. For businesses, faster and smarter solutions typically equate to more revenue. Diverse teams are vital for achieving sustainability and growth; taking on unpaid workers will limit you.

Don’t create a homogeneous workforce, and don’t shut out people who can’t afford to become part of your project.

Alec Dudson is editor of Intern magazine.

17

WORKSHOPWORKSHOPWORKSHOP

Break was reported to have a £700m price tag.

Two-station chainFor Westmorland Family, the company behind Gloucester Services, the foray into roadside retail started in 1972 with its first project, Tebay Services in the Lake District. When the family learnt the M5 was going to be built straight through their Cumbrian farm they put in a bid to run the service station.

It featured a farm shop with fresh baked goods and a small cafe. Then, four decades after opening Tebay, Gloucester Services became the company’s second outpost.

Last year Westmorland Family brought in £92m in sales and profit

Future forecourtSERVICE STATIONS SHIFTING FO CUS

Retail has become a cash cow for motorway service stations. Westmorland Family brought in £92m last year from just two outlets thanks to posh sausage rolls.

of £6m. Over eight million people came through its doors.

Sarah Dunning, CEO of Westmorland Family, says the goal is to be the ‘stoppers’ choice’, meaning that drivers actively seek out a stop at Gloucester Services.

Another petrol station, Parkfoot Spar in West Malling, Kent, has spent the past four years also bringing food to the forefront of its business. Owner David Charman estimates that less than 30% of his customers buy fuel when they visit.

Wealthy village peopleBoth Parkfoot and Gloucester Services have benefited from being located in affluent areas. King’s Hill and Painswick – a stone’s throw from Parkfoot and Gloucester Services respectively – are two of the wealthiest villages in the UK.

The emergence of service stations as places people come to shop has further potential.

‘Our shop is our key profit earner, and it’s the reason why people choose to come to us,’ Charman explains. ‘Ten years ago, virtually no [filling] sites in the country could claim that.’

About 30 miles north of Bristol along the M5, there’s an artisan petrol station.

Gloucester Services houses an on-site butchers where people pre-order meat, stating whether they’ll be travelling north or south. Many don’t even stop for petrol.

The side of the M5 might seem an incongruous place to sell the kind of fare normally found in a village farmers’ market. But black pudding scotch eggs, wild boar sausage rolls and cheeses from the Cotswolds’ finest producers have been selling in strong numbers alongside petrol since it opened in 2014. There’s not an arcade machine or a KFC in sight.

Retail fuelling growthGloucester Services has been referred to as a noteworthy example of how petrol stations could well be an emerging format for retail.

More fuel-efficient cars and higher forecourt rents have squeezed the business of selling petrol, especially in cities (see box).

Meanwhile, motorway service stations are thriving. UK operators Moto, Road Chef, and Welcome Break have grown by partnering with the likes of Burger King and WHSmith.

This year, Pizza Express announced it would open its first motorwayside restaurant at a service station near Oxford.

Back in February, Welcome

• Forecourt rents have soared, increasing on average by more than 50% in the last six years. Most stations make just a 7% profit on petrol sales.

• Meanwhile, fuel-efficient cars and supermarkets opening their own petrol stations have created more competition.

• It’s led to a wholesale closure of petrol stations. In the past 50 years more than half of British petrol stations have closed. Last year, Shell, Esso and BP sold 1,085 stations between them.

• The Petrol Retail Association says food is where the future lies, accounting for more than 10% of annual revenue growth last year.

INSIGHT

The Cineroleum Clerkenwell

A design collective’s 2010 architectural experiment to turn a derelict petrol station into a pop-up cinema.

The Filling Station King’s Cross

A placeholder during the King’s Cross redevelopment, serving a US diner-style menu instead of fuel.

The Residence SE5 Camberwell

A slick redevelopment of nine flats, on the site of a former petrol station in south-east London.

No 27 Limerick

This abandoned site was repainted with bright colours in 2014, inspired by pop artist Ed Ruscha.

Pump Shoreditch

A former Texaco petrol station has been transformed into a street food market on Shoreditch High Street.

Flower Station Marylebone

The forecourt of this ex-petrol station has been a flower shop since 2001.

Petrol station transformationsMotorway services are doing well, but city petrol stations are struggling. Some ex-forecourts have had unusual facelifts.

18

Dealing with a PR disasterEYE OF THE T WIT TERSTORM

Just after it opened in Hackney, owners of The Bonneville feared they’d lose everything over an insensitive tweet.

Jack Sheldon has a talent for finding the cheapest flights. Thousands of his newsletter subscribers would attest he’s better at it than even famous sites like Skyscanner and Expedia.

Sheldon is a private travel agent: all he needs for work is a laptop and his geeky insider know-how concerning every aspect of how

1 Regroup.

‘Find out exactly what’s happened, how it happened and what the current state of play is online. Gather staff and make it clear what’s OK to communicate and what’s not.’

2 Act first.

‘Get your apology out before the media goes to press so you have a voice and don’t look disorganised. Keep it sincere, simple, and never try to excuse your actions; it will only feed the fire.’

3 Respond carefully.

‘Keep responses brief. The longer you make them, the more opportunities there are for people to pick holes. [Refer] people who are being particularly vocal back to your statement.’

4 Keep it in perspective.

‘On social media a storm can blow over as quickly as it blows up. People are quite forgiving of human behaviour if things are dealt with in the right way.’

‘DON’T FEED THE FIRE’

Samantha Phillips, co-founder of Catch Communications, on how to cope with a social media storm.

Three months in, nearly 3,000 people had subscribed through word-of-mouth. Promoting his newsletter on Reddit gave it another boost; his AMA (‘Ask Me Anything’) generated 42,000 more subscribers.

Could he turn this popular email into a moneymaker?

Sheldon considered several ways to monetise his newsletter: a total paywall felt too aggressive and likely to alienate people, while ‘affiliate links’, where Sheldon would take a cut on bookings, seemed antithetical to the idea of finding cheap flights. He settled on a ‘freemium’ model. For £35 a year, users could opt in to receive

Sheldon ensured an attractive product was still free, while affording sufficient additional value to people who pay.

INSIGHT

In the summer of 2014, another cocktail bar opened in Hackney. It shouldn’t have been anything newsworthy or remarkable.

But, on its opening weekend, a man stumbled into the bar after being stabbed nearby. It was a stark reminder that the nickname ‘Murder Mile’ was still a valid one in gentrifying Lower Clapton.

The founder of The Bonneville, Ruairi Gilles, says he attended to the stabbed man, called for an ambulance and waited for the police to take statements. He asked one of his staff to tweet

that the bar would be closed that evening.

The tweet read: ‘#CSIClapton due to events on Lower Clapton Road this evening, we will unfortunately have to close #WelcometoHackney’. It was accompanied with a picture of the bloodied floor.

A Twitter storm ensued, attacking The Bonneville’s seemingly insensitive attitude. ‘Boycott @BonnevilleE5,’ one Twitter user wrote. The Daily Mail and Evening Standard piled in and amplified the outrage. Residents

organised a street protest. When Gilles spoke up and attempted to explain what had happened, he was met with accusations that he was ‘victim blaming’.

‘I thought we were done for,’ Gilles says.

But he decided to ‘ride out the storm’. He stopped responding to the tweets and instead approached Hackney residents in an attempt to win them over with pleas that he had ‘put [his] heart and soul into this place’.

His advice is to prioritise local relationships: ‘People who live 200 miles away jumping on the bandwagon don’t matter.’

But The Bonneville still hasn’t fully shaken off the damage from three years ago. ‘Some evenings I’ll stand outside and hear someone say, “Oh no, that’s the Twitter place”,’ he says.

Sheldon’s flight alerts on a more regular basis. Non-paying users would still receive semi-regular flight updates.

His 165,000 original subscribers were offered a £10 discount. Of these, he says 25,000 signed up – generating £625,000 in one hit. The challenge will be keeping up momentum now these users are paid up for the year.

airlines price their flights. In September 2016, Sheldon

spent £30 on setting up Jack’s Flight Club. It was nothing more than a newsletter containing cheap air fares – a simple service that he thought could strike a chord with some of the 40 million-plus people that search for flights on Skyscanner each month.

Money-making newsletter HOW TO START CHARGING

Turning a digital hobby into a money-making business has flummoxed many. Jack’s Flight Club has made it work by offering paid-for supplements on top of a free service.

19

WORKSHOP

Ditching the dreaded chatbots GENER ATING ONLINE SALES

Ace and Tate’s flirtation with Facebook, Snapchat and Skype is emblematic of how companies everywhere are turning to social media for customer service and sales.

Even experienced business people can be energised by the prospect of being part of a startup.

INSIGHT

The benefits and limitations of chatbots are a major talking point in retail.

→ SAME OLD SERVICERetailers have been using rudimentary artificial intelligence software to replicate the kind of human interactions that people are used to having over the phone to a call centre.

Facebook in particular has been shouting about how chatbots are a game-changer for customer service, and is already integrating them into its messenger platform.

Companies including Sephora and H&M are using bots through apps like Kik.

However, many believe it’s impossible to replace humans with bots for anything other than the most menial enquiries.

→ TOP OF THE BOTSOne company that’s come up with a mixed approach is Hero. Its founder Adam Levene has created a website plugin which allows customers browsing a site to speak to real-life shop assistants.

Rather than the customer receiving a text response, it enables engagement with a sales assistant on the shop floor over video call.

Levene argues that for big-ticket products like furniture or jewellery, customers want more information before making purchases, and shop assistants who are often standing idle in empty shops can be put to use helping close sales over the web.

Having launched in September 2016, the company’s challenge will be adapting consumer behaviour fast so the shops that have started using Hero see continued value in subscribing to the service.

Will chatbots take over customer service?

Selling glasses in shops isn’t easy. People get overwhelmed by the choice, and frustrated by trying on lots of frames. Doing it online is even harder.

Amsterdam-based Ace and Tate has thrown the digital kitchen sink at trying to leapfrog the hurdles that selling spectacles through the internet presents.

Skype adviceFounder Mark de Lange initially hired someone with a background in social networking to take charge of the shopping process.

What started off with the team simply replying to messages over Facebook has since grown into a range of options, including to interact over WhatsApp, schedule a style consultancy on Skype or get

Luckily, a chance encounter put him in touch with a man who had the answers and who Walker would later convince to become his unofficial chairman. Since last December, Chris Copestake, founder of a big soup and sauce manufacturer, has been informally advising Walker on his business.

feedback on mailed-out frames over Snapchat.

Retailers everywhere are experimenting with social channels and chat mechanisms to create a social following, persuade customers to buy, and minimise the hassle and expense of returns.

Middle groundFacebook, Instagram and Snap are all trying to develop new tools to help retailers, despite the fact just 1.5% of online sales came from social media last year.

De Lange says around 20% of online customers ask questions and seek out style advice through Ace and Tate’s social channels. He recruited heavily in customer experience early on, noticing a jump in loyalty and purchasing from those that discussed their style and frame choices with a professional.

Warby Parker effectSpectacles startups have been among the most experimental in driving their efforts online. The most famous among them, Warby Parker, grew in popularity thanks to a scheme that sent customers lots of frames to try on at home for free. The company has continued to invest heavily in Facebook, which founder David Gilboa has described as its most effective tool for hooking customers.

It’s a scheme Ace and Tate has replicated. De Lange is banking on the ‘try before you buy’ mail-out format to lead a push into the UK. Unlike in the other European capitals where Ace and Tate has established itself since its founding in 2013, the company isn’t opening a shop in London right away. ‘It’s a middle ground; not completely online, not completely offline,’ he says.

The wisdom of strangers ASKING FOR HELP

With no experience in the food and drinks industry, Tea Rex’s founder landed a veteranto help get his tea brand off the ground.

‘Within 48 hours [of his involvement], he’d opened up one of England’s biggest ginger importers to us,’ says

Walker. ‘He put us in touch with a factory we would never otherwise have found or got

access to.’ Copestake also recommended

Walker quote suppliers much shorter lead times than necessary so Tea Rex could batch produce sachets, and has given hours of his time advising on the finer points of manufacturing fresh products with a long shelf life. ‘It’s obvious stuff when you say it out loud,’ admits Walker. ‘But it’s not stuff I’d got my head around.’

Walker has tried to find others like Copestake to help him. He’s been relying on goodwill and ‘gentlemen’s agreements’ with a photographer, an ex-buyer from Waitrose, an investor, printer and nutritionist, who have given their time and services now for reward in the future when Tea Rex raises investment. ‘I’ve created a vision,’ says Walker. ‘I know exactly what I want out of people, and I’m incredibly specific.’

Like many a startup founder, Andrew Walker was left scratching his head when it came to several technical aspects of launching his fruit tea startup.

How to get stocked in a supermarket? What’s the right price? What’s the distributor’s cut? Questions about production and marketing kept occurring to him.

Mark de Lange’s engagement insights:1 Keep it human. ‘Avoid the

temptation to use bots for Facebook chat.’

2 Focus on one or two channels. ‘Don’t go across the board from the get-go.’

3 Don’t force it. ‘The beauty of online shopping is giving people the choice of interacting or not.’

20

Pound of the underground ADVERTISING

They’re unsophisticated, untargeted and seriously old school: so why do London’s tech startups still love tube advertising? Strange as it may seem in the age of Facebook and Google ads, a growing number of London startups are turning to tube advertising to attract new customers and help their brands stand out from the masses.

‘The tube cuts through the noise,’ says Tom Cavill, co-founder of property Isa firm Brick Lane, which first tried its luck with the underground’s users (up to 4.8 million of them per day) in January this year. ‘Other ad formats are thirsty for your attention.’

Companies can be reluctant to advertise on London’s underground as it’s sometimes associated with trashy brands and ugly adverts.

But Cavill believes that commuters are a relatively captive audience. They’re looking for distraction, rather than trying to avoid it.

Facebook: loud and expensive‘With other areas of advertising, like Facebook, you have to think about how to dress an ad up as something other than an ad. With the tube, people almost want to be entertained,’ says Cavill.

But advertising on the tube isn’t just a way to catch commuters’ eyes and distinguish a brand. It’s also a means of future-proofing against Facebook and Google’s 99% share of the digital ad market.

Personalised children’s book publisher Lost My Name has been experimenting with advertising channels in the US, from TV campaigns to podcasts, for some time. ‘Last year, one of our biggest pushes was to diversify our marketing,’ explains head of marketing Anne Thouas. ‘We’re

pretty Facebook-dependent, but it’s only going to get more expensive. It’s added two million more advertisers year-on-year.’

Over 60 million businesses now advertise via Facebook users’ news feeds. In the last few months of 2016, the average cost per Facebook ad click in the UK was 21p, while the cost per app install was £4.33 – more than double the cost in the US. Thouas is also convinced that, after three years, it’s getting harder for Lost My Name to reach new customers through Facebook.

Experimental advertisingLost My Name trialled its first tube campaign before Christmas 2015, after noticing several other startups advertising on the tube – Hello Fresh, Dog Buddy, Swoon Editions among them – and asking them for feedback. It ran a second set of 2,200 ads inside tube carriages for two weeks in March this year.

‘You don’t want to make eye contact with anybody, so you end up looking around,’ says Thouas. ‘Ads are memorable in the tube.’

Exterion, the media agency responsible for selling TfL’s ad space, says the majority of its clients come through word-of-mouth referrals. ‘The startup world is a small one,’ notes Killian Barrins, who heads up Exterion’s ventures arm, which was set up in 2015.

To encourage consumer-facing startups with limited marketing budgets to dip into tube ads, Exterion offers various payment deals, from a share in revenue, to

a percentage per app download, for example. One of its longest-running advertisers is Made.com, which has seen a 50% increase in sales year-on-year, and is one of the fastest growing retail brands in the UK. ‘Lots of startups use us just before looking for funding,’ adds Barrins.

New customersBrick Lane’s objective was to gain new customers, stand out from its competition and build trust in its brand in the run up to the Isa deadline; it wanted its campaign to be ‘remarkable’. It created two ads – one that was simply descriptive, another that was ‘more creative, to make you think’ – and opted for the large ‘16-sheet’ posters opposite platforms favoured by big brands. 150 adverts were pasted up in stations throughout zones one and two for one month.

‘We’re a considered purchase,’ adds Cavill. ‘People like to see us a few times, and seeing us in places other than the internet builds that story of the brand.’

Tracking success Although quantifying brand recognition is hard, Lost My Name took a forensic approach to monitoring the success of its London underground ads, using surveys on the order complete page to find out how customers had heard about the site, then verifying the responses against users’ IP addresses.

Thouas says there was a definite uptick in sales from the capital on both occasions, although she admits the March campaign was less successful than the initial Christmas one. ‘It’s a difficult time of year for a seasonal business,’ she explains.

While Exterion’s data can pinpoint how and where to best target specific user groups, Barrins recommends ‘reaching as many people as possible, as often as possible, as quickly as possible, instead of zoning in on a particular station’.

Costs

£127,600for 4,400 panels ads in every tube carriage on every line for two weeks

£103,600 for 200 16-sheet poster ads, one in most stations in zones one and two for two weeks

CARRIAGES

13 minutesaverage dwell time

PLATFORMS

3 minutes average dwell time

21

PARTNER CONTENT: COURIER FOR HISCOX

1 DESMOND & DEMPSEY

The idea for Desmond & Dempsey came about when its founders identified a gap in the market – in this case, for high-quality yet affordable pyjamas. Molly Goddard had been searching for an alternative to her husband’s business shirts that she had taken to wearing when lounging at home on the weekends. ‘Joel finally had enough when he had to go into a meeting with a Vegemite stain on his sleeve,’ says Australian expat Molly. ‘But I couldn’t find any pyjamas that I liked that didn’t cost hundreds of pounds. So we thought, why can’t we make them?’

With zero experience manufacturing clothing, the pair were faced with a steep learning curve. ‘So it was a lot of trial and error,’ says Joel Jeffery. ‘We had no idea about sewing or even where to buy fabric.’

The first 100 pairs of pyjamas went on sale online in September 2014. ‘We sat up all night watching the analytics,’ says Molly. ‘We thought we might get a few orders but we [only] got one,’ adds Joel.

But sales quickly began to rise. Further proof of success came in the form of orders from department store heavyweights – although this did force a rethink of their e-commerce-focused business plan. ‘When Bergdorf Goodman knocks on your door, you’re not going to say, “Oh, no thank you”,’ says Molly.

Now the pair aim for a combination of 80% e-commerce and 20% wholesale.

While their five-year plan includes adding new product lines, for now Molly and Joel are focusing on their core product. ‘We want to be a household name,’ says Molly. ‘The goal is for your top drawer to have D&Ds in it – not PJs.’

Growyour wayIn this ongoing series we

follow three flourishing businesses and reveal the secrets behind

their growth.

TIP FOR GROWTH:

Never underestimate the power of good customer service

Molly and Joel relentlessly go above and beyond to please their customers and their efforts have paid off. One mystery shopper was later revealed to be a Vogue editor, who has since become a vocal supporter. ‘Everyone says you can build a business using social media and influencers, but it’s not really about that,’ says Molly. ‘It’s about genuine personal connections.’

Every business faces challenges as it grows. Here, we meet the three companies that’ll be sharing the story of their expansion, and all the ups and downs that come with becoming your own boss, over the next few months. Our first question: how did they make the leap?

22

2 ACCEPT & PROCEED

When David Johnston decided to strike out on his own by starting a design studio in 2006 he didn’t have a business plan or more than one month’s wages in the bank. ‘But I had notions of grandeur from the get-go,’ he says, with a laugh. ‘I knew that I wanted to be a company, even though it was just me at that point.’ To give this impression, he admits to invoking a split personality: ‘I made up staff members; I created email addresses and would pick up the phone as one person, and then pass on the calls. It was quite confusing and unsustainable – but it worked!’

David’s team vision began to be realised when

3 KITCHUP

When Charlie Jones launched Kitchup, a company that connects commercial kitchen space with food businesses looking to rent it, he had solid market research to draw upon. ‘I’d been working for a government scheme that provides mentoring and loans to new businesses,’ Charlie says. ‘I’d seen a huge amount of food startups coming through and one of the biggest problems they had was finding kitchen space.’

With many food businesses only using their facilities at certain times of the day or week, Charlie saw an opportunity to introduce commercial food production to the sharing economy. He took out a £5,000 personal loan and launched a website in

Hiscox provides a range of cover for those bold enough to start their own business.

hiscox.co.uk/businessinsuranceHiscox Underwriting Ltd

In partnership with

TIP FOR GROWTH:

Source another pair of hands‘If I had my time again, one thing I would have done earlier is act on the feedback I was given to have someone else come on board,’ says Charlie. ‘Since Emma has joined we’ve done more in the last three months than I had done in the last six. Having another person is just so valuable on so many different levels.’

TIP FOR GROWTH:

Encourage your staff to spread their wings

David encourages his staff to pursue personal design projects outside of their commercial ones, and credits this as a factor contributing to Accept & Proceed’s high retention rate. ‘We have the 43M3 gallery where we show self-initiated work sometimes, and we do other personal projects, for no other reason than we love them.’

creative director Matthew Jones joined him as a business partner in 2008. The pair have since turned Accept & Proceed into an award-winning design agency with 13 staff and a client list of eminent brands including Moleskine and Nike. Last year the pair opened Today, a co-working space in Hackney.

The curation of a ‘fun and lively’ atmosphere has been a central concern. ‘I’ve been at agencies that are driven by profit or expansion alone, and I didn’t want that for us,’ says David. ‘We’ve been careful not to grow at a rate that will overstretch us – we want to be able to do ground-breaking work and not have to take on contracts just to pay the overheads.’

September 2015, with five kitchens on his books. ‘We had a flood of enquiries almost from the off,’ he says.

By March, Charlie had enough confidence in Kitchup’s potential to quit his day job. Early this year, his twin sister Emma Jones joined him.

The pair are now looking into funding in order to further scale their business. ‘We need to take things to the next level,’ says Charlie. ‘Our priority is to improve our technical platform so we can automate some of our processes – at the moment it’s very labour intensive.’

With Kitchup fielding enquiries for its service from cities across the UK and Europe, expanding into other territories is a long-term priority, ‘once we’ve got London perfected’.

TUNE IN

We’ll also be following the inspiring stories of these three

companies through a series of podcasts. Listen in for tips and advice on all aspects of

growing a business.

Subscribe via yourpodcast app, iTunes,Soundcloud or visit:

courierpaper.com/hiscox

23

PORTRAIT

TOMBLOMFIELD

The quiet coder turned enemyof the big banks.

24

Monzo is hiring. Monzo, it seems, is always hiring; the newly-licensed UK bank is arguably the hottest startup in London right now.

‘We’re working to become the Google or Facebook of banking,’ runs the job ad. It’s the kind of extraordinarily ambitious statement Monzo’s co-founder, CEO and pied-piper-in-chief Tom Blomfield makes on a regular basis.

Blomfield is the man who must simultaneously instil in customers, financial regulators, and investors a sense that Monzo is both a rock- solid bank and something much more thrilling.

His formula seems to be working. People are keen to work for Monzo, investors want to invest, and the neon pink Monzo card has somehow become a coveted object even outside coder circles.

The hacker and the hacksFor a bank CEO, Blomfield spends an outrageous amount of time talking to journalists. It’s not unusual for him to clock up two interviews per day, he says. Spreading the good word about how the banking sector is set to be wobbled seems like his favourite pastime.

‘It feels like we are at a tipping point where the entire industry is teetering on the edge of a cliff and it is about to give way,’ Blomfield told Techworld in 2015.

And yet, for all his column inches and podcast minutes, Blomfield is not your typical, brashly confident CEO. He is a softly spoken coder. He built the site for Boso (an Ebay for students) while at Oxford university, and then became technical co-founder at direct debit startup Go Cardless. Nor is that the only way he’s an unusual public face. At 31, he still projects a boyish but sensible image – all while shouldering the responsibility of selling Monzo as the business that will transform consumer banking.

Masterminding the hype Blomfield appears to have mastered the way publicity works. A huge chunk of Monzo’s 200,000 users voluntarily talk about it, and new features are trickled out to keep chins wagging. It’s a tech startup that others follow closely (whether they want it to succeed or fail), and equity crowdfunding’s darling – last year it banked the fastest ever raise on Crowdcube

(£1m in 96 seconds), followed by a raise of £2.5m this February, which attracted a record-breaking 6,500 investors.

‘Let’s be honest – he doesn’t need to do this,’ admits Luke Lang, Crowdcube founder. ‘Passion Capital [Monzo’s VC investor] would’ve put in another million.’

About a year ago, Blomfield significantly stepped up the time he spent on PR. ‘It was pretty conscious,’ he says. ‘We don’t pay anything for marketing really, or do much paid advertising. That’s why I spend half my time on it.’

Often, he plays the role of the consumer champion. ‘I’ve stood up as an individual and said, “I’m a frustrated bank customer, I bank with Natwest and I feel like I’m stuck in an abusive relationship”,’ he says, using one of his go-to metaphors. He speaks at fintech events. He’s been on Newsnight. And he makes regular visits to corporate offices. ‘We take 100 or so cards to Transferwise or Sky or Facebook, and the secret is actually it’s a really great recruiting tool,’ he says. ‘We wait about a week, and we get a flood of applicants.’

Seeing a billionBlomfield is clearly good at selling his vision within London’s tech bubble. Whether he can sell Monzo further afield is another matter.

The question is, what lies behind the hype? Rival banks, both digital and on the high street, are all waiting for Blomfield and his company to be properly examined.

Ignore the noise and, critics say, Monzo is right now a very well- designed app that lets users split bills (with other Monzo users), track spending, and take out cash abroad at good rates with a kooky charge card. For a massive chunk of people outside of the early-adopter network, that’s far from enough to entice them to download the app, let alone leave their trustworthy, if frustrating, high-street bank.

‘On the front of our investor deck it says “Monzo will be a financial control centre for a billion people around the world”,’ says Blomfield.

‘If we grow at 3.5% per week, which is less than we’re currently growing, we’ll reach a billion users in 2023,’ he continues, spinning his water bottle. ‘I did the maths last week.’

Such bare-faced ambition is fascinating, as is the steady conviction with which it’s

explained. Blomfield has a habit of looking off and upwards when he’s thinking. It’s like he’s acting the part of the visionary – or perhaps that’s really what they do.

Monzo says it aims to be a ‘bank the size of Facebook’. ‘When I say that to people they laugh,’ says Tristan Thomas, Monzo’s head of marketing and community. ‘When [Blomfield] says it to people they believe him.’

Blomfield’s confidence is clearly compelling.

Outlandish ambition It’s telling that Blomfield was the first founder who VC firm Passion invested in twice. ‘They certainly believe in Tom and think he’s great,’ says Matt Robinson, one of Blomfield’s co-founders at Go Cardless (and another founder who Passion has invested in twice).

‘We went to them and said, “Look, we’re thinking of starting a bank, and we need some money”,’ says Blomfield. ‘And they said, “How much?” At such an early stage it has to be about the founder and the investor because there is no traction, no market.’

It’s a very self-assured statement.Yet Monzo wasn’t an entirely

novel idea. Blomfield isn’t allowed to talk about why he left his role as

chief technical officer at what is today one of Monzo’s chief rivals, Starling, the bank founded by Anne Boden in 2015 and where Blomfield worked prior to launching Monzo. There were reports of rifts and tension at the time. Whether that stemmed from diverging strategies or a desire from Blomfield to run his own venture is unknown.

But he claims hunger to assume the CEO role wasn’t what made him leave Go Cardless in 2013. ‘Go Cardless is a great business, but I sat down and thought, “Do I really want to be running this for the next 5 or 10 years?” And I thought, “Not really”.’

Instead, with Monzo, a consumer-facing tech company, Blomfield can do something much more public – and potentially much bigger. ‘We’re talking years in the future, and we probably won’t get there… but I think to be able to have a huge impact on the world for what you’ve built and then take an amount of wealth and use it to cure malaria or something… that’s pretty cool.’

If such outlandish ambition seems terribly un-British, that’s because it is. Blomfield’s been through YCombinator and soaked up its values. Even his staff seem to be under the influence: ‘Most

people come at a problem and say, “Okay, how do we solve it? This is what we’ve done in the past.” Tom and Jonas [Huckestein, Monzo CTO] attack it from first principles,’ says Thomas. ‘[They ask] what’s the root cause of this problem? And how can we attack it in a different way?’

It’s all classic Silicon Valley lingo.

Mathematical mindsetThat scientific approach isn’t new. Blomfield’s university law tutor, Nick Barber, remembers him as a thoughtful, focused student: ‘If you asked him a question he would think about it carefully, and give an answer that exactly answered [it].’

At Monzo, that precision shows itself in the tech, the roadmap, the speed of execution, and even people management. ‘He’s super direct,’ says Thomas. ‘He’s not someone who is going to mince around words just to be polite.’

‘Tom’s greatest strength is that he’s an incredible doer,’ adds Robinson. ‘When something needs to be done, Tom doesn’t muck around.’ He recalls a time at Go Cardless when the three founders were writing a list of potential bank partners. ‘Tom hadn’t said anything in 30 seconds, and then he was on the phone, saying,

“Hello, is that the RBS team?”’‘That’s amazing; it can save a lot

of time. [But] it can be impulsive.’Recently, Blomfield’s started

talking about Monzo developing into a marketplace where users can find other fintech startups to buy insurance, take out loans and earn brand loyalty points. ‘It’s definitely the 20-year vision,’ he says, but that doesn’t stop him meeting with other startups frequently.

‘I love new things, new ideas. [I’ll] have a meeting with a startup that wants to build on our API and I go, “This is amazing, I want to help with this,” and I go to our team [and say] “How can we help these guys?” And they go, “Are you kidding me? We set our quarterly priorities, and that’s explicitly not a priority”.’

‘I miss being hands on – writing the code, being able to put your headphones on for 12 hours and have a new feature,’ he admits. ‘I really love the process of making something grow from scratch.’

Robinson thinks Monzo’s far from the last company Blomfield will start: ‘He’s going to build three to five more business in his lifetime, and one of them’s going to be a breakout success.’

Is that business Monzo? No comment.

—‘Monzo will be a financial

control centre for a billion people around the world’

—

The Pied Piper Monzo’s founder has combined Silicon Valley zeal with a predilection for publicity to position himself as digital banking’s consumer champion. Will he pull it off?

25

W

B

NEW YORK The New, New Media

DISPATCHES

as your work ethic. ‘Feeding the content monster’ has become an around-the-clock occupation for New York’s media hustlers, who acquiesce to the pressure to post, publish, and live tweet at a seemingly insatiable volume. But just how sustainable is this frenzied level of output, for both the workers and the rapidly evolving media structures which pay their bills?

For the most optimistic clues of the future, look to The New York Times; currently undergoing a huge restructuring by taking its cues from Netflix and HBO. The big idea is, unsurprisingly, more: more journalism, more supporting content, and more ways to read, watch and listen to all of the above. The ultimate goal, Wired reported earlier this year, is to make a digital subscription to The New York Times seem less like a luxury, and more like an necessity: an IV drip of content you just can’t live without.

No fumbles with native advertising to be found here, either; many leading editorial platforms have established slick, in-house brand content operations in their place. From Condé Nast’s

23 Stories to The New York Times’ T Brand Studio, these self-styled creative content agencies are a one-stop shop for brands looking to commission, produce, and distribute campaigns in one place. A myriad of major brands have invested accordingly: T Brand Studio has landed clients including Belvedere and Cartier; 23 Stories have worked with Olay and Microsoft, and Gen Z-focused lifestyle site Refinery 29 has used brand dollars to transform a four-person team into a worldwide ‘media entertainment business’, with over 400 staff and a valuation of $500 million.

As New York’s media industry keeps growing and evolving, the country’s bright and brilliant young professionals continue to show up to job-hunt in their droves. As a former resident of Los Angeles who relocated to New York in 2015, I can testify to the city’s enduring appeal: despite its overpopulation and overpriced apartments, New York is still the most newsworthy town in the world – if you’re engaged in the messy business of feeding that content monster, at least.

‘Still the most newsworthy town in the world.’

‘If it’s weird and wonderful you want, then Berlin has that in spades.’

hich comes first: the city, or the creative fuel that feeds it? While political, economic, and geographic factors all play their part in establishing the profile of a metropolis as ‘The X Capital of the World’, it’s the people who maintain that rep. Media, you might argue, is to New York what movies are to Los Angeles and fashion is to Paris. Arguably New York’s biggest cultural export, it’s also the one that best reflects the characteristics of its working population: innovation, industriousness, and more than a modicum of outright hustle.

It makes sense, then, that New York’s media industry has been quick to adapt to the challenges presented by the new media revolution of the past 10 years. The global shift towards rampant content creation has been absorbed seamlessly here in NY, where you’re only worth as much

city itself encourages non-linear thought. Just look at the way the street numbers joyously jumble themselves up, so you might need to walk down each road at least twice to work out where you are.

Given these characteristics, it’s easy to see why Berlin is a natural home for the diverse talents needed for a thriving VR scene. At any given party you can find an Italian architect, a Spanish scientist, a Brazilian advertising executive, and an American scriptwriter. In an example of how regularly these worlds overlap, I was invited last November to perform poetry at State festival, a two-day event celebrating the relationship between art, science, society and artificial intelligence. Of course, the event took place in a giant warehouse.

London’s VR scene, by contrast, has a more earnest, corporate feel. It’s dominated by gaming, followed by manifestations of what Kevin Molloy, head of production at London-based Inception VR, calls ‘VR as a tool’. Here, he says, companies are building VR experiences to train doctors to operate, build virtual hotels so potential guests can figure out which rooms they would like to stay in, take children on ‘virtual school trips’ and treat those recovering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In terms of maturity, London’s VR industry is also far further down the road than Berlin’s. Startups which

erlin is a city legendary for its immersive experiences, with several nightclubs famously open for days on end. It’s perhaps little surprise, then, that this town has found itself home to a small but growing virtual reality tech scene. It’s a scene that’s been shaped by Berlin’s playful approach to life, which attracts creative types – and left-field thinkers – in their droves.

This, after all, is the place where a friend once sent me a picture of a man on public transport accompanied by his pet – a pony. The city’s residents are also supremely creative with their buildings. A good friend of mine has just opened a studio whose facade is a butcher’s shop, and one of my favourite cocktail bars (sadly now closed) could only be accessed through a secret door in a kebab shop. Even the geography of the

benefited from initial injections of VC cash must now find their own way, and work out ways to monetise their content.

In Berlin, the VR scene is significantly smaller, notes Sönke Kirchhof, CEO of the year-old company INVR Space, which focuses on arts rather than business-based applications. And while large entities such as Unreal Engine are putting substantial money into this field, the public sector is also playing a vital role with local and regional funding.

Elsewhere in Germany, VR applications are increasingly used in the automotive, military and medical industries; INVR, though, retains an artistic emphasis. Having just received its first funding tranche, it’s about to branch out into education. Using images and footage from Berlin’s archives, it will create an experience where visitors can ‘time travel’ through the history of the Reichstag, one of Germany’s most famous buildings.

These days, Molloy says, ‘you can be a global VR studio based out of any city you choose’. But it’s clear Germany’s capital has something unique to offer. ‘Berlin is full of artists,’ he says. ‘The first wave of people who came into VR were technologically savvy, but not necessarily creatively brilliant. In this second wave, I think creative minds coming in and making really weird and wonderful things is where Berlin will help to excel.’

BERLINVR finds its Bohemia

Venerable publications are getting into bed with brands in ever-new ways.

London for the head, Berlin for the heart: VR is a shiny new toy for Europe’s creative capital.

Phoebe Lovatt

MusaOkwonga

26

I

LOWDOWN

WORK /LIFE

Sum up what you do.I have loads of ideas and find the best people to execute them.

Why did you decide to get into nail art?I set up WAH because I thought it would be a fun thing to do with my mates – I didn’t realise it would be a game-changing trend and a cool business.

When were you last surprised by something?I’m always surprised that people keep coming to the salon and that nail art hasn’t become a dead fad.

What’s the best ever invention?Google Maps API.

Does modern capitalism work?Yes, as long as it’s 50/50 with creativity.

What would you go big on if you became PM?Childcare. It’s such a massive barrier for economic progress in this

country. If women could go and do what they want, the whole country would benefit. And it’s not just a female problem. I share [my son] Roman 50/50 with his dad. He also has to go to work and has exactly the same problem.

What would you outlaw?Advertising. It’s basically the biggest cause of anxiety in society today.

Who would be your three dream dinner guests?Elon Musk; Beyoncé; Richard Rumelt, author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.

What’re your bucket list destinations?Santiago, Chile; Cambodia; Big Sur, California.

One thing you read or did recently that you’d recommend?Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. I bloody love this book! It’s about how to market high technology products to mass consumers. Plus, a facial by Pfeffer Sal.

Where would you like to go in our time machine?1970s LA, where for the first time it was pretty cool to be black.

four million plus-selling book The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying. The crux of Kondo’s credo is that, as part of an epochal sort-out, you should discard any items that fail to ‘spark joy’ when you hold them. With everything in its right place – which, for many items, is the local charity shop or a skip – you’ll liberate yourself from the oppression of unwanted possessions. It sounds like a load of shui – until you’ve tried it.

You don’t have to watch many episodes of the TV show Hoarders to conclude there might be a link between physical and psychological baggage. The Princeton Institute of Neuroscience has determined that clutter impairs your ability to focus, forcing your brain to devote precious bandwidth to junk filtering. Tidy desk, tidy mind, it would seem.

There are plenty of apps capitalising on the desire to organise: most of us are familiar with note-taking app Evernote. Then there’s Smartsheets and Trello, project management tools that turn deadlines into aesthetically pleasing Gantt charts.

There’s even a chatbot, Astro, that archives emails, sets reminders and pulls out top-level questions from your inbox.

Real or virtual, the optimal clutter level is highly individual, which explains why neighbouring workers can have polar opposite habits.

Mess has historically been portrayed as another mother

If we hit ‘most listened to’ on your music, what would come up?Lil’ Kim – Big Momma Thang.

Favourite app?Slack.

Best person you follow on social media?I don’t really look at other people’s accounts – I just look at my own, like a diary.

Who’s your hero?I don’t have one – they always disappoint. Every hero is human and fallible.

What superpower do you wish you had?To be able to naturally respond to how everyone’s feeling in the most appropriate way possible.

What’s your death row meal?Jerk chicken, rice and peas with coleslaw and plantain.

Do you have any regrets?None whatsoever. Every single thing I’ve done has led me to where I am right now. If I’d worked harder in my 20s, I wouldn’t be as cultured and connected as I am now. If I hadn’t been through hard times, I wouldn’t be as resilient.

of invention. Albert Einstein once asked, ‘If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?’ For every Marie Kondo, there’s a Tim Harford, economist and author of Messy: The Power Of Disorder To Transform Our Lives. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that students came up with more and more innovative ideas in an untidy environment. They were students, after all.

The truth, and the creative sweet spot, lies somewhere in the middle. Too much clutter overwhelms our attentional selection mechanisms and, on a logistical level, makes it hard to identify what we should be dealing with. But too little stuff shuts those mechanisms down altogether, and excessive time and energy diverted into decluttering is misplaced. Kondo has been known to collapse from organising, which clearly isn’t healthy.

We’ve all experienced the sudden compulsion to tidy – one of procrastination’s sneakiest disguises – when we have something much more important to be doing, which is akin to the fetishising of ‘inbox zero’. Ironically, achieving email nirvana in the name of productivity all too often comes at the expense of actual work, and the arrival of every subsequent message is an even greater torment. Inner – and inbox – peace starts with acceptance.

recently hired a fixed desk at the new London Fields branch of We Work. But after a couple of days I found myself holed up in the hotdesking area. To borrow the title of trend forecaster James Wallman’s book, I was suffering from ‘stuffocation’.

The computer towers, packing crates and packets of Frosties cluttering the fixed desks were seriously cramping my feng shui. Maybe it was just me, but their occupants seemed subdued by their surroundings.

On the minimalist hotdesks, which were strewn with the contents of one backpack maximum, I felt like I could breathe. Their nomadic inhabitants appeared breezier, less burdened.

Less is more and more popular, thanks to Japanese organising consultant Marie Kondo and her

Sharmadean Reid is founder of WAH, once a hip-hop zine and now a futuristic London nail salon, and co-founder of Future Girl Corp, a business network for women.

?

‘I’m always surprised that nail art hasn’t become a dead fad’SHARMADEAN REID, WAH FOUNDER

‘The minimalist hotdesks’ nomadic inhabitants appeared breezier, less burdened.’

STEERING CLEAR OF STUFFOCATION

Can a tidy desk and an empty inbox really jump-start creativity?

JamieMillar

27

C O U R I E R L I F E

NOOK YINKA ILORI MOVEMENT MIRANDA YORKSTORE CURATION PROFILE FOOD ACTIVITY

Keeping good company“The keys to longevity are happiness at work and loving what you do,

being adaptable to change, staying focused on quality, not being distracted about what others are doing and staying original and true to your identity.”

– Rana and Peyman from White Mulberries cafe

Read the full story on our new site allpressespresso.com

My week in food:Miranda York runs through

her favourite ingredients and places in eat, p32.

Keeping good company“The keys to longevity are happiness at work and loving what you do,

being adaptable to change, staying focused on quality, not being distracted about what others are doing and staying original and true to your identity.”

– Rana and Peyman from White Mulberries cafe

Read the full story on our new site allpressespresso.com

NOOK, STOKE NEWINGTON

Gemma Ridgway and Jack Simpson are considering a rejig. ‘We’ve never changed the position of the departments in our mini department store,’ says Ridgway, who co-founded Nook in 2012. ‘Bath and body has always been at the back, cards have always been at the front…’

Plenty of minor shuffling goes on everyday. ‘I’m a display geek,’ says Ridgway, who used to work as a visual merchandiser for high-street fashion brands. Now, being the one who buys, displays, and sells products means she can be even more analytical with what works best where. She’s also got to know her customers very well.

‘There aren’t any real hotspots

in the shop where you have guaranteed sales,’ she says, adding that it’s more about finding the area that best suits a product.

Cards sit near the window so they’re easy to spot by passersby. The window display, meanwhile, changes on a three week rotation; ‘It’s very strict,’ jokes Ridgway, adding that it’s enough time for their regular customers to spot something they like and return to buy it.

When Simpson first met the French team behind Kerzon candles and scents (pictured above), they hadn’t even made their first products. ‘I said, ‘When can you ship them?’ And they said, ‘When can you pay for them? Then we can actually make some stuff.’ Their product range has grown, sold well, and the company has opened a store in Paris. ‘We stick by lots of suppliers, because we like what they do,’ adds Ridgway.

‘There aren’t any real hotspots in the shop.’

Spotlight

Courier Life

STORE CURATION

How the duo behind the Church Street shop decide what goes where.

30

YINKA ILORI

ILORI’S DEFINING TR ACKS

Yinka Ilori spends a lot of his spare time wandering around London, looking for abandoned chairs. Two or three finds provide the raw materials for one new creation, which is painted in vivid colours and re-upholstered. The fabrics, sourced from London or Lagos, are inspired by the bold patterns his Nigerian mother – ‘the queen of colour’ – wears to church and weddings.

‘Every chair has a narrative,’ he says. ‘The furniture I see around London is to me representative of the city’s diverse people.’

While the original chairs have their own back stories, Ilori attaches new imagined stories to the upcycled final pieces. Drawing inspiration from the parable traditions of the Nigerian Yoruba tribe, each has a deeper meaning. Growing up, every ‘lecture’ his parents gave to Ilori and his siblings would end in hour-long parables, he says.

In one collection, titled ‘If Chairs Could Talk’, Ilori created five chairs based on different real life characters from his school days. ‘Some went through the education system, some ended up in the criminal justice system. Some have emerged triumphant whatever their path,’ he says.

Although Ilori trained in product and furniture design, his chairs now straddle the worlds of design and fine art, and are often exhibited in gallery shows. It’s up to the new

owner how they interact with each piece; they could hang it on the wall or sit on it at the dining room table – although it may not always be that comfortable.

Ilori says his work is a vehicle to express and celebrate his intersecting Nigerian and British heritage. ‘In the outside world I’m British. At home I’m Nigerian. I speak Nigerian, I eat Nigerian food, I watch Nollywood. It’s like a double life but I love both. The chairs are a celebration of being both African and British.’

He adds: ‘When you take two found chairs that belonged to two different people from different backgrounds and merge them, you merge their lives.’

Despite being made by a British man in the UK, the explicit exploration of his Nigerian background in both meaning and aesthetic, has led to Ilori’s work being branded ‘African design’.

His work has been featured in an African art fair at Sotheby’s, is currently touring as part of a exhibition called ‘Making Africa’ and he’s spoken at South African design festival Design Indaba.

It’s something Ilori has undoubtedly benefitted from, but can nevertheless be a source of subtle frustration. ‘I hate being put in a box of ‘British’ or ‘African’ design, I’m inspired by both,’ he says.

The ease with which Ilori fuses his dual identities also feeds into what he calls his first love: music. A huge part of his background is, he explains, the pop music his parents played around the house. ‘When I hear the words sung in Nigerian, it goes into my veins,’ he says. Grime, on the other hand, has served as the counterbalance. It’s a genre he first discovered in secondary school and one he continues to love today.

Courier talks Afropop and hunting for discarded furniture with the artist-designer.

Courier Life

‘When you take two found chairs that belonged to two different people from different backgrounds and merge them, you merge their lives.’

PROFILE

King Sunny AdéJa Funmi Each Christmas my mum will play King Sunny while cooking Jollof rice and spinach and drinking wine or Guinness. The music and aroma make my Christmas. Every one of his songs tells a story. The lyrics are a source of inspiration; Ja Funmi means ‘fight for me’ and I find it particularly motivating.

KanoP’s and Q’s When Kano’s Home Sweet Home (2005) came out I was living in an flat in Islington. I still remember going and buying it in HMV in Angel, putting my speakers out of the window and blasting it to the whole estate. P’s and Q’s was played on repeat. I refused to let mates burn it, I was like: ‘Fuck you I just bought it!’

Fela KutiWater got no enemy Fela Kuti was an activist as well as a musician. He spoke his mind and didn’t give a fuck. It often got him into trouble, but he was a man of the people. I like to think that how music gave [him] his voice, chairs and stories allow me to connect to people. Water got no enemy - it doesn’t get much more true than that.

NasYou’re da man I’ve always thought of Nas as not just a rapper, but a bit of a philosopher. He crosses genres and is very intelligent. The ‘you’re da man’ refrain always sticks with me. To call it empowering probably isn’t quite right, but whenever I listen to it I’m like ‘yeaaah’; it gives that boost.

Orlando Owoh‘Any song’Owoh is a real old school Nigerian. My mum was in tears when he died. He’s a story teller and a life teacher. From the minute the lyrics kick in you’re hooked. The stories also contain important lessons. In one he tells how if you’re jealous of a neighbour’s new shoes, remember that they could be hurting his feet!

31

YORK’S TOP SPOTS

I’m obsessed with markets. I love the bustle and the in-teraction with traders. During the week, I’ll go to Borough Market for fresh produce – I like Chegworth Valley and Ted’s for fruit and vegetables, Bread Ahead for baked goods (and also, those doughnuts!), and Neal’s Yard for milk and cheese.

On Saturdays I run a small market on Druid Street in

Bermondsey. There I’ll pick up sourdough bread from The Snapery, cultured butter from Grant at Ampersand, and homemade cardamom granola from Rock My Bowl. Sweet treats come courtesy of Fatties Bakery, and ice cream sandwiches from Happy Endings. I can happily while away every weekend wandering through markets, tasting and chatting.

The mozzarella, borlotti and wild garlic green sauce dish from the Ducksoup Cookbook is my current go-to. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve cooked it. It’s quick to make and most of the ingredients are usually lurking in my kitchen. I use wild garlic when it’s in season. If it’s not, basil works just fine. Crusty bread is a must to mop up the salty sauce laced with olive oil.

MIR ANDA YORKThe food writer behind At The Table, an

events company and magazine based around British food culture runs through her favourite places to eat, drink and buy produce, as well

as sharing her dish of the moment.

The dish

Courier Life

The Snapery The Snapery makes some of my favourite loaves in London - all naturally fermented and made with time and care by Richard Snapes and his team. The Seeded Field Loaf is particularly good - as well as the baguettes. And I can never resist brioche if it’s on the stall.

Quo VadisI usually head to Quo Vadis, where you can always find a cosy spot. Plus if it’s getting late, the cocktail menu is there to tempt you. Jeremy Lee makes the best bar snacks – cheese straws and pis-saladière, or a smoked eel sandwich if you’re feeling particularly peckish.

MY WEEK IN FOOD

32

‘Kids have got the right idea; running around the park, climbing on the monkey bars, playing hide and seek. That’s what Movement is all about,’ says Erdi Babili, who runs Movement classes at Momentum Gym in Haggerston.

Movement is a training method which combines an eclectic, non-traditional range of activities. Broadly characterised as improving mobility, balance and body strength, it’s a combination of gymnastics, parkour, street workout, dance and bodyweight training.

In a typical class, participants will swing and lift themselves on bars and rings, jump and bounce off boxes, crawl and cartwheel along the floor, play balance games with a partner and attempt head or hand stands.

Popularised by a group of trainers with big online followings such as Tristan Kobayashi and Ido Portal, it’s been taken up by everyone from dads wanting to be more limber in the park through to UFC champion Conor McGregor who regularly trains with Portal.

‘The practise can take you anywhere – some immerse themselves in hand balances, some in mobility, others in pure strength on the rings,’ says Babili, adding that, because it’s

largely body-weight based, training can be carried out anywhere from the gym to the living room (although a chin up bar does help).

‘It transfers really well to the rest of the world and sets you up to do pretty much any other activity. If you want to play with your kids or take up a new sport, Movement gives you the mobility, strength and balance. It makes you a conditioned human.’

Babili first got into the sport after attending a Movement camp in Thailand led by Portal. He started teaching classes at Momentum last year.

It’s one of a roster of group classes at the local gym, founded by Geoff Stewart, that aim to inject fun into working out. Other workouts on offer are adult gymnastics, metabolic conditioning and Cross Fit – the global phenomenon that has become the gym’s signature class.

‘People feel like they need to go to the gym to get fitter and leaner; they don’t realise they can do it through other means that are far more enjoyable,’ adds Babili.

I’ve been buying bunches and bunches of wild garlic while it’s in season. I’m planning to make pesto with it so I can continue to enjoy its punchy flavour after the season ends.

‘It makes you a conditioned human.’

The ingredient

Courier Life

ACTIVITY

JoséI’m always returning to José on Bermondsey Street. Partly because it’s local, partly because José Pizarro is the loveliest chef, but mainly because the croquetas are to die for. It’s the perfect spot to drop in for a glass of sherry and plate of jamón. Or to order the whole menu!

MOVEMENTExploring the back to basics training philosophy

with Erdi Ibil at Momentum gym

33

WORKSPACE

Beavertown BreweryUnlike most London breweries, Beavertown has a lot of space.

It’s not tucked away in a railway arch, or a garage-sized ‘lock up’. Instead, they’ve got a 5,500 square foot warehouse in Tottenham.

The brewery moved to its spacious digs three years ago after running out of room at their previous site in Hackney Wick.

It’s now full again. Cosmo, the head brewer, reckons they’ll need to move again in a year or so.

When it arrived in Tottenham, the brewery had eight fermenters – they’ve since collected 38 of the ginormous vessels. Most often, they’re filled with the brewery’s two most popular beers: the Gamma Ray IPA, and the sessionable Neck Oil. Each tank produces 10,000 litres of beer and takes three weeks to brew. Staff split shifts during the day, and the brewery is in operation from 6am to 9pm.

The smaller tanks at the back are used for more experimental brews; blueberry coffee stouts, spiced IPAs, and lightly salted sour beers are some recent examples.

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