SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Pitch of This Podcast series. Today I'm joined by Dr. Chloe Sharp and Simon Sharp, and we'll be diving into all things insight and research, ensuring that the product, service, or brand you're trying to take to market is going to get seen and heard by the right audience. So at the start of any business, any brand, any proposition, obviously there's another big factor which is funding and how people go about funding and what they may need, what they may look for, and the kind of support they may need. Be good to kind of get your view on what's needed when and how businesses can go about that.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Yeah. It was interesting because I was at um the Cambridge Tech Week this week, and that was something that they picked up on yesterday. Because sometimes there's the uh idea of going for non-dilutive funding straight away, but sometimes it might be good to dilute a little bit if you're building a big pie. So that was kind of the idea from the investors that were on the board or on the on the panel, just kind of thinking, how big do you want to make the pie? Essentially. So if you're kind of giving little bits uh kind of away as part of equity, then sometimes it might be worth it. Um, but there's we've been to other events locally uh run by South Midlands uh Growth Hub, and that was really interesting because they were talking about um planning for different types of finance, whether it be loans, debt, um, but whatever kind of funding you're going for, it's always good to plan it and think about things in advance and have a strategy. Uh, because no matter what type of finance you have, if you leave it too late, it will be expensive.

SPEAKER_02 1:37

Yeah, yeah, sure. And that sort of funding, as you say, can come from different places and can be approached in different ways.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Um in your experience, and I appreciate you've worked with a lot of founders and a lot of businesses. Um, what are kind of like the key points that you really need to look out for just to make sure you're gonna A, make sure that the the business proposition you're taking to market is gonna be correct, so you've got enough investment to make sure that that is the case. Um, but two, how how you know how is is there a way of simplifying the process to make sure you don't go down rabbit holes or avenues that perhaps other people's taken where there could be stumbling boxes and some blockers?

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Um I think it's good to uh if you've got a business idea to think about the competition and look at what's happened in the past. Uh because you what you don't want to stumble into is kind of a graveyard of similar ideas that haven't worked. But it might have just been bad timing or bad uh execution of the idea. Doesn't necessarily mean that you shouldn't uh try it out. Um but I think having an idea of uh the landscape quite broadly and also talking to customers to understand the uh the problem uh in a lot of in a lot of detail. Like with Whispers Flow, for example, um uh they spoke the CEO spoke to around 500 people um before investing in the idea and kind of for iteration purposes and things. Um and from that he's got uh different product principles. So it's quite interesting um to kind of see how other people have done it who've been successful. Um but it keeps coming back to, and that was kind of what they're talking about at Cambridge Tech Week as well, understanding the problem um and also having a clear route to market. Uh so it's kind of those indicators, I think, sort of understanding um like your competition, your market which you're going into, and your customers, um, and that should kind of give you an idea of how big is the problem. Is this something that I want to uh explore? And also another thing that we're talking about yesterday was resilience and obsession. Because even if you do go after the idea and you build the business from it, you do have to be you do have to be obsessed with the problem. So having that kind of passion, understanding the problem and things are kind of also part of the decision process as to whether you want to build it and uh and what commitments you want to make financially as to whether you know you want to do that, whether it's personally, friends and family or kind of looking for uh private equity.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Sure. Yeah, it's it's the classic old story, isn't it? Is it uh tech push? Is it market pull? There's a lot of the basics that just people sometimes overshoot and they don't necessarily, like Chloe said, go into the fundamentals that make a business work successfully. They might have a really, really good idea. All right, why wasn't why isn't it already working? Why isn't it already out in the wild? If it was, what's different about your version? And speaking to customers is also fundamental. There's so many routes to where to to do that these days, so many ways that you can get research completed, but actually having that authentic understanding that the market wants what you are providing allows you then to build your processes, your funding plan, all aiming at that one route to market. Um and that seems to be where a lot of people can be more successful. Um, missing those things and just trying to jump to the end, that's when the problems can sometimes occur.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Also, um you kind of just made me think about uh USPs.

SPEAKER_01 5:12

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 5:12

So having a good understanding as to what makes you stand out, particularly if you're going into a busy market. Uh so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Well, yeah, and it it can be very challenging to find your unique position, can't it? But uh like once you've once you've got it, if you can then double down on that, then that this becomes the the brand, that becomes the message, that becomes the position to whoever it is that you're speaking to, and it can run through everything that you do as a business. I think that's when people seem to find the most success.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

Yeah, it must be a very lonely place as well, right? Yeah, you know, you've got people that are entrepreneurial, they've got great ideas, they're very creative, they've got something in their mind they want to take to market. How is it going to work in the real world? And are people gonna engage with it for the right reasons? And you know, is it gonna be actually a viable investment for somebody at that stage of funding for them to really resonate with them and to sort of to be part of that journey with them?

SPEAKER_01 6:08

I mean, it's it's almost a double-edged sword these days, isn't it? Because we live in a in a world now where everything moves super quick, we've got loads of interesting tools, we've got the use of AI, which makes you feel like as an entrepreneur, as an individual, you can take on everything all at once. Yeah, but we're still human at the end of the day. And whether we can cognitively balance all the things that we need to be able to do for a business, it's hard work. Different people get excited by different aspects of their business as well. And we work with loads of different founders. Some are really commercially um sensible, I suppose. They're a bit reserved, they're conservative, they they want to make sure everything's planned and right. Other people are absolute technical experts at what they do. But unfortunately, they don't understand how their cash flow should work or how they should fund themselves correctly or where money should go when they do manage to get hold of it. So having all of that in your head at once can be really challenging. So I think it's really important to have the right people around you as well, uh, because that can definitely help. Just get somebody in the in in in the co-co-driver's seat who's able to give you the right advice.

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Yeah, yeah. And you know, your experience in doing this for others is you know exceptional, and you've seen really great success off the back of the work you've been creating, and particularly over the last couple of years, you know, developing your frameworks and you know, taking your understanding and experience in industry and actually applying that to a method and a solution for people, I would imagine has been really, really valuable.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, because I I think I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole at the beginning of the year, which was trying to understand what product market fit actually meant and how it was different from um like sales and marketing and kind of more traditional kind of approaches. Um, so I think from that that made me kind of think about different types of fits across um the commercial journey and important questions to ask, and what is enough evidence to make the right decisions uh at key points of your commercial journey. So um, so yeah, the framework that we've developed is is around that, but um that builds on a lot of experience and and research and things, but it's we've tried to make it as simple as possible to understand on the website.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yeah, absolutely, and agility is always quite useful as well, isn't it, in a small team like us? Um because I think that website's been rebuilt what five times now. But then that's the kind of flexibility you need to bring if you're trying to really refine your product market fits. Like who are we talking to and why? What lands with a customer correctly? What are the jobs to be done? What does a customer actually want to hear or see? Or how do they resonate when they land on our site and think, oh, that's me, that speaks to my problem. Yeah, these people have experience, and in their mind, they remove the risk of speaking to you. So, from my perspective, it's all about risk mitigation because I'm just that exciting. But it's like if you've got a founder or somebody trying to build a business, the ones that I've seen where they've been more successful, they're self-aware. So they may be that technical expert, but if they're self-aware and they know that they've got a blind spot for certain things, then they try and fill that with an expert rather than thinking that actually they can do everything themselves. Yeah. So yeah, the framework is a good way for us to help explain things to founders because you know you can enter at the start, you can explore the marketplace, you can validate as you start speaking to people and getting those authentic item uh answers, and then you can slowly grow your business in an informed way. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

But also start to identify your moats as well. Uh, because with AI, it's just you know, everyone's got the same tool. So, how do you stand out? Um, so it might be distribution, it might be your network, uh, so it's kind of what what makes you difficult to copy. Um so it's kind of making it uh I guess easier for people to to kind of think in that kind of way with the with the framework as well.

SPEAKER_01 10:25

Yeah, that's that's very true because it is that now, isn't it? Living in a in a world where we've got everybody can get hold of a Claude subscription, and then everybody ends up thinking like Claude, everybody gets taught the same way, yeah, everybody's website looks a bit the same. Yeah it it is really important that you still manage to find your authenticity. Um, and that tends to come out of a human interaction, like just sitting and having a conversation like this, you still can't mimic that back with AI. Um, and getting in front of customers, talking to people, um, building relationships. I mean, the stakeholder management piece, again, you absolutely have to be doing that stuff yourself.

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Yeah, definitely. And the relationship part is huge, isn't it? Yeah, the credibility, obviously. You've so you've you've done the work, you've gone through the process, you've hit some challenges, you've hit some road humps, you've dealt with them. Yeah, you've probably navigated in slightly different ways at different times, but that's all that AI can't get into right now. And I think that's the piece that's really important that there's a human element at the foundation, but then moving it up a layer, and I know you guys are championing AI and utilising AI in the right way at the right time, but really, really interesting to understand how you take that human thinking and all the great tools you've developed from your frameworks to your processes, etc., and how you've layered AI into that to become perhaps I don't know, a little bit faster, validating things, making sure you everything you'll do is efficient. Yeah, it'd be good to hear a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Well, that's that's kind of you're leading on that as well. That'll be that'll be me then.

SPEAKER_01 12:02

So um, I mean, there's two of us sat here, but I'm gonna have to admit, without anthropic and claude in the room, uh life would be a lot slower and a lot more challenging. And again, without turning this into a pro tips on how to use AI podcast, it it can be an invaluable tool. For me, I'm very careful with how I use it. Um it's very easy to get again sucked into a rabbit hole with how things work. But in our environment, I've built it so that it's got access to all of our files, it knows everything we've spoken about, it knows transcripts and conversations and briefs and proposals and what's worked and what hasn't. So now we're at a point where we can just layer through okay, this is my situation. What is the best outcome for this individual? How can I make this work? And it takes away some of that cognitive load. Yeah, um, it makes it quicker, it means that we can do more. Um, it's not so much Chloe delivers, I work back office. There's an element of that, but now I can deliver too because I can make sure that we're delivering um through the right toolkit. But again, like I said, you've got to be really careful because if there's a model change, for example, it can break your workflows. If prices go up, if the model goes offline, there's all the risks that are associated with it. And like we see this um repetitive thinking that is always models think the same way. We were talking about this earlier today, where you're saying you're playing Claude and ChatGPT off each other.

SPEAKER_00 13:42

Yeah, get them to check each other's work and review each other's work.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Okay, this is the way this is the way I do the same when I'm coding, so I'll do a bunch of stuff with anthropic and I'll code it in Claude, and then I'll use Cursor, which is looking at codecs and cursor zone uh model composer, to check the work that's been done, and you can go backwards and forwards and it works better. Um, so it's not it's about using them as tools, don't overrely. Uh still, you've got to keep that human in the room, but now it's more about being the expert in the room as well because they can be so compelling to tell you that something is right. Yeah, if you don't go through the detail yourself, you can make a mistake. Yeah. And going circling back to funding, people just pushing, for example, a grant application through Chat GPT, yeah, it's a bit of a nightmare. It's a bit of a nightmare. It strips the the story, there's no narrative.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

Yeah, yeah. And you can't really kind of um sense what what they're like really trying to do as the reader. Um, but if they've written it themselves or at least updated the first draft of it, then you can kind of uh understand their story a little bit more.

SPEAKER_01 14:54

Um it it flattens it, doesn't it? Yeah and I suppose this is it's like if you were asking AI to make you cakes, it would make you a great cake, but then be the human who decorates it, so at least the cake becomes yours. Yeah, there needs to be the unique stamp of humanity that you can bring to whatever it is that you're doing. And when we do work with businesses to build AI in, everything we do is people-led. Um, it's easy to start with the tech, and a lot of leaders actually in business that we've spoken to will sit there and have a wish list of things that they want the tech to do. But sitting and talking to the people who have been doing that job for 15 years pre-AI gets you to, oh, actually, this is the process, this is the area of efficiency we can use AI to improve. And you've got to understand the people because without going again off on one about um we don't want to take away people's jobs and stuff, we don't believe that's necessary. It's more about um empowering the team. You never really know what people like about their job unless you ask. And for somebody who's been doing a job for 25 years, if you all of a sudden say, Well, I can take away that bit, well, that might be the bit they enjoyed the most. So you and you actually need the agency of a human decision in that area, and you flatten that with AI, again, you're opening yourselves up to risk.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

But also, if you understand the people as well, you might think this isn't actually an AI solution at all. Uh so uh earlier this week we've been in to an organization where we uh sat with leaders and also sat with the kind of uh frontline workers as well. Um, just to understand the the day-to-day kind of process and and things and where the problem areas were we thought actually it's it's more of a a process change or a training need or something like that. Um rather than AI, because sometimes in this particular context, AI wouldn't really help because it was so complex and to try and ground it would be really hard because it was kind of m trying to ground something on like shifting sands, which is not the ideal use case for AI at all. Yeah, so um, yeah, so it's not always AI which is the solution, but I think once you kind of get into it and you understand how it works, you might think, oh, actually, you know, maybe we need you know this solution, that solution. So it opens up you know different ideas.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Yeah, definitely. I mean, don't get me wrong, bringing AI to bear on grunt work and manual tasks and things that can be automated, and there's so many good homes for it, especially at enterprise level where um they may have been doing things slowly for some time, and actually this is just a great opportunity to take some tools in that are going to make people's lives easier, but you can't underestimate the complex nature of a human expert when it comes to the nuances around really complicated things, and sometimes those complicated things aren't obvious, and it might be, oh, we need to have X and Y available, but X isn't available. But actually, if you take A and B and put them together, you get that. Well, building that into a model of AI and having all those variables, all it takes is for one little mistake in there and it can't make that decision itself, or it can, but it's misinformed, and then it's risk. Yeah, so it's like, how often are you willing to let that go wrong? And what's the risk to the business? Yeah. Um, and if that's going in front of a customer, then you've got to be really careful anyway. So yeah, definitely, definitely an advocate for AI. Yeah, but proceed extra. Using it in the right way, and don't forget your expert in the room who can call AI out when it's boldly telling you something that's completely, yeah, completely wrong.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

Yeah, totally. Well, perfect. We've ticked the AI box, which is awesome. It wouldn't be a podcast, but I obviously mentioned it, given the fact that you're obviously utilising it and as I say, using it in the right places at the right time is is key.

SPEAKER_04 18:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

Um, going back a step though to the funding element, and once we've got that in play and everyone's comfortable with how we're gonna push this brand or business forward, from an evidence point of view, as in making sure that you know that brand is gonna get heard and seen by the right people. Um yeah, that that qualification of that and that the frameworks you've built out and the development of that work you've done, it'd be good to kind of just understand like what those steps look like. Once there is cash in the bank, we're good to go. We understand who the stakeholders are, um, how are we gonna get it to market?

SPEAKER_00 19:36

Yeah, I guess that's a pretty big question. It is a big question. Um so uh I'm just trying to think where I'd start with that. Um I mean, having a very clear brief is always good, especially where everyone understands and is aligned with what kind of good looks like, and also what the brand is uh or the marketing campaign or or what it's trying to achieve. Uh depending on you know what phase you are uh in in business, I suppose, if it's for awareness or if it's a particular um you know trying to promote something. Um so uh I would probably take a similar approach to um Ogil Ogil V, I think I said it right. Um in that they have a behavioural science kind of approach. So it's understanding the people and the and the environment, but the extent of the evidence and research that you need and how you would go about it just depends on how complicated uh something is or what change you're expecting to make or something along that kind of line. Um maybe even how risky something might be, you know, if you got it wrong. Um so uh what Olgolfi do is they do uh quite a lot of uh ethnography, so they uh immerse themselves in the environment like qualitative research, so interviews and also quantitative as well, so then they can really understand the uh the environment. So if they're proposing uh a solution, um then it's with all the kind of cultural and social sensitivities and norms and that kind of thing uh in mind, uh, rather than just um you know, just creating something you know in a meeting room after brainstorming and it just being done in isolation just based on everyone's experience. So um, I mean it's obviously good to have that in the mix, but I think it's good if it can be also met with the kind of insights and evidence and having that as part of the decision making pro um process as as well for for making decisions around like what should a brand do, what should should the process kind of look like, and what do we need to check? Do we need to check um uh maybe like messaging or images or something like that? So uh I think trying to be as iterative as as possible can just help to identify uh risks and also what what will work early, so then you can kind of like scale it up. Up um and you've you're pretty certain, sort of based on what you've seen, that it'll work.

SPEAKER_02 22:05

Yeah, yeah. I suppose working through that process as well, it's understanding when there are things that don't work quite as well as you'd expected, learning from them as well.

SPEAKER_04 22:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

Yeah, which is a big part of you know the whole brand strategy process and taking something to market when somebody's not quite listening to those pitfalls or those challenges and dealing with them in the right way.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

Um, it's it's making sure that you're listening all the time and evolving.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because sometimes if you've got you know the highest paid person in the room, the hippo, um, they can just try it to sort of say, No, I don't want that colour or I don't want that whatever it might be. Uh but then if you've got the evidence to say, well, you know, we have tested it on you know socials or we've spoken to you know these people, and you know, with making the decisions based on that, sometimes it can help to justify a decision. And so then if that person still wants to override it, at least they'll know that you've come to that conclusion based on you know experience and and evidence.

SPEAKER_01 23:09

Yeah, I mean it's again back to the exciting topic of risk, right? So if you can validate something, you can de-risk it. You're never gonna be 100% well, you might be 100%. If you are, congratulations, you've cracked it. Um, but anything you can do to take risk out of your router market, anything you can do to take risk out of your product offering, fantastic. Um, and the easiest way to do that is to ask a bunch of people if it's actually gonna solve a problem for them. Yeah, is it the problem that you think it's gonna solve for them? It is wonderful, let's go. So all that works in terms of evidence. I think evidence, evidence is a hugely broad term and it's and it can be very different for different people. Um, so understanding what evidence means, like if you're trying to get funding, an investor is going to look at something very much differently to, like you say, the highest paid person in the room who needs a director level piece of evidence which says we should go this way with this. Um it's keeping flexible when you're defining what it is, but then understanding specifics and then just going and asking lots of interesting questions to get answers.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah, I guess on that point as well, it depends what sector you're in and what what evidence means. So I was uh well at the conference I was kind of at this week, it was all about deep tech. So how do you define customer traction when something's still in a lab? So uh if there's uh if you're in another sector like software or AI, you know, you can get something to market a bit quicker. So then the um like the evidence will look different because you can do product experiments and and and things like that. So like the industry itself uh sort of dictates what evidence looks like. But it was interesting uh to hear the conversations um particularly amongst the investors, in that there's not a shared idea as to what they mean by evidence and customer traction. Uh but like you said, it's down to kind of risk, like how risky is the decision and how certain do you need to be to make a certain decision.

SPEAKER_02 25:19

Yeah, and in terms of have you ever had the occasion where uh somebody's come to you and said, Look, it's my gut feel, this is gonna be the best thing, and it's gonna be the best investment that anyone else can join me on the journey. Um and you kind of can't change that mindset.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Um have you ever had that scenario? And if so, like did you change it and how did you go about that?

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Yeah, um, yeah, I've worked with with um founders in in the past where uh yeah, they they had a gut feel about what they thought the customer would want and they've created a solution. And then what we did is we went out and spoke to prospective customers and and things, and what they thought they needed was nowhere near to what the customers actually needed. Uh so they did a a pivot um to go from something that they that was kind of quite a complicated uh analytical solution to something much more simplified. Um but I think once people start to get evidence and talking to customers into their life, um then I I think it's difficult to go back to not knowing and just and get and guessing, essentially, and then understanding what people actually need, like once it gets into the market and then you get user and customer feedback. But even that's quite risky in itself because the um the customers might be you know maybe complimentary, but you don't really know if if they're just being polite. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

Um so uh and and I think you might have drawn on something that might be a first-time founder versus an exited founder who's going again.

SPEAKER_04 27:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Because there's a level of pride that sits around the first-time founder who's got their amazing idea, which no one's thought of, and they're very excited by, and it's like great, and then you start to pick at it, and you can normally tell quite quickly if you ask a few analytical questions and they haven't got answers. And if they then turn around and get defensive, you're like, okay. Um people needing to get proper evidence to support it tends to be what you see second-time founders do because they they go right, I've got this as an as a concept, yeah, and I'm flexible on what this does, yeah, and I will listen to what the market pull is, yeah, yeah, rather than it being, I've got my amazing idea, it's better than your idea, and you're gonna love it because my mum says.

SPEAKER_04 27:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:48

And like Chloe says, it's about having dispassionate feedback. So it's again, it's that awareness piece. If you can find an aware founder who is, I don't know this thing, or I think that this could work, tell me, they're the best people in the world to work with.

SPEAKER_04 28:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

Because they will be open to what you suggest, they will value your opinion. Whereas, yeah, I think we've both spoken to plenty of founders where it's uh they've they're very much, this is my idea, yeah, and I need you to enable my idea, please. Um rather than acting conversations and sometimes, I imagine.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, um I was at a startup weekend at Crownfield University, and uh just before, or I think that weekend, I'd I'd read uh on LinkedIn about this idea of um being an entrepreneur entrepreneur is like being a scientist.

SPEAKER_03 28:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:39

Like you're there to kind of initially just experiment. Like, I've got this idea, is it right? My hypothesis is you know, X, Y, Z. Like I think that's gonna work. And then you go out and you try and find out, am I right or am I wrong? Um, and then you kind of keep like tweaking it until you you kind of get onto the the right idea. Um, and then from that you figure out, can I create a company off the back of that? Is it a sustainable business? Um so I think that idea of being open to feedback and and things that I do see that more in in second-time founders, uh, because with first-time founders that they kind of uh focus on the product and the technology and they're kind of a bit more reticent to speak to people. Yeah. Uh but those that second-time founders I guess learnt the hard way that once they've put their product into the market and they got sporadic user research, sorry, user feedback and customer feedback and stuff, that that was a harder way to update the product rather than just learn about it right from the very beginning whilst they're in the process of designing a product. And that goes across any industry. Um, and that was something that was spoken about at Cambridge uh Tech Week as well, which is um deep tech does have this idea of uh like tech push, and so investors want to see more customer discovery up front. I mean, product market fit is going to be kind of harder, I guess, in that sector. Um, but at least demonstrate like what's your route to market, what's the pathway to profit and things, and you get a lot of that from talking to people as early as possible, yeah. And even just showing them uh like an early idea, which could be uh anything from like a a slide deck, you know, some sort of sketches through to you know cardboard prototype, or it doesn't have to be finished uh to explain what your idea is, uh idea is. So yeah, so we we um encourage founders to go out with a very early sort of prototype or a sketch or something of their idea. So once they're talking to people, they understand the problem but get feedback on like quite a concrete idea early on, uh rather than just explaining it and it being a bit abstract and different interpretations.

SPEAKER_02 30:46

Yeah, it's totally strategic, very thorough, um, but it's gonna it's gonna have the backing and the and the thinking done.

SPEAKER_03 30:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

So it's not setting yourself up to fail later on.

SPEAKER_03 30:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 30:59

Um and that's where I was gonna go next. The later on, obviously, there's a load of groundwork you've just talked about, and you've got some amazing frameworks in place to do that. You've got a layer of AI in there, yeah, which is great to hear. Um, using it the right places, obviously. And then the other bit is the brand piece. So then taking that and informing where the brand should go, yeah. Like in your experience, like that crossover for the work you're doing from funding to developing the strategy to getting the insight to validating that product service where it might be, taking that into brand. What do you think are the fundamental things that all of that work done at the start needs to go into that brand piece?

SPEAKER_00 31:37

Um, I think it's really about um messaging and storytelling. Um, so if you've done all the work up front, you know what the customer problem is and you know how to talk to them and the language they're using, uh, which means that it's a bit sort of like uh a bit messy at the beginning in terms of trying to understand what that is. But it means that uh if you do all that upfront work at the beginning, it makes marketing and messaging easier like later on. Um so yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Yeah, completely agree. Storytelling, storytelling, storytelling, storytelling. It's what humans do, it is what sets us apart, it is how we evolved, and it is still what we want. Like there's a reason social media sticks in the way that it does, it's stories. And the human brain doesn't necessarily when it when it when it meets a person, it will help happily go, that person does that one thing, and I will remember that one thing for that one person. Yeah. If you can do one thing exceptionally well and you can build a brand that sits around that, especially in the early stages of building your business, for networking, correct, you then become the person who is that brand, you're synonymous, and you have your story, and people like that because they can relate to you and by association be part of your story. So it helps people want to be involved with you, and then of course, as you grow and your brand gets bigger and then it becomes its own story, yeah, you might be able to step into the shadows a little bit. But having that narrative in the right place, um, maintaining the human authenticity that allows it to connect with your customers, you look at successful brands, that's what they do. You feel like I am proud to be associated with this brand, I am part of its story.

SPEAKER_00 33:28

Yeah. So I think with AI, it it's very difficult to shortcut any of this sort of grunt work. But um, but also creating the brand, like it because it it's almost like flattened design in that a lot of AI design just looks very, very similar.

SPEAKER_04 33:44

Same words.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Um so yeah, same words like actually, quietly, land that kind of thing. So like it it might be good in the early days just to kind of uh get something out there, maybe like a long scroll web page or something. Uh but as you evolve your brand, it is important to get expert help in that. So it's authentic, it tells the story well, it's very clear what your value proposition is. Yeah. And that the value proposition that you tell your customer is something that they understand, and how you might message it to them might be different from how you message it to you know investor or a grant or something like that. So it needs to speak to the customer. So the brand evolves mainly in its um uh I guess like its look and feel and and all that kind of thing as you grow as a company, and it kind of needs to reflect that. But yeah, having expert help, I don't think AI can really do any any of that at all. No, not not at all.

SPEAKER_01 34:39

And obviously, we've worked with some excellent brand agencies. Um and when you have somebody who's experienced as you guys are, yeah in putting a brand together and how that works and how that story helps connect you to people, yeah, you can come up with a level of copy that just makes sense on the page. It's um even if a founder goes through that process with some expert guidance, watches some stuff, understands it, whatever, learns about it themselves, their story becomes more authentic. And I don't want to say in a world of AI, we're all looking for authenticity, but there's a bit of that happening now where there's a lot of slop out there. Um, so write your own copy. You know, what is it that you want to say?

SPEAKER_00 35:25

Um but sometimes it's uh it's hard to distill it. And and it can be really useful to have you know experts um that have done this, you know, value proposition kind of thing, like a lot of times just to be like, oh, you mean that, and then just set it in a line.

SPEAKER_03 35:41

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

And then and then you're like, oh yes, I've been you know explaining it in about 10 minutes uh to try and get get across what I'm trying to do.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

But um it does help when you can get yourself down to a sentence because it goes back to that piece where it's that when you're networking, when you're trying to meet people and you're trying to build yourself up, if you can say hi, we help people do this one thing. Yeah, people go, All right, I don't need you right now, but I'll keep that for later.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

And it is getting to that point, isn't it? That's the that's the tipping point that people need in their lives in terms of right, I understand what I'm doing, they now understand more importantly, they understand what I can do for them. Yep, that's the big part. And I think what I've loved about our conversation today is how we get to that and how that informs and ladders up to the value proposition, all of the great work that you know you guys do at the start, whether it's from taking you know investments and funding all the way through to validation, making sure that every touch point and we're stress testing the market before we get too far down the line or the road and it's not gonna resonate with who you're trying to attract.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:53

So it's a the what we've heard today is being you know, it's it's the ideal way of working, right? And that's the thing. If if if there was autonomy on this process, that that that would be it. That that would be the um the best way of approaching any kind of brand or products taking themselves to market.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's it's so much work to get to that point of a very clear message that then you can brand and market.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

And it and it takes the thinking out. So helping somebody with a framework, frameworks can sound a bit played out, but actually, you know what, if you're building some furniture, you want a framework. Yeah, you want something at the end that is complete and stable, yeah. And uh and you may not be an expert in that process, so find a set of steps or rules that actually, you know what, they're tried, they're tested, they've they've had that stress test done, and we know that they work, and you've got to keep them living and breathing. Yeah, you'll tick them off as you go through, but they can iterate, you might need to go back because the market changes, you change, your offer changes, but following a a list of steps, it just sort of takes the cognitive element away and it just makes it a bit easier to succeed. Yeah, takes the risk out.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Yeah, yeah. And also for founders, um, sometimes it can be really useful for them to have uh like advisors if they can't afford you know this kind of help straight straight away, um, and mentors and things.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Yeah, and and also just to that point, that mentor piece, having someone that's got can see the full journey, yeah, not just that step in the helicopter, rather than just throw it. That's my next step, that's my next step, that's yeah, actually someone that knows where it's going in the journey that's gonna have to go on, because you'll probably spot things that perhaps aren't quite right at the start.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Yeah, they've you've seen it and they've seen it before, yeah. Yeah like you if if you're in there dedicated to your idea, we've spoken about awareness, not everybody is, and you do need that fire in your guts to be an entrepreneur and a founder, you've got to have an unwavering belief, but that can mean that you then put that onto your decision, yeah, and actually having somebody just hold your shoulders and go left a bit, right a bit can be really helpful.

SPEAKER_04 39:10

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:11

Well, look, today's been great, and thanks ever so much for so much insight. Um, obviously, the great work you're doing from the ground up, really. Like, you know, you are working in every every different area as people are developing from entrepreneurial ideas through to delivering a brand. Um, like I say, it's been great to have you, so um really appreciate it, and especially as it's tech week this week as well. You know, we had to weave in a bit of AI, and I know you guys are championing AI. Yeah. Um, but yeah, being Tech Week as well, big thing for Milton Keynes, obviously, and having you guys part of our podcast this week has has meant a lot. So thanks a lot for joining us. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Yeah, really looking forward to uh being part of MK Tech Week this week.