June 28, 2024 • 38 mins
Richard Thornton's’s story begins with his early career in consulting and his serendipitous entry into the tech industry in the early 2000s. He joined a digital data collection business that was looking to disrupt the market research industry. This venture-backed company gave him his first taste of working with venture capitalists and shaped his 20-year career working for B2B, technology-enabled, and SaaS propositions. Richard's career trajectory saw him transition from individual sales contributor roles to C-level positions, running sales, marketing, partnerships, alliances, and customer success teams.
These experiences, both good and bad, have equipped Richard with invaluable insights that he now brings to his role at J12 Ventures. As an Operating Partner, he works post-investment with portfolio companies, guiding them through the scaling process.
Richard shares his reasons for transitioning to a portfolio approach to working life. After 20 years of high-pressure roles, he wanted to spend more time with his family. He also felt he had achieved as much as he wanted within the insights sector and was eager to apply his knowledge across a broader range of businesses. Now, Richard divides his time between his role at J12 and his positions as a board member and strategic advisor for several UK-based scale-up businesses.
In this episode, Richard delves into the importance of hiring the right talent and the critical role that plays in the success of startups. He emphasizes the need for a robust, objective-driven hiring process and shares his approach to identifying key traits in potential hires. Richard also discusses the significance of growth hacking and provides examples of successful strategies he has witnessed.
Looking to the future, Richard highlights emerging trends in sales and technology that will impact startups. He discusses the challenges and opportunities presented by an increasingly informed buyer landscape and the role of automation in sales processes. Richard also shares his thoughts on maintaining a human touch in a world increasingly dominated by technology.
Join us as Richard Thornton offers a wealth of knowledge and practical advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals alike. Discover the key ingredients for scaling success and the future trends shaping the startup ecosystem.
To learn more about Richard Thornton and J12 Ventures, visit J12 Ventures and connect with Richard on LinkedIn
And for insights into hiring senior talent for software & saas ventures, check out https://alpinasearch.com/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
On the menu. So welcome to the Startup to Scale Up game plan where we dive into
the minds of software venture leaders and investors.
I'm your host Gary Rieman and today we have a super guest joining us.
Richard Thornton is an operating partner at J12 Ventures with a track record
of investing in and scaling high growth startups and Richard brings a wealth
(00:24):
of experience and a a unique perspective on the tech and investment landscape.
So in this episode, we'll explore Richard's journey from operational leadership
to venture investing and his insights on what it takes to build successful startups and scale-ups.
So let's dive in and welcome Richard to the show.
(00:45):
Great. Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. And great to be joining you today for the discussion.
Absolutely. So let's begin with your journey. Manny, could you share a little
about your journey from starting in the tech industry and operational roles
and eventually joining J12 Ventures?
Yeah, sure. And we'll try and give you the abridged version.
(01:08):
So I sort of started my career, well, I studied, first of all,
in sort of business management and marketing.
And I guess one of those individuals that has the rare claim to have gone on,
actually actually used their degree in practice in the real world.
But I initially went into consulting, was a research analyst for around four years.
(01:30):
And that actually gave me, I think, a really good grounding in terms of the
sort of fundamentals of what became sort of a broader sort of commercial role
or set of roles that I would go on to do.
So a grounding in sort of consulting. And then And I was headhunted and sort
of almost fell sort of accidentally or certainly wasn't planned into the world
(01:53):
of software and technology way back in,
I think, 2002, 2003,
where I joined a digital data collection business at the time that was looking
to sort of disrupt and pioneer the market research or insights industry.
And that was a company that at the time was privately owned,
(02:14):
but very quickly after I joined, became venture backed.
And that was my first sort of window, if you like, into working for and with
venture capitalists and understanding what that entails from a company perspective.
And since then, I spent and really carved out sort of a 20-odd year career working for B2B.
(02:37):
Technology-enabled or SaaS propositions, going in early to organizations in commercial roles.
So I've been everything from an individual sales contributor earlier on in my
career through to working for the sort of latter 10 years or so as an operator at C-level.
So having sort of CRO or CCO roles, running sales, marketing,
(03:01):
partnerships, alliances, and customer success teams within those organizations.
And and through that sort of 20-year career i was fortunate to work for different sort of.
Share shareholding structures and sort of ownership structures
and that's really given me a i think a sort of
good lens into the sort of different flavors and
(03:24):
expectations that come with ownership of organizations
so that's included everything from being privately
owned to publicly owned and then venture backed and
private equity owned sort of in between so the
full gambit if you like of different ownership
structures and sort of governance compliance and expectations
that come with operating in those in those environments and and within those
(03:50):
organizations i've been fortuitous to have you know excellent opportunities
to grow over a long period of time and work with some very exceptional and inspiring leaders.
My last business since that I exited in February 2021, when I joined,
it was a sort of couple of million euros in revenue in a very small Swedish-based organization.
(04:12):
And as part of that executive leadership team, we grew it to 100 million euros
in revenue, globalized the proposition and then optimized it.
So it became a very scalable market leader in the data collection and insight space.
So clearly, that's given me a lot of learnings and experiences, good, bad, and ugly.
(04:33):
And now actually getting on to what I do today, I'm sort of taking all of that.
And I'm trying to sort of pay back, if you like, into the startup and technology world.
So I'm an operating partner, as you said, for J12. I work mainly post-investment
with the portfolio of companies that fund investing.
(04:55):
And I also am on the board of a number of businesses here in the UK where I'm
a board member and strategic advisor.
They're mainly scale upstage businesses that are sort of past that 5 million ARR mark.
And, you know, that's how I sort of divide my time today.
So I've gone from sort of operator being into something wholesale,
(05:17):
you know, full time to now wearing a variety of hats and sort of imparting my
sort of experience across a sort of number of different businesses and business models.
What were the main drivers behind that decision to switch to being part of an investing portfolio?
(05:37):
You talked about giving something back. So obviously that's a factor.
But what were the other factors that influenced a pretty major decision for you?
Yeah, it's a great question. It's something I've talked about a lot on other
podcasts and just sort of with friends on my network since leaving SYN specifically.
(06:01):
And just talking candidly, you know, I initially was ready for just a complete break.
I'd been running hard and fast for sort of 20 odd years in sort of high pressure roles.
I'd had a lot of responsibility on my shoulders relatively early on in one's career.
I was a European managing director, managing an employee base of 200 people
(06:24):
at the age of 28 and had sort of been at C-suite ever since until,
you know, the exit and the IPO was seen in February 21.
So in all honesty, part of me was, you know, just burnt out,
needing a break, wanting to just step away from sort of corporate life and spend
more time with the family.
I've got two young boys and, you know, as you know, they grow up very quickly
(06:46):
and I've missed a lot along the way. So that was a personal key driver to wanting
initially a bit of a break and a change.
But I'd already sort of decided probably a year prior to the eventual IPO that
I wanted to sort of try my hand at sort of going plural and taking a portfolio
(07:08):
approach to working life.
I just felt that I'd accomplished as much as I wanted to within my sort of domain.
Which was the insights sector and market research.
And I felt there wasn't another business that would be able to get me as excited
as the journey I'd just sort of been on with seeing and sort of all the milestones
(07:31):
and gates that I'd gone through as part of that sort of story.
Story and and i also
just you know selfishly wanted a better balance
in in you know how i worked how i operated
and being able to sort of curate my my time
in a much more meaningful manner than i was able to when
i was sort of solely in on one business as an operator so for those sort of
(07:55):
three or four reasons i i i pursued you know what i do today was which is much
more this sort of advisory sort of board or net kind of life albeit you know being.
Sort of selective and sort of careful as much as one can on the types of businesses
and founders and teams that I work with.
(08:16):
And I've kept that purposefully sort of manageable.
It's really for businesses here in the UK. And then the J12 sort of operating
partner portfolio work is in addition to that.
So they're really the reasons that sort of drove that decision just over three years ago.
And looking back now, I think, you know, never say never of going back in as an operator,
(08:38):
but it would be a really difficult decision,
I think, for me to sort of give up what I've kind of built and created and the
enjoyment and motivation and sort of, I guess, intellectual sort of stimulation
I get from what I do as of now.
It sounds like you're having a lot of fun in your latest adventure.
(09:00):
One of the things I've seen from you online are these playbooks that you've
been publishing, leveraging all those years of operating experience to help
the operators that you're now supporting.
So can you elaborate on the eight building blocks for scalable sales?
It's outlined in one of your playbooks. And which block do you find startups struggle with the most?
(09:27):
Yeah, so I'm a huge fan, as you've
alluded to, of playbooks and as much as possible, prescriptive selling.
I think regardless of ICP or customer segment, one can always build a defined
and staged sales process and something that is repeatable and scalable.
(09:48):
And I think the earlier one invests in that, the better.
You know, the payback on that is relatively quick and it's often sort of overlooked
or kicked into the grass by sort of founders and startups in terms of it being
something that, you know, comes further down the track.
In terms of the sort of building blocks that I think form the key fundamentals
(10:12):
of a playbook and those which I believe are the most challenging without a doubt are,
well, there's two really, I would say playbook.
Being really disciplined and having absolute clarity around who your audience
is and ultimately who you sell to.
(10:34):
So that's sort of part ICP, part persona set.
And I've seen this skirted over far too easily and far too quickly by many teams
and businesses over the years. But that is mission critical to get right early on.
And it requires experimentation and sort of a lot of A-B testing and sort of
(10:58):
challenging of kind of hypothesis and sort of actual sort of results in the field.
But overinvesting almost a disproportionate amount of time very early on in
defining your target audience and getting that ICP boxed in is really key.
And then the second building block I would point towards, and it continues to
(11:21):
be a challenge, I think, for all organisations, regardless of size and stage,
is attracting talent and, you know, understanding,
you know, the sort of individual parts that make up the total sum.
And I think, you know, that is part art, part sort of science in terms of how
(11:43):
one can do that. And it doesn't get necessarily any easier, the larger or mature
you get as an organization.
But fundamentally, the first cohort of hires in any organization is of paramount importance.
And I think investing in a robust,
objective-driven process from a hiring perspective is absolutely key.
(12:09):
And again, we'll pay dividends and pay back in full, you know,
if you if you can sort of fine tune that to an extent early on.
From a talent perspective, to what extent do you and your colleagues get involved
with the portfolio in in shaping the approach to to hiring that initial cohort?
(12:32):
Yeah, I actually can get very involved. I'm working with a couple of J-12 portcos
at the moment, and I'm quarterbacking hiring processes, typically at sort of VP level or above.
But I will play a role guided by the founder and the business.
But that can range from, you know, being directly involved in the interview
(12:54):
process, being part of a panel for a sort of practical exercise that is part of that hiring process.
But actually getting involved much earlier on as well in terms of designing
the brief and the job description.
And I liken thinking about.
Hiring and profiling in the same way a business would think about its ICP.
(13:15):
So in the same way you would create a set of thermographics and a framework around who your ICP is,
I actually advise that you would do the same sort of exercise in terms of profiling,
framing who your ideal candidate profile is.
And so I work with some of the founders and portcos on that framework and support
(13:37):
end-to-end in the hiring process. It can also be post-hiring and,
you know, designing what the onboarding should look like.
And then the other critical component, of course, particularly thinking about
sales roles is incentives,
commission plans, bonuses, and what that structure should be,
particularly for startups where they don't have the benefit of leaning on historical
(13:58):
data or a set of norms to shape KPIs and sort of commission parameters.
And so getting that right in the early months and year one is challenging.
And so I'm sort of, you know, adding, I guess, expertise and sort of learnings
of how I've done that in the past as another key area.
(14:19):
So that's quite a broad church, but, you know, I can be very hands-on actually,
depending on the business requirement and sort of the founders' needs.
What are some of the key traits you look for when hiring a commercial leader
in an early stage B2B SaaS venture?
Yeah, I mean, we spend a lot of time actually talking about attributes and characteristics
(14:42):
or sort of behaviours as a sort of overarching sort of umbrella.
And I think this is really key.
I think in any good effective leader, there's a sort of combination required
of sort of One that is to an extent empathetic and sort of has a degree of healthy
degree humbleness, but equally,
(15:03):
you know, you want an individual, particularly in a startup to have empathy.
A huge amount of kind of drive and energy and conviction and almost to the point
where it becomes sort of obsessive.
The best founders, the best leaders in startups are those that are just relentless
in their pursuit of the mission and the objective.
(15:24):
But they can, as I said, couple it with a sort of humanistic aspect to how they are as an individual.
So we look at all of those sort of traits.
Clearly, there's things from a sales perspective like curiosity.
You know will to win you know huge
amount of driving an individual um i guess
(15:46):
robustness because you know in sales you hear
more know more a lot more than you will hit
yes so that resilience is key so there's a
sort of framework that myself and the j12 team have been sort of developing
and actually it's baked into our playbook that we sort of roll out and make
available to portfolio businesses when we invest and sort of help them on board
(16:09):
into the J12 kind of world and framework, if you like.
So yeah, it's something we've invested a lot in in the last 12 months.
And it's something I lean a lot into when talking to founders about hiring and
getting those first cohorts of sales hires right first time.
And in terms of satisfying yourself that the
(16:30):
preferred candidates actually do demonstrate
those traits and they're not just you know
professional interviewees shall we say so going beyond their ability to make
a strong impression when they're being interviewed by you and the team what
do you do do you have you have any psychometric tests do you rely on backdoor
(16:53):
references what do you do to to be pretty
damn confident that you've landed the right talent.
Yeah, and it's hard, right? And it's even harder in the US when you go and hire
there because everyone there is excellent at selling themselves and sales by nature is just that.
It's being able to put on a sort of facade and at times a different skin or
persona, right, to sort of play a role.
(17:15):
And you need to be able to cut through that. So there's a
few things that sort of make up the sort of
backbone bone of a best practice hiring process in
my in my opinion you've alluded to two two
aspects i'm a huge proponent of
referencing you know i it shocks me actually still today large businesses as
(17:37):
well that don't do thorough referencing and really triangulate around the process
when it comes to candidates and i don't just mean the references that are provided
by the individual in the process.
It's the back channeling and the kind of unofficial referencing that I think
produces the greatest insight.
(17:58):
And sort of learnings around the individual as a person and specifically how they are as an operator.
So that's one component. We do use psychometric tests. Some of the J12 portfolio
businesses are already working with psychometric tests as a validation point,
not as a go, no go kind of trigger in the process, but absolutely to round out,
(18:22):
you know, an initial thought or view of a candidate as an additional sort of
data point in that decision making process.
I have a sort of three touchpoint rule that, you know, regardless of who you're
hiring, three individual people in the business,
ideally in different parts of the business, should touch the process, speak to the candidate.
(18:47):
Play into a sort of standardized scoring criteria as part of the process.
And then I guess the final component would be a sort of exercise or practical stage.
For example, with one of the JTO portfolio businesses, we've just completed two hiring processes.
(19:08):
And within both of those, candidates were asked to prepare two exercises,
really. one was an elevator pitch.
So they had to produce a sort of 30 to 60 second elevator pitch and pitch it
to a panel and then have some sort of dynamic Q&A around that.
And then the second sort of longer form part of that exercise was to produce
(19:32):
a pitch deck and actually pitch to us in a real life role play scenario where
we all had certain personas and there was a sort of back and forth Q&A for a 45-minute session.
And this was like stage three, stage four of a hiring process.
So very robust, certainly for a startup.
But as I said, hiring for me is one of the most important things any business
(19:58):
can do, let alone startups.
And that's why I think you should
really invest the time and the process stages to doing it thoroughly.
And by the sound of it, gives you the chance to demonstrate your acting credentials
as well when you choose which persona you're going to go with.
It does indeed. Yeah, it gets everyone out of their comfort zone,
frankly. You know, so it's a level playing field in that regard. Yeah.
(20:22):
Another thing I noticed in the playbook is you emphasize growth hacking as a strategic approach.
So can you give me an example of a successful growth hacking process that you've
witnessed where you've seen it work really well?
Yeah, I'm a fan of sort of growth hacking and it can come in sort of many guises.
(20:46):
Is i i i think one of
the the things we've done in the
past i i guess it's sort of growth hacking or sort of lead gen sort of hacking
around sort of events almost in the sort of guerrilla marketing type sort of
manner so you know turning up to sort of events not necessarily having an exhibition
(21:09):
exhibition stand or even a sort of presence there,
but sort of, I guess, bombing the event in terms of sort of collateral people,
maybe even sort of pegging on sort of hotel,
you know, in the same complex as the conference and just leveraging sort of
something a bit more spontaneous and not necessarily as planned to really,
(21:33):
A, create a presence, but B, break into conversations and relationships.
With a slightly more punchier approach to how you would typically attend one of those events.
And at Sina, we also held sort of hackathons where you'd have different functions
in a room or you could do it remotely where you would just have a sort of ideation
(21:54):
session where it was based around a sort of theme.
And that could be, for example, from a sales perspective or a growth perspective.
You know, we want you to drive a set of ideas that we will then sort of shortlist
and sort of vote on around how we can amplify or accelerate,
for example, our market outreach.
(22:16):
How we can create a specific campaign to break into an enterprise segment,
how we can create a narrative and unlock conversations and relationships with
a certain persona on the C-suite.
For example and we held those periodically and
they would be successful the product team also would do
(22:38):
that but in a product capacity from a hackathon perspective
as well to sort of try and unlock ideas and
sort of opportunities in terms of building out the product and platform so i
think these can be applied as principles across various functions and to sort
of unearth i think ideas that perhaps wouldn't necessarily surface through usual
(22:59):
forms of communication within organizations.
And it really gives the floor to the entire employee base as opposed to perhaps
a more sort of standard top-down approach where the big ideas,
the big strategic bets come from, you know, the C-suite and the exec team.
Cool. I want to talk about the future for a few moments.
(23:22):
I'm going to put you on the spot here. So without using the words artificial
intelligence or machine learning,
what emerging trends in sales and technology do you think will have the most
significant impact on startups in the next three to five years?
(23:43):
It's really difficult when you remove those two. So I'll try and talk around those without using.
You're going to find another way of describing the same thing,
aren't you? It would be another. Exactly. Neural networks.
Yeah, exactly. No, look, I mean, I think to an extent, and this is sort of documented,
(24:04):
the world of sales, if I look at it through the sales lens, is without doubt changing.
It has changed even in the sort of 20-odd years that I've been involved in it as a practice.
I think today we live in a world where the buyer, first and foremost,
is far more informed, far better educated with a lot of information and data at their fingertips,
(24:31):
which makes the buying process and the selling process mirroring that fundamentally different.
For an arguably, in many cases, shorter, less personable, much more of a transaction
than sort of a relationship build.
Obviously, that varies depending on what you're selling and who you're selling to.
(24:52):
But as a sales professional, what it's meant is that one has had to become much
more adaptive to be relevant in that environment and to better understand where
their buyer spends their time.
What are the forums? What are the environments?
What is the digital presence that your ICP or persona set has?
(25:15):
And how do you best infiltrate that?
And so, whilst the world hasn't moved entirely away from sort of traditional selling techniques.
Smiling and dialing, emailing, face-to-face selling at events as examples, I think the.
The mix of sales channels if
(25:37):
you like has become much more omni-channel in nature
and more complicated as a result and it's become
much more pragmatic so there's a kind of always-on sort
of notion to how one needs to sell today and and and that requires a consistency
of tone and narrative and and presence at all times and that is very challenging
(26:00):
challenging for organizations because because it requires a level of discipline
and investment to get that right.
Challenging for the individuals in the sales organization, for example,
because it requires a high degree of self-learning and sort of evolution to
stay on the right side of these trends.
And they're only getting accelerated
by, you know, some of the things that you mentioned at the start.
(26:24):
And that sort of pace of change and disruption is going to just get exponentially
faster and more complex.
The other thing I'm seeing is...
There's a lot more automation that's crept in, you know, tools and software
are now aiding businesses and sales individuals far more than they were even,
(26:48):
you know, three years ago, let alone five, 10 years ago.
What that's allowing is an amplification of outreach and opportunity and potential.
You can get to, you know, in front of more clients with, you know,
a single voice far easier and more effectively.
But it also means that the world has become very crowded
and much smaller actually in in size because
(27:11):
you know that accessibility is available
to all now not everyone
takes up that opportunity and adopts and enhances what's available to them those
that do and and and can sort of curate that with their business i think you
know will cut through more effectively but i think workflow and tools are also changing
(27:35):
the sales landscape in addition to a more educated sort of buyer persona. Yeah.
I'm intrigued by the automation aspect because I get countless emails that seem
to begin with the same sentence.
I hope this email finds you well. And it seems that that's a standard chat GPT email introduction.
(28:03):
How can these sales teams sort of leverage the automation tools and technologies
that are now available and at the same time be human, for want of a better word,
be individual to the person they're reaching out to and not just sound like
(28:23):
a cliched AI-generated messenger?
Yeah, and that is the challenge here is, in a way, everything becomes,
you know, depersonalized, right?
And so, in sales and business, frankly, if we just take a further step back,
it's about people, right?
People buy from people, even, you know, within technology services and products.
(28:49):
You know, you look at whether you're a Salesforce, LinkedIn,
or, you know, my old business, as much as you would be selling technology and
solutions and talk about, you know, software and platforms,
a lot of the longstanding customers and relationships within those accounts
were formed at a individual, you know, people or person level.
(29:11):
And humanising what you do is extremely important.
And that needs to come through to your point in terms of the tone and the message and personalisation.
But I still think you can do that. I think a lot of these tools today are designed
for you to be able to put your personality and stamp on,
(29:32):
albeit then scale up and automate how that is then distributed.
I think a lot of the bad practice you're seeing is honestly just laziness.
It's people who take the tools at the sort of lowest level of sophistication
and are frankly lazy in sort of approach and execution.
(29:55):
I think the best businesses still ensure that their teams and their people shine
through beyond the technology and the product they're selling.
And I think that's an opportunity for companies and particularly startups as
they're at the very front of that journey is,
you know, the best businesses in the end are able to curate and find that equilibrium
(30:21):
between technology and.
And humans or technology and people and it's it's how
you bundle that up that i think increasingly becomes
the differentiation or the secret sauce
and that sounds simplistic on
one extent but actually it's it's not it's it's it's getting that recipe right
(30:42):
and when to lean in more on technology when to lean in more on people and have
the appropriate times of of of business and when your scaling and to me that's
a really interesting sort of paradigm to sort of figure out,
and to sort of follow as as as the world will continue to get flooded by,
ai there i've said it and and and technology and automation it's okay you're allowed to mention ai,
(31:08):
on these follow-up questions it was only it was only that previous one where i was outlawing the
phrase in terms of your career over
your several decades in both operational
and and more recently venture roles
who are the three people who've most influenced you the way you think the way
(31:32):
you behave the way you you act either from colleagues and mentors or thought
leaders in the the world of technology and business?
Yeah, sort of.
The three that immediately come to mind are actually all individuals that I've
had the privilege to work with and learn a huge amount from.
(31:57):
I've been blessed, actually, throughout all the different stages and businesses
within my career to work with what I believe are sort of exceptional leaders.
But each of the three individuals have their own traits.
And I guess I've sort of formed a different and unique relationship with.
(32:19):
The first dates back to when I sort of fell into kind of the world of technology
and sort of insights. And it was a guy called Max Cartellieri,
who I'm still in touch with today.
Max was the founder of Chow, and I joined Chow Surveys in 2003 and had a really
(32:42):
unique opportunity, actually, because Max, a German native based in Munich,
but had just moved to London to help establish a UK presence.
And so for the first six months of my time of joining that business,
I had Max literally sat next to me, just me and him in an office,
(33:03):
intense sort of environment, but a fantastic opportunity to learn,
you know, a huge amount about how to conduct yourself, about how to, you know,
rethink strategically about, you know, a business and a market opportunity.
Opportunity and Max has gone on to be
a sort of multiple entrepreneur he's now founder and CEO of Alpha Sites which
(33:24):
is one of the leading global expert network businesses operating successfully
today so he's definitely probably the first person that I learned what I now deem as.
Good practice of what good looked like from and he's become a bit of a coach
or sort of mentor albeit sort of intermittently over the years the second is
(33:47):
Bo Mattson Bo founded Chow Bo is also a partner with J12 hence the connection
and sort of my association with the fund and he's someone,
just being frank I would run through brick walls for he hired me at SYN gave
me the opportunity to sort of go on that sort of amazing journey that I did
for 12 years with that organization and injected a huge amount of fun and unpredictability,
(34:12):
actually, along the way.
I had seven years working with him when we were venture-backed,
and they were probably the most rewarding and exciting years of the entire SYNC chapter.
When we were growing like crazy, everything was about top-line growth and land-grabbing
the market opportunity.
(34:32):
And Beau just had a very good way about him, frankly. Frankly,
you know, a Swede was very open and sort of consensus driven to an extent.
But hell, does he have a backbone as well and is very, very driven and convicted
in his approach, but does that with amazing principles and values.
(34:53):
So Bo would be the second individual.
And then more recently, and I only worked with this individual for a relatively short period of time.
But um it was probably
the most challenging of of periods and that
was tom bielman who was my boss and ceo at sin at the time of working under
(35:14):
private equity and and and was the ceo that led that organization to the ipo
and tom brought a huge amount of experience from outside side of the organisation,
having worked in big corporates and also on the investor side of the equation as well.
And particularly on the latter, the sort of understanding of working with PE, understanding.
(35:41):
Of how you look at situations through the eye of an investor and how that lens
differs from perhaps being an operator was really insightful and enlightening.
And I'm happy to say all three are still very much on page one of my phone book
and definitely would be probably the three first calls I made if I needed some
(36:02):
career advice and wanted to unpick the wealth of knowledge there that they sort
of all have in aggregate.
So they're the three that I've sort of been really fortunate to work with.
I mean, there's sort of many other very, very talented leaders and peers and
colleagues I've had the pleasure of working with along the way,
but those three for me are just standout individuals.
(36:25):
Wonderful. And how can listeners find out more about you and J12 Ventures?
Yeah, so J12Ventures.com, there's an array of information there about who the
team is, investment thesis, and obviously showcasing the portfolio.
It's an early stage, seed stage only, Nordic-based VC fund.
(36:49):
I've been involved with the fund now for coming up to three years.
We're a tight-knit team, agile in how we operate,
and really backing founders and groundbreaking technology companies in AI and
data and in the Nordics and more broadly We also host a number of events.
(37:10):
The pinnacle of those is J12 Day in Stockholm, but we have hosted things in
Berlin and London and Stockholm, which we're doing in partnership with the broader VC ecosystem.
System and then you know i i try
and provide sort of insights and commentary as well both with
j12 and and reflecting on my broader portfolio work
(37:31):
primarily through linkedin which is always a
good place to to start if uh mom wants
to see more about me or or get in
touch to have a conversation going forward that's awesome
richard thanks so much for joining me on today's show and walking me through
your your journey and your vision for the future without ever mentioning AI
(37:53):
or machine learning I almost managed it I think it I think it came up once but
uh look thank you Gary really appreciate it thanks again for having me on the show.
On the menu. So welcome to the Startup to Scale Up game plan where we dive into
the minds of software venture leaders and investors.
I'm your host Gary Rieman and today we have a super guest joining us.
Richard Thornton is an operating partner at J12 Ventures with a track record
of investing in and scaling high growth startups and Richard brings a wealth
(00:24):
of experience and a a unique perspective on the tech and investment landscape.
So in this episode, we'll explore Richard's journey from operational leadership
to venture investing and his insights on what it takes to build successful startups and scale-ups.
So let's dive in and welcome Richard to the show.
(00:45):
Great. Thank you, Gary. Appreciate it. And great to be joining you today for the discussion.
Absolutely. So let's begin with your journey. Manny, could you share a little
about your journey from starting in the tech industry and operational roles
and eventually joining J12 Ventures?
Yeah, sure. And we'll try and give you the abridged version.
(01:08):
So I sort of started my career, well, I studied, first of all,
in sort of business management and marketing.
And I guess one of those individuals that has the rare claim to have gone on,
actually actually used their degree in practice in the real world.
But I initially went into consulting, was a research analyst for around four years.
(01:30):
And that actually gave me, I think, a really good grounding in terms of the
sort of fundamentals of what became sort of a broader sort of commercial role
or set of roles that I would go on to do.
So a grounding in sort of consulting. And then And I was headhunted and sort
of almost fell sort of accidentally or certainly wasn't planned into the world
(01:53):
of software and technology way back in,
I think, 2002, 2003,
where I joined a digital data collection business at the time that was looking
to sort of disrupt and pioneer the market research or insights industry.
And that was a company that at the time was privately owned,
(02:14):
but very quickly after I joined, became venture backed.
And that was my first sort of window, if you like, into working for and with
venture capitalists and understanding what that entails from a company perspective.
And since then, I spent and really carved out sort of a 20-odd year career working for B2B.
(02:37):
Technology-enabled or SaaS propositions, going in early to organizations in commercial roles.
So I've been everything from an individual sales contributor earlier on in my
career through to working for the sort of latter 10 years or so as an operator at C-level.
So having sort of CRO or CCO roles, running sales, marketing,
(03:01):
partnerships, alliances, and customer success teams within those organizations.
And and through that sort of 20-year career i was fortunate to work for different sort of.
Share shareholding structures and sort of ownership structures
and that's really given me a i think a sort of
good lens into the sort of different flavors and
(03:24):
expectations that come with ownership of organizations
so that's included everything from being privately
owned to publicly owned and then venture backed and
private equity owned sort of in between so the
full gambit if you like of different ownership
structures and sort of governance compliance and expectations
that come with operating in those in those environments and and within those
(03:50):
organizations i've been fortuitous to have you know excellent opportunities
to grow over a long period of time and work with some very exceptional and inspiring leaders.
My last business since that I exited in February 2021, when I joined,
it was a sort of couple of million euros in revenue in a very small Swedish-based organization.
(04:12):
And as part of that executive leadership team, we grew it to 100 million euros
in revenue, globalized the proposition and then optimized it.
So it became a very scalable market leader in the data collection and insight space.
So clearly, that's given me a lot of learnings and experiences, good, bad, and ugly.
(04:33):
And now actually getting on to what I do today, I'm sort of taking all of that.
And I'm trying to sort of pay back, if you like, into the startup and technology world.
So I'm an operating partner, as you said, for J12. I work mainly post-investment
with the portfolio of companies that fund investing.
(04:55):
And I also am on the board of a number of businesses here in the UK where I'm
a board member and strategic advisor.
They're mainly scale upstage businesses that are sort of past that 5 million ARR mark.
And, you know, that's how I sort of divide my time today.
So I've gone from sort of operator being into something wholesale,
(05:17):
you know, full time to now wearing a variety of hats and sort of imparting my
sort of experience across a sort of number of different businesses and business models.
What were the main drivers behind that decision to switch to being part of an investing portfolio?
(05:37):
You talked about giving something back. So obviously that's a factor.
But what were the other factors that influenced a pretty major decision for you?
Yeah, it's a great question. It's something I've talked about a lot on other
podcasts and just sort of with friends on my network since leaving SYN specifically.
(06:01):
And just talking candidly, you know, I initially was ready for just a complete break.
I'd been running hard and fast for sort of 20 odd years in sort of high pressure roles.
I'd had a lot of responsibility on my shoulders relatively early on in one's career.
I was a European managing director, managing an employee base of 200 people
(06:24):
at the age of 28 and had sort of been at C-suite ever since until,
you know, the exit and the IPO was seen in February 21.
So in all honesty, part of me was, you know, just burnt out,
needing a break, wanting to just step away from sort of corporate life and spend
more time with the family.
I've got two young boys and, you know, as you know, they grow up very quickly
(06:46):
and I've missed a lot along the way. So that was a personal key driver to wanting
initially a bit of a break and a change.
But I'd already sort of decided probably a year prior to the eventual IPO that
I wanted to sort of try my hand at sort of going plural and taking a portfolio
(07:08):
approach to working life.
I just felt that I'd accomplished as much as I wanted to within my sort of domain.
Which was the insights sector and market research.
And I felt there wasn't another business that would be able to get me as excited
as the journey I'd just sort of been on with seeing and sort of all the milestones
(07:31):
and gates that I'd gone through as part of that sort of story.
Story and and i also
just you know selfishly wanted a better balance
in in you know how i worked how i operated
and being able to sort of curate my my time
in a much more meaningful manner than i was able to when
i was sort of solely in on one business as an operator so for those sort of
(07:55):
three or four reasons i i i pursued you know what i do today was which is much
more this sort of advisory sort of board or net kind of life albeit you know being.
Sort of selective and sort of careful as much as one can on the types of businesses
and founders and teams that I work with.
(08:16):
And I've kept that purposefully sort of manageable.
It's really for businesses here in the UK. And then the J12 sort of operating
partner portfolio work is in addition to that.
So they're really the reasons that sort of drove that decision just over three years ago.
And looking back now, I think, you know, never say never of going back in as an operator,
(08:38):
but it would be a really difficult decision,
I think, for me to sort of give up what I've kind of built and created and the
enjoyment and motivation and sort of, I guess, intellectual sort of stimulation
I get from what I do as of now.
It sounds like you're having a lot of fun in your latest adventure.
(09:00):
One of the things I've seen from you online are these playbooks that you've
been publishing, leveraging all those years of operating experience to help
the operators that you're now supporting.
So can you elaborate on the eight building blocks for scalable sales?
It's outlined in one of your playbooks. And which block do you find startups struggle with the most?
(09:27):
Yeah, so I'm a huge fan, as you've
alluded to, of playbooks and as much as possible, prescriptive selling.
I think regardless of ICP or customer segment, one can always build a defined
and staged sales process and something that is repeatable and scalable.
(09:48):
And I think the earlier one invests in that, the better.
You know, the payback on that is relatively quick and it's often sort of overlooked
or kicked into the grass by sort of founders and startups in terms of it being
something that, you know, comes further down the track.
In terms of the sort of building blocks that I think form the key fundamentals
(10:12):
of a playbook and those which I believe are the most challenging without a doubt are,
well, there's two really, I would say playbook.
Being really disciplined and having absolute clarity around who your audience
is and ultimately who you sell to.
(10:34):
So that's sort of part ICP, part persona set.
And I've seen this skirted over far too easily and far too quickly by many teams
and businesses over the years. But that is mission critical to get right early on.
And it requires experimentation and sort of a lot of A-B testing and sort of
(10:58):
challenging of kind of hypothesis and sort of actual sort of results in the field.
But overinvesting almost a disproportionate amount of time very early on in
defining your target audience and getting that ICP boxed in is really key.
And then the second building block I would point towards, and it continues to
(11:21):
be a challenge, I think, for all organisations, regardless of size and stage,
is attracting talent and, you know, understanding,
you know, the sort of individual parts that make up the total sum.
And I think, you know, that is part art, part sort of science in terms of how
(11:43):
one can do that. And it doesn't get necessarily any easier, the larger or mature
you get as an organization.
But fundamentally, the first cohort of hires in any organization is of paramount importance.
And I think investing in a robust,
objective-driven process from a hiring perspective is absolutely key.
(12:09):
And again, we'll pay dividends and pay back in full, you know,
if you if you can sort of fine tune that to an extent early on.
From a talent perspective, to what extent do you and your colleagues get involved
with the portfolio in in shaping the approach to to hiring that initial cohort?
(12:32):
Yeah, I actually can get very involved. I'm working with a couple of J-12 portcos
at the moment, and I'm quarterbacking hiring processes, typically at sort of VP level or above.
But I will play a role guided by the founder and the business.
But that can range from, you know, being directly involved in the interview
(12:54):
process, being part of a panel for a sort of practical exercise that is part of that hiring process.
But actually getting involved much earlier on as well in terms of designing
the brief and the job description.
And I liken thinking about.
Hiring and profiling in the same way a business would think about its ICP.
(13:15):
So in the same way you would create a set of thermographics and a framework around who your ICP is,
I actually advise that you would do the same sort of exercise in terms of profiling,
framing who your ideal candidate profile is.
And so I work with some of the founders and portcos on that framework and support
(13:37):
end-to-end in the hiring process. It can also be post-hiring and,
you know, designing what the onboarding should look like.
And then the other critical component, of course, particularly thinking about
sales roles is incentives,
commission plans, bonuses, and what that structure should be,
particularly for startups where they don't have the benefit of leaning on historical
(13:58):
data or a set of norms to shape KPIs and sort of commission parameters.
And so getting that right in the early months and year one is challenging.
And so I'm sort of, you know, adding, I guess, expertise and sort of learnings
of how I've done that in the past as another key area.
(14:19):
So that's quite a broad church, but, you know, I can be very hands-on actually,
depending on the business requirement and sort of the founders' needs.
What are some of the key traits you look for when hiring a commercial leader
in an early stage B2B SaaS venture?
Yeah, I mean, we spend a lot of time actually talking about attributes and characteristics
(14:42):
or sort of behaviours as a sort of overarching sort of umbrella.
And I think this is really key.
I think in any good effective leader, there's a sort of combination required
of sort of One that is to an extent empathetic and sort of has a degree of healthy
degree humbleness, but equally,
(15:03):
you know, you want an individual, particularly in a startup to have empathy.
A huge amount of kind of drive and energy and conviction and almost to the point
where it becomes sort of obsessive.
The best founders, the best leaders in startups are those that are just relentless
in their pursuit of the mission and the objective.
(15:24):
But they can, as I said, couple it with a sort of humanistic aspect to how they are as an individual.
So we look at all of those sort of traits.
Clearly, there's things from a sales perspective like curiosity.
You know will to win you know huge
amount of driving an individual um i guess
(15:46):
robustness because you know in sales you hear
more know more a lot more than you will hit
yes so that resilience is key so there's a
sort of framework that myself and the j12 team have been sort of developing
and actually it's baked into our playbook that we sort of roll out and make
available to portfolio businesses when we invest and sort of help them on board
(16:09):
into the J12 kind of world and framework, if you like.
So yeah, it's something we've invested a lot in in the last 12 months.
And it's something I lean a lot into when talking to founders about hiring and
getting those first cohorts of sales hires right first time.
And in terms of satisfying yourself that the
(16:30):
preferred candidates actually do demonstrate
those traits and they're not just you know
professional interviewees shall we say so going beyond their ability to make
a strong impression when they're being interviewed by you and the team what
do you do do you have you have any psychometric tests do you rely on backdoor
(16:53):
references what do you do to to be pretty
damn confident that you've landed the right talent.
Yeah, and it's hard, right? And it's even harder in the US when you go and hire
there because everyone there is excellent at selling themselves and sales by nature is just that.
It's being able to put on a sort of facade and at times a different skin or
persona, right, to sort of play a role.
(17:15):
And you need to be able to cut through that. So there's a
few things that sort of make up the sort of
backbone bone of a best practice hiring process in
my in my opinion you've alluded to two two
aspects i'm a huge proponent of
referencing you know i it shocks me actually still today large businesses as
(17:37):
well that don't do thorough referencing and really triangulate around the process
when it comes to candidates and i don't just mean the references that are provided
by the individual in the process.
It's the back channeling and the kind of unofficial referencing that I think
produces the greatest insight.
(17:58):
And sort of learnings around the individual as a person and specifically how they are as an operator.
So that's one component. We do use psychometric tests. Some of the J12 portfolio
businesses are already working with psychometric tests as a validation point,
not as a go, no go kind of trigger in the process, but absolutely to round out,
(18:22):
you know, an initial thought or view of a candidate as an additional sort of
data point in that decision making process.
I have a sort of three touchpoint rule that, you know, regardless of who you're
hiring, three individual people in the business,
ideally in different parts of the business, should touch the process, speak to the candidate.
(18:47):
Play into a sort of standardized scoring criteria as part of the process.
And then I guess the final component would be a sort of exercise or practical stage.
For example, with one of the JTO portfolio businesses, we've just completed two hiring processes.
(19:08):
And within both of those, candidates were asked to prepare two exercises,
really. one was an elevator pitch.
So they had to produce a sort of 30 to 60 second elevator pitch and pitch it
to a panel and then have some sort of dynamic Q&A around that.
And then the second sort of longer form part of that exercise was to produce
(19:32):
a pitch deck and actually pitch to us in a real life role play scenario where
we all had certain personas and there was a sort of back and forth Q&A for a 45-minute session.
And this was like stage three, stage four of a hiring process.
So very robust, certainly for a startup.
But as I said, hiring for me is one of the most important things any business
(19:58):
can do, let alone startups.
And that's why I think you should
really invest the time and the process stages to doing it thoroughly.
And by the sound of it, gives you the chance to demonstrate your acting credentials
as well when you choose which persona you're going to go with.
It does indeed. Yeah, it gets everyone out of their comfort zone,
frankly. You know, so it's a level playing field in that regard. Yeah.
(20:22):
Another thing I noticed in the playbook is you emphasize growth hacking as a strategic approach.
So can you give me an example of a successful growth hacking process that you've
witnessed where you've seen it work really well?
Yeah, I'm a fan of sort of growth hacking and it can come in sort of many guises.
(20:46):
Is i i i think one of
the the things we've done in the
past i i guess it's sort of growth hacking or sort of lead gen sort of hacking
around sort of events almost in the sort of guerrilla marketing type sort of
manner so you know turning up to sort of events not necessarily having an exhibition
(21:09):
exhibition stand or even a sort of presence there,
but sort of, I guess, bombing the event in terms of sort of collateral people,
maybe even sort of pegging on sort of hotel,
you know, in the same complex as the conference and just leveraging sort of
something a bit more spontaneous and not necessarily as planned to really,
(21:33):
A, create a presence, but B, break into conversations and relationships.
With a slightly more punchier approach to how you would typically attend one of those events.
And at Sina, we also held sort of hackathons where you'd have different functions
in a room or you could do it remotely where you would just have a sort of ideation
(21:54):
session where it was based around a sort of theme.
And that could be, for example, from a sales perspective or a growth perspective.
You know, we want you to drive a set of ideas that we will then sort of shortlist
and sort of vote on around how we can amplify or accelerate,
for example, our market outreach.
(22:16):
How we can create a specific campaign to break into an enterprise segment,
how we can create a narrative and unlock conversations and relationships with
a certain persona on the C-suite.
For example and we held those periodically and
they would be successful the product team also would do
(22:38):
that but in a product capacity from a hackathon perspective
as well to sort of try and unlock ideas and
sort of opportunities in terms of building out the product and platform so i
think these can be applied as principles across various functions and to sort
of unearth i think ideas that perhaps wouldn't necessarily surface through usual
(22:59):
forms of communication within organizations.
And it really gives the floor to the entire employee base as opposed to perhaps
a more sort of standard top-down approach where the big ideas,
the big strategic bets come from, you know, the C-suite and the exec team.
Cool. I want to talk about the future for a few moments.
(23:22):
I'm going to put you on the spot here. So without using the words artificial
intelligence or machine learning,
what emerging trends in sales and technology do you think will have the most
significant impact on startups in the next three to five years?
(23:43):
It's really difficult when you remove those two. So I'll try and talk around those without using.
You're going to find another way of describing the same thing,
aren't you? It would be another. Exactly. Neural networks.
Yeah, exactly. No, look, I mean, I think to an extent, and this is sort of documented,
(24:04):
the world of sales, if I look at it through the sales lens, is without doubt changing.
It has changed even in the sort of 20-odd years that I've been involved in it as a practice.
I think today we live in a world where the buyer, first and foremost,
is far more informed, far better educated with a lot of information and data at their fingertips,
(24:31):
which makes the buying process and the selling process mirroring that fundamentally different.
For an arguably, in many cases, shorter, less personable, much more of a transaction
than sort of a relationship build.
Obviously, that varies depending on what you're selling and who you're selling to.
(24:52):
But as a sales professional, what it's meant is that one has had to become much
more adaptive to be relevant in that environment and to better understand where
their buyer spends their time.
What are the forums? What are the environments?
What is the digital presence that your ICP or persona set has?
(25:15):
And how do you best infiltrate that?
And so, whilst the world hasn't moved entirely away from sort of traditional selling techniques.
Smiling and dialing, emailing, face-to-face selling at events as examples, I think the.
The mix of sales channels if
(25:37):
you like has become much more omni-channel in nature
and more complicated as a result and it's become
much more pragmatic so there's a kind of always-on sort
of notion to how one needs to sell today and and and that requires a consistency
of tone and narrative and and presence at all times and that is very challenging
(26:00):
challenging for organizations because because it requires a level of discipline
and investment to get that right.
Challenging for the individuals in the sales organization, for example,
because it requires a high degree of self-learning and sort of evolution to
stay on the right side of these trends.
And they're only getting accelerated
by, you know, some of the things that you mentioned at the start.
(26:24):
And that sort of pace of change and disruption is going to just get exponentially
faster and more complex.
The other thing I'm seeing is...
There's a lot more automation that's crept in, you know, tools and software
are now aiding businesses and sales individuals far more than they were even,
(26:48):
you know, three years ago, let alone five, 10 years ago.
What that's allowing is an amplification of outreach and opportunity and potential.
You can get to, you know, in front of more clients with, you know,
a single voice far easier and more effectively.
But it also means that the world has become very crowded
and much smaller actually in in size because
(27:11):
you know that accessibility is available
to all now not everyone
takes up that opportunity and adopts and enhances what's available to them those
that do and and and can sort of curate that with their business i think you
know will cut through more effectively but i think workflow and tools are also changing
(27:35):
the sales landscape in addition to a more educated sort of buyer persona. Yeah.
I'm intrigued by the automation aspect because I get countless emails that seem
to begin with the same sentence.
I hope this email finds you well. And it seems that that's a standard chat GPT email introduction.
(28:03):
How can these sales teams sort of leverage the automation tools and technologies
that are now available and at the same time be human, for want of a better word,
be individual to the person they're reaching out to and not just sound like
(28:23):
a cliched AI-generated messenger?
Yeah, and that is the challenge here is, in a way, everything becomes,
you know, depersonalized, right?
And so, in sales and business, frankly, if we just take a further step back,
it's about people, right?
People buy from people, even, you know, within technology services and products.
(28:49):
You know, you look at whether you're a Salesforce, LinkedIn,
or, you know, my old business, as much as you would be selling technology and
solutions and talk about, you know, software and platforms,
a lot of the longstanding customers and relationships within those accounts
were formed at a individual, you know, people or person level.
(29:11):
And humanising what you do is extremely important.
And that needs to come through to your point in terms of the tone and the message and personalisation.
But I still think you can do that. I think a lot of these tools today are designed
for you to be able to put your personality and stamp on,
(29:32):
albeit then scale up and automate how that is then distributed.
I think a lot of the bad practice you're seeing is honestly just laziness.
It's people who take the tools at the sort of lowest level of sophistication
and are frankly lazy in sort of approach and execution.
(29:55):
I think the best businesses still ensure that their teams and their people shine
through beyond the technology and the product they're selling.
And I think that's an opportunity for companies and particularly startups as
they're at the very front of that journey is,
you know, the best businesses in the end are able to curate and find that equilibrium
(30:21):
between technology and.
And humans or technology and people and it's it's how
you bundle that up that i think increasingly becomes
the differentiation or the secret sauce
and that sounds simplistic on
one extent but actually it's it's not it's it's it's getting that recipe right
(30:42):
and when to lean in more on technology when to lean in more on people and have
the appropriate times of of of business and when your scaling and to me that's
a really interesting sort of paradigm to sort of figure out,
and to sort of follow as as as the world will continue to get flooded by,
ai there i've said it and and and technology and automation it's okay you're allowed to mention ai,
(31:08):
on these follow-up questions it was only it was only that previous one where i was outlawing the
phrase in terms of your career over
your several decades in both operational
and and more recently venture roles
who are the three people who've most influenced you the way you think the way
(31:32):
you behave the way you you act either from colleagues and mentors or thought
leaders in the the world of technology and business?
Yeah, sort of.
The three that immediately come to mind are actually all individuals that I've
had the privilege to work with and learn a huge amount from.
(31:57):
I've been blessed, actually, throughout all the different stages and businesses
within my career to work with what I believe are sort of exceptional leaders.
But each of the three individuals have their own traits.
And I guess I've sort of formed a different and unique relationship with.
(32:19):
The first dates back to when I sort of fell into kind of the world of technology
and sort of insights. And it was a guy called Max Cartellieri,
who I'm still in touch with today.
Max was the founder of Chow, and I joined Chow Surveys in 2003 and had a really
(32:42):
unique opportunity, actually, because Max, a German native based in Munich,
but had just moved to London to help establish a UK presence.
And so for the first six months of my time of joining that business,
I had Max literally sat next to me, just me and him in an office,
(33:03):
intense sort of environment, but a fantastic opportunity to learn,
you know, a huge amount about how to conduct yourself, about how to, you know,
rethink strategically about, you know, a business and a market opportunity.
Opportunity and Max has gone on to be
a sort of multiple entrepreneur he's now founder and CEO of Alpha Sites which
(33:24):
is one of the leading global expert network businesses operating successfully
today so he's definitely probably the first person that I learned what I now deem as.
Good practice of what good looked like from and he's become a bit of a coach
or sort of mentor albeit sort of intermittently over the years the second is
(33:47):
Bo Mattson Bo founded Chow Bo is also a partner with J12 hence the connection
and sort of my association with the fund and he's someone,
just being frank I would run through brick walls for he hired me at SYN gave
me the opportunity to sort of go on that sort of amazing journey that I did
for 12 years with that organization and injected a huge amount of fun and unpredictability,
(34:12):
actually, along the way.
I had seven years working with him when we were venture-backed,
and they were probably the most rewarding and exciting years of the entire SYNC chapter.
When we were growing like crazy, everything was about top-line growth and land-grabbing
the market opportunity.
(34:32):
And Beau just had a very good way about him, frankly. Frankly,
you know, a Swede was very open and sort of consensus driven to an extent.
But hell, does he have a backbone as well and is very, very driven and convicted
in his approach, but does that with amazing principles and values.
(34:53):
So Bo would be the second individual.
And then more recently, and I only worked with this individual for a relatively short period of time.
But um it was probably
the most challenging of of periods and that
was tom bielman who was my boss and ceo at sin at the time of working under
(35:14):
private equity and and and was the ceo that led that organization to the ipo
and tom brought a huge amount of experience from outside side of the organisation,
having worked in big corporates and also on the investor side of the equation as well.
And particularly on the latter, the sort of understanding of working with PE, understanding.
(35:41):
Of how you look at situations through the eye of an investor and how that lens
differs from perhaps being an operator was really insightful and enlightening.
And I'm happy to say all three are still very much on page one of my phone book
and definitely would be probably the three first calls I made if I needed some
(36:02):
career advice and wanted to unpick the wealth of knowledge there that they sort
of all have in aggregate.
So they're the three that I've sort of been really fortunate to work with.
I mean, there's sort of many other very, very talented leaders and peers and
colleagues I've had the pleasure of working with along the way,
but those three for me are just standout individuals.
(36:25):
Wonderful. And how can listeners find out more about you and J12 Ventures?
Yeah, so J12Ventures.com, there's an array of information there about who the
team is, investment thesis, and obviously showcasing the portfolio.
It's an early stage, seed stage only, Nordic-based VC fund.
(36:49):
I've been involved with the fund now for coming up to three years.
We're a tight-knit team, agile in how we operate,
and really backing founders and groundbreaking technology companies in AI and
data and in the Nordics and more broadly We also host a number of events.
(37:10):
The pinnacle of those is J12 Day in Stockholm, but we have hosted things in
Berlin and London and Stockholm, which we're doing in partnership with the broader VC ecosystem.
System and then you know i i try
and provide sort of insights and commentary as well both with
j12 and and reflecting on my broader portfolio work
(37:31):
primarily through linkedin which is always a
good place to to start if uh mom wants
to see more about me or or get in
touch to have a conversation going forward that's awesome
richard thanks so much for joining me on today's show and walking me through
your your journey and your vision for the future without ever mentioning AI
(37:53):
or machine learning I almost managed it I think it I think it came up once but
uh look thank you Gary really appreciate it thanks again for having me on the show.
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