June 20, 2024 • 47 mins
Join us as we sit down with Connor Archbold, Founder and Co-CEO of Tracksuit.
Connor shares his compelling journey and what lead him and his co-founder Matt Herbert to start Tracksuit.
Through his story you’ll gain insights into the resilience and innovation required to launch and scale a tech venture at speed.
Ever wondered how Tracksuit developed its game-changing SaaS market research model? Connor dives deep into the strategic manoeuvres that turned a white-labeled data visualisation app into a standalone powerhouse. Discover how early commitments from customers validated their vision and propelled their growth. Understand the pivotal role of customer feedback, the balancing act of maintaining other jobs during the early stages, and the critical decisions that led to focusing full-time on Tracksuit.
Culture is the bedrock of any successful startup, and Tracksuit is no exception. We chat about the importance of fostering in-person connections and maintaining high hiring standards as the company scales. From managing the excitement and stress of scaling to balancing startup demands with family life, Connor shares invaluable advice on staying focused, avoiding burnout, and making values-based decisions.
Tune in for rich entrepreneurial wisdom, personal anecdotes, and actionable strategies for growing and managing a thriving tech venture.
You can connect with Connor via LinkedIn and check out Tracksuit.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Gratitude is one of the main feelings, like wow, how
lucky are we that we've gotthis great opportunity, we've
got this amazing team and we getto learn all these new things
and take advantage of thisopportunity.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Connor.
He almost needs no introductionin the tech system.
Connor is co-founder and co-CEOof a company called Tracksuit.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If it's not better than global best practice and
made Tracksuit-y.
It doesn't exist at Tracksuit.
And that's just like our way ofsaying find what is best
practice and make it better andthen align it culturally.
Love that.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan.
Welcome to my podcast, whereyou will hear from a range of
guests, including those from thestartup world and those that
have had incredibly interestinglives and some stories to tell.
I would really appreciate it ifyou could hit the follow button
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is limited, so let's get on withit and hear from our next guest
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Now back to the show.
My guest today is ConnorArchbold and Connor, he almost
needs no introduction in thetech system.
Maybe for those outside of NewZealand, I'll give you a little
bit of a background.
So Connor is co-founder andco-CEO of a company called
(02:04):
Tracksuit.
I have not been able to not seeTracksuit in New Zealand I'm
actually in Australia now but Isaw Tracksuit at the New Zealand
High Tech Awards, where one ofthe Tracksuit team received an
award wearing none other than atracksuit.
But Connor, welcome to thepodcast.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I'm absolutely stoked to be here and we're not at the
no introduction stage at all.
That's crazy talk.
I appreciate the sentiment.
Awesome to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, it's so cool and I want to start, as I always
typically do, talking a littlebit about your origin story.
And I tell you what.
I got super excited when I sawwhere you went to school,
because you're a Rangitoto boy,as am I.
I was about 100 years prior toyou, but I went there as well.
And then you went to Otago.
But I'd love to start with yourorigin story.
(02:54):
How did you get to be herebefore you got anywhere near
starting tracksuit?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, great, go to the shore as well.
I'm still living on the shore.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, go to the shore Love the North Shore in New
Zealand.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
My story.
I mean, I guess I've got atwang.
I have an American twangbecause I was born in the States
and immigrated to New Zealandwith my parents and siblings in
1999 to the wonderful shore, andgrew up over there, went to
Rangy and then went to Otago andthat was a nice combo because
Rangy is the biggest school inNew Zealand and then went to
Otago and that was a nice combobecause Rangy is the biggest
school in New Zealand, biggesthigh school, and then Otago is
(03:26):
sort of A lot of people fromRangy don't go to Otago.
So I met a whole other raft ofindividuals so that was really
cool for me.
And then I became a lawyer.
I was a lawyer straight out ofuniversity and did that for 3.5
years and I loved that because Ithink I'm naturally like that
strategy sort of thinking,entrepreneurial brain.
(03:49):
But I really had detailsdrilled into me through that
three years of being a lawyerand I loved that time.
I met my wife there, so thatwas awesome and a lot of my best
friends are there and a lot ofthem have gone on to be
entrepreneurs as well, so prettyinteresting group of folks.
And then I wanted to get intostartups so I worked with the
Ice House.
I came out of that worked atthe Ice House to raise a fund to
(04:12):
launch Lightning Lab here inAuckland, which had been in
Wellington a couple times.
At that point I'm relativelyrisk-averse for maybe for a
startup person not compared tothe total population, but for a
startup person so that was doinglike running Lightning Lab is
my way of learning aboutstartups without actually having
to do one myself.
And then I joined one of thestartups that had gone through
(04:35):
Lightning Lab, actually inWellington.
But I'd met the Mishkuru teamand founders and they were kind
of one of the early darlings ofthe New Zealand ecosystem and
there was Snapchat third partyapp.
And they were one of the earlydarlings of the New Zealand
ecosystem and there was Snapchata third-party app, and they
were riding the wave of Snapchatbeing this modern.
It felt like how TikTok feelsright now, something new and
cool and vertical video focused,which had never been the case.
(04:56):
So I joined that team and that'sactually where I met Matt, my
now co-founder.
We joined on the same day inthe Auckland office and then he
went and led the Sydneyexpansion and I joined the team
in New York and became COO ofthat business and so I came up
through operations and customersuccess, actually through that
kind of pathway, I reallyunderstood the engine of a SaaS
(05:18):
business.
And then when we both returnedMatt from Australia and me from
New York when COVID hit and myfirst daughter was on the way,
so my wife and I moved back andtracksuit kind of was a very, it
was an idea, it was ahypothesis, and then all of a
sudden it was a businessopportunity that we kind of had
(05:39):
to take advantage of because itwas flying off the shelves
before we even knew what washappening.
Because it was flying off theshelves before we even knew what
was happening, so Matt and Ijumped into it as soon as that
was deemed very obvious and weworked with BBC Unavailable and
TRA and I've told that story alot.
You can get into that whereTracksuit came from if you want.
But yeah, that was my originstory anyway.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
It's super cool and I know that with Tracksuit you
are definitely solving a problemthat I know anybody that has a
brand and lives inside a companythat wants to understand its
brand really struggles with, orthey did up until Tracksuit came
along.
I had time at Nike for aboutfive years and I can remember
around the leadership table wewould just debate the value of
(06:20):
the brand and how we could trackit.
We used to use these reallyprimitive spider web diagrams on
the sort of attributes of thebrand and it used to sit on a
shelf.
It would sit on a dusty shelfand we'd occasionally do it.
So you were really tapping intosomething that brands are, by
their very nature, are somethingthat are kind of they're very
hard to measure in many respects, but maybe with a lot of
(06:42):
digital automation, digitalmarketing, it's got easier.
How did you sort of tap intothat original insight that gave
you the genesis of the idea forTraxit?
What was that?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
First of all, I really appreciate you saying
that because I think about theproblem Traxit solves, because
you came up through managementand finance functions as well,
which were actually byquantifying brand a little bit,
we're actually helping.
One of the problems we solvefor marketers is that they get
buy-in from C-suite and boardsand finance functions, which is
(07:13):
the hardest part of marketing.
It's no longer that we'remaking sure that people don't
see it as the coloring infunction.
It's like this is real.
This is building the business'ssuccess long term.
So I really appreciate yousaying that when Traxsuit came
from.
Essentially, matt and I had beenworking with brands in MarTech
for years and we were fascinatedby this modern brand trajectory
(07:37):
where they grow really reallyquickly and Warby Parker is an
example in the States, casperMattress is another one but they
grow really, really quickly andthen they find it hard to keep
that growth going.
And if you read the listingdocuments when those companies
IPO, they talk about awarenessand awareness is really low,
like 14% or 10%, and that's notenough to compete with
(07:59):
incumbents in the category thathave 80%, 90% awareness across
the population that are activelypurchasing those products.
And so me and Matt have thissoftware as a service scaling
skill set, and we were sittingdown with James Herman and the
previously unavailable team whohave the brand strategy skill
set, as well as TRA, theresearch agency, who are very
(08:21):
brave market researchers andforward thinkers who wanted to
disrupt their own area.
And with those powers combined,we came up with this software
as a service market researchmodel that actually solved the
problem for brands and formarketers, rather than maybe
insights people, and that wasthe initial idea, and so we came
(08:42):
up with this five-page mock-upof what it might look like and
we went around and had I think Ihad around 100 people brand
managers, marketers in an Excelspreadsheet that I thought I
could talk to and get warmintros to, and the moment that
we were like, oh man, this is athing was by the 68th
conversation, 11 of them hadcommitted 'd signed a sass
(09:06):
contract for this product thatdidn't actually exist and we
weren't.
We weren't like selling snakeoil or anything.
It was just like we said, hey,we don't have funding for this,
like, if we're going to build it, we need 10 people to sign up
for it and commit.
And yeah, 10 people 11 did outof those first 68 conversations.
And that was the moment that wesaid, okay, we're going to go
build it and we have thesecommitments, we have these
(09:28):
customers already, and that wasreally impactful.
It was a great way to buildsomething, because you're
actually building it alongsidethese early customers.
So what they're saying theywant, that's what you're
building.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
And it allowed us to focus on the right things and
ignore the wrong things and keepcustomers in the forefront of
our mind yeah, it's interestingand from what I've heard and I
heard you do an interview withtroy hammond on the we fucking
love startups podcast andmassive shout out to troy and
you talked about that check size, if you like that commitment
from those early customers wasnot insignificant, like it was
(10:03):
actually quite a decent chunk ofmoney.
Were they all large brands orwere they smaller brands?
What kind of customers werethey early on?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
It was a mix.
I mean, our hypothesis wasaround those growth company
brands.
So they're well-known enoughand they're investing enough in
brand and marketing to be makingleaps, but they're not
incumbents, they're notconglomerates.
They haven't been around for along time.
So Sharesies was in there andstill a great customer.
(10:32):
We love them and that sort ofstyle of that sort of size and
ambition of company were whatmade up those early customers
and we largely focus on them.
Now it's expanding out a bitmore.
We go smaller sometimes, we gobigger sometimes and there's
sort of different ways ourproduct works for that.
But that was the initialhypothesis.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
And did you get those customers to then kind of throw
the checks in and then fromthere start building a basic
product out with a developer?
Like how did that work?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The first product was done in about a month and a
half.
So we said, hey, you're goingto get the first version of this
within about a month or twomonths.
And the first version was, likeyou know, we were doing surveys
of the population and we builtit into like a white labeled
data visualization app basicallyyou know, a fancy Power BI and
it wasn't our app at all, it wasjust we'd collected the data
(11:23):
and we'd serviced it in a waythat was usable for the client
and it sort of looked like whatwe'd put in the slide pack.
And then we launched versiontwo, you know, another couple
months after that, and itprobably took seven or eight
months to actually build our ownapp, a standalone thing, and we
were building thatsimultaneously alongside the
white labeled version, which waswhat customers were using every
(11:45):
day, while we were kind ofbuilding the true app in the
background.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
And give us a sense of sort of some color around
that.
Is it just you and Matt at thispoint in time?
Have you got any others workingwith you?
Are you working day jobs?
How did that all look in thoseearly days?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I was a full-time employee at Previously
Unavailable, which is JamesHerman's venture studio, and I
was committed to this projectfor a certain amount of time.
I think it started off as oneday a week and then it gradually
moved up into three or fourdays a week and Matt had
basically come on board as theco-founder of Tracksuit and I'd
(12:24):
say it was like a little bit inthe air as whether I would stay
in tracksuit or go back topreviously available, depending
on how big the opportunity was.
It turned out to be big enoughand matt and I at one point
looked at each other and we'relike, okay, should we just do
this thing?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
you're like yeah high five and then?
And were they easyconversations to have at home?
You know you're married, you'vegot a couple of young kids and
probably at the time did youhave children yeah, it actually
was founded within four monthsof my daughter being born.
So yeah, a couple, basicallytwins almost so you go home and
you're like okay, so we've got afour month old and I'm gonna
(12:57):
throw everything at this here'sthe thing like I'm super bullish
on the venture studio model.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I've done done a lot of research around how Venture
Studio models work and whatworks and what doesn't, and I
actually think that New Zealandis the perfect place for the
Venture Studio model.
And I've spoken about this alittle bit and I don't know if
you want to get into that.
We have this petri dish, thisbeta nation.
That's quite easy to access acertain number of potential
(13:24):
customers in any field, becauseit's one degree of separation
across all of New Zealand so wecan Launch stuff here, get
feedback really quickly.
We've got great product andengineering talent here, very
skilled, and so you can getsomething to MVP level really
quickly and really efficientlyand it also can be quite high
(13:46):
quality.
And so I actually think thatNew Zealand is the perfect place
to launch stuff and figure outwhether it's worth putting more
into.
And that's sort of what Ventventure studios are really good
at.
So there's this nice combo oflike if you can have a venture
studio and the risk the familyrisk, like you were asking is
basically are you going to getpaid?
(14:06):
And the beauty of a venturestudio is like yes, because
we're not just building thisthing.
We're building a lot of thingsand my salary isn't solely tied
to this one idea and it actuallymakes it easier in other
startups I've been involved in.
If anyone's been in startups,you know that like there are
times when you maybe should haveturned the tap off.
You're like this juice isn'tworth the squeeze.
(14:28):
They're like let's just call it.
And if you're early enough inthe journey, if you haven't
raised investment, if you'reearly enough in the journey if
you haven't raised investment,if you're at a venture studio
it's really easy to do that.
It's like these metrics don'tline up, the margin isn't there,
this isn't the thing we shouldpursue, and you turn it off and
you go work on ideas 3, 4, 5, 6.
And so we had a number of ideasat TU and actually it was one
(14:51):
of those and it just turned intothis high growth, amazing
opportunity, and then thesnowball kept rolling.
And so there wasn't any realrisk from a family point of view
, and I give a lot of thatcredit to the Venture Studio
model and also to the VentureStudio model in particular in
New Zealand, where you can startthe ball rolling a little bit
faster.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, it's super interesting.
You hear you talking about theVent venture studio model.
It's something that I'minvolved with as well and I
would give a massive shout outto it too, and particularly in a
place like New Zealand where,as you coined that phrase, you
know the beta nation.
I think I've actually neverheard that.
It's a really nice way ofputting it.
We've got a population of 5million people.
It's relatively easy to makeconnections across the right
(15:34):
part of the ecosystem, but it'sa big enough customer base with
forward enough tech populationto be able to trial things.
So that's pretty cool.
So you get started and youstart getting early customers.
You are only three years inbefore you start looking at it.
Your second funding round is a$20 million Series A.
(15:55):
Take us through what the lastcouple of years have looked like
.
They must have been insane.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
It's pretty insane, really fun, really fun, pretty
insane.
We bootstrapped for the firstkind of nearly two years.
We bootstrapped andbootstrapped from Venture Studio
.
So like, I guess, taking thatkind of privileged-y start into
account, where there was lessrisk and it wasn't like we were
just eating noodles for twoyears, we started with the
(16:21):
support of PU and TRA and webootstrapped our way through.
But we only ever used I guess Iuse the word bootstrap because
we only ever used customerrevenue to pay salaries and to
pay for dev work.
So we had that restriction onourselves and we intentionally
put that there because Matt andI had so much scar tissue from
(16:42):
what we call VC validation,where it's way easier to raise
Don't tell all the VCs this, butit's way easier to raise VC
money than it is customerrevenue.
You can make a nice slide pack,you can come up with a cool
idea and if you've got the rightconnections and you've got a
way to get a foot in the door,you probably can get some level
of VC funding if you have enoughconversations.
(17:04):
So if you spend all your energydoing that instead of being
focused on customers, and thenyou have to build the thing that
you put in the slide pack forVCs.
You don't know whether anyonewants that.
That's just what VCs thoughtwas a good idea, so they're not
customers.
But anyway, we desperatelywanted to only build with
customer revenue and so wefocused on that and that's why
we use the word bootstrapped andthat lasted for about 20 months
(17:27):
.
We built, we in-housed theproduct team.
That was our biggest spendingmoment.
We hired a few people in thefirst year Hamish and Michaela,
sales and customer and marketingand then we slowly expanded and
then we in-housed the productteam all at once and brought in
some devs and product folks andthat was a big moment in early
(17:47):
2023, 2022.
And then we kept building and wegot to of that, like 3 million
arr in 16, 17 months and we werelike, man, this is going quick.
One of the things that I guesswe forgot was that you have like
you have receivables, like alot of that cash is tied up.
(18:08):
You don't actually have a block, and so we'd like we kind of
model these things as like we'vesold this much, we think we can
hire these people, and thenpeople pay their bills 30 days,
60 days, 90 days late and you'relike, oh, we actually don't
have any of that money and whenyou're a 2-year-old startup, you
can't get debt.
No one's going to give you anydebt selling and focus on our
(18:32):
customers and just build thisthing and drive value, because
we're able to sell it as much aswe.
The energy that we put intosales brings in more customers
and that stretches the team evenmore, because we were only like
10-12 people with 3 million ARRgetting pulled into 4 countries
.
So we were like, okay,something's got to change.
(18:53):
And actually the best thing todo was we lined up with
Blackbird and Icehouse and someother strategic partners
globally and raised a smallround and that was really
exciting.
It took the pressure off ofthat counting how many dollars
were coming in.
Can we hire one more person?
It allowed us to lean intogrowth, into Australia in
particular, and now Australia isour biggest market and we've
(19:14):
got around 15 people there,which is great.
And then it took 12 months andat that point we were like, okay
, we'll lean into Australia, wewill test the US and UK markets
and see if our product marketfit is the same and then if we
can prove that Australia getsall the flywheels turning and if
we can prove that the productmarket fit in the us and uk feel
(19:37):
the same, then we'll raise aseriesa and we thought that
might take like two years and anormal startup timeline of
raising every two years.
But actually we, matt and I dida couple trips into the us each.
We had a lot of conversationsand we ended up hitting that
millionaire I mark in bothcountries just from word of
mouth and under a ofconversations.
And we ended up hitting thatmillion ARR mark in both
countries just from word ofmouth and under a year each.
(19:58):
And we were like, oh my God,it's happening again.
We got to go and so we lined upsome US partners we love
Althausen Footwork and broughtalong the earlier partners for
the ride as well and then leanedinto the US.
So that was February this year.
We closed that round out andyes, it's been a wild ride these
last couple of years.
But I think the highlight isjust this team Like the team
(20:20):
that we have is just phenomenal.
The culture that we've managedto hang on to throughout that
growth is what Matt and I aremost proud of and, yes, it's
pretty exciting.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
So give us a sense of size of HeatCount now, like
what kind of team size have yougot all up now?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
We were 75, but we hired 10 people last month, so I
guess we're going to be 85 soon.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
So you're operating across how many geos?
Four?
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Four we have teams in Sydney, new York and London,
but we've also opened up.
We have customers in Canada.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So we've got kind of five customer geos but four
offices team.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And how do you go aboutbuilding culture across four
different countries, like, doyou feel like you've got a
culture across all of them andthat is common, or does each
have their own kind of uniqueculture?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
yeah, this is, I mean , it's a good question.
I think we're still prettyearly days in the us.
You know we got five people ineach in the us.
Matt, my co-founder, has movedfrom Auckland to the UK and I
think that's how we think aboutit.
We don't think there are anyshortcuts to building culture.
A lot of it is in-person time.
A lot of it is we repeat thevalues over and over again.
(21:29):
We try to instill them throughin-person connection.
So Michaela, who is in planenumber two and head of marketing
, she's going to be heading overto the US, along with Charlotte
, who was our first salesperson,and Hamish's team, and they're
both going to head to the NewYork office and be our cultural
pillars there.
And Matt and I are spending alot of time on planes.
At the moment, matt's in the USat least a week out of every
(21:52):
month and I'm there probablyabout a week every two months.
So I guess we wear the burdenand we don't see it as a burden.
We put the time in and we thinkthat that's really important.
There aren't any hacks.
You can't just have a bunch ofslack bots that pump up the
values or something.
You got to just be there yougot to meet people.
There's a way that we show upat TrSuite, which is really
(22:14):
important.
How we show up is a big part ofthe culture, but also we're
really tough on hiring.
I think that's a big part aswell.
Just holding the standardsextremely high on hiring has
enabled us to grow this fast forone, but also it feels like
everyone who's coming into theteam is adding to the culture,
and that culture of high care,high performance, is something
(22:37):
we talk a lot about and that weinterview for.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
And it feels like at a headcount of kind of 85 next
month, you're heading towardsthat magic hundred person level
which a lot of founders talkabout.
Getting to that point it'salmost a little bit of a and I
use this phrase in a good sensea bit of a break point, because
you start to go once you gobeyond 100, maybe you've got an
extra layer of management inthere.
Maybe you don't necessarilyknow every person in the team,
(23:07):
maybe the induction is not aphone call from you or a
face-to-face, it's a video thatthey're watching.
It gets different and it'll bereally interesting to see you
guys as you translate into thatnext era for you.
But you've kind of done thestartup thing for a while with
lightning lab and with mish guruetc.
Does that make it a lot easierstarting tracksuit and kind of
going through this evolution ofgrowth that you're going through
(23:28):
now?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
I mean, I think there's definitely things that
you know, you learn along theway and that helps you and you
you see second time, third time,founders or people that have
been involved in other startups.
I think you do have a bit of aleg up, especially on the early
part.
But right now, matt and I areleaving our comfort zone
completely.
We've never been here before.
So everything is People talkabout you're building the plane
(23:50):
while you're flying it.
But Matt and I now are likelike okay, so now we're learning
to build planes while buildingit and flying it.
Like that's a whole notherlevel.
So like we're motivated by that, we're super excited about
learning.
But we acknowledge that we'relike leaving our comfort zone
and starting to enter newterritory, which, yeah, is great
and all those you know.
We try to see things as welllike a privilege.
(24:12):
Like it's the privilege tobreak your operating model and
have to rethink how you doonboardings.
We know that when we reach that100-person level, things are
going to change, but that's sucha privilege If you're growing
fast enough, if you're able tosupport that many people in your
team.
It's fun to learn and, I think,being comfortable with slowing
down a little bit in order tomake the right decisions is
(24:34):
something we talk about and sothat you're not kind of getting
too burnt out or missing steps,you know we interviewed the team
not too long ago and, yeah,everyone's number one fear was
like losing the culture thatwe've built because we're moving
too fast.
And I think trying to stayconscious and be intentional
about how we're building as wellas what we're building, is
(24:57):
something we think about a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
And how does it feel going outside your comfort zone
when you're trained as a lawyerand, as you say, in the startup
sort of world, you are lower onrisk tolerance.
How does it feel then to bestepping outside things that you
now can control?
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah, it's scary for sure, but it's exciting, scary,
exciting, exciting.
And yeah, I think the overallfeeling like gratitude is one of
the main feelings Like wow, howlucky are we that we've got
this great opportunity, we'vegot this amazing team and we get
to learn all these new thingsand take advantage of this
(25:33):
opportunity.
So I think it's awesome andMatt and I, when we started
Tracksuit, we were supermotivated by the opportunity and
getting to build something thatwould help challenger brands
grow and even New Zealand brandsgrow and take on the world.
That was really motivating.
But we were also reallymotivated by the idea of
focusing on changing howstartups are built.
(25:56):
Can the venture studio modelbecome more important in New
Zealand?
Can we change?
We have things like transparentcompensation and we really
focus on a lot of that cultureand maybe better benefits and
good parental leave and therearen't too many people in the
office after 6pm.
We try to schedule messages forthe next day and we're
(26:17):
definitely not perfect by anymeans, but we're motivated to
try and create a new way ofbuilding startups and so, as
long as we're continuing to besuccessful, as long as we're
continuing to grow, we find thatbeing able to put in cool new
initiatives that make ourculture very unique is
motivating, because then maybeother startups that are being
(26:38):
built will have to do that stuffas well in order to If they
want to grow in the same way andthey want to have their people
inspired in the same way.
So we think a lot about thatand that's something that kind
of keeps us going for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
You're an intelligent guy, you're a lawyer, you've
done investment banking, you'vebeen around the startup scene
for a while, but is theresomething that freaks you out
here in this current journey?
Everything, yeah, everything,yeah, yeah, and it's great for
other founders to hear thatright yeah, yeah, like
reassuring I mean.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
So everything broke.
We were still managing the teamand operating like we were 20
people when we got to 60 andeverything broke.
There was like a two-monthperiod, sort of december,
january, february where I wascrispy I don't know if I was
like fully burnt out, but but Iwas definitely.
I'd been working hard.
I'd just spent 3 months in NewYork and taking the family over.
(27:27):
It was like raising the round.
I was building the New Yorkteam and running the New Zealand
and Australia teams after hoursand it just got too much.
And so we think this year isabout learning how to scale the
business, but also scaleourselves and figure out how to
grow ourselves and the businesstogether.
(27:49):
And it freaks me out.
That can happen really quickly.
I didn't notice that I wasclose to the edge until it was a
little bit too late, and thenit took a couple months both for
the company and for me torecover and like that's time you
don't necessarily have.
Lucky that I've got a co-ceowho could like step in and help
out, but it freaks me out.
But there's a lot ofuncertainty and in order to do
(28:12):
it well, there's like 10 platesspinning and one of those is
like yourself and you know so.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Getting good therapists, getting a good coach
those things have helped a lotearly this year yeah, it's
interesting that you talk aboutthat, because I think the
reality of having to grow andscale a company and if you're
successful in that, it's goingto continue to grow and scale
means you need personally togrow and scale.
And if you use the analogy ofit's, you know and it's probably
(28:40):
an overused analogy in startupslike climbing a mountain,
there's a ton of people who'vegone to base camp.
There's lots and lots and lotsof them, and it's kind of cool,
it's kind of funky, the tentsare all brightly colored, it's
fun, we all hang out at the sameconferences, but to go to camp
one, camp two, camp three,actually you know, shit's
getting real at this point andit's getting harder and your
(29:01):
skillset has to change.
Leading a company of 50 peopleis very different from leading a
company of 500 people or 5,000people in time, and so you, as a
CEO and a leader, you're justchanging how you spend your day,
you're changing your skillset.
So I'm pleased you raised that,because I think that is
something that a lot of foundersdon't necessarily, you know,
consider at the beginning of thejourney.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
That's probably one of the toughest points is you
grow yeah, absolutely, and youhave to be pretty introspective
and possibly get other people'shelp to be introspective, get a
lot of feedback and you have toadapt because you can't be the
same person that you were 12months ago.
Yeah, but it's true foractually everyone in the team
like the blog they ask everyoneto read when they join.
I mean, one of the things weask everyone to read when they
(29:45):
join is this first round reviewgive away your Legos blog.
I don't know if you've everread that, but it's essentially
like.
The metaphor is like when youstart, you're building one Lego
tower and then you're like, ooh,I got to also do marketing, I
have to do customer success.
And then you get to 10 thingsas a founder and you're like, oh
, no, I got to hire someone todo each of those things.
(30:07):
And then they all start withtheir own Lego block and maybe
that marketer is doing marketing.
And then they're like, actuallythere's brand marketing,
there's performance marketing,there's SEO, there's that you
have to hire one expert to doall of those things to get it
off.
And I think that that analogyfor the founders here now, I'm
realizing, is actually like evenmore.
(30:28):
Like I just hired an EA andthat EA is helping me like
manage LinkedIn messages andemails, and so like handing over
, like podcast interviews.
Yeah, yeah, this is an AIinterface.
It's very good.
It's very good, it's very real.
It's just like you have toconstantly look at what's taking
up your time and what's takingup your energy and carve it into
(30:51):
half and get someone else to dopart of it and hopefully well,
almost always in my case they'rebetter at it than I am.
I'm like one of those classicgeneralists who's like 80% good
at lots of stuff.
That's my skill set is that Ican do most things 80% good, and
then I need to be very good athanding them over to someone
who's 100 or 110% awesome atthat.
(31:14):
One specific thing.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
Hey, just let me pause you there for a second and
tell you about some help that'savailable for startup founders.
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It doesn't have to be like that, though.
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(31:38):
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Use promo code scale up 2024and start removing those
(31:58):
headaches.
Let's get back to the show.
What's been the toughest partof the tracksuit journey to date
that maybe you really did notconsider would be an issue?
Was it the working capital?
You know like when you'regrowing, you forget, actually,
that people will take 30 days topay you.
I mean, what's been thetoughest part of the journey so
(32:19):
far?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I mean I think, like disclaimer, that it's definitely
been a pretty like blessedjourney and that we've had part
of market fit, which is uniqueand wonderful.
The thing that throws us off iswhen we lose focus, and that's
still the case, like the analogythat people always use.
The overused side of thing islike drive the wedge in as deep
as possible before expanding out.
And I think we've occasionallylike we've been driving the
(32:41):
wedge in as deep as possiblebefore expanding out, and I
think we've occasionally We'vebeen driving the wedge in, and
the wedge in our case would belike brand tracking is one
specific part of market researchand you can do that.
Or you can do NPS and othercustomer surveys and other
things, or you can even dostrategic partnerships that
aren't just selling to that oneICP.
You could expand out yourcustomer groups, so you're
(33:03):
selling to enterprise andmid-market and small.
So there's like lots of waysthat wedge is refined into an ic
selling a certain product intoa certain customer with a
certain messaging.
And they always talk aboutdriving that wedge in as deep as
possible.
And I think over the three yearsthat we've been around, we've
been like I mean, I think we'vedriven the wedge in like should
(33:25):
we do this other thing?
And we sort of start playingaround with other stuff and we
immediately slow down, likeeverything gets way harder, and
so it's been kind of fascinatingto see us mess that up and then
like the whole thing, and thenyou're like carve it back, get
back to just the wedge, and thenall of a sudden we start
(33:45):
speeding up again.
And so, yeah, the hard thinghas been saying no to
opportunities.
I guess that's a great problemto have when you're a pro market
fit.
But staying focused, saying noto things that seem like they
might be a smart move butactually just end up distracting
that's the beauty ofbootstrapping, I think as well
If I can encourage other peopleto just use customer revenue to
(34:06):
pay bills and build product isthat you have to stay focused,
and so it forces that for longerthan you might do it otherwise.
And yeah, so the hard part forus is sticking to our guns,
sticking to the wedge, and thenmaybe the other part is in
trying to be intentional withculture and trying to keep the
standards really high whilehiring.
(34:27):
We've done that, but there havebeen lots of really difficult
conversations where you needsomeone and you run the whole
application process all the waythrough to the end, and there's
a bunch of really goodcandidates but they're not the
best possible person you everenvisaged for that role.
(34:48):
And then we say no and it'slike, oh my god, we have to go
back.
It's like another three monthsaway before we find this person
and basically whoever it isthat's been lacing up their
boots to do that job and theirjob is like another three months
before that person joins what?
So that's also been reallydifficult, but I also stand by
(35:11):
those decisions because it'shelped us retain the culture and
sort of that go slow to go fastmentality.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And I think Steve Jobs used to talk about.
You know, be slow to hire andquick to fire, because it is
just so critical that you hirethe very best talent and
actually that A players hire Aplayers and hang out with them
and D players kind of tend tohire D players and so having a
high bar for your hiring, youknow that's amazing that you've
(35:40):
been able to kind of hang on tothat, even though it's tough
because you've got jobs to doand people are getting stressed
and that sort of thing.
So you talked before about youcan get to 80% of basically
everything.
Is that your superpower?
Or is there something that youwould go leave me to do this all
day long and I'm pretty good atit Like, is there something
that you would say that's mysuperpower?
Speaker 1 (36:08):
I think that's.
That's up there.
That's one of the things that Irely on, you know, for who I am
and how I operate.
It's like I've never done thatbefore, but I'm going to go do
it, don't worry, I got it and itends up going pretty well not
perfect, not the best in theworld, but it can be pretty good
.
That's up there.
The other thing that I do thatmaybe I didn't know before
TrackSuit was something that Idid well, but I've now kind of
figured that out is thinkingabout things from a first
(36:31):
principles basis, looking at asituation and I guess not seeing
why it's done that way thestatus quo doesn't necessarily
make sense and then able toquickly kind of synthesize
something that makes more sense,at least to us, or maybe is
more aligned to our culture andhow we're building, and that
(36:55):
doesn't take insane amount ofeffort.
And you know, it's sort of acreative problem solving muscle
that I'm able to flex and a lot.
When you read about that Ithink I thought I always of a
creative problem-solving musclethat I'm able to flex and when
you read about that I thought Ialways called it creative
problem-solving.
But I think now that I've readmore books and I'm learning to
build the plane while flying it.
I realize that's sort of afirst principles-basis thinking
(37:15):
that's what other people call itand I think that's one of my
superpowers that I'm lucky tohave.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
And do you find that tough when there's lots of fires
burning superpowers that I'mlucky to have.
And do you find that tough,when there's lots of fires
burning, to kind of strip itback?
Speaker 1 (37:24):
to first principles.
It is tough, but maybe not astough as others find it, and
that's why it ends up being asuperpower.
It's hard, but you know one ofour operating principles.
The thing we talk about is likeglobal best practice improved
and then made track CD, and sothat's the standard, Like if
it's not better than global bestpractice and made tracksuit-y.
It doesn't exist in tracksuitand that's just our way of
(37:46):
saying find what is bestpractice and make it better and
then align it culturally.
Love that and that's our firstprinciples thinking, and
historically that wasn't alwaysas possible, but now you can ask
ChatGPT to write you a 12-monthcustomer journey for a
mid-market SaaS product and itcan do a global best practice
job.
It can research, it can findall of the ways that you should
(38:09):
manage a 12-month customerjourney.
So that's the global bestpractice.
It's pretty easily accessibleand then you should be able to
look at that and say, Well, thisdoesn't make sense for these
reasons and then change it, andthen you should be able to,
based on our values and some ofour views of the world, you
should be able to update it in away that feels more attractive,
(38:31):
and so we hold that standardacross the whole company and
encourage everyone to just callout anything that feels just
global best practice.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, that's a pretty high bar.
That's fantastic.
So global best practice is thestarting point, then improve it
and then ultimately it's trackcity.
I love that Now.
You talked before about gettingto a point of being pretty
close to being burnt out, and Ilike your phrase of being crispy
.
How do you avoid that?
Now?
What do you do to recharge?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Getting an EA was really important to me because
I'm bad at saying no and workingon getting better at saying no,
with therapists, coach peoplethat are much smarter than me
who can give me the tools to dothat.
That's not a quick fix, that'slike, hey, let's dive into your
past and figure out how youended up here as a people
pleaser.
So then getting an EA who cando that for me was like the
(39:22):
immediate fix.
It was like, okay, yeah, yeah,maybe in a year I'll be better
at saying no because I can putup boundaries, but I need
something now.
So, yeah, hiring to solve thatfor myself, knowing that that is
not my skill set, handing overthat lego of like managing my
calendar was a huge part of thatand, like you know, if you ask
anyone on the team, I'd say,yeah, three weeks ago I became a
(39:44):
different person.
I started sleeping more, Istarted exercising again, got
some color in my cheeks, so it'sall rosy over here now that my,
my ea is joined and you've gottwo children under five at home
as well and your wife, so youbeing able to be present for
hanging out with them.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Do you find that you do incredibly long days and you
know you don't spend enough timewith your kids, or do you
manage that pretty well withyour calendar management?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I have to create that culture at tracksuit that isn't
work all the time.
So, yeah, I'm pretty good.
I sort of start my days early 637 am and I don't do anything
with the family in the morning,I'm sort of out the door, but
then I get home at 4pm and I dothe afternoon shift and
(40:30):
occasionally particularly beforeMatt moved to the UK I had to
log in late and do some UK callsor investor calls.
But now that he's over there,that's a huge benefit.
I can sort of just spend thattime with wife and kids in the
evening.
Yeah, I love that.
So yeah, it's actually youbecome much better at
prioritizing when you become aparent.
(40:51):
It seems absolutely wild lookingat it from the outside.
You could have a one andthree-year-old and build a
company like Traxsuit and saythat you don't work all the time
.
But it's been possible and Ithink I'm a different human than
I was before kids.
I probably fluffed around a lotmore when I was at work.
I probably would spend moretime choosing a Spotify playlist
(41:13):
to plug into my headphones orsomething, and now I'm just like
I'm in and out Seven till four,bang, and then I'm home.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
And the reality is and I was having a conversation
with Cecilia Robinson from myFood Bag on an interview the
other day and we were talkingabout young children and by the
time your child is 18,apparently, statistically, you
have spent about 90% of thetotal time you will ever spend
with them in their life.
So, and one in three, it's ahuge part of that percentage and
(41:42):
journey.
So good on you, because I thinkthere'll be people who are in
startup life who maybe, you know, could spend a bit more time at
home and a bit more time withtheir kids.
You'll never regret that.
You'll never, ever regret thattime.
Final question you know you'rewith a bunch of people that
obviously are incredibly highperformers in the tracksuit team
and those people will be asource of inspiration for you
(42:04):
and you'll be learning from themOutside the team.
Where do you get yourinspiration?
What do you listen to?
Is it music?
Do you listen?
You read books, like?
Where do you get inspired?
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah, the team are a huge part of the inspiration for
me they're the biggest partAbsolutely.
My kids and my wife isabsolutely brilliant, so I
usually run most ideas by herand she improves them and
indexed.
But I think, like I'm one ofthose people who, you know, I
need the downtime in order tocome at it in a creative way.
(42:36):
So, like I'm listening to musicoften on the commutes or
something, I will have some ofmy best ideas.
So listening to music is veryimportant.
I think there's too much adviceout there right now.
One of jeff bezos's camera wasone of his principles or just
something he talks about a lot.
But he sort of says that ifyou've gotten to a certain level
of success like if you manageto make something work, you have
(42:59):
part of my kit fit you probablygot there by making lots of gut
decisions and so as long asit's a two-way door like it's
something you can reverse if youneed to the best thing you can
do is just to make moredecisions and so to move faster.
You just have to make moredecisions in order to move
forward and as long as it's atwo-way door, you can't regret
(43:21):
it that much because you canjust exit out of that decision.
A lot of the advice out therethere's so many books, there's
so many things you can just exitout of that decision.
A lot of the advice out there.
There's so many books, there'sso many things you can digest in
order to help yourself improveand a lot of them end up just
making you sort of second guess,your gut decisions.
So I try to have a few absolutethings that I follow and listen
(43:42):
, but I don't try to expandbeyond that too much.
I choose a couple of favoritesand then I also make sure that I
have, like, ample time forquiet and the music and to be
able to like let my brain go onits own little journey.
So, yeah, it's important to meto have both a couple north
stars that I listen to regularlyand lots of times with quiet.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah, and, ultimately , the decisions that you're
making and the ones that areflowing up to you, to make other
big ones.
And to make the big ones, youhave to have the quiet right,
you have to have the ability tomake a decision.
I think it's I think it's PeterThiel who talks about only
making one massive decision peryear and therefore you need
thinking time, you need spaceaway from the email slack, you
(44:28):
know, etc.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
just to be able to really be thinking about focus
and that sort of thing I thinkbig decisions come up,
definitely, but also thesmallest decisions still boil to
the top in a lot of ways, andone thing that I'm learning to
do more and more is you sit withthe little things that come up
(44:50):
and you just make thosedecisions a hundred percent in
line with like values and youreally showcase the values over
and over again.
I've found that to be reallyimportant in this current phase,
and it's like in this 50 to 100phase, a lot of the stuff still
comes up.
The only way you should bemaking decisions is based on the
(45:12):
values and the principles.
So instead of saying, oh, thisis how I would write that, you
just say global best practice,improved matrixity, and that's
the feedback.
It's like that's what we dohere, because otherwise the
little things keep boiling upand you have to keep solving
those problems.
But it's's like you have tohave those operating principles
in place and you have to justremind people over and over
again it's a lovely way ofsynthesizing those decisions,
(45:34):
isn't it?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
because you're actually giving almost a
codified way to your team of howto handle a decision on a small
problem or a mid-sized problem,because the values are going
across the top of them, andtherefore it's a nice way of
deconstructing the problem tocome up with some sort of pretty
obvious solution.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah, and I think the hope is that when stuff starts
boiling up eventually, whensomeone's about to take
something to you, they're like Ithink Connor's just going to
say global best practice andproof of matrixity.
So I should not even do this.
I know the answer yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
It has been an absolute joy to talk to you.
I've been looking forward tothis interview for a while and
you've been a busy guy.
You have been a super, superbusy guy.
I think there's going to be abunch of founders out there who
will have picked up a lot fromlistening to this.
I'll make sure there's waysthat people can connect with you
on LinkedIn and with Tracksuitin the show notes to the episode
(46:30):
, but I just really, really wantto thank you for your time
today.
It's been fantastic, oh it'sbeen wonderful chat.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Thank you, Greg.
I'm so glad we got to help thetime.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Hey, don't forget to check out Deskwork, the team
behind you, being able to buildhigh performing offshore teams
for your startups and SMEs.
It's deskworkco.
Backslash, greg, and go andsave yourself some hard-earned
money.
Gratitude is one of the main feelings, like wow, how
lucky are we that we've gotthis great opportunity, we've
got this amazing team and we getto learn all these new things
and take advantage of thisopportunity.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Connor.
He almost needs no introductionin the tech system.
Connor is co-founder and co-CEOof a company called Tracksuit.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
If it's not better than global best practice and
made Tracksuit-y.
It doesn't exist at Tracksuit.
And that's just like our way ofsaying find what is best
practice and make it better andthen align it culturally.
Love that.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey everybody, it's Greg Sheehan.
Welcome to my podcast, whereyou will hear from a range of
guests, including those from thestartup world and those that
have had incredibly interestinglives and some stories to tell.
I would really appreciate it ifyou could hit the follow button
and share this amongst yourfriends, but, as you know, time
is limited, so let's get on withit and hear from our next guest
(00:58):
.
I want to tell you a little bitabout desk work.
Desk work is your offshoringoption.
If you want to save around 50%of your total headcount cost for
equivalent talent acrossaccounting, marketing, sales,
your operations or your admin,then check out desk work.
Honestly, if I was looking tostart an accounting firm again,
(01:22):
it would be a no brainer for meto use desk work.
I've used offshoring teamsbefore in the past.
I got past my skepticism onbeing able to do it and it was
so phenomenally successful.
Go have a look at desk-workcobackslash, greg, and book
yourself a free discovery callto learn more about it.
(01:42):
Better still, a free discoverycall to learn more about it.
Better still, mention my nameand get yourself some discounts.
Check it out.
Now back to the show.
My guest today is ConnorArchbold and Connor, he almost
needs no introduction in thetech system.
Maybe for those outside of NewZealand, I'll give you a little
bit of a background.
So Connor is co-founder andco-CEO of a company called
(02:04):
Tracksuit.
I have not been able to not seeTracksuit in New Zealand I'm
actually in Australia now but Isaw Tracksuit at the New Zealand
High Tech Awards, where one ofthe Tracksuit team received an
award wearing none other than atracksuit.
But Connor, welcome to thepodcast.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
I'm absolutely stoked to be here and we're not at the
no introduction stage at all.
That's crazy talk.
I appreciate the sentiment.
Awesome to be here.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, it's so cool and I want to start, as I always
typically do, talking a littlebit about your origin story.
And I tell you what.
I got super excited when I sawwhere you went to school,
because you're a Rangitoto boy,as am I.
I was about 100 years prior toyou, but I went there as well.
And then you went to Otago.
But I'd love to start with yourorigin story.
(02:54):
How did you get to be herebefore you got anywhere near
starting tracksuit?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah, great, go to the shore as well.
I'm still living on the shore.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah, go to the shore Love the North Shore in New
Zealand.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
My story.
I mean, I guess I've got atwang.
I have an American twangbecause I was born in the States
and immigrated to New Zealandwith my parents and siblings in
1999 to the wonderful shore, andgrew up over there, went to
Rangy and then went to Otago andthat was a nice combo because
Rangy is the biggest school inNew Zealand and then went to
Otago and that was a nice combobecause Rangy is the biggest
school in New Zealand, biggesthigh school, and then Otago is
(03:26):
sort of A lot of people fromRangy don't go to Otago.
So I met a whole other raft ofindividuals so that was really
cool for me.
And then I became a lawyer.
I was a lawyer straight out ofuniversity and did that for 3.5
years and I loved that because Ithink I'm naturally like that
strategy sort of thinking,entrepreneurial brain.
(03:49):
But I really had detailsdrilled into me through that
three years of being a lawyerand I loved that time.
I met my wife there, so thatwas awesome and a lot of my best
friends are there and a lot ofthem have gone on to be
entrepreneurs as well, so prettyinteresting group of folks.
And then I wanted to get intostartups so I worked with the
Ice House.
I came out of that worked atthe Ice House to raise a fund to
(04:12):
launch Lightning Lab here inAuckland, which had been in
Wellington a couple times.
At that point I'm relativelyrisk-averse for maybe for a
startup person not compared tothe total population, but for a
startup person so that was doinglike running Lightning Lab is
my way of learning aboutstartups without actually having
to do one myself.
And then I joined one of thestartups that had gone through
(04:35):
Lightning Lab, actually inWellington.
But I'd met the Mishkuru teamand founders and they were kind
of one of the early darlings ofthe New Zealand ecosystem and
there was Snapchat third partyapp.
And they were one of the earlydarlings of the New Zealand
ecosystem and there was Snapchata third-party app, and they
were riding the wave of Snapchatbeing this modern.
It felt like how TikTok feelsright now, something new and
cool and vertical video focused,which had never been the case.
(04:56):
So I joined that team and that'sactually where I met Matt, my
now co-founder.
We joined on the same day inthe Auckland office and then he
went and led the Sydneyexpansion and I joined the team
in New York and became COO ofthat business and so I came up
through operations and customersuccess, actually through that
kind of pathway, I reallyunderstood the engine of a SaaS
(05:18):
business.
And then when we both returnedMatt from Australia and me from
New York when COVID hit and myfirst daughter was on the way,
so my wife and I moved back andtracksuit kind of was a very, it
was an idea, it was ahypothesis, and then all of a
sudden it was a businessopportunity that we kind of had
(05:39):
to take advantage of because itwas flying off the shelves
before we even knew what washappening.
Because it was flying off theshelves before we even knew what
was happening, so Matt and Ijumped into it as soon as that
was deemed very obvious and weworked with BBC Unavailable and
TRA and I've told that story alot.
You can get into that whereTracksuit came from if you want.
But yeah, that was my originstory anyway.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
It's super cool and I know that with Tracksuit you
are definitely solving a problemthat I know anybody that has a
brand and lives inside a companythat wants to understand its
brand really struggles with, orthey did up until Tracksuit came
along.
I had time at Nike for aboutfive years and I can remember
around the leadership table wewould just debate the value of
(06:20):
the brand and how we could trackit.
We used to use these reallyprimitive spider web diagrams on
the sort of attributes of thebrand and it used to sit on a
shelf.
It would sit on a dusty shelfand we'd occasionally do it.
So you were really tapping intosomething that brands are, by
their very nature, are somethingthat are kind of they're very
hard to measure in many respects, but maybe with a lot of
(06:42):
digital automation, digitalmarketing, it's got easier.
How did you sort of tap intothat original insight that gave
you the genesis of the idea forTraxit?
What was that?
Speaker 1 (06:52):
First of all, I really appreciate you saying
that because I think about theproblem Traxit solves, because
you came up through managementand finance functions as well,
which were actually byquantifying brand a little bit,
we're actually helping.
One of the problems we solvefor marketers is that they get
buy-in from C-suite and boardsand finance functions, which is
(07:13):
the hardest part of marketing.
It's no longer that we'remaking sure that people don't
see it as the coloring infunction.
It's like this is real.
This is building the business'ssuccess long term.
So I really appreciate yousaying that when Traxsuit came
from.
Essentially, matt and I had beenworking with brands in MarTech
for years and we were fascinatedby this modern brand trajectory
(07:37):
where they grow really reallyquickly and Warby Parker is an
example in the States, casperMattress is another one but they
grow really, really quickly andthen they find it hard to keep
that growth going.
And if you read the listingdocuments when those companies
IPO, they talk about awarenessand awareness is really low,
like 14% or 10%, and that's notenough to compete with
(07:59):
incumbents in the category thathave 80%, 90% awareness across
the population that are activelypurchasing those products.
And so me and Matt have thissoftware as a service scaling
skill set, and we were sittingdown with James Herman and the
previously unavailable team whohave the brand strategy skill
set, as well as TRA, theresearch agency, who are very
(08:21):
brave market researchers andforward thinkers who wanted to
disrupt their own area.
And with those powers combined,we came up with this software
as a service market researchmodel that actually solved the
problem for brands and formarketers, rather than maybe
insights people, and that wasthe initial idea, and so we came
(08:42):
up with this five-page mock-upof what it might look like and
we went around and had I think Ihad around 100 people brand
managers, marketers in an Excelspreadsheet that I thought I
could talk to and get warmintros to, and the moment that
we were like, oh man, this is athing was by the 68th
conversation, 11 of them hadcommitted 'd signed a sass
(09:06):
contract for this product thatdidn't actually exist and we
weren't.
We weren't like selling snakeoil or anything.
It was just like we said, hey,we don't have funding for this,
like, if we're going to build it, we need 10 people to sign up
for it and commit.
And yeah, 10 people 11 did outof those first 68 conversations.
And that was the moment that wesaid, okay, we're going to go
build it and we have thesecommitments, we have these
(09:28):
customers already, and that wasreally impactful.
It was a great way to buildsomething, because you're
actually building it alongsidethese early customers.
So what they're saying theywant, that's what you're
building.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
And it allowed us to focus on the right things and
ignore the wrong things and keepcustomers in the forefront of
our mind yeah, it's interestingand from what I've heard and I
heard you do an interview withtroy hammond on the we fucking
love startups podcast andmassive shout out to troy and
you talked about that check size, if you like that commitment
from those early customers wasnot insignificant, like it was
(10:03):
actually quite a decent chunk ofmoney.
Were they all large brands orwere they smaller brands?
What kind of customers werethey early on?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
It was a mix.
I mean, our hypothesis wasaround those growth company
brands.
So they're well-known enoughand they're investing enough in
brand and marketing to be makingleaps, but they're not
incumbents, they're notconglomerates.
They haven't been around for along time.
So Sharesies was in there andstill a great customer.
(10:32):
We love them and that sort ofstyle of that sort of size and
ambition of company were whatmade up those early customers
and we largely focus on them.
Now it's expanding out a bitmore.
We go smaller sometimes, we gobigger sometimes and there's
sort of different ways ourproduct works for that.
But that was the initialhypothesis.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
And did you get those customers to then kind of throw
the checks in and then fromthere start building a basic
product out with a developer?
Like how did that work?
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The first product was done in about a month and a
half.
So we said, hey, you're goingto get the first version of this
within about a month or twomonths.
And the first version was, likeyou know, we were doing surveys
of the population and we builtit into like a white labeled
data visualization app basicallyyou know, a fancy Power BI and
it wasn't our app at all, it wasjust we'd collected the data
(11:23):
and we'd serviced it in a waythat was usable for the client
and it sort of looked like whatwe'd put in the slide pack.
And then we launched versiontwo, you know, another couple
months after that, and itprobably took seven or eight
months to actually build our ownapp, a standalone thing, and we
were building thatsimultaneously alongside the
white labeled version, which waswhat customers were using every
(11:45):
day, while we were kind ofbuilding the true app in the
background.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
And give us a sense of sort of some color around
that.
Is it just you and Matt at thispoint in time?
Have you got any others workingwith you?
Are you working day jobs?
How did that all look in thoseearly days?
Speaker 1 (12:01):
I was a full-time employee at Previously
Unavailable, which is JamesHerman's venture studio, and I
was committed to this projectfor a certain amount of time.
I think it started off as oneday a week and then it gradually
moved up into three or fourdays a week and Matt had
basically come on board as theco-founder of Tracksuit and I'd
(12:24):
say it was like a little bit inthe air as whether I would stay
in tracksuit or go back topreviously available, depending
on how big the opportunity was.
It turned out to be big enoughand matt and I at one point
looked at each other and we'relike, okay, should we just do
this thing?
Speaker 2 (12:36):
you're like yeah high five and then?
And were they easyconversations to have at home?
You know you're married, you'vegot a couple of young kids and
probably at the time did youhave children yeah, it actually
was founded within four monthsof my daughter being born.
So yeah, a couple, basicallytwins almost so you go home and
you're like okay, so we've got afour month old and I'm gonna
(12:57):
throw everything at this here'sthe thing like I'm super bullish
on the venture studio model.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
I've done done a lot of research around how Venture
Studio models work and whatworks and what doesn't, and I
actually think that New Zealandis the perfect place for the
Venture Studio model.
And I've spoken about this alittle bit and I don't know if
you want to get into that.
We have this petri dish, thisbeta nation.
That's quite easy to access acertain number of potential
(13:24):
customers in any field, becauseit's one degree of separation
across all of New Zealand so wecan Launch stuff here, get
feedback really quickly.
We've got great product andengineering talent here, very
skilled, and so you can getsomething to MVP level really
quickly and really efficientlyand it also can be quite high
(13:46):
quality.
And so I actually think thatNew Zealand is the perfect place
to launch stuff and figure outwhether it's worth putting more
into.
And that's sort of what Ventventure studios are really good
at.
So there's this nice combo oflike if you can have a venture
studio and the risk the familyrisk, like you were asking is
basically are you going to getpaid?
(14:06):
And the beauty of a venturestudio is like yes, because
we're not just building thisthing.
We're building a lot of thingsand my salary isn't solely tied
to this one idea and it actuallymakes it easier in other
startups I've been involved in.
If anyone's been in startups,you know that like there are
times when you maybe should haveturned the tap off.
You're like this juice isn'tworth the squeeze.
(14:28):
They're like let's just call it.
And if you're early enough inthe journey, if you haven't
raised investment, if you'reearly enough in the journey if
you haven't raised investment,if you're at a venture studio
it's really easy to do that.
It's like these metrics don'tline up, the margin isn't there,
this isn't the thing we shouldpursue, and you turn it off and
you go work on ideas 3, 4, 5, 6.
And so we had a number of ideasat TU and actually it was one
(14:51):
of those and it just turned intothis high growth, amazing
opportunity, and then thesnowball kept rolling.
And so there wasn't any realrisk from a family point of view
, and I give a lot of thatcredit to the Venture Studio
model and also to the VentureStudio model in particular in
New Zealand, where you can startthe ball rolling a little bit
faster.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, it's super interesting.
You hear you talking about theVent venture studio model.
It's something that I'minvolved with as well and I
would give a massive shout outto it too, and particularly in a
place like New Zealand where,as you coined that phrase, you
know the beta nation.
I think I've actually neverheard that.
It's a really nice way ofputting it.
We've got a population of 5million people.
It's relatively easy to makeconnections across the right
(15:34):
part of the ecosystem, but it'sa big enough customer base with
forward enough tech populationto be able to trial things.
So that's pretty cool.
So you get started and youstart getting early customers.
You are only three years inbefore you start looking at it.
Your second funding round is a$20 million Series A.
(15:55):
Take us through what the lastcouple of years have looked like
.
They must have been insane.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
It's pretty insane, really fun, really fun, pretty
insane.
We bootstrapped for the firstkind of nearly two years.
We bootstrapped andbootstrapped from Venture Studio
.
So like, I guess, taking thatkind of privileged-y start into
account, where there was lessrisk and it wasn't like we were
just eating noodles for twoyears, we started with the
(16:21):
support of PU and TRA and webootstrapped our way through.
But we only ever used I guess Iuse the word bootstrap because
we only ever used customerrevenue to pay salaries and to
pay for dev work.
So we had that restriction onourselves and we intentionally
put that there because Matt andI had so much scar tissue from
(16:42):
what we call VC validation,where it's way easier to raise
Don't tell all the VCs this, butit's way easier to raise VC
money than it is customerrevenue.
You can make a nice slide pack,you can come up with a cool
idea and if you've got the rightconnections and you've got a
way to get a foot in the door,you probably can get some level
of VC funding if you have enoughconversations.
(17:04):
So if you spend all your energydoing that instead of being
focused on customers, and thenyou have to build the thing that
you put in the slide pack forVCs.
You don't know whether anyonewants that.
That's just what VCs thoughtwas a good idea, so they're not
customers.
But anyway, we desperatelywanted to only build with
customer revenue and so wefocused on that and that's why
we use the word bootstrapped andthat lasted for about 20 months
(17:27):
.
We built, we in-housed theproduct team.
That was our biggest spendingmoment.
We hired a few people in thefirst year Hamish and Michaela,
sales and customer and marketingand then we slowly expanded and
then we in-housed the productteam all at once and brought in
some devs and product folks andthat was a big moment in early
(17:47):
2023, 2022.
And then we kept building and wegot to of that, like 3 million
arr in 16, 17 months and we werelike, man, this is going quick.
One of the things that I guesswe forgot was that you have like
you have receivables, like alot of that cash is tied up.
(18:08):
You don't actually have a block, and so we'd like we kind of
model these things as like we'vesold this much, we think we can
hire these people, and thenpeople pay their bills 30 days,
60 days, 90 days late and you'relike, oh, we actually don't
have any of that money and whenyou're a 2-year-old startup, you
can't get debt.
No one's going to give you anydebt selling and focus on our
(18:32):
customers and just build thisthing and drive value, because
we're able to sell it as much aswe.
The energy that we put intosales brings in more customers
and that stretches the team evenmore, because we were only like
10-12 people with 3 million ARRgetting pulled into 4 countries
.
So we were like, okay,something's got to change.
(18:53):
And actually the best thing todo was we lined up with
Blackbird and Icehouse and someother strategic partners
globally and raised a smallround and that was really
exciting.
It took the pressure off ofthat counting how many dollars
were coming in.
Can we hire one more person?
It allowed us to lean intogrowth, into Australia in
particular, and now Australia isour biggest market and we've
(19:14):
got around 15 people there,which is great.
And then it took 12 months andat that point we were like, okay
, we'll lean into Australia, wewill test the US and UK markets
and see if our product marketfit is the same and then if we
can prove that Australia getsall the flywheels turning and if
we can prove that the productmarket fit in the us and uk feel
(19:37):
the same, then we'll raise aseriesa and we thought that
might take like two years and anormal startup timeline of
raising every two years.
But actually we, matt and I dida couple trips into the us each.
We had a lot of conversationsand we ended up hitting that
millionaire I mark in bothcountries just from word of
mouth and under a ofconversations.
And we ended up hitting thatmillion ARR mark in both
countries just from word ofmouth and under a year each.
(19:58):
And we were like, oh my God,it's happening again.
We got to go and so we lined upsome US partners we love
Althausen Footwork and broughtalong the earlier partners for
the ride as well and then leanedinto the US.
So that was February this year.
We closed that round out andyes, it's been a wild ride these
last couple of years.
But I think the highlight isjust this team Like the team
(20:20):
that we have is just phenomenal.
The culture that we've managedto hang on to throughout that
growth is what Matt and I aremost proud of and, yes, it's
pretty exciting.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
So give us a sense of size of HeatCount now, like
what kind of team size have yougot all up now?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
We were 75, but we hired 10 people last month, so I
guess we're going to be 85 soon.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
So you're operating across how many geos?
Four?
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Four we have teams in Sydney, new York and London,
but we've also opened up.
We have customers in Canada.
Speaker 2 (20:58):
So we've got kind of five customer geos but four
offices team.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And how do you go aboutbuilding culture across four
different countries, like, doyou feel like you've got a
culture across all of them andthat is common, or does each
have their own kind of uniqueculture?
Speaker 1 (21:07):
yeah, this is, I mean , it's a good question.
I think we're still prettyearly days in the us.
You know we got five people ineach in the us.
Matt, my co-founder, has movedfrom Auckland to the UK and I
think that's how we think aboutit.
We don't think there are anyshortcuts to building culture.
A lot of it is in-person time.
A lot of it is we repeat thevalues over and over again.
(21:29):
We try to instill them throughin-person connection.
So Michaela, who is in planenumber two and head of marketing
, she's going to be heading overto the US, along with Charlotte
, who was our first salesperson,and Hamish's team, and they're
both going to head to the NewYork office and be our cultural
pillars there.
And Matt and I are spending alot of time on planes.
At the moment, matt's in the USat least a week out of every
(21:52):
month and I'm there probablyabout a week every two months.
So I guess we wear the burdenand we don't see it as a burden.
We put the time in and we thinkthat that's really important.
There aren't any hacks.
You can't just have a bunch ofslack bots that pump up the
values or something.
You got to just be there yougot to meet people.
There's a way that we show upat TrSuite, which is really
(22:14):
important.
How we show up is a big part ofthe culture, but also we're
really tough on hiring.
I think that's a big part aswell.
Just holding the standardsextremely high on hiring has
enabled us to grow this fast forone, but also it feels like
everyone who's coming into theteam is adding to the culture,
and that culture of high care,high performance, is something
(22:37):
we talk a lot about and that weinterview for.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
And it feels like at a headcount of kind of 85 next
month, you're heading towardsthat magic hundred person level
which a lot of founders talkabout.
Getting to that point it'salmost a little bit of a and I
use this phrase in a good sensea bit of a break point, because
you start to go once you gobeyond 100, maybe you've got an
extra layer of management inthere.
Maybe you don't necessarilyknow every person in the team,
(23:07):
maybe the induction is not aphone call from you or a
face-to-face, it's a video thatthey're watching.
It gets different and it'll bereally interesting to see you
guys as you translate into thatnext era for you.
But you've kind of done thestartup thing for a while with
lightning lab and with mish guruetc.
Does that make it a lot easierstarting tracksuit and kind of
going through this evolution ofgrowth that you're going through
(23:28):
now?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
I mean, I think there's definitely things that
you know, you learn along theway and that helps you and you
you see second time, third time,founders or people that have
been involved in other startups.
I think you do have a bit of aleg up, especially on the early
part.
But right now, matt and I areleaving our comfort zone
completely.
We've never been here before.
So everything is People talkabout you're building the plane
(23:50):
while you're flying it.
But Matt and I now are likelike okay, so now we're learning
to build planes while buildingit and flying it.
Like that's a whole notherlevel.
So like we're motivated by that, we're super excited about
learning.
But we acknowledge that we'relike leaving our comfort zone
and starting to enter newterritory, which, yeah, is great
and all those you know.
We try to see things as welllike a privilege.
(24:12):
Like it's the privilege tobreak your operating model and
have to rethink how you doonboardings.
We know that when we reach that100-person level, things are
going to change, but that's sucha privilege If you're growing
fast enough, if you're able tosupport that many people in your
team.
It's fun to learn and, I think,being comfortable with slowing
down a little bit in order tomake the right decisions is
(24:34):
something we talk about and sothat you're not kind of getting
too burnt out or missing steps,you know we interviewed the team
not too long ago and, yeah,everyone's number one fear was
like losing the culture thatwe've built because we're moving
too fast.
And I think trying to stayconscious and be intentional
about how we're building as wellas what we're building, is
(24:57):
something we think about a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
And how does it feel going outside your comfort zone
when you're trained as a lawyerand, as you say, in the startup
sort of world, you are lower onrisk tolerance.
How does it feel then to bestepping outside things that you
now can control?
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Yeah, it's scary for sure, but it's exciting, scary,
exciting, exciting.
And yeah, I think the overallfeeling like gratitude is one of
the main feelings Like wow, howlucky are we that we've got
this great opportunity, we'vegot this amazing team and we get
to learn all these new thingsand take advantage of this
(25:33):
opportunity.
So I think it's awesome andMatt and I, when we started
Tracksuit, we were supermotivated by the opportunity and
getting to build something thatwould help challenger brands
grow and even New Zealand brandsgrow and take on the world.
That was really motivating.
But we were also reallymotivated by the idea of
focusing on changing howstartups are built.
(25:56):
Can the venture studio modelbecome more important in New
Zealand?
Can we change?
We have things like transparentcompensation and we really
focus on a lot of that cultureand maybe better benefits and
good parental leave and therearen't too many people in the
office after 6pm.
We try to schedule messages forthe next day and we're
(26:17):
definitely not perfect by anymeans, but we're motivated to
try and create a new way ofbuilding startups and so, as
long as we're continuing to besuccessful, as long as we're
continuing to grow, we find thatbeing able to put in cool new
initiatives that make ourculture very unique is
motivating, because then maybeother startups that are being
(26:38):
built will have to do that stuffas well in order to If they
want to grow in the same way andthey want to have their people
inspired in the same way.
So we think a lot about thatand that's something that kind
of keeps us going for sure.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
You're an intelligent guy, you're a lawyer, you've
done investment banking, you'vebeen around the startup scene
for a while, but is theresomething that freaks you out
here in this current journey?
Everything, yeah, everything,yeah, yeah, and it's great for
other founders to hear thatright yeah, yeah, like
reassuring I mean.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
So everything broke.
We were still managing the teamand operating like we were 20
people when we got to 60 andeverything broke.
There was like a two-monthperiod, sort of december,
january, february where I wascrispy I don't know if I was
like fully burnt out, but but Iwas definitely.
I'd been working hard.
I'd just spent 3 months in NewYork and taking the family over.
(27:27):
It was like raising the round.
I was building the New Yorkteam and running the New Zealand
and Australia teams after hoursand it just got too much.
And so we think this year isabout learning how to scale the
business, but also scaleourselves and figure out how to
grow ourselves and the businesstogether.
(27:49):
And it freaks me out.
That can happen really quickly.
I didn't notice that I wasclose to the edge until it was a
little bit too late, and thenit took a couple months both for
the company and for me torecover and like that's time you
don't necessarily have.
Lucky that I've got a co-ceowho could like step in and help
out, but it freaks me out.
But there's a lot ofuncertainty and in order to do
(28:12):
it well, there's like 10 platesspinning and one of those is
like yourself and you know so.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Getting good therapists, getting a good coach
those things have helped a lotearly this year yeah, it's
interesting that you talk aboutthat, because I think the
reality of having to grow andscale a company and if you're
successful in that, it's goingto continue to grow and scale
means you need personally togrow and scale.
And if you use the analogy ofit's, you know and it's probably
(28:40):
an overused analogy in startupslike climbing a mountain,
there's a ton of people who'vegone to base camp.
There's lots and lots and lotsof them, and it's kind of cool,
it's kind of funky, the tentsare all brightly colored, it's
fun, we all hang out at the sameconferences, but to go to camp
one, camp two, camp three,actually you know, shit's
getting real at this point andit's getting harder and your
(29:01):
skillset has to change.
Leading a company of 50 peopleis very different from leading a
company of 500 people or 5,000people in time, and so you, as a
CEO and a leader, you're justchanging how you spend your day,
you're changing your skillset.
So I'm pleased you raised that,because I think that is
something that a lot of foundersdon't necessarily, you know,
consider at the beginning of thejourney.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
That's probably one of the toughest points is you
grow yeah, absolutely, and youhave to be pretty introspective
and possibly get other people'shelp to be introspective, get a
lot of feedback and you have toadapt because you can't be the
same person that you were 12months ago.
Yeah, but it's true foractually everyone in the team
like the blog they ask everyoneto read when they join.
I mean, one of the things weask everyone to read when they
(29:45):
join is this first round reviewgive away your Legos blog.
I don't know if you've everread that, but it's essentially
like.
The metaphor is like when youstart, you're building one Lego
tower and then you're like, ooh,I got to also do marketing, I
have to do customer success.
And then you get to 10 thingsas a founder and you're like, oh
, no, I got to hire someone todo each of those things.
(30:07):
And then they all start withtheir own Lego block and maybe
that marketer is doing marketing.
And then they're like, actuallythere's brand marketing,
there's performance marketing,there's SEO, there's that you
have to hire one expert to doall of those things to get it
off.
And I think that that analogyfor the founders here now, I'm
realizing, is actually like evenmore.
(30:28):
Like I just hired an EA andthat EA is helping me like
manage LinkedIn messages andemails, and so like handing over
, like podcast interviews.
Yeah, yeah, this is an AIinterface.
It's very good.
It's very good, it's very real.
It's just like you have toconstantly look at what's taking
up your time and what's takingup your energy and carve it into
(30:51):
half and get someone else to dopart of it and hopefully well,
almost always in my case they'rebetter at it than I am.
I'm like one of those classicgeneralists who's like 80% good
at lots of stuff.
That's my skill set is that Ican do most things 80% good, and
then I need to be very good athanding them over to someone
who's 100 or 110% awesome atthat.
(31:14):
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Let's get back to the show.
What's been the toughest partof the tracksuit journey to date
that maybe you really did notconsider would be an issue?
Was it the working capital?
You know like when you'regrowing, you forget, actually,
that people will take 30 days topay you.
I mean, what's been thetoughest part of the journey so
(32:19):
far?
Speaker 1 (32:20):
I mean I think, like disclaimer, that it's definitely
been a pretty like blessedjourney and that we've had part
of market fit, which is uniqueand wonderful.
The thing that throws us off iswhen we lose focus, and that's
still the case, like the analogythat people always use.
The overused side of thing islike drive the wedge in as deep
as possible before expanding out.
And I think we've occasionallylike we've been driving the
(32:41):
wedge in as deep as possiblebefore expanding out, and I
think we've occasionally We'vebeen driving the wedge in, and
the wedge in our case would belike brand tracking is one
specific part of market researchand you can do that.
Or you can do NPS and othercustomer surveys and other
things, or you can even dostrategic partnerships that
aren't just selling to that oneICP.
You could expand out yourcustomer groups, so you're
(33:03):
selling to enterprise andmid-market and small.
So there's like lots of waysthat wedge is refined into an ic
selling a certain product intoa certain customer with a
certain messaging.
And they always talk aboutdriving that wedge in as deep as
possible.
And I think over the three yearsthat we've been around, we've
been like I mean, I think we'vedriven the wedge in like should
(33:25):
we do this other thing?
And we sort of start playingaround with other stuff and we
immediately slow down, likeeverything gets way harder, and
so it's been kind of fascinatingto see us mess that up and then
like the whole thing, and thenyou're like carve it back, get
back to just the wedge, and thenall of a sudden we start
(33:45):
speeding up again.
And so, yeah, the hard thinghas been saying no to
opportunities.
I guess that's a great problemto have when you're a pro market
fit.
But staying focused, saying noto things that seem like they
might be a smart move butactually just end up distracting
that's the beauty ofbootstrapping, I think as well
If I can encourage other peopleto just use customer revenue to
(34:06):
pay bills and build product isthat you have to stay focused,
and so it forces that for longerthan you might do it otherwise.
And yeah, so the hard part forus is sticking to our guns,
sticking to the wedge, and thenmaybe the other part is in
trying to be intentional withculture and trying to keep the
standards really high whilehiring.
(34:27):
We've done that, but there havebeen lots of really difficult
conversations where you needsomeone and you run the whole
application process all the waythrough to the end, and there's
a bunch of really goodcandidates but they're not the
best possible person you everenvisaged for that role.
(34:48):
And then we say no and it'slike, oh my god, we have to go
back.
It's like another three monthsaway before we find this person
and basically whoever it isthat's been lacing up their
boots to do that job and theirjob is like another three months
before that person joins what?
So that's also been reallydifficult, but I also stand by
(35:11):
those decisions because it'shelped us retain the culture and
sort of that go slow to go fastmentality.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
And I think Steve Jobs used to talk about.
You know, be slow to hire andquick to fire, because it is
just so critical that you hirethe very best talent and
actually that A players hire Aplayers and hang out with them
and D players kind of tend tohire D players and so having a
high bar for your hiring, youknow that's amazing that you've
(35:40):
been able to kind of hang on tothat, even though it's tough
because you've got jobs to doand people are getting stressed
and that sort of thing.
So you talked before about youcan get to 80% of basically
everything.
Is that your superpower?
Or is there something that youwould go leave me to do this all
day long and I'm pretty good atit Like, is there something
that you would say that's mysuperpower?
Speaker 1 (36:08):
I think that's.
That's up there.
That's one of the things that Irely on, you know, for who I am
and how I operate.
It's like I've never done thatbefore, but I'm going to go do
it, don't worry, I got it and itends up going pretty well not
perfect, not the best in theworld, but it can be pretty good
.
That's up there.
The other thing that I do thatmaybe I didn't know before
TrackSuit was something that Idid well, but I've now kind of
figured that out is thinkingabout things from a first
(36:31):
principles basis, looking at asituation and I guess not seeing
why it's done that way thestatus quo doesn't necessarily
make sense and then able toquickly kind of synthesize
something that makes more sense,at least to us, or maybe is
more aligned to our culture andhow we're building, and that
(36:55):
doesn't take insane amount ofeffort.
And you know, it's sort of acreative problem solving muscle
that I'm able to flex and a lot.
When you read about that Ithink I thought I always of a
creative problem-solving musclethat I'm able to flex and when
you read about that I thought Ialways called it creative
problem-solving.
But I think now that I've readmore books and I'm learning to
build the plane while flying it.
I realize that's sort of afirst principles-basis thinking
(37:15):
that's what other people call itand I think that's one of my
superpowers that I'm lucky tohave.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
And do you find that tough when there's lots of fires
burning superpowers that I'mlucky to have.
And do you find that tough,when there's lots of fires
burning, to kind of strip itback?
Speaker 1 (37:24):
to first principles.
It is tough, but maybe not astough as others find it, and
that's why it ends up being asuperpower.
It's hard, but you know one ofour operating principles.
The thing we talk about is likeglobal best practice improved
and then made track CD, and sothat's the standard, Like if
it's not better than global bestpractice and made tracksuit-y.
It doesn't exist in tracksuitand that's just our way of
(37:46):
saying find what is bestpractice and make it better and
then align it culturally.
Love that and that's our firstprinciples thinking, and
historically that wasn't alwaysas possible, but now you can ask
ChatGPT to write you a 12-monthcustomer journey for a
mid-market SaaS product and itcan do a global best practice
job.
It can research, it can findall of the ways that you should
(38:09):
manage a 12-month customerjourney.
So that's the global bestpractice.
It's pretty easily accessibleand then you should be able to
look at that and say, Well, thisdoesn't make sense for these
reasons and then change it, andthen you should be able to,
based on our values and some ofour views of the world, you
should be able to update it in away that feels more attractive,
(38:31):
and so we hold that standardacross the whole company and
encourage everyone to just callout anything that feels just
global best practice.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
Yeah, that's a pretty high bar.
That's fantastic.
So global best practice is thestarting point, then improve it
and then ultimately it's trackcity.
I love that Now.
You talked before about gettingto a point of being pretty
close to being burnt out, and Ilike your phrase of being crispy
.
How do you avoid that?
Now?
What do you do to recharge?
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Getting an EA was really important to me because
I'm bad at saying no and workingon getting better at saying no,
with therapists, coach peoplethat are much smarter than me
who can give me the tools to dothat.
That's not a quick fix, that'slike, hey, let's dive into your
past and figure out how youended up here as a people
pleaser.
So then getting an EA who cando that for me was like the
(39:22):
immediate fix.
It was like, okay, yeah, yeah,maybe in a year I'll be better
at saying no because I can putup boundaries, but I need
something now.
So, yeah, hiring to solve thatfor myself, knowing that that is
not my skill set, handing overthat lego of like managing my
calendar was a huge part of thatand, like you know, if you ask
anyone on the team, I'd say,yeah, three weeks ago I became a
(39:44):
different person.
I started sleeping more, Istarted exercising again, got
some color in my cheeks, so it'sall rosy over here now that my,
my ea is joined and you've gottwo children under five at home
as well and your wife, so youbeing able to be present for
hanging out with them.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Do you find that you do incredibly long days and you
know you don't spend enough timewith your kids, or do you
manage that pretty well withyour calendar management?
Speaker 1 (40:10):
I have to create that culture at tracksuit that isn't
work all the time.
So, yeah, I'm pretty good.
I sort of start my days early 637 am and I don't do anything
with the family in the morning,I'm sort of out the door, but
then I get home at 4pm and I dothe afternoon shift and
(40:30):
occasionally particularly beforeMatt moved to the UK I had to
log in late and do some UK callsor investor calls.
But now that he's over there,that's a huge benefit.
I can sort of just spend thattime with wife and kids in the
evening.
Yeah, I love that.
So yeah, it's actually youbecome much better at
prioritizing when you become aparent.
(40:51):
It seems absolutely wild lookingat it from the outside.
You could have a one andthree-year-old and build a
company like Traxsuit and saythat you don't work all the time
.
But it's been possible and Ithink I'm a different human than
I was before kids.
I probably fluffed around a lotmore when I was at work.
I probably would spend moretime choosing a Spotify playlist
(41:13):
to plug into my headphones orsomething, and now I'm just like
I'm in and out Seven till four,bang, and then I'm home.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
And the reality is and I was having a conversation
with Cecilia Robinson from myFood Bag on an interview the
other day and we were talkingabout young children and by the
time your child is 18,apparently, statistically, you
have spent about 90% of thetotal time you will ever spend
with them in their life.
So, and one in three, it's ahuge part of that percentage and
(41:42):
journey.
So good on you, because I thinkthere'll be people who are in
startup life who maybe, you know, could spend a bit more time at
home and a bit more time withtheir kids.
You'll never regret that.
You'll never, ever regret thattime.
Final question you know you'rewith a bunch of people that
obviously are incredibly highperformers in the tracksuit team
and those people will be asource of inspiration for you
(42:04):
and you'll be learning from themOutside the team.
Where do you get yourinspiration?
What do you listen to?
Is it music?
Do you listen?
You read books, like?
Where do you get inspired?
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah, the team are a huge part of the inspiration for
me they're the biggest partAbsolutely.
My kids and my wife isabsolutely brilliant, so I
usually run most ideas by herand she improves them and
indexed.
But I think, like I'm one ofthose people who, you know, I
need the downtime in order tocome at it in a creative way.
(42:36):
So, like I'm listening to musicoften on the commutes or
something, I will have some ofmy best ideas.
So listening to music is veryimportant.
I think there's too much adviceout there right now.
One of jeff bezos's camera wasone of his principles or just
something he talks about a lot.
But he sort of says that ifyou've gotten to a certain level
of success like if you manageto make something work, you have
(42:59):
part of my kit fit you probablygot there by making lots of gut
decisions and so as long asit's a two-way door like it's
something you can reverse if youneed to the best thing you can
do is just to make moredecisions and so to move faster.
You just have to make moredecisions in order to move
forward and as long as it's atwo-way door, you can't regret
(43:21):
it that much because you canjust exit out of that decision.
A lot of the advice out therethere's so many books, there's
so many things you can just exitout of that decision.
A lot of the advice out there.
There's so many books, there'sso many things you can digest in
order to help yourself improveand a lot of them end up just
making you sort of second guess,your gut decisions.
So I try to have a few absolutethings that I follow and listen
(43:42):
, but I don't try to expandbeyond that too much.
I choose a couple of favoritesand then I also make sure that I
have, like, ample time forquiet and the music and to be
able to like let my brain go onits own little journey.
So, yeah, it's important to meto have both a couple north
stars that I listen to regularlyand lots of times with quiet.
Speaker 2 (44:06):
Yeah, and, ultimately , the decisions that you're
making and the ones that areflowing up to you, to make other
big ones.
And to make the big ones, youhave to have the quiet right,
you have to have the ability tomake a decision.
I think it's I think it's PeterThiel who talks about only
making one massive decision peryear and therefore you need
thinking time, you need spaceaway from the email slack, you
(44:28):
know, etc.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
just to be able to really be thinking about focus
and that sort of thing I thinkbig decisions come up,
definitely, but also thesmallest decisions still boil to
the top in a lot of ways, andone thing that I'm learning to
do more and more is you sit withthe little things that come up
(44:50):
and you just make thosedecisions a hundred percent in
line with like values and youreally showcase the values over
and over again.
I've found that to be reallyimportant in this current phase,
and it's like in this 50 to 100phase, a lot of the stuff still
comes up.
The only way you should bemaking decisions is based on the
(45:12):
values and the principles.
So instead of saying, oh, thisis how I would write that, you
just say global best practice,improved matrixity, and that's
the feedback.
It's like that's what we dohere, because otherwise the
little things keep boiling upand you have to keep solving
those problems.
But it's's like you have tohave those operating principles
in place and you have to justremind people over and over
again it's a lovely way ofsynthesizing those decisions,
(45:34):
isn't it?
Speaker 2 (45:35):
because you're actually giving almost a
codified way to your team of howto handle a decision on a small
problem or a mid-sized problem,because the values are going
across the top of them, andtherefore it's a nice way of
deconstructing the problem tocome up with some sort of pretty
obvious solution.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah, and I think the hope is that when stuff starts
boiling up eventually, whensomeone's about to take
something to you, they're like Ithink Connor's just going to
say global best practice andproof of matrixity.
So I should not even do this.
I know the answer yeah, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
It has been an absolute joy to talk to you.
I've been looking forward tothis interview for a while and
you've been a busy guy.
You have been a super, superbusy guy.
I think there's going to be abunch of founders out there who
will have picked up a lot fromlistening to this.
I'll make sure there's waysthat people can connect with you
on LinkedIn and with Tracksuitin the show notes to the episode
(46:30):
, but I just really, really wantto thank you for your time
today.
It's been fantastic, oh it'sbeen wonderful chat.
Speaker 1 (46:36):
Thank you, Greg.
I'm so glad we got to help thetime.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
Hey, don't forget to check out Deskwork, the team
behind you, being able to buildhigh performing offshore teams
for your startups and SMEs.
It's deskworkco.
Backslash, greg, and go andsave yourself some hard-earned
money.
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