... with Cleo's David Smith, VP of People

Speaker 0 00:00:07 The inclusion part, which is the big question everyone's wrestling with at the moment, we've got a phrase we say to people on the joining clear, which is come to clear, right? And I think we say that we don't want anyone to feel any pressure to create a culture of psychological safety. Hey, Matthew Ellis. And this is the scaling so far podcast, the place where we have candid chats with pretty awesome tech founders and people leaders about how they built and scaled their teams. Today's guest on scaling so far is David Smith, VP of people, AI powered FinTech company, Cleo David has a ton of experience, um, at a bunch of super successful organizations. So, uh, I'm sure he will have a lot to share with us in terms of what it takes to succeed and scale from a talent perspective. David, welcome. Thank you very much for joining us today. Speaker 0 00:01:18 Really looking forward to hearing more about you and your journey. Um, I guess first off ice breaker question. Um, how did I get good. Thank you. Thanks Matt. And thanks for having me as well. Delighted to have a chat with you about this and yeah, not too bad at all. I hope everyone was in good spirits. Awesome. Thanks for being with us. Um, so you've always held, um, talent and people focus roles, right. Um, and I'd love to hear a bit more about your journey, um, to, to where you are today. Really? It should. Um, well, um, I always say this first because it is relevant and both my parents were psychiatrists, um, which obviously people normally laugh at because it says something about me as well in terms of the house. Um, but, uh, there was always a healthy, interesting people in the household and I'm one of the strange people who wanted to do that for a living. I did choose it my first proper job, I suppose you could call it and had a couple of earlier stage back home in Newcastle. And I'll never forget. I joined HR program. There was two jobs, there was one in marketing tech wasn't as glamorous as it is now. Speaker 1 00:03:00 There was more self-indulgent, Speaker 0 00:03:02 Um, fresh, fresh faced and naive rods. And they said two months ago to which team and marketing office was on one side and sort of super glamorous, upbeat, friendly place. And then the tech office was the other side and there was an R and D right. It really was, it was dark. Uh, they, they dressed differently. They would have to be shoes. It was average. I liked it a bit because they really, really, um, they were the most happy people doing what they do for a living and it was a vocation and they loved it and they were absolutely brilliant with me. They used to get me along to all of the standards that understand what they were doing, the product engineers, tech, hiring all the rest, super grateful to them, always, uh, moved to a couple of different positions, but to hybrid role, you know, they were on a completely crazy scaling journey, really high caliber team. Um, but obviously the business funds and profits recognition wise, um, went to trade line, really positive story. We, um, I joined two weeks after the business would be bought by KKR. Speaker 0 00:04:25 They basically said we want to go into turbo charge, private equity within five years. Um, as rarely happens, it worked like a dream. Um, we scaled the team and Tremain from two 50 to a thousand at the time it was. And so there's roughly 250 hires a year incrementally plus probably another 50 or so backfills a lot of tech data science, product focused hiring. Um, and I think we did build a genuinely very good team at tradeline. We were able to attract from a warped, which was fantastic. Um, I was also working for a female CEO that was very big on diversity and inclusion and that sort of stuff as well, and not really being ingrained, you know, she didn't write the soap. So that forced her to hardwire into everything that we did, which is a good thing. We were a little bit ahead of the game on that. Speaker 1 00:05:25 Uh, and yet, um, did the ICU stay Speaker 0 00:05:27 For about a year afterwards? Uh, then the fiber network, because interestingly body, there was a data scientist, a graduate data scientist at longer, but I worked Speaker 1 00:05:40 There. Yeah. Speaker 0 00:05:45 But we know some of the same people and uh, I love what we're doing. I love the business. I love what we're trying to do for people in terms of, um, offer a more positive and cost-effective solutions to people who are not being well-served. I like the fact that the company's trying to save you money, not spending money and from an internal perspective, the culture it's absolutely brilliant. And we've gotten a lot of hiring and scaling to do. We just raised a big series series B, so cash in the bank charges on higher, higher, higher Speaker 2 00:06:27 Sounds exciting. Um, and yeah, the Trainline journey is one that I've followed. None of, there were a number of kind of acquisitions involved in there as well. Lots of super interesting stuff. Um, so you've touched on this a little bit already, but now with, with Cleo, could you tell us a little bit more about kind of the company its mission, its vision and competitor? Speaker 0 00:06:49 Yeah, absolutely. Um, so the mission, vision and purpose, I guess, is all unified on the improving people's relationship with that money. And there's a couple of ways you can do that. One is first of all, helping people to budget, proximity and stick to their targets and saving goals. One of the very popular features of the application is called a roast vote, which is essentially a chat bot, which will remind you of what you're committed to in terms of saving and generally being quite humorously, not you, if you're going off course and the product's working super well, especially in America because the fruitful meaningful for information about why people are spending money and then respond to that. Um, so you can help people improve their relationship in terms of helping them save and improve their outputs. Um, the other ways that you can do it is you can help people improve their credit scores. Speaker 0 00:07:51 Again, you know, 78% of our customers are in the us. Um, so institutions like Equifax and the big credit rating agencies that we can advise and help customers on how to improve that credit score and therefore that accessibility to product in the market, which is good. Um, but the final thing is, uh, obviously being able to offer people, um, short term, very condoms, um, immediate credit at a reasonable price. So we hired a kind of premium and the premium product and the premium subscription service, um, is, is, is a small fee every month. But if you want to take that, say for instance, you're coming up to the end of the month and you couldn't afford paying the bill. We can bridge the gap for you and say, look, do you want to lend a hundred dollars from us, no charges to it's probably subscription and then pay it back to us on payday. And the beauty of that is, um, if you did that with a bank and you mind your overdraft to Speaker 2 00:08:56 Get a stopping $25 a day, and it quickly turns into an expensive way to land. So we don't want to be a kind of huge wholesale lender in terms of every time we lend a person, some money, but for those small kind of bridging loans, we can probably do something there. So that there's three main ways helping people improve their credit rating and also being able to, it sounds great. And it's probably a topic for another day, but I think the whole topic of financial education and discipline around budgeting and saving is it's a massive topic. It's certainly not something where we're taught in school and something we have to learn through something that can help coach people and be more, be more mindful of that is, um, is great. Um, I mean, I believe that 400% revenue growth in the last 12 months. And on top of that, as you just mentioned, right. Speaker 2 00:10:08 As the unimpressive, so 44 million led by EQT. So 20, 20 I'd say been a pretty successful year as a business. Um, yeah, what's the specifically, what's your, your journey with Cleo look like so far, um, to be able to help, I guess, from a people perspective, support, scale to support that growth and then also the, um, yeah, there's, there's so much in that I'd love to hear about that. Um, um, the, um, the rating is, um, the rate of growth and the fact that we're getting to a level where we're actually be, you know, generating genuine revenue cycle is what's making us as attractive as we all to investors to be from. And, um, we need to continue doing that. So there's the usual journey of any business prove you've got a product offering which can acquire customers and then it makes sure you can retain customers and then look for additional forms in the acquisition stage now into the more retention and monetization stage. Um, and I think the people objectives behind that as well. So from my perspective, just in terms of, I guess my main objectives for you and what I want to see happen is we first and foremost, as a baseline, as you'd expect the experience of film, uh, continued roles, uh, with really, really high caliber professionals. And that can be anything from product analysts, Speaker 0 00:11:55 Product managers, designers, engineers, any of those people who, you know, collectively formed the magic that builds a product, um, and then obviously scaling the support functions to support market finance, et cetera. So we've got people, we've got a lay down, we know roughly what sports we want to build product. And it's not about engineering. If I step back and look from slightly higher level, I think there's two things. One is with the, um, percentage of all your user base, which is in the U S we need a on the ground presence in the U S so this was one thing that triggered an item to your point earlier on about acquisitions. If you want to win the market, you need to be in the market. You need people on the ground to understand the local complexities. You understand some of those customer journeys, you need representation. Speaker 0 00:12:50 If it's going to be a big polyp and portfolio, a big attack, not most of the time, why they have spin them off all over the place. And I think Cleo has started doing that in the U S now. So we've got some really meaningful leadership hires secured in the last couple of months of the U S, which is really good for us, but we're now in a position where we can start to build products. So that balancing the team between London and the U S is the model for me. And number two is probably around actually, um, morale, engagement and retention, particularly during this pandemic and everything being remote. So you have to do all of the other stuff in terms of, okay, we were a 25 person business. Now we're going to be 125. How do we retain people, growth opportunities? Can we give them the support? Speaker 0 00:13:45 But the other thing that I found is really keen on is not losing the DNA of the company culturally. Um, so we work really, really hard on team engagement. We spend a good amount of money on it. We put an awful lot of effort into, um, uh, setting up 1,000,001 different ways for people to connect within Clio. So if you want to pay for a duty yourself within your squad car, the company all the time, um, we really do spend a lot, but getting people together, having fun, um, uh, not talking about work, trying to get to know each other on little individual human level, because I think one thing that has suffered a bit with offices not being available is, you know, the work stuff, the transactional work stuff still stands. But I think those kind of into the intermediary moments where you couldn't account for coffee with someone, go for lunch, go for a drink after work, and then not there at the moment. So you have to look hard and they're probably the three big areas of looking at higher salt, the U S um, and then how do we engage and retain this? Speaker 2 00:15:01 Perfect. It's interesting that you're, you're also building product engineering teams in the U S um, I guess it was like observing lots of companies from afar. I'm very fascinated by that and often see the, uh, the sales or go to market or customer success teams kind of based in, in the U S with engineer in Europe. So exciting to see the, um, the distribution of the product and engineering teams. Um, and on the last podcast I was on, I was speaking to, um, guy Franklin, um, at graph core, and he had a very similar, um, I guess, challenges, right. You know, under the banner of, we've got the talent now, you know, how do we retain and engage the workforce? And of course, as, uh, and then myself firsthand, as well as the business matures, the level of expectation comes from within the business around maturity, around things like, um, structured learning career pathways, compensation, banding benefits, sort of basic kind of stuff. Speaker 2 00:15:58 So, yeah, super, super exciting. Um, you've touched on this a bit already, um, and you know, obviously a, a ton of learnings from previous roles that longer Lloyd's Trainline. Um, is there anything that you found particularly impactful, um, that you've brought to clear, um, from those learnings? Or is there kind of like a specific approach or piece of advice that you would be happy to share when it comes to achieving people's success in, in this type of thoughts, growth organization, it's kind of continuously pushing and passing through commercial milestones and as a result, you know, people and the scale. Speaker 0 00:16:40 And one thing I have learned from, uh, the hyper growth, um, journeys of other companies is if you're going to ask people to do new things and take on new challenges, new roles, you have to put the effort into equipping them to do that. And you have to make sure that the culture is, um, sufficiently open and transparent that they have the ability to challenge back and say by the ones on the ground. I mean, don't agree with what you're doing here. Um, and if you get that balance right level, you're really good for this business, for the culture. I think what you ended up with is the opportunity to progress people internally, as opposed to just continually hiring in new senior leadership hires externally, if you want to, um, if you want to do as your culture quickly, just hire the entire team externally at a leadership level, don't promote anyone. Speaker 0 00:17:39 Um, I think you've got to be careful with that. And the second thing I say, um, again, already clear, um, this is something we're very cognizant, and I think I had a little bit of this, a trend level as well. Don't treat your culture as irrelevant. Um, so normally when you come into a business early stage and you want to scale, and that's that core 25, 30, 5,100 people who have learned an awful lot about, but the main who was super valuable and who you want to be part of the journey, but what you call it to spend the next three years talking about the good old days, you have to be intentional about the culture. You have to accept that not only will it change, but it should change and embrace the positives behind that. Um, what else, trying to keep some of the DNA and fun from, from those early days. And I think what bodies don't really want to be clear on what we're trying to continue now, the mission of the organization has stayed very, very consistent, and therefore everyone who comes in, you know, we might have different views on how to build a product politics, how often we should work. It doesn't matter as long as we're all behind that purpose. Speaker 0 00:18:57 So I think whether it's personal values will run an organization's values, if you're strong on your values, people will give you a framework to scale the business property protection. Speaker 2 00:19:09 I relate very personally to that as well. Um, I think I even wrote this down somewhere that funny businesses, not that it's, it's a group of people that are United by, um, you know, a vision, mission, and core set of values. So that makes, makes perfect sense. And I guess from, I guess, not necessarily the companies you've worked at, but just from observations, do you think that the cultural element is, is focused on early enough in the organization or be speaking, or is it more a reactive type or we've got some problems that's focused on this, but what's your general opinion. Speaker 0 00:19:49 Brilliant question. Um, I'd say two things to not one is, um, you, you just from observation talking to friends and other organizations, if you're on the point where you're trying to figure out what are the right reinforcement mechanisms for the culture that we want, or you've already off the culture has to be in the organization Vajra and osmosis. And really what you should be saying is how do we package the best bits of this and explain it to new joiners, right? How do we make sure that they feel engaged with Paul off the strike away? No. How do we reinforce a top-down set of five usable a Monday to what the culture here is. If the CEO is telling you all the culture is you've already lost by a, has to be more organic than that. Um, I have seen quite a few businesses where they'll get to the point where they'll get to a certain scale and the CEO will say, right, we need to go hard on values and culture here and start trying to reinforce it like a program. Speaker 0 00:20:52 And it doesn't work either. You have to do a trip I've been just help people become immersed in some of the basic stuff you can do to do that. I told them, this is what it's like to work in January. I mean, these are the volumes we subscribed to during the onboarding process, you know, come and do all of these various activities in the company and get to know people that will get people immersed with the cultural lot quicker than sending the map website or a PowerPoint deck with here's what our values and culture is. It just doesn't bring true. And then the second thing it says, what about culture tell I lifted super fast and too quickly. So one thing I'm the most conscious oddly and I clean out of every line is not currently a way of scaling too quickly. You know, you can do that, um, as been organizations recently, uh, who have done that, and it ends badly. Speaker 0 00:21:52 You either, um, you turn into the swirl vortex of an organization when new people are coming in all the time and big price times. And no, one's quite sure what to do and some come through and add value, but a able to do so, you know, I worry about organizations that go from a hundred to 600 in a year and those types of journeys. Um, and the second thing we have seen recently in some tackles and even in London, is it ends up in redundancies. You go, what you shouldn't be spending on people. And, um, one thing I really like about Cleveland is every single hire. Think about specifically, if they're going into what skills do they need, what personality traits for, they need to be super, super tight on this selection, take your time with it. There's nothing worse for them. So that's, that's the second point. I'd say our culture, you can, you can get into the Fonda team metrics of saying we've expanded from two 50 to 500 this year without actually thinking, what did that do to the organization? What did that do to the culture and indeed what five-year of those people being able to watch because of the way we brought them in. Speaker 2 00:23:11 Yeah, I completely agree. And I guess I've said, and personal experience and observation is that that Nico Platypus was very passionate about this, but the culture isn't static. Right. Um, and like you say, in an early organization, the culture is what the business is, right. And that's five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 people in a room. Like you probably don't even need to be writing it down. You need to be intentional about who you are and what you're doing, but yeah, as the business scales, it needs to evolve to some words, to some statements, to some underlying, um, that support that. Yeah. I think the, the stage appropriate nature of culture is, is key. So, yeah. Thanks for touching on, on that, on the flip side, um, what would you say is the biggest piece of BS advice? Um, you've heard when it comes to scaling teams and people practices something that you've said professed, um, as great, um, but feel like early stage organizations should avoid. And, and you've touched on one really key point, which is that the vanity metric of scale being, um, how many people you have in your workforce. I get behind that a million percent, but yeah. And any other, any other gems that you've heard that you would suggest people consider carefully before executing Speaker 0 00:24:34 There's two? That would definitely be my number one. I, I, whenever I interview a recruiter, um, if the only thing they haven't talked about is I'm hired X number of people around them. And there's no follow on that. That really, really worries me. Um, uh, and similarly for organizations, to your point, it is a pharmacy metric. I'd much rather someone says, you know, I hired 15 or 20 people at the company did this, and this is one part that was people play it and they will enjoy working there. If, give me a little bit more than just the whole metric. Uh, I'd always be in the second one. Um, again, I think a lot of early stage businesses are really guilty of this when they're trying to scale is really, really, really appropriate abusively stage of an organization to go and, um, big, big, big directors of product, et cetera, from Google and Facebook. Speaker 0 00:25:34 Have you really, really thought about that hire or are you doing it because next, nearly very small people to, um, will brick and intellect to the organization, but have you actually thought about how that experience translates into what you were trying to do? Um, and I, I really liked that feel product team at the moment, we've caught people who actually understand that, uh, the industry that were in gangs for we're trying to build as a product and, uh, our incoming VP product is from a subscription based business, a more subscription based product. So think about those clients back to that folks think about those in terms of what skill sets do you need to do that particular job. Don't just say, this person worked at X, Y was that company and went to this uni therefore to no-brainer that role. I do think there's a lot of businesses out there that do that identity kit of recruiting as black woman Speaker 2 00:26:32 I'm grinning and grinning and nodding because, um, yeah, it wouldn't be the count. The number of conversations I've had where folks have said our VPN should be from Google, Facebook, Speaker 0 00:26:44 Amazon, et cetera, et cetera. Why? Because when they come into 10 person organization, then the resources around those organizations and is your, is your startup, um, a safe environment for them psychologically? Can they do that kind of stuff? So that's great. I really love those points. And let's jump into the, the building out the sort of management layer or executive team in, in an organization, you know, likely or similar. Um, you've touched on a few points, but I guess it became, why is it so important and more specifically at the phase of growth new guys are at now? Um, yeah. What are the key points where I'm building a management team and we've touched on a few bits and pieces here around, you know, promoting from within continuity and culture retention that deep consideration around where's this person coming from and do they have the requisite skills and personality traits that help drive the business? Speaker 0 00:27:43 But yeah, let's, let's focus on this or building out management layer, executive teams super important. I think there's a, there's probably, um, three points I point to, uh, especially at the stage of saying clear, um, that actually translates to most organizations. You need that humility and you need people who are willing to run this fever. If you're an early stage organization, if you hire someone and they're on an empire building mission from day one, you know, as an example, say, you hire a VP finance. First answer is great. Go home. You're head of finance, head of FP and a little early stage where you'll need to get our hands dirty and do stuff. But I think you have to, if you can get the right personality traits and the right attitude for big organizations. Brilliant. Speaker 0 00:28:42 So I think that's one, uh, and I think the humility and servant leadership at our stage of growth is absolutely incredibly important. You know, I am, I know everyone's just been here a few months, most people to have a conversation with, and I never want to lose the ability that I have to send them a Slack message and ask them anything and vice versa. We want that openness transparency make yourself available, make yourself accessible, put the effort into being a presence internally, even remotely. I think it's important. And the big one that say, particularly for talking about CEO stage organization, you probably want to slightly over hire and deal VP roles. Um, but the reason I say that is what can accelerate our to expect to the series B series C, et cetera, quickly choose it, the nature of the growth. Um, one thing I did learn the train line, or we'd had a fairly, very stable leadership team, a very stable executive team, you know, to the point of life. Speaker 0 00:29:54 Some people have been there 15 years. It translates for a stable and fairly happy organization. Um, now it does present a challenge of progression. You know, some people did leave because that wasn't the, the next step for them, but the fast, fast, fast majority logged up and saw the same people with the same behaviors, the same attitudes, the same values who had a ton of experience in that organization. I could share you and me help you. Um, I thought, I thought Claire, the CEO Trayvon was brilliant and keeping that team together. Um, and I'd love to do something like that again and Cleo, you know, we slightly over hire at the moment and then we've got the same leadership team, right, the way through the next couple of phases. So they get a three things. Speaker 2 00:30:38 Perfect. And I can't remember who I was listening to and there was a big, big, big topic around continuity and how it helps your foster assuming it's that that team is effective. Um, so yeah, I can certainly, uh, certainly see the value of that and thanks for sharing those points. Um, so the feel clear as a product is to kind of bring fairness to our understanding of money, um, speaking and engaging with consumers, I guess, in a more human to human way. Um, but I guess in traditional banking is questionable in some cases. Um, and I really love kind of the way that the business approaches this. And as I mentioned previously, I think it's, it's a gap in super, super impactful. Um, how do you kind of wrap, I guess the topic here is employer brand has a strong sense of fairness and openness in your employer brand as well. Speaker 2 00:31:40 Um, and reflected in the tone of voice that's used. Um, from my understanding it's super important to, to your function, um, as a P from a people perspective about this brand inclusivity and diversity. Can you tell us a bit about how you kind of bring the inclusivity topic to the, for internet clear, um, and how this might be evolving over the coming months? Because I'm super happy to see that organizations are being far more intention about this topic. Um, and I'd love for us to be able to get some of your, your wisdom in terms of how practically organizations can come start to implement them and support, um, a culture of diversity and inclusion. Speaker 0 00:32:28 That's a brilliant question. And it's probably one of the things we think about the most since joining a new business. Um, there's a lot to unpack on this one, right? I think, um, on the diversity point to start with, um, so if you're talking about EDM Noli, particularly the Island gets forgotten. And the reason for that is quite often, because it's not as easily quantifiable the say, you know, we have 60% representation on the district team of people and from a less represented backgrounds them. So people generally skew towards the former because it's easier to quantify, but actually long term is the bit that makes the business change. That's the cultural change. Um, and one thing I did get from, and, um, we did a lot of this was really intentional. Um, the equality and diversity. So not everyone agrees with this volume, never had any issue with running purely diverse searches. Speaker 0 00:33:34 We did that intentionally. We wanted equal representation across before my active levels and when we served and I figured it built a massive business with doing that and conversations I've been having kind of in my, in my day job. Um, you mentioned that kind of fair representation at different levels. How do you, from your perspective, how do you ensure that happens, you know, through different stages of the recruitment process, do you focus on the outcome or do you focus on what you can influence at different stages of the interview process from like a recruiter perspective, percentage of pipeline, final interviews of stuff? That's a great question. I focus on the inputs on the funnel. That's where I think the recruitment team can be really, really directly intentional about. We are only sourcing for a certain kind of course of candidates. Um, I, again, that's my point about hard-wiring this stuff into your processes. Speaker 0 00:34:38 Um, if it's take a standard recruiters, probably sourcing four days a week, if a day and a half of that is focused on talking to people from underrepresented backgrounds, I'm good with that because that's part of your job to build a representative organization. Second reason is as well, particularly from an employee base that represents your customer base, you know, diversity in sobriety, because you're dealing with better products and getting better outcomes. Um, so there's all sorts of reasons to do it. Um, so I think that's really important in terms of the, kind of the D the be intentional about who you're bringing in and be ready to be fairly direct on that, but on the inclusion part of which is, uh, which is the big question everyone's wrestling with at the moment, we've got a phrase we say to people when they're joining clear, which is content clear, we had wonderful. Speaker 0 00:35:35 And I think we that a lot how's that joining CEO will kick kickoff the sentence. We don't want anyone to feel any pressure to put on a facade when they come to work, you know, be yourself, create genuine culture of psychological safety, where people can be themselves and sometimes say things, you know what everyone in the organization may not agreement that's okay. If you're going to have an inclusive organization, hear all viewpoints, discuss, discuss a really civilized mother and have an exchange of views. So we have, um, a bunch of different Slack channels where people express views on politics, all sorts, and it worked really well for us. And I think the reason it worked well for us is we get this stuff out in the open and we talk about it. And then we don't, we don't try to suppress these conversations and say, this isn't a work conversation. Speaker 0 00:36:31 I think those days are bad. Um, you know, you're a product of the society you operate within. We actively have these channels and encourage these discussions because we find that actually it makes the organization more cohesive because there's a, there's a medium. When you talk about this stuff and people have a very open exchange of views, it's greater. Um, but there is some other stuff. So I think particularly on inclusion, it's about doing the, micro-behaviors not focusing so much on the macro. So I think people will say right before the DNI statement that it's on the careers page, therefore inclusion, when they're magically happen. And then you'll go to a squad meeting in that team. And the same three people will talk for the hour and the other 15 will sit on the end of the zoom call. Coleman's nothing at all. So we do, um, we do focus on the micro-behaviors, but we will train people in better facilitation, facilitation as an example, because most meetings you go to are not inclusive forums to say people doing all of the talking and taking up all the time. Speaker 0 00:37:38 You know, not always been great at inviting people in and invite the views. And, um, even though small kind of modifications and micro-behaviors make a huge difference to how the organization runs. And the final thing I'd call out is you have to have that transparency and we are super transparent on virtually everything we share. Um, we should have your planners and the team planners down to the minute detail of how we're planning to build the team and the business, how we share, um, uh, everything we possibly can about what they're doing. So to the point of lab, myself and the CEO is not how a building was built in the org. It's all open source. Everyone can see, and we definitely want to see all the other Slack channels. We try and keep open as well. So there's not these private conversations or nefarious plans going on in the background and what we're planning, what we're up to. If you want to look at it, you can look at that difficult questions about it. Ask us the question. And I think that breeds inclusion, because we're just transparent on as much as become B, they'd be the main points. Speaker 2 00:38:46 Brilliant. I love it. And some, some real kind of tangible things that people can, can take away, uh, into their own skillsets. So thank you very much for that. That's I guess, similar topic, um, on cultural, uh, elements that impact, um, and we've touched on the point that you're building out on hiring in, in multiple regions and launching global hubs. And, um, certainly from conversations I have day-to-day and lots of people out there are probably thinking about from a scale perspective, you know, do they do their launch in a new, a new territory? Um, that could be there, see examples of this UK based organization scaling in, uh, in the U S um, or other engineering sites in Europe. And I'd love to get some of your, your advice, um, here. So are there any specific hiring or people practices that you should be mindful of or plan for when you start to hire in a new location and how do you, or essentially, how do you re replicate that, that scaling success from a hiring process, from a cultural perspective in a new region, whilst being mindful that you are in a new region and there will be natural kind of cultural differences. Speaker 2 00:40:05 So, yeah, big topic, but I'd love to get a summarized version of quotes from you on that one. Speaker 0 00:40:11 Great question as well. Um, think about this quite a lot. Um, again, uh, I would hop back to mission values and principles because the things that should be a bit Crispus in a new market, um, uh, in terms of what the candidates buy into, should it be the mission of the business, the values of the organization and the principles of how we build products, they are universal, they translated to any region. Um, then you're quite right. I mean, you have to accept that there's going to be local differences and interpretations in terms of cultures and practices, but that's good again, back to the diversity point. And I think that's a great fit. Um, we've learned probably more from having a customer service team in the U S than virtually anything else we've done in the last 12 months. Having those people who are in that market, listening to the voice of those customers who are using the product every day, playing that back to our product teams has been instrumental. Speaker 0 00:41:21 So keep the, uh, keep the focus on the vision, the values and the principles, but all the rest, except that it's going to change at the edges and be comfortable with that plus point. Um, and I think the second thing that you do have to think of from a slightly more tactical point of view is how do you raise your profile and your employment brand in new regions. So selection at the moment, it's all remote anyway. So that kind of works and that can translate to the U S or the UK or wherever else you're aiming. Um, but I think actually being able to attract the right talent in those markets is, is tough. Um, we do have, again, quite a concerted focus when we're talking about our employment brand, just to focus on two or three key points, don't try and don't try and do too much with your employer brand. Speaker 0 00:42:16 Um, I think people sometimes think we have to open up absolutely every aspect of the organization to external scrutiny. You know, we need case studies with our employees going out every week. You don't, what you need is when, you know, someone gets a message about potentially joining Migo company. They know what your company's synonymous with, or they can understand it very quickly from having materials. Um, and, uh, I think if you're clear on what the company is, what it stands for, what it's trying to do, then your employee brand only benefits from that. Again, if I tried to zoom out and employer brand is not about representing when you have a bad benefits package than someone else to what we were talking about earlier about brand is something that is something that makes you feel a certain way. It, it, it, the notes of the emotion positive or negative, um, and, uh, it conveys, um, it conveys a feeling. And I think if people understand who you are and what you're trying to do, then you might achieve that. But, you know, if they see that you pay an extra 4% of the pension contributions, monthly, probably not so much, Speaker 2 00:43:28 It's a great topic. Cause cause we could talk for hours on the employer brand piece, but I completely agree, you know, the authenticity of the brand and not over-engineering it, right? Like you say, it's not intended to be forced. Um, and I want to draw out a point that you made, uh, and you should feel a certain way about an employment brand and a business. And it's okay for somebody, if you're being authentic. It's okay. And probably really, really good if somebody feels negatively about that or it doesn't relate personally to them and they don't apply it to the organization because it should in equal measure, attract or repel sounds a bit of an aggressive word, but where you get my point. And I think a lot of people miss that element is kind of sell, sell, sell, sell, sell, and often what they're selling is not authentic. And that has ramifications further down the line. Right. Brilliant, great points. Thank you very much for that. We'll go into some lighter questions now. Um, just as we, as we look to wrap, um, Speaker 0 00:44:32 This is the magic wand question. So if you had a magic wand, what would you say one challenge that you would like to solve with your magic wand when it comes to scaling things or people practices anyone can tell me about eight to 10, really, really lovely people who are high quality Ruby. I think, um, I think one thing that is a continual frustration, probably even most people who work in people, leadership is the caliber of tooling around stuff like analytics still isn't that, um, and the amount of work I have always have been another lever that, um, um, the, the caliber and the quality of the tooling, particularly around, uh, team planning and allocation where people are in squads, organizational structure, planning, the tooling, they're still poor. Um, recruiting systems have definitely improved, right? That's been a big, big plus at the last 10 years. Speaker 0 00:45:44 I think we go much deeper in this field than I, but we'd all subscribe to that. Um, they've improved, but on the other side, once you get into the slightly more back office team planning, budget allocation, where are we spending our money? Where are we placing our chips as an organization? The tool is still poor. And if you've got poor tooling, then the insights not as sharp as it could be. Um, so if I had a magic wand, I'd say better people. Yeah, I'd join you on that as well. Um, I won't mention the company name in case it's something they do internally, but there was a consultancy I was speaking to that had a frustration on a similar point. And they were to your point earlier looking to build out something from a core resource allocation perspective that they had squads and tribes as well. So product focused teams where they could route the people around based on the skills and softer skills, cultural elements as well, and that had associated budget knowledge and all of this kind of stuff. What is one thought or phrase that Speaker 2 00:47:01 Great. Speaker 0 00:47:08 And he does it for a living. There was more about it than you do just to be super, super humble. I can't stand leaders in any business who think that because they're in a certain level of role that they have the expertise to, um, solutionize for, uh, for others without listening to perspective. Uh, I'll, I'll use my own example since Joel and Cleo. Um, you know, I want to talk to the recruiters and understand the pain points and I want them to tell me what we should do about it and, um, that to enable the right answers. Um, if, if we've got a lady in HR operations, as we do, who spends eight hours a day in our back office databases, she's going to know an awful lot more about what we need to fix in that. And I'm like, Brian, I think good engineering, one of the, to see a similar way in terms of when you step away from the code, you have to trust it to the code. Um, and if I could, if I could find a people related version, well, um, trust the people who were close to the code and that would be it, but I can't think of a snappy title. Speaker 2 00:48:18 That's brilliant. Thank you very much for that. Another piece of great advice. So last question, before we close up, um, is there a people leader, founder, or source of inspiration that you think we should try to secure as a future guest, someone you admire think has a unique or impactful perspective or approach from equal kind of standpoint? Speaker 0 00:48:44 Um, I have to put the name out of that. So I worked for a guy and, uh, I've worked for a guy twice called Robin Hunter called cruisers. I think, uh, the CPO is still the train line. Um, and he's been a bunch of big, big, big dotcoms that have them brilliantly. Um, the reason I would say the ramen is definitely worth talking to, or listening to for any kind of up and coming people leader in any capacity is he's probably the most commercially savvy people leader I've ever met. Um, he was the one who showed to me that if you get the people or the HR function, right, you can absolutely be a driver of the business instead of just a support function. We really, really understand how to link on people's strategy with commercial strategy. And that still is where a lot of people or HR leaders fall down that good in that bubble, what they call mechanic to half of the credibility of the exact table, but we know the best on that. Um, and he was sold on learned a ton from that capacity. So yeah, he'd definitely be, was having the conversation. Speaker 2 00:49:59 Right. And I that's, I'm super excited already not having even spoken to the person. Like I agree that having the people function as a product of the organization, like you say, rather than, uh, a tree that gets shaken, people want some fruit to go from, it is a different game. David, it's been a real pleasure to chatting with you. Um, I've enjoyed learning from you. I hope that the people that are listening in, um, I've also enjoyed the content. I'm really excited to see, uh, Cleo's next phase or phases of growth. Should I say? Um, especially following the exciting series B. So thanks again for sharing with us and being so open and, um, thanks everybody for listening in Speaker 3 00:50:50 <inaudible>.