Full transcript: Alicia Navarro on London Real
1:16 Brian Rose: Formats. Learn about the people behind the innovation locally. Films, locally sourced. Silicon Real, it’s about the people. This is Silicon Real.
1:30 The weekly talk show dedicated to the people of the London technology startup scene. My guest today is Alicia Navarro, who is the CEO and co-founder of Skimlinks, which helps publishers earn revenues and gain insights from their commerce-related content. You guys automate the affiliate marketing process, turning product links into revenue, generating affiliate links. You work with one and a half million sites around the world. You drive annual e-commerce sales of $62.5 million through your platform, 80 plus people, San Francisco, New York, London.
2:04 You work with publishers such as the independent, Hearst, Gawker Media. You are the child of Spanish migrants to Sydney, Australia, where you got your computer science degree. We’re all immigrants here in London, even the English are immigrants, you know when they finally figure it out. I think I’m an immigrant. Alicia, welcome to Silicon Real.
2:21 Alicia Navarro: Thank you, Brian, delighted to be here.
2:23 Brian Rose: I’m really glad you’re here. I think this is going to be fun. We were having a little conversation in the kitchen earlier. Sometimes the best parts of the show in the kitchen, so it’s horrible, cuz I meet people and I’m like, don’t tell me that, you know.
2:34 I tried to like bend it into my mind so I can bring it up later so I appear interesting. It’s like anti-rapport building, what I do. But it’s something we have to do, so we’re saving it all for everyone watching. One word comes to my mind when I think of you, and it’s a word we hear a lot around in this industry. I guess it’s called pivot, and if you don’t live in the tech world, the first time I heard that word, I think I was being taught basketball when I was a kid, and so if you don’t use that word in this industry, people don’t know what you’re talking about.
3:04 Some call it a euphemism, some call it a business reality, some just call it tech jargon. I’ve done it myself many times. In my small media iteration, sometimes I do it in my mind, like on my way to work. I’ve pivoted three times and I’m kind of back to normal, but I was wondering if you could tell me what that word means to you. Is it something that’s used too often?
3:23 Is it used accurately? I know in 2006 you started with Skimbit, and that’s the reason I bring this up. Tell us about the art of the pivot or what it means.
3:33 Alicia Navarro: A nice esoteric question. I mean, I don’t think of it as something deliberate, as a pivot.
3:38 I mean when you’re actually going through that nightmare of your business and your dreams failing, it’s more like a survival mechanism. It’s whatever you need to do to get through another day. So we, you know, we started with a totally different company. It was a B2C social decision-making tool, like a very ugly early Pinterest, and that just didn’t work, and I was either going to lose all my money and fail, or I had to find a solution. So in retrospect it’s called a pivot, but at the time it’s mere survival.
4:08 Brian Rose: Right, okay. And so, is that term overused these days, or is it just a term that any small business has been using since the beginning of time?
4:16 Alicia Navarro: I think it’s probably very prevalent at the moment because of the popularity of kind of agile methods of product development, where you’re not setting off on day one with, you know, a long vision. You’re starting off with, you know, a small idea that you validate, you build, you validate, you build, you validate, you build, and so there’s a lot of pivoting that goes on throughout that process as you learn about the market, learn about your customers, learn about what your capabilities are.
4:44 So there’s a lot of kind of mini pivots that companies go through, and there’s probably also a lot of people that are lured to the idea of entrepreneurialism, that basically say I want to be an entrepreneur now. I need to come up with an idea, and so the idea may not work out, and so they need to pivot. Whereas I guess before this kind of cultive entrepreneurship started, you started with an idea and then you became an entrepreneur, as opposed to the other way around, right?
5:15 Brian Rose: So it’s the rock star effect. Are we putting the cart before the horse in a certain sense with that?
5:21 Alicia Navarro: I think that is a trend, certainly.
5:23 Brian Rose: Right. There’s something called cognitive biases, and it’s one of my, a guest from London Real talks that says that we have 25 cognitive biases as humans.
5:31 One is called the reciprocity bias, like when the waitress brings you a mint before you get the tip, and then you tip her more, and you’re like, that doesn’t make any sense, but it works. And one of them is media bias, like what we see in the news. And we see the Zuckerbergs and we see the Ubers and we see that, and we’re like, oh, that’s what this is. And then I’ve spoken with 80 people here and I visited their offices, and it’s quite a different thing, you know, when it comes down to tech reality.
5:56 Can you just tell me, has it always, I mean, you’ve been in this business for a long time now. Has it always been that way, or is the media now much more pronounced than it used to be?
6:08 Alicia Navarro: Oh, absolutely. I think. So when I started it was about 7 years ago, and there was certainly an attractiveness to the concept of entrepreneurship, but I think that it was very hard, and so there were fewer people, I guess that kind of got into it, and so it wasn’t as glamorous.
6:26 I think it’s been a kind of double-edged sword over the last probably three or four years where, you know, the good side of it is there’s a recognition that to make this country, and you know, all developed countries really great, that a degree of enterprise needs to be fostered amongst its community, particularly its young. There’s also been coupled with that a lot of the success stories of the Facebooks and so on, and these sudden billionaires, so it’s created this mini gold rush of sorts, of people that think, right, I want to be rich. In the old days it was to be a lawyer or a rock star, now it’s to be an entrepreneur.
7:00 And so I think that there’s a whole vicious or virtuous circle, whichever way you look at it, that’s going on of people that kind of see successes, want to emulate it. There’s a whole industry that springs up around it. Government recognizes that there is a lot of good that can come from it, in terms of job growth and, you know, technology innovation, and it just created this mass swell of interest in the space, I think.
7:24 Brian Rose: And is it more so here than in the UK than in the US?
7:27 Alicia Navarro: Cuz no, both. I mean, you only have to try to rent an apartment in San Francisco to realize there’s a lot of very wealthy people out there, and a lot of people trying to be wealthy.
7:36 Brian Rose: Is that, I mean, I haven’t been there recently. Is it really kind of crazy and hard to S? Is it a sustainable that kind of wealth gap,
7:43 Alicia Navarro: or, I mean, that’s a very you know, broad global question, isn’t it?
7:47 I don’t think it is. But then every time someone says that you know, people, I’m sure that people said that about London 100 years ago, and yet it continues. I think it creates a lot of problems, but it also creates a lot of great innovations. It’s a double-edged sword now.
8:02 Brian Rose: When you started Skimbit, you weren’t even in the UK yet, right?
8:06 And so you went from Australia to the UK, you’ve made some acquisitions in the States, you spent two years in San Francisco. I mean, after going on that journey, what is your view of the different kind of ecosystems? I mean, is there.
8:18 Brian Rose: It’s hard in Australia to raise capital, right?
8:21 Alicia Navarro: I think now it’s a lot easier, but when I started this was 2016.
8:24 I basically had spent, you know, nine months building my first version of my website using a team of developers in Romania, working nights and weekends while I had a full-time job, and so I finally had this, you know, great website, and I went to the one VC that focused on kind of tech startups in Australia at the time. I pitched. He didn’t like it, and then that was it and over. Right? So I decided to do what all Australians do, I guess, at that point in time, and did a kind of walkabout and went and just left my job for six weeks and just went traveling to try to find the answer.
9:00 And during that travel I went via London. That’s where I had the concept to change Skimbit into a kind of white-label version of that technology. And being there and seeing the opportunity in the scene in London was the driver for me to go back to Australia, pack up my life, sell my car, sell my furniture, give up my apartment, and move back to London to be a full-time penniless entrepreneur at the age of 30.
9:29 Brian Rose: Okay, and that was ’08, is at the end of 2007.
9:32 Okay, is that right?
9:33 Alicia Navarro: Yes. And it was a great time. I mean, those early days, the beginning of 2008 was a really exciting time, I think, to be an entrepreneur in London, because there wasn’t a support structure as it was now, so we really depended on each other a lot more than I think perhaps happens now, and so the friendships that I formed at the time with, um, a lot of those entrepreneurs, like the people from Huddle and Wayne and trusted places, and so on, are now kind of my best friends in the world.
10:03 And it was, and it was a very vibrant, exciting time despite it being a smaller scene than it is now.
10:09 Brian Rose: Right? Wasn’t Skimlinks the original tech company in the Roundabout? I mean, you were one of the,
10:14 Alicia Navarro: yes, we moved to the Roundabout before it was cool. There was basically Moo Doppler and Skimlinks, and that was it in the early days.
10:21 Brian Rose: Okay, I mean, I, that’s like in the tumbleweed days. The tumbleweed, I think of tumbleweeds going around the Roundabout. I mean, you know we’ve had Alex Hoy in here, a Kia people that were there back in the day, and I don’t, I think it’s hard for people to understand the difference, because that’s 6 years ago, and just recently Old Street station got a makeover, but you know, even, you know, 3-4 years ago it was just pretty dodgy over there, not to mention two years previous right?
10:44 Alicia Navarro: I really, I mean, I didn’t move to Old Street by choice. I was at the time renting a desk from kind of this kind of person that was incubating me, of sorts. And that was. We were originally on Long Acre in Covent Garden, which was lovely. I loved it, but they decided, oh no, we have to move.
11:03 They bought a building in, on Paul Street here, just around the corner from you. And I was like, I had to move. I had nowhere else. I had a free desk, and I was going to take it, so suddenly I’m like, Dad, what am I going to do, all the way out east? This is ridiculous.
11:16 But in the end it kind of turned out to be a lucky accident, right?
11:19 Brian Rose: So you kind of, you kicked it off. You’re the reason we’re here.
11:22 Alicia Navarro: Yes, you must all bow down before me.
11:24 Brian Rose: I want to ask you about raising money.
11:26 Brian Rose: I had asked you a couple questions before the interview, and you wrote me, I’ve raised five priced rounds of funding, two convertible notes, and three rounds of debt financing, so I can raise money. That’s probably more raising than I’ve had with 80 different companies here, you know. I don’t think anyone has really has that kind of series. What did you learn about raising money, and yeah, what can you tell us about it?
11:50 Alicia Navarro: Try to do it as less often as you need to.
11:52 It is distracting. It is demoralizing. It is atrociously hard, but even, like, really, unless you’re like the 1% of companies that are an absolute slam dunk and you’ve got like 20 offers at your table, which doesn’t really happen. It’s very hard. It takes time and it’s distracting.
12:06 And there’s a thousand things I’d rather do, but you, so if I could do it all again, I’d probably raise fewer rounds of a larger amount. Yes, it involves slightly more dilution, but as long as you maintain a slow burn despite raising a lot of cash, it just gives you a lot more runway and a lot more clarity of focus, which is the biggest detractor. I mean, I see a lot of other startups that are raising very small amounts, like 50k here, 100k there, and it just means that they’re constantly fundraising, which means they’re not growing the business And two, it just, it’s never enough money to do anything important.
12:43 You’re never going to hire a great employee with that kind of money. You’re never going to really invest in a difficult problem, and so for companies I’m encouraging of raising as much as you can at any point in time, because fundraising is not a fun process.
12:57 Brian Rose: Okay, there was an article that came out in TechCrunch a week or so ago, and it was someone I think in the States, and they, it was about the act of announcing your fundraise, and they announced a fundraise, like six or nine months after they actually did it, because they didn’t want that to be a media event in itself.
13:15 They wanted their product to be the media event, or their success with a client to be the media event, and he just said, can we just stop with the, you know, press releases for funding rounds and get on and be grown-up companies and let’s, you know, talk about the real news. And I thought it was a great article to read it was sandwiched between some funding round articles on TechCrunch. What are your thoughts on that?
13:37 Alicia Navarro: I mean, I agree. All this press release stuff is just a means to an end.
13:41 A funding press release is about, you know, it’s good for raising profile and so on, but it’s a shambles. All it tends to mean, really, that a lot of recruiters call you up the next day, thinking that you have a lot of money. And we, you know, we did close our round months ago. It wasn’t, it’s not something that we’ve done this year. You just, it just wasn’t an important thing to make the announcement.
14:03 Brian Rose: Okay. I had Nick Brisbourne here at Forward Partners, and you know, we had just heard about the announcement in TransferWise, and it was a big thing, I guess, because you know, Ben Horowitz his first European board seat, and these are big strategic things, and I’m so happy for them, but I also was asking him. I said, you know, this concept of valuation, you know, is it the fact that it’s a billion or Uber is 40 billion, or should we think of it that there’s just some more money being raised to see if they can get to their next point, to get to their next point?
14:30 You know, again, this media bias. Do we just get caught up in these bright lights and big numbers sometimes and not focus on the fact that these companies are like you got, it’s like a video game, Donkey Kong or something. You got to get from here to here, or you die, and then here to here, you die. Is there a better way? We should think about that.
14:44 Should we stop? Should we just make a moratorium on even talking about valuations?
14:48 Alicia Navarro: Valuation is interesting, because, well, fundraising is interesting, because it’s a validation of a milestone. It’s that enough people believe in your journey and in your story that they’re willing to invest and join you in that journey. That’s exciting, and that is worth celebrating, and it’s hard, but raising money is not the hardest thing that you do in a business.
15:07 And I think the companies that focus too much on that lose sight that actually despite how difficult it is to raise money, it’s easier than actually growing a company. You know that there are at least rules and processes that you go through to raise around. Whereas once you’ve got the money in the bank, you know, then you’ve got infinite possibilities and an immense amount of pressure on your shoulders to actually do something. So I think those the celebrations of, um, sorry, the successes that people have once they’ve raised money are probably more worthy of celebration than the round itself.
15:37 Brian Rose: Okay, and what advice do you give to young entrepreneurs when they’re going to raise their funding? Let’s say they’re going for a Series A or an angel round, and in their mind they want to the 10 million valuation. I don’t know why, and I was having a chat with a buddy of mine who just finished with Imperial College here, a master’s degree, and he’s gone to New York, and he’s interviewing with the startup, and he was like, I’m going to get a point, but I might get a half a point.
15:59 And I was looking at him, I’m like, you don’t even care what it is. It’s just in your mind. So you want to tell your friends that I got a point, or two points, but you don’t even know what that means. It’s, am I making a point here?
16:10 Alicia Navarro: You’re absolutely right.
16:11 It’s, and it’s something that we then have to train our employees about as well, like the percentage that you get as an employee is utterly irrelevant, because the valuations change, the terms change. What matters is what your shares are worth now and what they would be worth at a particular exit in the future, and that, and that’s worth talking about as an employee. But I have a very kind of firm view about valuations because I see a lot of young startups trip up on it and become obsessed with the valuation, and there’s a number of really bad things that happen if you do that.
16:47 The first is that if you get too high valuation, you will struggle then to get a follow-on round, particularly one at an uplift valuation, right?
16:54 Brian Rose: That’s a huge point to make, especially right now in the Mark enous, it’s enormous, and it happens all the time. If you, if you do get what you want and raise money at this big valuation, you might be, you’re setting yourself up for failure later. And you might get the great press release and all your friends from college will say you finally made it, but in In reality you’ve made it harder for you.
17:12 Alicia Navarro: Very much so. Unless you kind of absolutely slam dunk it out of the park. Oh, that’s bit of cross metaphors there. Unless you’re doing extremely well, you will struggle then to get a follow-on round, because further rounds of funding are much higher, and one of the great things. I mean, we’ve always had ups.
17:32 So we’ve done five priced rounds. Everyone has been an uplift, and so the story is great. We’ve had follow-on investment from all our, all our investors. Our investors are happy because we, you know, there’s a great story that they can tell back to their, their partners, which is, you know, this company’s continuing to grow in valuation. Our stock is continuing to increase in value.
17:52 These are the things that actually matter if you want to be a long-term company. And I know invest entrepreneurs sometimes obsess about, well, that dilutes me too much. You know, and the thing is, if you’re worried now about what you’re going to walk away with in 5 6, seven, eight years’ time, I just think it’s the wrong thing to focus on. What WS most is, are the terms good? Are the investors getting into bed with the kind of people that you want to be with for the next 5 to 10 years?
18:21 And is it, are you leaving yourself open for the next liquidity event, whether it be a fundraise or an exit? Because if you price yourself too high, the likelihood is you’re not going to survive beyond the next round.
18:35 Brian Rose: Okay, those are three things: terms good. What’s a, what’s a good example of good terms or bad terms?
18:41 Alicia Navarro: Making sure that you retain a degree of power, making sure that, especially in the early days, there’s not nasty liquidation preference terms.
18:50 Making sure that yeah, it’s mainly around control and around how the shares are distributed afterwards. Also things around warranties. There, there’s just a sea of, um, terms that make a more important difference, and we’ve, we’ve like chosen lower valuations that have been offered to us because they came from a investors that we liked and be terms that were more favorable to us long term.
19:16 Brian Rose: Okay, investors. The right investors.
19:18 How do you choose them? I mean, I’ve heard this a few times from people that have been on here, that people just jump at the first check that they get, and they never even met these people, let alone about to get married to them. H, how do you, how do you, how do you know if it’s a good investor? How do you know if it’s a good partner, you know? It’s, if you think about, you’ll end up attached to your VC for longer than your relationships.
19:41 Alicia Navarro: It’s true. I mean, my seed in my seed round happened, you know, SE six years ago now, and that investor is still involved in my business. Luckily, you know, he’s great, and we get along very well. Um, but you know, I’ve also had investors that have not had their interest aligned with me, and it causes incredible problems down the line. And I’ve seen it happen again and again and again to investors that, you know, don’t really believe in what you’re doing, and so they won’t follow on in your investment, and there’s nothing worse to the outside world than if your initial investor doesn’t follow on or, um, isn’t, or steps down.
20:18 You know, that the whole world of funding is full of signals, and you have to, you know, that’s one of the things that you learn after years of doing this. There’s a lot of little things that you need to manage, and choosing the right investors and choosing a valuation that allows you room to grow, helps you manage those signals that will help you secure that next round.
20:39 Brian Rose: Okay, so don’t be greedy in your valuation. I was once told, yeah, valuations don’t matter, terms matter, and being here tomorrow matters, so as long as you’re here tomorrow and the terms are not bad, and it’s a valuation that gives you, you know, that’s not incredibly dilutive, it’s a good thing.
20:55 Alicia Navarro: So when you’re getting your, you’re raising your round, think about the next one and think about okay, well, if it wants to be a higher one, then it’s going to be this, and is that even realistic? And frankly, in the end, valuation is purely generally a matter of how much you raise. So if you want to raise, you know, uh, basically almost every round will be 20 to 30% diluted on average, so whatever you raise, you know that times five is going to be your post-money valuation.
21:20 Right? So it’s not that complicated. At the end of the day, each raise you’re going to be selling 20% of your company, and so that’s five times, boom, and basically if you can’t raise that $2 million, you can only raise half a million. Well, that means your valuation is 2 million, not the 20 that you wanted. That’s just the way it is, unless again you’re TransferWise and you’re, you know, absolutely beyond exceptional which is what we read about all the time.
21:38 Brian Rose: Right, okay, let’s talk about company culture. It’s something that we haven’t really dove into too much here on the show. I don’t know why, but I know it’s something you’re very proud of. It’s something you work very hard about. So, and it’s something you built from scratch, I guess.
21:50 Can you tell me what those words mean to you, or what, what it means to you as a company culture, and how you make it happen? I know, you know, you move back to London for part of the reason, because you wanted to be face to face with your employees. So tell me, tell me about Skimlove.
22:04 Alicia Navarro: Yeah, it’s, it’s one of those funny words, isn’t it, that when you actually try to define it, it can be a little bit complex, but the way that we think about it is, um, how do we create an environment that creates the results that we want out of the company?
22:16 And by results, it’s not necessarily just financial results, but, you know, the softer side of things that make your day worthwhile. Ultimately, you know, hiring and training people is a hard thing, so you want to create an environment where people want to stay, where people are happy and where people are performing at their best, and so you create a culture that attracts the kind of people you want to work with and makes them happy. And so for us, that means creating, and our, you know, Skimlinks culture is very much one about celebrating each other, about that cheeky sense of humor, about, uh, a unique kind of sparkle to them, and actually, after a while, we recognized that we needed to define that.
22:56 And so we came up with, we actually have a name for it in our company, which is #SkimLove, and it came about very organically. It happened as a result of, on our Yammer board, we would like to celebrate each other’s wins, and not just each other’s wins internally, but we believed passionately that the best way to win as a company externally was to sell ourselves, not just our product, and so me and all our sales team and everyone that’s customer facing, when we go out into the world, we project goodness, heart, and sincerity, and we believe that that is fundamental to the reason that we’ve succeeded as a company. You know, customers choose us and are loyal to us because they love that quality, and so whenever we would celebrate a win, we would say, you know, hey, we want this client, #SkimLove, and so it became a kind of meme in our office, and And then we break it down into what it means.
23:56 So we break down each of the letters. So S is about the sparkle in the eyes, you know, the fire in the eyes, that you’ve seen someone that you just recognize as a kindred spirit. K is about being kickass. I is about being inventive. M is about being master of your domain.
24:10 L is about being likable. O is about being open-minded. V is about being vocal, and E is about being entrepreneurial, and and that’s our culture.
24:19 Brian Rose: That’s awesome. What you just said, I’m trying to think of what ours is going to be, and so these were characteristics that were always inside of you.
24:28 I’m guessing that you always wanted to nurture at the company, but you just kind of spelled them out recently with the hashtag.
24:37 Alicia Navarro: Yeah. Yes. As you, as we got bigger, it became useful to define what was previously an unspoken and very accepted thing. But yes, in the early days it wasn’t, it’s not something like I went on day one, decided, right, what’s going to be my culture, and wrote it all out.
24:55 It was a very organic thing that was driven by both me and my co-founders’ personalities, I guess, and the way that we chose to lead, and the people that we chose to hire, and those are the kind of the building blocks of culture, and those early employees are so important because, um, everything then flows on from those people, and particularly in the early days, we were ruthlessly focused on choosing people that not only, um, had the right kind of experience but were the right kind of people that had the fire in the eye. That there was a magical spark. It sounds like a very wishy-washy thing to say, but it’s the same way that you recognize a friend or a partner.
25:38 Like, there’s something that happens chemically, and so we kind of looked for that in our early team, and still now we still look for it. Um, and it means that when you walk into Skimlinks’ offices, you can feel it. There is, there is a sparkle in the air. Even Al Cina, when she walks in, she says walking in to our office is the favorite part of her day because of the energy in it. And that’s because of the amazing team that we have.
25:59 Brian Rose: What happens when someone’s not sparkling enough? Do you pull them aside and you say, you need to sparkle more?
26:05 Alicia Navarro: Every team can, I think, we say that we can accommodate, you know, up to 5% of people that aren’t necessarily like that. And as you get bigger, it, it evolves, it matures. It’s not all kind of “yay, aren’t I amazing.”
26:16 It’s sometimes it’s AC quied a ferocity or, you know, a distinguished intelligence, that sound pathetic, but it manifests in slightly different ways as you get bigger. It doesn’t mean that we’re all the same. It means that there’s a, there’s a, there’s a something that draws you to them and helps us feel like a team.
26:33 Brian Rose: So many people watching us are founders, or they want to be founders, or they’re interested in this industry, and you just said that, you know, a lot of people get caught up in fundraising when they should be thinking about the product, and then they should be thinking about their first hire, and now they’re thinking, we’ve got to find our own hashtag.
26:51 So where does that process come in? And funny enough, we’re doing that right now at London Real and Silicon Real. We’re trying to really write down exactly what makes us different and what we’re all about, and it’s fascinating and it really is interesting just to find out what are we about. And you know, you have an impression, and your co-founder has an impression, and your employee, one to three, but how important is it to sit down and hash that out before you build your product?
27:14 Alicia Navarro: Oh, I, I know. I think that you build your product first, but just hire great people to start with, and you only have to worry about, you know, well, I, I think that it’s culture has to be something that flows naturally. I think, I mean, you can, you can create things that help initiatives that help support it. So, for instance, you know, we, um, what do we do, um, to foster kind of, um, gosh, let me think. Um, you can’t mandate the Skimlove.
27:50 No, no, but you can do things around it, like, you know, we believe, my co-founder and I really strong believe, is that if you want, you know, the E in Skimlove, which is entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial people, part of our duty then is to be very open about the process and what we’ve learned and what mistakes we’ve made. So we’ll sit down with our team and tell them about the fundraising process what worked, what didn’t work, what terms we negotiated for, so that our employees, who we’ve all hired because they too either want to be entrepreneurs or love being part of an entrepreneurial journey, can get feel that they’re part of it. So that’s one thing we do to kind of enhance the culture.
28:30 We also are, um, incredibly generous when things go wrong. You know, we support our team, and it’s a very nurturing, supportive place. We’ve had some really awful, awful disasters that have happened to certain team members, and when you see how the team stand together, and it’s driven by the examples that we set, we’re very generous financially, and, um, and with our own personal time to make sure the whole team knows that we care about them, and that being together means something, something.
28:57 Brian Rose: Okay, tell me about laughter. You said that’s an important part of the, of the environment, and it starts from you.
29:04 Alicia Navarro: Yes, absolutely. I think that, uh, I believe that if you’re going to go and spend, you know, a majority of your waking hours, uh, with a group of people, you want to kind of choose people that you want to be important parts of your life, and I want to spend most of my life laughing. And, um, and so we’ve again created a culture that is very tongue in cheek, very kind of self-deprecating, very cheeky.
29:30 And, uh, and so as a result, it’s incredibly fun on a day-to-day basis, alongside being very productive, of course.
29:36 Brian Rose: Okay, um, I mentioned Ben Horowitz earlier, and part of the thing in his book was The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and he had to make a decision about swearing in the office, and I think he ended up pulling the office and they made a whole decision, and they finally realized that we are going to swear in the office, because I think he found that overall it was the right thing to do. I don’t know.
29:56 Alicia Navarro: He probably did a, a regret analysis. Something, I, I, again that’s the V in Skimlove and the O, the open-mindedness, are all about being open-minded and vocal, so there is a lot of swearing. I make a habit of swearing every time I interview someone the first time, because if they’re not going to be the kind of person that kind of is comfortable with that and kind of grins and giggles at me when I swear, they’re probably not going to cut it at point.
30:24 Brian Rose: Can you give me an example?
30:26 Alicia Navarro: Say you’re interviewing me. What would you say? And I’ll try to react naturally. Um, you know, I, you know, I’m really f***ing passionate about this thing I’m doing, and, uh, and then you want them to kind of go, you know, did I react right? You want to hire me, right?
30:40 Brian Rose: I’d hire you.
30:41 Alicia Navarro: Okay. Well, you said it in a nice way, cuz there’s so, I don’t say, I don’t swear aggressively. It’s not about being, it’s about being passionate, about being cheeky. And, you know, we have a very diverse workplace as well, so we have you know, lesbian gays, we have 21 different nationalities.
30:59 We have old, young. I f***ing love diversity, and so again, I, we will often mention, like, you know, one of my team is, is a lesbian, so we will also sometimes, when she’s interviewing with me, I’ll mention something about, you know, your wife, cuz you want to see if the other person is comfortable with that, right?
31:15 Brian Rose: Yeah. Well, you’re, and you spent a couple years in San Francisco, and you know, the Californians are just, they’re, they are more open than this Brits.
31:22 So, well, I think Brits are more comfortable with swearing, though, right?
31:26 Alicia Navarro: That might be true.
31:27 Brian Rose: Now, what if someone doesn’t like swearing? Are you going to miss a good candidate, or is it just a culture decision?
31:32 Alicia Navarro: It’s a signal, one of many that you kind of try to pick up.
31:35 Brian Rose: Okay, all right. Now, look, you spent two years in San Francisco. Okay, I’m from California. I live here now. You know, you were in London doing business.
31:42 You went out there for 2 years, and then you came back. Everyone has an opinion about that. Some people think everyone in San Francisco is aggressive, megalomania walks around like they’re the king of the world, blah, blah, blah. But we also have to say, the Yanks do a lot of things, right. So, what’s your read on it?
31:59 As honest as you can be.
32:00 Alicia Navarro: I was initially very nervous about moving to San Francisco. It, you know, it’s kind of a little bit easier here. You know, you’re, it’s easier to be a big fish in a little pond, and, um, going out there, it was, you know, how am I going to navigate it? It’s, it’s such a big, scary place.
32:17 Um, and you know, I think Brits are kind of a little teasing of Americans, Rah r r, and everything, great. But to my surprise, I found the people in San Francisco were just incredibly warm and welcoming, and it was incredibly easy to fall into a very nice lifestyle there. So the personal side of things was great. Um, I think, interesting, on the personal side, I do, I think it was Americans are very good on the surface. I have a lot more deeper friendships in the UK, but I’ve got a lot more surface friendships in San Francisco.
32:50 That was another kind of odd characteristic I saw.
32:53 Brian Rose: Okay, what about business practices? Is there something you noticed there where you’re like, I want Skimlinks to be like that? And let’s just talk about something as simple as work hours, or being in contact via email 24/7. Is that something you notice more there?
33:06 Is that the right way of doing business or the wrong?
33:09 Alicia Navarro: Um, I can only talk so much as it affects my company, obviously. Um, so, because, uh, to maximize the number of overlapping work hours, the San Francisco office would start a lot earlier, but they would tend to finish a bit earlier. And frankly, the San Francisco, uh, our San Francisco office has a slightly more relaxed kind of lifestyle, because they’re not around the frenetic of the engineering team.
33:34 It’s a sales and marketing team, and as long as they kind of hit their quotas and are doing a good job, it’s, it’s a bit more relaxed. Um, that may not be the same in other companies, but from what I saw, I think it’s, it’s, um, it’s quite a relaxed lifestyle. Um, other working practices, I think it’s, uh, very competitive. Not many people stay employed with you for a long time, uh, we’ve done very well, and we, again, because of our culture and the way that we treated our team did a really good job of, um, retaining great people over a very long period of time.
34:07 But I think unless you do that, it can be, um, difficult to hold on to people, because it’s just so many great offers out there, uh, and as soon as your company starts to do well, your, you know, your employees are going to be picked off.
34:20 Brian Rose: Okay, did you bring back any American practices when you came back to Britain this time? And says we’re going to do this different?
34:27 Alicia Navarro: Um, again, I don’t know if I’m quite the right person to speak about, because, you know, we created uh, you know, a team in San Francisco that were very kind of agile, right?
34:36 Okay, and independent, right from the engineering here.
34:39 Brian Rose: Okay, yeah, um, talk to me about international expansion. So, uh, a lot of British companies, of course, they’re going to look West. They, they kind of, I’m about to say they have to, but they don’t have to. Damen Kimelman from due diligence said, we don’t need to go to America.
34:52 You know, a lot of companies are like, we don’t need to go. Nutmeg, another great example, and they probably don’t, but a lot of companies have gone. Why plan there’s tons of them going there. What did you learn, or what should they learn when they go?
35:04 Alicia Navarro: That’s a really good question.
35:05 Um, we needed to go over there because for a B2B business, especially one where part of our proposition was our team’s personality. Um, face-to-face time is important, uh, as is being seen as American. What we found is that a lot of American companies like to do business with other American companies. They don’t mind if you’re British as long as you live in America, or at least you say that you do, and so that was one of the first things before I even moved over.
35:37 Um, I would go over there very often, and I would be very complimentary of America. Um, Americans are very, very patriotic, and, uh, and unconsciously xenophobic, so they like to do business with other Americans or people that love America, uh, and so that’s a really important thing for British people to understand when you, uh, when you go over there. You know, sink into that lifestyle, try to understand some of the differences in their language, which can pull you up.
36:04 They don’t know what the word fortnight is, they think it’s quaint, uh, you know, or a score. They don’t know what a score is. There’s a whole lot of words, so you’ve got to very quickly learn about these things, like painkillers. They think you mean morphine, or, uh, don’t say you’re going to the toilet, that’s very vulgar. You going to the restroom, right?
36:22 So these things. And then I also found that, um, in order to be understood, I would start to roll my Rs so I’d say I’m here, or I’m going to have a drink of beer, because otherwise they don’t understand you.
36:34 Brian Rose: Okay. So assimilate to a degree. I mean, they love Brits and Australians.
36:38 Alicia Navarro: Thankfully, they, they think the accent is, is exotic. I think it’s hilarious, but they, but they, uh, it’s easier if they feel comfortable doing business with you, and they can recognize some of themselves in you.
36:49 Brian Rose: Okay. Talk to me about the state of technology in Britain, in London. Where are we going?
36:54 Are there’s some big potholes coming up? Uh, I want to get your thoughts on SEIS funding. You know, what the UK okay. You know, lately we see a lot of face time from Boris and some people at Number 10, and they’re there at the thing, but a lot of people say the government is doing positive things. Americans think the UK government is much more on board than, say, the American government when it comes to tech.
37:14 You know, what do you see there? Do you see face time? Do you see tax incentives that are going to hurt us in the long run? What’s your read?
37:21 Alicia Navarro: I mean, honestly, I think the UK government’s done an awesome job supporting British entrepreneurship, to the point where I, I’m glad my company’s based here.
37:28 I don’t want to live in the US. A combination of R&D tax credits, which literally saved my cash flow in the first couple of years, um, EMI stock options, so that my employees get, you know, really well protected from a tax perspective with their stock options. American employees don’t get that. Um, and Entrepreneurs’ Relief, which makes it really really attractive to stay a UK resident, uh, or as an entrepreneur. I think that government’s done an incredible job with the things that it should be meddling in.
38:00 I think that sometimes there are expectations of the government to fix all your problems, like the cost of rent, like the cost of hiring. Um, and that’s, that’s not the government’s. Well, I mean, the government can’t fix everything, but I think that they’ve done a really, really good job to make it an attractive place to work.
38:17 Brian Rose: Okay. And SEIS tax credits to encourage funding.
38:19 I mean, so many people have put money into tech and other industries because these incentives came out. Sometimes people rattle off the numbers. I’m an American. I get globally taxed. I don’t even think I can qualify for these things, but, like, people say it’s a wonderful thing.
38:32 It’s a good thing. What’s your read?
38:35 Alicia Navarro: I think it’s a double-edged sword. Um, it’s, I guess, uh, you know, I know many people think it’s, it’s a wonderful thing. I have a slightly, um, different view, which is that it’s sometimes giving money to companies that aren’t ready for funding yet, that their ideas are not yet developed enough, and that your funding ideas before that they’ve gone through the rigor of having to improve in order to get funding.
39:03 You know, for us, it took us, it took me a year of pitching to raise my first seed round. If I had raised a SEIS round in the first couple of months of pitching, I would not be here today. Absolutely not, because my, the idea I had a few months in was bad, and it was only being rejected again and again, and getting awesome feedback from VCs as to why they, when investing, could I evolve my business to the point where eventually it was good enough? I did raise money, and here we are today.
39:34 Um, and I worry about that sometimes, that if, if startups get funding before they’ve been tested enough, if they, you know, VCs, you know, a lot of them are really, really smart, and it’s really useful to pitch to them and get their feedback as to why this business is not yet ready, and it’s an awesome opportunity to iterate and improve your business. So, I, I worry about that. Um, I worry that the companies that are getting funded, um, not yet proven and not ready for funding, um, I worry that because it’s such a small amount, um, you are not really getting the runway to do anything significant.
40:10 You’re not going to hire a great team of people. You’re not going to be able to have a long enough runway to build an important product or feature that matters. You’re going to be constantly fundraising, and that’s distracting and destructive for your company. Um, the people that are funding via SEIS tend to not be experienced VCs. They might be, often, very high net worth individuals that can’t really contribute, um, to, to the product development.
40:36 They don’t really know enough about the scene and about technology to give feedback. I see that happen a lot, um, and they’re also not very sophisticated investors, and so they end up driving the cost up of legals, um, and making the process much harder for the young startups, and ultimately, it also drives up the cost of, uh, employees. It drives up the cost of rental properties. I, I think there are very, very few really, really big successful companies now that have started out of SEIS.
41:04 Brian Rose: Okay, so it almost, like, artificially floods those seed rounds, and he ends up funding all these ideas that haven’t been fleshed out, don’t have the guidance, over-spend in all these weird areas, and it kind of creates this weird, I guess it’s not a bottleneck, but this kind of weird. I mean, maybe it, maybe it is, like, having too many kids and they’re all competing for the same. I mean, if the only way you can raise money is by someone that is putting money in you, because if you fail, they’ll get their money back.
41:29 That’s not a winning indicator that you’re likely to be a success. You’re, you’re a tax write-off, and, and until you’re willing, until you find someone that’s willing to invest irrespective of being a SEIS, the people that put money in thinking, I’m not going to get my money back, my money will lose I will lose my money if this is not a success. That means your idea is ready for being something, right? Survival of the fittest, and that’s what happens in America because they don’t have that tax credit.
41:52 Alicia Navarro: Correct?
41:52 Brian Rose: Okay, and, but then also you’re in San Francisco, where you have people with exits and smarter money and more money out there. But yeah, okay, that’s the trade-off. Talk to me about a liquidity event for you, being acquired. Next level, that’s something you have to think about as CEO and co-founder.
42:08 So what, what goes through your mind when the landscape constantly changes?
42:13 Alicia Navarro: Ah, um, I mean, it’s one of those things that you can’t necessarily plan for. I mean, the saying is that you, you’re not, you don’t, uh, sell your bought, and, uh, it’s, it’s very true. You know, the best valuations come when you, you don’t want someone to buy you, but someone really, really wants you, and that’s how you get the great valuations. You know, companies that get to a Series C stage are in the kind of, are getting the kind of valuations that make being acquired a little bit more challenging.
42:46 You know, you’re not going to be something, you know, you can’t be bored any longer for 20, 30, 40, 50, $60 million, which is, you know, a lot of weight on one’s shoulders, but that’s, you know, when you believe enough in what you’re doing and think your team is awesome, uh, and you’re doing this because you love the process, not because you necessarily want to be rich tomorrow, then, you’re in for the long run. And, um, you have to be driven by wanting to build a great company, um, because it’s, it’s a long, lonely, scary ride if you don’t believe that.
43:15 Brian Rose: Okay, but you have to be open-minded, cuz the, the typical founder line is we’re not going to sell, I’m here until I die, and we’re building the greatest company,
43:24 Alicia Navarro: we’ll sell, we’ll sell probably, um, uh, and, but I think it’ll hopefully be when it’s, I mean, the ideal scenario would be that it would be, you know, that it would be a great return for my investors, a great place for me and my team, uh, and where we get to see the hard work that we’ve done for the last few years achieve even greater scale and success.
43:42 That’s, that’s the goal. Um, I personally don’t think that I mean, I didn’t think I’d be able to do this job at this scale either. Every day is a new stage for me as well. Um, I, I was very comfortable being, you know, an early-stage CEO that was kind of easy. I was product manager.
44:00 I did exactly what I wanted to do. Now, you know, there’s 80 people. You’ve got to think about processes and scale and investor management, and it’s hard, and I’ve got to learn how to do it every day. Um, I do get worried that, you know, at some stage I may not be the right CEO for that company. Um, and that’s perfectly okay.
44:18 At some stage it may make sense to bring in, um, someone that’s better at managing a company of that size. Um, it’s not yet. I’m, I’m, I, I believe I’m still the right person for that job. Um, but ultimately, I, I care about the success of the company, and whatever my role is in that.
44:32 Brian Rose: You said you can’t sell your board.
44:34 What does that mean? Is it, you said you can’t sell your board, does that mean they ultimately make an independent decision? What did you mean by that?
44:40 Alicia Navarro: Oh, I don’t know if I said.
44:41 Brian Rose: Oh, I thought you said you can’t sell your board.
44:43 Is that what you said?
44:44 Alicia Navarro: No.
44:44 Brian Rose: Okay. Maybe I, maybe I misunderstood what you said there. There’s a thinking in Silicon Valley lately that founders should be the CEOs, that that is the core of the company, whereas maybe years ago people were saying, now it’s time for grown-ups to run the company, but it seems to have shifted the other way.
44:59 Alicia Navarro: Yes. Um, definitely. There’s no, there’s no way that anyone else would give a s*** more than I do. Um, so yes, for as long as I’m capable of doing a pretty good job, I’m the right person for the job. Did I react well on that square as well?
45:14 Brian Rose: Well, you giggled.
45:15 Alicia Navarro: Okay. That’s uncomfortable. That’s uncomfortable, the giggle all right. I just lost my job opportunities.
45:18 Brian Rose: Um, what was I going to ask you about? We talked about SEIS, real quickly, incubators and accelerators. I, I joke every week that there’s a new one around the corner. I think there are 10 fintech accelerators in this country now. I could be exaggerating, but I, I still expect the other 485 of the Fortune 500 companies to announce their new accelerator in London, and everyone’s going to be like, he, and then they’re going to hire someone and they’re going to pump out 100 people.
45:43 I know I’m being a little brutal here, but am I going too far? Is this the case, or is this just knowledge, and we’re helping people along, or is this again leading unproven ideas and people down the wrong path?
45:55 Alicia Navarro: I think, I think that good question. This real talk here. I know.
45:59 Alicia Navarro: I mean, I guess let me take it personally for a second. So when I started, um, and I first arrived in London from Australia. Um, I was kind of incubated, I guess. It was, uh, you know, a great guy. He was a finance director for a company, and he gave me desk space.
46:16 He helped me raise, um, a loan from the bank, um, and he supported me with business advice, um, and then for that he got, you know, a slice of equity, which I guess in today’s terms would be an incubator, although at the time it was more just a great guy that helped me out, um, and helped me build the business. Um, so I think from that perspective, it’s, it’s great if you can find someone, or, you know, a person or an incubator that can help you in those early days when you don’t want to be distracted by paying rent or taking out the garbage. You know, you want to be part of an entity that lets you just focus.
46:50 That’s, I think, a really healthy thing. Um, it’s nice to go somewhere as well, otherwise you’ll be working from home. It’s lovely to go out of your home and actually be somewhere where you can be focused, where you can be around an energy that makes you want to succeed. So from that perspective, I think incubators are great. Um, I do sometimes worry, though, that, again, that there’s so many of them that they’re basically, you know, filling up numbers based on, you know, oh, I’ve got to get, I’ve got 10, you know, 10 spots.
47:16 I’ve better find 10 companies, and maybe not all of those 10, you know, are going to be great successes.
47:22 Brian Rose: How do we fight this media bias of the next rock star is the tech entrepreneur? I mean, how do we do that?
47:28 Alicia Navarro: I, I, when people like you interview people like me, I tell it like it is, and, and tell, and I, you know, I, I’m amused at how negative I sometimes appear. I think when I speak at events, because I’m not, I don’t go out and say all of you should be entrepreneurs, it’s a great thing, you should all do it, it’s amazing.
47:47 I tell the truth, which is what all of my fellow entrepreneurs are thinking but they often don’t say, which is, oh my God, it’s really hard. The suffering, the weariness, the loneliness, the fear, and it’s not quick. It’s 7 years. I mean, there’s a lot of great things about it, don’t get me wrong. It’s, it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do, and I’m happier than I’ve ever been, but it’s not for everyone, and what it takes to get through those seven years and grow a company and retain exceptional talent is not spoken about often enough, and it’s not something that necessarily everyone has, and that’s not a bad thing.
48:23 I think being part of a startup is amazing, being the, the founder and the CEO that takes it through its 10-year, whatever journey, um, is not for everyone, and that’s okay, and, uh, and maybe we should be supporting, um, you know, we should be more encouraging people joining startups, necessarily, than starting them themselves. Right? 7 to 10 years, people always talk about as that, as an exit, and it’s so true. So if you go back and look at your favourite IPO story, even those big successes are 7-10 years in the time, and no one tells, no one says that either.
48:53 Like all the stories you hear about, you know, in, in 18 years they sold for a billion dollars, and that’s what everyone believes, and that is not the norm. The norm is very weary, very tired, you know, very hardworking people that are scared every day that it’s going to end. And that’s what people need to understand if you still want to do it despite that.
49:11 Brian Rose: You know, yay, it’s funny, there’s a, I’m a big fan of, uh, of mixed martial arts, which is fighting sometimes they do it in a cage, and there’s an ultimate expression where one of the fighters, he looks at someone and says, so you want to be a fighter?
49:24 As in, you have no idea what it takes to be a fighter. All you see is me on Fight Night knocking someone out. You don’t see the pain. You don’t see me getting knocked out. You don’t see all this stuff.
49:33 And so I always think, like, so you want to be a tech startup? Yeah, you don’t even know what you’re getting into, but you know, it’s good to, it’s good to let people know that, I know you like mentoring people, and I know you like mentoring women in the industry. For a while, I was asking women that came here about women in tech, but I, I think that’s the wrong question. I think people asking that question is, is passing the buck down the road, and so there just isn’t, sorry, there just isn’t.
49:54 Alicia Navarro: There isn’t a problem. I mean, the reason there aren’t more women in technology, and I believe this, and this is, again, another hot topic, is just that there’s not more women that want to be there. There is nothing that has ever stopped me or any of the women I work with getting into this industry other than lack of interest. So the one thing I do think that we can and should influence is, um, changing that media bias, um, and showing that there are, um, creative, uh, exciting careers in technology for women, and show those to younger girls who, at the moment, are watching, you know, Gossip Girl and other TV shows where the female protagonist is a photographer, or, you know, a nurse, or whatever.
50:32 If we can kind of popularize that there are, um, great exciting, travel-filled careers for women. Um, that’s, that’s a really good place to start. Um, but other than that, you know, I, I did what I wanted to do at university. Um, I, I have always, any career I wanted, being a woman, has been nothing but actually a blessing in this industry.
50:53 Brian Rose: Amen to that.
50:54 Apparently, Shark Tank is like one of the most popular shows in America now, and that’s just about people pitching to, like, start companies. Apparently it’s, it’s very cool now, so I’m guessing all these children look at Marissa Mayer and Joanna Shields, and there’s, you know, beautiful, sexy, strong, powerful, feminine women that are leading technology companies. I think that’s a great thing, right? Just like you. Um, I want to ask you one concept.
51:15 Something I call the immigrant mind, and it’s this whole idea of immigrants, when they go places, they, they show up at a country and they feel different, because a lot of times they’ve got, they’ve got no one to go home to. They’ve got no parents to go home to. They have a different language. They might start off with a PhD in one country, and now they’re driving a cab, and they don’t care. And I’m an immigrant in this country.
51:36 Your parents were immigrants. Now maybe you’re back to an immigrant. Of course, my great-grandfather was from Cornwall, so maybe I’m not an immigrant. It’s something that I always go through my mind, and I was just wondering what your thoughts are on that. I mean, America’s is by definition full of immigrants.
51:47 Brian Rose: Do you think there’s a separate mindset, or do you think that’s talked about in the wrong way?
51:53 Alicia Navarro: Oo. Um, and then the easy questions come up. I like being a migrant, but that’s only, that’s a personal thing, cuz I just, I, I quite like being different. Um, I don’t know if that makes a difference workwise?
52:05 I don’t think, I mean, certainly as a young girl, um, being an immigrant, um, and being, you know, the eldest child of immigrant parents was an incredible driving force behind being academically focused, um, and, you know, I, I did well at school, because, you know, I was told off if I did not, you know, get 100% in every math test. sort of thing. Um, so there was certainly that, which drove me to, you know, go to university and do well there. Um, but from a startup perspective, I think personally I haven’t, I don’t believe anyway that that’s factored in my journey.
52:40 Um, other than the fact that I’m very comfortable moving countries because I’ve done it so many times, and I don’t, I’m not leaving anyone behind in the UK when I moved to San Francisco, or vice versa.
52:49 Brian Rose: Right? Understood. Um, Alicia, I always ask everyone here a few questions at the end. I’m going to hit, hit you with these.
52:55 These are the easy questions. Um, if you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Alicia. I guess you were getting your computer science degree in Sydney, maybe, um, and give that young lady a bit of advice. What would you tell her to do?
53:10 Alicia Navarro: Um, I would say, don’t worry, it’s going to be okay.
53:13 I hear that a lot. I don’t, I’m not going to do anything differently, but it’d be really nice to know that, you know, just enjoy your 20s. You’re going to be working hard in your 30s, so just really enjoy your 30, your 20s, and, and don’t, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. It’s going to work out okay. I often think, if I, like, all I would want right now is an alien to come down from you know, the, the universe and say to me, don’t worry, like, it’s all been.
53:39 And then it just, it, I think it’ll change the way that you, it’ll take all my worry away. Right, then I just focus on doing rather than worrying.
53:45 Brian Rose: Maybe the 60-year-old should call you now and give you the same advice.
53:48 Alicia Navarro: Call me, right? Call me.
53:49 Tell me.
53:49 Brian Rose: Uh, on that same note, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received, business or personal?
53:54 Alicia Navarro: You needed to tell me ahead of time that this is going to happen, then, then you would have these in the canone, be like, yeah, whatever, I know, but then I just, I’m, this is the hardest one.
54:04 Brian Rose: Always people were like, I don’t know, but did you have a business mentor, or someone that was like, okay, they taught me some ropes as far as this?
54:11 Alicia Navarro: I mean, the one that I always say is the one I said earlier, I guess, which is, don’t worry about the valuation, just worry about being here tomorrow, and that’s, I think, probably being the most useful thing.
54:22 It takes the ego away from the process. Like, I don’t, I don’t care what valuation is. I don’t care. Like, you know, sometimes you think, gosh, you know, you see all these other companies that have got sky-high, crazy-ass valuations, and then you think, you know what, but they might, you know, it doesn’t matter. I’m still here today.
54:38 I’m still here tomorrow. I love what I do, and I need to take ego out of the equation and just focus on doing a good job.
54:44 Brian Rose: That’s a great answer. Final question, and I asked this of everyone, and this is more relevant today, you know, to the 20-year-old that’s listening to us somewhere around the world on iTunes now, or on YouTube, that wants to get into tech, you know? They’re like, oh, I’m interested.
54:58 I’m watching Silicon Real, cuz I, London in tech, and I live in somewhere in the European Union, and they’re like, I want to do this, you know. What do you tell them? Because we’re part of the media now, whether we like it or not. Being part of, being in tech, or being part, being an entrepreneur.
55:12 Alicia Navarro: Okay, both.
55:13 Being tech, do it. It’s awesome. Like, to be part of the world that is creating our future. I think it is one of the most creative things and important things to be doing right now. And that’s the thing that people, I think, don’t realise it’s, it’s incredibly creative and it’s exciting.
55:28 Um, you know, we’re doing something that matters and is advancing, you know, society forward. Um, so yes, tech, definitely, entrepreneurship. If, if it’s all that you’ve ever wanted to be, and that nothing else will make you happy, then do it, and, you know, surround yourself by people that love you, and make sure that you balance your work life with things that keep you Sayan on the outside, because you’ve got to be in it for the long run, right? And it’s going to be a journey, be a journey, it’s a lifestyle.
55:58 You look back and go, wow, it’s what a ride. But you know, and at least it makes a great story, right? Tragedy, comedy. Oh my God, one day I am going to write a book of actually what the, the real things that happen that can never say in these kind of situations.
56:12 Brian Rose: One day, really?
56:13 Brian Rose: Is it juicy?
56:14 Alicia Navarro: Oh my Lord, people wouldn’t believe Stranger Than Fiction, as they say. Mhm. Okay, I, my lawyers, who know everything, we sit there sometimes and have lunch and go, the things, the things, yes.
56:24 Brian Rose: Now I want to hear this stuff.
56:26 All right, we’re going to talk about this stuff after we turn the cameras off. Um, how can people get in touch with you? Are you hiring? If they want to get some Skimlove, how do they do it? Yes.
56:35 Alicia Navarro: We’re always hiring. Uh, engineers always very welcome. Uh, hiring salespeople. Um, just go to skills.com careers, I think, and, uh, and you’ll see photos of our team and learn a bit more about our culture.
56:47 Brian Rose: Okay.
56:47 Brian Rose: Do you tweet? Do people contact you? Do you mentor people? I know I’m opening up a Pandora’s box here, but I mean, um,
56:54 Alicia Navarro: I’d love to say I do, but, unfortunately, if I said yes to everyone, I would never have a moment of work done. So, um, I uh, sometimes do.
57:02 Brian Rose: Okay. Now, that’s a good answer. That’s a very good answer. Alicia, thanks so much for being here. I appreciate it.
57:09 Brian Rose: The product’s fascinating. So many of the people that listen to this and listen to London Real, you know, that they produce a lot of their own content, and they really don’t know what to do, you know, when it comes to generating revenue, and like, we could go down a whole long road, and we didn’t really get into editorial versus making money and micro-payments and Bitcoins and all this stuff, so I guess we’ll have to save that for another time, but they can check out, um, your site, your product, and, and really get up, the,
57:35 Alicia Navarro: I mean, the kind of publishes that do well with us are going to be, like, uh, fashion-oriented sites, um, uh, consumer electronics reviews, fashion uh, lifestyle, um, uh, uh, entertainment, automotive. Basically, sites that are talking about things that can be bought are going to be the sites that tend to do well with us.
57:51 Brian Rose: Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much. As we say on Silicon, it’s about the people. Uh, you’re definitely one of them, and I wish you all the best in Skimlinks. Thank you.
58:03 Alicia Navarro: Skimlove.
58:04 Brian Rose: This week on Silicon Real, we have venture capitalist Nick Brisbourne, founder of Forward Partners. We’re there helping to build the company in a much more meaningful way than a traditional VC. From concept, Roar, idea, through the Series A, as investors, particularly if you’re managing a fund, you want to be in the best companies in the world. Hope without critical thinking, critical thinking is naivety, and critical thinking without hope is cynicism.
58:31 Striking the balance is key. Having great judgment is kind of one of the differences between success and failure. Ultimately, the world is a smaller and smaller place every year. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. On Monday, Silicon Real presents Nick Brisbourne, Forward Partners.
58:47 Slow down to speed up.
