Full transcript: James Gill on London Real
0:42 Dedicated to all those fantastic people of the London technology startup scene. I’m Brian Rose. I also host London Real in this same very studio. We do some non-tech stuff over there, so if you ever want to take a break from that, you can Co check out some cool people. I had probably the coolest dude in the UK here yesterday.
1:00 Mr Ashley Walters was part of the So Solid Crew, which was a garage and hip-hop group in the Millennium times. Then he also went and started on as Top Boy in the series Top Boy which is located right here in Hackney. He was a really cool dude, so we had a talk for like an hour and a half. We talked about what it’s like to have a number one single when you’re 19 years old, what it’s like to go to prison for having a gun. You name it.
1:24 So anyways, check that. You had the investment biker on the Jim Rogers. I got to watch that. Yeah, I have that. What I call the grumpy old man series and there’s a bunch of old guys, and they talk about finance and stuff that everyone loves.
1:35 Those guys. Yeah, when I did the China motorcycle ride, people were like, oh, you know, ex-Finance guy doing motorcycles, and they were like, yeah, definitely. I got to, I got to watch that one. Yeah, so check those out. It’s londonreal.tv, but we’re here today to talk Tech.
1:49 My co-host is entrepreneur Colin Pyle, who’s making mad coffee these days. What’s going on, what’s going on? Yeah, busy times. Everything’s going well, man. Just coming up with a few new blends, looking at some of our own machines, growing the business.
2:04 Lingo is going well. Looking for CTO for Lingo, so if anyone’s out there, interested, fits the bill. Drop me a drop me a tweet, and we, we, we’ll take it from there. Awesome. and the motorcycle ride through India is coming out on the Travel Channel.
2:17 Yeah, so on the Travel Channel globally, UK. UK got pushed back because they didn’t want to air it during the World Cup. That’s probably smart. So, so yeah, so so yeah, things are going really well, and Renaissance Man in the building, and someone texted me to say hello to them on this live podcast, but we don’t know who it is. We don’t know who it is.
2:33 So, okay, well, text again if that’s you. We, I’ll just say hello, and we can like edit it in later, maybe. Hello to all the love. Awesome. Okay, cool.
2:40 Thanks so much for being here. Our guest today is Mr James Gill, who is the CEO of GoSquared, which is a real-time web analytics platform, including e-commerce tools, which you guys rolled out in February, so companies can compete with the big boys like Amazon. You guys have over 50,000 sites using your tools. Your competition is places like Google Analytics. Another, another there, we use you guys for London Real, and I have to tell my guys to stay off GoSquared, because it’s like crack rock on that stuff, and when you go in there, it’s got, quite honestly, a sick user interface, and you can track like these people where they’re coming from, what they’re doing on your site, if they came back from the day before, where they’re located in the world, and that’s just our basic stuff, you know, let alone e-commerce and stuff.
3:28 So I actually have to tell people to get off of it. I’m sorry. Yeah. Thanks, thanks a lot. So, because it’s really addictive, you know?
3:35 So Yeah, thanks for that. James, you found out this company eight years ago, when you were even younger than you are now. We’re going to talk about that, but right now, welcome to Silicon Real. Cheers, pleasure to be here, and I must say the coffee is amazing. I’m rolling on that right now.
3:48 It’s very good. Wow. I didn’t pay him to do that. Yeah, there’s not like a 50 under the table. Crew Cafe, crewcafe.com, go check it out.
3:56 That’s Colin. Startup so get involved. It’s very good coffee. You know, before we get on to the analytics, I just want to talk about your age, because you started this company 8 years ago, which is something we always seem to come up Everyone thinks, you know, startups are two and three year, and your flip ventures, but you would know more than anything. You spent probably your third of your life.
4:13 Oh, when you put it like that, I was, I was about to say that you started this company at University, but you started it before that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was, yeah, back in 2006. So I met my co-founders when we were, I think we probably were studying for our GCSEs at the time, which we were, like, full 14, 15 years old back then. How old are you now?
4:33 I, I turned 23 just, just recently. Yeah, you look older than 23. Is that a good thing? I don’t… We should talk about that.
4:40 So you started this when you were 14, 15 years old? Yeah, yeah. So it was, it was more of a hobby back then, I must admit, but name, GoSquared, started doing web stuff. Started learning. I started learning to design my, yeah, my f…
4:52 My friends here. I started with, started learning how to program, and it’s just rolled and rolled and rolled from then, and it’s gone through tons of different, like, it, it’s kind of been a bunch of different companies rolled into one. I guess you’d call it a pivot in today’s lingo, but you know, we were just learning how to, to try and build a company back then, and, for the last sort of two and a half, three years it’s been a much more serious business, full-time, and, yeah, it’s been one hell of a ride so far.
5:19 So let’s just talk about age really quick before we get into business model, because I always wonder about this. You know, they’re talking about in Silicon Valley now, guys my age. I’m rocking 43, by the way. They go in for the Botox and stuff, because, like, even if you’re in your 30s, a lot of guys are like, okay, you’re a bit over the hill. I mean, I don’t know if it’s to that degree in London, but do you find that there is this optimal age in the mid-20s?
5:39 I mean, maybe you’re right on the beginning of that, or does your age affect you? I, I think it, in the early days it was a real concern that, like, we were so young no one would take us seriously. Yes. So I think there is, like, definitely this optimal, optimal age. I don’t know.
5:54 I think it’s just if you’re, if you’re doing cool stuff, and you can be any age if you’re, if you’re clued in and you’re in the scene, then, the age doesn’t matter too much. But, yeah, I, I think for us, you know, when you’re at school, you’ve got no, nothing to worry about. You don’t need to worry about paying to feed a family, put money on the table for for everyone, and there’s just so much more opportunity, and all you need to do is worry about whether you can fit it in with, with homework and stuff.
6:22 But yeah, I think, you know, 20 is is is, is, is a great time to be doing this stuff. What’s the oldest employee at your company? All right. At the moment, We’re still a very young company. I think the average age is 22, 212 ages.
6:37 We do not age discriminate. We have had people working with us who are, being, ah, all the way up to 30. That’s all good, but I mean, seriously, I mean, if I was in my 20s, I remember when I was, like, trading on Wall Street. I was in my 20s, and I’d be like, some 35-year-old guy be like, are you kidding me? Like, if you haven’t made enough money to retire, Grand, get out.
6:57 And I was like, but come on, it’s a little bit of a culture clash, you know? I think, yeah, it definitely stands out when you’re at meetups. But I think, you know, age is, is R actually the thing that matters. It’s like, you can tell if you’re, like, at a meetup or an event, and someone clearly isn’t in this world. But that can be applicable to someone who’s 19 as much as it can be to someone who’s 40.
7:19 You know, it’s just, I think there’s people all ends of that spectrum who know their stuff, and, yeah, I, I don’t know. I don’t think age is too big of a deal these days. Okay. I hope you’re right. I mean, it’s Tech, you would think it’s like what you can produce.
7:31 So, yeah, you mentioned the pivot earlier. I want to talk about that right away. It’s such a, Tech term. I said it to someone today not in the field, and and the guy’s like, oh, so you changed your mind? But you know, it is a bit more.
7:43 It’s different than that because you start off with something, but if you’re actually listening to the feedback, which is what you have to do, and if you have to change up, you have to change up. You guys started GoSquared. These were square pieces of advertising space, right? Oh man, yeah, it, it started. So, just to clarify, I hate the word pivot.
7:58 You know, I hate using that word. But why do you hate it? I don’t know. I just think it’s so cliche, you know? It is very much like people have changed their mind but need to put a lean startup spin on it.
8:09 Is it laced with failure or something? It sounds less ambiguous, like, to an investor. You’re like, oh, and then we pivoted, rather than, like, oh, I was f***ing really wrong when I went this way, and so I decided to go this way. Yeah. I mean, like, to be honest, like, when we started, the internet was a very different place to where it is now, and the whole startup scene is just so different.
8:30 But back then, I, I saw Alex Tew’s million dollar homepage, and little pict, yeah, and like, I don’t know if any, if you, if you’ve seen that, but it doesn’t It’s just all these different ads. He had this beautiful, beautiful site of a million pixels in this grid, and you could buy like a square of pixels, and that would be advertising space forever, and so everyone, every pixel was a dollar each, and I, I think so many people, I’m not, you know, we weren’t the only ones, but like, semi-bu cottoned onto that as being this genius, simple idea, and sort of thought they could give it a go. And I was always much more interested in design than anything else, and we thought, like, let’s try and do that, but actually make it look good.
9:14 And, so that’s how GoSquared was born. We were selling a grid of 5×5 square ad spaces on our homepage, and five pixels, so there was just five squares, so they were each like 140 pixels square, so there was like a nice bit of space, and, you know, that, that got us started. I, you know, I started learning HTML and CSS and learning how to, like, do web design, and, Jeff, my co-founder, started learning PHP, and JT started learning JavaScript, and these were, like, this was back in the really early days, and it, it got us together building something as a project, and over time it just evolved, and we, we started a blog.
9:53 It turned into, like, an advertising network, more of a marketplace, and then after all of that, we got into analytics and tracking these sites to help price the ads, and that’s where we are today, with the sort of real-time analytics platform. And it’s just been this, like, roller coaster ride of trying stuff out and just knowing when one thing’s not working, switching and moving onto something else, and it’s been a great way of learning. I must say Just jumping in and going for it.
10:20 That’s a good pivot story. I like that. Right? And what does your product look like now? I mean, and are you happy with it?
10:27 I mean, when you go around and you pitch people, people on what you’re doing, are you look at the Google Analytics, the competition, are you guys like, yes, we are where we want to be, number one? How do you evaluate? Yeah. So I think, you know, when we got into the space that, you know, we were the first guys doing real-time analytics, and I think, you know, back then it was really exciting, and it’s, it’s even more exciting now, but there’s a lot more competition going on.
10:52 You know, Google’s pacing ahead very fast with their, their product, and it does a lot of stuff, but it’s very complex, and then there’s a lot of other guys in more sort of niche verticals doing a lot of interesting stuff too. From my perspective, it’s always been critical for us to build something that, like, anyone can use, that’s so damn easy that people will even want to use it. So even if it’s a bit addictive, I apologize for that, but, but it’s, it’s, it’s quite readable and usable looking at it today, and it plotted the previous day traffic over the current day traffic, and you could see, like, how much less or worse, like, it’s obvious things in retrospect.
11:31 That’s what a great UX is, right? It’s such a simple design. Years on, yeah, we, we’re trying to do stuff that, like, just makes sense. But the a real challenge is, you know, you got things like Google Analytics. It does everything.
11:45 You know, there’s very few things it doesn’t do, but because it does everything, it’s really hard for someone to pick it up and just get value out of it from day one. So what we’re always trying to do is think, how how can we make this easier? How can we get someone to getting insights and taking action faster? And, you know, I think the product does that a lot today, and I think over the next year, God, there’s so many awesome things we’ve got in the works, and it’s one of the most annoying things when someone asks me, like, how’s the product doing right now?
12:13 You’re always looking forward to the next release, the next release. But, yeah, I, I think it’s, it’s really exciting. I think the competition is, is hotter than ever, but I think it’s just such a great space, and so much innovation still ahead of us. I think just the overall idea of, you know, people don’t really want analytics. They want to just know how to make their site better.
12:34 They want to know how to take action and actually make things, yeah, improve things. And, the closer we can get to telling people and informing people around insights, rather than forcing people to look at graphs and charts, I think the better job we’ll be doing. So, yeah, tons, tons of innovation. Would that happen like automatically? So almost like AI telling you, like, hey, you got to lower your price for this product?
12:58 I think, yeah, there’s, there’s tons of stuff that could be done. It’s almost like the simpler you make it for the user, the more work you have to do as a, as a service. But, you know, I think there’s lots of things, like, you know, very simple things, like rather than showing someone, you know, all your users are on IE, and some of your users are on Chrome, you can be doing things like, you know, don’t, don’t use, HTML5 video on your site, because most of your users won’t be able to, to, to view it.
13:27 So like taking stuff that you already know but turning it into, like, information and actions is definitely sort of where we want to be taking things. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s a pretty powerful tool when you do that. You know, we had someone on here, I think it was Snap Fashion, you know, where they’re, you know, taking a photograph, and they’re trying to analyze what it is. Is it a clothing?
13:45 Is it something like that? And maybe was someone else where their direct competitor was, like, Google, and you’re taking a network of, like, six, eight, ten people, and you’re competing against such a huge company, and I was just wondering if you ever have to get your head around that, or if you ever have to think yourself, no, we can do it better because we’re quicker and we’re faster, and we’re the Instagram against the whatever com out, you know, we’re all that. Yeah, I, I love that kind of, well, that’s one of the things that I love on well, yeah, I, I think that’s one of the things I loved about when we were getting started.
14:16 It’s that, you know, we could be a bunch of kids still at school and have a web presence that competed with the big guys, and I think that’s one of the great things just about the web today. You know, no matter what size you are, you can still build things from your own bedroom that compete with massive companies, as as long as there’s net neutrality. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t get me started. But, yeah, I think, well, well, for us, I think there’s, there’s, you know, it’s easy to look at Google and, there, the, the huge guys in the room, but, there’s tons of things that a company like us can offer that Google can’t.
14:50 You know, you don’t get to talk to anyone when you’re using Google Analytics, for instance. A lot of these big companies, you know, you don’t get support. You can’t go and reach out to whoever’s working on it. You, they don’t necessarily listen to feedback on which features are needed. They don’t necessarily want to go down certain roots because they want to build this product that works for the masses.
15:09 And so I think there’s huge opportunities for us to, you know, use those things to our advantage. And another thing with, like, the whole NSA scandal and all of this is that, you know, people have a bit more trust with us. You know, they’re paying to use our platform. We’re not going and, like, sending all that data off to some government agency. We’re not selling it on to advertisers, and so I think there’s a lot more sort of honesty in our business model that our customers seem to appreciate, and, you know, when you weigh all these things up and add them all together, it becomes a pretty weighty argument for why you could use something like GoSquared over bigger tools like GA, and, yeah, I think, tons of room for innovation as well.
15:49 There’s so many exciting features that us and a load of other startups are working on that. Like Google, you know, they can’t, they can’t do everything. I saw on your timeline that you guys moved over to Amazon cloud services, like a few years in, and, I don’t know why that hit me, but I just wanted to ask you, were you guys one of the early adopters to that and what’s that been like? I would say, yeah, so Jeff, my co-founder, is pretty much the one who did all the fun work on the migration, but, like, back then I think it may have been just after, like, we got our first sort of coverage on TechCrunch, and it just blitzed us.
16:25 We were completely, we were on like this one server on a shared hosting platform, and we were just completely destroyed by it, and so we were like f***, we need, we need to sort this out, you know, we, we can’t have this every time we get any coverage. And so, you know, at the time there was literally Amazon and a few other small players, and I think maybe Rackspace had something going on, but Amazon just looked like they were ready to transform the space, and I think, like, the concept of paying by the hour for servers, and that you could boot up like 100 servers for an hour, and it cost you the same as booting one server for a whole month. Like that, that sort of flexibility was just amazing, and, for us, you know, we have this weird kind of, like, scaling situation where if you think about Facebook, if they get a lot of users, they can kind of predict the amount of bandwidth that each user will use, whereas for us, we have this, like, free trial, unlimited free trial.
17:22 So you know, Joe Blogs of his, individual site signs up, that’s fine, but then you could get, like, I don’t know, the Wall Street Journal signing up the next day, and, just that unpredictability meant we needed to scale really quickly, and so yeah, we like Amazon just came along and exactly the right time. We jumped on there, and it’s not like you just suddenly have a scalable platform when you jump on something like Amazon. You have to re-architect things, and over time, and I I can’t take any credit for this.
17:49 Like, Jeff and JT and the guys have spent most of their, like, the amount of time they’ve spent on getting things to work together, so that you have, like, servers dedicated to individual tasks and being able to scale things like that. It’s, it’s been a huge job, and, like, at the end of the day users never see it, because the service just works, but you have to spend so much time and manpower, like getting a scalable architecture working. And it’s, yeah, one of the fun, fun challenges of trying to grow, but they’re great, great problems to have, but Yeah, Amazon’s made so much stuff possible for us that we just couldn’t do otherwise.
18:23 I think, yeah, are they being monitored by the NSA? Yeah, maybe. They seem to know their stuff on security, but they run, they, R, they run the CIA websit… Well, they’ve got, they’ve got a thing called GovCloud, which is like their own data center for a lot of government stuff in the US, which is supposedly all separate from the, like, consumer stuff, but Amazon’s got some massive, massive businesses using AWS now. It’s, it’s crazy.
18:50 It’s got some government stuff. He was saying, remember? Oh yeah, yeah, Huddle does all the UK kind of cloud stuff, don’t they? Yeah. You know, mention customer service.
18:59 I mean, if one of these guys goes to your website, and it’s not working, you’re not going to get a second call back, right? I mean, if they try the free trial, what if you learned about customer service, over the last few years, and then compared to the Yanks, CU the Yanks really step their customer service game way up? Don’t, oh God, yeah. So, I mean, I’ve always tried to offer the best damn customer service we can. It’s a, it’s a no-brainer.
19:21 Like, it’s one of those huge advantages we have over like the big guys, but I think one of the things is just how challenging it gets when you are growing. You know, you can deal with a couple of requests a day, but then when you, when you’re scaling up to you know you’ve got a bigger team, but you’ve also got a lot more users on board, and then you have one blip, or one outage, and the amount of people that affects, it’s, it’s really, really tough to work out how to manage that. You know, originally we just had an inbox, and we just, oh, okay, I’ll deal with that, deal with that, but then you need a support system, and then you need to start working out the frequently asked questions and getting them all nailed down.
19:57 It’s, ah, it’s never perfect, but I, I think the, the one thing we’ve really learned is just response time is everything, and, you know, if, even if you can’t get back with a great response, getting back within 10 minutes makes so much difference compared to getting back to someone 12 hours later. And, I think, yeah, response time is the number one thing, I think. And also, I think one of the things that’s changed is how much of our support now happens on Twitter rather than over email, and, we, you know, we got this great tool that basically every tweet is like a support ticket, and it, we just get back to stuff instantly, so if anyone ever has issues with GoSquared, Twitter’s always the best way.
20:36 Say, we say, tool. It’s, it’s called Sparkcentral, and it’s admittedly quite an enterprise-level tool, but the guy who made it, Davey, he, like, we’re hanging out one time, and Yeah, he just, I think he, he lets us use it, and a couple of other cool companies, but, like I know Buffer use it as well, and they’ve got, they’ve got some massive companies using it now, guys like Delta Airlines, and, and so, like, we feel so lucky to have known about this early on, but it’s, it’s been a great way for us to just get, yeah, you know, get back to people super, super quick, and, I was, I can’t remember maybe Bloomberg or something did a thing on the response time, depending on which sort of medium you use to, to contact the customer or, or, or the company, and, and Twitter was one of the fastest, because they don’t want, you know, obviously everyone sees it.
21:26 So, yeah, exactly. If someone’s like, waiting on, on Twitter for a day, they’re going to start tweeting like, oh, GoSquared didn’t get back to ex, you know? And that’s the customer, just has so much power now. It completely changes that. Yeah, balance doesn’t it?
21:39 Yeah, yeah. And a nice change too. Yeah. Well, depends what side you’re. Well, yeah, that that’s true, because you know, I, I love all my coffee customers, but it’s just like sometimes people are just so goddamn whiny.
21:52 It’s because the one bad customer can cost you hours and hours and hours and hours and lots of money, so, exactly. Business model. I’m sure Colin’s going to hit you with a few questions. You always seem to dig in there we go. You guys are subscription, I guess?
22:06 Yeah, yeah, so monthly and annual subscriptions we offer. And is there, you know, do you see any amalgamation in the sector coming up? Do you think, like, a few small players would maybe join together and increase CU? I guess, you know, Ivan What co-hosted a few weeks ago, and Ometria is, I think, maybe you can maybe explain the difference of some of the platforms that are out there, how you guys differ, for the layman like myself, because he has an e-commerce, I think that’s separate in the real-time analytics.
22:36 I don’t know. Yeah, yeah, no. I met doing some cool stuff. Yeah, really have a lot of respect for those guys. I would say like, for us, I, I don’t look at many startups as competition.
22:48 I just think that, like, the, when you look at how much money is in the industry and where it’s going, there’s, you know, there’s GA, which is free, but there’s also GA Premium, which is like 100k annual contracts, there’s, Omniture, which is ridiculous contract size, there’s WebTrends, these huge guys, and, the thing that really frustrates me is that a lot of these bigger tools are, you know, they’re massive contracts. They have huge sales teams, and at the end of the day, the product is used by like two or three guys in a huge company, and everyone ends up, like, emailing the, the analytics guy, gets a report, and waits like a day for it. And I, I just think the big opportunity for all sorts of startups, you know, Ometria, like Mixpanel Chartbeat, Ketric, GoSquared, like it’s putting this data and putting these insights into, like, the hands of the people that really need it.
23:42 And I think that’s the real opportunity for us. And I think, you know, when I look at our customer base, a lot of our customers have multiple different tools on, and, you know, I think it’s very hard to find one tool that does everything right for every, every customer, and so I think that’s why there’s so many different, you know, people doing stuff in this space. You know, people need customer-focused analytics, people need e-commerce analytics, people need publishing-focused analytics, and, there’s so much room to, like, have great solutions that focus in on those needs while also, you know, which are far better at those needs than, say, something like Google Analytics, which just does an okay job for everyone.
24:24 And how, how much is it a month? Is it very tier depending? Yeah, we, oh man, pricing is a whole, a wonderful art and science when trying to decide pricing, but we, we do, basically per, you use your own system to determine how to, real-time, in real time. Yeah, yeah. Well, basically, yeah, it’s very simple for us.
24:44 It’s just like the more pages you have, the more you pay, but you can get started for like 10, 15 quid a month, and goes right up to like bigger guys paying us thousands a month depending on… I got to try again. The coffee just got kicking off. We use Crazy Egg, you know? Yeah, it was pretty cool, but I, again, it’s something that I just don’t have the time, and I don’t have a specific guy on my team to look at that, so it ends up being me, and, and to look at a dashboard that’s just much easier, and gives me the things I need to see exactly.
25:15 Yeah, so many people say they’re like, using Google Analytics, but they’ve got it installed, but they like Google Analytics, they don’t actually use it. Yeah, exactly. I know. I log in and I’m just like, oh f*** yeah, no, it’s like they change it every week, and it’s like, this is moved, that’s moved, they rename that, and yeah, was good. They, yeah, and they’re, they, ad buys and ADW platforms really bad.
25:38 I got so angry at Google AdWords because, so we make, we make Nespresso-compatible pods, sort to keep going to cof, and so I can’t coffe you an entrepreneur cafe.com. But so, so an espresso is a trademark term, so you can’t use it in an ad. Oh, yeah, but all of our competitors are using it. So I was like, screen grabbing, like, I, you know, Nespresso pods, and then you see, like, all these competitors that are doing what we’re doing, and I’m just like, what the f*** and then it’s like, to your thing, it’s like how do you contact them, and and then you end up sitting on the phone for like, somebody told me that one time, they’re like, call, call YouTube customer service.
26:18 I was like, yeah, email YouTube customer service, yeah. It doesn’t exist. It was like, tweet at Google. It’s like doesn’t work either, right? It’s just like the giant.
26:26 How do you get hold? Exactly. Tweet the machine. It’ll get mad at you. And, how is business?
26:33 How are your revenues? It’s, it’s good. It’s good. So yeah, we’ve been growing and growing over the last few months, and one of the things we did was introduce a new pricing tier, pricing system, which starts at a slightly higher price point. We got rid of our free plan like late last year, and that was a really, like, I was really nervous about that move and what that would do to our numbers, but it turned out that, like, conversion from our, our trial to premium actually, like, doubled when we dropped our free plan, which was pretty exciting.
27:05 So, but yeah, like, the aim for us right now could have gone the other way, right? Yeah, we were I don’t know. We were just worried, like, oh, would it piss off the community and stuff? And so far, touch touch wood has been okay. But yeah, the aim for us right now is just to continue growing on the revenues coming in.
27:22 You know, we’re doing great. The revenues are growing every month, and, you know, we’re to the point where it’s break even, and we’re just continuing to grow those, grow the revenues as much as we can, and we’re not really looking for more funding at the moment. We’re just trying to, you know, continue to grow our customer base, and I just think there’s, there’s so many customers, especially at a higher end, that we could be winning right now, and it’s going to be exciting.
27:48 Yeah, yeah. We’ve got some pretty tough targets to meet. We, people are willing to pay for analytics. So, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
27:54 I think, you know, it’s a, it’s a combination of better tools, more, more niche tools, and also the team and the support and the sort of training you get with that, that makes it a valuable proposition for people. I think. What kind of financing have you had? I didn’t even know. Oh yeah, so we’ve raised so, I, it must be like two and a half, three years ago we raised from, Passion Capital, before, like, Passion was properly set up, so the Angels at Passion, Eileen Burbage, Stepan Ganser, and Robert Degaro, and they all put like individually, and also Thomas Jones, who is now at an angel, startup, VC called Charlotte Street Capital.
28:37 So, they put in, yeah, they put in a small round early on. The funny story about that was, like, Jeff and I took a gap year after school, like after we’d done our A levels, to, to, to, you know, see if we can make GoSquared work, and we’re like, ah, man, we’re going to be in our office in London, we’re going to be, you know, living the high life, running a startup, and, you know, by the end of the gap, you were like, okay, it’s, it’s been fun, but, like, off to uni now. Let’s, let’s, let’s get on with our lives.
29:08 Let’s keep GoSquared going on the side. And a week before we were, like, just packing for uni and I get this random email from Eileen at Passion, and she’s like, oh, we’ve seen you guys, we’ve been following you for a few months. Want to come in and chat? And we, we go and chat, and she’s like, yeah, here’s the deal. We’ll put some money in.
29:29 We’ll do a round. You guys can’t, you guys will be full-time on this. How does that sound? And Jeff and I, like JT was already at uni at this point, but yeah, Jeff and I were like, oh my god. And so we went to uni for like four or five weeks, thinking, what, what do we do, what do we do?
29:49 And we spoke to, like, everyone we knew, and in the end we’re like, screw it, let’s run GoSquared full-time. And so yeah, I, Jeff dropped out of Nottingham. I dropped out of Exeter Uni after, like, five, five intense, hardworking weeks, and, went on to, yeah, run, run GoSquared full time, out of White Bayard. And so since then we’ve raised another round from, so, Passion followed on, with Atlas Ventures over in Boston, okay, led by Fred Destin. And yeah, so that, and that was a a large round.
30:24 We’re talking millions, you. It was closer to a million. And, I mean, we haven’t raised like Dropbox sums of money here, but, you know, we’ve taken quite a, you know, we’ve taken an approach where we haven’t gone mental. We haven’t gone crazy, and we’ve just tried to grow, you know, as organically as we can, and and the money’s really helped do that, and hire at the right times, and get us to where we are now, which we’re really thrilled with. So, but you could use another chunk of change in the next 12 to 18 months.
30:52 You know, you could always, you could always do with more money, but I think, for us, I, I just really like how priority now that is. You know, let’s build a solid business with solid revenues, and that will give us the sort of, the, the ability for us to make our own decisions going forward. There, there’s nothing worse than, you know, there’s nothing worse than, like, knowing you’ve got, like, three months left, and you, you got to raise money, and you got to take whatever comes your way.
31:16 You know, and I think, you know, that’s, we’re just putting ourselves in the best position. Okay, so how, when you, when, e first called you up? Yeah, how old were you? I think 18, 19. I think, yeah, so you know, I think it’s a fear for a lot of kids out there, especially me, if someone called me up at 18, 19, I would have a clue, right?
31:38 What a term sheet looks like. Am I getting screwed over? Like, so we would talk through, I think that’d be helpful for a lot of our guests, potentially, about, you, who you reach out to, what resources. For sure. So I had a, a really good friend at the time who was, he was running a, a company a bit like s kick, actually.
31:54 And, and, and yeah, he, he was the one who originally made the connection with Eileen and me. Called James Proud, and he’s now over in in the Valley, but he was like the same age as me, and I always sort of saw him as being like a step ahead, and like he’s almost like the, the next year at school, you know. He’s already done all that. And, you know, he kind of gave me a lot of feedback on E and and and Passion, and, you know, really, you know, made it clear like they’re, they’re not going to screw you around.
32:25 They know what they’re talking about. They’ve got the experience. and then I think when we had the meeting with Ven and and Stefan, it just, you know, really highlighted to me that they knew what they were talking about. You know, my impression of investors at the time was like, all they care about is profit margin, you know, how much revenue bringing in, and I think most angel investors now are pretty sensible to know that those aren’t the key performance indicators that such an early stage, you know, you got to be looking at the product, the team behind it, and what they, they plan to do, what their vision is.
32:58 And I think that was what just really stood out for me, that they were willing to put the money in based on us as a team. And yeah, I must admit, like, we were clueless about, like, what a, what even raising money would even involve. So, and the scene back then was so different as well, you know? Like, White Bayard had maybe two or three companies in it, and was one of maybe two startup hubs or co-working spaces in London. And you know, there weren’t that many startups around.
33:29 But one of the cool things was being at White Bayard, there were a couple of other people doing that, and we, we spoke to a lot of people there. My dad’s always run his own businesses. Not in Tech, but in advertising, and, so he’s always kind of, I guess, like, given his path through life, I never kind of assumed I’d be working for someone else. I kind of thought I would maybe end up running something my own one day. And, I don’t know, I just think that, it sort of, the timing kind of worked out fairly well, and just based on, like, how legit E and Stefan and Robert seemed, we just sort of thought, let’s go for it.
34:09 Like, let’s just go for this, and you know, what’s the worst that can happen? And a great thing as well was, Jeff and I, we spoke to our universities, and they were like, we wouldn’t normally let this happen, but you can come back next year if this doesn’t work. And so suddenly I was like, oh, okay, let’s do this. Retrospect, with the terms, the deal good, and when you, I just, I don’t think we could ask for better. Angels in London.
34:33 So he’s actually a veteran in this space. Actually, listen to what he’s saying. Ser, he’s been around. He’s been around. The beginning of the round, get the ring cools…
34:44 The exactly, years long, you got some gray hair no gray hair yet. You know, the, the big thing I got to ask you, this is Silicon Real, so let’s talk about acquisitions. You guys seem like a ripe target for someone to scoop up, and so I’m wondering, is that something that you actually solicit? And if it’s not, then are you not doing your job as the CEO? You like that question?
35:04 Yeah. Oh man. That’s something that comes up every now and again. You know, people could grab you for a pivot. People could be like, look, this is real-time analytic information.
35:11 We might not use it for this, we use it for this. Yeah, I, I don’t know. I think, personally, I don’t want to be acquired at this point in time. I mean, not me as a person, GoSquared. And I, I just think, like, there’s a few reasons behind that, but like one of them is, you know, the, I think there’s so much opportunity to still innovate in this space, and I think that we are a unique, we’re doing a lot of things uniquely at GoSquared, and we, we are coming up with a lot of our own ideas in house, and I, I know, like, our road map for the next six to 12 months, and I want us to be doing that stuff ourselves.
35:49 And I also think, you know, a lot of people Okay, so money aside. I think, you know, when you’re, when you’re at school, you’re thinking, like, what do I want to do in life, and if I can do something that I enjoy, that’s going to be great. And if I can make money from it, that that’s even better. And I think, you know, I think on the team we’ve got this shared understanding that we all love what we’re doing. We’re setting our own destiny with what we’re, what we’re building, and and I, I just can’t imagine us wanting to do anything else, like, even if we were still GoSquared, but working in another company, it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t be the same, you know, reporting to senior management or, you know, shareholders and things like that.
36:29 I, I love what we’re doing right now, and I, I think there’s just so much opportunity to do that under our own roof right now. That’s, that’s how good companies succeed. Yeah, and, and feeling like that. Well, yeah, hopefully Hopey, Ian, if, if you’re looking for the exit around the corner? I mean, it’s very hard to, I, you know, and and that would be distracting as well, if we were like, T, knocking on doors, to, you know, see if someone, I’m not saying we haven’t had offers.
36:53 You know, we’ve had, you know, very, a lot of companies come along, and, you know, knows around, see what they see, see what they want, but we’ve just not really wanted to go down that route, and and also, like, I don’t know, at the moment, I just really want to do as much as we can in the UK. I think a lot of people view success as selling out to Google, Apple, Facebook, or something, and it, I it feels like a startup dies every time they sell to Google, to Facebook, to an American company. Is what up.
37:22 It’s just like, you see how many great companies Facebook buys, and then you just hear nothing from them ever again. It’s like going to the pool. Yeah, yeah. I don’t know. Yeah, we, we’ll see.
37:34 Okay. A good answer, tactfully answered as well, a veteran answer. Okay, talk about 23 with press. It’s been press training. I’m telling you, you can grab this guy.
37:44 You know, let’s hit on net neutrality before we wrap up. Will the net stay neutral? Or not? That’s crucial to your business, isn’t it? Yeah, it is.
37:53 I, I mean, I don’t know if I, yeah, I, I sincerely hope so, is all I can say. I don’t know. We’ll have to see. It’s going to be interesting. It’s also going to be interesting seeing what the larger companies are really going to, you know, what kind of fight they’re going to put up.
38:10 You know, Google’s always tried to play the good guys in this space and fighting for everyone to have access to the internet, and I know, will they be happy to just sit back and let this one slide and knowing they’ll be able to pay their way, and, and, and I, I don’t know. We’ll have to, it’s hard to say. What, you know, NSA revelations, that comes out. You get a lot of these protests, and you don’t know if it’s just lip service, and they were in Obama’s office, and the Zuckerberg letter to the White House, and I don’t know who’s who’s the politician here?
38:38 I can’t tell. And it’s not in the interest of a lot of big companies, right? So I mean, the Justice Department is making a ruling on, I don’t know, that, that, that flabbergasted me, that the American justices would consider that there wouldn’t be a neutrality, but you know, I guess this is going to get worked out. Yeah. I didn’t, like, to get too Sy.
38:57 Come on, come on, Anonymous, shut this down. Don’t go, them, those guys, those guys don’t f***ing around. I’m asking for their help. It’s like I’m shining the Batman light, the big a light, into the sky. Yeah, we would like to speak with someone from Anonymous, so if you’re, if you’re listening, which I know you are, we’d like to have you on, on either show.
39:21 So, you know, we ask a few questions at the end. to people on the show. I’m going to adjust the ages a little bit, but I’m going to hit with him. just basics. If you could make a phone call to the 15-year-old, James Gill, and give that young man a bit of advice, let’s say pre-GoSquared, so maybe just a little bit earlier than that.
39:38 What, what advice would you give them? What would you tell them to do? Oh, that is a good question. I would say, don’t be afraid to sort of, like, go down your own route. I know that, like, when we were young, everything at school was like, you’re going to go to uni, you’re going to go and then work in a job, you’re then going to go and maybe one day, sometime, when, like, 30, then you’re going to go and start something.
39:59 I just think, like, it’s never been a better time to start your own thing, and I think people even still at school can be, can be taking their own, their own route. And, yeah, don’t be afraid to do your own thing. Yeah, you skipped uni. Yeah, other than five weeks. And do you think, have you ever noticed?
40:18 Oh, my, oh my gosh, I didn’t go to university. Have you ever been like, oh, I didn’t study that, or has it affected you at all? I, I mean, I think I’ve got a, a better liver than a lot of my But yeah, I, I know, I think I made quite a few friends while I was at uni, even in those five weeks, but, you know, there were a lot of fun times, but we that we may have missed out on, but we’ve had a lot of fun times doing what we’ve done, and we tried to make it a fun fun place.
40:43 And one of the great things, being in where, where we are in London, and White Bayard, is like, there’s a great community there, and the amount of new people you get to meet every day is, you know, and, and the kind of relevant connections as well has been great, so I don’t, I don’t have many regrets, to be honest, but You know, you can always go back to uni someday later. Yeah, they don’t go anywhere. Yeah, yeah, the uni stay there, stay there. Yeah, but it’s interesting that, you know, you’re saying even at your age, which is younger than most people that have come through here, that you still didn’t necessarily know that this was a career option for you?
41:14 Yeah, I mean, I just knew that, like, I love design, and, and the web was becoming this huge, like, platform to build great ideas off of, but while I was at school, it was still, like, a massive question of, you know, how can we turn this into something that is, you know, going to put bread on the table. And I think that’s where it’s so critical in the ecosystem to have people that know what they’re talking about with money, and, like things like Passion Capital, and there’s, there’s such a great ecosystem now in London. You know, we’re not as crazy as Silicon Valley, but I think it’s so, so evolved now compared to where it was even three, 3, 4 years ago.
41:54 And I think that is really helping a lot of people do what they want to do in their lives. And that’s great. Good thoughts there. What’s the best advice you’ve ever received, business or personal? Oh, god.
42:08 I always get that reaction. I don’t know. Great. I don’t know, is a, there was a great quote that I have on my wall, that’s something like, some people, dream of great accomplishments while others stay away and do them. And that is a good one, but also just don’t give up.
42:25 Like, keep at it, keep at it and, and it, it’ll work out. I think, yeah. Okay, last bit. This is an interesting one. Advice to the people listening around the world that kind of were your age, you know, 20, 18, about what they should do if they want to, you know, get into tech, get into a startup, become a startup.
42:44 What do you tell them? I would say, for us, we were building stuff, but we never had much of a community or many people knowing about it at first, and one of the critical things we did was start a blog and talk about, and start giving stuff away, and I think the more you can, like, give out there, that’s quality, that’s sharing valuable stuff. I think that all comes around. It’s like karma, and, and I think, I think that is a, a massive thing, even if you haven’t got a product yet, build something that can get you a community, even without that product, and and that’s the most important thing.
43:18 If you can get people knowing about you, talking about you, talking with you, then you can build great products, that, and, and software and companies off the back of that. So get involved somehow. Yeah, get involved, and have, like, a, a story that people can, can kind of come to you and, and build a community around. Yeah, interesting. Do you see people jumping into the community now, as a veteran?
43:39 That are getting in just because it’s hot, just because, you know, they think it’s the rockstar, they think it’s the way to do the quick flip yeah, there’s, there’s definitely a lot of people that, you know, I, I think when you’re genuinely in the community, you can spot those people a mile off. There, but you know, I think there’s, you know, a lot of people can build products right now, but building a loyal following and a, a loyal community and getting customers is the real challenge, and I think that takes a story, and that takes hard work over time, and you know, I think unless you are building that from from day one, then it’s, it’s going to be tough. But yeah, I think that’s, that’s really critical.
44:18 So anyone trying to build a product, think about everything around that before you, before you think it can be a company. Would you move to San Francisco? Not right now. No. Have you?
44:29 I started watching Silicon Valley, that show. Like, I had heard bad things about it, and I started watching it. Oh, Jesus, it’s, I quite enjoy it. It’s pretty funny, but also it’s also like scary to think that maybe even part of that could be true. It’s just like, oh my God, Entourage, ask, he’s very Entourage.
44:47 It’s like everything is magnified, like the personalities and the stor, like times 10, and I don’t even know if I could breathe there. I don’t know. Have you watched it? Do I haven’t? I’ve heard a lot of, when you think about the Valley, have you been out there?
44:59 Or, yeah, I have. I, I mean, it’s a great space. you know, it’s, it’s, it’s amazing. You know, you get a Starbucks, and everyone is in tech, everyone’s got a Facebook, Apple t-shirt, whatever. I think, you know, I’ve always, being a Londoner, though, I was born in London, and and now I live in London, and I just think there, it’s such a great sort of hive of activity, where not everyone is in tech.
45:24 You know, you’ve got creatives, you’ve got ad people, you’ve got finance, you’ve got everything, and I, I think that’s the magic, where you get all these different industries combining, and I, I think that, like, I, in some ways, I’d hate to be somewhere that is only tech. It’s, you get into this echo chamber. I mean, I, I don’t mind the valuations in the Valley or the capital, some of your finances out of America. You know, so I was that nent last night, they were talking about valuations, and it’s like, just, e got a pretty damn good valuation.
45:55 Do you know what I mean? So, you know, it’d be tough to get a, get a higher valuation over in the States, so maybe a little bit higher, but it’s getting pretty, pretty… Maybe the angel money gets lost around over there. Well, that’s it, maybe the earlier stage, early stage, maybe. But yeah, you make a good point.
46:10 And then, if you watch that show, it’s probably the worst thing to do. I’m from California, and I watch that show, and I’m like, oh, Jesus, I don’t think I, because like you said, it’s like an echo chamber from hell, but you know, it’s anyway, it’s a comedy series, it’s on HBO. It’s called Silicon Valley, if you don’t know it. There’s like seven episodes, but, thumbs up or down? I I like it.
46:30 I know, surprisingly, but the writing is quite creative, and a lot of the comedy is really quite subtle, and actually they don’t dumb down what they’re doing, so there actually is some tech in there, and I think some of the people are supposed to be personalities in the, you know, I think there’s a Peter Thiel in there. I hope that’s not Peter Thiel, because he’s pretty creepy. This guy, I haven’t met Peter. But yeah, anyways, I think they’re making comments but it’s kind of fun to watch.
46:57 So, anyways, did I miss anything, Colin? We get a good snapshot there. James, it’s, it’s really nice to meet you. You, you seem really capable at what you’re doing, like I said, I don’t know why I didn’t think you would be, but you really are a veteran than, you know, because you know, like you said, super mature for your age. When I was 23, a backhanded compliment.
47:16 James is like, if I hear that one more time, really, I don’t know. You speak, you know, like more intelligently than I do. 32, so it’s it’s like when I, I think back when I was three, and I was not very smart. Not that I am now even. But, it’s, because he saw the ecosystem like way before a lot of people did, you know, getting funding when this wasn’t such a big community.
47:37 And I think, I think it’s such an interesting thing for young kids to, because I had, I always had ideas, right, but I could never really implement them because I couldn’t, hey, I didn’t have capital, and I couldn’t code, and all this sort of stuff. So, you know, we’re in the age, if you can build, you can really get something going really quickly, and for, for almost nothing, right? So I think it’s, as an entrepreneur, as a kid, to just learn to put the tools in your own hands, and you can kind of control your own destiny.
48:06 I think it’s really cool. Yeah, the barriers are so low now, you know, maybe too low. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it is. it’s easier than ever to start something, but it’s still damn hard to keep something working and grow it over time, and I think that’s what clears the suckers out.
48:20 It is those hard times, the times where you miss that account, where it’s hard to make payroll, and that clears the suckers out, so then you can, you know, really go long lasting, and that’s what I think shows, and, like you said, the community can, they can sniff out a fake, and the VCs definitely can. So, you know, if you don’t get those successive rounds of funding, then people know what’s up. So, people can do a free trial easily by going to gosquared.com.
48:43 Yeah, yeah, and I meant that as a high compliment with the crack rock earlier. I’ll show you my analytics. Yeah, they’re a lot of fun. You can, I mean, I won’t go on, but you can see where people are coming from, if they came from this tweet, what they’re looking, it’s, it’s really good stuff. So, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m joining, and like you said, I mean, if you go to Google Analytics.
49:02 I mean, if you can’t find what you’re looking for in five or 10 seconds, and you don’t use it, then what’s the point? So I, I’m selling his company anyways. Thanks so much for being here. A pleasure. Twitter, good to get you.
49:14 Yeah, Twitter’s great. Yeah. I’m James J. Gill. Yeah, it says James Gill, just J in the middle.
49:19 Okay, awesome. On the Silicon Real tip, this is episode 49. We got our Big 5 coming it’s crazy. We hit episode 200 100 in the studio yesterday at London Real. That’s combined.
49:29 That’s, that’s a lot of shows. Eh, that’s a lot of shows, right? Yeah, it’s crazy. Lot of hours. A lot of hours.
49:34 We had a we had a meeting of the minds of the Silicon Real crew here last Friday. We tweeted out, we got a bunch of people working with us behind the scenes, booking guests, working on sponsors. It’s all good. I think we’re looking for one more person. If you want to throw your hat in, it’s, tweet us or hello at silicon.com.
49:50 Yeah, keep, yeah, reach out, man. If you’re interested, you’ve got nothing to do in the summer, and you’re interested in getting involved in tech. You know, we could always use the help. There’s so much that we can do to grow this community. And, we just need, need people to help us spread the word and get these videos out there, and some amazing conversations that kids that are 16, 17 can listen to, and, and, you know, get inspired and learn something.
50:11 Yeah, plus you can meet people like, you know, James, or, you know, or all, all the guests that we’ve had. Yeah, or, or, or the important. Yeah, it’s all good. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, come check our faces out, and our website, you know, just Google Silicon Real. You can see us on YouTube.
50:27 It’s about the people. James, thanks much for being here,
