Full transcript: James Layfield on London Real
0:00 In London, technology is the silicone roundabout. Introducing a new talk show dedicated to the people of the London technology startup scene. Silicon Real. Each week, interviewing entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, financial technologies, accelerators and incubators in an exciting three-person format. learn about the people behind the innovation. Locally filmed, locally sourced.
0:34 Silicon Reel. It’s about the people. This is Silicon Reel, the weekly talk show dedicated to the people of the London technology startup scene. I’m Brian Rose. I also host London Real. It’s a similar show except it’s not just tech we get like writers, activists, politicians, rock stars, hip-hop artists, celebrity astrophysicists. I’m trying to impress James here. Spoken word. Spoken word artists. I mean, it gets pretty crazy over there. So if you want to check that out, that’s londonreal.tv. And you can look at all those episodes. You can actually look by category. You can search by Bitcoin, by mixed martial arts, by success. Yeah, it’s nice, right? Yeah. Okay. We’ll be upgrading silicon real very soon. So, but today we’re here to talk tech. My co-host is none other than Colin Pyle. You were off last week, we had Mr. Ivan Mazura in the house, the CEO of Ametria, Russian born, London bred dude, and we talked about Bitcoin.
1:31 I actually kidnapped the guy that runs the Bitcoin ATM on Shortage High Street, like three hours before the show, because we had a cancellation, and came in and we talked about Bitcoin, he explained how the Bitcoin ATM works, it’s a little creepy, they actually take a picture of you when you go in to like transfer your pounds for Bitcoins, and we had a whole, we talked about Dogecoin, the dark wallet, everything. So yeah, I’m glad he stepped in for that because I don’t know too much about Bitcoin. He’s way smarter than I am.
1:58 Ivan had just written like a 10 page blog about Bitcoins and stuff. He actually has a Bitcoin mining machine in the corner of his bed. He’s one of the smartest guys I know. He’s pretty nice. I’m glad he was here for that one.
2:07 Yeah, the smart money’s on Ivan. So that’s all good. It’s actually been watched like 1500 times, that live episode. So check that out on our YouTube channel. How’s the coffee business?
2:16 Coffee is good. Couple new blends coming up and you know, doing some fundraising right now. doing another round and you know every entrepreneur you got to go through it and it’s really hard because it’s like two jobs because you can’t take your eye off the ball running the business but yet you can’t you can’t stop raising going out and looking for money so it’s it’s kind of it’s tiring that’s why you get paid the big bucks with the startups there you go because you’re juggling so all right awesome good to have you back yeah our guest today is mr. James Layfield the CEO of Central Working which provides the ideal environment for growing businesses. You guys have co working spaces in Bloomsbury, Shortage, campus just around the corner, and Whitechapel ish ish. Okay, we’re gonna get to all those details. But you guys are more than just a co working space.
3:01 You’re more like a club, you get companies in there talking to each other. You don’t take equity stakes. It’s not specifically tech, it could be fashion, but everything that they could be coffee. And we’ll get into that. Um, you guys are also a startup in yourself. And we’re one of the the UK’s top 100 startups in 2013.
3:19 James, it’s so fun to have you here. Welcome to Silicon Real. Thank you so much, amazing to be here. This guy’s been watching Silicon Real episodes all afternoon. I’ve been memorizing them.
3:28 I can verbatim quote. I love it, I love it. Nothing’s worse when people get here and they’re like, so what’s this like? But most people are pretty good about knowing what the show is about. But I was checking your Twitter feed out recently and you guys are blowing up with this recently launched, The Escalator, which is in Whitechapel.
3:44 You got the guys from Barclays there, You got the guys from Techstars there. We had Jon Bradford in here a few months ago. He was actually here with Max Kaiser from Russia Today and it was this kind of crazy show. Big fans of him. What is going on at your Whitechapel office?
3:56 What is the escalator? I mean, I know what an escalator is, but what is going on over there? It’s magical. Firstly, it’s magical. So basically, we were incredibly fortunate.
4:06 So do you ever go to Whitechapel? The answer is probably no. Yeah, not as often as you would think. Not as often as you need to. Gene, I wouldn’t say I go there.
4:13 Yeah, you need to go there. It’s blowing up over there though, Jesus. We are leading that charge. So basically, we went down there back in the day in December, and then we found the most beautiful piece of real estate in London, probably. And that sounds like a massive over claim, but I promise you, if you come and see it, you will also, you’ll have a little tear in your eye.
4:33 We found this amazing real estate. Some crazy guy in the 20s decided that he wanted to create the Harrods of East London. So then weirdly, he went to Selfridges and copied the exact structure of Selfridges. So it’s this amazing building with all these beautiful columns, gigantic floor-to-ceiling windows, wooden floor shroud. And he was so basically ambitious to create this project.
4:57 He rocked up down there, knocked on all the doors of the houses, and literally said, right, I’ll buy your house, I’ll buy your house, I’ll buy your house. And in a typical entrepreneurial story, someone wouldn’t sell their house. But rather than give up, he built around it. actually he built this department store with a house in it with this one little devil who wouldn’t sell anyway so he did that sadly the dream did not work out for him and he went bust I presume because it was being derelict like 20 or 30 years so we went in there in December and there was literally rats on the floor graffiti everywhere it’s literally off the grid it hasn’t got power to it it’s probably London’s only zombie proof building so when the apocalypse comes come to Whitechapel we’ve got off the grid power from generators. We’ve got a satellite dish bringing the internet. It’s pretty amazing. So it’s totally off the grid. Anyway, we just saw it and fell in love with it and decided that it’s not all about the Silicon Roundabout. It’s not all about Old Street. It’s about Britain. And it’s about finding the right places. So we think we found a beautiful home.
5:58 And so to answer your question, which is what on earth is the escalator? The escalator is a collaboration between Barclays Bank, Techstars, and ourselves to create, I suppose, the ideal place, a bit like our proposition really, that can take a business from a concept to execution. So we’ve actually not only got Techstars in there, which are pretty much as John Warner told you, the world’s leading accelerator, we’ve also got Microsoft Ventures in there.
6:26 So it’s probably the only place in London where you’ve got two of the leading, well, stop it can be, because there are only two, two of the leading accelerators in the same building. So that brings an incredible amount of momentum and energy with it. Coupled with that you’ve got this incredible facility. In the bottom we’ve got Fochshofton Ginger, which is one of our member businesses, Ubercool Cafe. So you come into this beautiful cafe, you go upstairs, you’ve got a 140 person event space called the Innovation Loft, where we only officially opened earlier on this week. We already had, I think, three or four hundred hours worth of content coming through there if you have an event and you want to put it on somewhere come and see us it’s free it’s completely free like campus London you guys let people come in for free yeah yeah basically the event space completely for free use that and then you’ve got a really huge central working but we’re not co-working I loathe co-working please actually explain I can elaborate on my loathing okay well it sounds horrible but the reason I loathe it is because what’s the difference for people that So in my opinion, the difference between the two things, I suppose, would be we see ourselves as a service-led business and our service proposition is about helping you to grow your business.
7:41 That’s what we do. So we train our team in this. They help people to do that. I’ll explain a little bit more about that later on because exciting things are happening on that front. And we then design, build, manufacture all of our own furniture.
7:56 We then create the spaces and we spend a lot of attention to detail and a lot of money. We spend a few million pounds creating the new place out that way. And then we create a really, hopefully, premium product to enable people to grow as fast as possible. That’s what we do. And I think, to be honest with you, the reason I’m not such a fan of the word co-working is co-working to me is about lowest cost desk space.
8:24 So it’s just, I want a cheap place to work. I’m willing to put up with sitting next to you to do that. And the benefit of sitting next to you is I might get something happening. And that seems like, again, in my view, most of the industry that exists, I think there’s 70 co-working spaces in London, I think it’s probably like five that make any money. So it’s not really a business if you’re not…
8:46 It’s a fun thing to do, it’s nice, but it’s not a business, and I suppose we’ve always looked at this as, how do you really help people to grow? You’ve got to be around to help them to grow, and you’ve got to be well-funded to help them to grow. So we basically have set ourselves up to try and focus on their growth by being really, really good at helping them with that growth, and that, we think, comes from a premium product. You said quickly that they’re not a business, some of these other quirky spaces.
9:10 And I agree, you see there, and you’re trying to look at the revenue model. I mean, you guys don’t take equity six in the companies say at Whitechapel. How do you make a business out of it? So there is basically there’s a really if you are able to deliver a Really high level of service and again if you look at say the twist you’ll see on our Twitter feed the things that we do for our members Significantly help them with their businesses. That’s that and that’s all we’re focused on It happens to be in a really beautiful space and it happens to be that you’re sat next dimension businesses But it’s because we’re actively involved in that process that that we make a difference And so there is a there’s a really lovely moment when you start out to when you grow to let’s say 10 or so people when that Support that love that care is invaluable And so you can rightly place a fair premium on that attention that love that care that support that effectively will give someone a facility in terms of contact connections and physical space that even a major corporate like a Barclays couldn’t necessarily afford to give to a team of that size.
10:13 Right. They actually chose you. That’s a big statement. Yeah. It’s very, very nice.
10:18 It’s very exciting. I mean, we haven’t actually weirdly PR’d that, but yeah, they have. They’ve basically, they went around the world and generally, they went all over the US and the UK and they assessed all the potential partners to work with on this project. And I’m really, really proud that we had the secret sauce that they thought was relevant to their work. So we’ve been really lucky to be involved with them.
10:41 And this is going down to sycophantic, so it’s not sycophantic, but bear with me on this. I think if you look at an institution like a Barclays, you instantly think, oh my God, what a nightmare. And I think in most cases you’re right, but I think what’s interesting is these guys have been able to act in an entrepreneurial fashion and move at a pace that I couldn’t believe a PLC could move. So we did the deal in December, we were open in February, I mean, that’s insane.
11:07 That was ridiculous, and that’s including creating the brands. We worked with their in-house team to create the brands, the amazing team they’ve got there, and then physically design the spaces, which we did, physically building out the spaces, which we did, and creating the whole concept. To do that in three months, from concept to execution, is just, I think, is mind-blowing. So I was really excited that they could do that. And so the plan is, we’re sort of top-secretly looking at doing one outside of London.
11:33 We’re just trying to find the right site for it now. We’ve got to hopefully, we’ve got a site coming up, potentially it’s in Manchester. And then we’ll do another one, another escalator in Manchester. We’re also looking into other countries for this concept because it’s such a lovely thought that if, again, you guys have started businesses, you know how bloody hard it can be. As you said, just the fundraising side without any support is an absolute pain.
11:56 And theoretically, someone like a bank can, if they’re thinking in the right way, really help with that. And so what we’re trying to do is work with them to enable them to have the agility of a miniature business. We’ve got 10 employees, we’re a miniature business. They’ve got 100,000 employees, they’re quite large. But give them some agility, give them some visibility, give them some incredible access.
12:20 And because it feels like a real partnership, it really feels like a partnership, we’re able to create some magic that I just think it surprises me. It surprises me every time I see them and talk to them because I’m getting access at the highest levels, I mean I sat down with the CEO of Barclays Bank, I mean why would he bother to do that if they’re not taking this seriously? So it heartened me actually that they’re sort of, they’re doing the right thing I think.
12:44 Did you have like a pitch when you went into them to say, Barclays must be thinking okay we got tech stars on board, I mean these are the guys that specialize at incubating, we got that handled, so let’s just get you know a loft somewhere blah blah blah blah blah blah and then all of a sudden your name comes up and they’re like okay I understand why we need John Bradford and his crew. I don’t understand why we need central working. Do you pitch him this kind of what you just told us as in we make things happen?
13:07 Well, what’s interesting is I think there was three or four projects running in parallel within the Barcode Organization. And one of the projects was looking at how do you support SME? Another one was looking at how do you incubate technology to help the bank grow? So John Bradford, you nailed that piece. But this other piece, if you’re a bank, any bank, you’re sat on an insane amount of real estate.
13:27 And again, this isn’t something they’re doing. It’s not something we’re doing with them But I think this is where the idea started which is every single bank in Britain is trying to get rid of their high street presence Right now or has got rid of a lot of the assets But if you’re sat on those assets and you’ve got insanely long leases Wouldn’t it be nice in especially in a recession? Wouldn’t it be lovely if you could? repurpose that Real estate to add value to your customer base and I think that’s where the starting point was So they took a journey into how do you repurpose the real estate to I think now West came to us to talk about it Hspc you’ve only just started to talk about it with us now. We’re saying sorry a little bit late Silicon Valley Bank has talked about it with us Pretty much most of the major banks have come to us to talk about it and the reason they’ve done that I think is because two things one is No one wants to do anything for nothing So, these institutions are certain assets that have to make money.
14:22 So if you give a, if you just gift the space to someone, and they haven’t got a business model that actually makes money, then that’s not going to last very long. They might give you their retail branches to do something similar. They won’t be doing, that’s what I’m saying, but I think that is the project that started the journey to answer your question of why you guys, because they were looking at a different question. looking at the question of how do you do that?
14:46 And then that, for whatever reason, has changed as a tactic. I have no idea. It’s not for me to comment. And it may not have changed, but I’m not aware that it has continued. When we look at your day-to-day, your day-to-day, hour-by-hour, what you do, do you kind of look at the central working space in general and you’re like, all right, we need to get these guys talking with these guys.
15:03 We gotta watch out. These guys are ramping up on 10 employees. They’re gonna need more space. I mean, are you very active that way? We, as an organization, yeah, we are.
15:11 I wish I’d put it with me. It’s so stupid. A massive wall at home with all of these other things. Screens with everyone’s faces. Tom Cruise, that dude needs help now, move it.
15:22 Is this minority reporting? Exactly, exactly, it’s basically like that. But a little bit more no attack. Now, we’ve created this thing, which is currently called the Awesome Box. And it goes back to my point, so my business partner, Steve Petty, he created the Virgin.
15:37 From Virgin, right? Virgin Atlantic. Exactly, he created the Virgin. Nice grab. Well exactly, he created the Virgin Atlantic Lounges.
15:43 Yeah, we’re telling you not be understated how they’re the best in the world It didn’t and the one in Heathrow was ten years ago Yeah, before anyone was thinking about before Google workplaces existed. I don’t get to airport lounges You need to change the rest of the It must be one of the first examples of corporates making something a public design and really thinking about how people interact It’s incredible. I mean incredibly visionary and it what it did which is really fascinating is, it basically made you look at Virgin Atlantic as if they were bigger than British Airways and they had like six planes as a mystery.
16:19 More importantly, it changed the way that people acted. So rather than get to the airport at the last second, and there’s a lot of this, get to the airport at the last second, rush through security, bags is laid all that crap, Virgin managed to get it so that their passengers were on board early. So their passengers sat in the lounge happily waiting. In fact, in some places you’re paying to be in there and therefore their planes were filling up quicker and therefore they could actually get off on time.
16:45 So there’s lots of interesting things that they did that became benefits that you wouldn’t necessarily assume. But the other thing is it’s fundamentally a sort of marketing proposition for them. So it’s really about how do you make customers happy? And that’s what’s amazing. So we got Steve who came in from that side of things.
16:59 And then we head home to a guy called Grant Powell. So Grant is from Five Star Hotels. So again, I don’t know, because I’ve not done this exercise, I think if you go to any co-working space and talk to their management team, they won’t be from the hospitality industry, ever. They may be from the tech industry, they may be from the, they might even be from the sort of office industry, but they’re not from the hospitality industry. And I think that in putting the team together, the secret source, although I’m giving it away now, and the secret source is definitely that we see ourselves as a hospitality business.
17:33 Our team are hospitality people. We won service business of the year last year, because we are a service business. And so when you look at this problem through that lens, you get a completely different answer to if you look through the problem of how do you give people who need cheap desk, cheap desks, or how do you find a room in which you can put some people who you can take equity in, or whatever else people are thinking to create the business models that they create.
17:57 We said, how do you create the best service to help someone grow their business? It’s a different question. So to the sort of minority port piece, We’ve got a training manual, it’s how do you deliver continuously good service? So we’ve created, it took us, we spent a lot of money, like £50,000 creating these things. It’s a lot of IP, a lot of time, a lot of love on creating the manual to take someone who is not even necessarily having been to university, you don’t have to have been to university.
18:26 Anyone who’s in the hospitality industry could and should come and work for us, because We create a really loving culture where we can transfer that love from you to the member. But we don’t have to employ people who are specialists in stuff. They have to be specialists in looking after people. And then this manual takes you on a journey from being unaware of how to help people solve, I need a new employee, I need an HTML program, I need to find some investors.
18:52 Because they’re quite specific things that most people wouldn’t know how to do. But the manual lets you and shows you how you can help those people without that knowledge. And most of it is about, there’s a guy called Kevin Ayres, who set up LinkedIn in Europe. So Kevin said central working is like LinkedIn, but in the real world. Because that’s exactly what we do, except LinkedIn, to be honest, was a bit shit.
19:13 I don’t know. Jesus. That’s a strong statement. I didn’t do anything there, does it? James isn’t worried about making any enemies.
19:18 Oh, LinkedIn. Doesn’t do anything, does it? We were going to go for them for sponsorship. No. But what does it do?
19:23 It’s becoming… It’s doing something, isn’t it? It’s not. It’s becoming more of an actual information service, isn’t it? I don’t know what it does.
19:28 Yeah. Media company now it really is tempting you if you’re like a black book almost free Because there’s too many people there’s two people and also you’ve got no there’s no tools to guide you right that I can work out Anyway, so sherry kotu would say differently. Yeah. All right, an advisor to the board that was here recently But I’m finding it more and more useful that the LinkedIn but you’re saying your place is for LinkedIn in the real world Imagine if LinkedIn would you point people?
19:54 Would you point people in the direction of HTML programs or absolutely? So every single day, there’s a lovely little, I’ll quote you, a lovely little tweet that we got the other day from, I took a photograph of it, it was so beautiful, brought a tear to the eye. So basically there’s a company called Caribou. So Caribou, I don’t even know them, they’ve been basically, and Microsoft Ventures have been looking after them for the last three months, they’ve been fast tracking them.
20:17 And those guys have created an amazing technology which is an iPad technology that allows you to read to your child remotely. So you’ve got a young kid, probably under 10, at home in London, you’re away on business in New York. They can see you, you can see them, and you can literally pay his turn, pip a pig with them and show them the words and point out the noises. It’s a lovely human tool. Anyway, so this is the quote they said, it says, needed an intro to a specific person in a huge corporation who pulled through central work, and of course, killing it as usual.
20:50 And that was their sort of spontaneous freedom. What it was is we put them in touch with the head of the army. So if there’s going to be a way to get that product out to an audience that would love that product, it would be the army. So we made that introduction for them. And that’s the sort of stuff that we do.
21:05 And the reason we’re able to do it, if you think about generally service businesses, like your bank, they may know your last name, but possibly not. They probably don’t have a clue what you do for a living. And they definitely, I mean, they don’t know about this. It’s unlikely it’s possible. They don’t understand what this is.
21:20 If you go to your accountancy firm, they probably know that you do this, but they don’t really know what it means or how it works. I couldn’t really help you with anything necessarily. If you actually look at a coffee shop actually, they’d probably know your name, and that’s most service businesses in Britain. Hotels, you’d go there every week and they’d get to know your name. Again, they possibly wouldn’t know what you did still.
21:37 They’d know maybe the name of the company that paid the bill, but what that did, they wouldn’t have a clue, or care about. And so you’ve got this really strange thing where most service businesses have a very low level of understanding of their customer base. Our service proposition is about knowing your name, brilliant, we’re already on par with your coffee shop, knowing what you do for a living and at that point we’re sort of stepping in front of nearly everyone and then knowing what your problem is today and at that point we’ve blown everyone else out of the water. There isn’t a service business that you can think of really that knows those three things about you and we know that about our members and then we help them with that third piece and with the second piece and with the first piece because it’s actually nice when you go to your coffee shop and they say hello how are you doing James I love that there’s a huge value on that and actually again most businesses don’t even understand how valuable knowing someone is and it’s not because we’ve got but we have got but it’s not because we’ve got systems where you walk in it’s like uh hello James how are you doing are you okay?
22:32 It’s because you really know. Do you fucking know the names? This is like the age of the nuanced business model like the I didn’t expect you to come in here and tell me this today but it’s like these businesses where it’s like okay we specialize in this and that’s why we’re so good at it and you look at all the things online and you know why instagram of this or this because they specialize in this yeah and they’ve got 15 people making this work and it’s amazing an Instagram. So how much more expensive is it for all that personal touch and service? Not a lot. So basically if you go down Bonhill Street, just over there, we were in campus, you’re right, so we’ve actually got Bloomsbury, we’ve got Bonhill Street next door to campus and we sort of helped Google set up campus.
23:10 Easy said that you built a space? We consulted with them before it opened and then we helped set it up for the first two years, and then our contract finished with them in March and we’ve now got Whitechapel but we have a space here and there is a brick separating us from what some people would consider a competitor to us and we have a 60% price premium over that competitor this is Google no this is actual it’s not Google someone next to you okay got you all right but what’s interesting 60% 60% price premium versus the person was a brick away so that to me says that we’re doing something right because we shouldn’t be able to do that if we’re not doing something right. We also have really, really great retention. Because the thing is that the thing is if you walk into a room with some desks, which is all we really sort of have, all of any of us have, that doesn’t do anything.
24:02 You can have nice desks, you have a nice room, but it’s still room with some desks. But when you’ve been there for a bit, and like Caribou, you see that the value of that one contact will change their business. That’s worth more than, I mean, what you We’re talking about 300 quid a month, I mean, it’s bugger off, isn’t it? It’s a joke, because you don’t have to buy an office anyway. It’s not as if we’re selling something that you’re not gonna have to pay for it anyway.
24:26 Right, and I see where the premium comes from, and now you’re a startup. How do you scale that? I mean, we’ve all been looking at London property. I can’t believe you found this space in Whitechapel, because you go down to Whitechapel, and I mean, there’s like 40-story high-rises in Whitechapel now, going for a million pounds in two-bedroom, it’s insane. So, you know how it’s hard to find space in London in general, right?
24:45 And, you know, I don’t even know If you have the bandwidth now for 10 properties, maybe you do. We are. You do? Okay. So, how do you scale?
24:52 Is that the prime idea? Well, there’s two things. There’s two things about that, I suppose. The first is our model has a number of benefits compared to the traditional models in terms of the way that we engage with our customer base, in terms of how they use the space, in terms of how we design the spaces, that means that we can get a great yield per square foot. And again, that’s what’s nice about the model.
25:14 It is a business. So we can actually go to a property that’s got a £40 square foot, £50 square foot rent, which again, I don’t think most of our competitors could, because they just couldn’t get the return on it. And take that space, do what we do to it to spend another million pounds or so on it, and get a great return. Because the product stacks up at the end, we’ve got a lovely model that looks at helping someone when they’re first starting out, I mean for 100 quid a month, we will give you the exact same love and attention as someone who’s permanently with us.
25:44 We don’t say, well, you already paid 100 pound a month, you get six introductions, you’re paying more, you get seven. We don’t do that bullshit. So if you need us, we will help you. And we don’t care. If you ask me for something every single day and you pay 100 pound a month, we’ll help you every single day, every single day.
25:59 The reality is people don’t ask for something every day. The reality is that basically we’re putting systems in place and got systems in place to help them help each other. And I think that’s the other thing we do. You scale it through a few things. One is have a model that can afford to pay London property prices the words what’s the point. Two is to have an incredible training manual and the secret thing about the training manual is that I’ll share today is there is um there’s a lady who lives in this country she has a number of large properties and often wears a hat. Basically that lady had her household come and see us and her household have taken away our training manual and are looking at some of the things that we’re doing to potentially incorporate into how they train some of their team. That’s your IP now. Yeah that’s our IP. So the fact that that someone who’s very well looked after thinks and their team think that we have something special enough that they want to take it and implement it back in her houses means that there’s something there is some secret sauce there something special so that we’ve created a pack that can mean that we can train people in about eight weeks so that’s highly scalable and as I said we can bring someone from any service background and take them through that training and get them there. And then finally, it’s, this is how I said it wrong, it’s Al Kayida in a good way, in that each one’s a cell.
27:16 That’s a quarter. Yeah, exactly. That’s quarter, yeah. Okay. Oh, and here’s the clip. Al Kayida in a good way.
27:22 Exactly. Boom. Yeah. Well funded. Forma recidio.
27:27 Forma recidio. But it’s cell orientated. Anything that’s cell orientated, it can survive and thrive more easily than if you have a massive system in place where everyone has to report up. So each unit runs as a cell, and the cell is capable of helping people in the same way on its own and making those decisions on its own without having to check back to me with my screens in my bedroom about should they help this person or not, they just get on with it.
27:54 We have multiple cells within the Whitechapel property? So in that one, basically they’ll be a lead manager and they’ve got three team members working for them, they just go for it. But what I’m saying is they don’t have to report back to head office to sort of get this stuff happening They’re able to talk amongst themselves and run as autonomous units Okay And so we also we run a site as a profit center as an autonomous unit And so you can see straight away if a site is working on it Let’s talk London Real estate and let’s talk London in general. I mean short. It’s just changing as we speak I know you were given the old street no love earlier and that’s okay But that but the tube station has like transformed in front of my eyes. I was telling someone the other day I mean it used to be literally junkies hanging out there, you know nothing wrong with that But now it’s like the Tate modern pop-up stores juices. The whole thing’s got a brand new look It’s like changing in front of our eyes, you know, Whitechapel is blowing up. Absolutely is the future Gonna be in London. Does it not have to be in London? So many guests that we have on Silicon Reels say it’s about Population density. It’s about getting three people in the room with some beers and that creates companies It’s not about them being on Skype and all this stuff So is the future of your company gonna be in London or can it be in Manchester? Can it be somewhere else?
29:06 I think been brutally honest It can be in any city where there is insanely high population density You need a few factors for this model. We believe to work you need high property prices high property prices is a good thing Really our model. Okay, because it high prices and old-fashioned leases because basically if you’re a high growth startup It doesn’t matter if you’re Twitter or if you’re a newbie that’s to start yesterday You don’t want to sign a five-year lease on a property because you know, you know that you will grow out of that property Instantly like Twitter have had to take an extra 16,000 square feet But they don’t need you know, because they will need it because the models are flawed for me as a start You know what? I was looking for space You’re either gonna go bankrupt within five years or you’re gonna have you know, grow X Times you’re gonna grow to this but you’re gonna be out of this space at some point So you need that flexibility and also there are times when you need to just suddenly ramp up We’ve got a client now, they want 30 more people overnight for three months.
30:04 You can’t do that in a traditional leasing model. So you need a hot market where it’s tricky to get property, and you can go to Manchester, you can get property for free, you can go to Hull, you can probably get paid to take property. I mean, that’s the thing. The reality is, and this is not derogatory about Britain, it’s a reality of the economy, it’s a reality of the real estate market. London properties in high demand and is of high value is increasing and so you’re always going to be in a position where it’s tricky as an SME to get a really great useful solution to that problem.
30:38 So high property values help you and your business model. Help us but also I think we help then in turn those guys have some flexibility they couldn’t otherwise get. So again I don’t know if you hopefully have never done this but if you try and get British telecom to give you the internet that you’re paying them to do. So you pay them for a survey, you pay them to install it and you pay them every month. That takes between three months and six months to just plug in a cable. I mean that sort of crap you don’t want to have to deal with. That’s insane. I mean there were so many stupid things that you don’t need to worry about that we worry about for you from how to get the internet on and working decent through to leases and, um, you know, we just take away the pain.
31:23 So you’re not moving out of London. London’s going to be the spot for the next five years. There’s always going to be things happening here, regardless of the real estate prices going up, regardless of it being hard to find spaces. I think the thing about the hard to find spaces thing, I think is a curious viewpoint. I think there’s a strain. There’s a potential culture that has come about, which is, Which again, I think it plays to the coworking concept, which is why should we pay for space?
31:48 And that mentality has driven the idea that that component is of low value, but it’s obviously not of low value, hence the fact it’s now expensive and you can’t get it. As you find, you’ve found for the last few years, people doing crazily good deals just to get some people occupying and paying their rates, basically, because they didn’t want to have dead rates bills. Now the market’s changed, everyone’s complaining that they’re going to have to pay for property, but again, that’s not weird.
32:16 If you go to any industry, it’s weird if you don’t pay, if you go to an advertising industry agency, they pay rent and rates and service charge for the building. Everyone does. It’s just that lots of the tech startups have, for some of them, have a viewpoint that it shouldn’t cost that much money. That makes sense. But it does.
32:32 I mean, it doesn’t. I mean, that’s, I suppose, that’s the nice thing. We can make that pain go away like that and make it so easy. I wonder if you could tell us a couple of secrets. We know that like places like Google, they have these elaborately designed workspaces that like maximize all of their intellectual property, meaning the people and get everybody working together, whether it’s the food over here and the ping pong table over here and all this stuff.
32:55 You’ve been doing this for a couple of years now. I’m wondering, what have you found as much as you can tell us, what is some of those secrets that you found that get people kind of working together or get things easy? You said you design your own furniture. I mean, is it like down to color schemes and this kind of thing that keep people, not only because you want people interacting, that ultimately makes you successful, right? Yeah.
33:15 What are the tricks? Well, the thing that’s interesting is, so for example, again, if you look at sort of a Google proposition and it didn’t do it too much here, which is really nice, it’s not about gimmicks. So I think what you find is a lots of architects and lots of big companies will create the office of the future. And what that means is just sticking out of bullshit and colors and slides and, oh Oh my God, we’ve got a slide in them. And we just, we hate that stuff.
33:40 Because no one fucking uses it. People don’t really want, who wants a slide? Don’t let them marshy monsters. But the thing is, people love the photo. There’s a photo of like, bah-bum, the office.
33:51 And it’s sort of that photo is why they all do this crap. I get it. It’s true. But it doesn’t really make it working there better. It’s just a gimmick.
33:58 So what we’ve tried to do is kill all the shit and just focus on what really makes working better. And some of this stuff is so prosaic as to be ridiculous. But if you go to most office environments, there are not enough plugs. How simple is that to fix? Well, the reason people don’t do it is because it’s expensive, each plug is expensive.
34:18 So people do put one per desk. We do shit loads of plugs. So one of our simple innovations is every table has got four plugs per person, which of course it has. But honestly, if you go to most offices, that isn’t true. That just isn’t the case.
34:32 So give them loads of power is one of the things. Secondly, again, most desks are designed. I mean, look, this is a fucking huge desk. It’s unnecessarily large. It is unnecessarily large.
34:44 And it’s made of a reflection of my ego. It’s beautiful, but it’s made of very poor quality material, so I would say it as well. Is it Ikea? It’s not Ikea. No, it’s not.
34:52 It doesn’t feel Ikea to me. We need James to come in here and hear from yourself. What’s interesting is a lot of the furniture you see in the market is built for an old-fashioned world where people did have drawers and desks with stuff in, instead of a cloud-based storage facility. They used to have lots of wires and things coming out that were connected to printers. And just stuff that nowadays you sort of don’t do, and that’s only really changed recently.
35:15 And so the manufacturers of furniture haven’t really caught up with that yet. They are catchy out, but they haven’t. So we went out and basically created furniture that enabled people to work on laptops, enabled people to work with big screens and multiple screens, enabled you to have rigs that you can clamp onto the desk that you have on your multiple screens if you’re, say, a gaming developer. And created footprints and formats that were super flexible. So we can reconfigure our spaces so effortlessly.
35:40 If you’re four today and eight tomorrow, we can cope with that very, very easily, because all of our stuff is very modular. It plugs into each other. It’s a bit like Lego. It’s just easy to run, easy to use. And then in terms of the colors and things, I mean, again, I suppose we try and have a fairly sort of flamboyant, but natural look.
35:58 So we’re using lots of natural materials. It feels very comfortable. We spend most of our time left on the chair. I mean, you’re gonna be spending shit at the time of that chair. And again, if you go around lots of the sort of coworking space, you’ll find this bit is cheap.
36:11 But that’s the important bit. If you’re sat on it all day, don’t skimp on this thing. Equally the lighting, getting the lighting levels right. I mean, it’s boring, boring stuff, but it’s the lighting, it’s the power, it’s the data, it’s the reconfigurability. Stuff that you won’t notice is the stuff that’s special.
36:28 And there’s loads of, I mean, just silly things. I’m just trying to think of the best, silly examples. But things, the gimmicky meeting room thing, we do a bit of, and people seem to quite like that, because they’re like, oh, I’m having a meeting room in the love room, and that works, it’s fun. But the gimmicky stuff, apart from that, we don’t bother with. I mean, things like storage.
36:43 Most people these days don’t need much storage, so we just do these little lockers, it works fine. Rather than having to put in huge amounts of storage space and cupboards, which a lot of people would have done, or could have done it, it’d be a waste. And then that’s sort of it, really. Simple, simple, simple, simple things. That’s fine.
36:58 Talk to me about America. Yes. Are you going there? Yes. And when you visit there, when you go to the valley, when you go to the alley, do you see the working spaces and things that they’re doing better?
37:07 Oh my God. Or worse. Miles better. Okay. Miles better.
37:12 Miles better. Really? Yeah. They are fucking awesome. So basically.
37:17 So primarily New York and New York. Yeah. I mean, what you’ve got again, New York, you’ve got this amazingly insane real estate market. It’s so expensive. It’s so ridiculous.
37:24 It’s so bizarre. It’s exciting. in here? Yeah, it’s worth it. Way worse than here. Is it? Yeah, you can sell someone a spike over there for a thousand dollars a month and they will sit on that spike.
37:33 I’ve seen some of the shittiest offices in the world in New York and people go, oh my god, this? And it’s like, a tiny little thing, this place, this is just three thousand dollars a month. Fucking amazing. And look, I can get inside the office. And you’re like, you are kidding me. You are kidding me. And look, you’ve only got one beggar you’ve got to kick to get in. It’s insane. It’s insane. And the lift doesn’t work. Yeah, it didn’t work, but it doesn’t matter. We’re in on the fifth floor and honestly it’s insane. So what impressed you about them? Not that obviously but what impressed me was I mean everyone’s heard of hopefully WeWork and they’re coming to London at some point. They have taken somewhat like a Regis. WeWork. Yeah okay and just nailed it and what they don’t do which is what I think is quite exciting which is why I think we’ve still got with we’re gonna survive is they don’t do service very well. They don’t have a level of service and what they’re really selling, which is great, are beautiful glass boxes. So if you want to work in a tiny box and pay a shitload of money for it, they have an amazing product and it’s very cool.
38:32 That’s kind of what Regis does, too, though, right? Yeah, but they just do…that’s almost like if you want to pay a lot of money and sit in a horrible box, that’s what Regis do. These do a beautiful box. Greater box. A nice box.
38:41 Nice box. A very sexy box. And if you go and see their places, you’ll love it. It’s super cool. In New York.
38:46 New York, San Fran, all of us. So we work awesome products. Check it out. Lovely. They coming to London, they’re expensive but they’re sexy and then there’s something called Noi House, rubbish name, I can barely spell it but it’s the only other company I found in the world that has also been set up by people from the hotel industry and so they understand service, they understand service and I would say Noi House is a bit like a sort of, if you could work at Soho House I know you can but you can’t really because you can’t use your phone which is a bit stupid but if you could actually work at Soho House that’s That’s sort of what Noi House is.
39:21 And then you’ve got… What else you got? There’s a couple more. But anyway, they’re the two, I think, they’ve got something right, and they can scale that business and it’ll grow. And they’ll come to this market.
39:30 I mean, Noi House is looking already here. We work locally, hopefully September, October time. They’ll change the market. And I think there’ll be a nice little shake-up that’ll, again, it’ll be good for people who’ve got a good business. Are you going to America?
39:42 We are looking at New York. We’ve been looking at New York for a while. I did a trip to New York. Is that necessary for your business model? Do you have to be there?
39:52 It depends how you look at it. I mean, I have a very old-fashioned view, which is great brands are created out of America. And that might sound like a horrible thing to say, but there aren’t many great brands, big global brands that are created from Britain. There are a few, Britain, BP, there’s some that you think, wow, yeah, they’re up there. But they’re mostly not created from here because we, as an island nation, seem happy to just look after our island.
40:20 And basically, there’s a chap called Mark who runs Regis. So he started Regis when it was one unit. And he’s taken it, and he’s British. He’s taken it, and it’s a British company, from one unit to a 1.7 billion pound company. Again, there are hardly any people in Britain that can have done that.
40:41 It’s an amazing thing to have done. So he sat with us and said, this should be a thousand sites. And I thought that was fascinating. I don’t think another British person could have looked us in the eye and said something as insanely audacious as that. I mean, that’s a billion pound company.
40:56 I mean, and so when he said that, I still thought, well, we’ve got something here, lads. This might be a winner. But it made me realize there’s a potential, but it also made me realize that to realize that potential, you need to go where the money is, where the ambition is, where the balls are. And despite what everyone says, we have not yet created the conditions in this country to easily, and it’s all relative, push out a brand. So we were going to hit London.
41:25 They’re backed with 30 million pounds just to spend on doing their initial launch. 30 million. None of the competitors in this country have got anything like that sort of money, not even close to that sort of money. Where do you guys get money to finance yourselves? So we basically have, we’ve done partnerships, so for example, partner with people like Barclays, where we were sort of in a commercial relationship with them.
41:49 We have Angel Investment and we are looking, like you, at fundraising. And it’s one of those things, I think, finding partners who get how quick you have to move is less likely to happen in Britain than it will happen in the US. And so I think if you’re trying to scale a business like this, I mean, like, I mean, Starbucks, Starbucks is about 10 times bigger than Costa. It’s not like a little bit bigger. It’s miles bigger.
42:12 McDonald’s. Yeah, Americans are used to scaling. It’s a huge population. Absolutely. So I think that countries have been all about scaling, moving west and, you know.
42:19 And so I think the only way for us to create a massive global brand, if that’s what we want to do, and we’d love to do that, would be to go to America because the people who are there can help us do it. And you guys are talking about Dubai, Moscow, Warsaw, Singapore. Obviously you dropped in Manchester. Those are the cities. How important are those?
42:36 This model works in any city. Any major city, any capital, any sort of second, third, fourth city, I mean the weird things in Britain, we sort of haven’t really got that. We’ve got London and then Britain, but in lots of other countries you’ve got other major cities within that are dominant in something. So in lots of other places that’ll be the case. So this is something that I think, yeah, you could and should, and it will at some point take going to those cities.
43:03 But again, it’s fairly logical to say, OK, nail London, prove the model, pick up model, take it to America, New York, and just roll it across America. And then having done America, come back to do the rest of it. What about Berlin? That seems obvious. Yeah, but it’s a real set.
43:18 But you don’t know. It’s cheap there. OK. And that doesn’t necessarily help you. You probably thrive in a place where it’s expensive.
43:24 You need a complication to provide a solution. Well, no, it’s not that we thrive, but it’s expensive. Well, exactly. It’s like, why struggle? It’s like, why?
43:30 We’ll probably go to Manchester. But if you go to Manchester, if you can, for free, sit here, why would you pay me money? Because also the thing you will not be able to understand is the value we add. The value we added to Caribou wasn’t about desks, but how the hell, when you come in, do I actually demonstrate that to you? It’s hard.
43:50 In London it’s easier, but it’s hard. So I think outside of London you’re looking just at, well, this costs something, this doesn’t cost something. I’ll take this one. Thank you much. It’s a basic fundamental thing that comes back on the shoulder to solve a problem, right?
44:03 Totally. Are you worried as you scale, you won’t be able to help caribou’s of the world? Well that’s why we’ve spent, as I said, like 50 grand investing in this all of that. It’s all about if you get hold of that, it’s honestly when you open it, light comes out in your face. It’s a bit like this.
44:19 We need a tour. We need a tour. You do? Yeah. But yeah, there’s something that is the secret sauce.
44:24 And because again, we started again, hopefully, I think differently towards, we designed center working to scale. It was designed from the first second we did it to scale. So for the first two sites we didn’t make money and we never would make money because it wasn’t designed to have two sites, it was designed to have 50, 60 sites. So it needs that scaling and so because of that it has systems that scale, it has it has a brand that will scale, it has training manuals that will scale. It’s got the stuff that you’d have in a business a lot bigger so that it can be the business that it wants to be that’s a lot bigger. When is the central working LinkedIn coming along. Yeah, that’s an interesting one, isn’t it? So again, we’ve been working on stuff like that. So we’ve got something currently called project C. And that’s, okay, we won’t be called ultimate, but that’s what it’s currently called. And it’s a bit rude of entry right now. And I think it’s also one of those challenges and sort of your sort of Instagram point. It’s like, how do you get really good at doing one thing?
45:18 Well, because if you go into that, there’s a danger that you end up as a tech business. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not. But then the real estate becomes a secondary point. I think there’s an interesting balance there, finding a tech platform that doesn’t become the whole business, I don’t think, because I don’t think that’s what I want to do.
45:35 And also, not putting in place a digital barrier. We want to be human. People crave being together. People crave that human contact. And so part of our role is to provide that human contact.
45:53 And if we’re too clever with our technology, this isn’t some sort of clever explanation so we don’t have to spend our money on it. If you’re too clever with technology, you become a bit automated. And when you become a bit automated, your service level plummets. Because just think, when you used to, years ago, go into a bank, when they had decentralized branches, they actually could look after you in a branch. Now, because of technology, they can’t.
46:20 You end up on a call center or you end up on a website the service level is actually plummeted with most banks it’s not better it’s worse right so you got to watch for it what made you what you are just a few more questions um what do you think of tech in London you know you’ve seen in the last two years it’s obviously getting bigger our show has started exactly for God’s sake this is it yeah right I mean that’s a sign you got incubators everywhere I would I’m gonna ask you later we don’t have a chance about over incubation but like everyone’s starting an incubator, you know, where are we going here with London Tech and what do we need to avoid? What do we need to do better? I mean you’re on the ground, you see what’s going on. So basically whenever we started thinking about central working five years ago, so we did two years of planning before we started and back then London as a tech centre was nothing really. It was but it wasn’t seen as one and when we first started three years ago, it sort of the The idea of London as a tech centre was almost a bit of a joke, a little bit.
47:19 And then when Google campus launched, I was like, oh my God, it’s cool, Google’s done something in London, woohoo. I think now, I think it’s actually true. I think London is now what it wanted to be. And it will only get better. And I think someone, lovely, have you ever met Prue?
47:36 You’ve got to meet Prue. Prue Ashby? Yeah. It’s a Prue for London partner. Get her on the show.
47:41 She’s awesome. Okay. a long long time ago and it was a great pitch that London partners had come up with who promote London around the world for London and she said if you own another country like America if you want to talk to the advertising marketing bit of that industry you end up going to probably like New York or Hollywood if you want to go talk to the money part of it you end up going to San Francisco if you so actually you end up having to shoot thousands of miles to find this specialist in an industry across that country here you can jump on a a borage bike, and you can be with some of the most creative people in the world, like Framestore in Soho, and 15 minutes later be with some of the top banks in the world, and 15 minutes later be with some of the top PR agents in the world.
48:23 And it’s quite a unique set of circumstances. So I was not cynical but sceptical, and I think now I really see, because I was thinking, fuck London, let’s get to New York, ages ago, and now I’m thinking, this is amazing. There is something very, very, very special here. Like if the politicians don’t fuck it up, because that’s the danger, isn’t it? That as a sort of stupid gesture, labor comes in and just changes stuff that the conservatives did just to change stuff.
48:51 If they don’t fuck it up, there is a real chance that this can be an incredible tax center, I think. It’s amazing. How could they fuck it up, do you think? Take away the tax incentive? You could change the tax incentive schemes, of course.
49:04 If anything, that still needs loosening and loosening and loosening to get the money flowing. you could reduce the emphasis on technology. I mean, you could just do some stupid policies that look, or you could make it harder for people to come into the country. I mean, that alone will be the most fucking stupid thing anyone could do. It could be happening.
49:21 It’s insane that that could happen. And the challenge, I suppose, is that the man in the street doesn’t appreciate the difference between one type of person coming to the UK and another type of person. Should there be a difference, who knows? But if you are, I had this bizarre experience, one of the top execs from Google, left Google to do their own startup and couldn’t get a fucking visa. And you’re, it’s like, we should be biting their hands off to keep this person.
49:47 Yeah. I mean, they can’t. Unfortunately, Yanks aren’t the best example either, but they’re working on it. No, no, no. I read that she went to New York, but she was American.
49:52 There you go. A couple more questions. Will you overtake a small equity stake in companies? I mean, come on, one, 2%. I mean, will that, is that ever a part of your business model?
50:00 Do you think it’ll ever happen? I think, I think what that does is it changes how you look after your customers. What we’ve tried to do is say and believe and imbune in everything we do the idea that you’re as good as you are. You’re as special as you are. So that fills through everything we do.
50:19 So lots of places, lots of clubs, which we see ourselves as, would say, well actually, he’s an awesome journalist. You can have free membership, mate. And you’re just some scummy startup you can pay. And we don’t do that. We don’t do that.
50:32 Everyone pays. And what that means is that everyone is equal and everyone gets the same service. If, however, I think, actually, this guy’s got something really awesome, which by definition means that you haven’t got something really awesome, I then take a bit of equity in his business. But then I’m gonna help him more than I’m gonna help you. Because I care more about him so he didn’t know how.
50:52 And it will fuck our model completely if we did that. Because it means that you can’t love your customers as a customer base. You will focus on the ones that you’ll get the most return from. And that changes our business through something that is not. That’s a good answer. I like that.
51:07 I do feel this hospitality vibe going on here. And it’s something I didn’t think about when I thought about central working. No, me neither actually. So I’m a solo host guy. And so I work out of there every now and again.
51:17 And Shortage has created a really cool environment now. And you either have some desks and all that sort of stuff. But, you know, and I’ve been to a lot of your central workings and it’s been, yeah, I see a huge opportunity in taking the co-working and then, you know, some of the club type stuff. And sort of meshing them together and trying to create an environment where people can spend spend their days. Yeah Yeah, we want to do it. Um James. We always ask everyone here a few questions at the end You probably know these are coming hopefully you didn’t prepare for them But that’s okay If you can make a phone call to the 20 year old James Layfield and give that young man a bit of advice I don’t know where he was, but what would you tell him if you have sex sooner Jesus?
51:55 Have you not had sex when you were 20? No, I was 21. Can you believe that? 21. That’s how it was.
52:00 Look at that lane. Wow. It was like an explosion. There we go. The poor one was destroyed.
52:04 That’s why I would say 10. What else? That’s sexier. That’s the first one, I think. That’s the first one.
52:10 Were you at all involved in technology whatsoever? Did you see it coming? Oh my God. I was a geek at school. Hence my not having sex, I suppose.
52:20 I was an uber geek. Okay. I was illegally pirating computer games and selling them. I was importing them from, for some reason, Amazon was the home of hacking computer games when I was a kid. So they used to get cracked in Amsterdam.
52:33 I’d get my disks through. I had an array of disk drives. I would just be copying, do not arrest me. I’d be copying, copying, selling, copying, copying. Statute and limitations is all I know of it.
52:42 James, and selling them in the playground as a kid. So I was probably underweight a token. But so I was into computer graphics. I used to draw and design. I thought that I would end up in that world because I was obsessed with it.
52:55 I think I can be sort of quite an obsessive personality. So I got so obsessed with it, I realized that I could spend my life inside the computer and not really enjoy life in the real world. If this is indeed the real world. And so, and so- We can talk about that online. And so I opted out.
53:15 I mean, and then I did come back to it. So when I was at Virgin, we did the sort of, pretty much, I like to think, it was Facebook. It was pretty much Facebook. years before Facebook, it was called virginstudent.com. So I did try my hand at doing a .com and it was fun.
53:30 But I love, like you were saying, I love that tangibility to go into a room and touch stuff that makes someone’s life better and to have a conversation. Because I get off on talking to people. I like talking to my members and I don’t see them as customers paying me money. They’re people that I really like And it’s, there’s nothing nicer. And they say, I’m sure this is why you do this.
53:56 It’s so nice to meet people, to talk to people, to hear their ideas, to feel their energy. And that’s why we started this business. Because that energy that you feel in the room, if you come in, you get it in so hard as well, that buzz, it’s fucking awesome. Right, and you’re talking. It’s like a drug.
54:10 It’s weird, interesting, because you’re in the tech sector, and let’s be honest, techies are naturally on the introverted side. I mean, look at your history. And so, in a weird way. Oh, geez. In a weird way, you kind of have to push them to get talking, but that’s how great the companies are made by getting them out of their shell.
54:27 Don’t do the virtual media. Don’t do the- Make it comfortable for them. Yeah, right, right, right. Make it so comfortable. And it’s so lovely.
54:33 You see sometimes a member will join and they start off so quiet. And part of the skill of our team is to let them flourish and let them be themselves and feel comfortable and help them to engage. And not that they’re necessarily socially inadequate doing that but you’re right there’s some people that aren’t super flamboyant and therefore we can help them make those connections and we can make this and what you see is after a few months they’ve got a load of new friends that they would never have had in an office because these people care about each other’s businesses that’s to be honest the criteria to join central working was twofold which is you have to be passionate about what you do or you cannot join so again it’s probably we won’t let you join if you’re not passionate about what you do. So you will screen people. Yeah and we all get rid of people and you have to be open to collaboration and so if you put that basic filter on open to collaboration and passionate you sort of attract a group of people who are open to collaboration and passionate and see then you create a world where they want to play. Okay second part of that question what’s the best advice you’ve ever received in your life? I hope it didn’t happen at 21.
55:45 What are you gonna have the best advice yeah yeah business or personal okay hold on let me think I’m sure there is some maybe I’ve got my memory so rubbish my memory so what’s my best maybe in the past two years something maybe in the last hour that a client said or or that you know something you you gleaned from working with I think this is it and it’s not it’s not it’s people say this a lot and there’s tooth yeah this is one so people say it’s a lot and you don’t always understand what they mean. When you are fundraising I think most people get so pissed off about how hard it is that they reduce their barrier to entry. They sort of start off at almost I want some money and some stuff and then you end up at a place which is like I can give you some money I don’t really give a shit and I think what I found is and what’s true is what someone says you don’t ever want just money you always want money plus and the plus has to I think be some sort of expertise or guides or support because what I found is if you go for money for money’s sake all they want is return and if all they want is return they don’t understand your business and they don’t care about your business they just want money and that that constriction means that you probably won’t grow whereas actually if you have someone who looks at your business and says here’s all the amazing things we could do together and here’s some money then they want to help you do those things and and that is that’s the number one
57:09 Thing. Yeah. I saw a tweet recently that said something like, uh, before you take on a customer, is this someone you want to have a relationship with because you’re going to have a relationship with. Yeah, exactly. And whether it’s a one time Starbucks and it’ll come back forever or whether it’s you raising money.
57:22 Yeah. I mean, this is, these are good thoughts. When I, yeah, when I raised cash, oh, you know, the valuation is one thing, but I’m, I’m thinking I can bring this down 10 to 20% discounted for a guy that’s going to give me 20 to 30%. A hundred percent. Right.
57:34 So absolutely. And so it’s almost like evaluation is determined for me based upon who I’m pitching to. you’re talking to, yes. Last part of that question, to the 20 year old that’s listening to us out there. The version.
57:43 The 20 year old version. That might have been in your situation. You poor man. You never know where this is going to go. And it’s live.
57:51 What advice do you give to them? To the 20 year old listening to around the world that wants to get into tech. I suppose, I think the thing that people do, and it’s probably a generic answer, but sorry if it is, but I think it’s just a truism. basically people procrastinate and you get the person that’s talking about their idea all the time. I suppose what I found is if you don’t talk about your idea at all, you just do the fucking thing.
58:16 It doesn’t sort of start now and when I say don’t talk about it, back to Ben Southworth’s point, I’m not saying don’t show it once you’ve started, I’m just saying don’t just talk about the idea of doing something. It’s so funny, we had a guy come up to the other day and he goes, oh my God, I thought about doing central work in agency. I was like, yeah, you didn’t fucking do it, dickhead. But it’s funny that people imagine that they’ve come up with an idea just because they’ve thought of something. And actually, the energy you need to make it happen, the human brain is amazing that you always underestimate how fucking hard things are. So no one would be an entrepreneur if they knew how hard it is to be an entrepreneur, because it’s a nightmare.
58:53 You’re always running out of money. You beg, borrow, and steal. And most of it is not about making it, because most people don’t make it. It’s about the thrill of doing it. And it’s hard, hard, hard, hard, hard work.
59:04 But you’ve just got to stop. And let’s talk in more walking, is what you’re saying. Yeah, absolutely. We had a guest on London Real. His name is Eric Thomas.
59:12 He’s called the Hip Hop Preacher. He’s really famous in America. He’s like a motivational speaker. He used to be a Southern Baptist teacher. And he says, say it once.
59:19 So tell all your friends once, get it out there so they’ll be accountable, and then shut the fuck up and then do it. Completely correct. Completely saying what he said. Yeah, you know, yeah, I mean people Week in after week in telling me the same fucking story exactly like just minimum viable product and shut the fuck Exactly. He’s the grumpy old man buzzers. Yes, 20 year olds. There it is James it’s been such pleasure having you here. You’re definitely more fun than than your LinkedIn photo Suggest so this is a lot of fun. And if you’re listening, you know, this makes it this makes a lot of sense If you’re looking for space, it makes sense to spend the extra money, go the extra time to apply, to go into central working as opposed to just x-desk and shortage where you’re going to get so much value that you can’t quantify, that years down the line you’ll be like, why didn’t my business make it?
1:00:10 It didn’t make it because James wasn’t there, the team with the army and whoever else you know. So, you know, it does make sense to just think about your space a little bit more. I’m here in the studio and a lot of people coming through, but like I can value the the success of what I’m doing, the deals I’m doing, based on the meetings I have. So I mean, it’s ultimately- So about connections. Who you’re in contact with in a physical way, which is hard to imagine in this- It’s all about the people.
1:00:36 Exactly. It’s all, hello, the strap line, boom. People can follow you on Twitter at Layfield, L-A-Y field, at Central Working as well. At Central Working is pretty more active. I’m not that active on Twitter, sadly.
1:00:47 Should be more active. Do you have space in Whitechop, for example, if people want to come or? Basically, I challenge you. I challenge you to come down and not love it. If you don’t love it, I’ll buy you a coffee.
1:01:00 I promise you you’re gonna love it. It’s fucking amazing. Okay, and you have space. People can come and you can come. Yeah, of course, we really just opened.
1:01:07 And, more importantly, everyone, we’ve got a launch party on the 18th of June. Epic event. Tickets are on Eventbrite. Get yourself a ticket. Go to our Facebook page, forward slash central working.
1:01:20 Apply for a ticket. Come and enjoy yourself. This is at Whitechapel, yeah? It’s probably gonna be a crazy party. All right, I’m in.
1:01:25 I’m in. Good, good. Yeah, okay, we’ll go. Fantastic, I love this whole business model. It gets me excited, so thanks so much for being here.
1:01:34 As we say, it’s about the people here. We’re on Twitter, we’re on hello at siliconreal.com. If you wanna hit us up with some messages, we got a bunch of people that are helping out on the show coming into the studio tomorrow. We’re talking about taking over the world, all this crazy stuff, right? Yeah, absolutely.
1:01:49 Yeah, some people have helped out recently and become part of the team. We’re trying to grow this thing. We’re a startup too, right? Trying to figure out, you know, how to keep growing and get good guests. We’d love to help with that.
1:01:59 Fantastic. Love it. You know, maybe we should move the studio to central working. There you go. Never a motor studio.
1:02:04 Yeah. Not a crazy idea, right? Not a crazy idea. And if you have guest ideas, it sounds like we need to get this woman in from London partners and all that stuff, then hit us up on Twitter and come back to us. And there you go.
1:02:14 If you listen to us on iTunes or on a YouTube channel, give us a search. You can see our extremely good looking faces. And until then guys, It’s about the people. James, thanks so much for being here. Thank you.
1:02:24 Thank you. All right, guys. Take care. It’s really difficult to try and explain the kind of reality of Bitcoin, which is just one giant document where every single transaction has been recorded. This is the blockchain, right?
1:02:40 This is the blockchain. Exactly. It’s hard to explain that to anyone. Yeah, nobody listens to that. So you just talk about Bitcoins, and you talk about the fact that there’s 21 million of them at some point by the time they will be mined, and you talk about the fact that they get mined by computers, but you don’t really explain the whole specific nature of what it is.
1:02:55 Because that hurt Bitcoin in the beginning, it was too much information. For complete beginners, like how much do you know about this Federal Reserve or the UK Central Bank? And they do constant easing, that is what mining is.
