Full transcript: Jenny Griffiths 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 host London Real, which is a similar kind of show, same studio. We get some people in the room, try to figure a few things out. We had the one and only Neil Neil deGrasse Tyson here last week, astrophysicist, all around, super cool dude.
1:01 He put me in headlock after the show. So that was a lot of fun. We’ve had… Is that your first headlock? He was a really big dude, you know, and I wrestled in high school and I do a little bit of that in my…
1:10 But he was big. He was big. He would have been really hard, a tough fight. Wow. Yeah.
1:15 Yeah. He knew what he was doing. So yeah, we left friends, so that was good. So you check that out if you want, it’s at LondonReal.tv. But we’re here to talk about tech this week.
1:23 My co-host is entrepreneur Colin Powell, who runs online language schools. The coffee’s coming soon. What’s going on with you? Yeah, it’s been a good week, man. It’s moving forward.
1:34 It’s got 100,000 Nespresso compatible, organic, 100% Arabica coffee coming next week, so. That is awesome. Fingers crossed it doesn’t get stuck somewhere, you know? It helps brand somewhere. Everything’s, we’ve had a lot of things, just bad luck, so I’m just hoping.
1:53 To be fair, if you’re the world’s first coffee heist, that’s something to put on your CV as well. Yeah, it’s true. That would be terrible. Why’d you have to bring that up? Coffee heist, yeah.
2:03 Coffee heist, it’s not worth enough money. No. Cool, I can’t wait to try those, man. Really look forward to that. Yeah, no, it’s exciting, so.
2:09 Awesome.
2:55 And also FinTech Innovation Lab, they’re about to give us their debut class. It’s coming out March 26th. They got seven companies that have been over there in level 39 and Canary Wharf tinkering away. And if you wanna check them out as an investor, you can go to that on March 26th, all right? Yeah, send them an email if you’re an investor.
3:12 Yeah, it’s fintechaddextensure.com and you can check it out. You know, very excited what’s going on with those guys. Yeah, I’m excited to sort of get some more guests on because they just have an amazing cohort and we had one of them on a few few months back. So yeah we’ll get we’ll get a few more on after and digital shadows was one of their ones from the previous years. Didn’t you beat digital shadows in one of your awards? We’re gonna get to that. We’re gonna get to that. So anyways just thanks to FinTech we’ll be keeping you updated with those companies. Now to our guests which is Jenny Griffiths who is the founder and CEO of Snap Fashion which is a visual search engine that allows customers to search for fashion items using images instead of words.
3:53 That’s right. You use, I believe, a unique algorithm to find similar items from over 100 retailers here in the UK online. You have won a few awards yourself. You beat out Digital Shadows, I think. I think you won a $175,000 award from Cisco Big in 2012.
4:11 Yeah, that’s right. I don’t bring that up. Digital Shadows, anyway. Okay. Well, they’re still surviving.
4:17 It’s true. They’re all good. Yeah, they’re good, but they probably could have been doing better if Jenny wasn’t around 175 grams good Yeah, you also I think one that the decoded fashion startup pitch. You probably want some more Jenny. Welcome to Silicon rail Thank you. Thanks for having me. No, it’s so good to have you here You know, we we’ve been doing this show 35 weeks now and we’ve never had anyone from fashion on or fashion tech I don’t even know what fashion tech means I don’t even know what the industry is like so maybe before we start talking to Exactly about snap fashion you could tell us what the state of the union is now now in FashionTech here in London and around the world.
4:52 Brilliant. OK. So FashionTech is becoming a really hot space in startups, definitely. When I started doing it, it was about four or five years ago. And it was a bit outlandish that someone was looking at moving technology into fashion space.
5:05 But now it’s a really thriving community. You’ve got people doing great things, like Chloe Digital does a load of coding initiatives around getting people into fashion and technology. And you’ve got some really, really good brands starting up. So in London, it’s a particularly kind of hot topic. When you go over to the States, I was over there last week, and it’s very much the kind of New York scene.
5:26 So if you want to go abroad to do fashion tech, then New York’s definitely the place to go. Is it usually a capital city thing for fashion? It’s a good question. I mean, I think everyone gravitates towards where the fashion shows are held. So I know Milan’s also a really kind of strong area for fashion tech in Paris.
5:42 So yeah, I think it’s about going to where the fashion communities are, and then also where kind of developers want to live, and it tends to concentrate in those areas. It must be a case. I remember back in the early tech days, like in the late 90s, there was all these great plans about buying tennis shoes online and buying it. And just like the tech wasn’t ready, or it just, they were dreams. But it wasn’t really going to happen back then, was it?
6:07 No, it’s true. And I think there was still a bit in that space. So the reason I started Snap Fashion was I realized that everyone suddenly had a camera in their pocket, and it seemed like the absolute perfect time to launch Visual Search for Fashion. But when it comes to other things in the fashion tech space, like virtualizing people, trying on outfits, and doing that kind of augmented reality stuff, I do think we’re still a bit of a way towards getting that really kind of smooth user experience that people want.
6:33 OK, all right, let’s talk snap fashion then. People come to your website, or they’ll download your app. What are they going to be able to do? That’s a very good question. I’m also not sure.
6:43 OK, so on the app side, you can basically take a photo of anything and it will find you similar things. So we’ve got one app called Snap Colour Pop which is take a photo of any colour. It searches over half a million items and basically spits you back everything in that kind of shade and you can just scroll through and see what you want to buy. So if you want to match like a purple with a purple this? Exactly like you just bought a dress and you want to find a pair of shoes to match that kind of thing. Loads of people take photos of their dogs which I always find quite weird but there you go. They might be matching dogs to outfits. They want to match their dog to their outfit. I don’t see why not, yeah. And then snap fashion that is a bit more experimental on the technology side but it’s kind of the cutting-edge bit of visual search that we’re working on so it’s all about finding cut matches and color matches and texture matches so you can take a photo of an item of clothing in a magazine on a catwalk in a shop window and then we’ll try and find you everything similar on the high street so they’re the two apps and the website’s really similar we’ve just got a little bookmark that you can put on your bookmarks bar and then literally grab at any image of any website and start shopping from it.
7:47 OK, we always ask, what have you done and what are you planning to do? So can you give us a quick, because I love how she makes it sound so simple. We had the guys from Halo here, and I was like, your app is really simple. And he was just like, we’ve got 50 engineers that make it simple. Because your idea sounds so simple, but it must be so hard to implement.
8:05 Yeah, and it’s actually one of the problems that we face with Snap, because it sounds so blatantly obvious. The question I always get asked is, why isn’t Google doing this already, which is a good question. And then you also get, well, it seems really simple. So if I get a shoe returned in heels with the flats, then why is this happening? It’s outrageous.
8:22 So it’s one of those things that is actually a really hard problem in computer vision. So my background’s computer science, not fashion. So I kind of wrote the algorithms at university and took us about five years to get them to where they are today. So yeah, it’s been quite a tough road, but we’re looking to move into kind of doing men’s fashion and moving into other verticals as well, which I have to keep secret but yeah we’re also going to launch a few products this year in partnership with a few more brands so we’re definitely increasing our reach. And where do you want to be? I mean what is that what is the goal? It sounds a bit grand but I want to be like the Google of visual search so I want to be like if anyone sees something they kind of reach for Snap to go and find it so we’re starting off in fashion but I think there are so many areas in consumer visual search that are really kind of crying out for for an application. It’s one of those things where because everyone’s carrying around a camera and when we’re all walking around we’re using those tiny little keyboards and it just seems really backwards that that’s the way we’re still operating so I just want to be able to search the world using pictures.
9:24 Are you still using the same tech that you developed years ago? Yes, we’ve added to it but the core algorithms are still the same so yeah it feels a bit weird that my university product turned into this business I’m running today. And the final question I usually ask people is, why do you think you guys will win in this space after, you know, compared to the Googles or to the Americans? I mean, you know, because what you’re doing is, I mean, if you’re thinking about it, it’s not just fashion.
9:49 I mean, this could be anything. Yeah, it’s true. There are loads of people cropping up as well, like different competitors. And I think where Snaps, we were the first to market with this technology and we’re still the only people that can do kind of cut analysis and the cross-platform visual search. So I think one of the reasons for our success is being really, really lean with the team and we haven’t raised too much money and we’ve all got our responsibilities and everyone kind of owns their little bit of the business and I think that’s been really kind of key to us being quick and first but then going forward I think our success is going to come from like commercial partnerships and making sure that we partner with the right people so we’re not reinventing the wheel we’re not trying to compete against people who are ahead of us at this moment it’s all about just finding the right people to work with and accelerate both of our technologies alongside each other. So partnerships I just read today you did a partnership with Westfield. Yeah that’s true I wasn’t expecting that to come out today so I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say. Breaking news.
10:45 So Westfield if you’re not from London Westfield is probably the largest they have a pair now in London of proper shopping malls that it’s an American company isn’t it? Australia. Okay well they know what they’re doing when it comes to malls and London never had malls up until a few years ago right and now they have these mega ones. They’re insanely big. I was in California over the holidays visiting my dad in Palm Springs. They have a Westfield in Palm Springs. I was like that’s weird. So anyways back to the partnership yeah so maybe you could just touch on how that works and what what you know why they would want to partner with you and why you’d want to partner with them. Yeah sure so I mean what you said really kind of encapsulates the Westfield experience for some people which is just your head spins when you get in there and there’s all of this choice and it’s great news because you know that your outfits in there it’s just can be a bit mind-boggling to start searching and because you might not you might not have the energy to find it exactly I can go to five stores and I’m done yeah and there are hundreds of stores but men go to buy women go to shop that’s that’s the second part of the interview sorry I couldn’t show off you were saying yeah I mean when I go to Westfield it’s normally for a reason like I’ve got a friend’s wedding coming off and I need to find an outfit and you’re kind of lacking that
12:00 Inspiration and you know that you’ve got to find a dress and you don’t quite know what you’re looking for and what Westfield wanted to do was kind of give people that inspiration before they hit the stores so they came to us because they wanted to do it kind of really visually and tying in their stylist content with opening up literally the whole of Westfield to have an online experience so I can’t say too much but they use snaps technology to kind of let you build shopping lists at home so that when you hit the shops you’re kind armed with what the stylists think you should be wearing, and then also where you can buy it in your budget. So yeah. So you might be able to take a picture of something you want, upload it to this, and then be told where to go in Westfield.
12:38 Yeah, it’s slightly different to that. I can’t give away the secret sauce, but it’s more about kind of stylist inspiration and then finding it in store, rather than you finding your inspiration yourself. Okay. Can you walk us through this Cisco competition you won, and it’s a lot of money, it’s a lot of publicity. Do you get in touch with the Cisco people as well?
12:59 Of course. We were at a gig together the other week. I mean, Cisco was absolutely crazy for us and I think it was one of the turning points in the business, definitely, because we actually launched our first product the day before we entered the big awards and then we had the awards ceremony and we had to give our presentation. It was very Dragon’s Den style and then we ended up winning it, which really shocked me because there were some amazing businesses in there, like Digital Shadows was one of them, and then people doing kind of video messaging, and there was such a diverse range of businesses. And yeah, I was expecting it to be a kind of prize with a few strings attached, and genuinely Cisco have been so open to helping Snap, so they’ve been helping us get press coverage, and kind of taking us under their wing, helping us get commercial introductions, and yeah, they’ve been so supportive I couldn’t believe it.
13:50 But they didn’t take an equity stake in the company. They didn’t, no. It was a check for $100,000 and then $100,000 worth of support. So we got PR from Union Street and then marketing from DNX and then legal from Bird and Bird. So it’s like they thought about all of the weak points that a digital business would have and tried to kind of fill them in for us.
14:09 So yeah, it really helped kickstart it. And is the office space, is that part of the deal too? Yeah, that’s, well, it wasn’t meant to be part of the deal, but I was a bit cheeky and asked and they said yes. So yeah, it’s called Ideal London and it’s Cisco working with UCL and DC Thompson and they’ve each nominated different companies to be in the space. So Cisco companies are kind of us.
14:30 They’ve got Whittos who do in-store kind of analytics and social gaming group who do Twitter campaigns. So we’re not companies that compete, but we kind of complement each other. The Smarts are in there as well who does shopping from videos. So it’s quite nice to be sharing a space with people that you don’t have to be too cagey around, but you’re kind of hitting similar problems at the same time. I’ve heard the coffee there is amazing. It’s amazing coffee.
14:55 So, omnisambles. What did you spend the $100,000 on? We spent it on people mainly and we also used it to kind of keep the business running for a bit longer so we didn’t have to raise investments. So I’d love to say that I kind of hired a Corvette and drove across America but I’m fairly boring in that way. But yeah, we beefed up the tech team so we’ve got a few front-end developers working for us now And we also invested a bit in kind of PR marketing as well to kind of get our brand out there and in retrospect Why do you think you won the competition? Oh?
15:26 Don’t don’t make me do that I’m trying to visualize Jenny’s presentation. I’m like, what did you get up and say? I mean you can describe the technology really simply but anyone can have this idea But you must have shown them that you could implement it. It’s true I think what really made us stand out on the day was that we gave a live demo and And it’s always really, really scary giving a live demo. But you say, like, we can find fashion from a photo.
15:48 And you take a photo and it finds something similar. And people either think, yeah, that’s kind of obvious. Or she’s a bit nuts, and they don’t really believe me. So we stood up, gave a live demo of the products. And I think that’s when people kind of took a step back and went, I’ve never seen anything like that before.
16:03 So that was probably the moment. And yeah, just lucky, I guess. Got a hard moment they had for you. Because I’ve used Google’s, so Google has like an image search before and it’s pretty average. So I just maybe jump into that and just out of curiosity, what are you doing differently than what they’re doing?
16:29 Yeah, Google are absolutely amazing at doing image search on like hard objects and stuff you can extract metadata from. So things like buildings and wine bottles, DVDs, and you kind of grab information from that and then you can help it kind of supplement the visual search. So you’re searching not necessarily the picture but the metadata. Yeah exactly there’s a bit of that there’s a bit of visual search they so they kind of mix up all of these different ways of searching and they package it up into something that works really strongly on buildings and those kind of things. If you snap on a building it would be awful. So where we started was doing real pure visual search and I literally wrote algorithms just for fashion. So I spent ages analyzing kind of what the different features are of different items of clothing and looking at what it is that would make those algorithms really, really tailored for that.
17:14 So spending five years just looking at the difference between shorts and skirts, I think has kind of made us approach it in a completely different way to Google and a few of the other kind of startups cropping up at the moment. So yeah, I think that’s where we’re standing apart. Yeah. That’s really interesting. So you’re essentially taking the difference between, you know, a long sleeve t-shirt and a short sleeve t-shirt, putting it into code on the non-techie, as you can see, and then so that the codes can match up against.
17:40 Yeah, exactly. And so where do you pull all the data from to match it up against what someone uploads? We’ve got partnerships with about 170 UK retailers, so we wanted to be sure that people are kind of opting into the system because obviously you’re having your brands displayed alongside other brands and it’s of benefit, but some people get a bit kind of edgy about it. So yeah, we basically just pull in all of their data feeds every morning and they’re the kind of feeds that they’re giving already to fashion bloggers and people like that.
18:03 So there’s no overhead for them to be on the system and they don’t pay unless you make a sale. So it’s a really nice kind of platform to try out with all the different retailers. And the data and the images that they’re giving you, they’re good enough to match with your algorithms? Yeah, they’re great. I mean that’s one of the really good things about the way that online shopping has gone and the way that kind of fashion blogging has taken off, is that people really want to have the best product images online and it really does help us out. So if they’re on white backgrounds, no models, it’s kind of the perfect shop for us to be able to match against. No models. I know. It’s the last thing she wants, she wants a product right?
18:36 Product, right? You know, we call this show silicone real, so we like to ask some real questions, so we’re gonna hit you with a few. That was a good question you asked about Google search. You know, for me, the ultimate bottleneck when it comes to fashion, buying fashion online, is that I’m not there to try it on. Yeah. And sooner or later, you’re gonna have to come to that. I mean, you obviously get them to the products, so you’ve probably solved a big chunk in the meantime, but still, like for me, t-shirts and jeans, I mean, those are like impossible, almost, unless you’re in the store.
19:06 So how do you fight that ultimate bottleneck that may be without that virtual technology we’re not ready for? Yeah, it’s true. I mean, for me, as a woman, you’re so used to buying stuff and taking it back that you’re constantly going, oh, that looks good, can’t be bothered to change really lonky or just buy and I’ll take it back later. So for me, the biggest bottleneck in online shopping is what does the fabric feel like? Like if you’re going to spend £70 on a dress, £200 on a pair of shoes, you really want to get a sense of what it feels like, and I think that’s why people are buying so much stuff online and then taking it straight back.
19:40 So there’s a few things you can do, like we try and have price filters and you can set kind of tags to say these are my favorite retailers that I trust, but I’m really looking forward to the person who solves the problem of what does this fabric actually feel like, and it’d be interesting to see if that’s through 3D printing, or yeah, I just can’t see that as a problem that we can solve in the next decade. So is that not a bottleneck for you right now? Are you not finding that that’s a problem?
20:05 Yeah, I mean, it’s a bit of a problem in the sense that when we make a sale, if people take it back, then we lose the commission. But for me, I’m really, really keen to just become that tool that people discover fashion from. So if you’re snapping something in a shop window, you see that it’s available in Topshop. If someone goes next door to buy it, I really don’t mind that I’ve lost out on the commission. I just like the fact that people are kind of using Snap and interacting with it.
20:28 So my personal mission with Snap isn’t to make a load of money. It’s kind of to get people searching the world visually and then kind of make sure that we’re enhancing their consumer experience and yeah. She’s looking at WhatsApp business model where they’re not trying to make anything and then they get scooped up, right? So you just want people to use the technology and keep coming back to you. Yeah, I mean, the way that we monetize Snap at the moment, it’s great if we make affiliate sales and to be honest, affiliate is all a numbers game.
20:55 So the more people who are using Snap, the more likely they are to buy through it and we kind of build up that rapport with them. And that’s kind of in the long term how our revenues will be flowing and doing things like partnerships and just generally helping users get engaged in online shopping. I think when we’re playing the long game, it’s going to be how the company kind of grows in value. OK. You were recently in America, and I don’t know what you were doing over there, but you must be thinking about America as a market.
21:20 You must be thinking about the way the Americans tend to scale in a big way. Is this something that you’re going Are you going to need to go to America? Are you learning something from them or are you just going to keep doing the things that you’re doing here? Yeah, I mean I always laugh with people in England about it because every investment pitch ends with, we’re going to take our technology to America and I swear that everyone around Silicon Roundabout says it.
21:43 We had a company in recently that said they weren’t going to America. Really? Who was it? It was some, I don’t know, I’ll remember, but go ahead. They said they didn’t need to but I think it was Busu actually.
21:54 Yeah, Busu language company. They said, yeah, they’re doing everything from here. They don’t need to be there physically, but. Yeah, I mean, I’d really like to keep the development team in England, and I think that we don’t need to physically be in America on the kind of dev side of things. I think business development-wise, it really helps to have someone on the ground over there, because when you’re looking to do partnerships with the big fashion brands in America or with the technology brands, you definitely have to be there in person.
22:18 So I was over in California for two weeks, and just the meetings that we had just accelerated the process so much. So my plan is to work from London and then kind of once a course it goes to America and kind of meet up with cool companies and try and get some relationships going over there. And will you be looking for venture cap over there as well? I’m not at the moment. You guys haven’t raised venture cap, have you, in the past?
22:41 No, I mean, we’re kind of informally raising at the moment and looking at doing Series A, but we’re actually breaking even as a company. So we’re in that strange phase where we’re ticking along really nicely. We’re not pumping money into marketing. I think we spent a thousand pounds on letting people know about Snap. So yeah, we’re trying to just do it through partnerships and keep it kind of fairly organic for now.
23:03 Already breaking even, that’s incredible. How many users do you have? We’ve had about, of course, a million to date. So we’ve got about kind of 10 to 12,000 regular users a month, so. And where do you find that distribution?
23:14 It’s mostly web, actually, which really shocked me. So, yeah. Interesting. I think it’s because people are still at that phase where they’re happy to browse on the mobile, but they’re not quite comfortable enough to buy on it. And everyone goes, it’s because of security.
23:29 And it’s like, it’s really no less secure on mobile than it is on web. I don’t buy Amazon on my mobile. I always wanna be at a commuter for some reason. Yeah, there’s that weird social barrier that we’ve got at the moment. And I think it’s beginning to kind of break down and we’re seeing a slow shift towards mobile usage, but web is definitely the best platform for us at the moment.
23:47 And heavily UK-based? Yeah, we’ve only launched in the UK, so we’ve limited it on the App Store to the UK and we’re launching in Singapore later on this year which will be really cool to try out in that market. Why Singapore? We were approached by Singtel who are a telecoms company over there and they also do media provision and that kind of thing, so they heard about Snap and wanted to run a trial. So yeah, we’ll be in Singapore and then hopefully the rest of Asia by the end of the year.
24:12 How many staff do you have? There’s a grand total of four of us full-time and then seven all together. I mean, you you know how to run a lean operation. Yeah, you don’t start it I think it’s something some people could learn from you as far as I’m sure you’ve been times where you’re like I have we doubled the employees I could do x y and z but you know, yeah But you know you you obviously don’t run your organization that way. Have you been conflicted in the past?
24:35 Yeah, I’m normally conflicted when I’ve worked 20 hour day and then go why am I doing this to myself? But um, I mean there are I really really like running a lean startup because I think people feel really empowered in their own kind job role and they are really owning that bit and I don’t like to interfere but you do get bitten by it once in a while when you normally say to investors well we’ve done this with seven people and imagine if you invested but then they can look at other companies who have had three million investments tech team of 19 and that automatically seems a bit more threatening even though we’ve achieved slightly more or in different areas so I think there’s definitely a balance to be had on being lean but also putting out that projection of we’re not just seven people in a room, like you can trust us and we’re a good company to work with especially when it comes to commercial partnerships as well it’s kind of proving that working with such a small company is kind of a good thing for them to do. Yeah it’s weird when you hear the number of staffs you make all these preconceived assumptions don’t you? Yeah someone came in for a meeting the other day and they went oh where are the rest of the team I thought you had about 50 I was like nope just us it’s fine but I’m also notoriously stingy so people have laughed at me for that all my life so I’m hoping it’s paying off now.
25:45 I get a frugal feeling from Jenny, you know? She runs like a serious shop there. I buy awesome presents for people, but apart from that, very silly. Is that why you started your visual search with fashion? Because you’re always searching for the best deal?
25:58 Yeah, exactly. I was properly shopping on a student budget at the time, and I just didn’t get why I was always going to the same shop. So if I wanted to buy something cheap, I was always going to Primark. If I was kind of treating myself, I’d go into top shops, Zara, Mango, and I kind of got myself into this style rut in a way. And then you read fashion magazines and you see all these amazing brands that you didn’t know existed.
26:21 So, yeah, it just seemed like a really good way of discovery and on the cheap, so. Yeah. And when you travel to the States, what kind of vibe do you get over there? What do you see that you wish that we could replicate more in London? And what do you see that you think that we do much better than they do?
26:37 It’s such a different vibe over there. I think the biggest difference is in startup founders because I’ve kind of got by being myself kind of fairly laid back and calm, don’t really speak that loudly in interviews, whereas the founders over in America are proper showmen and I’m always blown away by it because they stand up there and they talk about these amazing things that their company are doing. And then by the end of the presentation, you’re kind of like on your feet thinking I’ve got to invest in these people.
27:05 And I’m not sure if you’re over in America for long enough, you probably get a bit blind to it but as an English person going over there it really kind of opened my eyes into how polished American startups are. It’s really impressive so trying to learn a bit from them in that sense and not change who I am but just be a bit more kind of willing to broadcast the stuff that we’ve done and not kind of skirt over our achievements as much. But yeah things I think the UK do well. I think that we’re a bit more frugal because we know that investment is harder to get And we really kind of value the contacts that we have as well.
27:40 So, yeah, I think that we’re all a bit kind of more scared over here, but that might not necessarily be a bad thing. Did you find that you were hearing so many pitches that you were almost exhausted? Because we’ve talked about that, like the drink about over here is very casual and people can kind of hang out. And, you know, just imagine in the valley or the alley where, you know, everyone’s just hitting you with the pitch, you know, left and right. And like after a while, your head’s spinning because everyone’s got the pitch.
28:04 It’s going to change your life for every single company. Yeah, it’s true. I was waiting for someone to say something negative at some point, and it just didn’t happen for two weeks. A negative at all, or about their company? Yeah, just everyone’s talking about how great everyone is.
28:19 And it’s really, really nice. It’s so refreshing going over there for two weeks, and it kind of really lifts your spirits. But I imagine if you’re immersed in it for too long, you begin to get a bit jaded and over-pitched, definitely. And do you think you could hire better in Silicon Alley, Or would it be harder, the alley or the valley? I think some of the problems that I’m coming across recruiting in the UK is that people don’t see startups as a viable career path.
28:43 And I think that’s definitely changed over the past couple of years, but we’ve still got a very long way to go, compared to what they’re doing over in Silicon Valley. So when you say we’re a small startup, we’re growing, people normally think that’s a lot of risk. So you have problems attracting the best talent. So there’s probably that advantage to being in the valley, but obviously kind of salaries over there are fairly insane and people expect a lot when they join a startup. So I guess if things aren’t really taking off after a year, you probably lose your key staff more quickly. So yeah, I think it swings around about to that one.
29:18 And how do you recruit now? Really badly. We’re hiring. Do you spend 60% of your time recruiting? That’s what Saul Klein from Index Ventures says that the Moshi Monster people should do 60% of your time.
29:29 I really wish I could because finding the right people for the company is so important, especially when we’re so small, and I hate the phrase, but we’re really trying to build up that kind of company culture of this is what we want Snap to be when we grow. So yeah, I spend so much time trying to meet people, convincing them that we’re not a fashion company. I’m really gonna change my company name for that one because trying to attract developers when your name is Snap Fashion is an uphill struggle, definitely.
29:53 What, they don’t wanna work for a fashion company? Surprisingly not. Okay. What do they think you do? most people think that we’re a fashion design company or that kind of thing so normally when I speak to male developers I’m like with snap technology really we just got a fashion kind of facing. Yeah she calls it snap. She calls it snap. It’s true. She’s losing the fashion.
30:13 What are you hiring for at the moment? Web developers, zap developers, user experience designers so really really trying to build out the team. And how do they get get in touch with you? Jobs at snapfashion.co.uk or tweet me so yeah. And is that talent to be found on the outer reaches of the European Union, in your opinion?
30:32 Yeah, it’s a really interesting one. We’ve got a job at Vertow on Stack Overflow at the moment, and not one person from the UK is applied. So I really, I think it’s great that we’re being able to get all of the talent from European Union and that we don’t have issues with visas and that kind of thing. But I do find it strange that no one in the UK is applying for any jobs, as far as I can see, so. It’s all going just too well.
30:54 Yeah, but like developers are great wherever they’re from. I mean, being able to speak code is just one of those things that you’ve either got or you don’t have. So just being able to find the best talent from all across Europe, I think is a really kind of strong draw for London and being based here. And these other awards you’ve won? I mean, you’ve won like tons of awards.
31:13 On your LinkedIn profile, there’s like seven awards. I was like, come on, Jenny, what are you doing? How do you win all these awards? You said you didn’t apply for any of them? Yeah, I mean, at the beginning it was me being fairly desperate and applying everything in sight. So I mean Cisco was the first one that I entered, no that’s a lie, and Tech City Launchpad was the first one I entered with the technology strategy board and we won a hundred thousand pounds worth of funding and that was what actually let me give up my full-time job and join SNAP. So that was a really really good one and then we kind of went through a phase where I was applying for startup awards and things like being named as future 50 competition and that kind of thing just to try and raise our reputation. How do you find all these awards? Because I have no idea. Is it just Twitter? Yeah it’s just potluck. I mean the Cisco Bridge Innovation Awards I was literally just, it was the last day that the competition was open and someone tweeted it to me and I thought might as well give it a go. Because it just seems like there’s so many awards and incubators and everything like that. It’s so hard, there needs to be like an amalgamation of all the awards that can be won. And the travel is like I’m actually trying not to enter awards anymore because it makes it look like all I do is enter awards every day and also we’re trying to move out of the
32:24 Phase of being perceived as a startup I’d like to be seen as a kind of a slightly more established company in a way so we’re trying to move out of the startup awards phase but yeah we applied for TSB Cisco decoded and then after that they’ve just kind of come our way but like I said earlier I’m kind of a rare computer scientist female so I guess we kind of get noticed a bit more because of that. Do you think you’ll ever like snap up a company that might have a few employees that’ll have that missing piece of the puzzle in tech and do you also think that that might you might get snapped up in a similar way because you’re talking about a huge huge issue. Is that what it’s called these days?
33:04 Is that acquisition hire? Do you think about both pieces of that puzzle? Yeah definitely I’m always thinking about both sides because I think I used the phrase earlier but kind of reinventing the wheel is one of those things everyone’s doing every day so I get quite annoyed when you see another startup cropping up and you know the people who already have a similar startup and you’re thinking well if you had just worked together then it would have cut so many corners and the same is beginning to happen in visual search and so there are all these kind of people cropping up and it’s it would be really tempting to just go for kind of acquiring someone else or if someone bigger wanted to incorporate snap then we’re always open to it because I mean my mission when I started the company I wasn’t looking to kind of get rich, or I’m not one of those people who always wanted to run my own business.
33:48 It was this kind of mission to make online discovery easier. And if it’s a case of, if we join another company, then we can make that happen, then yeah, it could be a really nice outcome for us. Because I’m sure Google or an Apple, or who knows, might find this an interesting acquisition. Yeah, it’s all very weird though, when you’re a startup, it’s very cloak and dagger. So you go for these meetings with people and you’re like, I’m not sure how to interpret anything that you’re saying, and you end up reading things into it.
34:12 Trying to partner me, steal my stuff. Yeah, exactly. So I’m just. Ask me out. You don’t know what’s going on, right?
34:19 Where do you find your competition? What areas of visual search are they going in? There’s a few who have cropped up in fashion recently. I’m not going to say their names on this. No, of course not.
34:29 No, and there are a few people really beginning to crop up. And it’s really nice in a way that it validates the market for us. And it shows it’s an interesting sector. But I do worry that if so many fashion visual search engines crop up and users are just gonna think it’s a bit of a fad and there are too many of them now. I wonder why is fashion the place to be in visual search and not you know like a microphone or you know like an Amazon type product. I mean I think it’s quite glamorous industry on the face of it to be involved in and everyone thinks like yeah fashion you’ll get these great freebies and it’s like the most complicated of all goods you know you take a picture of this microphone it seems a lot easier to match this with product online than to match this right? Yeah it’s true I mean the reason I started doing fashion was I wanted to create a visual search engine for the whole world and then my professor took me into a room and went I think you’re being a bit ambitious there Jenny and then I just thought about what I personally want to use a visual search engine for and fashion just seems so obvious because it’s one of those things it’s really hard to put your finger on what it is you like about a bit of clothing so that was my motivation and I think it’s one of those areas that fashion tech was really heavily invested in about two years ago and it was really attracting loads of startups to the area so you’ve
35:44 Got people like me tell doing kind of virtual trying on and you’ve got people doing kind of pop-up shops and all these kind of virtual technologies around fashion so naturally the visual search engineers were going to kind of latch onto that and go you know what that’s a great industry for us so now that all the investments is centered on kind of education and FinTech and health tech it will be interesting to see if visual search starts moving into that sector well because it’s where the money is in a way. Yeah. Yeah. No, I love visual search. I think it’s a real move forward for sure. It makes a lot more sense to take a picture of something and be able to find something. And I think the way it’s going to evolve is because searching the world is such a huge task. I think there are going to be kind of startups in each of the different sectors.
36:26 I find like now almost it’s a skill in what words to actually use in order to search and find something. Because there’s so much noise out there and you spend like 3, 4, 5, 15 different phrases trying to find what you’re looking for whereas it’s getting to that point where search is becoming a little bit difficult. And you need a curator too which I think is what you do to a certain extent. You show them an item and then you want to be suggested other things.
36:54 Yeah, it’s true. There’s just so much choice out there and it’s great because it means You can basically buy anything online nowadays and same with if you want to find something out It’s guaranteed to be online, but trying to find it and trying to find all of the best sources of information as well It’s it’s getting really tough. So I’m looking forward to the startup as well He’s manages to finally condense kind of Twitter and news feeds and all of those things into one Kind of reputable news stream. It will be really interesting And is it only I mean do you need to get to the state sooner or then later just to even prove it to yourself That you can like scale on this massive way or is that not really necessary?
37:28 Can you just perfect the UK market and build it up? Yeah Um, I really want to get to the States this year and because I think it’s a really interesting market for us And I just be gutted if someone beat us to it. So and there’s a bit of that going on and And also I think if people are going to notice us and kind of take us seriously as a technology company Then I think it’s great to be based in the UK. We definitely need to have a presence in the US So it’s definitely on our roadmap that and I had two weeks of sunshine and now I I want to move that. Hey, the weather’s been great this week.
37:59 It’s true, I can’t complain, I brought it back with me. There we go. What’s the biggest mistake that you see startups in London making, say in the last 12 months? That’s a good one. I mean personally my biggest mistake was taking so long to have the guts to start up my company.
38:13 So I worked full time for a company and don’t get me wrong, I loved working for them and I was a project manager so I kind of got to learn a lot of skills I didn’t get at university but I do find it a bit grueling once in a while, but Snap could have been out there two years ago and we’d be far ahead of the competition by now. But I think the danger in London in general is there are so many socialising things going on at the moment within Silicon Roundabout, so there’s drinks every night and all these different talks and if you went to all of them, it’d probably be like a full-time job for about five people. So I think it’s being able to be savvy about what you want to engage with and what you don’t And being aware that there are quite a few sharks out there as well, kind of constantly touting for business and putting out some deals which aren’t necessarily great for founders.
39:00 Well, as far as venture capital investment, shark wise? It’s not so much investment because an investor’s job is to kind of invest in the right businesses and get a healthy stake and to be motivated by it. There are a lot of people offering services for equity, which people like accountants and lawyers, and you think, well, it’s good if you’re doing a completely lean startup and you don’t want to raise capital and they’re the right people for your business, but the assumption normally is you start talking about your business and they go, that’s great, I’ll do it for five percent, and yeah, it’s quite scary when you think about it. It definitely took me a while to get savvy to it.
39:38 And you stay away from the social events, or try not to do too many. I’m a really anti-social person. No, not you. I’m always working. Yeah, I mean there are certain events that I would always go on to, like I think Silicon Drink about is great and tend to frequent Google campus quite a bit, but there are other events when you go in there and you just realise that I hate to say it’s a lot of people without companies kind of just wanting in on the scene in a way and yeah, going for the lifestyle rather than the networking.
40:06 Yeah, it’s funny we talked about that early on in the show that a lot of people wanted to be part of a start-up because it was kind of the rockstar thing to do and then You realize your exit is going to be in seven to ten years and it’s going to work for next to nothing for a good chunk of that in an office with rats in it or whatever you call developers now. I’m just kidding. Shh. I’m losing confidence. Yeah, I know.
40:28 It’s hard work. We had a few people in here. We always talk about the work day here in London and we had one guy that said he leaves by example. He makes sure he leaves at six o’clock every night because he doesn’t want to be the boss that’s like, why aren’t you working all the time? I’m awful at that but I don’t force in fact I’m the boss who’s always there until midnight but turns around at seven and goes for goodness sake go home you need to get some rest and then don’t follow my own rules so what is the fine line because you know that the Yanks have a tendency to either overwork or tell people that they’re overworking you know I would say the Brits are the opposite someone say the Germans are even worse as in they’re like we’re out of here it’s it’s six o’clock where do you where do you find snap is I’m I’m hoping I’ve got the balance right, but that’s one of the reasons that recruiting is really hard because you want people to realise that, oh God, I’m about to say start-up life.
41:17 I hate that phrase. Just do it. Hashtag start-up life is fairly full on, but you have kind of peaks and flows, so you need to be one of those people who can stay late in the office and kind of enjoy it and get in pizzas and find it exhilarating rather than finding it draining. So I think the balance is just finding the right character of the job rather than making making sure that you’re kind of mandating all of these rules. Yeah, Davinia from, you know, Moshi Monsters, she said, you know, ultimately it’s a start-up and you have to be passionate about the job and that means you are going to think about it in the shower.
41:50 Yeah, it’s true. And if you’re a founder, it is your life and I never realized that when I first started Snap. I did it part-time and I thought it would be a hobby and it’s all-consuming and it’s the best thing that I’ve ever done but it means that if you don’t quite believe in it or you’re slightly on the edge, it’s quite a dangerous thing to get yourself into. Just thinking, yeah, I’ll flip over the company and sell it for millions is not a normal reality.
42:12 It’s unlikely. Yeah. Somebody was in the situation. Anything I didn’t… Yeah.
42:17 I’m curious. You have a small team. Yeah. How do you motivate your employees? We took them to Beyonce this week.
42:23 So that was a good motivation. There we go. That’s big. That’s a big one. So bribing them with entertainment.
42:28 It’s a good one. Okay. And food is always good. You know, share warrants and stuff like that for them down the road to turn in, is that? Yeah, at the moment we don’t have a share options pool just because we’ve kept the investment quite small but that’s coming in when we raise Series A so that’s definitely a motivator.
42:45 And I think just making sure, it sounds awful, but that you’re kind of building their CVs at the same time that they’re working there because everyone knows that if you’re working for a start-up, it’s not going to last forever unless we end up being Facebook, which which would be fairly cool. But yeah, I think it’s all about making sure that they’re doing the things that they enjoy and I always kind of take them to one side if I’ve given them a task and go like, is this one that you want to do or is there anything else you think would be better? And just making sure that you’re kind of skilling them up as well as working them hard.
43:15 No, that’s good. No, that’s really good. Jenny, I always ask everyone that’s here the same question at the end. You might know this is coming, but I’m gonna hit you with it. If you could give a phone call to the 20-year-old, Jenny Griffiths, six years ago, and give that girl a bit of advice, What would you tell her?
43:31 I would tell her to have a bit more faith in her own ideas and not take so long to start up the company that she was meant to do. And I’d also say that to anyone, actually, success is all about working hard. And the more you put into something, the more you’re going to get out of it. So I should have worked harder at university in the first couple of years. And yeah, I think it’s all about just being really committed and sticking with stuff.
43:58 That’s a good quote. On that same note, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received? Oh, that’s a good one. It is just have utter belief in what you’re saying. And don’t be the arrogant person who walks into the room and expects everyone to believe them, but learn how to stand your ground.
44:14 If someone’s telling you that your app is awful or that visual search isn’t the future and they just think that you’re wasting your time, which believe or not, people do say quite a lot to me, is just kind of not take it personally. but learn how to listen to criticism, pick out the good stuff, and then kind of try and shelf the other stuff and not really think about it too much. Good, I like that. And finally, to the 20-year-old that’s listening around the world in Singapore who’s gonna use your app soon, or in California or anywhere, what advice do you give to them say they do wanna get into start-up life?
44:49 Hashtag start-up life. Use the hashtag on Twitter, because everyone retweets it. I’d say, yeah, seriously, you should try it. Bumper views that I’ve been using. That’s my advice to attend to your oldest views, hashtag stars of life everywhere.
45:03 I know it sounds really contrived because everyone is saying at the moment, but learn how to code. Because if I hadn’t learned how to code, then I would have had to go out, raise capital, test out my ideas, get a minimum viable product using other people, and you’re so dependent on other people, even just developers giving you quotes. I’ve got the kind of knowledge to be able to say, I think you’ve underestimated that or think you might be taking the mix slightly.
45:26 So learning how to code, if you’re gonna start a digital business, there’s nothing more useful that you can do with your time. Right, even if you’re not gonna do the coding, you need to be able to look over their shoulder and make sure. Yeah, I mean, I try not to code anymore. I’m one of those people, I come up with these grand algorithms on paper and then it takes me ages to code them myself. But just having a grasp of what you’re asking your developers to do is so key.
45:49 And it also means that they respect you a bit more as well, just if you can kind of empathize with them and kind of throw out a few ideas now and again. I think it creates a really strong dynamic in your company. Well, that’s good advice. I think we’ve heard that a lot on this show. And I think it’s so true.
46:03 And it’s funny, Jenny was kind of alluding to the fact that this is a bit, you’re just back from San Francisco, they had the gold rush in 1849. And who got rich? It was Levi Strauss that sold all the jeans and all the pots and pans. Everyone else was just speculating. But as this becomes more of a bull market and bigger and bigger, you’re gonna get, like you said, accountants, lawyers, everybody wants 5% here, 5% there.
46:23 Some coder’s gonna quote you 30 grand for an app when you know it shouldn’t cost you that. And then all of a sudden, your life cycle, your company just got shut down in half. Yeah, exactly. By definition, statistically, you don’t succeed. So, you have to be very wary, don’t you?
46:36 Yeah, and being able to wear loads of different hats is just so key. So, making sure that you’ve got not a really in-depth knowledge of everything, but just being able to kind of hold a conversation about finance and legal and all these different aspects, social marketing and just being able to dip in and out and also know your weaknesses and when you need to hire the right person to do it properly. And five years from now, where are you gonna be sitting? Someone in San Francisco, what are you gonna be looking at through the glass doors?
47:03 You know, what’s it gonna be? Have a little empire by then, I hope. No, I’m hoping that I’m kind of splitting my time between London and kind of San Francisco or New York and in a load of different verticals in visual search. So I’d love Snap to be kind of leading in fashion visual search and people naturally kind of, my dream is to hear someone looking at a dress in a shop window and going, oh, you should just snap it. And it being kind of a really natural behavior.
47:30 So that would be my dream. And a load of developers doing really cool stuff on computer vision R and D and really kind of pushing the barriers, that would be amazing. I like it, I like it. Pretty cool. Good, great.
47:43 Story? Did I miss it? How much longer until you have the men’s snap fashion? Seriously, it’s discriminating. It’s true. It’s gonna be launching in the summer hopefully. In summer? Yeah. Perfect. Just in time for the short season. Exactly. Yeah, it’s apps we can’t use. We can’t use Datch, you know, we can’t use Snap right now. It’s ridiculous. I know. We’ve got to get used to it.
48:05 Discrimination. I love the story. You know, like I said, you were our first person for you know for fashion tech but in a way you’re not really fashion tech and so I mean you are but you know you’re you’re also gonna be so much bigger so it’s kind of exciting to see this on the ground or floors you know and see where it’s gonna go. I have to pop back if it all goes well. Yeah we’re gonna read about her in some huge acquisitions. Yeah you seem like a perfect sort of acquisition for a big player to just get into the visual search as like an ac you hire I think It’s if you’re out there if you’re meeting Jenny for the first time on silicone real you could just give us a 1% Bitcoin finders fee. Yeah, one has to know Bitcoin and it’s all good. Yeah, just contributes to the to the general environment. That was on that piece of paper you said Jenny if people want to get up in touch with you personally or you mentioned the job or Twitter. What’s the best from?
49:01 Yeah, and so I’m Jenny at snap fashion.co.uk everything comes through to me eventually. So even if you email omnishambles at snapfashion.co.uk you will get through to me. Take that Colin Farrell. She just hit us with the code word. Do you actually respond to your emails? I really do yeah. I’ve got 400 in my inbox at the moment but that’s all gonna change tomorrow. I’ve got emails on my Trello list and I’m also fairly hot on Twitter, so I’m Jenny SnapTech and then SnapFashion is just at SnapFashion.
49:37 Okay, and the app is on iPhones now and coming to Android soon? It launched on Android last week, so yeah, we’ve got SnapColorPop, which is like the really stable take photo of the color we’ll find anything, and then you’ve got SnapFashion, which is a bit more experimental and really kind of pushing the boundaries. So they’re two separate apps? Yeah, that’s right, yeah. SnapColorPop and SnapFashion?
49:55 Yeah, that’s right, on both platforms. SnapColorPop. And then the website, obviously as well. You know SnapCracklePop? Yeah, I did that without realizing.
50:02 Weirdly enough, everyone thinks I’m the founder of Snapchat, so I take that one once in a while. Interesting. So you’re a billionaire. How does that feel? Apparently so.
50:13 It’s all good. It probably just feels the same the next day. Nothing changed. That’s fantastic. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, you can watch our beautiful faces on the YouTube channel, SiliconReel.
50:22 Come follow us on Twitter, at SiliconReel. Send us messages, hello, at siliconreal.com. You know people like you that suggest great guests like Jenny and everyone else. So well keep guest suggestions and yeah interns keep helping out Yeah, we’ve got great people cutting videos for us making phone calls and making all this stuff worth episode 36 and We hope to keep going. So yeah all the help and spread the word Yeah, but no, it’s been fantastic venture. It’s great If you want to learn a bit about this industry just watch 35 episodes of Silicon real you’ll meet Benjamin Southworth and you’ll go from number 10 to Halo, to Jenny, you know, to Datch, to Digital Shadows. I mean, you can get a really, a nice, you know, snapshot of what’s going on. My first show, I said, what is a moshi monster? And look at me now. Now I say words like UX, you know, when I’m hanging out with my friends. So yeah, it’s all good. As we say on Silicon Real, it’s about the people. Jenny, you’re one of them. Thanks so much for coming.
51:18 And yeah, I wish you guys all the best. Thanks very much.
