How are you? Welcome to the Entrepreneur Experiment podcast with me, gary Fox. Today, my guest is Colm Lyons, the co-founder of IDPAL. They help you with real-time customer verification, cut down on fraud and increase sales. Here's my chat with Colm Colm. Welcome to the pod. Thank you very much, gary. Quite a transition there, wasn't it? Yeah straight in See what happens behind the scenes, right.
No messing.
Welcome, welcome, good to have you in. You're definitely, yeah, definitely 2024 first person wearing shorts in the pod.
Summer's kicked in, isn't it May 1st?
We're here, isn't it?
Yeah, we're here. We were meant to be doing a very serious business prep chat there. We end up talking about holidays, life, family, everything but business. Sometimes that's important as well, you know, to be honest, way more important.
What do you do? So I set up a business in 2016 called IDPAL. We do identity verification, so the easiest way to explain it to people is if you're setting up a bank account and you need to verify who you are. We're kind of the company behind the scenes there.
So you know, we're obviously in a world as well where a lot of stuff is done remotely, and so the ability to prove who you are from the comfort of your own home or wherever you are on a bus or a train and then give the confidence, the business that they're dealing with a real, genuine, live person as well.
That seems incredibly timely, considering what came four years later yeah.
So again there's. I always kind of talk about right time, right place, but right time, right place is fine, but you also need to have the actual business behind it and the proper structures in place. I don't think that that really accelerated things too much, if I'm honest. That's kind of I think the world and the market had started moving in terms of kind of remote. So if you think about all the neobanks and all these, they were all around and they were going strong at it.
They were the ones I thought of as you were explaining to me, they were the ones, because the Senate Revolution kind of member kind of going oh, tilt up, tilt down to my left, turn right. I think that was the first time I did it.
You don't want to be doing that anymore. They're very easy to spoof. Really yeah yeah, so not to bore people or get into too much technical detail.
That's what we're here for. Well, not to bore people, we're here to get into all the nerdy detail.
Yeah, so there's passive liveness and active liveness Activists. Where you passive liveness, that happens behind the scenes, so you're not actually asked to do anything. So, yeah, you're able to check for depth of the face, make sure there's no face masks going on, screens of screens, no injection attacks. So it's a different technology that kind of changed. Again, it's about the fraudsters, so the fraudsters caught on to the how to get around active liveness solutions.
Really yeah, Even that like the whole kind of moving around tilting. Yeah, Jeez, because I remember looking at that going geez, that's pretty clever. Because you know it used to be just like take a picture of your face, yeah, but what you could easily do is if you knew what the process was. And again they're all the same, every time.
Same time and a lot of the time. You know I won't tarnish everyone with the same brush and say everyone will get caught. But yeah, they're just. They're easily spoofed.
Interesting. See, that's the kind of inside baseball I brought you on for. There you go. So Are we done. That's it, end of the pod. Thanks for coming when you set up in 2016,. What was, what was the plan Like? Who are we aiming at?
Yeah, so my background is all kind of financial services. Um, I was a stock broker at the time. Um, I knew nothing about technology.
So a lot of my friends do laugh at me that I've gone into the technology world, um, but it was very much that world that I was in and you know it was heavy financial services and I was getting fairly browned off with the whole process of identity verification and verifying identity of not just my customers but if I was setting up my own bank account or dealing with the law firm rent that I was doing. So that's kind of where it came from. So it was very much the.
It was just the, you know, the financial services firms. That's how I looked at it. But if you look at it today it's a completely different thing. Now I will say you know, 90% of our businesses using us are heavy regulated financial services firms, but you have that 10% softer side.
So childminding companies, dog walking companies, selling whiskey One of them that I love is like the horse trade, so the likes of Goffs and Tattersalls, who are the two big horse dealers in Europe both of them need to verify identities and both use us.
In what sense? Give me the example there.
Well, it's because it's money, it's a transaction, so you want to make sure who the person is behind the transaction. So over a certain threshold you've got to prove your identity.
Is that a know your customer thing? It would be. Yeah, what is that? Over 5k.
It's different thresholds for different industries but, generally it's around that 10k mark. So again, art dealers, things like this, there's some kind of strange ones that you wouldn't have thought of. I never thought of most of these, to be honest.
So if I'm going to sell a horse for like 50k, I have to use some sort of verification software, correct? Yeah, okay, so you have to create an account and then use the system that you're powering in the back end.
Exactly, and what does? How does it? Work so we have a couple of component parts right. So the whole concept and idea of the business was that and I'm a big believer of SMEs and I'm a big believer of SMEs and I won't get into a different conversation there around the current state of play in Ireland and our reliance on a lot of the larger tech firms.
Oh, we're definitely going to go there now. That's a yeah, so I've got a saddle for that hobby horse.
So the idea was kind of create a solution that the large industry would build themselves so typically large firms want to build it themselves so we would create and build something that we would be able to sell at a reasonable price to SMEs, mid-tier firms that just didn't have the capacity, the money, the knowledge, the know-how to actually build it. So we built a SaaS configurable solution completely off the shelf, so any business, no matter what size you are, can use our solution.
We have, you know. We say we can have you live in five minutes with your logo, your colors, your brand, all your business requirements. We can. Truth is, businesses aren't fast enough to move with you, but we've had plenty of scenarios where someone signs up in the morning and they're live that afternoon.
Wow, yeah, so it's one of those things you would assume takes a long time and it's quite laborious yeah, and you're basically replacing a manual process. Literally, you know um out of the box same day how it used to be done, like what you'd have to send in id and then get it verified, or how did it used to do?
yeah, so typically you would have to meet someone face-to-face, but if you weren't meeting someone face-to-face, you would drop the documents in, you would post them, you would email them. You know recently a lot of getting them WhatsAppped, you know things like that. So, like it's the whole landscape from a compliance point of view. It's kind of comical. It's actually real tick box and stuff.
So one of the things that we wanted to make sure that we focused on was that it wasn't a tick box exercise, that we went above and beyond and that we were actually checking that this document is real. We're actually making sure that the person is who they say they are. So it gives you the business confidence that this is who they say they are.
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Sounds kind of complicated it is like again, if you use the service it might take you 30 seconds, 60 seconds, and um, I think the day that I kind of realized that we're actually really onto something was when my first buddy texts me and says just use id, pal. It's pretty cool, only took me 20 seconds. Um, and I thought that was like wow, okay, he's not. You know, he lives in waterford and whatever else. So, um, and then you kind of go yeah, it was pretty easy.
But actually behind the scenes and the years of building and the technology and that's what I'm saying, like it sounds like a tough business to build.
It's very not one of those kind of businesses you go, I can see how you do that like. Yeah, so you're as your years as a stockbroker you'd seen kind of how complicated it was, how much work was involved.
Yeah, and it wasn't even as a stockbroker, it was just every job I was ever in. You know, and you know I talked to buddies and everyone's just giving out about it and talking about it.
I'm just like all right, what do I do? But what was the point? Because I'm always curious about that point, from zero to one, whereby people are like I'm going to solve that problem. What was that point for you?
So I told this story a couple of months ago where basically it was. So the idea with a stockbroker is they transfer you money, you invest their money and you make a percentage commission from that trade. So very simple business, obviously. And if the money is sitting in the account and their identity isn't verified, you can't use that money to invest in stock, so I can't make commission. So it was always that pressure to get people to verify their identities very, very quickly.
So you'd be on the phone and you'd be asking people to kind of go to your house. I'll drive down to Cork to you because it was worth your while. So it was just. It was a random, like horrible wet. I think it was October, november morning and this lady walked into the office and I got a call from reception to say you know, this person is waiting for you. So I went out and she was drenched, wet and miserable and she'd left her house early to come into the office to give me her documents.
And then I took the documents and I went and I photocopied them and I remember sitting at the front of the the office and it was kind of a big, huge, long office and I was photocopying the documents. I was like this is just this is wrong this just doesn't make sense. And I went back to her set up the account but I kind of went like that person had to leave her house early, she's soaked and the process from a compliance point of view. I didn't know if it was a real document or fake document.
I photocopied it, I gave it to the compliance team, I gave to the onboarding team, so her documentation had gone everywhere and I went okay, that's just, that's just horrible. So what I did was I actually started googling to see is there anything I could suggest to the business? And I couldn't find anything. So then I kind of got a little bit excited about it and started telling everyone that you know that this is what I was excited about and it's not a very sexy, cool business.
I was just going to say. I'd say most people are like great, yeah, yeah, antibody laundering yeah, KYC.
Yeah it's great.
Documents.
Yeah. So people were like it's kind of funny. What I did to a lot of people was what I said to them was these are three things that I need. Come back to me by Friday and guaranteed no one ever come back to you by Friday. So you knew they weren't in the right person. So it was until the people that I was talking to actually came back and was like, oh, they were as excited about this as I was and within kind of four months, four or five months there was three of us involved.
How Like what were you?
looking for.
What were you looking for?
What were you looking for? Were you looking for co-founders for technical people? Oh yeah, 100%. What were you doing?
I Were you looking for co-founders for technical people. Oh yeah, 100%. What were you doing? I knew my strengths, but I also knew my weaknesses right, and I said at the start I'm not into technology, I'm not a technological genius, so I was going to be building a tech company. That was the concept and idea. The minutes from our very first meeting are blown up and hung in our boardroom, which I love, and the beautiful thing about that is I know on this podcast everyone talks about pivots.
Uh, I love the fact that we've never, ever, ever, ever had to pivot I like that. So actually what's on the, what's on the board, what's in the boardroom, is actually what we have today. Um so, that's rare. Yeah, it's cool, it's cool, yeah, um, so that's so. How did?
again, this is always something I'm always trying to give as much practical advice to people not advice, but practical stories as possible to people so they can kind of get on the journey themselves. What did you do to find these people? Because people always struggle to go I can't find a co-founder, how did you find these people could? And I think a lot of the times you hear people saying, oh, you got a great idea. Don't tell people, they'll steal it.
99.999999% of people will not do anything they don't care, and I mean that in the best way possible. They don't care about you. They don't care about your stupid idea. They don't care about you. They don't want to hear about you. They're like cool, 100%. Anyway, let me tell you about the match last night.
They go out the back door yeah, um, no, the kind of the. The great moment was um. I was a wedding, I was at a wedding, I was a groomsman oh it's totally like you know having pints, there you go, and the guy that was sitting beside me was also groomsman for the same guy. Uh, uh, clearly, and we'd never met each other before, and I started telling him how it was doing. Um, and weirdly, he got a bit excited about it.
Uh, he was living abroad at the time and and he says, yeah, he was thinking about coming home and just the way he was talking, I knew that he had totally different traits and experience than what I had. So he decided, right, I'll pack up my job. And he moved back to Ireland and away. We went that's bonkers. So that's bonkers, yeah.
How did you know he was the right person?
Just by talking to him Just genuinely, like you know just the way he was. Now I will say for his sins and I always slag him about this he was a consultant back in the day, so he had a way and means of putting things together that I just didn't have that expertise right. So we very much complemented each other in that way and that's what it was as well. It was about complimenting. Like I didn't want a same me, so it was about complimenting each other.
But I think all the kind of the co-founders of the business stories are kind of cool, like the Rob O'Farrell is our. So that was a guy, james O'Toole. He'd kill me if I didn't mention his name I was gonna say yeah, um so james now lives in new york um, set up there, uh, 12, 14 months ago. But rob o'farrell is our cto? Um and everyone kind of goes where did you get rob from? And I think rob is a very, very special person? Um, he's a, he's a genius in his own right?
Um, but I put into linkedin, you'll enjoy this. I put into linkedin c t o search and around 300 names come up and I pinged every one of them and, yes, I had around 30 responses. Um, what did you say? Oh, it was just. I can't even remember exactly what I said, but it was. You know. Hi, my name is Colm. I'm setting up this business. You know, blah, blah, blah. We're looking for people with your expertise. I have no money, and it was something along those lines.
So I had around 30 people that responded out of the 300.
Not a bad hit rate, to be fair.
No, it was actually okay yeah, and out of those 30 then I went forward and kind of met with 8 or 10 of them. Every one of them that I met I spent maybe 20 minutes, half an hour with and with Rob. I met him and we spent 3 or 4 hours together. So it did take a while to get Rob. He was involved in something else and then when that finished, we hooked up maybe 6 months later and he came on board. So that was quite cool.
Is it a hard sell because techno people are so rare? Great techno people are rare.
I don't think it was a hard sell to him because his mindset so he's not just a techie, he's also business Right. So I think he has that kind of unique kind of mindset. I think for the right person it's not a hard sell, but it's about finding the right person you know, um, so uh, yeah, and then we met like so I was kind of a ceo of the business and needed a ceo um, and he was the kind of the next big hire.
Now granted, that was kind of three years ago, so we were maybe I think he's he was the 11th person in um, but we were at a, we were at a function again more alcohol involved, um, and there was maybe 10 or 12 people. So we had we had the, the coo role out in the market. We had maybe 100 people apply for the job, which blew my mind. Um interviewed loads of people and I was really really struggling. I had a kind of short list of three people but wasn't overly happy with all three.
And then just randomly at this event and a group of people in a circle talking and Simon Montgomery was the guy and he was just chatting, and I just turned around to one of our guys and I went he's our COO and chased him and got him. So that was that. So it was all kind of like, you know, different, kind of Different stories. For all the lads In that regard.
I love hearing that, because People really struggle With that part.
Yeah.
And I think they're afraid To put themselves out there. I think, that's the honest answer. Is that they're afraid to what you said there? Is that they're afraid to what you said there? Is that they're afraid to tell people yeah, yeah, Then they're afraid to pursue.
Yeah.
And then they're afraid to have uncomfortable conversations.
Yeah, no, 100%, and we actually. One of the things we love doing is putting memories up around the office. So after I met Rob that time he put up on his LinkedIn about this cool little Irish startup that was looking to take on a CTO and if anyone knew anyone. So we have his post up on our wall.
He ended up to be the CTO Stay humble Rob, Exactly.
So three of you got together. How long are we talking here? How long are you putting this together? Because that's important to know.
It'd be unjust to me also to mention so. We also had Shelley McKinney, who, well, she's now McKinney, she was Masdor. We were going to actually move the business to Amsterdam at one stage. So we won a startup lab thing in Amsterdam startup bootcamp. There was 300 companies applied. We got ranked number one and we were about to move everything over.
Were you doing the startup scene hard at that stage, pitching everywhere, going every meet up, yeah, and you were about to move everything over.
Were you doing the startup scene hard at that stage. Oh yeah, Pitching everywhere, going every meetup, yeah, yeah, and you were getting knocked down by everyone. Do you know what I mean? Like everyone's knocking you down, and there was different reasons. You were knocked down, but Shelly was living in Amsterdam at the time so it was kind of perfect, yeah, why? everything because we had this opportunity with this, this startup bootcamp.
They were giving us free office space, they were introducing us to all their network, they were blah, blah, blah, all that kind of great stuff, and we kind of, why not? You know why not none of us were tied down at that time, so obviously very different to now, but so Shelley then ended up when we decided not to move, she worked remotely. So 2016, 2017, ahead of our times, we had a remote CMO and then Shelley and I think it was 2018, 19, moved over to Ireland to join the business.
So that was quite cool as well. Yeah, so, but sorry the timelines yeah, 2016 to 2018, probably two and a half years, two and a half three years doing all that, building all that how were you fun on this? angel investors very much.
So I think we were some people call it lucky, some people call it unlucky we we never had a big ball of cash where we did these big investment rounds and even sorry, when I'm talking about a startup, I'm talking about, like you know, an investment round of half a million. We never even did like half a million investment rounds. We were getting drips and drabs of 100 grand here, 150 grand here.
Was that deliberate accidental cause? Because you couldn't why was that?
I don't think it was deliberate either, but we were learning on the fly. I'd never raised money for a company before. None of the rest of the guys had ever raised money, so we were trying to figure everything out. I do think it's a blessing in disguise, because we were so frugal. We were crazy frugal, yeah, you know, like we got, our first 50 grand came from Enterprise Ireland and I will always be forever grateful for that 50 grand. And again they took a percentage of the business.
And now some people kind of go, oh that's, and I go, no, no, no, no, no, we got 50,000 from Enterprise Ireland for a PowerPoint slide. You know that was, that's what it was.
And once they're on the team as well it's a different kettle of fish.
You've people with skin in the game then we ripped that PowerPoint slide up actually and it's it's framed in individual frames the whole way up the staircase in the office. I'm going to have to see this office man, you're selling this to me hard, like I feel like I'm going into, like some Willy Wonka but it is, it's kind of cool having all those, having all those memories, you know, I think they're important, though, because so many offices you go into.
They're all a bit generic, they're a bit sterile. You could be in any of them.
You know any of the big boys Meta, linkedin, like they all look the same and there's a Google-ification of all startups because, everyone tries to generic like, yeah, no, we just, we just do us, that's what we try and do and it's the same same same with everything. But um, yeah, the, the, the eye money come in and um it was. It was 50 grand, and myself and james always laugh at the time. We spent 49 800 on the product. And then we did one trip to the uk myself himself.
We brought our suits over because we thought that that's what we should be doing at the time. That's what business people do. Now we can wear shorts.
That's how you know you've met it. If someone rocks in here in shorts, I'm like this lad has met it. I wouldn't say that.
I just misjudged the weather this morning a little. And then it was too late. We shared a 12 bed dorm in a hostel. Oh, proper start off. And it's not as if the two of us were skin to rent. We were just both after leaving jobs, you know. But we knew that that we needed to make all this money work and you respect it.
I have a huge respect for people that do that, because you respect the money. You can always tell people who've had like a lot of money injected into the business, because the red flag number one for me is that if a company has loads of swag before as many customers yeah, yeah, yeah that's my number one bullshit o-meter.
I saw someone in 2017, when we were younger. I saw someone they'll probably know who I'm talking about when I say it, but they had beer. They had beer bottles with their name on it and I went what? How? You know why? It's just yeah just that, that's ego, but anyway, yeah, so anyways, we stayed in this hostel for two nights and we had our suits and we walked around the city meeting different people and what not they definitely thought you were fraudsters.
There's two lads in 6B definitely con artists. They're staying in a hostel wearing suits yeah.
So people saying, oh so where are you staying? You go, oh you've, I don't really know london, that well, yeah, yeah, yeah, so um we always laugh at that. And there's another guy who, um myself and james, we, we always, uh, we always shared a room. So again, trying to try and be frugal, right, uh, and somebody said to me uh, this is maybe 2019. I met them over in, uh, london, another event. And they said um, you, this is maybe 2019. I met them over in London at another event.
And they said are you guys still sharing a room? And we go yeah, yeah, yeah, we are. And they go alright, so why did you ask that? And he says I know you've met us when you have different rooms. Yeah, they just splashed. I was in.
London in Jan and I was looking at all their options. I was like, yeah, london's expensive, a no window option. I was like, yeah, yeah, I can go walk outside the door if I want some fresh air and I was fine, I didn't care. I never even saw there was a no window option anywhere, but I was like follow me it's cheap. So then, when did you launch the first version of the product? So 2016, you start cooking it up.
When was the first kind of like okay, it's live the end of 2017, we had our very first version and I always kind of laugh how we actually got someone to pay for it, because our platform originally was a mobile app. We also have a web journey now, but it was originally mobile apps. So we went heavy on mobile or on apps and we only had iPhone. We had no Android, so it meant half your customers couldn't use it, but I think it was very novel at the time. So people bought into it.
So we got a handful of customers and we still have a couple of customers on legacy accounts that we have never increased their fees and our plan is to never increase their fees and just leave them at that, because they were the first customers to pay us, you know. So those kind of first eight, ten people.
And what were you selling them?
you were selling the version, we were selling the mobile app that allowed their end users verify their identity through documents, databases and biometrics, and then a piece of a platform that the business could log into that they could review the documentation from, obviously, their office or wherever they were.
And did this sit within their customer journey, or is this an app that they would have to download? Your app.
So they would download our app but it would be their logo, their colour palette, their look, their feel, so it's all fully branded. So there's kind of two versions there's the branded version and then there's the completely white label so you could go into the app store and there's multiple companies there that you know, company name verify and it's actually just us behind the scenes, but it's completely theirs.
Is this how it still works now? Do you download a separate app to verify yeah or you?
could use the web version. Or if you have your own mobile app, you could embed our app into their app. So yeah, and there's different countries have different kind of expectations or wants. So definitely in the US, everyone wants the web journey. They think that downloading an app will create customer drop-off. That's a real funny one for me, because most people think that downloading an app is will create customer drop-off.
Um, that's a real funny one for me, because most people think that downloading an app is going to create friction. Um, it doesn't like our stats say.
that is not the case interesting because I would have thought that intuitively yeah, it's not the american idea so.
So, statistically, everyone has roughly 90 apps on their phone. We spent 90 of our time on mobile apps. Why do we do that? Because they're better, they're quicker, they're faster, they're slicker, they're cooler. Um, and that's just natural, um. And if you look at your own phone, you can do this later on tonight.
Uh, you look at your own phone and check out how many apps you have not gone back into in the last 12 months and I guarantee you'll do a, you'll do a nice clear down of your I did an off-boarding thing recently, yeah, and I was like they were like, oh, we can off-board like something you haven't used in six months.
I was like I was just curious. I was like, damn, there's a lot of apps on that phone. It was just Trainline UK. I downloaded it twice from Manchester and that's it it just stayed there.
There's a reason I use an iPhone, but there's a reason iPhone have the search feature for your apps. It's because we've so many apps. I think it's one of those things. I always kind of laugh at that people think that downloading an app is really a real friction. It laugh at that people think that, like, downloading an app is really a real friction.
You know, it takes like seven seconds, it's a button and, like you know, it's easy so talk to me about the first couple of customers, because that's always a landmark journey for for companies as well. Yeah, how'd you get them?
um door to door, like it was real kind of knocking on doors. It was very hard graft One of our well, there weren't, yeah, so there weren't a customer at the time, but they kind of brought us in. They brought us in and helped us a lot right. I always kind of I always mention them and name check them. So Vexco, who are down in Cloragland, they got their staff involved. They brought us down to Cloragland. We got to meet all their staff. They helped us kind of develop the product in a way.
And I think a lot of the companies that were involved in the early days, especially the actual customers, they knew we were trying to build something right. We never told them that this is the finished product and we were ultra like just about the customer.
You know we would be, you know we'd do anything for them and that's kind of what it was, Were you very transparent with them going look, this is what we're trying to do.
There was no point in trying to be any other way because it was full of bugs, it was full of issues, it was functionality-wise, it could only do 5% of what it can do today. So I think the people that were the starting customers, they're the kind of the innovative mindset type person who was like, oh, I like this, this is cool, I'll give this a try. You know how much is it? Yeah, that's, that's okay, that's not too bad.
You know, um, it was ridiculously cheap at the time, you know, compared compared to where we are now.
Um, but uh, yeah, you were, just, you were, you were trying to get into bed with them and doing everything for them and you were learning, and it was iteration after iteration, um, but uh, yeah, it was, it was good, like, and it kind of went 10 customers, 20 customers, 40 customers we've around been around 400 now um customers using us, um, so we'd have, you know, we would have a, let's say, 80 percent of our customer base will be what we call sme, mid-tiers, um, and then 20% will be that
kind of big, big enterprise, and then we'd have a number of businesses who'd be resellers, so they would have customers. You know that we actually don't see or have any deals with and they're they've resold on our behalf. So they're the kind of our three channels to channels to market.
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For more information, check out your local enterprise office on local enterpriseie and see how they can help your business today. Now back to the episode. And you grew literally door-to-door, one customer leading to the next, to the next, to the next.
Is that how it went?
Yeah, and at what stage did you start to ramp up the team, because that sounds like the three of you got it to a certain point. Four or five of you joined then.
Everyone was selling there. Poor vibe, you joined then everyone was selling. Yeah, there was no. There was no point in being there unless you were selling and what worked is in what?
when you said door-to-door, do you mean physically? Do you mean conferences? How do you mean?
some of them were actually, you know a little law firm. You know how are you doing. My name is colin and some of them were definitely going around to conferences and there was, you know, email campaigns. You know going on to websites. You know, put like old school pull, like going on to the website ourselves physically and finding what that email is and pinging the emails out. You know, uh, you're probably getting better hit rates on that kind of stuff than you would be.
Now I think the whole email world is gone. You know it's. You don't get any response from emails anymore. This is like the mass email that you go out for. You ping out the same thing to 2,000 people. No one opens them up anymore. We're back in 2016, 17. People were still responding. So, yeah, that was like it was exciting. I remember when we got our first customer so there were 24 euro a month, that's what they were and we went down to O'Donogh was like it was. It was, it was exciting.
I remember when we got our first customer. So I'll say there were 24 euro a month, that's they were and we went down to adonah who's uh and uh on bag of street first first month's takings behind the bar.
We're having three pints.
We actually spent our own money. We spent our own money. We didn't, we didn't use the, the 24 euro, um, we spent our own money, uh, and we had a couple of pounds of Guinness and that was an immense fee. It was just class somebody bought this.
It's mad how long were you operating at that stage?
it would have been the end of, so we were 20 months, so we were 20 months maybe.
Okay, yeah, coming up on two years.
Yeah, but before that there was six months before we incorporated the business. So we were incorporated March 8th 2016. So there was six months of kind of work and effort before that, so it would have been two years.
See, this is the bit I love chatting about, because this is the bit people don't see. Yeah, yeah, this is the bit People only see, like the overnight success. Yeah, they see the now they see you in shorts, thinking you're the man right, yeah, but they don't see the quiet years, yeah, whereby you're in the dark, no one knows about you, no revenue, but you're grafting, yeah, yeah, you're doing the hardest graft you'll ever do, because it's just yeah, but it's the most exciting time.
It's so enjoyable, so enjoyable I wouldn't do it again, but it's so enjoyable. It's great to think about it and remember yeah, and hang up cool mementos yeah, I wouldn't do it again.
Well, I think everyone says that. Every entrepreneur says that God, if I knew what I knew, it would, you, would, I would Like you. Just, you get that bug again. You're like maybe.
Yeah, yeah, maybe I could do it again.
Maybe there's another, maybe there's something else. So, two years in first couple of customers. Was that the point where you're like, okay, this is going to work?
Yeah, I think like so, when we were selling to the original customers, we had no competition because it was just in Ireland and it was just do you want this product or not? And it was a very, very simple decision. Um, most of them were not right, but uh, it was very, very easy. Um, we got involved in and I think this is definitely uh, something if I was telling you know, young startups to kind of avoid. We got involved in some large enterprise deals. We just not where we were not ready.
You know, um, and when you're kind of two, two and a half years in, you're kind of two, two and a half years in, you're chasing right and you're trying to do everything you can to please them. Your belief is that if you land that enterprise deal, that is going to change everything, but then you'll have a customer concentration issue of 90% of your revenue is coming from one customer and they're basically controlling you.
It sounds kind of intuitive. But it's probably the best advice. I heard this on a pod at the weekend. I was listening to the guy who used to be Peter Thiel's right hand man and they're asking you know, you've been at the right hand of one of the most successful people in the world in terms of investing and entrepreneurship. What's the couple of things? And that was it. It's like learn how to say no to things.
Yes.
And specifically things like that.
Yeah, and still today we're like there's RFPs that come in, there's one of our rules is that we don't go after banks. So that's my rule. Now, if a bank comes to us and we have a few banks using us, but if have a few banks using us, but if they come to us, that's a different story because they're interested in you but we would not really go after banks why not?
they suck the life out of you say what you really think, yeah too long a process and not to be too critical, but they always make the wrong decision. How does that come across? Perfect, not to be too critical, but they always make the wrong decision. How does that come across? It's perfect.
That's the clip we needed. Now we can end the pod.
Just what I mean by that is that they all make the wrong decision. So how they look at product is on an Excel sheet and it just blows my mind that that's how they assess something. And we're a big believer of like test our product and test the other product, Because I'm very, very confident you're going to go with our product.
It also seems kind of logical Try it, taste it, see what it feels like.
But they don't, they don't. So you go through this big, huge, long process for six months, iteration after iteration, of presentation after presentation, and one of the problems that we definitely found in our early days was we told the truth and now we realize that if you're in an RFP, most of the stuff that's actually been said in RFPs I won't say most of the stuff that's probably too harsh, right, but there's a lot of lies that are told in RFPs just to get you to that next phase right.
And that's what's happening. So, yeah, so like, when a bank finally makes a decision, they've never actually tested the product. That's wild, right, you'd think in this day and age, things have moved on. Is that bureaucracy? Is that old school mentality? What is? This is in our world, right, so I can't comment on everything that the bank does, but in our world, definitely, like it. Just, it blows my mind again that that's that's kind of what happens.
But by the time that they implement that product that they've decided on, they're two years down the line. Right, the world's changed. In our world it's completely different. So this idea, what I talked about, active liveness and passive liveness they will implement probably a passive liveness solution that now you need passive plus because the fraudsters have caught up, um, so that's why they're always behind the scene.
So if you think about, like a neobank, neobanks move and they're fast, you know, and they stay ahead of the game and that's why they're always going to be out in front. So, yeah, that's my thoughts on banks.
That's all I got to say about that.
Thank you.
Oh look, it's wild. Jesus Christ, you should buy something for 19 quid online. It's like reprogramming the space shuttle. Let's swipe here. Oh, it didn't go through that time. Redo the transaction. The amount of times you really have to want to buy something now to like go through the online transaction. It's mental, it drives me. I just don't understand that in today's day and age we can just go to revolut or one of those I think below, like again a hobby horse below a 200 euro threshold.
Stop asking me to swipe and log in and then get the authentication yeah, there's.
There's definitely certain things there like sorry, there's good reasons that you have to do the 2FA and everything else, but it has to be killing e-commerce.
It has to be, because I find it's such a friction that you're like I'm buying something for 20 quid yeah this is driving me insane. I'd say the amount of drop off on customers must be astronomical. Talk to me about fraudsters, because we mentioned this a couple of times what do you want to know about them?
everything.
Give me some sexy stories about fraud. Like because it has like yeah it's the number one topic at the minute in terms of like. All you're seeing online is fraudsters. Did this at the currency in an article up yesterday. I love the currency, yeah, in an article yesterday about Chinese.
Tom Lyons was great to us and we're not related, tom.
Lyons is great. We're a big fan of him. Beautiful writer, really nice guy.
He put out some stuff on us in our early days when we were a non-event and, yeah, I'll be always thankful to him for that kind of support as well. Yeah, fraudsters like we're, we rely on our customers to tell us about fraud cases. So we are unique in our space in that we don't have access to our customers' data Right Okay. Customers data right okay. So if you verify your identity with a company tomorrow, if you're using our software, we have no access to that data, right?
So if they catch a fraudster or we've, there was there was a cool case two years ago where there was a gang of fraudsters caught through our system and the company got in touch with us and they were all very excited about it. We got equally excited because you know, but we rely on those businesses to tell us about situations where they caught fraud Behind the scenes. The technology is doing a totally different thing, but then you're looking for what those trends are.
So information that we would have access to would be certain types of security features or certain types of changes that are made with documents, or an increase in documents for a particular country, things like that. So we've access to that information, but it can never be brought back to an individual. So that's the kind of data that we have access to.
What's actually happening and the truth about what's happening in our space is, a lot of times when you go through a verification process, your data actually gets sent to a third country. The large majority of them are India or Pakistan. You have a manual person verifying your identity there. It's not using technology, and if you ever go through that journey and you get a message say we'll let you know in 10 minutes or you can open up an account in 5 minutes, we'll let you know in 24 hours.
There's a problem with your document. The reason all that's happening is because they're in a queue and it's manual people when we are 100% tech driven. I get the buzzword AI because it has to be brought in, so that allows us then not to have access to the data, which is a huge selling point for anyone that's in compliance. They go oh, we've just dramatically reduced the risk there in someone not having access to our customers' data.
I think in the next couple of years, there is going to be a big blow-up in our space. I've said this at board meetings as well. I just think it doesn't make sense. What do you mean. The amount of data that's accessible to other companies that are using equivalent identity verification providers.
So the data has been transferred on a couple of times. Yeah, and there's manual people looking at that data and what are they doing with it?
Who are they? So, if you think about the risks that are involved there and you not knowing who has access to your data, it's crazy O so outsourcing is great, um, but if it's cheap, it's cheap for a reason.
Yeah, you're paying I had a chat with someone earlier. You're paying in a different way. Yeah, you're paying in terms of increasing risk exposure. You're paying in terms of maybe opening yourself up not now, but down the road for problems. There's always a cost, and there's this rush towards cheapness.
There's this rush towards like especially bigger, bigger institutions, like banks cost cutting yeah, yeah, I will say in our industry though, it's kind of like there's there's very like we're all kind of roughly the same price. There's nobody really kind of going. They're the kind of like the, the Ryanair of the identity verification, we're all kind of roughly the same price, which, again, is fine. There's certain variances, but it's just.
Yeah, I just think what's happening in our space because it's the older school companies, because they're using people behind the scenes to manually verify it, I think it's just. It's a bad user experience. You don't have to wait 10 minutes or 24 hours.
People's patience is so low now People are so you want instant, on demand. If you have to wait 10 minutes, it feels like 10 years. The next day people are gone, they're just like I won't bother. Just drop out the funnel Like it's wild. Fraud seems to be just so prevalent right now. Is this because we just hear more about it, or is fraud a huge growing issue?
We definitely hear more about it, but it's definitely a growing issue. Yeah, definitely Like in our space so. Ai generated documents. I was given a I was a sounds funny but a guest lecturer, um at the pat institute I'll call them um and basically I just showed them a platform where you can get any card, id card, passport, driver's license, national id that you want, put in whatever information you want. Uh, it'll cost you fiber and you can have it in around two minutes.
No way and it's going to trick most systems.
So it gives you a digital version it gives you a digital version, yeah, jeez.
So if you look at what's happening, so you've all these companies. So where's a fraudster going to go? First, a fraudster is going to go to the place of least friction, so they will go to the place where you're allowed to upload your ID. So if you're allowed to upload your ID, what that means is that you can't tell if that was actually a genuine picture of an ID or not. So if you go to our platform, if you're using our service, you have to take a picture of a genuine ID.
In the moment. In the moment, okay, yeah.
If a picture of a genuine id right in the moment, in the moment. Okay, yeah, if you take a picture of a photocopy, right, we can recognize that it's a photocopy, we will let that true, but the business knows it's a photocopy, so they know that you're a fraudster or potentially a fraudster it'll flag it to go.
Yeah, it's, you know not everyone's a fraudster.
Because it's a photocopy, you know you might be trying to do a deal and you're away on holidays or away at work and someone else's um, but uh, but that's the kind of stuff that you're dealing with. So you have these ids that can be created for next to nothing. That's crazy, yeah, and the scary thing is that a couple of years ago, you needed to be a really good fraudster. Right now, this is available to anyone, you know well, it used to be this thing.
You know the dark web and you know these gangs that would like, whereas now it's just anybody yeah, and I like there's a lot of identity documents real, genuine identity documents for sale on the dark web. I have my own theories on where they're coming from that I won't get into, but yeah, what a tease there you go. Season, what is it? Maybe season 542?
you're gonna come back on and do a tell all like it's. It's wild, like I mean the online world at the minute just feels, it feels crazy, like it's accelerating at such a pace it is it is scary.
Yeah, it is scary in a way, um, but again, the right technology you're, you'll be in a you'll be in a good place. Um, I'm sorry that's not a plug for us, but you need loads of different things.
Well, it's like insurance, right? You don't wait to get insurance when your house burns down. These are all these things. You are going to do business in the online world, which is everybody now? I don't think there's anybody who should be in offline business anymore. These are the extra steps that you need to do. Yeah, because customers have changed right Customers' preferences, especially after COVID. People are, and it's a good thing in a way, because people are so used to digital now.
Yeah, yeah, they're used to doing things online, whereas things before were, oh, bring everything into the bank and the bank manager will look after me, whereas now people are like, no, it's fine, I can rate, it's easier, it's handy, so, like, it's good things. We just have to be more conscious of, like, what are the knock-on effects? Yeah, yeah, you don't want to make it too easy.
So what, what's the plan for? Id pal like, where do you want to bring this? So we we were successful in ireland. Um, around two, two and a half years ago we launched in the UK. So we've a decent sized sales unit in the UK so that's our biggest revenue earner. It's 40% of our revenue comes from the UK. We're only down to around 30% Irish now. So as time goes on, it's going to be less and less in Ireland. The US we opened up an office in the US. To what was it? March last year? Um, that was.
That was a super week. I was over there for the kind of the launch party. We did it over St Patrick's um and uh. On the Monday we got in to do the ringing of the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, which was quite cool. So that was like our opening pick, pick of we've launched. It was cool. I got a great reaction as well on LinkedIn and stuff like that. So, but the US is the big press now for us.
We think there's a huge opportunity in the US for us, and how we decided on the US was naturally the revenue came, started coming from the US. So where we'll decide on where our next country is is based off where revenue is coming from. And I kind of look at it as though once you kind of get to that somewhere between 5% to 10% of your revenue coming from a particular country you definitely have product market fit. There's something going on there that there's a real interest.
So then that's when we start really looking at that market. So who knows where it'll be? But definitely that's how I look at it. That's quite the natural. I think a lot of people kind of go oh you know, ireland, uk, us, yeah, that's typical, but that's just where the revenue came from.
That's what you're following.
You're following where your customers are. So you know, if we're in a place where Italy starts going to 5%, 6%, 7%, we'll start properly looking at the Italian market and go right, we need bodies on the ground there.
That's a cost, right. There's a huge cost to ramping up in these countries, especially if they're non-English speaking. Yeah, that's a whole different ballgame. You said it. It's a safe space, no one's listening.
Yeah, I just think like. So if you look at, if you look at, if you look at the types of startups around now, right, it's really really hard to get staff and you are competing against these companies who are paying overly inflated wages, they're giving you breakfast and all these different benefits. You can't do that. So there's only a subset of those people that will ever come to a startup. So, if you look at our business, our largest customer is less than 5% of our revenue.
Okay, which means that if we lost our largest customer, we're fine. Okay, I don't want to lose our largest customer, but we're fine.
It's a bad quarter, maybe a bad half year, but it's not the end.
Yeah, exactly. So if you look at any country and you go how the country's been run, and if you run the country like you should be run the business, you're in a scenario there where, where is your over alliance? Okay, and I just think we have a huge over alliance on these large corporates. So if tomorrow it was announced that linkedin or google or meta was pulling out of ire, there would be emergency meetings happening. That's what would happen.
So you saw everything when the likes of X announced the redundancies. You saw what happened there and all the meetings that were happening about redundancies. So if you had a scenario where those thousands and thousands and thousands of jobs were gone tomorrow and you could potentially have a knock-on effect as well, a knock-on effect as well, a knock-on effect would be cataclysmic. Where are we, you know? So I don't think we focus enough on homegrown.
I don't think we focus enough on, you know, and what you want is small businesses become big, right, exactly, yeah. But if you look at like the likes of, say, transformate or Finergo, these guys, right, they're homegrown, they ain't going nowhere, right, and that's super.
And like the thousands of staff that they have, right, so that sets your stall Like there's no way anyone's having a conversation with either of those two companies and worried that they're going to be moving their operations right because they're Irish and that's where they're staying so, and worried that they're going to be moving their operations right Because they're Irish and that's where they're staying.
So I think if we were doing more of that, you would be in a far stronger place and you would have less reliance. That's what I kind of mean.
And I agree with you and I asked you the question because I've thought about this quite a lot. I've chatted to a lot of really great entrepreneurs about this, because it is something I do think about, because I think after code, if you haven't learned now not to be surprised, then you've missed the lesson, because anything can happen at any time.
I had an unbelievably good conversation with stephen kinsler for us there's even kinsler down ul a few weeks ago and we kind of did like a couple of hypotheticals yeah what could cause like a mad reaction. He's like, well, what could cause my reaction is trump decides in the morning. All us tech firms have to come home or they lose x yeah, yeah, it's huge. I was like, uh huh, keep going. And he played it out, he goes. Let's say, google meta linkedin salesforce pulls out of dublin.
The whole quarter is gone. Yeah, frank canal is over it's finished. You're in serious trouble you're losing 100 000 jobs and I 100,000 jobs that are paid exceptionally well, and the butterfly effect of that of knocking out is cataclysmic. That makes the Celtic Tiger look like a little blip.
If I presented an investor deck based off all this that you were just after talking about, you wouldn't get funded. That's the reality.
And I think we don't like to talk about it because it's great what we've done, what the idea of done, is unbelievable and you got to work with what you have. But I also think I think there's a lot of bullshittery around the Irish startup scene. I think we like to do a lot of jazz hands without kind of actually, I saw this nonsense about like they're going to build a new accelerator. I'm like incentives, yeah, yeah. Incentivize entrepreneurs. Stop giving them like entrepreneur crash.
Yeah, give them incentives, get out of their way. Show me your incentives, I'll show you their outcome. That's the Munger Buffett quote. That is the most true thing in business in the world.
Stop giving people two grand and just incentivize them to build, to grow and to stay. Yeah, I've another view. I've another view that's in line with that.
I won't go into it now either, but god, we're gonna have to do a walker episode in a couple of years I've I've told some people about it, um, and uh, I've told a good few people about it.
They're like oh yeah, that's that's.
I really like that, um, but it's, it's kind of it's around the the, the start, the startup scene um but it's, yeah, it'll be a beast to kind of get off the ground as well we're wrapping in like eight minutes, so I'm gonna get that out of you, off off camera, and then, don't worry, I'm gonna bring it back on in two years and, uh, we'll get all the juice out of it. So we're going to move into our rapid fire round, but before you do that, where can people learn more about yourself?
And learn more about IDPal?
Yeah, LinkedIn will be my main space, so it's just column lines C-O-L-U-M, lines L-Y-O-N-S, and the website is wwwid-palcom.
Who are the main types of people that they're listening on? D-palcom who are the main types of people that they're listening on? Yeah, that's for me, but I'm not sure if it is, who are the main types of customers that should be coming to you?
anyone in the financial services industry and, to be honest, like not to say anyone that's doing anything but like identity verification. If you're not doing it because it's a regulatory requirement, you're probably going to have to do it to protect your business from fraud. That's the reality. So that's one of our problems is the scope is just huge.
Good problem to have it is yeah, Quick fire round. What book could you recommend every entrepreneur read?
Would you be surprised if I said I don't read books? That's absolutely fine, that's not the wrong answer. Get out. I've read three books in my life three books. If you discount, you're leaving certain things like that and there are three very random books. The first book that I ever read was actually Richard Branson L Losing my Virginity Best book I've ever read. Second book was around unsolved crimes in Ireland and the third book was a fictional book about a basketball player in Italy.
So there you go. That's my history of books. But what I will say is we buy books for our staff.
The irony of this, I know.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah but everyone else reads, so that's fine. So I think there's um, there's a atomic habit, habits that's constantly mentioned.
I think, yeah, um, and then eat the frog oh yeah, um so it's an old one, but a good one they're the last two books that we bought for they're the books that people tell me are good yeah, yeah what's something you have to learn the hard way yeah, yeah, yeah, what's something you have to learn the hard way.
Uh, learn the hard way probably probably two things I'd say. Um, the first would be never, never believe what you're told or what you read, right, um, I think, I think there's an awful lot of bs and an awful lot of like and that's everywhere right, and that's even like in the papers and everything. It's just like you just read it and you kind of firm up an opinion. The other thing would be what was the question?
What's something you had to learn the hard way.
Oh sorry, definitely like fast money. I used to be the stockbroker, I used to be the trader. That's when I was a kid or in my early 20s. It was all about the QuickBook. The slow grind is better. You can't make money fast, right? Look, there's obviously exceptions to the rule, but it is. It's just you need to work at stuff and you need to spend a lot of time on it, and so you know, we're eight years in business now and we're we're in a good place now.
But, um, yeah, just that, that'd be definitely. You know, it took me probably 15 years to realize that. Not, not chase the quick book what have you sacrificed to? achieve your success. I wouldn't necessarily say I've sacrificed anything, it's just being honest, like I've loved every single minute of what I do. So there's definitely been, you know, stuff with mates and events. And you know I sold my car. When I set up the business I bought a motorbike, but now I love my motorbike.
So you know, you kind of thought that that was. I set up the business, I bought a motorbike, but now I love my motorbike.
So you know you kind of thought?
that that was a sacrifice at the time, but it turns out I actually like driving bikes. But yeah, I don't think honestly, I don't think I've sacrificed anything. You know, there's nothing. That's kind of I've just loved it. What would you do today if I give you 10 million euro? Go for a steak for two hours and talk about it. But I would look at it as that is kind of like the money, and again, there's different ways of looking at it.
Right, I think my brother and my sister have been like their rocks to me all my life. They've supported me, they've backed me. I'd say I've failed them many times. Uh, they have never failed me. Um, so I would look after them, uh, and then I would take the rest of the money and I would make sure my three boys and my wife and my family were looked after and we were set up for the future, um, and then I'd probably take a chunk of it that I'd just have a bit of fun with beautiful, very sensible.
Thank you for that. It's honest. I like it. What's something new? Daily routine. You wish you started sooner um.
I'm brutal with routines. I'm like all you're looking at me like the teacher that's giving you the hard I know it is this is like but I'm, I'm in, right, and if I'm not all in, I'm the complete opposite, whatever that is. But I'm brutal with routines, even like, say, exercise. If I decide that I'm going to be going to the gym or whatever it is, I will be there every day for two hours nonstop and then I'll miss one session and you won't see me for three years, right.
So that's my problem with routine.
Yeah, it's just it doesn't exist in my life and I think that's probably why IDPAL is one of the successes behind IDPAL is because I went all in on IDPAL and that's helped drive the business forward.
I'm going to give you 1 million euro. You can invest it in one person or one company. Who would that be?
Can give you one million euro. You can invest it in one person or one company. Who would that be? Can I cheat and split it?
but have it in. It's kind of a wishy-washy answer, but go on. They better be good people okay, so they're.
I think if you were putting a million quid into someone, um, if it's a really, really young company, you're probably going to lose it, right, because most startups fail, yep, uh. And if it's a well-known company and they're doing loads of really good stuff, it's probably too late to invest, right? So I'm going to look at this differently and I'm going to split the money between a guy, mark Donnelly, so he has a clothing brand called HUH or who. How's your head?
Yes, I've followed him online. Yeah, interesting story.
He's had his own battles in life. Yeah, um, I think I'm pretty sure we're one of our, one of his earlier customers, um, so we got loads of their hoodies and, like our staff, wear them all the time. They're cool, you know, and it's got the the huh brand, it's got the id pal brand, um, so I think, because he's doing good stuff right, I would give it to him and in the same train I thought this is why I split it I would give the other half a million to Brent Pope.
So Brent has created a thing called Elephant in the Room, so we've taken part in it. Where he came and he spoke with our company in January and you could hear a pin drop, he like just his own battles as well. So I think, mark and Brent, you know on the same vein and I think the money would be safe and put to good causes.
Good answer. If you had to start a new company in the morning, what would it be?
I don't know what it would be, but I wouldn't reinvent the wheel. I think there's so much opportunity to start a business that just do it better than it currently exists, so I don't know what it would be. To be fair, it's a very, very hard question. I look at probably a hundred different things I see every day that I just go like why is that like that? But yeah, I wouldn't do something that's totally like out there, right.
So I wouldn't go the man of drone um world right, because I just think that legislation, everything around that, that, like you know, and hope it's a success because it's it's really cool, but I just couldn't do that. I would go with something that just you make it better and it's easier to sell, make it quicker, make it cheaper, make it easier.
What's one thing you believe other people strongly disagree with or find weird could be, could be controversial, and I've started talking about it more in the last six months. I didn't really ever speak about it before. I kind of think we should all be chipped say more. I think. I think we're in a world where we're being tracked anyways. So we all have our mobile devices, we all have location settings. You're getting an Uber, you're paying for something, you're being tracked anyways.
So if we all had a chip, that again look at those access issues and all this kind of different stuff right, but it would. I think it would make the world a better place because it would reduce crime. It would just reduce like loads and loads and loads of stuff, right. And I think you know, if there was rules and regulations around, if something like say that, like say a crime happened, that the chip, you could see who those 12 people were in that area at the time right.
It would put a lot of lawyers and solicitors out of business and help with the courts and you know, could help with so many things. But I just think and I firmly believe in years to come we will all be chipped.
The feeling gets its way.
Yeah, there you go.
What's one thing you spend money on in your personal life that brings you immense happiness?
So there's a load of standard answers like the food, travel, wine, beer. All that For value, for moneyify 15 euro. I listen to music 24 7 constantly and podcasts.
You've got to say as well yeah yeah, well, this podcast is on spotify there you go, sure it is um, yeah, I just, I just love music and for 15 quid, like if spotify was 200 quid, I'd probably pay it I said this to my wife the other day like we have, we get up, we have Alexas everywhere, so we are in track we have Alexas all throughout the house and I was just get up in the morning. I was like Alexa play Foxy Morning Wake.
Up, I am a narcissist, so I name it after myself, and we just have these songs through the morning and then there's like an afternoon mix, then there's an evening mix. We have it on all the time.
We were only talking about it because we were like, oh, it's kind of cool and for 15 quid or 12 quid, whatever it is, and you're kind of going like what that's? You know, you go out and get a, get a sandwich and a bottle of water it still blows me away.
I still love the novelty of Value is insane. It's a good answer. What's your final piece of advice to every entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur listening?
Again, there's your stock answers of you know always ask for advice, trust your gut stuff like that. I would have a little warning around for young entrepreneurs avoiding the vulture advisors and people who try to get involved in your business at an early stage when they don't really have your best interests at heart. I just see too much of that. We avoided it, thank god. A lot of shysters around the scene.
They're looking for the board seat, they're looking for the advisory role and they'll hang around you for two or three months and they'll lead you down a garden path and then they'll ask for what they want. So we've been unbelievably lucky with people who have, just from day one, helped and advised. And look if we ever, you know, properly succeed. I would like to think that you know those people will always be thanked with something and won't be forgotten.
But yeah, I just think just be careful of those Like be really careful.
Our startup scene is unreal in terms of we now have exceptional founders who've gone through, built incredible businesses, yeah, but there's also a huge amount of bullshitters, coaches, mentors who have never worked in a startup in their lives and now they're wanting to be. You know, getting 10% for equity for advice or intros. It's funny you're the second person in that seat today to say they were asked for so it's not unique 10% you're not.
You're not a unique flower, I'm so sorry to break it to you. They were asked for 10% for an intro. Really, wow, so yeah, but that's the advice I love when people come on and share. These are the real stories of like, because sometimes you kind of like you know, put people on pedestals and go. Well, they must know what they're saying because they're an advisor.
The only thing I love is when you go to an event and there's a panel and they're talking about fundraising and all these different things, and you look at them and you go. So that's someone from Microsoft and you're just going. Don't start me.
Don't start me, we've done so well. Don't get me annoyed what my hobby horse is, the entrepreneur competitions and the judging panel are all from big multinationals. Yeah, yeah, yeah, entrepreneur competitions and the judging panel are all from big multinationals. Yeah, no clue, not one of you, just because you wrote a check for two grand. Not one of your entrepreneurs. Come on, 100%, love it. Listen, that was a cracking chat and you're coming back on in two years for the juicy tell all.
Thank you very much. Thank you so much for coming in pleasure it was an absolute pleasure. Thanks, gary.