Welcome to the Listen perspective. I'm your host, Rebecca Hastings. I've spent over a decade working with executives in the tech sector, and help successful companies build their leadership teams and scale. During my career, I've been lucky to have the privilege of learning from many exceptional leaders. In these conversations, you'll get perspectives from peers, be inspired, and learn what it takes to become one of the best.
This is your chance to listen to experts talking about the challenges, solutions, and the vital insights they've gained in their careers to date.
That's what builds value in the organization. Because that's what you can scale and as an investor or acquire, they're going to come in with their money, or assistance or team or whatever. And they can make the fight they can scale that up.
Today, we're joined by Matt Liesl, Matt little has worked in the technology sector for over 20 years. And he has worked with companies such as soon Fox which exit to Fortinet. And at the moment, he works as an interim and fractional CPE to start with advisor, non Executive Director and chairperson. And he's been involved in companies such as malleus, clap CO, which was acquired by Reggie education, and gamba digital, which was acquired by a xario. So Matt, thanks so much for taking time
to speak to us today. I am super excited to hear about your career and your insights into the world of technology and product. My first question for you is like what attracted you to the startup world because I know that you actually worked in quite corporate environments before that,
by Rebecca. So I, when I when I left university, my first few jobs were for large organizations. And I found they were quite slow moving, you know, the decision making process took forever, I never quite understood why, you know, everyone agreed something was a good idea. But it would take six months to make anything happen. And I got to a point, I've been through a couple of exits about point. And I had really enjoyed
this building to an exit. And I decided that rather than working for sort of medium sized company, and help each exit, actually, what I wanted to do was go join a proper startup, you know, really early days startup. So I went to work for a company, I was the sixth person in the office. And I was one of the first experienced commercial experience people in the organization, which some people call founding team. And I really liked two things. One was
building something. Now I really liked actually creating an organization that was getting bigger, generating customers building brand new product, but also what Oh, term, the immediacy of action. In other words, we have make a decision. And we could all agree this a great thing to do, there's data to back this up, let's make this happen. And we could do it the next day. And we could see the results in a couple of weeks.
None of this kind of put it in front of the committee, the committee meets every three months. And then 912 months later, you see a result, we fail to turn stuff around much, much quicker. And that's what I really enjoyed. And at that point, I think I got pre hooked on startup. Well, somebody it may even have been you first six months into working in startup, you told me I think you're never gonna go work for a big company again, are you? At the time? I don't think I understood that.
And now I do. There is just so much opportunity for startups, there are so many interesting challenges that people are tackling, and so many great entrepreneurs Albert's work with. So yeah, I love startup land. And and I wouldn't leave it
there. It's really interesting, because a lot of the startups that I'm working with, they want people who come from startups, rather than large organizations. But you know, thinking back to that time, you know, you obviously were so you know, very hands on tactically when you needed to be, but I think it's often overlooked, just like the commercial experience that someone can bring if they have come from a large company right
into that startup world. And I think that, you know, that mindset that you've just described, that you embodied when you were working, there is probably a lot more important than anything else.
So I agree, I don't, I think someone has to have the right mindset. And that's some people test that by expecting people to have come from startup and only work and startup, but you can get it anywhere. I mean, I was an entrepreneur, even when I worked at a large company, I just didn't know it. So I got the opportunity to excel. Breast
fat in a startup. The benefits for with having brought that large company experience is when we start to scale to simple things like, you know, HLRs ease, or other things that a startups never come across, you know, as somebody working in a larger organization. So well, I know how this works. You know, I know how to do annual appraisals, I know how to do this kind of thing. So I brought
that experience with me. And it's saved, for example, getting an external advisors or whatever, to help with some of that. So I mean, the challenge as a founder is guess, startup mentality, but they may have come, or they may have significant large company experience as well,
yeah. And everyone wants someone to work for them who's T shaped, I guess, if you're in the right role in the right corporate company, you can have a broader skill set that you teach that early stage environment. So that company that you joined, that was sown forks, and they had a really fascinating journey. I was involved in a like slightly by helping hire people. But it was great to be part of it. But it'd be good to hear from you. Like, what are the kind of like key challenges that you
encountered there? What were the kind of like Product Market Fit challenges being in such an early stage business?
Okay, so I think so I joined, the company had one customer at that stage, and they were getting a lot of really positive feedback from that customer, which was great. That was also their biggest Achilles heel, because they had one customer, and effectively, whatever that one customer wanted, the team built. And there was a real risk that the product became specific to our customer, rather than the generalized product. So I think product market fit was achieved, in part by listening to that
customer. But also ignoring that customer at times and thinking about what is the general market need, and trying to generalize the solution. And once we got our first three, four or five customers, that became easier, until it became harder when we have lots of customers. And then suddenly, the chief exec and myself, which I'm listening to a huge number of customers, and trying to balance all these
requests. And it's very easy to get dragged into the conversation of I want this one feature, if only give me this feature. And part of the journey I've been on towards C PTO is understanding, digging into what's the problem we're trying to solve here? What's the customer problem? What's the challenge they have? Why can they do it with other products? Why can't they deal with our product? Better? What workarounds are they using at the moment, and really understanding that kind of loop.
Because if you understand that, then you can build something that is a general solution to a problem.
That's a great insight, especially for company, there's early days, and a is so easy to be pulled in the direction of what your customers want to do, rather than stick to a strategy, especially when you're under pressure to keep revenue coming in. So
it's absolutely and it's it's one of those things where the sales team come along and say, if you write me this one feature, I can sign a big customer. And you're looking at your strategy thinking, well, that's not what we're aiming to do. But you've got a commercial pressure of Yeah, but we could really deal with the revenue. And the customer will definitely sign if you go build, if you build that for me.
And you know, as an investment, money's tightening up just now, I think that's a trap that a lot of early stage businesses need to be aware of, and, you know, certainly take quite a balanced approach to between the immediate and the long term where they can,
yeah, and if there's a great book, the bill to trap out there, I'm gonna get it on Kindle, Amazon, whatever. And this covers this really well. And I found myself reading that years ago, reading the first few chapters, just thinking, yep, I made that mistake. Yep, I remember doing that. Yep. And it's one of those books where you just walk away thinking crikey, I could have done with this 10 years ago. So if you find yourself in that space, go read the book. It's a really fascinating read.
There's a great recommendation, I'll put a link in the notes so people can find that later. So one of the other things that was really interesting about sonar Fox was that the team grew just so quickly. There were I think there were like six of you, then maybe like nine A few days later, then within months, like how big How big is the team goal, it cost the business.
So well, we secured a significant round of investment, and you know, that was to fund team growth. And we went from, I think off the top of my head's from about 12 to about 25 and I took the call. I spoke with the chief exec and the board, about how We were going to do that. And, yes, I mean, you, you very much helped us on the recruitment side of things. But I was keen, and people thought I was crazy Demis I was keen to actually get all the new
startups in at once. And do this as a wave, rather than a sort of trickle. And my logic for that was, and people disagree with this, but I think it was the right thing. It's still today. My logic was we treat them as a cohort, almost like university, you know, all the first years come in at the same time, because it takes so much time to onboard people and train them. And a lot of it's common. So what are the mission? What's the mission? What are the values? What are we trying to achieve?
What is the product do? Who are our customers? So my view is we get in a cohort, and we train them all on that stuff, some tenuously, and then once we've done that, then they can go off to their specific teams, and learn the specifics for their role. I think it works pretty well. And the side effect of that was not only did we reduce overhead for the leadership team, but also that cohort became in built a lot of team spirit, because they'd all come in together, and they're all new
starts together. So they got to know one another, and form really strong relationships, working relationships with one another. So rather than just having, you know, one, you start in this team of couple in this team and couple over there, who didn't know one another, and they felt isolated. Actually, they had a great working relationship. So it was a bit left field bad approach. But for us, I think it worked really well. Having spent
time in that office, I do think that it really fostered a sense of team spirit. And it meant that everybody was on boarded properly to the business, which is something a lot of early stage companies. It's just really time consuming for someone to constantly be taking out for one person to do the demo another person's talk to the culture and values. Just to explain like this is, this is
how we work here. This is an I think that one of the other benefits was it gave everybody a much more holistic view of what was happening in the organization. So although it seemed like a very much like a bit of a big bang, more than doubling a small company overnight, it made the change process much smoother. And everybody within the existing team was involved in some way. So like the people who were there before and for in the new cohort joined. So people got to know each other pretty well.
Yep. So So I agree. And Chief tech myself, we put together what we called cenforce. University, he his idea, and I thought it was great name. And we had different sections within that. And we challenged one another to create content. And I would demo my content to him. And he would do the same to me. And we would make sure we were both happy with it. And you know, the best it could be. So that when we presented it to the team, it wasn't just a poor leader, doing something they knocked together
in half an hour. This was a well thought out well structured, sequenced onboarding program, which we wouldn't have had time to do if we were doing this drip, drip, drip sort of one person at a time. It's different teams. The chief exec and I spent, you know, several weeks putting this together. But the return was, as you say, huge, because it built knowledge. It got everyone on the same page, what are we about? Why do we do this? Why do people care? What problem are we solving? How do
we work? You know, what do we value? What don't we value. So it was really important for us
and other things that I would be fascinated to get your insights on, it's just a topic of conversation, which seems to come up quite a bit just now is about getting the most out of your engineering team. As you grow, a lot of people are keen to truly scale rather than just add bodies to a process and you know, try and really reap the benefits of having extra people in their team. So it would be great if you could tell me a little bit about that. And where I'd like to start is, you have
some great insights on this. So could you tell me a little bit about the difference between effectiveness and efficiency of development teams?
Sure, of course. So I find a lot of companies struggle upon they move between when it was two engineers or three engineers there, there was almost telepathy, you know, they didn't have to talk. They just knew what was going on. And they could work really efficiently together great. When you start hitting 678, it becomes a bit more difficult. And when you start going north of about eight engineers, suddenly nothing
works. It feels like you're walking through treacle, you're dragging a big anchor behind you everything slow, it's broken, it doesn't work. So that's the point of which people start worrying about efficient teams and trying to make the team more efficient. And they think that means is working faster. And that is what efficient means. It means, you know, I can put out a release every day as opposed to every week. Great. But I've
challenged that. And I've got a couple of insights papers on my website to make the difference between efficient and effective. Because there is a well known principle that something like 80 90% of code written is never used by users or only ever used infrequently. So what actually we should be doing is not trying to write that code faster, but not write that code, only write the code that people are going to use. And that's what I term
effective. So I want teams to be effective, even though maybe more efficient teams, you can churn out code faster. But I want to be the team that's writing the code that people are going to use, because that's the value
and how do you go about achieving that outcome? Because it is seems so logical, it's actually a challenge the, you know, resumes across so many industries, like in recruitment, I only want to contact the relevant candidates rather than lots of candidates. So there's probably some thing that anyone listening to this can take from the conversation.
Yep. And you're right, it's, it's the most naive level, it's simple. It seems ridiculously simple. Well, of course, I'm not going to know just called working smarter, rather than harder in some areas. But for this for product, it's about, and this is where the CP to roll really came from.
It's about recognizing, it's not just about code quality, you need to go speak to your customers, find out what they want, what they want to buy, find out what problems they have, find out how they would like to solve those problems. And then bring it back to the engineering team. And say, Well, how can this be built? And if so, how do we build it? So you know, I, I look, in my with my CPE to hat on, I look at various different risks, you know, the value of risk? Can I sell this?
Can I make money from it? Usability risk? Can I build something that is customers are going to enjoy using from a UX perspective, the feasibility? Is it technically possible? And then the business viability? Are we the right people to build this? So if we take value first, I want to understand, is anyone going to buy this? Why are they going to buy it? What what problem? Am I solving for people? And that's where if I get that, right, I can then engage engineering to do the
feasibility piece? Is it possible with the right company to build it? And that's how I work out right? What's the 20% of people are going to use often all the time says really
interesting, I guess, just, you know, working smarter, but that's actually being a little bit more strategic and commercial, and taking a more holistic view to things rather than busy work. So I'm just interested to know you started its own Fox as a CTO, and then you've now moved into a CP CIO role. How did you make that transition is something a lot of people are interested in, but don't really know how to do and there's ambiguity about what
that CPT or rules looks like. So we could we could discuss all this, but find out how you transitioned?
Sure, of course. So I made that transition. So I made a lot of mistakes. Hey, I came into the CTO role. And I knew my technology background, I could lead teams to build really, really good, well engineered product. But I found we, as a team, we get super excited about some new feature, and we put it out there, and we find customers were ambivalent about it. You know, and we were struggling to get people to adopt it and use
it regularly. And I think over the years, I began to realize this difference between writing really good code, directed by gut feel, you know, what do I think my intuition tells me a customer might like this, to actually managing the risk better, and asking customers more or understanding what job they're trying to do. And then solving that, and then creating a lightweight, lightweight sort of MVPs or demo products or something to show customers get
their feedback. Now, I made the mistake initially of just trying to drive the product or a CTO I've kind of almost had product responsibility. And I tried to drive it too much to my intuition. And through learning, seeing other people do better through various readings. I've learned there is a more effective way to do that. So I found this self in a place where I really liked human psychology and understanding the way people think the way people by the way
people evaluate. And I took that sort of personal interest and mixed it with my technology background, and found myself, unfortunately, between a CPO, chief product and a CTO chief technology. And I found myself sort of in the middle and people used to ask me, Are you a CTO or a CPO? And I didn't know. And then someone really helpfully invented the term C PTO to decide to define that person
stuck in the middle. So as I thank goodness, I've got a badge that I can wear that actually describes what I think I've been doing for several years now.
Sounds like a combination of just being really close to the customer, testing and validating ideas before proceeding. And you're being open to other people's feedback a little bit more seems to have helped you along that journey.
Yeah, I mean, I think, lesson number one, be humble, you don't have the answers. Now you need to, you need the tools and skills to find the answers. And you as you said, Rebecca, you need to be open to because someone will come along saying I want this, I think it should be done this way. And you're going to have this feeling in your gut, well, that's rubbish, I would never do that way. And you need to be humble enough to say, actually, I probably got this
wrong. You know, you're the customer, you're the one with the money. You're the one with doing this day to day, you're the one with the problem. So I will be open to the idea that I made a mistake. And I got it wrong. And let's try it your way and see if you're way worse. And I will take your ideas. And I'll pay them back several other customers and see if it
resonates with them. But yeah, that there's nothing worse for CTO or engineering teams then getting really excited about the latest development, putting it up there on the App Store or releasing it to customers. And it nobody uses it. It's the worst outcome ever. And I've been there most teams have been there. So that's what I tried to avoid.
So if somebody wants to be Ventoux, a CPT overall, you know, I'm, I think that doing that within an early stage startup or scale up business is the ideal place because it the constraints that are placed on that business, really augment the possibility for that opportunity to become a reality, if you want to, like take yourself beyond technology.
Yep. So agreed. And I think, a really early stage startup, if you're wearing the hat of CTO, then ask the question, who's covering product? Because if it's not you, then who is and if no one
else says you need to do it. So you need to, again, think about how do I decide what the product is, for the next stage of organization, maybe the sort of 1020 30 people, you might have a product of Sir, or you might have a formal CPE to pass the point of which I've worked with a lot of organizations helping mentor and guide their product teams, and really get them working effectively together
with engineering. So you have those kind of two stages, I guess, three, the stage after but the first stage is, you're the person doesn't matter what your title is, you're probably covering technology and product together, you might be CEO, you might be chief technology officer, you might be something else, but you're kind of probably covering it all. The next stage is, you're maybe more formally recognized as having product, and you need to hone your skills. And advisors can
help with that. And then the stage after is the, you're probably a board level or chief product, whatever and you have several, maybe a CTO underneath you and a CP o underneath you. And you're, you know, you've got teams of people doing stuff. So recognizing which phase which the three phases you're in, and then gathering the appropriate skills, background reading, study, mentors, people around you to help you. That's probably the most important thing.
There's some fantastic advice there and some great tips. So now, now you're out on your own. You've been consulting with some of these amazing businesses over the last couple of years. Because now you've been in like five exits in your career, you've been involved in this, but phenomenal. You've obviously worked out how to bring a lot of value to those businesses based
on some of the stories. Could you tell me a little bit about how you've helped them do that through, like strategy and teams and anything technical, that's relevant? That'd be amazing. Of course.
Yeah. So I've been through five exits, three, with myself and two as an advisor. And so I've seen the whole build up to exit. I've seen the due diligence process. I've helped companies through that. But your question about how you build value It's. So there are various different metrics and revenue is one of them, but it's the one that people tend to focus on. But what I look for is long term product viability, long term customers, ease of attracting customers holding on to
customers. And short that will deliver revenue. But I don't like to focus on revenue first. Because if you focus on revenue first, then you will make short term decisions is my opinion. So you will make a decision, you'll sign up a customer and they're a bad customer, they're, you know, a customer, that's not a good fit, or they want a whole lot of worked into the product. And if they're a bad fit, they'll churn, they'll leave you after the first year. So I look for
long term growth. And that's what builds the value in an organization. Finding a customer is a set of customers with a similar problem, coming up with a solution that solves that problem for multiple customers, and then talking about that product to that persona of customer. And that's what builds value in the organization. Because that's what you can scale. And as an investor or acquire, they're gonna come in with their money, or assistance
or team or whatever. And they can magnify, they can scale that up. But if you've just got a series of one off sales, which a lot of startups do, they have great revenue numbers, but they're really just a series of one off sales. You can't scale that. Yeah.
So it needs to be repeatable and expandable, and, you know, documented well thought out, I think that goes across all all businesses.
Yeah, so absolutely agree. And a good acquisition team, a good DD team can spot that. And they'll be able to work out is it just you've had 10 delivers 10, one off sales that have landed? Or actually do you have something that is repeatable. And this is why I get concerns with companies that solely talk about revenue numbers as a success piece. Because, you know, there, there are markets that are businesses out there, and I could make a
load of money. But I'd be out of business after a year or two, because my customers, you know, it's not a good fit, or the product isn't going in the direction that they want. So I
speak to founders every day and leadership teams. And there's a couple of common challenges that I'm seeing come up time and time again. And one of them that I love your insight on is how to balance like stealing product and tech and knowing where to put your resources across the two functions. So
in it is a huge shine for a lot of organizations. And this is actually where I think the CPT role comes into its own. Because if you have a CTO, and a CPO, they're effectively fighting for resource a lot of the time, the resources, the engineering team, or QA team or whatever. The C PTO, or someone with joint responsibility actually has to balance it themselves and are fighting, they're just looking for the
best outcome. And a good CP to balance is things like working on technical debt, for example, with new sales opportunities. And there are various different models out there for modeling the potential return from a particular development. But the key thing for me is, what is your strategy? And what's going to take you closer to your strategy? Because again, it's very easy to get distracted by people talking about we need to fix this technical debt, or we need this new library because
it's very cool. And we'd love to use it. Or else if we do this, we get, you know, half a million in revenue or whatever. Focus on your goal. What's the strategy? What's the outcome you're looking for? And what takes you closest to that?
And what other challenges do you hear people coming to you and saying, oh, gosh, I'm really stuck with this.
So I think the one we just described that kind of balance between tech and product is probably the greatest one. The other challenge, obviously, is people the number trying to get more good people. And it's something Rebecca, you're obviously intimately close to just trying to find good tea. Because in the mantra I've always had is you hire for tomorrow. It's not about your tech skills today. You need adaptable people, people are desperate to learn and grow with
the organization. And one of the biggest challenges at the moment is a lack of people who have those kinds of skills, and I'm willing to grow with the organization. So yeah, it's an I know it's something we've seen for years and years. Insufficient good tech people, but I think it's got more Critical over the last couple of years or so. And as I've moved many is me having moved more into the product space. And I see this more. But the number of good product people on the
market is really small. There's a lot of people, if you are CTOs who suddenly saw the new term CP to and just stuck a P in their LinkedIn profile, right? And they're not product people at all. So I work with organizations, and often we're looking for good product people really hard. And I think
that, for me, when I'm helping companies put together a product team. There, even the founders aren't always sure of what kind of product people they need, you know, your product means so many different things, is their product strategy. Is it product marketing? Is it your technical product advice that they need? Is it Product Management? Is it
product ownership? And I don't think that people are always clear on how to identify and assess what their actual requirement is, you know, certainly working back from the end result is a great place to start. And knowing what you need someone to achieve, rather than just what you think you need would be my tip, for anyone who's facing that dilemma. Just know,
I think that's a great tip, I really do. And, you know, I've worked with you quite a bit in the past, Rebecca, and one things I really like is, so I've worked with some recruiters who do not know the differences between the different roles that you were just mentioning. And it's apparent that they're about to try and hire me the wrong type of person. I like working with you, because you know this stuff, and you've dealt with it a lot. And it's very easy to have a conversation with you.
But where I add value to organizations to sitting down and thinking, what is the end goal look like? What do we need to deliver this? How many product managers? Are we going to need a CPO? You know, how does technology fit into that? What is the text structure in the play, and then work with the recruitment partner to bring those people into the organization.
And I certainly think that more thoughtful approach can end up saving companies a lot of time and money. You know, and getting something out there quickly can be just as advantageous is doing
your own. I was thinking about this the other day record and by the time you go through CVS, brief a recruiter go through CVS, interview on board, whatever, get that person up speed, and then that person is not fully productive. Initially. It takes him maybe six months, but during those six months, then asking maybe a couple of other people for help regularly, you're losing one to one and a half years worth of people time for each role, at least. And
therefore getting it right. And, you know, getting the right person in is it's a false economy to go cheap. I think.
Definitely. I think you're better to have, especially in an early stage, less time from people with more experience. And you know, I think, you know, obviously, that's not like the right solution is a company is growing beyond their first few hires. But it, it makes all the difference if there's that solid foundation there.
Yep, great. And that's in part, why do an idea and a fractional basis, sort of part time basis with companies. So they maybe don't need my skills full time or, you know, they don't have a role big enough yet enough money. So for me working with them on a fractional basis to help get them to where they need to be now, and then bring in people, you know, maybe less experienced, but maybe mentored by me or whatever. So to take them to the next stage works really well.
So another thing that I'd love to speak to you about is what to do when growth in a company is starting to stall. I can see that happening in a couple of areas. It's obviously it's, it's really challenging. Its cost of acquisitions increase for lots
of businesses. So there are metrics that people can look to it, you know, but actually, from the CPA to perspective, or your perspectives, you know, as an advisor, and board member in some of these businesses, what are the places that people should be looking to, like, get to the root of that problem?
Yeah. So when I advise boards or sit on boards, I go back to basics at this point. What is it that worked before but it's not working now? Why, you know, if we build in good product that customers want We're approaching the right customers about it and presenting it in the right way, then we should be making sales. So something in that chain is broken. And going back to basics and understanding, you know, have we gone off the rails? Have we stopped listening to customers now building something
they don't want? Or are we, you know, you sometimes see organizations taking a really well focused product, and thinking, a sort of shotgun approach of just sending it out to anybody will help scale their business, or, you know,
something. So like, just go back to basics and say, speak to your customers, you know, the latest version, if you're measuring, whether it be Pirate Metrics, or heart metrics, or whatever it is, understanding how many people using your product, what percentage of your user base are using the new feature you've
just put out there? How often to be using, how frequently do they come back, and use that data to drive an understanding of what's happening to your product, and then change your strategy accordingly.
Totally, and that makes so much sense. But I think it's it's really easy for this to happen in the knee jerk is quite often, oh, sales, marketing or growth are to blame for growth, stalling, and you know that that creates a bit of, there's always gonna be friction in an organization around those areas. But actually, being a lot more analytical about the product and how it's being used, could save you a lot of money and get to the root of the problem in a more effective way is your message.
Agree? Absolutely that so an a good product manager. So a sales team go out and sell the product, you know, as is, is the perfect solution. So they don't go out and try and sell a future product or a product with extra bits added on. So if we, the sales team are doing that taking the standard product out to customers and trying to sell if it's not working, it's not bringing sales teams fault. There is something wrong with the product, or identification of customers or something like
that. But a good product manager whose strategic well work out what is wrong, and then realign it.
Totally. So one of the things that we touched on earlier, and we're talking about your experiences, you've been involved in five exits. And that's a lot of experience in that space. And something which you know, very few people will have, like been involved in so many businesses that where there is an acquisition. So I would like to know from you, but when should companies think about preparing to exit?
So my simple answer to this is they shouldn't. Okay, and that's a slightly contradictory answer to what I'm about to say, don't get focused on exit, get focused on building your business building repeatable product sales, etc. But put in place the foundation's the groundwork for an exit as soon as possible. So make sure and I do a lot of work with companies. I've done due diligence, I've been asked a lot of questions by people doing due diligence. And I know what it
looks like. And I know risks. So I go into organizations, and are able to put an independent perspective on things and say, as an acquirer or investor, that risk over here, it's too high, you need to address that risk over here is fine, don't worry about that. So you can start looking at those things because they're good for the business, and building the things that acquires or investors will look for and dealing with those risks
early. Tip number one, don't leave it till too late because a good DD team will spot you've tried to write the answer to their question and pretend it was written six months ago, they'll spot that straightaway. So don't think about exit because you'll get distracted and stop doing the day job. But do put in place the foundations for a potential exit now,
and just keeping your like your filing systems clear. And like really basic stuff can help and having basic governance policies and procedures. Make sure that you know where your contracts are, and that you have them all signed. And
yeah, absolutely. So build a data room now. Go do it now and populate it. A good chair will think about these governance frameworks think about good governance, which includes everything you just mentioned. And should the board are doing those things because it's the right thing to do for the business. So going back to my earlier point, it's not about we're trying to create an exit so let's do this. It's about this is right for the business. So let's do it. And
you never know when someone is going to contact you with you know, an opportunity. You just don't know. Absolutely. You can always manufacture these things and then codes. This year we're going to sell you want to make yourself have just the best on the market so that you are snapped up and have more control of those negotiations.
Absolutely, you're absolutely right. So because if you haven't done if you've left risks open, what happens is people come along and they chip the price, they certainly go, well, we weren't going to pay this much. But we don't like this risk. So we're gonna knock half a million off. So you want to avoid that. But to your point, I've had two conversations around a potential acquisition, one of which was started with a LinkedIn message
to me. And the other which started with we went to demo the product to somebody in their office and have a cup of tea. And at the end is a great Are you thinking of being acquired, because we might like to talk about that, you know, both of them were out of the blue. You know, so you never know where it's going to come from. But yeah, if you've done all the good staff, you've got good governance, you've got a chair or non execs helping put that in
place. And then you've got your data room with all that ready, you've looked at the big risks to avoid people trying to cut the price back, then when it happens, and it will happen, if you're a good company, you're ready.
That's really valuable advice. And I think that by putting those things in early on, the added benefits are, it's far it's a lot less stressful when things do happen. And a lot of what you need to do to prepare for an exit is going to be similar to what you need to prepare for taking on investment. So whatever comes first, you're putting yourself in place for growth,
absolutely 100%. One of the roles I did as an advisor, again, doing this analysis of risk within the organization from a acquiring investors perspective, we did all that over six months, and we built it because it was the right thing for the business. And then when acquisition when a due diligence team did come along as an easy conversation, because we knew what they would consider risk. And we'd already dealt with that appropriately. So actually, it was a straightforward conversation.
Interesting. And in terms of your, like, advice for people just now, you've been involved in so many companies, your great successes, and you've been on the board. From that perspective? What qualities are you seeing in the leadership teams that have successfully exited? What is it about those individuals that's helped propel them to that place,
humility, and openness to learning, you know, learn as much as possible, as quickly as possible, adaptable, and they listen. And actually, a lot of the other skills they can make up for if they've got those things. The worst leadership teams are the ones who have got closed days that don't want to hear input from other people, or else, they're the seasoned professionals who sit this out, I don't need to do this, I've done this for enough years, I
don't need to do that. Or else, the people who really don't have the appetite, they're not, they don't have the appetite for learning to learn new things, or try new things. So I think if you've got those, and if you use values to hire, and so if your values are around humility, around openness, around a lack of ego around a want or thirst for learning, and you hire those people at board level, your organization will do a lot better.
That's great. So really looking for that, I guess, open openness, which is going to make it easier for people to I think it's easier to empower a team, if you say I don't have the answers is up to you sometimes. And people get more excited when they're given that level of trust, and autonomy, like they're far more likely to feel valued, as well.
So I guess if those tools enable successful delegation at the planet, like humility is so important, and I see people like talk about being humble, and how important it is. But I think that it's hard to assess humility, because it's, you know, what you're meant to see. There's so much information out there about an hour. And people are sometimes a little bit hard. Sometimes the level of humility they display based on their experience is impacted by the environment that they're
operating in. You know, I can think of times in places where it's not you've needed to have a good degree of bravado and, you know, a sense of we can do anything, and we know the answer serves in order to just create a bit of steel and momentum. So how would have you any tips for trying to identify humility? I know I'm putting you on the spot. And it's a tricky one.
Wow, that is a really hard one. I'm going to answer a slightly different questions, give myself 30 seconds thought, think. So, two of the greatest skills, a leader can have a vulnerability and humility. And I've seen that leaders and I can think of one chief exec, who had a complete inability to be vulnerable, they always had to have the answer. And it's had a culture within the leadership team that was really challenging, because nobody was able to make a mistake at that
point. You know, you the experimentation culture went out the window. So I think humility and vulnerability to the greatest and most underrated skills in a leader. How do you assess for humility and vulnerability? I don't I don't know. And I think if I did no bad answer, I'd probably make a million pounds. But I think there is a chemistry thing there. And you can do the sort of various interview techniques
to try and uncover that. But I think you just get a sense from somebody, you know, if you're an experienced, interfere. And this is where I've used your skills, Rebecca in the past to help interview because you're usually experienced in this space, I'm just trying to uncover do we really think this person is authentically humble and vulnerable? Or is it just, you know, a screen they're putting up?
And I would like, you know, just listening to there is maybe maybe think of two things that you could do and that they're not necessarily fully recruitment focus, but they should be part of your process and things you're considering. The first obvious one is referencing does it match up? And I think that it's, for a lot of companies. They're quite happy just to a standard look for Joe Bloggs worked here from first January 2020, until whatever date in the future, and
that's all you're given. And there's reasons why companies feel that that's all they can provide. But I do think that we've kind of lost a lot of insight, and even just like how to get the best out of our new
hires. By dropping the ball with referencing in general, I think that there is a way to take a good reference and to get somebody to tell you informally, and for humility, when you were talking about it, the you know that, you know, being able to say I don't have all the answers, and I might be wrong. Those are really challenging for companies. If you have no humility in your leadership team, and people think they know everything, hopefully it's not
the case. But if you have that, that tends to seep through out your organization, and that culture goes all the way down to the bottom. So maybe a way to assess humility, they could think more about would be how to find out what they think the cultural challenges are. And when people have had challenges of people who work for them, not demonstrating humility, because that would be indicative,
I think is a good approach. I'll give you a very funny laughing It's funny story of humility. So we were asking a candidate at once about humility. It's quite a senior role in an organization. In part because I had to rush there and Miss lunch. And in part because I was just being nice. I brought some cakes with me. So we had some cakes in the middle of the table, some muffins and stuff because I was passing a coffee
shop, and I wanted some cake. So we had this, then this person had spent half an hour explaining why they were humble, and part of the team and although they were going in at sea level, that actually, you know, they're really a normal person. And then they stood up on the way out, and I was about to grab all this stuff and put it in the bin or take it with me or put it in the kitchen or whatever. The surgeon said, A will somebody tidy up after us
in this room. And I can't believe you've just explained to me how humble you are how you know, an inch on the ground yard for your expecting. And he also was trying to explain how he understood startup culture, but everyone has to get her hands dirty. And then he stood up and was expecting the team to come and tidy up after him. I'm just like, okay, that blew for me.
That's a great story. And yeah, so other things we could do to add to the list of assessing humility is, is someone willing to tidy up after themselves?
Exactly. You know, I'm a board member advisor and the first thing I did was I'll tidy up this and why not? You know, it's it's, that's, again, part of it. Gather, it talks about it. I'm vulnerability and saying you don't know the answer. It's one of the most motivating things for a leader says, I don't know, I don't have that answer. What do you think? How could you, you know, can you give me some ideas to help me
solve that problem. And if you look at Dan Pink motivation, the autonomy, mastery and purpose, if somebody feels that they have autonomy, and being asked to solve problems, if they filtered, they're getting better by trying to solve hard problems and a purpose, you know, around the organization and helping the leadership team and they have a personal purpose. That's hugely motivating. So it's a technique.
I think, I wish more leaders would use I don't know, what do you think, help, you know, can you come up with anything to help you solve this problem?
Great advice. So I'm sure that people will be thinking a lot more about how humble they are, or they really am demonstrating that behavior. And we're, what is the kind of like level of humility within their organization? Do they need to be thinking about that more holistically? Yeah,
absolutely. Well, I'd say I have six. I think, as I say, leadership, many leadership teams would value would get value from being a little more vulnerable and a little more humble.
Totally. Well, Matt, thanks so much for your insights has been truly fascinating and great to reconnect with you and find out more about your work as a CPA to and how you're helping all these companies scale and exit. It's been really insightful.
I've really enjoyed the conversation. And thank you for the questions. And it's been a really interesting chat, Rebecca, so thank you.
Well, thanks for joining us today. If you would like to get in touch with myself, our Matt, our details are down below in the contact information. Thanks for listening to the Listen perspective. I'm Rebecca Hastings, founder and director at the Lucent group, a tech sector executive search and talent consultancy. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with others, post about it on social media or
leave a rating and review. If you're a company looking to hire top technology leaders, or you'd like to discuss your next move, please reach out to me on LinkedIn or send me an email to Rebecca at the Listen group at dog co.uk