The Exchanges

Q Work ethic gets you a long way. In the early days, you built the MVP with just a million bucks, right? Before any outside funding. Can you just talk to me about that and what you'd advise founders on MVPs and going to V-one with minimal resources having done that?

A Yeah, so yeah, so at the time we wanted to build a full stack energy company, and we had a million bucks. So what we need for full stack energy company, we need power generation, we need a license, we need someone to help us guide through regulation, we need a qualified trader, so you need to be qualified to trade energy, and we also need a qualified electrician. So we found a single wind turbine in north of Scotland, um, that the seller is willing to sell for 750 K. Uh, we found a license for 75 K. Um, we convinced, uh, the former CEO of Ofgem to become an advisor with just equity and no cash. Um, and my co-founder Charles became a qualified trader and electrician. So we acquired all the skills and assets we need to build a MVP for Sac Energy Company. So my advice is I don't think you need a lot of capital. You don't need a huge seed round to get started. You can just

AI assessment note: “we found a single wind turbine in north of Scotland... willing to sell for 750 K”

Q understand, when we look at, like, transformative moments, one of the most transformative early moments to you was getting the job with Nick and with Revolut. Can you just take me to that? And Saka actually said I had to ask this one, he was like, you gotta start with how he actually got the job. How did you get the job with Nick, and what did that look like?

A Yeah. So at the time I just, you know, I, I, I just graduated and, uh, I was just perusing on, uh, on a Facebook group, like it was called London startups. And I saw this job post, um, Revolut and I was like, okay, I have no idea what this company does. Uh, but I was looking for fresh guys. I was like, okay, I applied and Nick replied within five minutes. I was like, oh wow, that's, that's very quick. And then he asked me to come for a face-to-face interview the next day. So I came for an interview, and he asked me a bunch of physics questions, like, you know, I didn't realize I was applying for a physics job. Um, and he offered me a role, you know, right after the interview. I said yes, and that was it. That was like, uh, the fastest interview process I've ever had.

AI assessment note: “I saw this job post... applied and Nick replied within five minutes.”

Q Work ethic gets you a long way. In the early days, you built the MVP with just a million bucks, right? Before any outside funding. Can you just talk to me about that and what you'd advise founders on MVPs and going to V-one with minimal resources having done that?

A Yeah, so yeah, so at the time we wanted to build a full stack energy company, and we had a million bucks. So what we need for full stack energy company, we need power generation, we need a license, we need someone to help us guide through regulation, we need a qualified trader, so you need to be qualified to trade energy, and we also need a qualified electrician. So we found a single wind turbine in north of Scotland, um, that the seller is willing to sell for 750 K. Uh, we found a license for 75 K. Um, we convinced, uh, the former CEO of Ofgem to become an advisor with just equity and no cash. Um, and my co-founder Charles became a qualified trader and electrician. So we acquired all the skills and assets we need to build a MVP for Sac Energy Company. So my advice is I don't think you need a lot of capital. You don't need a huge seed round to get started. You can just

AI assessment note: “So my advice is I don't think you need a lot of capital.”

Q Is that not a game of luck in some ways? When you hire, when you hire someone, you've never met them before, they're young, you have very little data on them, you don't actually know if they're going to give it the all and work through Christmas to get that deal done, to get that project off the line. Is it not a game of luck?

A Um, I'll say it's, it's certainly not game luck. There are, there are questions you can ask. So I usually pitch them, pitch them about a company telling, okay, like we want to be the number one engine company, blah, blah, blah, right? Uh, and then I, I, I explained to them, look, you have many, many choices, right? You're obviously very, very talented engineer. You have many choices. You can work at any startup you want, any tech company you want. Like, are you really sure this is what you want to do, right? It's going to be very tough. Um, there'll be tough times. Um, you know, you have to balance, constantly balance between shipping new features, fixing bugs, um, increasing, uh, improving scalability of the platform. Like, like, why do you want to do this to yourself? Like, why are you sure you want to do this, right? And if they say, oh, I'm not sure, depends on the pay, blah, blah, blah, that means they're not up for it. But if they lean in and they tell you, okay, I've been so bored at my corporate job. I've been, this is something I've been looking for, you know, for a very long time. Like I'm in, then you know, right? Now, obviously they can lie, right? But most, I would say from my experience, they don't.

AI assessment note: “I'll say it's, it's certainly not game luck. There are, there are questions you can ask.”

Q What did you learn from Nick about managing people and people performance?

A It's all about results. Uh, like, I think, I think Nick's make this, make this analogy before, but, um, there are three types of people in the world. There are people who can self-identify the target and shoot and hit the goal. Then there are people who can't identify targets, but if you point, they shoot and they hit the goal. And then the third type of people, which is neither, right? You want to maximize the first and second Group of people. Um, and you want ideally the first and second type of people leading teams, right? Um, and basically the throughput of your company is basically some of the number of people in the first and second bucket.

AI assessment note: “there are three types of people in the world. There are people who can self-identify”

Q What did you learn from Nick about managing people and people performance?

A It's all about results. Uh, like, I think, I think Nick's make this, make this analogy before, but, um, there are three types of people in the world. There are people who can self-identify the target and shoot and hit the goal. Then there are people who can't identify targets, but if you point, they shoot and they hit the goal. And then the third type of people, which is neither, right? You want to maximize the first and second Group of people. Um, and you want ideally the first and second type of people leading teams, right? Um, and basically the throughput of your company is basically some of the number of people in the first and second bucket.

AI assessment note: “It's all about results. Uh, like, I think, I think Nick's make this analogy”

Q When you think about, like, energy, the energy crisis today, what does no one know that everyone should know? I'm very naive on energy. It's not my business. It's not where we invest traditionally.

A So, first of all, uh, there's no such thing as harm to renewable. So just think about, you know, when the sun is shining, uh, solar, uh, solar is generating, and obviously sun is not shining all the time. And for wind, it's the same, right? When wind is blowing, you get wind energy, right? Wind power. Uh, however, they are extremely correlated to each other. What that means is even if you overbuild solar and wind, it's never possible to cover a harm set of the time. Um, to be harm set renewable because they're highly correlated, right? So in certain hours you get abundant of solar and wind energy, but certain hours you basically get near zero energy, even if you overbuild. Now you can argue, okay, you can put storage in, but right now most batteries are sub two hours. Right. So they actually, batteries are still way too expensive, um, for us to use to store, you know, you know, days or even weeks without, you know, solar and wind energy. So any energy company that's claiming their harm sent renewables is a complete lie. Right. They're simply buying renewable certificates, right, to claim the harm sent renewables, and it's completely false. Just to give you, let me give you, let me give you like a proof point of why, why, why this is completely false. When, when we, when we had the, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the gas prices weren't shut up, but the energy companies are offerin…

AI assessment note: “any energy company that's claiming their harm sent renewables is a complete lie”

Q Is that not a game of luck in some ways? When you hire, when you hire someone, you've never met them before, they're young, you have very little data on them, you don't actually know if they're going to give it the all and work through Christmas to get that deal done, to get that project off the line. Is it not a game of luck?

A Um, I'll say it's, it's certainly not game luck. There are, there are questions you can ask. So I usually pitch them, pitch them about a company telling, okay, like we want to be the number one engine company, blah, blah, blah, right? Uh, and then I, I, I explained to them, look, you have many, many choices, right? You're obviously very, very talented engineer. You have many choices. You can work at any startup you want, any tech company you want. Like, are you really sure this is what you want to do, right? It's going to be very tough. Um, there'll be tough times. Um, you know, you have to balance, constantly balance between shipping new features, fixing bugs, um, increasing, uh, improving scalability of the platform. Like, like, why do you want to do this to yourself? Like, why are you sure you want to do this, right? And if they say, oh, I'm not sure, depends on the pay, blah, blah, blah, that means they're not up for it. But if they lean in and they tell you, okay, I've been so bored at my corporate job. I've been, this is something I've been looking for, you know, for a very long time. Like I'm in, then you know, right? Now, obviously they can lie, right? But most, I would say from my experience, they don't.

AI assessment note: “I'll say it's, it's certainly not game luck. There are, there are questions you can ask.”

Q Can you just help me and say, you know, I was talking to one of the biggest, um, kind of data infrastructure providers the other day, and they were like, listen, the reason we're not in the UK is because as a percentage of revenue, energy is 16% of our revenues in the UK, whereas comparatively elsewhere, it's three to four percent. Why is that? Why are we so bad?

A Two reasons. The first reason is over-regulation. There is, it's very hard to build Anything in the UK, like physical otherwise. Um, let me give you an example, right? Um, one of the, so we're trying to build a power plant in the UK and, you know, one of the things council have a complete discretion over, you know, planning, especially around environmental impact. So we had to do, you know, wintering bird surveys, right, over several winters. So you hire, so how that works is you hire a guy with a clipboard and they count number of birds in the winter. And until that server is done, you can't build. So that's one example where, you know, it's so hard to build something physical in Britain. Um, and right now I can tell you, um, if you speak to any of the, you know, infra capital providers, um, they want to deploy a lot of capital to building infrastructure. So the problem is not capital. The problem is it's very, very hard to build. So that's the first reason. The second reason I would say is the quality of companies operating this space is not very sophisticated. Like a lot of these existing energy companies, they are not technology driven at all. They're very old school. So pen and paper spreadsheet based companies, um, they're incredibly inefficient. Now, there's not much I can do about regulation, but I think we can for sure build the best version of what, uh, you know, best…

AI assessment note: “Two reasons. The first reason is over-regulation. There is, it's very hard to build”

Q When I interviewed Nick, the thing that struck me was he said about the 26 kind of product, ah, experiments were being run internally at the same time. That was a really interesting way to approach company building to me that no one had ever talked to me about before. What did you learn from that? And what are your takeaways from seeing that you, that you've applied to Fuse?

A Yeah, I think product diversification is so important. I mean, let me give you like, let me give you like one, one example of why that was so important. So during the COVID lockdowns, um, the interchange revenue, so, you know, revenue from people spending on cards, especially abroad, went basically near zero, right? However, um, there was a lot of stimulus checks, right? From, from the COVID times and the stock market was booming, right? And the crypto market was booming. So whilst the exchange revenue went down, the, you know, trading revenue went off. So it kind of offset each other. Um, so that was a great example where diversification actually helped make the company's revenues much more resilient.

AI assessment note: “diversification actually helped make the company's revenues much more resilient.”

Q When I interviewed Nick, the thing that struck me was he said about the 26 kind of product, ah, experiments were being run internally at the same time. That was a really interesting way to approach company building to me that no one had ever talked to me about before. What did you learn from that? And what are your takeaways from seeing that you, that you've applied to Fuse?

A Yeah, I think product diversification is so important. I mean, let me give you like, let me give you like one, one example of why that was so important. So during the COVID lockdowns, um, the interchange revenue, so, you know, revenue from people spending on cards, especially abroad, went basically near zero, right? However, um, there was a lot of stimulus checks, right? From, from the COVID times and the stock market was booming, right? And the crypto market was booming. So whilst the exchange revenue went down, the, you know, trading revenue went off. So it kind of offset each other. Um, so that was a great example where diversification actually helped make the company's revenues much more resilient.

AI assessment note: “diversification actually helped make the company's revenues much more resilient.”

Q When you think about, like, energy, the energy crisis today, what does no one know that everyone should know? I'm very naive on energy. It's not my business. It's not where we invest traditionally.

A So, first of all, uh, there's no such thing as harm to renewable. So just think about, you know, when the sun is shining, uh, solar, uh, solar is generating, and obviously sun is not shining all the time. And for wind, it's the same, right? When wind is blowing, you get wind energy, right? Wind power. Uh, however, they are extremely correlated to each other. What that means is even if you overbuild solar and wind, it's never possible to cover a harm set of the time. Um, to be harm set renewable because they're highly correlated, right? So in certain hours you get abundant of solar and wind energy, but certain hours you basically get near zero energy, even if you overbuild. Now you can argue, okay, you can put storage in, but right now most batteries are sub two hours. Right. So they actually, batteries are still way too expensive, um, for us to use to store, you know, you know, days or even weeks without, you know, solar and wind energy. So any energy company that's claiming their harm sent renewables is a complete lie. Right. They're simply buying renewable certificates, right, to claim the harm sent renewables, and it's completely false. Just to give you, let me give you, let me give you like a proof point of why, why, why this is completely false. When, when we, when we had the, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the gas prices weren't shut up, but the energy companies are offerin…

AI assessment note: “any energy company that's claiming their harm sent renewables is a complete lie.”

Q Can you just help me and say, you know, I was talking to one of the biggest, um, kind of data infrastructure providers the other day, and they were like, listen, the reason we're not in the UK is because as a percentage of revenue, energy is 16% of our revenues in the UK, whereas comparatively elsewhere, it's three to four percent. Why is that? Why are we so bad?

A Two reasons. The first reason is over-regulation. There is, it's very hard to build Anything in the UK, like physical otherwise. Um, let me give you an example, right? Um, one of the, so we're trying to build a power plant in the UK and, you know, one of the things council have a complete discretion over, you know, planning, especially around environmental impact. So we had to do, you know, wintering bird surveys, right, over several winters. So you hire, so how that works is you hire a guy with a clipboard and they count number of birds in the winter. And until that server is done, you can't build. So that's one example where, you know, it's so hard to build something physical in Britain. Um, and right now I can tell you, um, if you speak to any of the, you know, infra capital providers, um, they want to deploy a lot of capital to building infrastructure. So the problem is not capital. The problem is it's very, very hard to build. So that's the first reason. The second reason I would say is the quality of companies operating this space is not very sophisticated. Like a lot of these existing energy companies, they are not technology driven at all. They're very old school. So pen and paper spreadsheet based companies, um, they're incredibly inefficient. Now, there's not much I can do about regulation, but I think we can for sure build the best version of what, uh, you know, best…

AI assessment note: “Two reasons. The first reason is over-regulation.”

Q What shouldn't be a KPI, and what should, and how do you determine that?

A I mean, like, like when you start incentivizing a metric, you need to think about, okay, what are the second order consequences, right? Let's take a very simple example. Let's say, um, let's take a recruiter, right? If you give a KPI to a recruiter, um, let's say on hires per month, what they might start to do, right? Because the bonus depends on it, is trying to convince hiring managers to lower the talent bar. I've seen that happen before, but that's actually not what the company wants, right? What the company wants is actually keep the talent bought high. So instead they try to, you know, you know, some recruiters that really want to chase the bonuses, they try and negotiate with hiring managers, try and convince them this is the best you're going to find, you're not going to find someone better, et cetera, et cetera.

AI assessment note: “when you start incentivizing a metric, you need to think about... second order consequences”

Q What shouldn't be a KPI, and what should, and how do you determine that?

A I mean, like, like when you start incentivizing a metric, you need to think about, okay, what are the second order consequences, right? Let's take a very simple example. Let's say, um, let's take a recruiter, right? If you give a KPI to a recruiter, um, let's say on hires per month, what they might start to do, right? Because the bonus depends on it, is trying to convince hiring managers to lower the talent bar. I've seen that happen before, but that's actually not what the company wants, right? What the company wants is actually keep the talent bought high. So instead they try to, you know, you know, some recruiters that really want to chase the bonuses, they try and negotiate with hiring managers, try and convince them this is the best you're going to find, you're not going to find someone better, et cetera, et cetera.

AI assessment note: “when you start incentivizing a metric, you need to think about... second order consequences”

Q Do you think it's important to have an enemy in a startup? Whether it's Revolut and banks, whether it's Fuse and, you know, traditional incumbents, is that important?

A I think it's important to have a common goal. So like, for example, at Fuse, our common goal is like no trade-offs. So if you think about, you know, looking back like last 20 years, right, like this like green movement, right, of, you know, basically telling people to use less, right? So you had politicians that says you shouldn't, you should drive less to work, you should turn heating on less often, you should fly less, you should do You know, less of everything, right, in order to save the environment. Like, and then you have, you know, energy prices slowly creeping up over the last 20 years as well. I think it's like, it's basically trade-offs, and I think that's totally wrong, right? Like, it's actually moving in the complete opposite direction, right? It's, we should be using more energy. There's actually, A very strong correlation between how much energy you use per capita and quality of life. Right. And, and if you look at the Americans, right, the Americans use, you know, almost eight times more energy than Europeans and, and look at the quality of life. Right.

AI assessment note: “I think it's important to have a common goal.”

Q Do you think it's important to have an enemy in a startup? Whether it's Revolut and banks, whether it's Fuse and, you know, traditional incumbents, is that important?

A I think it's important to have a common goal. So like, for example, at Fuse, our common goal is like no trade-offs. So if you think about, you know, looking back like last 20 years, right, like this like green movement, right, of, you know, basically telling people to use less, right? So you had politicians that says you shouldn't, you should drive less to work, you should turn heating on less often, you should fly less, you should do You know, less of everything, right, in order to save the environment. Like, and then you have, you know, energy prices slowly creeping up over the last 20 years as well. I think it's like, it's basically trade-offs, and I think that's totally wrong, right? Like, it's actually moving in the complete opposite direction, right? It's, we should be using more energy. There's actually, A very strong correlation between how much energy you use per capita and quality of life. Right. And, and if you look at the Americans, right, the Americans use, you know, almost eight times more energy than Europeans and, and look at the quality of life. Right.

AI assessment note: “I think it's important to have a common goal.”

Q When were you off target in execution with Revolut, and what did you learn from that?

A I think we're off execution maybe every year. Um, because you could be, I think, I think the mindset should be, I think, I don't think number one is enough. I think you need to be best versions of yourself, right? So you always need to review, okay, in the past week, in the past month, what kind of, what could I have, what could I have done better, right? Or like maybe, maybe a more extreme analogy, right? Um, Like I used to ask my team, right, at Rev, if you had a, if you have a gun pointed to your head today, would you have done more? If the answer is yes, that means you're not doing a good job.

AI assessment note: “I think we're off execution maybe every year.”

Q When were you off target in execution with Revolut, and what did you learn from that?

A I think we're off execution maybe every year. Um, because you could be, I think, I think the mindset should be, I think, I don't think number one is enough. I think you need to be best versions of yourself, right? So you always need to review, okay, in the past week, in the past month, what kind of, what could I have, what could I have done better, right? Or like maybe, maybe a more extreme analogy, right? Um, Like I used to ask my team, right, at Rev, if you had a, if you have a gun pointed to your head today, would you have done more? If the answer is yes, that means you're not doing a good job.

AI assessment note: “I think we're off execution maybe every year.”