The Exchanges

Q you to say, but I want to start with a little bit of context. So, you know, we see Farfetch now one of the largest and most successful tech companies to come out of Europe over the last decade or so, but I'd love to go back to the beginning in a little bit and just ask, where did it all start for you, and what was that aha moment?

A I always say that the journey is now 27 years and counting, because I've always been an entrepreneur since the age of 19. I started as a software developer. Then I started my company with my current CTO, actually, Cipriano, who's been working with me for 27 years. Bless him. And then we started developing software for the fashion industry. That made me fall in love with fashion. I became a shoe designer. I never stopped being a coder, and the software business carried on. And it was these two experiences that ultimately led to the concept behind Farfetch and this idea of a community of curators and creators united in one single easy to shop platform. But to me, it's like a continuum, right? It doesn't feel like I did one thing and then I stopped and then I did another thing and then I eventually I decided to do Farfetch. It just feels, as I'm still doing what I always wanted to do, which I always had a passion for, What I call revolutionary technologies, things that change the way the world works somehow for the better, and a passion for fashion. And so, to me, it feels like a continuum, and the Farfetch idea actually looks very, very simple to me, and it has always looked very simple. You know, this industry needs a platform, someone has to build one, and we're gonna have a go at it. It's what came to our minds in that winter of 2007.

AI assessment note: “it was these two experiences that ultimately led to the concept behind Farfetch”

Q you to say, but I want to start with a little bit of context. So, you know, we see Farfetch now one of the largest and most successful tech companies to come out of Europe over the last decade or so, but I'd love to go back to the beginning in a little bit and just ask, where did it all start for you, and what was that aha moment?

A I always say that the journey is now 27 years and counting, because I've always been an entrepreneur since the age of 19. I started as a software developer. Then I started my company with my current CTO, actually, Cipriano, who's been working with me for 27 years. Bless him. And then we started developing software for the fashion industry. That made me fall in love with fashion. I became a shoe designer. I never stopped being a coder, and the software business carried on. And it was these two experiences that ultimately led to the concept behind Farfetch and this idea of a community of curators and creators united in one single easy to shop platform. But to me, it's like a continuum, right? It doesn't feel like I did one thing and then I stopped and then I did another thing and then I eventually I decided to do Farfetch. It just feels, as I'm still doing what I always wanted to do, which I always had a passion for, What I call revolutionary technologies, things that change the way the world works somehow for the better, and a passion for fashion. And so, to me, it feels like a continuum, and the Farfetch idea actually looks very, very simple to me, and it has always looked very simple. You know, this industry needs a platform, someone has to build one, and we're gonna have a go at it. It's what came to our minds in that winter of 2007.

AI assessment note: “It's what came to our minds in that winter of 2007.”

Q I think risk is such an integral part of decision-making models. When you think about your relationship to risk today, how do you think about that, and has that changed with the maturation of Farfetch into the very successful and public company today, and so how do you think about that relationship to risk for you?

A That's a fascinating question because entrepreneurs, they have a completely different risk calculator to other people, right? We would never start a business if we have the, you know, average person perception of risk. Because, I mean, if you look at startups, the majority does not survive, and it's a very small minority that is a home run or whatever you want to call it, like a huge success. And you're taking a huge personal risk. You're investing your passion, your energy, your ego, your security, your sense of security, your Sense of certainty of outcome. You're putting all of that in the line, right, when you start the business. So we do have already a calculator that is messed up in the circuitry. The circuitry of our risk calculator is just wired in a different way. Then, I think, as you mature as an entrepreneur, you know, you start to be a little bit more nuanced. You start to be a little bit older. I'm turning 47 now. Your risk calculator calibration starts to be a little bit more Average, a little bit more normal. And you do start to ascertain risks in a more understandable way, in a more of an average way. But I think you always keep that. And it is very important to keep that. It's very important to keep that in the culture of the business, because businesses that don't take risks, they will die. It's just a matter of time. And in the tech space, they will die very,…

AI assessment note: “as you mature as an entrepreneur... your risk calculator calibration starts to be a little bit more Average”

Q Can I ask, how do you practice that? Because I, I totally agree with you in terms of being aware, being in the moment, but it's very difficult with all the surrounding noise that one has. How does one do that? Is that meditation? Is that continuously bringing yourself back to the core? What does that look like for you in terms of putting that into practice?

A It is meditation. The essence of meditation is awareness of the present moment, and that's why you can meditate in your peloton, for example. I know you're a peloton aficionado. As long as you are fully aware of the present moment, that means your bodily sensations, even the visceral sensations, it means your emotions and feelings. It means your thoughts, whether they're involuntary or voluntary, and as long as you're fully aware, and even aware that you are aware, you are in meditation. So if you ask a Zen master how many hours you meditate a day, you'll say all the time, 24. I'm far from being a Zen master, very, very far, for full disclosure, but it is that contemplative practice, really, and once you get the hang of it, you can do it all the time. You can absolutely do it all the time. And of course you will lose track of it and you will get completely entangled in your thoughts and on your emotions. And when you have a situation in your life that really pushes the button, like we say, pushes your buttons, you just lose it. But the moment you recognize, oh, I lost it. I was completely unconscious of what I was doing. I was just in reaction mode and I was just automatic pilot and I don't know what I said and what I said or did what I did. That moment just shows you that a part of you was present. And was realizing that you were not present. Unless you live completely immerse…

AI assessment note: “It is meditation. The essence of meditation is awareness of the present moment”

Q risky. I think, for me, something that I struggle with a lot, actually, despite the posh British accent on the podcast, is self-doubt. And, like, handling self-doubt as someone quite young in the industry, but doing things that are a little bit more older. Like, how do you think about your relationship with self-doubt? And I guess, how would you advise me, who thinks about that self-doubt quite a lot?

A I think self-doubt is healthy. So what would be a human being without self-doubt? Talking in more psychological terms, you know, the ego needs to inflate for us to do something. If you take a baby, the baby needs to believe that she can run. She's just walking, barely, but she needs to believe that she can, that's the ego inflation, right? So her own mental picture of herself envisions her running around, and she needs to have that, because otherwise she won't try. Of course, she will fall, and that will be a painful experience, but this is so normal. So it is so normal that we do something, and it works out, and then we say, wow, I can Really do this. Maybe I can go a little faster. That you can call it ego inflation, which is totally fine. Otherwise you don't get out of the same place. You're stuck in life. And of course you will stretch yourselves to a certain limit and then you will fail and then you will come back again. And this is how you grow, right? You grow through this cycle. So self-doubt is very healthy as long as it doesn't cripple you. As long as you can have that detached view, again, that conscious view that, okay, wow, I'm doubting myself here. And as long as you can clearly see it for what it is, it is a mental movie. It is a mental construct. It's your brain constructing. What if all goes wrong? It's just a mental construct. That's all it is. It doesn't mean…

AI assessment note: “I think self-doubt is healthy.”

Q Can I ask, how do you practice that? Because I, I totally agree with you in terms of being aware, being in the moment, but it's very difficult with all the surrounding noise that one has. How does one do that? Is that meditation? Is that continuously bringing yourself back to the core? What does that look like for you in terms of putting that into practice?

A It is meditation. The essence of meditation is awareness of the present moment, and that's why you can meditate in your peloton, for example. I know you're a peloton aficionado. As long as you are fully aware of the present moment, that means your bodily sensations, even the visceral sensations, it means your emotions and feelings. It means your thoughts, whether they're involuntary or voluntary, and as long as you're fully aware, and even aware that you are aware, you are in meditation. So if you ask a Zen master how many hours you meditate a day, you'll say all the time, 24. I'm far from being a Zen master, very, very far, for full disclosure, but it is that contemplative practice, really, and once you get the hang of it, you can do it all the time. You can absolutely do it all the time. And of course you will lose track of it and you will get completely entangled in your thoughts and on your emotions. And when you have a situation in your life that really pushes the button, like we say, pushes your buttons, you just lose it. But the moment you recognize, oh, I lost it. I was completely unconscious of what I was doing. I was just in reaction mode and I was just automatic pilot and I don't know what I said and what I said or did what I did. That moment just shows you that a part of you was present. And was realizing that you were not present. Unless you live completely immerse…

AI assessment note: “It is meditation. The essence of meditation is awareness of the present moment”

Q risky. I think, for me, something that I struggle with a lot, actually, despite the posh British accent on the podcast, is self-doubt. And, like, handling self-doubt as someone quite young in the industry, but doing things that are a little bit more older. Like, how do you think about your relationship with self-doubt? And I guess, how would you advise me, who thinks about that self-doubt quite a lot?

A I think self-doubt is healthy. So what would be a human being without self-doubt? Talking in more psychological terms, you know, the ego needs to inflate for us to do something. If you take a baby, the baby needs to believe that she can run. She's just walking, barely, but she needs to believe that she can, that's the ego inflation, right? So her own mental picture of herself envisions her running around, and she needs to have that, because otherwise she won't try. Of course, she will fall, and that will be a painful experience, but this is so normal. So it is so normal that we do something, and it works out, and then we say, wow, I can Really do this. Maybe I can go a little faster. That you can call it ego inflation, which is totally fine. Otherwise you don't get out of the same place. You're stuck in life. And of course you will stretch yourselves to a certain limit and then you will fail and then you will come back again. And this is how you grow, right? You grow through this cycle. So self-doubt is very healthy as long as it doesn't cripple you. As long as you can have that detached view, again, that conscious view that, okay, wow, I'm doubting myself here. And as long as you can clearly see it for what it is, it is a mental movie. It is a mental construct. It's your brain constructing. What if all goes wrong? It's just a mental construct. That's all it is. It doesn't mean…

AI assessment note: “I think self-doubt is healthy. So what would be a human being without self-doubt?”

Q I think risk is such an integral part of decision-making models. When you think about your relationship to risk today, how do you think about that, and has that changed with the maturation of Farfetch into the very successful and public company today, and so how do you think about that relationship to risk for you?

A That's a fascinating question because entrepreneurs, they have a completely different risk calculator to other people, right? We would never start a business if we have the, you know, average person perception of risk. Because, I mean, if you look at startups, the majority does not survive, and it's a very small minority that is a home run or whatever you want to call it, like a huge success. And you're taking a huge personal risk. You're investing your passion, your energy, your ego, your security, your sense of security, your Sense of certainty of outcome. You're putting all of that in the line, right, when you start the business. So we do have already a calculator that is messed up in the circuitry. The circuitry of our risk calculator is just wired in a different way. Then, I think, as you mature as an entrepreneur, you know, you start to be a little bit more nuanced. You start to be a little bit older. I'm turning 47 now. Your risk calculator calibration starts to be a little bit more Average, a little bit more normal. And you do start to ascertain risks in a more understandable way, in a more of an average way. But I think you always keep that. And it is very important to keep that. It's very important to keep that in the culture of the business, because businesses that don't take risks, they will die. It's just a matter of time. And in the tech space, they will die very,…

AI assessment note: “as you mature as an entrepreneur... your risk calculator calibration starts to be a little bit more Average”

Q Can I ask, how do you balance that? Like leaping into the unknown, you never know what's coming. Also with Wall Street's desire to know what's coming, employee certainty to know what's coming. How do you balance, like, the uncertainty of life and the inevitable with the expectations of Wall Street, employees, investors, who want to know what's coming and want some certainty around it?

A Well, it's the only way you can deal with all these things in an adequate, unhealthy manner. Last Friday, our stock was involved in one of the hedge fund blow-ups. Archegos Capital blew up and I woke up. I normally don't look at the stock price. I only looked at the stock price by 11, and the stock was down 20%. So what, what is happening? No one knew what was happening, and I said, okay, let's see if there's any news. There must be some news. No news. Okay, maybe the Nasdaq is down. No, Nasdaq is not the tech. Well, okay, fine. So it's a bit strange, a bit weird, but at that moment, these things come back. These things, wow, here's the unknown. So the unknown is manifesting itself. It's just Wake up on a Friday, and a third of your company, or a quarter, I don't know how much it was, is being dumped in the market. Okay, how do we deal with this? And then, of course, there's the things you do, right? You jump on a call with your CFO, and you jump on a call with your investor relations, the bankers call you, and they say what's happening on the floor, and you then start to see the news coming through. But if you don't have this detachment in the sense that this is just proof that you are not in control, You are absolutely not in control of life. Not at all. And if you don't have that clarity and that humility, humility that we don't have the power to control events in our life, …

AI assessment note: “if you don't have this detachment in the sense that this is just proof”

Q You mentioned right action there. It's like a teaching. I'd love to hear, how do you think about following your head versus your heart when it comes to decision making, and any lessons you have from past experiences choosing head versus heart?

A Yeah, so one of my favorite neuroscientists, I love neuroscience, I'm passionate about how the mind works. That's my I would say it's a hobby, but it's not a hobby because it's so central in my life that it comes even before anything else. Because if I don't understand how my mind works, how can I make sense of the world anyway, in any circumstance? But I'm very much into neuroscience. And this guy, he happens to be Portuguese. He has a age index of 99. He's a hugely published scientist. And he published his first seminal book, which was The Error of Descartes. And Descartes, philosopher, French philosopher, famously said, I think, therefore, I am. And he thought that There was a clear division between rational thinking, logical thinking, and emotions, and he thought that emotions got in the middle, and this is such a big mistake, and we're taught this when we're children, either implicit or explicitly. We're taught by our parents, we're taught by our teachers in school, we're taught by documentaries or movies, and what he has proven, and this book was in 1994, it changed my life when I read it, that he's since then published. The last one, I really recommend the Listeners is the strange order of things, the book he just published. And what he demonstrated is that you cannot make good decisions without involving your emotions. For example, people who have a stroke in the right …

AI assessment note: “what he demonstrated is that you cannot make good decisions without involving your emotions”

Q Can I ask, I love that you said the word detachment there. Bit of a personal question. Do you think the ability to detach Detachment comes from, bluntly, financial security. You know, Farfetch is obviously an incredibly successful company now, and, you know, you've done very well with Farfetch. Do you think detachment comes with financial security, and how have you seen, like, your relationship to detachment change?

A Detachment, let's call it serenity, or peace, because detachment can sound aloof, can sound like, I'm alienating myself, I don't care, there's a world out there. It's nothing like that. On the contrary, you're doing everything that needs to be done. You know, you're doing everything. You're picking up the phone. You're jumping on video calls. You're doing everything. You're not doing it with a sense of panic. You're doing it with a sense of serenity of like, what is it within our power that we can do? I think that doesn't depend at all on external events. So it has nothing to do with the financial security. There are examples of stocks that did not recover, and there was no guarantee that ours was going to recover because it was quite a lot. I mean, the volumes to give you an idea Were 10 times more or less the average volume. I think it was around 10% of the company was dumped on Friday, and probably another 10% on Monday, something like that. So there was a huge concentrated position, and that could have led to -50%, -60%. I mean, that has happened before, and so if there's panic around the stock, no one buying it, and some people wanting to sell it at whatever cost, that's what happens, right? So I don't think it's financial security at all, because you can be in the safest position and create a mental movie. And that mental movie will throw you into a panic situation, right…

AI assessment note: “So it has nothing to do with the financial security.”

Q Can I ask, how do you balance that? Like leaping into the unknown, you never know what's coming. Also with Wall Street's desire to know what's coming, employee certainty to know what's coming. How do you balance, like, the uncertainty of life and the inevitable with the expectations of Wall Street, employees, investors, who want to know what's coming and want some certainty around it?

A Well, it's the only way you can deal with all these things in an adequate, unhealthy manner. Last Friday, our stock was involved in one of the hedge fund blow-ups. Archegos Capital blew up and I woke up. I normally don't look at the stock price. I only looked at the stock price by 11, and the stock was down 20%. So what, what is happening? No one knew what was happening, and I said, okay, let's see if there's any news. There must be some news. No news. Okay, maybe the Nasdaq is down. No, Nasdaq is not the tech. Well, okay, fine. So it's a bit strange, a bit weird, but at that moment, these things come back. These things, wow, here's the unknown. So the unknown is manifesting itself. It's just Wake up on a Friday, and a third of your company, or a quarter, I don't know how much it was, is being dumped in the market. Okay, how do we deal with this? And then, of course, there's the things you do, right? You jump on a call with your CFO, and you jump on a call with your investor relations, the bankers call you, and they say what's happening on the floor, and you then start to see the news coming through. But if you don't have this detachment in the sense that this is just proof that you are not in control, You are absolutely not in control of life. Not at all. And if you don't have that clarity and that humility, humility that we don't have the power to control events in our life, …

AI assessment note: “we do have the power to control our reaction to those events”

Q Can I ask, I love that you said the word detachment there. Bit of a personal question. Do you think the ability to detach Detachment comes from, bluntly, financial security. You know, Farfetch is obviously an incredibly successful company now, and, you know, you've done very well with Farfetch. Do you think detachment comes with financial security, and how have you seen, like, your relationship to detachment change?

A Detachment, let's call it serenity, or peace, because detachment can sound aloof, can sound like, I'm alienating myself, I don't care, there's a world out there. It's nothing like that. On the contrary, you're doing everything that needs to be done. You know, you're doing everything. You're picking up the phone. You're jumping on video calls. You're doing everything. You're not doing it with a sense of panic. You're doing it with a sense of serenity of like, what is it within our power that we can do? I think that doesn't depend at all on external events. So it has nothing to do with the financial security. There are examples of stocks that did not recover, and there was no guarantee that ours was going to recover because it was quite a lot. I mean, the volumes to give you an idea Were 10 times more or less the average volume. I think it was around 10% of the company was dumped on Friday, and probably another 10% on Monday, something like that. So there was a huge concentrated position, and that could have led to -50%, -60%. I mean, that has happened before, and so if there's panic around the stock, no one buying it, and some people wanting to sell it at whatever cost, that's what happens, right? So I don't think it's financial security at all, because you can be in the safest position and create a mental movie. And that mental movie will throw you into a panic situation, right…

AI assessment note: “So it has nothing to do with the financial security.”

Q leadership, you know, I think when people look at you today, it's like this inevitable up into the right success, and Jose has always just been incredibly successful. You mentioned that it not working out in the end and platforms not being in fashion or in vogue. How did you deal with it not working? It's incredibly painful when a business doesn't work. How did you personally deal with that?

A I think it's a learning. I think being a CEO is one of the most humbling exercises in life. I'm not saying that every single job is a chance that life gives us to teach us some humility, but I think being a CEO, a founder is a very lonely position, especially if you have no other founders. I never had a co-founder. I was always the only CEO and founder of my businesses. You have to decide impossible things because if they were not impossible, others would have decided before, right? As the saying goes, And you have to decide with limited data, and with a mix of gut feel, and experience, and intuition, and right brain, left brain, and then you have to live with that decision. So when things don't go well, it is very sobering, and it brings you straight down to the ground, if not below the ground sometimes. You know, after a while, you just get used to it, and you start to see it's part of the journey. It's part of, you know, being hit, falling on the floor, and get back on your feet again, and get back in the fight again. I think that's very important. I did martial arts, Japanese martial arts as a teenager, and my master always say, it's more important to know how to fall than to know how to attack. To know how to fall and get up is the most important thing, and that's true in life as well, and in business history.

AI assessment note: “after a while, you just get used to it, and you start to see it's part of the journey.”

Q leadership, you know, I think when people look at you today, it's like this inevitable up into the right success, and Jose has always just been incredibly successful. You mentioned that it not working out in the end and platforms not being in fashion or in vogue. How did you deal with it not working? It's incredibly painful when a business doesn't work. How did you personally deal with that?

A I think it's a learning. I think being a CEO is one of the most humbling exercises in life. I'm not saying that every single job is a chance that life gives us to teach us some humility, but I think being a CEO, a founder is a very lonely position, especially if you have no other founders. I never had a co-founder. I was always the only CEO and founder of my businesses. You have to decide impossible things because if they were not impossible, others would have decided before, right? As the saying goes, And you have to decide with limited data, and with a mix of gut feel, and experience, and intuition, and right brain, left brain, and then you have to live with that decision. So when things don't go well, it is very sobering, and it brings you straight down to the ground, if not below the ground sometimes. You know, after a while, you just get used to it, and you start to see it's part of the journey. It's part of, you know, being hit, falling on the floor, and get back on your feet again, and get back in the fight again. I think that's very important. I did martial arts, Japanese martial arts as a teenager, and my master always say, it's more important to know how to fall than to know how to attack. To know how to fall and get up is the most important thing, and that's true in life as well, and in business history.

AI assessment note: “after a while, you just get used to it, and you start to see”

Q Now, I always go off schedule, but I have to touch on one thing you said there. You mentioned the partnership that you have, 27 years. I mean, Jose, it's longer than I've been alive. It's longer than most people are ever married for. Can I ask you, what's the essence of a partnership of such strength and quality like that, do you think?

A Well, first of all, it just shows how old we are. I'm one of the oldest people going around in the far-fetched corridors. We don't go around in our corridors these days because of COVID, but we're going to go back one of these days. Yeah, I think it's a shared passion for the same thing. Cipriano has always been a revolutionary in spirit, and he loves new problems like any good coder, but he really loves creating products and things that really change the way people operate and do things and express their creativity, in our case, in the case of our industry, the creative industry, and that's really all we care about, right? And that's what kept us going all these years, and then mutual respect, obviously, and friendship. There's always the value of Mutual trust, respect, and we just love working with each other. We love each other to bits.

AI assessment note: “I think it's a shared passion for the same thing.”

Q Now, I always go off schedule, but I have to touch on one thing you said there. You mentioned the partnership that you have, 27 years. I mean, Jose, it's longer than I've been alive. It's longer than most people are ever married for. Can I ask you, what's the essence of a partnership of such strength and quality like that, do you think?

A Well, first of all, it just shows how old we are. I'm one of the oldest people going around in the far-fetched corridors. We don't go around in our corridors these days because of COVID, but we're going to go back one of these days. Yeah, I think it's a shared passion for the same thing. Cipriano has always been a revolutionary in spirit, and he loves new problems like any good coder, but he really loves creating products and things that really change the way people operate and do things and express their creativity, in our case, in the case of our industry, the creative industry, and that's really all we care about, right? And that's what kept us going all these years, and then mutual respect, obviously, and friendship. There's always the value of Mutual trust, respect, and we just love working with each other. We love each other to bits.

AI assessment note: “I think it's a shared passion for the same thing.”

Q You mentioned right action there. It's like a teaching. I'd love to hear, how do you think about following your head versus your heart when it comes to decision making, and any lessons you have from past experiences choosing head versus heart?

A Yeah, so one of my favorite neuroscientists, I love neuroscience, I'm passionate about how the mind works. That's my I would say it's a hobby, but it's not a hobby because it's so central in my life that it comes even before anything else. Because if I don't understand how my mind works, how can I make sense of the world anyway, in any circumstance? But I'm very much into neuroscience. And this guy, he happens to be Portuguese. He has a age index of 99. He's a hugely published scientist. And he published his first seminal book, which was The Error of Descartes. And Descartes, philosopher, French philosopher, famously said, I think, therefore, I am. And he thought that There was a clear division between rational thinking, logical thinking, and emotions, and he thought that emotions got in the middle, and this is such a big mistake, and we're taught this when we're children, either implicit or explicitly. We're taught by our parents, we're taught by our teachers in school, we're taught by documentaries or movies, and what he has proven, and this book was in 1994, it changed my life when I read it, that he's since then published. The last one, I really recommend the Listeners is the strange order of things, the book he just published. And what he demonstrated is that you cannot make good decisions without involving your emotions. For example, people who have a stroke in the right …

AI assessment note: “what he demonstrated is that you cannot make good decisions without involving your emotions”

Q You mentioned the kind of takeaway, and I love that in terms of the saying from martial arts. You know, obviously I did my research before, and you've said before that you're a Zen Buddhist by philosophy and not by religion. I've never had this on the show before, so I thought I'd take the chance. What element of Zen Buddhism philosophically resonates with you so much?

A First of all, for me, having a philosophy is important because you need one, and even if you think you don't have one, you do have one. Maybe you're not conscious of it. Maybe you inherit it from your parents, or you inherit it from your Society, culture, the role society has given you, and you never questioned it, but you are using it. As human beings, we cannot operate. Our minds are models of reality, and our actions are based on those models of reality, and therefore, you're either conscious that you're creating a model of reality, and conscious of what that model is, and it is classic, it is changing all the time, or you're not. So for me, that's why this is not just a hobby. It is essential to my life. It's really to try to be Conscious of what my mind is doing, how it is processing reality, and that is a very zen thing, you know. It's really about being here and now, and being aware of what is arising, and embracing what is arising. So whatever arises, love that. It's one of the zen cohens.

AI assessment note: “It's really about being here and now, and being aware of what is arising”

Q It's lovely to hear about that relationship. Now, you mentioned also being the shoe designer, and in 1997, I know you launched your own fashion brand with Swear. What were the biggest takeaways from that experience, and also, how did that impact your operating mindset with Farfetch?

A So, I actually started Swear in 1995, and I moved to London in 1996 to open the Swear flagship store in Covent Garden. To call it the flagship star is a bit grandiose because it was literally 250 square feet. It was a hole in the wall, the tiniest star of Neill Street in Coventud. But for me, it was like a big step moving to the big city. I was born in a tiny city in Porto, in Portugal, and moving to a global metropolis and developing my brand there. You know, it was a bit naive of me because I was only 22 at the time. You know, I had no education in shoe design. As you probably can tell from my early designs. And all I had learned was being in factories and watching the pattern cutters, and I actually trained as a pattern cutter. I found someone to teach me. But, you know, it wasn't a very prepared step in my life and in my journey. It was more of, I think I can do this kind of youthful arrogance, and that's it. But it was quite successful. We had a huge following globally. These were the days of the Spice Girls and the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy and all the cyberpunk Kind of aesthetic. And therefore, Swear, which was very rebellious and very cyberpunk, well, it says it all, really caught the imagination of folks at the time. And we ended up having franchises, so Swear shops everywhere. We had a Swear shop in Moscow, in front of the Kremlin, in Nikolskaya Street. We had one…

AI assessment note: “and that's where I learned that it's a difficult business”

Q You mentioned the kind of takeaway, and I love that in terms of the saying from martial arts. You know, obviously I did my research before, and you've said before that you're a Zen Buddhist by philosophy and not by religion. I've never had this on the show before, so I thought I'd take the chance. What element of Zen Buddhism philosophically resonates with you so much?

A First of all, for me, having a philosophy is important because you need one, and even if you think you don't have one, you do have one. Maybe you're not conscious of it. Maybe you inherit it from your parents, or you inherit it from your Society, culture, the role society has given you, and you never questioned it, but you are using it. As human beings, we cannot operate. Our minds are models of reality, and our actions are based on those models of reality, and therefore, you're either conscious that you're creating a model of reality, and conscious of what that model is, and it is classic, it is changing all the time, or you're not. So for me, that's why this is not just a hobby. It is essential to my life. It's really to try to be Conscious of what my mind is doing, how it is processing reality, and that is a very zen thing, you know. It's really about being here and now, and being aware of what is arising, and embracing what is arising. So whatever arises, love that. It's one of the zen cohens.

AI assessment note: “It's really about being here and now, and being aware of what is arising”

Q Last question for you, and it's Carmen Busquets before said that you're world-class when it comes to rallying opposing parties around shared goals. What do you think gives you that talent, and how do you approach that careful discussion, negotiation, rallying parties together?

A I don't know, really. I think it is the ethos of Farfetch, right? We see ourselves as an enabler for the entire industry. So what we really, really want to do, what is the reason why we wake up, come to work every day, go through thick and thin to make this company a success? And the ultimate reason is we love this industry and we love revolutionary technology. We do it for the love of fashion and revolutionary technology. We don't want to be a retailer. We don't want to be a designer. We're not any of those things. We are an enabler for the creative community to engage with the public that loves this part of culture, which is fashion. So when you think of Farfetch as that, as a platform, right, as a platform that brings the creatives and the curators, the boutiques, together with the brands, which are the creators, under one roof, as a beautiful ecosystem, and makes that available to people that are deeply engaged with this part of culture, which is fashion to consumer, if you want. No one is an adversary of anyone, right? So I really see this as an ecosystem. For example, Louis Vuitton appointed Virgil Abloh, As the men's creative director a few years ago to hear success. I think Virgil is revolutionizing the Louis Vuitton vision for men. But guess what? That can only be possible because a boutique in Italy and Antonioli and also Davide, two co-founders of NGG, Matt Virgil, b…

AI assessment note: “I think it is the ethos of Farfetch, right? We see ourselves as an enabler”

Q It's lovely to hear about that relationship. Now, you mentioned also being the shoe designer, and in 1997, I know you launched your own fashion brand with Swear. What were the biggest takeaways from that experience, and also, how did that impact your operating mindset with Farfetch?

A So, I actually started Swear in 1995, and I moved to London in 1996 to open the Swear flagship store in Covent Garden. To call it the flagship star is a bit grandiose because it was literally 250 square feet. It was a hole in the wall, the tiniest star of Neill Street in Coventud. But for me, it was like a big step moving to the big city. I was born in a tiny city in Porto, in Portugal, and moving to a global metropolis and developing my brand there. You know, it was a bit naive of me because I was only 22 at the time. You know, I had no education in shoe design. As you probably can tell from my early designs. And all I had learned was being in factories and watching the pattern cutters, and I actually trained as a pattern cutter. I found someone to teach me. But, you know, it wasn't a very prepared step in my life and in my journey. It was more of, I think I can do this kind of youthful arrogance, and that's it. But it was quite successful. We had a huge following globally. These were the days of the Spice Girls and the Chemical Brothers and Prodigy and all the cyberpunk Kind of aesthetic. And therefore, Swear, which was very rebellious and very cyberpunk, well, it says it all, really caught the imagination of folks at the time. And we ended up having franchises, so Swear shops everywhere. We had a Swear shop in Moscow, in front of the Kremlin, in Nikolskaya Street. We had one…

AI assessment note: “that's where I learned that it's a difficult business”

Q Last question for you, and it's Carmen Busquets before said that you're world-class when it comes to rallying opposing parties around shared goals. What do you think gives you that talent, and how do you approach that careful discussion, negotiation, rallying parties together?

A I don't know, really. I think it is the ethos of Farfetch, right? We see ourselves as an enabler for the entire industry. So what we really, really want to do, what is the reason why we wake up, come to work every day, go through thick and thin to make this company a success? And the ultimate reason is we love this industry and we love revolutionary technology. We do it for the love of fashion and revolutionary technology. We don't want to be a retailer. We don't want to be a designer. We're not any of those things. We are an enabler for the creative community to engage with the public that loves this part of culture, which is fashion. So when you think of Farfetch as that, as a platform, right, as a platform that brings the creatives and the curators, the boutiques, together with the brands, which are the creators, under one roof, as a beautiful ecosystem, and makes that available to people that are deeply engaged with this part of culture, which is fashion to consumer, if you want. No one is an adversary of anyone, right? So I really see this as an ecosystem. For example, Louis Vuitton appointed Virgil Abloh, As the men's creative director a few years ago to hear success. I think Virgil is revolutionizing the Louis Vuitton vision for men. But guess what? That can only be possible because a boutique in Italy and Antonioli and also Davide, two co-founders of NGG, Matt Virgil, b…

AI assessment note: “I don't know, really. I think it is the ethos of Farfetch, right?”