Every argument clarity score on this site is built from rows on this page. Each
question and answer was assessed with names hidden, the host's own answers included, on
four things from 1 to 5:
directness (does it answer the question asked), coherence (do the ideas follow),
precision (concrete details and clear references), compression (says a lot per word). The weighted
mix (30/30/25/15) is the exchange score. A person's published score averages their exchange
scores on raw tape only, at least 8 of them, shrunk toward the cohort mean.
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Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q Ok, so why aren't they all growing? That means your software is not working.
A Well, that's one way of looking at it. I would see it another way. The market we sell into is a very competitive market. It's driven by a lot of macro issues that aren't necessarily just about the software. So some training providers grow, some shrink, some pull out of particular markets. Some sectors like hospitality were having a hard time. Therefore, there were fewer learners in training. The market has many dynamics. Um, our software is not focused on quality of training so much as the efficiency of operation, the compliance, and the data-driven decision-making for those running the business. So while it clearly does influence on quality to some extent, there are many other variables. The quality of the curriculum, the quality of the tutors that organization employees, how good they are selling to employers their services. Those things will affect why some win and some don't, but the apprenticeship market has actually been declining by a few percent a year in the last handful of years for a variety of reasons due to funding. So it's not, we can't just ride a rising tide. What we do is we increase our market share and that's what we have been doing.
AI assessment note: “It's driven by a lot of macro issues that aren't necessarily just about the software.”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 5 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.60
Q 1.5. Okay, so did you already have an exit? How'd you, how'd you get so rich? Where'd you get your income from?
A I've already grown, so grown one company, sold it to a public, a US public company. That's why this business started in 2009. I was bored. I, I had sold my last company. I'd done my exit, my, um, you know, earn out, and I just wanted something to keep me amused while I was thinking of the next thing to do. So that's why I started the business. And we did quite well quite quickly, but in a cyclical market. So I either had to shut the company down after we'd done very well financially, but just wind it down because it wasn't a good long-term market, not strategically, or pivot into a new space. So the other thing I did is I actually started our first customer. So one of the challenges is when you are an end-to-end platform, how do you win your first customer? When people say, it's a brilliant idea what you're proposing doing, but who have you done it for before? And you say, no one. And, um, that's a bit of a challenge. They say, do you want me to trust my entire business on your platform? So in fact, I set up a training company with a partner, uh, who was our first customer. And we grew that to be the fastest growing training company in the country. We grew it to over twenty million in revenues in three years.
AI assessment note: “grown one company, sold it to a public, a US public company.”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 4 · P 5 · Cm 4 4.55
Q Who, who's an example of a training company that might teach, uh, someone that wants to cut hair that sits in between the hair cutter and the salon?
A There are many, um, um, Uh, Learning Curve are one of the big ones. Um, Hobbs Salons. They're a salon training company, but they all, a salon operator themselves, but they also do training. The key thing in the UK is it's regulated. There's a bit, it's not a tax break. In fact, it's the opposite. Every firm in the UK with a payroll of three million or more has to pay half a percent of that payroll into a tax that goes towards funding vocational training. So what you've got is this Big, big pot of money for training, and it's use it or lose it. But because there's government involved, there's compliance and regulation, and that's the bit that we're a little bit different on.
AI assessment note: “Learning Curve are one of the big ones. Um, Hobbs Salons.”
Answered produced feed
D 5 · C 4 · P 4 · Cm 4 4.30
Q About eight million-ish. Okay, and do you remember, uh, just looking at a growth rate, where were you exactly a year ago?
A Uh, we would have been something like 20% less. Put it this way, we have for the last four years done over 50% year-on-year growth. But we've recently run into a problem, which is the bigger you get, um, the harder it is to maintain your percentage, because each month we throw in two, three more customers, maybe four customers in a good month, but the bigger we are, it's a denominator, you know, so, so the issue we have is how you reprice the existing book of customers that you have as, because The main contributor to growth has been the number of new customers we secure each month. We have very, very low churn, but we have only two or three. Well, in financial terms, last year was 2.3%.
AI assessment note: “we would have been something like 20% less.”
