How to be a "high agency" founder with exited founder turned investor, Saba Yussouf

Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best business podcast for curious entrepreneurs featured in the UK's Top 20 charts for business shows.

Hosted by Stephanie Melodia, Strategy & Tragedy features candid interviews with entrepreneurs who have scaled - and failed - their businesses - sharing their lessons in entrepreneurship along the way. From Simon Squibb of 'What's Your Dream?' Internet fame to Lottie Whyte of Sunday Times Top 100 Fastest-Growing company, MyoMaster. From exited founders like Nick-Telson Sillett to subject matter experts like Alex Merry in the public speaking arena and Matt Lerner, the GOAT of Growth.

This is one of the best podcasts to listen to if you're looking for educational and inspirational content on Spotify, Apple, Google, Amazon, YouTube or watch the clips on Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, or YouTube Shorts

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In this week's episode, Stephanie Melodia interviews Saba Yussouf, exited founder and investor specialising in STEM revolutions - from reinventing food systems to democratising infection prevention and battling environmental threats.

Born in London, trained in economics at Cass Business School, now backing the future of health as the force behind Club Five Health and Deeper Beauty.

As a high-agency venture capitalist, Saba bets on founders who rewrite industries, not rules. Worked with institutions such as Cambridge University, American Express, and Harrods.

Watch on YouTube via the link below or keep reading for the transcript, where Steph and Saba cover:

• What it means to be high agency, how to get there, and what it looks like in practise

• Saba's own entrepreneurial journey and how much market timings can affect success or failure

• From founder to investor - how Saba developed her own investment thesis and what she looks for in a deal (Hint: High agency founders for one 😉)

• Saba's "unhinged" neuro-backed time management hack

• And so much more entrepreneur-focused goodness.

SM: As an exited founder and now investor, what is your founder story and transition into investing?

SY: You know, I am an investor now, but to be honest, I will always think of myself as being a founder. I always want to be known as a founder.

Founder is really where my heart lies. It's where my brain lies. I love the stress. I love the it's what makes me feel alive. And I started my career honestly young after I graduated, and taught me a lot of discipline, taught me about international tax. I was up at four in the gym at five. I learned a lot. And I'm happy to have worked in industry, but I was just dying to do my own thing.

I was dying to start from the bottom and work my way up in my own industry, my own company.

So I left and I was young at around I was 24, and I just jumped right in. I started a health food company called Klever Kalories, sold it a few years later for way too cheap, but I thought I was so amazed that someone wanted to buy my company, I couldn't believe it. I thought I was the coolest person in the world! Severely undervalued, but whatever. We move on. And I just took it from there.

I realised that my passion is not in property, which is which is my family's business, but it really is in STEM - science, technology, engineering, and math - where I get to help human health equity. That is really what I care about. So all my founding companies or investments since then have been in helping human health equity, water treatment, disruptive solar treatment, human health, biohacking, skin, everything.

That is probably the common denominator in what I do.

SM: Incredible. Well, I was gonna ask about how you develop your investment thesis, but I guess you kind of answered that.

I'm so curious: how does this 24-year old from a corporate career not only launch her own business, but build it into something so successful and valuable, which even to your own admission, okay, maybe it was undervalued, but you exited it - that is a humongous success! Especially for anyone's first business starting aged just 24. So, like, how did you go about, like, figuring it all out from the get go?

SY: You know, when people meet me okay. Well, we just met. You probably look at me and think, oh, she looks like she has it all figured out. I definitely don't. I just do it. You know, you just do it.

So you you just told me about something about myself that I don't really think about;

"Oh, you've achieved this success."

I don't even use those words when when I talk to myself. I just think, okay. Great. Now, what? Okay. How can I make this more efficient? What's the next goal? And you just do what makes you happy.

And, okay, in that first start up I won, I've lost since then. I don't have the luxury of losses, but I have lost. So it's it's up and down, and I think you have to be thick skinned to go through it. Entrepreneurship is really not for everyone. I think if someone had told me at the age of 24, this is what entrepreneurship does to you and feels like, there's definitely a masochistic side to entrepreneurship.

SM: So, like, why this - what was it, sorry? A supplements business?

SY: It was a health food brand where we had these, cake bars that were healthy. And back in the day, I was starting to get into my fitness and and health, and I was taking supplements like creatine when they were just coming onto the market. So it's still quite a disruptive product and where I found a manufacturer to insert these supplements into the food.

Then we have to do shelf life testing. You have to do everything, find your packager... and I just made it happen. It was pretty much the first product on the market that contained these metabolism-boosting products, supplements that helped your muscles, recovery, all of that into something yummy.

And I remember I sent samples to Harvey Nichols. As I was 24, didn't know what I was doing. I sent samples to their head office because back then, it was so easy to on LinkedIn. And I sent samples, and they really liked it. And they wanted to exclusively launch with me. They gave me six months exclusivity in every store around The UK. And I I was a little bit proud of myself. I thought a bit cool. And there's another product that I've invested in, and we were trying to launch with Harvey Nichols last year. And it was so hard. I couldn't get in touch with anyone. Everyone's emails are censored. Their phone numbers can't reach - the times have really changed in the ecommerce and B2C business.

SM: It is so interesting you say that, Saba, because as I'm listening to you, something I've definitely cottoned on when I've interviewed other phenomenally successful individuals like yourself is a lot of you do make it sound easy. And it gives me a bit of a run for my money as an interviewer to, like, scratch beneath the surface right? Pick away and be like, I just you know, I know that it's not always that easy, or I know that there's more there's more grit, there's more to the story than that.

But what you've just highlighted there is the one of the external factors that we have no control over, which is the timing of things.

So I would love, as someone obsessed with sort of headwinds, tailwinds, and reverse-engineering success on, like, lessons learned from both the wins and the failures. Let's take this incredible example we've got here. We've got success with Harvey Nicks and your first healthy cake brand, and then you've got the more recent experience.

What were were there any other differences, first of all, other than timing, different tones?

SY: Sure. My MOQ thirteen years ago from my supplier was something like 200 units. And that is an immediate barrier to entry for a lot of customers.

SM: Because one of the questions I was going to ask you was around market validation and mitigating the risk. And this is also something I'm fascinated by in entrepreneurship as well. Right? Is all of the customer discovery and litmus tests and MVPs and all these different things that you can do, having to invest in thousands of units or SKUs to to launch a product because it is risky.

What level of testing, validation, what confidence did you have at 24 launching your healthy-

SY: The same confidence that I have now, and I don't think you're gonna like my answer, but, you just go for it.

SM: Do you know what? I do love your answer. I wouldn't mind!

SY: I know that you would have liked a scientific answer maybe where you do your litmus test, data sets, and you everything has to be a fair test, you know, how we're taught in in school. But but really, it doesn't work.

SM: Do you know what the truth is? 100% of the guess of the answers I get to that question is the same as ours.

SY: Oh, really?

SM: And the only reason why I bring this up is, honestly, you know, if I'm 1000% honest, I mentor MBA students in entrepreneurship, and it's a phenomenal program. And there is so much emphasis - it's so drilled into me as well to get that market validation, to mitigate those risks. It's very much based on those lean startup principles, which is great.

But the truth is - whenever I do ask entrepreneurs - they don't. They haven't done it.

SY: Funny because you're trained a certain way. Like, when I was at Ernst & Young, you are trained with these protocols, and it was just so unnatural to me. That's why I was itching to leave and just do my own thing.

And, no, I didn't have I had a basic proof of concept. I might have asked a few people, but you can never be sure.

As a founder, I think your your biggest risk is taking the risk.

SM: Yeah. I love that.

SY: Really? And and I had to learn that the hard way. If you want to be if you want to hesitate and you want to be too careful, you're not a founder.

SM: I get it. I get it. I love that. You gotta you gotta take the risk. Fortune favours the bold. You gotta take risk.

So how much of luck would you attribute to your success with that first business?

SY: I don't believe in luck at all.

SM: Oh, I see.

SY: I don't believe in luck in any area of my life.

SM: Wow. Okay.

SY: Sure. Coincidence. But coincidence, statistically, is very low chance.

SM: Why don't you believe in luck?

SY: I don't think luck exists. I think it's completely manufactured. It's... mental stigma. I don't understand the concept of luck.

SM: That's really fascinating.

SY: I think good things happen to you, sure. Bad things happen to you. I just see that as signals in my life. I don't, double down or lean on lean into this concept of luck because I think it can be misleading. I think it can give you false hope. I believe in in hard work.

SM: So connecting it to you saying you do believe in coincidences. What about when a lot of extremely low probability coincidences coalesce together?

SY: That's not luck. That's still just coincidence playing a part in it's just it's just math.

It's just math. That's all it is.

People think that math is a subject that you learn in school. Math is a language as well, right? Math is how we compute life as well as English, okay? So I think in maths sometimes. It helps me think clearer. But, but no - a lot of low-probability things happening to you has its own probability. I don't wanna get too deep - might stray from the subject, but that has its own probability of happening to you, if you win the lottery. I don't think it's luck. There was just a probability for that and you were the person.

SM: So, using your healthy cake business - what was it called again?

SY: Klever Kalories. With a k.

SM: Okay, very Kardashian of you! I love that.

Klever Kalories. Let's use that as an example because that was a success, by and large. I think that particular anecdote that you'd recount of sending some samples to some to the buyers at Harvey Nicks. And then, that bit of the story sounds really easy and wonderful and successful. It's just like, okay. We love this. Let's do it.

SY: Yeah. That was literally what happened. They emailed me saying, can we order 2,000? Okay. Now we want you in all stores. And I thought, "Oh, entrepreneurship is so easy. What does everyone come to thinking about??"

SM: It's interesting also how much early success you you saying that can really skew your perception of how easy or how hard it can be. Because getting that, you think exactly that. You're like, okay. This is a piece of cake. What's everyone complaining about? But the fact that you produce that product at that point in time, you hit the buyer's office at the right moment... Like, you also you don't know whatever else was going on in their day or with other supplies. Like, maybe they just ended a contract with another similar brand. All of these other, in air quotes, lucky coincidences and things that come into play there, your response to that is this was all just a cool It's just probability?

SY: I mean, let let me ask you a question, if I may. If you really want to believe in luck right now, tell me how would that help you in your entrepreneurial journey? What good is going to come of you believing in luck?

SM: For me, that's a wonderful question. I love how you turn the tables on me. So I delivered a whole session on "hacking luck," which is why I'm really glad that this accidental subject has come up here, which is awesome.

It's about how can we stack the odds in our favour.

There are always going to be things outside of your control. And so all we can do is control the controllables. And things like external factors such as macroeconomic environment, the timing, market shifts, other people, those things are always gonna be outside of your control. So, with that in mind, I'm a huge believer that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And so reverse engineering, success and hacking luck stacking the odds in your favor by more of those shots.

And, of course, being as strategic as you can possibly be, but executing on that.

SY: I see where you're going going with this, and I actually agree with the logic behind it. But perhaps I call luck a different thing, which is something that we were talking about, which is being high agency.

So if you want to stack the odds in your favour, you have to be high agency about it.

Otherwise, you will have a lot of bad luck.

SM: Okay, you mentioned the magic words here, so let's dive into that: what do you mean by high agency exactly?

SY:

"High agency is a philosophical strategy to alter your reality."

And I think I've learned how to be high agency over the years.

I was the opposite before.

And it allows my brain to run on signals instead of emotions, so that allows my decision-making process to be so much faster, which equals success being so much closer, which you might call luck.

SM: Interesting. So what does a high agency individual look like? How do they operate? Let's kinda paint a picture of that.

SY: If I talk about high agency founders, which is something probably I'm most familiar with, high agency founders are highly competent. They're highly focused, but they have a lot more time and resources than a low agency person. Because being high agency is a constant reflection on yourself.

It's almost like you have a barometer that you live by that checks you every day, and you ask yourself, okay, was this high or low agency? It it is your decision tree. I'll give you an example:

I speak with founders all the time, and someone came up to me yesterday and said, "Oh, I just don't know. This is so difficult. This is so difficult." That's very low agency to me. A high agency person would say, "Okay, this is difficult. What is the minimum effort I need to put into this to make it less difficult? That is efficiency. To get the job done.

SM: More of a productive mindset.

SY: Productive, efficient. Solution-oriented. Competent. Highly competent.

SM: To me, it sounds like the opposite of victim mentality, excuse mentality.

SY: Exactly. And, another founder said to me the other day, for example, they said, "Oh, I just don't know if I should fire my CTO. I can't decide. I can't decide."

And I said, "Okay, tell me, what is the cost of you not firing your CTO?" When you understand that cost, you will know in one second whether you are keeping or firing that CTO. Next. What's the next problem?

I work with with amazing founders. This skincare brand that I that I backed - she was a very high agency founder because she didn't just find solutions for problems. She actually dissolved the conditions around the problem so that it could never happen again. They just go one step forward, more forward, high agency people.

SM: Interesting.

SY: I think that is actually the difference between successful and unsuccessful founders.

SM: Expand on that.

SY: She's amazing. She managed to dissolve the situation, the conditions around the problem so that it can never arise again. This is something she does on a monthly basis. Don't get me wrong. That is why she impressed me so much.

SM: Yeah, she sounds very impressive. So can you give us a real life example to bring that to life?

SY: Oh, yeah. We were trying to figure out what manufacturer to use for the skincare brand, and they were she was facing so many roadblocks and so many issues, and I was watching her. She saw the doors as just glass walls. That's all. And she managed to find a way to appease the manufacturer to give him what he wanted while she also got what she wanted from an ingredients perspective. Optimal negotiation. And another founder would just say, okay. Thanks. Move on. Bye. Next. Let's make some calls. She managed to lower her MOQ by, again, giving them a deal that was so good that they couldn't say no. She's owning the situation. She's controlling the situation, and, really, she does this on a on a monthly basis. That to me is what high agency Taking accountability. You're you're proactive. Accountable for yourself. You know, no one is gonna be accountable for you.

SM: And what practical tips can you help founders get to that space?

Because I think you mentioned before, like, you weren't in that space. It takes a bit of work to do that. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs that feel that pressure, and you're using that example of decision making as well. You know, decision fatigue is real. And you're like, oh my god.

SY: Do I do that constant on a daily basis? Yeah. I get a lot of questions about that, actually. For example, time management. I sort of found this, and I see a lot of entrepreneurs also promoting stealth (hustle) mode, which is where, apparently, you work 18-20 hours a day because that's the only way you will succeed. And I'm so against it. It's I think it's so unfair, actually, to promote that because your your brain the optimal working bracket is, like, 4 hours, I think, for your frontal lobe. So I split up that 4 hours into 15-minute intervals because you can do anything for 15 minutes. It's not that bad. So my calendar looks ridiculous because it will be 15 minutes of doing completely different to what I was doing 15 minutes. And my output is 10X.

SM: Interesting. So this actually stands in complete contrast to - is it Jack Dorsey's - theory of having those themed days. His school of thought is the context-switching tires out your brain even more quickly, and so you have, like, Monday's your marketing day. Tuesday's your sales day. That doesn't work for you?

SY: So I do the complete opposite, actually. Everyone's different. Maybe a founder could test it.

SM: Yeah, that's a great idea.

SY: Jack Dorsey's way Yeah. One week's Saba's way and see what suits you.

You know, there's that phrase that, if if you want to get something done, give it to a busy person. That is because busy people have to be high agency. There's no other way they can survive. So, for me, it's fifteen minutes. Because in my head, you can do anything for fifteen minutes. And then then you switch to a complete different topic, a different job. And I noticed that my output was maybe even more than 10X. And your mind is stimulated.

SM: Is there any sort of explanation behind that? So, like, Jack Dorsey's explanation is to avoid the context-switching and the mental drain, what's your argument on the flip side?

SY: To avoid boredom, to avoid losing focus. To avoid drowning and stressing and focusing on the one problem. Because sometimes I don't fix it in 15 minutes. But I know at Tuesday at 08:15AM, I'm gonna revisit it with a fresh pair of eyes. Give give it a try. It's not for everyone. So that's something founders ask; how to help the time management, and they burn out in stealth (hustle) mode.

I think another thing - I wouldn't call them red flags - but I noticed that founders, sometimes they are operating from a place of desperation or a place of lack. And it just shouldn't be the case.

They say to me, "Oh, we can't scale until we raise money. Oh, we can't do this until we have investment."

To me, that's just a very low agency mind because in this day and age, with all the amazing tools of AI and technology, investment is not your oxygen.

Investment is just a jet fuel for the plane that you should already be flying.

So instead of saying to me, "Oh, I can't do this until I have money" - tell me what you have done with what you've got. You can build an MVP in 48 hours now using the $30 software online. That is the beauty of the world now. We're we're in such a great game. So I think the the victim mindset, it only hurts yourself, and this is no disrespect to other people. I was that person. I was all of the above, and I had to train myself out of it. But the good thing about being high agency is that it it's not correlated to intelligence. It's really easy to learn. Just pick it up like this. It boils down to responsibility for me. It's like taking that accountability, and it is genuine. I know I'm about to say a buzzword, but it is genuinely empowering.

It's one of the most empowered, really taking back that power, that control. It's like, "Okay, what can I do about the situation?"

SM: Yeah. I want to ask you about the investment and going back to founders not needing it in the early days. We'll talk about all this as well. For my entrepreneurial listeners, if there are any fundraising founders out there. Talk to us a little bit more on your investment thesis, what you look for. We've covered the high agency founders. So I hope that's clear for everyone. And beyond that. Tell us more about what you invest in.

SY: Like I said, I love STEM, science, tech, and math. And that may sound a bit nerdy, but really everything can be STEM. If you want it to be, if you apply a bit of technology, if you apply a bit of science. So what I really look for is, firstly, I look for a founder that's likeable. And that might seem really basic or trivial, but you'd be surprised. It's important. You'd be surprised. Being likeable is something you can't fake, and it's so obvious when someone is trying to fake it. And how can I a founder that I don't like? And, also, why should a founder work with an investor that they don't like? It works both ways. That's the first thing I actually like. Primarily just in terms of, like, that partnership, right? Because you're in it for the long-game with them too.

SM: What also comes to mind beyond that is you backing the jockey, so to speak, is how they're gonna go out there in the world as well, right, and sell and attract talent.

SM: That would be the the the high agency factor. Are you a function of high agency? And you can really tell immediately. So likeable, high agency, and is it that you're doing to help human health equity or help the world or find a solution? That's what I'm really interested in.

For example, I, co-founded, a caviar brand in The UAE. It's something so off brand for me, but it just made eating caviar a bit more high agency. So I got my thrill out of the product. Right? Still making it happen.

It's food. It's food tech. It it's launching in a few months. But I I still got what I wanted out of a very product. So it doesn't have to be this hard tech app. Just something that really is changing how we live, work, or play. There's a component in it. Yeah. Okay.

SM: Alright. So super, super clear there. Is there a is there a particular stage that you invest in as well, like pre seed, series A?

SY: It would be nothing more than series A. Napkin, pre seed, seed, rarely series A. Because, otherwise, it's not way to pay for a while. It does make sense for me to I'm in so late.

SM: Yeah. What I would just wanna link that back to is a comment you made a little bit earlier around the, one of the high agency factors as well with funding. So I know that there are certain types of business that you definitely can MVP to your point Yeah. Spend a low amount of money, spend whatever you can beg, borrow still. Yeah. But then there are other types - maybe they just don't fit into your investment thesis - but I know there are other types of businesses, whether it is the tech investment required or even, you mentioned your caviar brand, for example. You know, luxury or premium brand positioning requires even just that investment into that solid branding and getting it in the right places.

So I kinda wanted that point as well, given that you come in at those early days and you know how much that can unlock for founders. I wanna kinda challenge that point around, actually, I think some companies need a certain cash injection to get started. What's your take on it?

SY: So for example, my caviar brand, it is a luxury brand. We negotiated excellent payment terms with the supplier. They are the best supplier of caviar probably in the world. They supply Nobu, Zuma, Gaia. They are fully sustainable protocols. And we negotiated a really good payment plan with them, a thirty day payment plan that immediately dropped our back. And that came from you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Again - good negotiations. How to negotiate? And then packaging, you know, we we tried maybe 10 different styles of packaging. One packaging cost £25. The other was a fraction, but we just made we made it work.

Sales and marketing, I understand what you're saying. Okay. If you're starting, an LVMH brand, okay, you're gonna need a $10,000,000 marketing budget. Or if you wanna do influence, it's expensive. These days, my gosh. I got a quote from an influencer agency for $65,000 for 3 influencers doing a post. And I said to myself, this doesn't make sense. Everything has to make sense Yeah.

In in this world. And if it doesn't, that is a red flag. Pivot. Pivot. Pivot. Pivot. Pivot. We're living in a world now where we have the luxury of pivoting because we have so many low cost options online available to us.

SM: So what are you using with your caviar brand?

SY: So so for that, for example, there are other ways to do it. For example, you can gift influencers. Even if 10% of the influencers post, you will make your money back, right? You can use UGC. Super cheap, and you run your own ads based on that UGC that cost you maybe a $100. But everything is done with the best and the most luxury way.

Speaking of luxury, if you want to use that example. Ads. Ads work. A friend of mine has a luxury clothing brand. She started off by doing $200 a a month of spend on luxury ads to collect her data. There is always a solution. And if you can't reach out to me or an expert to us, ask your AI, you you know, that you're paying £20 a month for. You're we're really, really in in in the best best time. There's always a solution.

SM: I love that. What other growth levers are working for you with this Caviar brand? Do you do UGC sampling to influencers? Is there anything else?

SM: We're we're launching in a month or two, so we will be doing all of the above, but there's no reason why you can't do luxury at low cost. I'll never use the word cheap because cheap insinuates low quality. We're a little bit in a time now where I came in business school. I always talk about this golden triangle. I think it's called cheap, fast, good Exactly. Triangle. You can get two. Always taught you can only have two. Yeah. Good and fast, they it won't be cheap. Good and cheap, it won't be fast. It's all changed now. You can have all three. So so don't don't be scared if you're launching a really big tech product or something or a million pound car. I don't know. There's always a way to start and we we have all this available online. That's all I think it is. We've never had that before.

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Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best podcast for curious entrepreneurs and ambitious founders. Learn from those a few steps ahead of you in these candid interviews of the highs and lows of scaling and failing business.

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