Strategy & Tragedy: CEO Stories with Steph Melodia is the best business podcast for curious entrepreneurs. Hosted by Top 20 Female Founder, 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 Nick Telson-Sillett who achieved financial freedom after selling DesignMyNight (on The Wildest Exit Day in History™) to Emmie Faust, the founder of Female Founders Rise, who opened up about her breakdown on the road to discovering her mission in supporting female founders.
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In this episode, Stephanie Melodia interviews Geoff Wright, serial entrepreneur and now Co-Founder & CTO of proptech scale-up, Tembo.
SM: What was the strategy that got your first win at 13 years old?
GW: so I started out pretty young making websites; I think I made my first website when I was maybe 12 on PowerPoint and I don't know if you know but you can't get a PowerPoint website up on the internet for people to use and so before long I was kind of the guy who knew his way around around WordPress and I had grown this side project. I was still at school, I was up late typically working on something that somebody had asked me to do that week, I used to do maybe like one website every two weeks and I think it must have been 2/3 in the morning, Saturday night, typical teenager up you know like an owl and I thought 'you know what? I need an address. I need to make this thing look serious.' I'm not playing against the big web design players out there - I'm like 13 years old! I always knew that I wanted to build businesses and build products, and of course the sort of barrier to entry is you need a website. More than once I would Google "web designer" and I would work my way from top to bottom basically saying "hi, I've got an idea for a business, but I need a really simple website, what can I do?" and they would say "okay" (some of them would realise I was clearly a kid and kind of palm me off and get me off the phone, you know) some would say "look, this starts at five grand" and I thought "that's it" - dreams are scuppered, so one day I kind of decided I was going to do it myself. So in my head I had these guys I'm up against and I knew I was small fry but of course you have big aspirations!
I decided I was going to do it myself.
So I went on to Google and I typed "virtual addresses" (people who own buildings it's super popular now if you own a building you can basically sell access or use of your address for a monthly fee and you basically are a mail sorting office) and I was on there looking around it was one office.com, and I remember this website was just so bad, last thing before I went to sleep I dropped this guy an email basically saying "your website is terrible, how on Earth are you top of Google??" I was looking for an address I couldn't quite work it out that I don't even know what I expected off the back of this -
SM: I'm a visual person so I want to I want you to paint a picture in my head of how bad this website looks like.
GW: It was black background there was no cohesiveness to the fonts you know the logo was just kind of slapped up there but he had a brilliant address and so people were happy to use this service in spite of how bad this branding and this website was because they just wanted that value that was signal and wanted that address and I mean look it was listen at that point I was a brilliant web designer and if it was bad enough for me to say your website's terrible I think that's definitely saying something.
Anyway, I went to sleep and my phone vibrated - I used to put it on the window ledge for I went to sleep and it was right by my head - and I remember of course you know late night I'm thinking I'm just gonna lay in and I'll sleep this off until kind of 12 o'clock phone vibrates right by my year I'm sort of shocked out of my sleep and I answered this phone and that there's the guy;
"Hi Geoff, it's Ravi you sent me a cheeky message last night"
It transpired that he of course had a lot of people come to him saying I need an address for this new business but I need a website you know my problem you know just through essentially a different channel and I said "okay" and he said "if I send you briefs can you turn them around?" and I thought well you know this is incredible "yeah let's do it!"
It really kicked it off - that went from a website every couple of weeks to I was doing one or two a week I was doing one or two a week.
SM: And this is from sending out this one cheeky message?
GW: It was one cheeky message, yeah.
SM: We call it strategy with the show but you were just so appalled by how awful this website looked, you were just like I need to reach out to this poor dude and actually this is one of those instances where you miss 100% of the shots you don't take - you put yourself out there and you I presume you couldn't have guessed how good that could have worked out for you!
GW: That's right. It put me it put me on the path that has led me to where I am now. I had to stay at school study A-levels - everybody has this path put in front of them that leads off to university and a job that goes beyond and I was able to have option B which was I'm kind of earning more than I would as a grad that was a couple of years later... and that decision of "what do I want to do?" I de-risked it but because of that I would definitely say I don't think I maybe learned from that as much as I should because this was pre-influencer - for a long time sat behind a computer screen and actually you've got to be out there. Maybe a few years after that and a few opportunities would have maybe played slightly differently but yeah it's a lesson, it's an observation I've made now in TemboLand markets are built on this outward communication you can't sit behind a computer screen. As a software engineer it's kind of your natural state; you can't do that, you have to be out there building those connections, networking, partnering... You've just got to. It's a critical part of the process and the recipe today.
SM: You touch really interestingly on the standard path that's put in front of everyone (do A Levels, University... ) was there anything else what happened here?
GW: I was never a particularly good student. I don't I think you struggled to find a teacher that kind of told you otherwise you know I was never particularly engaged and I was always just happy sitting in front of a computer and it was always it was always part the plan I think I went a few universities you know I I thought that I I would go and have that life and I would end up in some technology based job right it was a natural path for me
but there was I do remember this moment you know because I was building things you know and I was I was I was partnered with a couple of guys on the web and we'd work on these these ideas but I remember there was this one moment it's so silly you know when I think back mood.com were a really hot startup amount this time yeah remember actually they were one of the fast I think they were based not far around here yeah and I was I think I was at my dad sitting on my laptop and I was flicking through their flicker actually and I hit this photo I feel an astounding I know I know sorry G and I was looking at this photo and they were sat around a table there must have been 10 laptops or Max you know I still love a Mac you know but back then it was all PCs right you know not every person had a Mac on their desk and I was still a kid. I basically made the decision that was the life I wanted. I wanted to pursue that and go into you know the Startup land. I don't even think I really knew what it entailed - it was just this vision, this picture I'd built up in my head was something I wanted to go after. There's no doubt that the gadgets you know those Macs sitting around the table I grew up in the 90s and that was the height of 90s action movies - it was when technology was still big enough to be wielded into rooms and people have these visions of what future tech would look like and there's a movie Under Siege and they hijack this train and the Tech guy comes in and wheels all this big hardware They're gonna hack some satellite and from a young age I always just love that stuff. So yeah between the building things and this just general love for technology and it pulled me in that direction. I love that kind of feel, the energy it's fantastic.
SM: What did your parents react like when you what age were you when you dropped out of school?
GW: It's funny because I don't really remember - it is all very blurry but you mentioned that standard path; schools are incentivized on how many people they get into uni and the grades they get to get into uni when if you're a parent sitting there looking at where you can send your kid for senior school that's what they're looking at and there was a round of Us you know I was a slightly different case because hi because I think teachers knew what was going on but they basically took the naughty kids that had that had passed the threshold of 5A to see passes I think was what you needed then you had to be given a place to stick around now of course there's a chance you're gonna ruin there ratings and so so yeah so they basically chopped us that was kind of the I don't want to call it the game but that was their incentive and they basically dragged me in one day so Jeff you're not doing any other work you know why not and I kind of expose at that moment thought I could have my cake and eat stay at school I'll just keep doing this thing on the side again kind of the risk my decision uh what on why you're doing it and I was like why you know I got this business I'm running let's go really well they said well you need to do the work are you going to do it and I think you know typical insulin teenager I was like don't need to do the work and they said well that's it then this is it you know you you're done and I remember walking out I'm feeling probably quite relieved and I don't think I told my dad my parents but up don't think I told my dad for a couple of weeks this was I remember it was December because I was with my then secondary school girlfriend I think we were walking around Selfridges and my phone rings and it was my dad and I think he must have spoken to my mum and he was absolutely fuming my mum knew you know what I was doing and I don't want to say it sounds a bit fluffy right what my heart was in and what I could do and achieve typical moment right and my dad was like no you know get yourself into position to go order successful career and so I think I went back I think I went back to school for like two weeks and I think we all realized then actually know this just isn't gonna work He has since "forgiven me" but yeah I think typical parent would be worried that I'd be a bit lost and I think when he saw that I wasn't lost he was happy and actually that incidentally was I don't know we'll get onto it but I joined the pretty cool startup that was in his space he was in the Telecomms world and I joined a startup called blick which is a whole story in a podcast in itself but I joined that as the 11th man in the UK and I remember that was the moment he was like "okay. I think he's got this worked out"
SM: Funny there was enough familiarity for him to be like "okay I'll accept it." How do you remember how it felt for you as a I guess 15 that this sort of time to be I guess one of the only kids in your class to drop out at this point and be an entrepreneur and doing your own thing at this used to be like the coolest kid in the year right?
GW: I remember it feeling quite good that I was one of the only ones that hadn't been kicked out because they had no you know I mean it was you know lots of naughty kids and you know people were just aren't really paying I was distracted you know I had something else that I was working on it but it felt good it felt good to be free it felt good to be I mean it feels so good right to be able to wake up and do what you want every day and when I say do what you want every day I mean I don't mean like Saturday morning vibes right you know wake up kapiti put Netflix on and have an hour to yourself you know to wake up and to be able to pursue something that you want to pursue is a really incredible feeling and that's why you know I feel that in the days and I wake up on the weekends and I still pursue you know sort of things I'm curious in and it's because that is that's the feeling I'm chasing I do it on holiday you know much my wife's annoyance you know pop over my open my laptop and be like right this week I am going to suss out thing and you're in such a tiny minority of people who discovered that feeling of freedom but again not freedom just kind of sticking on Netflix and doing whatever you feel like but the Freedom of pursuing your passion at such a young age how did it I'm really curious how did it then you because you did throughout your career you've had roles where you've been in standard employment you've had you know normal jobs as it were how did it feel kind of going into those sort of roles after having the taste of entrepreneurship at 1415 years old I think you know I always made sure I worked in the right places in a way always it was always there was always education there was way something to learn there was something I didn't have that I was going into this place to pick up to stick that further in my cap to make me better the next time I went round right you know I I work for an agency met guy at the mobile network I'd worked at the start-up black I mentioned and I went and spent some time afterwards when that imploded working in this agency with this guy as the kind of tech and strategy person which was good fun and I realized then uh I think there was some overlap was something else I was kind of working on with friend and I realized that I needed to learn to be a backend software developer it's great on the front end but I wanted to be able to realize these big ideas that I had I had to specialise on you know the the more complex application stuff that you can do and so I left there and I took a break up pretty hefty pakeup to just go junior back end software engineer you know and that was a good opportunity when they're not start up paste actually helped terribly far from here and so there was always something in it I mean there's no there's no denying that it was tough you know it meant the evening and weekend curiosity chasing you know definitely went up a notch but you know you've got to do these things I think I spent the middle part let's say the best part of it felt like six or seven years working on big ideas and they didn't realize into financial success financial freedom and so you've got put cash in the bank right, you have to live a normal life and so employment you know have a job, it pays the bills, it helped me build by my flat and and have some normal milestones and normal checkpoints in life because yeah I didn't necessarily have at least for chunks of time.
SM: This is genuinely what makes you such an interesting guest because your journey - the way I interpret your roles in employment, from the outside looking in - I see them as these learning opportunities and these almost like higher education courses particularly with the whole back end development that you that you wanted to brush up your skills on but you got paid for it in the meantime. In short you took a pay cut and it was definitely a reduction in salary that you used to but you learn you constantly develop you're getting paid for it in the meantime.
I just I really love that you didn't go through the standard steps of school secondary a level University employment it was our like entrepreneurialism starting your own Ventures going into employment using those as learning opportunities so I think this is where it's really great to share with our listeners the squiggly careers.
GW: Right, I think there are more more and more of them that are happening right I think the you know we've got some incredible creators you know that this whole industry didn't exist you know YouTube wasn't really a thing and I think more and more people will be able to find some path into the work they love before hitting uni and you know it's something I it's something I'm really proud of carving my own path and more and more people I think you know my cousin my brother even you know he dropped out ease in an apprenticeship and he's landing on his feet I think the path that maybe was a little less trodden back then is yeah more people and I do think it is important to share these sorts of stories because as much as it is becoming more commonplace people are accepting different entries into their careers it's still for many people I can imagine like it's it's still takes quite a bit of bravery you know especially if you've got parents like your dad you know as few moving it for sure it's like not even just on your own it's a bit of like oh go against the norms but you've got peer pressure your friend your set your social circles whatever your parents are like you've got all of those other influences and layers around it so again all the more reason to share these sort of interesting stories.
SM: So let's recap; you sent a cheeky message when you were a teenager that launched your entrepreneurial career, making websites. You then set off doing your own things and you mention they they failed and then you went into entrepreneurship into employment - is there anything interesting there on the failed Ventures?
GW: I think so, my friend was ay uni so I must have been sort of 2021 and we we wanted to build a search engine that aggregated in the end it was 175 stores I can't remember I mean this thing had hundreds of thousands of products on it but it was I don't want to say the typical founder story but you know here's for the weekend while he was at uni oh no I was looking for a thing the other day and it was quite difficult you know I wouldn't it be cool if you could create this thing and before you know it where photoshopping it like I say that was my kind of tool of Choice all the time photoshopping this thing out and we decided right that's it let's commit let's build this thing he was finishing uni let's spend some time on it and we went into we went out on found on offshore you know we found an offshore developed bar spec this thing out and it was it was pretty painful actually it was it must have been before I spent the time learning to be a back end of because I just didn't have that skill in it was actually one of the big drivers towards doing that and selecting ever make that mistake again to learn it yourself yeah absolutely well I felt like I had this pile of rocks that were sitting next to me and I just needed to move them from here to there you know we'd we'd have this list this this moving list with the team and maybe it felt like there wasn't enough movement and you know for these guys I totally get it right for us we're chomping at the bit we've got this opportunity we think we want to to seize on and the guys are turning up they're doing their days work and that's fine right and I think we realized that we were up against these really hot teams out in the US that had raised some cash and you know this was kind of a different world for us at that point you know they're racing cash they had designers and developers and so we made the call we're gonna do it ourselves and I think I think so problem number one I think offshoring a deeply what I'll call a deeply technical product. If you want to offshore and build quite a simple prototype or like something that already exists in the market I think it kind of makes sense you can do it it might be a bit more painful I had lots of really positive experiences but then problem 2 was we we felt like we were competing with these big guys on product terms and we just couldn't we were two guys you know like I say we had 175 stores you know we were competing kind of screen for screen pixel for pixel and what we want doing is solving that immediate problem for like a subset of users and so we spent years building this thing you know all of the problems that come with at least for two new software developers all of these problems that come with aggregating 175 stores we had no business fixing solving these problems aggregating 175 stores we should have picked six stores we should have picked a subset a users you know persona here's a girl she's 17 to 25 she likes these 10 brands you know let's build something the haran let's go and find some of her you know let's let's prototype this thing let's have a conversation and instead we sat and we coded for two years. I mean don't get me wrong, I can look back on that now and think if I hadn't done that nothing else would have happened right but if we had done a few of those things our chances looks of success would have been you know vastly different and don't get me wrong it the wheels the sort of rubber hit the road with that project we launched it we made some sales we couldn't believe it we I think one of our early sales we aggregated a store that's stopped UGG boots and somebody through Google landed on our site clicked on a pair of UGG boots and bought these UGG boots and we made £25 from that affiliate transaction my mind was blown you know if you think about the the supply chain of that product we had the smallest part in it and we made £25 and the third thing not to pile on all of the problems but generally we didn't really know what we were optimising for at that point what we should have said is "right we've got this product, it can make money maybe we should go out and focus solely on finding some users." Instead we went back to the product and we went back competing screen for screen and I think that next Road of let's grow this thing again could have had a material difference on the outcome yeah I mentioned as part of the intro so something a little bit different as the first CTO guest on the show and knowing what I do know of you you mentioned yourself confessed product guy you're a builder you're a developer and of course you've got this entrepreneurial streak as well I absolutely love those lessons that you learn from that first venture I think more of the pure entrepreneurs whatever they are but I've encountered so any founders who just have endless ideas and it's great to have that Vision and come up with the stuff but actually focusing on narrowing down what are the priorities who were building for how does this apply to a real world market how are we going to monetize and then of course all of the operational product side of it you know the whole offshore developers everything else is so many great takeaways from that which I think still apply today for anyone listening absolutely I mean they're fundamentals right I know I spent I spent a lot of time looking around for you know like a silver bullet you know you're reading it's so easy to get sucked into people's successes and stuff right online and you know being we were self-taught coders but we also kind of self-taught entrepreneurs and we were trying to look for the wisdom of those kind of gone before us and you know it doesn't it doesn't really exist because it has to be relevant to where you are you know in the process right and the reality is it always comes back to those basics. Something that has happened over the last that's a bit from a side you know the last many years is there's been a lot of capital in the markets and we've seen some crazy startups grow right you know huge fundraisers huge valuations what that has done is that has forgiven the fundamentals and of course it's swung the other way you know the capital was come out of the market and and there is a return to basics and and two fundamentals you know and actually that they're sort of mistakes you mentioned I think. The fundamental lesson there and it's something I'm lucky to have with Tembo now is you know you you should have a team that compliments you right you know we've like co-founder Eddie is Chief products officer you know it's him who guides what we build you know Richard CEO has an accountancy background and so he's mind is the business you know really and and I think we are together those kind of God rails that keep us true to those fundamentals and keep us kind of heading in.
SM: Some great takeaways there and I completely agree with everything you describe that is definitely what you speak about in terms of the capital and all the craziness that's gone on and startup land at the moment - again very much called to the podcast is very much we are in a New Era now and so what are those basic fundamentals what are the strategies and tragedies that we can learn from to build better businesses.
So, nice segue into modern day with Tembo for anyone who is nott already aware of what Tembo is, I mentioned it's a proptech scale-up, but if you can describe what what Tembo actually is for our listeners.
GW: That's right yeah so Tembo is a tool that is built to help people find out how we say they're true buying budget right you know we are in a position at the moment where house prices are going as we know up until the right and salaries are staying pretty stagnant it's never been harder than it has now to get on the property ladder and you know we observe that their I mean to go to go back a bit right we created a solution to the problem that we called a deposit boost a deposit boost was a way where we could bring family into the transaction so you went online you told us a little bit about you a little bit about your earnings you know and the place you wanted to buy and then you tell us about your family so mum and dad nan and grandad you know this is how much their house is this is how much equity they had and in their property and we would work out how we could take something out of a family's asset and boost your budget right that was our solution to the problem of let's get you on the property ladder and that was the prototype, that was the MVP, and that was the thing that kind of rubber hit the road with. We run that I can't remember for how long would that single product and of course what happened is a space started to emerge lots of people realize that this was a really important problem to solve right we've spoke about with education that that path that was put in front of you from school to university to job well of course the next step that is often after that is by your own home right have something that is yours and of course what comes after that and it comes after that and so people knew that this was a really important problem and many solutions to this problem started to emerge they were other schemes banks and lenders start to think about how they could tweak mortgages to help people get on the ladder and so we organically became an aggregator of all of these schemes I mean it didn't happen quite so drastically I would say we spent we still spend a lot of time looking at our data and there was a moment where we had just the deposit boost that we realized that a lot of people aren't actually failing on deposit what they need is help with income and we could just see that in our stats and in our in our mind and we mapped out a specific product, we've had this quite nicely developed product that was relatively mature I just shoe owned in this okay if they've failed on this just show them this page it wasn't properly bill we haven't spent much time thinking about it but let's just get this thing out and we validated pretty quickly that this was super important.
So the income boost was born and that was our suite of products. I'd say there was maybe another year and a half between then where we realized that those criteria gaps that we could spot in the data but there were other products that we could introduce. Tembo today is the only place you can go in the UK get a complete picture of your purchasing power. If you go to a typical lender or typical mortgage broker you'll see you'll see a couple of schemes I think we've got 22 got 22 on the purchasing side and I think finger in the air we've got five or six on the remortgage side but we have been so lucky to work on a problem that of course is is so impactful but it's felt so acutely to people and something I've learned is that the problem quite the size of the problem forgive Saul you know I think the bigger the problem you work on the harder people will work the more people were forgive to get to that value and it's not something we intentionally do you know we don't make it hard but it it means that your MVP can be a little worse off you're a user experience can maybe be not quite as worked out but people will jump through those hoops or they will work with you to get that I mean now we're very lucky we've got very smooth very mature product and I think you know which opens up that second stage of okay you've got this brilliant market where this problem is felt so acutely and you've got your solution which is battle tested and super smooth and that's when you can start to have some brilliant results there's company out the back of it that's where it starts to get a little bit more fun
SM: I love how this goes all the way full circle back to the beginning and that early experience with that awful website but actually this Ravi's business keep going back to the fact that he was solving a problem - people would suffer that awful website to get through to it.
I heard your fantastic CMO talk about how the media are actually making things worse in terms of the wider mortgage crisis the high interest rates. What would be your hot take on whether you agree with that statement?
GW: The media always make everything worse anyway but versus actually the are there kind of tides that are going in the right direction that's helping Tembo further along do you see what I mean so like if everyone's talking about it and it's all in the Press it's so much more front of mind for people therefore a bigger or more pressing problem therefore more of a needs contempo is what I mean absolutely I mean I think there is definitely a segment of people that that exist where kind of fearmongering doesn't help you know lots of people bury their head in the sand right we hear that firsthand from from people I wouldn't say custom I don't want to not say customers but we we spend a lot of time trying to understand customers and our customer profile right but I think absolutely you know remortgages there are there are subsets of people you know who do need more support when it comes to remortgaging not getting stuck on standard variable rates and whatnot and tempo is a platform allows them to allows them to open up their options we have we get so many reviews you know if people saying "wow I you know I never thought I was going to be able to do this" I think actually as that from our brilliant CMO she shared just today you know we had more reviews last week than we did the whole of last year you know and so what's that down to Tembo success. I think there has there has been a need for this product I think we all grow up and buy them mortgages of buying a house is tough right you know getting a mortgages is difficult and I think you you don't learn about getting a mortgage until you start to get a mortgage so we have all these preconceived notions you know we spoke to a fellow CTO at an event not ongoing he said I'm not going to be able to get on the ladder I'm not having got support from family I'm not going to be able to do it and I said well look but we've got all these brilliant schemes we've got zero deposit schemes we've got you know private a shared ownership we've got all these different things go on and have a chat and I got a message from one of our brokers earlier saying you know had a chat and I think we might be able to be you know to be helpful and so it's such a huge thing to be able to help people do at the moment but sorry what I will say is in terms of that customer segment when the problem is felt as acutely as I can't buy a home and I will always want to buy at home. I think there is always an extreme motivation to achieve that and so why what has happened in the market over the last year has been happening we haven't really felt it because if you're a fast time buyer and you're stuck renting you know you know your rent is gonna go up, because it's going to go up in trust rates you know your rent isn't really building your financial future you know it's not building financial security for you that motivation is still there and if you've never known 1.5% interest rates what difference does it make all you care about is what leaves your account at the end of every month and where that money goes you know and that it is building up your financial security and so it has helped us whether the storm you know I think duplicate out just recently and said they've seen a drop in sales for mortgage properties by 28% we haven't felt it and that is because of the type customer profile that we've been focused on and that is because of the size problem it has forgiven not just those upfront user experience niggles and you know us working out what the solution might look like you know it has carried all the way through to huge market and that is my biggest biggest understanding my biggest lesson from all of this because you know once you have that superpower of that connection and with your your customer you know it's a case of I'm gonna make it sound simple working out how you can solve that when I was lost in product land competing with those big start-ups out in San Fran that I had no business really competing with you know instead of battling pixel for pixel I should have put the problem first and said ok I need to help XYZ find a black dress better and if you go it from that direction organically I think good things will happen.
SM: We've covered a few highs and lows but what's one particular tragedy that's really stuck with you?
GW: This is a toughy; I was thinking earlier as I was reviewing some material. 17 years feels like a long time. I feel like we've probably come really close to having something that could have turned into the Vision that we had for it - like how many moves away were we? Just give it one more month, how many chess pieces away from having that. But I'll be glad to say I haven't carried that tragedy with me; it's only on reflection I think.
SM: Geoff it's been an absolute pleasure to have you; thank you so much for coming on the show.
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