65. From Dragon’s Den to Startup Success | Jinesh Vohra

Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reid, the podcast that covers everything about business, management, and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. What does it really take to walk away from a top corporate career and build a business in the middle of a global crisis? Today on All About Business, I'm joined by Dinesh Vohra, founder of Sprive and former Goldman Sachs professional who left the world of investment banking to become an entrepreneur. From a family shaped by three generations of business builders to launching just before COVID and navigating the cost of living crisis, Ginesh brings a rare perspective on risk, resilience and timing. We'll explore what it means to leave security behind, how to survive when the world turns upside down and what young founders can learn from building through uncertainty. well today on all about business i'm really delighted to welcome janesh vora um janesh is the founder and ceo of a company called sprive and this is a uk-based mortgage app and janesh is nodding it's designed to help homeowners become mortgage free which sounds like a very good thing faster is that right janesh that's completely right that's completely right i'm glad we got that right thank you so much for coming in to talk to me today why don't we begin why don't you tell me just a little bit about what Vora does and what your business is and how it helps customers so that everyone listening knows where we're headed yes Prime essentially like you said it's a mortgage app there's about 11 million homeowners in the UK and normally it's typically quite expensive to get on the property ladder so people tend to borrow hundreds of thousands of pounds over a 25 to 40 year period and the cost of interest is quite alarming, especially with the way the rates are at the moment. And so people download the app, it's completely free to use. And we help people in kind of three core ways to help them kind of pay off their mortgage faster and save interest. The first one is essentially you earn cash back, which you can pay to your mortgage with just one tap by the app. And so imagine you do your grocery shopping, you buy that cup of coffee, that takeaway, think about anything you do in your life and every single spend when you do it through the Sprive app turns into a mortgage overpayment, which means that you start to save interest and pay off your mortgage faster. Hang on, I want to ask that. How does that work? I mean, so if I buy coffees, you get cash back that then goes towards your mortgage. That's correct, yeah. How does that happen? That's amazing. So even if it's a penny or two, it still counts. Yeah, so exactly. We work with over 2,000 brands, so the likes of Amazon, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury's, John Lewis and Boots. The list really goes on. and it varies from brand to brand but for imagine your grocery shopping because that's something that people do every week and a and a family will typically spend you know easily 100 to 200 pounds a week on on the on groceries and everyone's got to like live to eat so it's an essential piece of spending so you go into say you know tesco's and you type in say 126 pounds if that's what your your shop came to you press pay now in the app one tap and essentially get like a barcode which instead of paying by your card, you scan the barcode and instantaneously get money into your Sprive account. And in the app, one tap and that money goes straight to your mortgage. And the great thing about that is as you start to use the app, you can start to then visually see how much interest you're on track to save, how many years you're on track to knock off. So you might start and you might see in the app, oh, I'm on track to pay off my mortgage three months earlier. And the more you use it, five months, six months, we've got customers using the app. So a freedom day comes closer and closer. We've got customers, like there's a recent customer who posted on social media and she's on track to save 84,000 pounds in interest and not 14 years off her mortgage. I mean, there aren't many apps anywhere that can kind of that much of an impact. She must be quite a big spender to have done that. No, so we have a second feature as well. So the shopping really kind of adds up and some of our customers are putting like 25 to 70 pounds just by kind of doing their everyday shopping. But then also we have a spare cash feature. So this is where, I don't know if you're familiar with auto-saving apps where you can like scroll away spare cash So you link your current account and then we look at your spending and you can set a limit. So you might say I can afford anywhere between a pound and 25 pounds a month. Others who are more affluent might say I can afford anywhere between 200 and 400 pounds a month. And then we work within those limits. And so say, for example, like we just went through Christmas. Most people spend a lot of money during this time on presents and Christmas dinner. We might then set aside a lot less money compared to like weeks and months where they're saving and essentially spending less. And then with one tap, again, that money can go towards your mortgage. So the shopping is a great way to get started because everyone spends. With the cost of living crisis, it's obviously very tough for people, but everyone has to shop. And so that just makes a huge impact and be able to just constantly chip away. Right. And you said there was a third. So we've got those two channels. There's a third way you can save the animal. There's a third feature as well, which is helping people refinance. So we scan the market every day for better mortgage deals. and if it can help you find a better mortgage, it will essentially help you get that with combining kind of tech with free advice. Wow, so this sounds to me like you must have done a huge amount of work to get this set up. I mean, all these relationships with these big companies, Amazon Boots, all the retailers, and the technology behind it. Yeah, I mean- A substantial investment, I'm guessing. Yeah, I mean, we support 14 of the top lenders in the UK, so we cover 85% of the residential mortgage market. So if you have a mortgage with, say, Barclays, Santander, NatWest, HSBC, all the big lenders we support, obviously that takes time. And then we work with over 2,000 brands. And again, that takes time. It took me a while when I initially was building the product to convince some of these brands to work with Sprive. So I've been doing this for six years. So it does take time. And it does take capital investment as well. Who were harder to convince, the banks or the brands? I would say the lenders is more challenging. because they're bigger organizations. And if you think about it, historically, especially, mortgages, lenders make a lot of money for mortgages and paying off... They don't necessarily want you to pay it off quickly, do they? People paying off their mortgage, it sometimes makes a little awkward. It kind of erodes their income and P&L. And so you've got to like really... Sometimes you get a penalty if you pay it off too soon. Yeah, no, that's right. And so we help with that as well. Through the app, you can track how much of your allowance you've used. But that was the challenging piece. But lenders understand, and I can go into more detail while lenders work with us, but it's around finding common ground. And once you're able to do that, you know, we're finding now that more and more lenders are now coming to us and asking us how we can kind of join Sprive, which is nice. So what I like about what you said as well is Sprive is free of charge to the user. Completely free, yeah. What's your business model and where do you make an income for yourself? because every company has to support its cost base. Yeah, I suppose the easiest way to kind of understand it is if you think about cashback companies like Top Cashback and Quidco, very traditional cashback companies, and then you think about how they make money. So in every shop, we take a cut. So we provide a discount and we get that funded by the merchants. I see. So some of the cashback goes to you and some of it goes to your customer. Yes, exactly. Most of it will go to the customer, but we'll take a... What's the split? Yeah, I'm not going to explain. I'm not going to say that because it varies from brand to brand. It varies from brand to brand. But you are saying most of it goes to the market. But most of it does. So it's more than 50%. Yeah, more than 50%. And what we build is, it's obviously not just the cashback app. We're connecting to people's bank accounts and to the lenders. There's a lot of trust involved here as well. There's a lot of trust. There's a lot of technology that's involved. And obviously that's very expensive. For every payment we process, and we process, someone's shopping in an app every three seconds. So the engagement is very, very high. But all of that costs money. We have to do like anti-money laundering checks. And so obviously if we're not sustainable, we want to keep it free. But it's funded by the merchants. And that's consistent with all cashback brands. So it's the shopping that actually makes it viable for you. And then the second part is things like you think about comparison sites. So they sell car insurance and they sell home insurance and energy switching. We would do all of that as well. But the difference is every time you do that, you earn money towards your mortgage. And just on the cashback, I think sometimes I speak to people and they're like, well, cashback towards your mortgage, how can that make a dent? But actually, it's the benefits of compound interest because most people aren't aware that lenders calculate interest daily. And so if you just take a £100 grocery shop and say you earn £2.50 on that grocery shop and that goes towards your mortgage, For the average person, that has a three times multiplier effect once it goes on to a typical mortgage. And so you end up saving between £7.50 to £10 on one shop. And imagine you do that 52 times a year. Because of the compounding effect. The compounding, it actually saves you a lot of money. And then obviously there's holidays and car insurance and home insurance all starts to add up. So for most homeowners, I'd say that our cash back rates are probably the most impactful when it comes to people's personal finances. It's just less than the actual money that is because it's effectively being invested in a manner that's ultimately tax free, which is obviously good as well. What if doing good was the smartest business move you'll ever make? I'm James Reid, CEO of Reid. In my new book, Karma Capitalism, I reveal how being a Philco, that's a company where at least 10% of shares are owned by a charitable foundation, has become our business superpower. Companies like Lego, Ikea and Novo Nordisk share the same Philco identity. These businesses last longer, inspire loyalty and make a bigger impact on society. This book is part manifesto, part practical guide. Karma Capitalism is available now at karmacapitalism.org. Being a good business is good business. So I've got so many questions for you. But I mean, I'd quite like to just go back to your sort of origin story, because you're talking about compound interest. You're obviously a person of great financial literacy. And financial literacy is an interesting issue in our society, because I don't think that many people are well equipped with financial. But you obviously are. And I know why, because you come from an entrepreneurial background, entrepreneurial family, and you worked at Goldman Sachs Bank for 14 years. Is that right? 14 years. Yeah, so I can see, you know, so in terms of background, you're sort of ideally prepared for this kind of business venture. So let's start with your family. I think it would be interesting because you mentioned to me earlier before we started recording that your grandfather was an entrepreneur in East Africa and your father was an entrepreneur. Will you just tell us a little bit about your family story because I think it's fascinating. Yeah, sure. So if you go back to my grandfather, so to give you some context, he grew up in rural India. in a state called Gujarat on a farm. And at 12 years old, decided to leave the farm without his dad's blessing. So he had a little bit of a disagreement. And he went with his uncle to East Africa on a boat to essentially start working. And he started working in construction as a laborer, very young, but these things happen very common. As a 12-year-old. Yeah, as a 12-year-old with his uncle and then started kind of picking up the trade. And he did that for a long time, but he obviously learned the trade very well. and started to know people that were in that. Which country was this? This was in Kenya. Right. And essentially, he then in his early 30s decided that he would start his own construction company and then use some of the people that he knew and then kind of get projects and do the work himself. And I mean, it was great for him because he was able to kind of build wealth. And that wealth was enough for him to send back to India and give my dad, as an example, a very good education. and so my dad went to boarding school um grew up um learning english in india which at the time um was only for you know people who are a little bit more affluent and then my dad decided to come to the uk um literally with five pounds in his pocket um because he you know there was the opportunity to kind of do so and again when he first started he didn't really you know have a lot of like connections it's very difficult to get a job and i remember when i was where did he go in the uk where did he live so in london um so and what they typically do is they find a house that they someone's living there and they will just all kind of live there and bunk up until you know they can obviously for their own place and at the time when i was very young he had three jobs so i remember him like um asda at the checkout doing you know doing doing that he was then kind of cleaning toilets and and being a cleaner and then he started his own business um and he set up his own accountancy firm and one of the things he did is because there was a lot of people that was in a similar position to him but they didn't have the education that he had so they struggled to do simple things like read letters in english right and so he used that community to kind of help them and also use that network to kind of build his business and that was good enough for him then to give me and my brother a private school education and that allowed me to then And obviously, I had a good university degree at the University of Warwick. And that led to me getting an internship at Goldman Sachs. And then me getting offered a position and then kind of progressing there for 14 years. So the Goldman Sachs experience, I imagine you learned a lot. Yeah, I mean, it's... Has that been helpful for what you're doing now? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I've got no bad word to say about the organization. It's a very tough place to work. They've got a very... Tough in what way? In that like it every year they cull kind of the poorest performers It can go up to like 10 to 20 Right So that always kind of keeps you on your toes I really like that Like the Premier League if you in the bottoms Yeah That a bit testing And like the hiring process is very rigorous and you may hear stories, but sometimes you're doing seven to 10 interviews to be able to get a role. And so the caliber of people that you're working with is really impressive. And I've always been of the mindset that I like being the best. And so that pushes you and everyone around you is very driven. And there's a culture that people are prepared to go above and beyond. It's very common to work 70 hours, 100 hour weeks. And it's not just FaceTime. People are just trying to outperform and out deliver. And that in itself, that environment has been very good for me. I think the other thing that I think about Goldman's is that they have a very entrepreneurial kind of environment. So at the early kind of doors, They really try to teach you and coach you to think about the business like it was your own and to try to come up with ideas and innovate within the organization. And they reward people who think outside the box. And it's a very flat structure in that just because you're more junior doesn't mean you can't get responsibility and you can't progress quickly. And your ideas will be listened to. And your ideas. But you've got to be able to maneuver through the organization. And that's a challenge in itself. but if you can adjust and you have the self-awareness, it's a very rewarding place. So you'd recommend a stint at Goldman Sachs to a would-be entrepreneur of the future, would you? Look, I'd say if you want to be an entrepreneur, then there's no better way than actually being an entrepreneur but you might find that you might make some more mistakes. I think with the, like I've always, when I was at university, I wanted to start my own business but I just didn't have the acumen. I didn't have the idea. I just didn't know how to go about it. And so I fell into that career. And I did tell myself at the time, remember when I was at university, I said, I'll do this for two, three years, build up some experience and then start my own business. But you then get sucked in. You're chasing the promotions. And then 14 years later, I was still there. Well, I imagine you were well-paid. I mean, it was a good lifestyle. It gets harder and harder as you progress because it's a very big bonus culture there. So if you're a poor performer, you know it because your bonus is zero. It's very much like, why did I spend all these hours and sweat and tears kind of pushing myself? And it's a kind of a signal you should leave. Otherwise, we're going to push you out of the organization. So if you get zero bonus, the writing's on the wall. Yeah, the writing's effectively on the wall. But if you perform well, they pay you well. And so it does become harder and harder. And I think for myself, I'm not so, obviously everyone likes money, but I'm not so driven by money. For me, it was legacy. Like I take a step back and my grandfather, if he hadn't done what he'd done and made those brave moves, if he'd had listened to his father when he was 12 and not then make the bold step from everyone around him, carried on being laborers and he started his own, you know, had the bravery to effectively take risk and start his own construction business. And like, like, like my dad, if he hadn't done what he did, then my life would have been very different. And so I want to have a legacy too. I don't want to be the, the dud in the, in the, in the, in the, in the kind of the, when you look at the generational, the generation. I can understand that anxiety. You're making good progress not to be by the side of it. Exactly. But for me, it was, for me, that was the driver. I didn't, I felt like you only live once and I wanted to leave a legacy. And my mindset changed when I had children. So I've got two young boys now, and I want to show them that anything's possible. And my dad showed me and my grandfather showed me through the way they lived and the things they did that anything's possible. And so I want to do the same for my boys. Yeah, it sounds like you'll be a very inspiring father for them. So you were at Goldman Sachs, and you've been there for a while. And then I imagine you had this idea. At some point while you were there, near the end of the 14 years, you decided to sort of branch out on your own. so what what triggered that decision how did that come about and yeah and then you you made that courageous step you know like your father and grandfather yourself which you know a lot of people might be thinking about and then maybe do maybe don't but you did it so talk me through that a little bit but please yeah sure so i mean when i've when i've when i was there and you'd go out after work you it happens quite a lot that you have a few beers and you'd be talking to colleagues about a business idea or, you know, just the idea of doing something. Because through kind of the role that we did, you would actually meet quite a lot of entrepreneurs. Goldman Sachs, for example, has a private wealth division and a lot of the clients are entrepreneurs. And so you do see that, you know, people that have taken risks have done, you know, some of them have done very well for themselves. So there's always that kind of itch. And then, but in reality, I wasn't ever really seriously looking to do my own thing. What happened was a colleague of mine that I used to work with grabbed me one day and said, do you know, do you want to go for a beer? And I said, yeah, sure. Let's invite, you know, the team. And he was like, no, just me and you. And I was like, okay, this is a bit strange. And we went to a pub that normally no one, like none of our colleagues ever go to. So it was quite, he didn't want to be overheard. He didn't want to be overheard. And he basically said that, look, he's decided to leave Goldman's and he's going to start his own business. and to give you some context his great grandfather was the king of Hyderabad so in the 1940s he was literally the richest man in the world and his whole family are entrepreneurs and so for him it was always on the cards to essentially start his own business all his family are entrepreneurs so when he told me I was like okay and he was like I had this idea that we should do something together for some reason he felt that I'd be a good person to go in business with and so the first question I asked him was so what's the idea? he goes I don't really have an idea I just know that we should do something together and because I always like the idea of doing something we literally after work sit in the cafeteria and get our laptops out and brainstorm business ideas and we started in the summer of 2018 and then we came up the idea for Sprive in about November so literally during that process we had ideas after ideas and as we start to validate the ideas very quickly became apparent that um you know those ideas weren't very good and and survive was essentially idea number five or six and that's the one where we started to really kind of get excited about and then yeah nine months later we i i left so you did so did are you doing that together then is he an investor he's my partner yeah right so that's good so so it's interesting you just decided you were going to do something before you had the idea Yeah, so we were going to look into it. Almost the first decision was we want to branch out and start this. Yeah, so the idea was we liked the idea of it. He was definitely going to leave. So we then were like, I'm not leaving a good job until I'm very, very sure. And so, you know, five months to come up with the idea, but being really intentional about finding an idea. And then once we came up with the idea for Sprive, conceptually in November, it was only until July the following year that I actually resigned and handed in my notice. So you're talking July 2019. Yeah, July 2019. And the time spent was really me actually understanding, will this actually work? Could I actually build it? Having conversations with investors, people in the mortgage industry, understanding what technology I needed to build. Because I needed to believe for myself. Because I have a family. And the good thing that I had done, which kind of ties back to why I started Superbriors, I had paid off my mortgage. And I've been very fortunate. know but i'd gone through that journey and i did it very aggressively goldman sack yeah but obviously that that salary helped but we did it very aggressively in four years um but that was the only reason why i could go to my wife and say hey look i've got this crazy idea i want to kind of leave this kind of corporate job and and and do this i think if i was her reaction i mean she wasn't happy she wasn't happy because i she was pregnant um yeah well it's a bit unsettling i imagine but crazy ideas sort of sounds exciting but maybe she's she's she's an accountant very risk averse okay and i told her that she would never um have to work again because we were we'd paid off the mortgage um we just started a family and so i had to kind of sheepishly go to her and say look you know that i told you you never have to work to um again i need you to go back to work because i i really want to do this so you had to get back to work yeah but that's a good thing about being an accountant i would stress you can always get a job yeah that's very true but she she went part-time that was the that was the that was the compromise and i said don't worry in a year i'll be earning a salary again took me four years so before it took me four years to earn a salary so but she was obviously patient yeah she's she's been she's been supportive but she's really important it's really important yeah so so so that so i'm just thinking back 2019 obviously what happened next was the pandemic which must have been very disruptive to your plans yeah you said it took you four years before you were able to get a salary so we thought we'd have to go to 2023 what what were the consequences of all that disruption yeah it wasn't ideal you kind of take the biggest risk and then suddenly the kind of pandemic happens and obviously that was a very prolonged episode in people's lives and I was very keen a to not launch the the product and the app during during the pandemic I just felt like it wasn't the right time we were a slightly different app during when we launched we didn't have the shopping part of the app we just had the spare cash feature that i that i mentioned earlier and when your people are worried about their kind of jobs and their livelihood the last thing they're going to do is start to overpay on their mortgage and so we paused and then we're also thinking about runway because with the tech company you've got people that to pay every every month and started looking at the numbers going okay how long is this going to last because if it if it lasts much longer we're going to run out of money and so i had to like hire a new team we were using kind of third-party agencies initially and then we had to find creative ways to like bring that in-house and and find some interesting ways to like prolong our runway and then yeah so it was it was uh definitely an interesting an interesting time it was a curveball that i were there any positives in terms of it giving you time to think about the service and i mean you obviously added extra business lines during that time and developed the offer through the app yeah no actually we did that afterwards so after COVID we launched so I suppose the one thing we did and so my my business partner that I mentioned he reads a lot of books and he's very very much a product guy and they when you when you read those books a lot of them say when you start a business build your MVP your minimum viable product and so he was like we need to build this and he wanted to build like a really basic version of the of the app In my head, I had a picture of what the app should be and had a lot more technology, a lot more automation. But he pushed quite hard and I kind of caved in and said, okay, we'll build it. And my suspicions were right in that no one wanted the app. It was too much friction, too much work for the customer. The MVP, the minimum viable product. It wasn't viable. It wasn't viable, but it took us nine months to build that. And we spent money on it. The good thing is that I'm quite frugal. so we didn't you know i kind of say if you make mistakes try not to make big mistakes that completely blow you out of the water but because we made that but there were positives as well in that we learned about what works and what doesn't work and we've got to like test some of the functionality that's the purpose of those but but yeah exactly but it gave covid to give us more time to be able to then build and iterate and then build the right version so that once covid ended in october 2021 we actually publicly launched right and that version in the first i'd say day that we launched we got an article from um that this is money and the headline was something like the uk's first mortgage over payment app is it any good and we literally on the first day had 2 000 people download the app and so that was like nice yeah and so yeah sometimes these power of communication yeah sometimes these things all happen it's just i i it's just so funny how like luck sometimes does play a part for sure i would agree with that luck's very important yeah but um so is preparation yes i say that's when you get lucky so you you um you develop this app it's interesting because often people say you know start small start with minimum viable product i mean i've heard that from other guests um but you recognize it required more development and complexity to deliver the service you wanted to deliver so you took a bigger risk in a sense doing it the way you did. How did you finance that? I mean, because what we're talking about here, building apps is not cheap, I know, because we do it ourselves, and especially complex ones that have friction-free offers. So I'm confident you must have put a lot of money as well as time into this endeavor. Yeah, I mean, it's a fintech. We're registered with the FCA, so there's a high bar there. It's not something you can just bootstrap. let's put it let's put it let's put it that way so we invested our own money and so again another risk there um in terms of taking money from our savings and putting that into the business and then just people that i knew in my network so i never asked kind of what i call like a friends and family round was the initial kind of injection that we that we got and i never would ask friends or family for money i would literally talk about what i'm doing and what i'm building and the fact that I'm leaving Goldman's to start this. And I started this while I was at Goldman Sachs. So I tell people, this is what I'm doing on the side. And what I found is that people tend to get FOMO. So as an example, we had someone that's quite high profile, like the former CFO of Microsoft US and India, who I kind of knew through my network. And I met him and I was telling him about what we're doing and he does angel investments. and he was like, I like the idea of this, I might invest. So I started telling everyone that he's probably gonna invest and he had actually 100% committed but everyone else was like if he gonna invest then I wanna invest and I went back to him and I said look we pretty much got all the money in are you gonna come in and he was like yeah yeah sure and so uh so he did invest yeah so you know these types of things kind of helped and we didn ask but you just shared the information the information and people would come to me asking me please can i invest because they knew me they knew they knew um i'd rather work worked with them or i'd gone to university with them or they were like members of my family. And they knew that, you know, they like to think I've got quite a sensible head on my, you know, and so I kind of would have thought this through. And they saw the excitement and they believed in what I was saying, that they could see this kind of being very big. And so, yeah, they gave me money and that kind of was our initial investment. And that got you? That got us to like launch. And then once we launched, you know, with things like the first day, a couple of thousand people downloading the app. I then went to angel investors, so a little bit more professional investors, and then they invested, and that was done. So you had to put together a sort of presentation deck? Yeah, presentation, financial model, and so I did that. Well, what advice would you give to people who are seeking angel investments? I think it's all about the network and getting kind of warm introductions. It's super key, so if you don't have that network, you need to build that network, and I, because I was at Goldman's, people automatically think that you have this whole huge network of angel investors, but that wasn't the case. I was in the risk division. So I wasn't a trader. I wasn't like an investment banker. And so by definition, risk, people in risk generally are very risk averse. And so they- You'd hope so. Yeah, you'd hope so. So there wasn't like a lot of people I could tap on. So I had to build that network from scratch. And one of the things I did, for example, was post on LinkedIn every day. And that was really helpful because people- About what you were doing. About what I was doing. Every day. Every day, Monday to Friday. And I would literally just share my story. So if I'm doing something like this, you know, I take a picture and post that. And if I was, whatever it was. And so people started to feel like a real connection. And they could almost feel like they were living this journey with me. That's so interesting. is so helpful to people. Yeah. And a lot of people obviously knew me from my corporate days. And a lot of people that are employees who work in corporates, they do have that itch that, and I think a lot of them would do really well. I think we have so many talented people in the UK. It's just having that kind of, that bravery and taking that risk. And it is a big risk. But those people would see and they would know people that know people and then introductions, they would be willing to help and then just network, meet people, meet people meet people and that helped that helped a lot and you tend to find with angels they like to they like to invest in groups so if you find someone they'll and they invest they'll then start to bring their friends over and you can that can be a real domino effect and so that worked really they tend to be networked themselves exactly and that worked really well and then and then i did one more round after that which uh was in kind of um towards the kind of the beginning of last year and that was more institutional so that was like vcs venture capital how much did you raise in that so that was a two and a half million cash and then three million tv media for equity so we now for example have a tv ad that's running on cross channel four so channel four ventures also invested in survive and the reason why i did that investment was to get more brand awareness so hang on so how did that work so they give you airtime they give you airtime yeah for equity for equity You're trading equity for airtime. That's right, yeah. Interesting. And have they given you, I hope, a lot of airtime? Yeah, I mean, it's a lot. And is it working? Do you see, does advertising work in that respect? Yeah, I mean, since... Did it work as well as this is money? Let's put it this way. Since I closed that last round, we've been growing 30% month on month. So that's pretty strong. I'm pretty happy with that. So yeah, we've been growing pretty rapidly. Did you do any other trades for equity? so you did just the cash which is obviously the two and a half million and then the tv media the tv media deal did you put a valuation on that yeah there is there is a valuation yeah that we that we that we put and then i'm actually going out to market now and doing another raise yeah so we've grown um pretty pretty substantially and um we want to we want to be more aggressive as uh 11 million homeowners in the uk that we can help and so we want to we want to kind of help as many as many people as possible so yeah we're raising big ambitions for sprive so i understand that you went on dragon's den to raise some money i did you've just done this yes so what was that experience like it was it was interesting so i've i've watched dragon's den like since i was the age of 20 yeah it's like an institution like an institution so you've watched it but and and so to be on that show is it was very surreal i remember like watching the show and almost acting like you know as if I'm a dragon and be like, that business is great or that business, you know, how's that ever going to work? And it's a great show because I do think it encourages entrepreneurship. I agree. And so when I got the opportunity and I got an email in my inbox saying, would you like to apply? I was like, okay, yeah, why not? Generally, when I think of dragons, then I think of actual products, things that you can actually like touch and feel. And from memory, I can't remember seeing many apps on Dragon's Den, but I went through a process. It was quite a rigorous process. In terms of being selected. In terms of being selected. When you say quite rigorous. As in, it was things like sending a video interview, like a video clip of yourself on camera, doing the pitch. And then there was things like interviews over video calls where they interview you a few different times. And then there's a whole like diligence process on your business because the BBC are very careful about making sure everything that's said and everything you're saying is 100% accurate. And the last thing they want is to kind of mislead the public. Or the dragons. Or the dragons, yeah. Because obviously that's very true because they want to make sure that what you're saying is completely factual because ultimately they are going to invest their own capital if they decide to do so. Yeah, the BBC is facilitating this process. They're like the investment banker in a sense. Yeah, effectively. Introducing you to possible investors, yeah. Yeah, and so obviously it was really nice to then get selected. And then they gave you very short notice, or at least for me, they gave me very short notice in terms of going, okay, here's the studio date. You need to do your pitch. So the date for the pitch was just suddenly like next week or something? Exactly. So was it? It's a very little time to prepare. And the actual pitch, you need to make sure you've memorized it. And because I'm in financial services, they were very like, they made sure that they made it clear that I had to say what I prepared. I couldn't go off piece. Terms and conditions apply. I find myself saying on our ads quite a lot. Because they were very rigorous. They're very rigorous in terms of, you know, they want to make sure everything that I said was completely, completely financial. So you managed to stick to the script. And so, yeah. So, yeah, when people watch it, I encourage it to be on the iPlayer. So, you know, it's the second episode in this year's season to have a look. I don't want to give too many spoilers away. Well, no, you won't be giving any away because it will have come out by the time. No, that's very true. People can hear this. But did it go well? Yeah. I won't ask for details, but were you happy? It went well. I was going to say, in terms of preparing for the pitch, I had my two young boys help me prepare. Because the way I kind of thought is that it's obviously a very stressful time. like you're in that you're in that you've got the cameras on you you've got the lights and so I kind of told them like while I'm doing the pitch jump on me like shout at me that scream right here um and I and they did they did that and they really enjoyed it but I made them part of that process but if you can pitch when you've got two young boys like pushing you and screaming in your hair then you can that's very good you can definitely do it under the so you knew I can deal with this yeah exactly like you wouldn't you wouldn't kind of get phased and and and be able to like deliver and that was like the key for me in terms of i was in the studio for seven hours so it was a really really long day i didn't realize you're only watching it you only see it in a small snippet but and then i was actually in the actual den part of the um recording for about an hour and a half and it was like a real investment pitch they the dragons ask you a lot of questions and they're very they're very clued up they because i've raised investment i was very comfortable with the questions they asked. But yeah, it was very vigorous. I mean, they're investing their own money. They're investing their own money and also they do this and it's television. So they will throw curveballs. They will try to... Were there some surprises? Yeah. What was the toughest question? So, I mean, it was a while back, but there were questions. One thing I was... I had these red lines that I was trying not to talk about too much. So as an example, I if they asked me about my background I literally just wanted to say I work in financial services and I was trying to avoid the fact that I you know that I work at Goldman Sachs as an example because in the past I've had like I've done some press and the comment section you know people were comparing me to like Rishi Sunak and like you know and so don't read the comment section unless it's about someone else yeah I know exactly but so So sometimes people can see that as a good thing because financial services, and they probably want someone who's had that background because they're obviously trusting, trusting, you know, with one of their largest household commitments, but it can also backfire. So you didn't want that to come out? Yeah. But did it come out? So, I mean, I don't know. I haven't seen it yet. Oh, we'll look forward to it. Yeah, so I see it at the same time. I see it at the same time. So you don't know what they've left in and taken out? I have no idea, yeah. That's interesting. So I'll see it when everyone else sees it. But you put seven hours of your time into what will be a few minutes of television. Yeah, exactly. 10, 15 minutes. I remember at the end of the process, I walked out and I was so drained. Mentally, I was so tired because it's very intense. Kind of emotional. Yeah. And they lock you in like a little room. They don't really like get you to talk to any, you can't really bring anyone in. Is that called the green room? Yeah, the green room. Exactly. I don't know why they call it. They're never green. And they get you to put on makeup and things that you'd normally never do. Exactly. Yeah, so interesting experience for sure. So you found it interesting. Is it something you'd recommend to other entrepreneurs? I really enjoyed it. I mean, there was a couple that I did bump into in the green room for like literally 45 seconds and they were literally shaking. They were so nervous. There were a couple. I don't know how they got on, but the nerves can really build up. I think if you're not careful, you can kind of get into your head. But luckily I was able to stay calm and I actually really enjoyed the experience. It was nice. Yeah, I think it's quite important to try and enjoy things like that, even if they're sort of new and unfamiliar, because I think the energy you're able to demonstrate comes over. Exactly. I think hopefully that comes across on camera. But I came out of it really enjoying the experience. There's no regrets for sure. Oh, good luck with that. No, thank you. I'll be watching. Yeah, yeah, thank you. So you're really in sort of fast growth mode with your business. I mean, you're moving from startup to scale up, it seems. Is that a fair description? That's probably fair, yeah. And that brings challenges of its own, doesn't it? It does. So you have to hire more people. So where are you in that journey now? And what's on your mind, Ginesh? So after the last round, we had the team. But then we needed to look at the team and look at where the gaps were and how we could take things to the next level. And so we did hire. We hired in all areas of the business. and I'm because of my days at Goldman's I was very used to hiring um I started managing teams probably when I was about 24 I was quite early in my in my in my career and so I've always known the power of hiring good people um hiring good people obviously even my corporate career made me look good and make me be able to kind of outperform and so that's that's been super key so what do you look for you're looking for good people give me a bit more detail yeah so I think um yeah so So I'm quite, I go off gut quite a bit, but we try to, yeah, gut feels quite important to me. But what I initially do is I'll have a process. So I'll interview them. And the first half an hour, I typically, obviously I see their CV and I, in my mind, depends on the role, but I have an idea of the caliber of kind of person that I'm looking for. So let me take an example, like marketing hire. so I wanted to hire someone to run marketing and I wanted someone who had consumer fintech app experience so what I did is I made a list of that in the last three to five years all the consumer apps in the UK in the personal finance space that essentially had done well and grown really really aggressively and then I wanted to find someone who had been through that growth period for at least you know and worked there for at least three years and so once you get that universe of like apps and then you get that kind of criteria you're really narrowing down the you are so you're very precise so in that example i was very very precise and how did you find them from there though i used that i used the recruiter in that in that example and then i hired a product person as an example you used an agent i use an agency yeah and then for a product hire that i did i i did both so i did um agency and i also did a linkedin um a job post and on linkedin it was crazy the number of um applications that i got was massively overwhelming but there was only one person that actually sent me an individual message connected with me sent me an individual message and then had like this only one person did that only one person did that but this thing there people if you want to get a job that quite a good tip So he did that but he also had like media like in is it medium where you have like loads and loads of like content about product and so you could tell he's someone who's really passionate he had amazing design portfolio but also he was talking about you could just see realms and realms of content over the last like 15 years that he'd been putting out in the ether and so straight away i could see through his linked in through through just the medium kind of i think it's called medium it's like a platform where you can like share your like your leadership and your thoughts and your work and and you could see he loved product and so then i was like okay i'll um i'll interview him and when i interviewed him i was in my head i wanted to give him the job in my on the on the spot but what we tend to do is also give people a task and i try to make it awkward so i'll do things i like doing things that most people would not do. So it'd be like a, I'll give them like a little task to do. I might even tell them to do a second round interview in that task on a weekend. And so if they can't be, if they don't want the job that much, then they're not going to really be the person for me. And so like, I just try to see how they react. So what's a task? I mean, I've got the apprentice in my mind. Yeah, so for like product, I'd essentially say, go look at my app. Right. And this is what we do. And if the objective is to get more people to download the app and do their first shop, as an example, because when you download an app, a lot of people browse, but they don't actually start using the product. And what we found through the data is once you start, it's something that you really incorporate as part of your life, and then it becomes a regular habit. But the biggest challenge with anything, like an app, is how many apps do you download? And they just sit dormant, right? You want people to engage. So I said, this is what we currently have. And I designed the app, me and my partner. And we're both from Goldman's. We're not product designers. We've just been making things up as we go along and using kind of our common sense where possible. What would you do? Right. Now, some people, what they'll say when you ask people is that they get very upset. They're like, you're basically asking me to do free work and they would just either refuse or they'll do something, but it'd be very like high level. And it's just, there won't be a lot of effort put into it. The people that really want the job will put a lot of effort. And when I do the first round interview, I spend half the interview convincing them why accepting a job at Sprive is going to change their life. And so I do a lot of that. And then the second half is where I really start to interview them. And so if that doesn't convince them to then put some real thought and hours into the project and then present, then you just know that they're not going to have the energy. That's very interesting. I mean, because it's an interesting mindset issue. Oh, you're just trying to get me to do some work for free versus what if I put a lot of effort into this? I'll get the job and I'll have made a good start. Yeah, exactly. I've already made some progress, which is another way of looking at it. Exactly. And then the final thing that I always do, I then get the team to make sure culturally is a good fit. So the team are part of the process. Yeah, because for me, it's very important that people get on and that there's this, like I've been in an environment, like a corporate environment like Goldman's where there's all sorts of people. But when you're small, you want a really nice environment because if one or two people don't get on, it can become really toxic. And so for me, just people that are easy to work with, that was kind of very important. So I wanted to make sure the entire team had this kind of warm, fuzzy feeling about new individuals kind of joining and that they felt like they could work with them. That was super important to me as well. I'm imagining listening to you though, Ginesh, that your business model doesn't require you to have a huge team. Yes, we have 16. 16. And in a way, as you grow the company, the upside of this potentially is that the income could outpace the costs quite substantially in the future. Yeah, already we're like cash flow. In November, we were like cash flow positive. So we're trying to really create a sustainable business. There are a lot of fintech apps out there that spend a lot of money. And I've seen it time and time again with founders who get a lot of venture money. and they balloon their teams to like 100 headcount when they're making like one or two million pounds in revenue and it just doesn't make any kind of business sense and they're almost trying to grow into that headcount. I don't feel that's the right way to do business. So we do things quite differently. And then you've got AI and the power of AI is just incredible. And so I'm just amazed around just what it can do. And so you're embracing. And so we're really embracing that too, yeah. so looking forwards i mean you talked about legacy yeah how would you like the sort of next chapter to sort of evolve for you and your business what's your sort of you know if you're visualizing the future for sprive and yourself yeah so what would you like that to look like so i like to be the go to out for homeowners i think if you take a step back and you think about a homeowner there's three core parts of their life there's obviously their debt their mortgage in particular there's their spending um so they're everyday shopping which we you know we play a big part and then there's the saving and again we can help people save and we want to create like saving parts that earn interest and maybe the interest can help you overpay your mortgage and and so i feel like if we can tackle those core three parts of someone's life then that just gives us a lot of opportunity to could do good for that um for that individual and help them and essentially become kind of debt-free faster and get some of that life back and so that's kind of really important i kind of ask some of our customers like what would you do if you're mortgage free? And you can literally see their eyes light up. I'd quit my job. I'd go part-time or I'd spend more time with family or go traveling. And so we want to help more and more people. There's 11 million homeowners in the UK. So we're about 100,000 customers active. So a long way to go in terms of helping more people. And then in terms of beyond that, people have student loans, credit cards, car finance. The student loan thing is a big issue. It's a big issue, yeah. So in my head, that's something that I'm kind of keen to help people on. Globally, there's a billion people with some form of household debt. So there's just a lot of people that we can help. So I think the sky's the limit is the way I see it. And I'm very driven. I feel very energized. I don't feel like what I'm doing now is work. I get to do fun things like this. And it's nice. It's good. Well, I can feel your enthusiasm for what you do. And that's infectious. so yeah well that i wish you every success with that um i suppose that i'm thinking that the team you put around you is going to be critical to your future success um how what sort of skills are you looking to complement your own yeah and it's a good question so i think it's um i'm a big fan of like fan of delegating and trying to make sure you've got clarity of thought i think if you if you get drowned in the in the detail it's really difficult to kind of steer the ship and so i'm and now i learned that through my corporate days and so delegating is very very key i think at the moment my team is very very strong i think as we add like more things in the app that's when i think we'll probably start to look at like hiring new new heads but i'll be very thoughtful about it so my head for example um we we have uh we help people refinance and at the moment we do that with a partner um but over time i like to have my own kind of mortgage experts in-house and so i can see us kind of really building out that um that that that's that part of the organization and it could kind of be a good business line maybe we'll get into like insurance and again i don't know much about insurance and so it might make sense to have someone who's got a lot of experience within the insurance space who knows we might you know help in people's pensions. So I think it all depends on how we take the business forward and then where my skill gap is. And then we'll look for the best people in that space. And I'm pretty persuasive or convinced them to... Someone said to me, find good people and let them get on with it. Exactly. I mean, once you've set the direction in terms of your delegation. Yeah, exactly. But I think it's been very thoughtful. I think there's two ways you can hire. You can either hope and let them come to you or you can go and approach the people that you want. And I always feel like if you have more intent in your hiring, the outcome is likely going to be better. I also use my network. So if I do hire someone, I'll ask people, like, who do you know in this space that you think would be good? And I try to de-risk it as much as possible. The other thing I tend to do, and I haven't had to do this, but I have done it in my corporate career, is if you know someone, very quickly when you hire them, if you've done a bad hire, just try to address the situation pretty quickly. By which you mean exit them. Yeah, because otherwise, if you got it wrong, then just do something about it quickly. It's better for both parties, is what I would say. But we've been very lucky we've not had to do that since I started Survive. Hope is not a strategy, I like to say. Yeah, exactly. You have to have intent. You've got to have intent, yeah. Yeah. Well, I wish you every success with your business, which it sounds to me could go in any number of exciting directions. And I'll watch it with great interest in the future. Hopefully, maybe one day get you back in the studio, Ginesh, so you can tell us about your journey through the next chapter. Yeah, happy to. Which I'm sure will be very interesting. I always ask two questions at the end. Sure. Hit me. my podcast and they're always the same the the first one and because at reed we love mondays is what gets you up on a monday morning so the fact the first thing if i'm honest is doing the school run so uh so that that has to has to be done and then i actually do um like a pt training session so um i when i was um building the business i didn't really look after myself and i was eating badly putting on weight and it got to a stage where i just turned 40 and you know i started to kind of see signals that if i don't look after myself that could that could not be good for me so i do that and that's a really nice way to kind of get my head in the in the in the right frame and then after that i meet the team and we set the agenda for the for the for the weeks that all my my whole leadership team know exactly what i'm expecting and that allows me to then kind of focus on what i need to do and i'm kind of comfortable that you know the leaders in my organization uh i clearly like clear direction clear accountability and then actually i can touch in different points throughout the week but it just really allows me to to kind of hit the week with the with the with the bang i also have this like um this this routine of like creating a to-do list um that for the for the week and what's urgent and what's important and i'm a big fan of just crossing things off um and so monday is all about getting getting myself mentally in the right place um and getting organized and um and then yeah making each day count yeah well i think that's important monday's very important day of the week but i'm reflecting what you just said i remember when i had turned 40 i had a bit of an epiphany i remember thinking it's either fit or fat at this point i wanted to make sure it was the former not the latter something about that age yeah um and i think energy is so important in business and keeping fit is actually necessary if you're going to have good energy in the workplace it makes a huge difference it does yeah and then my last question um and it's um in my interview book why you 101 questions you'll never fear again is where do you see yourself in five years time yeah sure so obviously we talked about where i kind of want to build sprive and i think the like you said the opportunity is is is endless and so for that you know hopefully we can make sprive and really helps you know a lot of people because i feel like if you think about fintech and financial services i think the whole the whole kind of industry is trying to get people into debt they make money you know a lot of them make money from um making that happen and i think there needs to be someone that's trying to get people out of debt and you know we're doing that and so that's something that obviously i want to kind of continue to build out um beyond that it's interesting i've always wanted to do more charity work um i feel like again i want to kind of take a step back and make a difference and i feel like through charity but real charity not just donations but actually if i can change someone's life just even if it's one person's life for the better and look i haven't adopted but like you know something really like meaningful where a little bit like my um my grandfather where he made a decision his whole life was like transformed if i could do that for someone at least one person i think that would be absolutely incredible and so i'd love to do stuff like that um for sure and then um and then yeah who knows but but yeah I want to be able to like make an impact I love what you just said about getting people out of debt yeah I think that's a brilliant and inspiring objective and if you do that for lots of people believe me you'll be helping a lot of people yeah through your business no no from through the business and then through your other activities but that's what I want to look back hopefully I you know I have a good long life and I look back and be like you know me being born on this planet mean that you know people people were better off And that, to me, is more important than actual money and wealth. Well, we're here to that. Thanks so much for coming in to talk to me, Janesh. I so enjoyed our conversation and feel thoroughly inspired. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me, James. It's a real pleasure. Thank you, Janesh, for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host, James Reid, Chairman and CEO of Reid, a family-run recruitment and philanthropy company. if you'd like to learn more about Reed Janesh Vohra or Sprive you'll find all the links in the show notes thanks for listening and see you next time