One of your quotes says, "We'll never sell or IPO as it's in nobody's long-term interest." >> Just no reason in the world why we would ever IPO. Never had any debt. Never had any investment. So, our new office, for example, we're buying that outright with cash. >> What inspired you to build a company that's valued at 2 billion slightly differently. >> This is not by design. There was no blueprint. Primary objective of this business is not financial. We we've never really done any outbound selling. It's all just been organic. We don't pay too much attention to a CV. We actually go back to GCSEs as well. like there's no person in this business that's ever been hired for experience. Even the people in finance, we're not yet the market leader, but I do think we will be. One of the most fascinating things about Halo is that you do things a bit differently. Obviously, you've turned it the the Halo way. So, tell us why did you decide to do this? What inspired you to build a company that's valued at two billion slightly differently? >> Uh, so firstly, I didn't decide to to do anything. It was this is not by design. there was no blueprint. Um, people often say, "Oh, can you tell me the secret formula to I want to have a software business that's worth billions or whatever. Um, what's the recipe?" And it was none of this was calculated. None of it was by design. It I I'm a problem solver. I love problem solving at heart. I was a programmer or still am a programmer, but I was programming from when I was at uni to right through to when I started employing people in 2011. Uh, and then I was still full-time programming up to about 2015. Um, and I I just love the process of like finding solutions. Um, even if a bit of software is not working the way it's meant to, I'd be up till like 2 a.m. just trying to fix whatever it is. So, it was just the love of problem solving that got got the business to a point, I suppose, where and that's infectious, like that kind of the passion for something is infectious. So when customers then experience it, they love it and they then tell people and that's how the business grew. >> I mean one of your quotes says we'll never sell or IPO as it's in nobody's long-term interest. Is that not a conscious decision? >> Yeah. Deep within my values as a human being I suppose. So the primary objective of this business is not financial and I think when you have unless you have a financial objective well there's two bits to it because one often so when you when you think well why why do people um go public? Why do they IPO? it's either to raise a lot of money that you then use to grow the business or to divest and take a massive paycheck as a founder um and possibly leave the business and go off and do something else. So, it's usually one of those two things. So, because it's not the financial objective, there's that's not interesting to me. But then the other in terms of like raising money to help put back into the business to grow the business, well, this business has a very high margin anyway. It's a cashrich business. there's more cash than what like we're so our new office for example we're buying that outright with cash like there's no financing we've never had any debt never had any investment so there's no need to raise money so that puts that reason out so there's just no reason in the world why we would ever IPO and in terms of why we don't sell like to a competitor we're just having too much fun like that we're enjoying we're we're all there's hundreds of people now on this process on this journey all growing like even even myself I've been doing this now over 20 years and I'm still learning new stuff all the time and um enjoying the process of continuing to yeah we're in a sphere that keeps I guess getting bigger or there's just new realms that we go to like we're just on the festival and um talk about that in a moment that was great yeah >> what is the long-term goal for Halo then because obviously an exit is a lot of business owners long-term goal what are you thinking >> so every 12 months when I look back and think of me 12 months ago, if I could look into the future and see what's about to happen in the next 12 months, I'd just think, are you kidding? Like, there's no that's ridiculous. There's no way that's about to happen. And I think as long as that continues to happen, which I think it will, um, then yeah, it's just about continuing to push in terms of what we do. This this we have high standards as an organization. I think um is really really important and we've actually had a conversation recently about cuz we could we could create so much more even though we're already in a lot of demand and we're growing quickly. We could we could hypers scale this business and we could um yeah 10x the demand that we currently have by pulling certain levers. Um but it would reduce the quality of what we do which then becomes more of a short-term strategy. So someone was to say to me, well maximize revenue in the next 12 months, every single decision we make in this business would be turned on its head and we'd do things completely differently. Um, but that's, as I say, our goals aren't financial. that would reduce the our essentially we'd be compromising our reputation and our standards and I think the fulfillment that people then get because part of why this is working is that people get a lot of fulfillment and gratitude from going through this process where they're growing and they're they're they're just doing amazing things >> and and that then becomes a infectious thing itself that there's a flywheel effect going on and it compounds and it's almost like that's when it becomes magic. Yeah. You said that selling the business is against your human values. Yeah. >> So, what other values have influenced how you approach Halo and what Halo is today that you have? >> Go back to it again. Standards. I think I've always been uh one of these people that just doesn't accept mediocracy. Um whatever you however you interpret that. I mean, uh whether it's you could say it's an all or nothing approach. Like even when I'm not that I was ever that good at football, but when I do play football, I give it everything. Like it's literally a matter of life and death. Like even when it's just a social game of six aside or something, it's like Harrison. >> I can't I can't do things by half. And I think that's kind of a approach. You could call it obsession. Um it's quite intense, I suppose. It's uh it's quite chaotic at times in terms of but it's it's great. Like it's it's just so much fun. We often think of ourselves as one massive sports team where there is like just this sports team mentality in our industry. We even though we're quite prominent now in Suffukk. Um in our industry we're literally like it's David versus Goliath. We're 1% of the well maybe 2% now the size of the the market leading um sort of massive big American tech companies. And we we we win more than we lose. And it's it's so satisfying to know what we are doing with our resources and there's nothing like it on the planet which is is really Yeah. And again that just fuels us more. >> Yeah. >> Where did that obsession come from? >> I think you're born with it. I I don't think it's something Yeah. If someone's I don't know got a business and it's not going too well and they're like oh can you help me? And then it's like oh you need to be more intense or more obsessive about it. It's like, well, that's not something you can just train yourself to be. >> Something, >> yeah, it's like nurture versus nature. There's definitely some things you can train yourself, but I think that deep intrinsic feeling of just just an unrelenting desire to to keep doing the thing that you do. Um, I mean I'm I just Yeah, we were talking very off camera earlier about not getting distracted by doing too many things. Honestly, that's if your objective is to be very successful in the realm at which you operate then absolutely just find something you love doing. I find programming just do it for forever like or or if it's if you love law and you want to be a lawyer just do law for forever and you will become the best lawyer in the world. Um terms of how you grow a bigger successful business with loads of people in it. There's a lot more to it than just finding something you love and do it forever. You've got to so many other things like you have to learn to relinquish control, trust, um foster an environment where people are empowered and have autonomy and all this stuff that honestly 99% of businesses they don't the reason they fail to grow teams and have the same level of effectiveness and efficiency when you whether you got two people or 200 people is because they don't trust they don't relinquish control. >> How did you find it when you first started hiring people? If you are, you got this obsessive characteristic and you're obsessed with very against s of mediocrity. How did you find it? Cuz it must been quite difficult to see someone else do that task. >> To put it simply, I made a lot of hiring mistakes like in the first 20 30 hires. There was a f the first 10 I think when I because I could really focus um probably is to do with how much time you can also spend with these people. the rate like we had honestly probably a 5050% of the first 10 hires went on and become absolutely world class at what they do and in fact I think only one has ever left so they're almost all still here um this is the other thing about business like in terms of what having a successful business you have to find a way to reduce staff churn staff churn is the most especially in something complex like software when it takes honestly 2 years for someone to begin to deliver phenomenal levels of return on investment where you can deploy them again and again to get loads of value back. Um and in our industry everyone it's like a two-year stepping stone. Everyone just works somewhere for two years. Oh, I want a promotion. >> Um most companies don't internally promote so they there's external so you go somewhere else to get a promotion. You go somewhere else. >> You're literally a net negative in the impact on the industry overall. you're not adding any value anywhere because you just keep going through this process where you're I don't know learning the new processes, the new culture, the new way of doing things, the new building new relationships with the new set of customers and none of that helps anyone other than you could say well yeah your paycheck's going up because you're getting promotions but but what you end up with and this is what we see our competitors end up paying people six figure salaries that are doing a tenth in terms of value proposition for the customer. They're delivering like 10% of the value proposition of one of our graduates that maybe has been here let's say four years. They're now they've got so much continuity the relationship the trust go back to trust not just between our staff but between us and our customers as well. Um there's so much trust there. Um and what do I mean by trust? It's like it's even just how quickly you respond to an email. If you're very responsive that builds trust, stuff like that. But >> that becomes really valuable and then the customer then trusts you. they see you're really it's not even about how clever you are. It's just like you care. You care so much that you're just responding to an email quickly. Might even be on a Saturday evening whenever um because you love what you do. Uh and then they then tell people and that's how the business grows. And we we've never really done any outbound selling. It's all just been organic word of mouth growth. And I think any business that's not growing through organic word of mouth by at least 80% I'd probably say you probably look at the product or service they're offering and question why people aren't talking about it a bit more. Maybe there's other sell itself. >> Absolutely. >> And then the value proposition. So if you think well >> what's then the cost of delivering that end solution to the customer. Well, it's way less because you've now not you don't need a sales and marketing engine. Again, going back to our competitors in our industry, they're spending 50 60% of revenue back into a sales and marketing engine that's building this like artificial demand if you like where you see billboards and stuff and it's just like you make end up making decisions for the wrong reasons and then you get churn. So customers start come to you for a bit, they then leave because it's not right and then and it just it's all very very inefficient and ineffective. Whereas what we do, we let them come to us. Um once they they probably got a trusted associate that said, "You need to go and check out Halo, see the stuff they're doing." Um and straight away that level of trust and the fact they're coming to us means they have a real solution. Like everyone's busy. you're not going to waste time reaching out to a vendor unless you genuinely want to put in a new software platform or whatever it is that you're reaching out to the vendor for. Um, so there's a real kind of need for the solution as well. And then yeah, when you put it all together, it ends because our customers don't our staff don't don't leave. Our customers don't leave. Had someone reach out to me a couple of days ago. They said um I've got this uh there's this person who works in the recruitment industry other side of the country not even from Suffach at all but um specialize in IT and they there was this they needed one of their clients wanted someone in the ITSM industry which is what we are in IT service management and they said uh don't even don't even waste your time by going to Halo because their staff don't leave I thought how cool is that like recruitment industry now has this awareness Yes. Not to even bother approaching our staff because they know that they won't leave Halo. >> Amazing. >> Let's say you have a fantastic product. How do you build trust with your customers? Like what are the ways you do it? >> Being honest with them. So if there is an issue with the software, not just telling all the nonsense about like what the say it's a bug like not just basically putting your hands up saying look it shouldn't be like that. We're going to remedy that as quickly as we possibly can. and they're blown away, by the way, as to how quickly we patch stuff or whatever. Um, but again, it's just about having integrity, being honest, being transparent, um, being responsive. Um, and again, it just comes back to just caring, like this sense of every person that you'll ever deal with in this business. We do care like at a level beyond it just being a transactional thing where you've got a customer and a supplier and money changing hands. That >> also why young people who joined the company have not left. you just care to retain staff. There's five things you have to think about in terms of the employment experience. One is pro progression. Like you have to have a sense of cuz because we we employ like ambitious driven people. So you you need to always have a sense of well what's what does the progression look like? That's one challenge. So it needs to be challenging. If it's even if there's progress but it's all really too easy, you're not going to be fulfilled. You're going to be a bit bored. So that doesn't work either. So you got to be challenged. But the right level of challenge, it can't be too difficult or then it's like well you end up feeling like you're not good enough or whatever. So you'll end up >> can't just completely. So it's got to be the right level of challenge >> progression. The people so the people you work with like when you come spend 40 hours a week or whatever it is >> in a team of people you you have to for you to be fulfilled at the workplace you have to enjoy the team of people you work with. So we don't we don't just ever like throw people into cert we we just let people find their kind of I don't know just to build and it like we do support shifts where people the more experienced people in the business um very regularly spend time with all all the new people in the business for two reasons. One, it's great for knowledge transfer, but two, it's great for them to just get a feel for all the different personalities and the chemistry, and you end up having so many like strong relationships. Like the amount of people at Halo that all live live together, like not in one massive house, but in in lots of lots of different houses where >> you'll have like three or four people just get get together and rent a house, which is pretty cool. You don't get that to the same level as what what we do here. Um, autonomy. So the the yeah you need to again this comes back to not just control and when I say autonomy I need I mean true autonomy. I don't just mean oh I'm going to leave you to get on with this but then you're just micromanaging every single bit saying oh you haven't done that you need to do this like let them make their own mistakes like if they've not done something um like when you guys earlier there's an issue with the sound system >> stressful moment. So, but you like whatever it like that's part of learn the more you do this thing the more you'll be aware of what the thing the reason was why it didn't work or what >> and that's such a micro example but in in business and and in life I think to to experience any whether it's a failure or some some resistance that's making something more difficult to experience all this stuff firsthand and not just have someone else say uh ah you've not thought about this and then they come along and fix it all or whatever and it's just not the same like you have to go through and people often say to me, "Oh, what's the biggest failure that you if you could click your fingers and that thing never have happened, what would it be?" And genuinely I I just think, well, so we had a a vulnerability issue um in our software like 18 months ago or whatever. Um fortunately, it was we it was all failed over safely and everything and and customers didn't have any outages. Um, but it was something where you could say, well, that's not ideal. It's like, well, yeah, but our security and infrastructure is now better as a result of having this thing that happened that wasn't ideal. >> Um, got to learn from >> and I think you just keep learning and I think to >> and so when it so if you could like instantly click your fingers and everyone in the business now knows everything that then becomes an unfulfilling environment where no one's challenged. So, going back to what you need to have a a fulfilled member of staff, um well, they'd no longer have the challenge bit because they'd kind of it would all be too easy. >> Yeah. >> Um the progression bit like they're probably there's no opportunity to progress. And so, I think it's really really good for people to just learn for themselves, make their own mistakes, and and just keep that sense of growing, just keep growing as people. And that's what that's what the fun bit, not just in business, but in life. Like I think >> for anyone that doesn't know, can you sum up what Halo does? >> Yeah, so we're a software company. So software as a service is so SAS SAS is the kind of term in our industry. Um we basically provide a platform that businesses use to manage the communications that go on in their organizations. Honestly, there's there's there's thousands of different so we call them workflows or like the the way the way information and communication flows through a business. There's so many different things out there and ways in which our platform is used. Let me go through a couple of highle examples. Domino's Pizza. So if you order a pizza, it's not got the toppings you ask for. You want to make a complaint, you go to the website, you log a complaint, then that complaint. So there's a complaint handling process. So Domino's Pizza or Halo customer, it'll hit a complaint workflow where it starts at one point and then and it may be that I don't know you get issued with a voucher or it may be that they think you're trying it on or it's not it's that something not right about it. And so that's where you build out this workflow to to handle and you get to a resolution and you see dashboards, reporting all this stuff. So that's one thing. We've got airlines using it to Yeah, there's a Yeah, that plane over there, Copper Airlines. So they they they use it for um managing uh vendors like vendor inquiries, customer support. So if you've got call centers where you got members of the public wanting to ring in and uh get help with their tickets or whatever, then it's it's that kind of so there's honestly thousands of different ways in which the end of the day. So it's a bit like glorified email or glorified WhatsApp. And and by the way, all these it's called omni channel. We have all these different means of communication and they they can all feed into Halo as well. So yeah, that's kind of what we do. >> Can you take me back to the early days? So as a founder, what were you actually doing like dayto-day? >> Uh everything. So I was I'd say half of the time I was programming. But even I remember 2008 I was living in Edinburgh at the time. I got an email from this guy Hussein Ali in Dubai. um Seammen's Dubai uh Seaman's IT Solutions which got acquired by ATOSS. But anyway, he he loved I did a demo net help desk as it was called back then. He loved it. It was he didn't have the biggest budget in the world and back then it was it was relatively simple what it did and it didn't cost that much money. But he did want like he didn't really want to set it all up himself and he said uh ah I I kind of want you to come over and do install it do some training. Bear in mind I didn't there was no one employed at that point. So it was if anyone was going to do it kind of had to be myself. So I was jumped on a plane on the plane. I'd still be programming. I'd be one of these annoying people with my laptop. I sat in the middle seat middle of the plane literally like six hours cooling. land in Dubai, staying in the cheapest hotels imaginable. Like I literally would go to wouldn't have been Booking.com back then, but um sort by price, which cheapest one, that's where I'm going. No air con. Um and it's just like a huge hustle. Like the early days was the best way to describe as a hustle, but I didn't care. like and I just loved programming and I loved going I I guess I always did have this desire to grow to I've always liked building things and growing things and um again that sense of progression and challenge. I love a challenge like just I thought oh that's pretty cool. I've not really done an international trip like that before but it sounds really exciting. I was probably in my mid20s at that point and uh so yeah I went to I think it was only I was only there 48 hours. Um, I remember not even having like I didn't even know I needed a visa or I I just got a tourist visa. Then they were like, "Oh, can I have your checked in at the reception bit and they're like, "Oh, what's your work visa?" I was like, "What do you mean a work visa?" And uh and they're like, "Okay, well, it's fine. Come up." And uh yeah, just g installed the system, gave them training, flew back, and those guys are still a customer. And it's uh uh but it was great like they were all so hospitable that Hussein Ali drove me around all the sites and um and I've done that like that period like 2007 2008 2009 2010 I was literally flying all over the world doing similar things like that to went to Commercial Bank of Rwanda in Kegali very similar experience um in fact I went to Greater Nida in India and as again these places I'm only ever there for like 48 hours but flew in, installed the system, gave them some training, and then they're like, >> and Indian's very hospitable people. And they're like, "All right, you're our special guest. You are not going to believe it, but something really exciting has just happened in Nida. We've just got our first ever Domino's pizza." >> And they're like, "Ah, we're our treat. You can have Domino's." And like honestly, I was I love curry. I love Indian food. I was really looking forward to some amazing Indian cuisine pizza. But I had like they were so excited I went along with it. >> Um Surinam in South America, um Australia. Yeah, all over the place. I'd be >> um But again, it was not strate. It was literally just reacting to inbound inquiries. Um, the one thing I did have to do, I guess one of the main biggest proactive things I've ever done probably is recognizing that I quite liked the the idea of building something and I I I wanted to to get more inquiries and it's like, well, how how do you get more inquiries with no money? Absolutely no money to spend on the business. Um, and it was barely ear earning enough for a livelihood. Um, and then I thought, well, it can't be that hard. Again, it's this kind of fearlessness maybe of just thinking anything's possible. Like if someone else has done it, then I can do it. Like that. I've always had that kind of mentality. So I just thought, well, it can't be that hard to get a website to number one in Google in the again, not AdWords. I've got no money for AdWords. So just in the organic search results. So I spend a few months and there's no like AI or anything back there to help you. It's just um and even what's on the the information on the internet, it's nothing like what we have now. Um, and he so it's probably books and things as well, like hardback books and trying to just learn like how how does Google decide like what what are the algorithms that determine whether a website is number one or number 100. And I did a whole lot of like AB testing different things. Some pages I'd spam with keywords, some I wouldn't. Um, sometimes I'd have loads of link get loads of back links to a page and some I wouldn't. and just trying to see trying to find that. So I think you can do too much of any of it then it's oh you're spamming it and it's just like finding that sweet spot of what works really well. Long story short end up getting our website to number one in the world anywhere in the world um for anyone searching for the phrase help desk software. >> So tell us about that that first customer was it through getting your website to number one on Google. How did you get them? So the first customer was actually this is even almost be like just literally a mailing list sending out 300 letters and one of them responded with a check >> physical letter >> literally physical in the post. you you guys are too young to even comprehend what >> we went to um a business meeting the other week and they're saying that is coming back because it is coming back um mailboxes like physical um digital digital mailboxes are so crowded now that if you can send a mail you're you're actually cutting through the noise >> it's at the point I think where like we don't do any outbound selling but even if we're to consider like would you get a return on investment from it >> it's so hard to like for any SDR rule to I don't know just try and outreach and cold call and stuff and booking meetings and we don't do any of that. Um, and I'm not even sure if it I don't honestly I don't think it works. Like maybe if you got something new that is you but in our industry where there's so many options out there. Um, and I think it's almost it's so rare that you'd ever come across a an organization that doesn't have anything in place at the moment. Guess if you got a brand new company that's being created with hundreds of millions of backing or something that maybe so they're going from nothing to quite a big company quite quickly. It could be that that's no fact that happens actually with with rail franchises where you got so like Virgin for example I think are about to compete with Euroar on the the rail network to to Europe. So so they're basically creating a company from scratch that will straight away have hundreds or thousands of people. >> Yeah. >> And they will need systems. So so but it's quite an unusual scenario to think that you you've got this thing that's been created that straight away needs systems for all the functions in the business. It's quite rare. >> Those initial mail letters, were you sending them to the company's offices and how what was like the how many were successful? >> Just a mailing list and literally one out of 300. >> Yeah. >> So the 300 letter is one response. >> Who was your first customer? >> Quick fit. >> It's quite a big company. How did you convince them initially to >> in terms of So if you think Yeah, they're a big company. They've got hundreds of garages, but the garages wouldn't be so if you think the system that particularly back then it was very much just a system that was used by IT departments. So if you were in So QuickFit would have an IT department that might have five or 10 people kind of servicing the IT for the head office, but all the garages are kind of just do their own thing. And even back then they wouldn't have even had it was probably like paper based like not even computer computer computer equipment on site I should think. So so in terms of the IT infrastructure in the IT estate relatively small which then means you don't have a huge team. >> Quickly did it grow and you got to a point where you step back and you were like wow. Uh we seem to double in size every year for about eight years I think between I don't know probably 2018 and 2024 no 20 or 2016 2024 something like that we just kept doubling but then you get to a size where it the more you double the harder it gets to double so we're now like last year was about 60% this year is probably similar like 60% growth. Um but in terms of was there an actual point in time where I sat back and thought well this is we're exploding like I think because and if you do look at the curve it really is quite a a smooth it's not linear but it's it's a very smooth curve. So there was no like one event that where everything started going crazy. It was just quite a organic journey. So there So in answer to your question, I've never really had that moment and and maybe it's a flaw and I should do it more often, but even just sitting back and thinking >> this is unbelievable and crazy. It's but you just you're so close to it and you >> um and it and by the way, it's not I don't it's not me. It's like there's there's 300 people that are all a part of this thing that's been created. Um, so I think yeah, we I think we we do all enjoy and we're all really proud of what we continue to do. Um, but it's on it is just like a in a gradual sense rather than just I don't know taking a point in time and cracking off with a champagne and all that stuff. >> You mentioned earlier your belief that it just it'll work. Was there ever a time that you thought it wasn't going to work in those early days? >> So, I didn't think we'd be I didn't think for a second there'd be any way in the world that we could challenge the market leader and become market leader. We're not yet the market leader, but I do think we will be. Um about 2023 was when that was when I realized that the technology was good enough. We had product market fit. technology was comparable with the the very best technologies in our industry. Um I could also see that we were out developing. So the pace at which our platform was improving was far quicker than what else is in the industry and we're now at a point where it is superior to what else in the industry. So, so back in 2023, that was when I actually thought there's actually no limit to where we can go with this. Like the the literally the sky's is the limit. And more recently, I'd say probably in the last year or so, I've began to realize that the the things the Halo way what we have and the way we do business. Yes, we're in the software industry, but our business philosophy and the values we have and what we do can actually be applied to any industry. And I think as time as we move on, I think there'll be all sorts of opportunities that come up where we're taking the Halo spirit, the Halo way to other industries. Some of it will probably be B to C like music festival. So that like that's something that's a bit bit left field for a software company too. So >> I want to come on to that in a moment. Um the the vision for that is yeah we're very ambitious and I think so we'll begin to do all sorts of other things in in other I think the the bread and butter the cash carry if you like will always be the software industry because it's um it's so profitable and so ready for disruption. I mean this the tactics that go on you just would not believe the uh yeah it's very disappointing I think how and it's because of the lack of competition I think that there has been that vendors just completely exploit their customers you I don't know if you heard the story recently about um VM so Tesco bought millions of pounds worth of VMware licenses VMware then gets acquired by Broadcom Broadcom basically say ah it's not worth anything you're going to have to buy them all and just stuff like that. It's just completely extorting your clientele and just ripping them off. And we're we're we're the opposite of that. Like the more we grow, the mo the more we're reducing our prices and giving because it because we can because our cost per customer goes down the more customers we have and we're just maintaining a a constant margin, which means that as we grow, we can deliver an even stronger value proposition to our customer. And that and again when you think 20 years ahead you that's the way your mindset is. We're not focusing on well how let's raise our prices the absolute max possible point to make as much as we can over the next quarter. >> Yeah. >> It's not the way we work >> talking about thinking sort of decades ahead. I want to test something on on you. So do you think that a lot of these companies the headline is um they're freezing jobs for young people that you are hiring a lot of young people. Do you think that in say 10 years time a lot of these companies will have a management problem where no one's actually risen through the ranks to become sort of senior managers? >> Absolutely will. But what they'll do is they'll just keep externally hiring. Um what will actually happen is that if companies do not change their approach and start investing more in young people, other companies will just come along who have got young people that are started by young people and they will just completely dominate and disrupt. Um, and you'll see a whole shift from the kind of established vendors with much older staff because they stopped hiring young people. Um, and then and and like this is this is exactly what's going on in our industry right now is um yeah, the the energy, the the hunger, the curiosity, the passion, the belief, the the fun, all these things that are part of the experience with our customers working with Halo versus who they've been used to. like the feedback we get unanimously is that they've just never experienced anything like it. They wish they came across us 10 years ago. Um and that is going to happen more and more. And I think as well like as we now be get to the the place we are in industry and even in business in the UK as a pioneering example of an organization that can do things differently by completely going all in on youth. people will begin to to to have a look at that and think well maybe we should be replicating that and maybe there is a different way that we can grow our businesses. So I think and it will depend there'll be some companies out there they will have very progressive leaders who will think okay maybe we've not got quite got things wrong the last 5 years with our hiring policies and they'll go through a period of change and they will just start hiring youth but there'll be others that just don't and they become incumbent and then they the disruptors come along and just take over. Why are these companies doing that? Is it are they just taking a bet on AI or they just simply not thinking long term enough? >> They don't think long term enough. So when you hire youth, remember it's going to take you two or three years to really begin to get return on investment. >> You're a public company. You're thinking about next quarter. And the the other thing as well is if you think about the process of hiring experience. So you you're at you're so Google and hire someone from Meta. It's like well why do they do that? Is it just for their experience? No, it's not. It's also for the network of contacts that that person's got. It's almost like monetizing the network. You think, well, why is that important? Well, it's because they want to do things literally like that. And if you've got the contact and someone who can do something and brings even if it's just bringing a customer to you immediately because they got a good relationship with a customer. Um it's but it's all just like real short-term focus and I think so we don't we we don't really do any networking really as as an organization. There's very little um even in Suffach like you'll rarely see see us pop up at networking events. Um it's because for us it's well what's the opportunity cost of that? It's time that we could be spending with our team. So it's usually the experience like for myself to go and do I don't know even like even if it's something going on in London where it's a day out the office. Well that's a day I could be spending with a team working with them knowledge transfer sharing experience bu building up and I think so we have a very very flat structure. There's basically I'd almost say just like two levels. You've kind of got you have got your your very kind of experienced people. But even the two levels like the like I just spent what three hours with we had 12 new people start last Monday. I spent two hours with them all and just spoke about the past, the vision. um just how every single person that comes through this door on day one is about to go on the same journey that every other person has been on because we've never externally hired anyone. Like there's no person in this business that's ever been hired for experience. Even the people in finance, none of them did any any finance before they started working in finance. Same in marketing, same in branding. Um same with all the technical people. Even the developers, a lot of our developers didn't even know that they didn't even want to be developers before they started to Halo. They had math degrees and they liked problem solving, finding solutions, and they're really personable developers as well. They don't mind getting on the phone to a customer, which is really rare in our industry. Um, and we'd identify people and say, "Well, that actually you'd make a great software engineer because again, great software engineering, it's about you got to be commercially balanced. It's not just about going in a room perfecting code because it takes too long. You need to get to 90%. Get out there. Get it alpha tested. Get it beta tested. Get the feedback. Iterate. Iterate. And you'll get to a perfect solution way quicker than if you're just a perfectionist coder that can't comprehend something getting getting out there that's not quite polished or refined. And most software engineers in the world are kind of they are perfectionists which doesn't really work. >> What are the attributes you look for in people when hiring them? like what could a young person do to make themselves thrive in this era? >> Um, so the first thing I say is we don't pay too much attention to a CV. Uh, weirdly as well, we when I say we don't pay too much, we actually go back to GCES as well because I think like maths and English are I know you told this at school, make sure you concentrate on math and English because they're really important. Genuinely, they are probably the two subjects that you can correlate more to how well you'll get on in certainly in our industry, what we do in the commercial world. It is hard like the what we do and the the problem solving and when you got someone ringing up and the software is not behaving and it's because we got thousands of settings and one setting is not set the right way. this kind of to have the ability to it's almost like so you need me you need retention skills you need to be able to remember stuff because once you've you don't need to know the answer straight away but once once you think okay I don't know the answer to that but then you get help from the experienced person who's on the support shift and they're like ah there's a setting here it's hidden far away you need to be able to have some ability to remember that um so it's math is a very good indicator of someone's aptitude to be able to essentially be a problem solver I think and so maths is important in the software industry um and a lot of people who maybe do quite well at math at GCC but don't love it so they don't do A level maths and then the A levels maybe aren't that relevant for what we do and even when they go on to uni it's like well they might they might even have an MBA or whatever it is like we none of it's as clear a window in and if you were to because I've been hiring people a long time now and when you correlate the data. Best thing is GCSEs. And don't get me wrong, there will be times when maybe 10% of the time when due to whatever circumstances in someone's life might meant that they couldn't have they just couldn't apply themselves or they were just immature, didn't didn't whatever reason, they didn't do well do as well as they could have done at GCSEs and then you think, well, that's maybe not fair. But then I think there's other opportunities where you can and this is where I'm saying that the CV doesn't really matter that much. Um, but it's a bit of a filter. But then all we actually do after after the when you send a CV in, there's just a 10-minute screening call where we're just getting a it really is just an idea of your personality. So going back to one of the five things people we need we need to know that like our team and whoever it is that's interviewing is would enjoy working with the person and and again that that word fun like we work for us the opposite of work is not leisure. It's not like, oh, you do work or you have recreational leisure time. For us, work is leisure. Like, work is a recreational thing that we love it. Like, we just can't get enough of it. Um, and people then say, "Oh, it's really bad because your your staff are working on a I came in when was it Saturday? Went out on a bike ride back about half 2. It's just a bunch of guys in the office Saturday afternoon all working away on projects. Um loving it like they're just having such a good time growing um achieving things. Uh and people say, "Oh, you got to be careful because your staff will get burnout." It's like, well, I don't I don't think you can get burnout from doing something you love. Um, it's like if you're a footballer, like you just keep playing football, training, gym. Uh, is there a point where you have to stop? Like if you just love it? I don't know. It's I think you should just for as long as you love doing the thing you do, keep doing it. >> Yeah. There's one last thing I want to talk about and that is the the music festival. So, why did a software company decide to run music festival? >> There's a few reasons. Um, but I'll just take you back to about 6 months ago, maybe 9 months ago, when so we were discussing, I guess, higher level branding objectives as an organization. And there's two main bits to think about when it comes to a company's brand. One is how you're perceived from as an employer brand. So, when it comes to recruiting talent, um, retaining staff, there's all that side of it. So there's that, yeah, your brand. Then you got what your customers think. So yeah, the p the way you're perceived from the people that you're actually selling your product or service to, they're very different things. And I think we we do quite well, we've always done quite well on the the product side. I think when people people know us now as Yeah, we we are a good organization to deal with. Um we offer unbelievable value proposition to our customers. Um huge success rates. the employer branding side because bearing in mind that we're now yeah we're planning to recruit a thousand graduates between now and 2030 in Ipsswitch we're beginning to exhaust and because we we have very high standards uh in terms of who does work at Halo and who who we who we hire to exhaust the local talent so people are having to come from further a field >> so what we want to do is to build up our employer brand like we want to get to a point where if you just stop any student at any university across the country and say, "Well, tell us about an exciting graduate development scheme um or just a great company to work for. We want people to think front and center of Halo." So then you think, "Okay, well, how do you resonate with a a 20-year-old student who hasn't yet even thought much about a career pathway?" And even if you think the biggest B2B software companies in the world, so people like Salesforce, students haven't they don't just don't know what Salesforce is. They haven't really thought about it. Why would they? They've had no reason to. Um, and we want to go so much further than that. We want students to be really excited about Halo as a from an employer branding point of view. So there's a whole lot of initiatives that we're beginning to do to to build on that. And I think one of them so I basically said to our team, look, this is the challenge. This is I'd almost it was one of those things where I was like, as much as I like a challenge, I actually think it might be impossible like without I don't know. I just thought it really is one of the hardest things you can possibly do is to build that connection between young people at that level on the other side of the country. Um to have that strong a rapport. Um but the team to their credit they're like okay leave that with us thinking all right what's a good way and then they came back on this was on the Friday we had this chat came back the Monday morning it's like right I've got a PDF proposal for you it was all about like this idea for a music festival and how it was going to be a disruptive music festival it was going to do things differently it was going to prioritize experience um even if you saw the feedback we got from the not just the public which was phenomenal but the artist experience the artists were saying like this is this is like some one of the best experiences we've ever ever had as artists which is phenomenal and I think um so that in terms of the why we're doing it the main reason is from an employer branding point of view but I have also been surprised how how much positivity there's been from the industry side so the customers and we we were giving free free tickets to customers not many took us up on the offer because they were like oh seems like some it's going to be rubbish like it's just an IT the software company, tech company doing a music festival. It's going to be terrible. >> It was amazing. I can say that for myself. >> And I think um it was way better than what anyone thought it would be to the point where now next year I think we're going to get absolutely inundated with requests from customers because they've seen they've seen all the the positivity surrounding it. >> Yeah. >> Um >> you guys you built something amazing here at Halo. You and the team. What advice would you give to a new founder that's just starting out? I think going back to what we were talking about earlier like if find something you love doing and if you're just doing it purely to make money or uh but you don't love it you won't be able to do it consistently and it'll always be and as well like your customers believe it or not like they will know they how however much you act you're act however good you are acting they will sense and they will feel how much you love doing what you do and I think that will come across and that is that is infectious it's as I was saying, it's what creates word of mouth. It's what begins to to build the business is when you can just People love passion. >> Yeah. >> Um and if you can just come across if if if a passionate person were to walk into this room right now, I don't care what they're passionate in. Like I just love seeing passion and I'm not unique there. Like it's human beings generally like gravitate towards passionate people. Like people love passion. So I think find something you're passionate about and again what we're saying don't get distracted by there's so many things in there's so much noise now like you there's so many podcasts now where you're you're you're told um and and as well I'd also add to this that don't there's so much pressure I think to for people to optimize their lives like whether it's wearable tech or um monitoring your sleep or your nutrition or uh just uh reading books books or going to the gym, not drinking alcohol, all this stuff that just chill out a bit. Just like do find something you love, do it a lot and moderate in in everything and just like the people people think, oh, I'm CEO of a successful business and I must I must have a really optimized life. I don't like I I honestly I'm such I just do normal things. I'm um I love going to the football, drink too much beer, but >> I started getting healthier now, but I was like I don't know. I didn't go to the gym enough and uh it's it's I don't really know, as I was saying, I don't do that much in the way of networking. I don't have this big fancy network of people that open doors. Um it's just the the way we do business is just by being really good at what we do. And if anything when people do because of my I am an introvert at heart and I don't like I sounds quite weird but I don't actually like marketing or advertising in the sense of how it does have the yeah you keep seeing Coca-Cola you will buy Coca-Cola. I don't like that. I don't like the fact that that is how susceptible human beings are. Um, I'd rather that we did just make more balanced rational decisions based on the quality of the thing that we're consuming. Um, but I know it's not life and uh but but anyway, so my point is so when people do say they can help and they can introduce me to this contact and I almost like just and maybe it's just cuz I perversely like the challenge of not taking their help. I don't know what it is, but I'm like, well, no, it's it's a bit if they come to me or you mention it and if they come to me, we'll do something, but I'm not going to reach out to them. It's like it's like, oh, I know this person and they they mentioned that you I don't know. It's just I don't I just genuinely don't like networking. This is the other thing just finally 99% of people will probably tell you and people come up to me all the time and say, "Oh, I I I have to network. I want to I need to network network network network that's how you grow successful business and it goes back to if you're artificially creating that demand and it's not people coming to you because they there's that trust and they actually have the real problem to solve and see if it's just like and the whole networking thing where they're doing you a favor they now expect you to do them a favor and it's just all a bit contrived and weird. Um, so anyway, >> I see that. If there is one key takeaway you'd want someone to take from this, what would it be? Would it be love what you do? >> Yeah. Love what you do and do it as much as you can. >> And share one last thing as well. Share the journey. Don't do it alone. It'll be boring. >> Um, and as if you if you do manage to be successful, share the success with the people involved in the project as well. Um, don't just like if you keep all the wealth for yourself and not and just I don't know, make sure that whoever it is that's delivering phenomenal value in your business that you're paying them well above market rates and even like I've over the years I've got given equity to people in the business. Um, and will continue to as well. It's uh the business is owned by the people in the business. And finally on that note, like don't sell out. Like the most of the people I've spoken to who have ended up thinking, oh, I should diversify or divest my assets and take cash, get a sell a minority. It ends up they lose purpose in life. They it doesn't mean as much to them. They just lose the very thing that was so fulfilling. Um and almost everyone, in fact, unanimously, I've never met anyone that has not said to me that they regretted selling too soon. Um, so almost all the founders I've spoken to, adittedly I don't know that many, but the ones I have spoken to, they all regret selling their majorities too soon. Um, so don't sell out because it it'll shortterm like, yeah, it'll make it will make you happy for a week, but then you're back. >> Your life will be worse than it was. >> What's step one to building a billion pound brand? >> You got to just find something you love doing. Paul, thank you so much for joining