Using fear to fuel your business venture<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Having a friend as a co-founder can be great\u2014but it isn\u2019t for everyone<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Running off adrenaline to scale the business but realising your own burnout point<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Finding an organic growth hack by channelling someone else\u2019s community or data<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n The reality of working with fintechs and banks<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n From sleeping on a friend\u2019s sofa, to game-changing deals worth millions<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Find a friend who wants and understands equity<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Complications: Moving to private equity but friends and family have previously invested<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n When in a leadership position, treat people as you\u2019d expect to be treated<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hiring isn\u2019t about the smartest person on paper\u2014it\u2019s about personality<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Where to start when building a board of executives<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Make mistakes, forgive yourself and get a good night\u2019s sleep<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n For our listeners, can you just describe what it is that Bud does?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I know that it does lots of very clever whizz-poppy things, but to break it down into sort of terms that my granny would understand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Really, the reality of what we do is, we take your financial data, which is the spending data that\u2019s in your bank account, and we work with banks to help analyse that data. We can then work out, based off of things like your spending patterns, the kind of things that you should watch out for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, if you look at where we started in 2015, it was a new financial app, which you could pull your bank data into, and we could give you insights into your spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We could send any alerts like, \u201cHey, it looks like we\u2019ve detected an upcoming bill, but it doesn\u2019t look like you currently have the cash in your account to cover it. So we want to make you aware of that. Maybe you need to try and cancel that service, or you need to move some money into your account.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s really those simple nudges and features and things that we all need. That kind of financial assistant in a pocket, was the original pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But what we found when we were building the company was, to get there, we had to build this whole infrastructure of data intelligence, because there wasn\u2019t really anything that existed that we could build on top of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then we became a business to business, so we started selling those services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than giving that service to customers through our app, we sold that service to banks and other banking apps, as finance apps to help anyone that had bank data to get this assistance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m fascinated by that move from the sort of B2C to B2B and I imagine at points that must have been painful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we\u2019re going to go into that in a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I wanted to start off by talking about how you get your head in the finance world, because I know you studied economics. Is that when you started thinking about financial systems, how you could make a correction, the challenges that you saw that, how did you even end up moving into this sphere?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I guess it\u2019s sort somewhat in your DNA to start your own company. And that certainly came from my dad. He was always an entrepreneur. He always had this kind of thing of if you\u2019ve got an idea, just go for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I found was at the time, it was 2014, this was the first wave of fintech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You had your TransferWises, your Starling banks. It was prior to Monzo, and I think Monzo was called Mondo back then, it was their first year in, and we saw all these guys coming through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Luckily at Salesforce, you got this view of what was happening in the tech ecosystem, what was happening in the world, because it\u2019s a huge CRM business, so you get to see these patterns emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, for me it was really interesting because there were these really high-growth companies coming in, at my level, which was the smallest kind of businesses that we dealt with, the sort of SMB they called small medium businesses at Salesforce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So this huge explosion was happening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d moved to Dublin and so I had accounts in different countries, obviously. People around the world think it\u2019s kind of odd, Ireland and UK being different countries and having different accounts. But yes, different accounts, using TransferWise and other services in between, to move money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And there were sort of two converging ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So one was, \u201cHey, why don\u2019t I just have access to all these services together in one app? I know it\u2019s in different bank accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the other side, there was this real explosion of fintech and it\u2019s services and the original idea was a sort of melding of those two ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I mean, when you started work on Bud, did you keep your job at Salesforce and were you kind of building on the side?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or did you say I\u2019m done here, papers in the air, I\u2019m going to start my business now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was out of fear. I had this idea. So the original idea was an intelligent money supermarket, where if you brought your financial data in, we would recommend the right services and products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You could integrate those altogether, and it\u2019s kind of this utopian idea of an autonomous financial app.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And a great idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh great idea, and still is today. But the technical challenges were vast, so we didn\u2019t know that going in. So, that\u2019s kind of what we learned on the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the thing that compelled me, this is kind of odd, it probably tells you more about me than anything else. The thing that compelled me the most to go and do it, was that I had this idea, and maybe it was a good idea, and that if one day I googled the idea, like automated financial assistant or marketplace banking app, and someone else had created it and it was doing great, then I would not forgive myself for not trying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Actually it\u2019s the same way that finally convinced me to take my driving test, I kept having these recurring nightmares that I couldn\u2019t drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it is something about the idea of not doing it, that compelled me to do it, which is maybe slightly odd, but\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fear can be a really powerful, terrifying but powerful way of getting you to move quickly and get things done. So did you already have your co-founder, George Dunning, with you at this point or did you find him later in the journey?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, George and I had been friends for many years. We knew each other as kids. We grew up in a town in north of England called Harrogate. And I used to go around to his house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope my mum doesn\u2019t listen to this, but I used to sneak around to his house and tell my mum I was going to church, but in fact I was going around to his house to play computer games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, we were just little nerd friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, I was going to ask, how do you know that the person, that you are going to co-found a business with is the right person, but I feel like childhood friend means, you know each other pretty well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a pretty, in-depth degree of trust there, and you can probably be very honest with one another, I imagine?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I mean, it can be great if you get it right. But equally I wouldn\u2019t advise it to everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s hard, and there certainly needs to be a degree of openness and you need to understand each other\u2019s weaknesses, and obviously, have an open dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But there\u2019re things about, and I\u2019m sure everyone can recognise this, there are things about the people that we don\u2019t work with every day, that we like to spend time with. So what you gain in a co-founder, you sort of lose in that person that you can\u2019t wait to see on the weekend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, yeah, there\u2019s certainly ups and downs. I mean it worked out for us thankfully, but it\u2019s not necessarily easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, there\u2019s definitely, you could say that the startup scene is littered with broken friendships because people went into business together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then, so, take me back to those early days. How crazy was it? Were you working sort of 14-hour days? What was it, what kind of pace did you have to keep up to actually create the first iteration of this business?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything in the startup is, and I\u2019m sure many people have said this, it\u2019s hellish. It\u2019s really hard and often it\u2019s hard because you put so much pressure on, and at some point, you might take on some money from family and friends and that adds on to the pressure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But really, it\u2019s funny, because, yes, we worked super hard and we worked long hours, but it never really felt like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I had this thing. I would work until I hated everything I was doing, and I just thought everything I was doing was terrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s when I knew I just no longer had the capacity to really do anything positive. So I would then go to bed and when you wake up, it all feels a little bit better the next day, right? So, yeah, we would work pretty late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But again, the original group of five or six of us, that ended up being for the first couple of years, we were really close, and it was fun, and it was hard, but you could never really repeat that right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because it\u2019s kind of a very special time, where you\u2019re sort of so excited and you\u2019re running off so much adrenaline that you are pushing yourself and of course your health suffers and things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How long did you have to run at that pace before you saw some traction though? Because I always think that\u2019s interesting to find out how long do you have to sustain that level of adrenaline fuelled like hyperactivity?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well it just depends how long it takes to get the point where you, as a founder, no longer scale, right? Because it\u2019s this idea that you\u2019re putting huge amounts of hours in, and you need to have critical thinking or make good decisions, but you are just burnt out or you need to take an extra push.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say there\u2019s an event that you need to go to, or you need to do a talk and you\u2019re just exhausted and there\u2019s that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so for us, it was probably about two years, because we built on very shaky foundations, as I mentioned. We had this sort of utopian idea of what we wanted to build, but ultimately the core technology was so hard to do, that it was sort about two years until we started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we pivoted over to the B2B, and I know we\u2019ll talk about it in a minute, that\u2019s when things started to, you\u2019re pushing that boulder uphill, and it started to get to that point where it wasn\u2019t just pain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That must have been really hard though when you had to look at your business and try and be impartial about its chances of success and think we have to change something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Was there a moment that you just thought, you know what, why don\u2019t we just stop trying, why don\u2019t we just close down?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or was that never an option in your mind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh no, it was always an option. It\u2019s always an option. You always think, \u201cHey, maybe this is just not it anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I think the reality of actually doing that, and giving up, maybe foolhardy in some ways. So I see all sorts of people that sort of push to the end and then they realise, \u201cOk, this business isn\u2019t going to work. Let\u2019s close it down and let\u2019s try something else, or let\u2019s do something else or let\u2019s change. We\u2019re going to change the business, let\u2019s start a new business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n That wasn\u2019t really in my nature, and it still isn\u2019t, but I think, who knows which is the better path? I don\u2019t know, I couldn\u2019t tell you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that\u2019s not what you did. Instead, you basically completely remodelled your existing business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So how big and undertaking was that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n How emotionally wrenching was it to try and scrap quite a lot of stuff that you\u2019d spent two years working on, and then refocus?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was many years ago now, and I feel like, to be honest, the number one thing, and maybe it came from starting up with a group of friends, as a business, but there were two things we wanted to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We had this idea that you could create this kind automated financial experience, and we sort of drew it up on a whiteboard and we said, \u201cLook, here\u2019s the pros of doing it on our own, masters of our own destiny, but here\u2019s the cons, there are thousands of financial apps out there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone was competing to acquire customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If ultimately what we want to do is automate and give people insight into their finances and give businesses the ability to automate their experiences, their lending, all this kind of stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is this autonomous financial dream that we have, we\u2019re more likely to be able to deliver that, through other businesses, where they have more data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s say, in an ideal world consumer facing, we become as big as one of the big banks. That would be awesome. And we\u2019d probably be able to deliver some experience, while very unlikely, we would have a lot of data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, in the alternative world, what if we worked with three banks and 20 fintechs, we would have more data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, with what we were trying to build, we realised it was a data problem and certain methodologies, investment, and obviously, with the B2B model, we could really core invest in the technology versus investing in customer requisition costs, because that\u2019s where you get into that loop with consumer businesses, you have to acquire customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s expensive, it\u2019s hard to scale that. So we drew that up and it kind of felt like a bit of a no brainer for us. So yeah, I don\u2019t remember feeling massively emotional about it. I think some of the team and some people ultimately, it really wasn\u2019t the thing for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And still today, we interview a lot of people and there\u2019s a lot of people that just want to create a customer product and it takes a different mindset, and I understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I think the core team, we just wanted to go on that mission. We wanted the company to succeed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, it was a bit of a no brainer for us, it wasn\u2019t too emotional of a decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s really interesting advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s always an organic growth hack. It takes so much time, money, energy to try and build your own community and your own customer base, one at a time, laboriously attracting them in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s always a way that you can channel someone else\u2019s community or someone else\u2019s data, and that the best businesses now do that. They find the organic growth hack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, that\u2019s interesting. That\u2019s actually what ended up proving the salvation of your business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was somewhat obvious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So in 2017, there was this piece of regulation that was announced. The long and short of what it meant was, banks no longer owned, or could say they owned their customer\u2019s data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Customers now owned their own data and could move their own data between different apps and banks, and things like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So then, what it meant was rather than these banks and financial apps having these kind of walled gardens, where they kept all the data inside, customers could move their data from one place to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n People that were alive to it, started to realise, \u201cHey, if a customer can move their data to any application or service of their choosing, which service will they have their data in?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hopefully, and this was kind of our pitch was, if a customer has choice, they can move. They don\u2019t have to change their bank account, they can just move their data to the application they find the most helpful, that assists them in the best possible way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few banks identified this quite early, and they came to us and said, \u201cHey look, we like what you\u2019ve built, why don\u2019t you license it to us?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so it wasn\u2019t just us going, \u201cHey, we could do this model.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n People were telling us to do the model. So we said, OK, this makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Positive reinforcement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, that was it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well that\u2019s interesting because I was going to ask, how you found the first fintechs and banks to work with?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because especially when it comes to banks, I mean they can be quite slow-moving creatures. I think because of the explosion of fintech, recently, things have changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But certainly a few years ago, it wasn\u2019t always easy to get traction with a big bank when you were a new startup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So was it all inbound and that\u2019s what got you up and running?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, it wasn\u2019t a hundred percent inbound. The ideas were inbound. So traditional banks are built top to bottom, their custodians of risk, they manage risk, and that\u2019s their culture. Their culture is to manage risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so while we had inbounds, it wasn\u2019t the CEO of a bank saying, \u201cLet\u2019s do this tomorrow.\u201d, it was like, \u201cHey, come and have a conversation with us. This might be interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The roadblocks to serve a bank were kind of endless really to be honest. This new regulation meant that customers could port their data but then the bank was saying, \u201cYes, but do I trust you?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n You see the billboards, and I think at the same time banks were advertising things like, never give your data away, never share your password, all this kind of stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And as much as you\u2019re not sharing your password with a service like us, there is that feeling where it just doesn\u2019t really make sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Banks were the same, they were sceptical about sharing their data with a third party, that kind of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So there were huge roadblocks, and we managed to pull something off that was pretty crazy and it got us our first big customer, HSBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well actually, our first customer was HSBC, and they\u2019re obviously the biggest customer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, we had to grow up pretty fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We had to put all sorts of policies in place, we had to create our systems in a sort of secure way. We almost built them too securely, to the point where we couldn\u2019t even access our own systems. But these are the things we had to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I guess, we were selling into many banks, it was kind of my job before, was sales, so, and that was just if anyone wants to try and sell into a bank and as a new fintech, there was no secret sauce. It was just a pretty well-rehearsed pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I mean there\u2019s thousands of people that work in these big banks, so there\u2019s always a meeting to be had. And the idea really was, you could get in there, you\u2019d have a meeting with someone and they\u2019re not going to be a decision maker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A key decision maker isn\u2019t going to take a meeting with you, but that might be their boss\u2019s boss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So you kind of work your way up through those layers and say, \u201cHey, these bad guys came in. It\u2019s kind of interesting. Why don\u2019t you take a look?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And through literally hours and hours of meetings in different banks, we\u2019ve finally got somewhere significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to talk a bit about how you have financed this business because you mentioned before you started Bud, you were sort of a junior salesperson, so you weren\u2019t on big bucks, and yet you were running at this original idea for two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So how did you finance that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n How did you have enough budget, to even create the business in the first place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, to begin with them, in a guess, it was just first idea was yeah, let\u2019s go do this business. I only move back in with my parents, while my parents are very supportive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re 24 and you\u2019re just like\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re living at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, I don\u2019t want to live at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I was in London and Dublin before, so I kind of made myself excuses about why I needed to be in London because it was the centre of fintech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I went and stayed on a friend\u2019s couch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It was actually, George and my other friend Jamie, who also ended up joining the business. It was their sofa, but they weren\u2019t in the business yet. I had to go to the pub with a couple pitch decks over the course of six or seven months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I was sleeping on their sofa, we were fortunate. I was certainly fortunate, like I said, friends and family bought into the idea to a small amount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I wasn\u2019t paying myself anything really, just enough to get by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately, and I\u2019m saying actually if someone raises the point, I\u2019m not from a mega wealthy family but I\u2019m certainly not from a family that couldn\u2019t support me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I know there are lots of founders that kind of build from nothing and no one, and don\u2019t have that support around them, but I certainly had that support network, and that certainly gave me a leg up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So that\u2019s something to call out, that was really helpful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yeah, that\u2019s why it\u2019s certainly interesting to me, trying to help level that playing field out, as a founder, because why do we see such low diversity in founders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s taking that risk. My parents could put food on the table. That was certainly something that helped, because you can\u2019t do it on nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yeah, I quit my job and maybe I wouldn\u2019t have quit my job, maybe I would\u2019ve done that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But then you do also fall into weird employment law things where your contract says that actually, you can\u2019t work on this during these times and that kind of stuff. So you have to be careful of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But at the same time I was very conscious of not spending any money. We had a small amount of money that we had and then eventually I kind of convinced George to quit his job and that was the first time we needed to start spending that money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n George needed to get paid and just enough to get by. We were three of us living in a small apartment so it was cost effective. Then eventually we kept gravitating friends and family in and convincing them, that this is a great idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once we went B2B, then things started to change a little bit. We had a really clear business model, we had customers lining up, that kind of stuff, and doing a bit wrong, we didn\u2019t get to the moon then, but it made sense a little bit more from an investment perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So we raised our seed round around 2017 but it was co-led between Investec that became Outward VC, and Bank of Sabadell, who are a Spanish bank. If you ever go to Spain, you\u2019ll see Sabadell, everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So they co-led the deal, that was about \u00a31.5m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s just unbelievable and crazy, and we didn\u2019t have to fight for payroll for certainly a good few months, a good year or so. And that was really, that freed us up to really focus on the business. That was really awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then we did our Series A in around February 2019, we closed it and that was about $20m in Series A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We closed our Series B, and the deal was worth around $80m, in terms of funding. So, it\u2019s great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wow, congratulations. That\u2019s like enough money to become quite a big established business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is game changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And I think the nice thing is ultimately, so it was led by TDR Capital, who have a vast amount of portfolio businesses in the UK, and there\u2019s a lot of synergies there, which is really exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But ultimately, the nice thing is as much as we talked about the big pivot, there\u2019s lots of small pivots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of our pivots was realising that we had this real speciality in data and data science, and we wanted to prove out that model during Covid and lockdown for the last few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we started to prove that out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think this round is really about hey, actually we\u2019ve got this, not just supplying kind of some of the services we were talking about in 2017, but we\u2019ve got these new services that are working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And those are the things that are really starting to scale the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And you said you learn a lot about having co-led investment rounds and I get the impression that it can be challenging.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you mind just for our listeners, what makes it more difficult when you\u2019ve got a dual investor tussle happening?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And with banks and large institutions, it\u2019s never just a lead either because every bank has a lot of regulation, they\u2019ve got certain things that they need to see for various reasons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So that becomes a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So and so says yes, will you say yes to this? Can we give you the same deal and then back and forth back? OK. I can see that would be time consuming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Certainly time consuming. And as an inexperienced founder, that was quite a rude awakening. But like I say, we\u2019ve done it before, and we did it again, and now we can do it again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have a GC and we have quite a robust, we have a quite robust organisation, we\u2019re just under 100 people and so, that we can handle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But again, if it\u2019s advice for founders, it\u2019s trying to avoid that, if you\u2019re trying to value your time and your mental state because you\u2019ve also got everything else to do at the same time. So try and avoid that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But we couldn\u2019t avoid that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We equally thought, these were big institutions. If we had one that was just leading, we didn\u2019t want it to be us first them, we kind of wanted it to be everyone on somewhat level playing field, so we could keep some power in that conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So that was the thinking, and it certainly did pay off but it\u2019s harder. It\u2019s harder, it\u2019s definitely harder to get right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No, that\u2019s interesting. And just for listeners, GC, general counsel, a godsend for any business who can afford one because they\u2019re very expensive but very few startups can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, very expensive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Find a friend that wants equity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a good trick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or a friend of a friend that understands the value of equity and you can hire brilliant mathematicians and engineers, but there\u2019s kind of people just sort of say no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They don\u2019t really understand the equity game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But when they do, they understand it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And they only understand that, if they see the value. So getting that right is important. That\u2019s how you can save some money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But it\u2019s a gamble, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n People often think I\u2019d rather have a salary that\u2019s like a juicy salary, than put my faith in this, being successful in five years\u2019 time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You have to have the right personality and outlook to understand that that could be better in the long run for your finances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It could be. It\u2019s massively risky, and that\u2019s the challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s like, what\u2019s your mindset, instead of, do you have an appetite for risk? It\u2019s the same thing that we see in personal finance with pensions, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pensions are obviously less risky but there\u2019s all the studies that basically say that, after a certain period of time, people will reduce the value of their pension to zero.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it\u2019s like a three-to-five-year horizons say, yeah, I\u2019ve got however much money in that pension, but it\u2019s got nothing to me, cause it\u2019s not in the immediate future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s these kind of strange games we play with mental accounting, that we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So these are the types of things we have to try when we are designing our systems instead of competing against.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To get into the neuroscience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah. To get into the behavioural cognitive part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On that point about equity, you mentioned that you had friends and family, backing you in the early days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How does that complicate matters, when you, then going to get kind of VC or private equity investment later on? Did you have to buy everyone out?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because you hear that if you have loads of people holding a very small stake, it can make things quite difficult when it comes to doing the term sheets and stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, I mean, it just really depends on how you structure the rights of the individuals. I got some sort of, some quite good advice early on, about how to structure it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, essentially for those friends and family, they\u2019re buying into you and your founding team and the vision. I think for a lot of friends and family, and that\u2019s why they\u2019re friends and family, they didn\u2019t necessarily want to interfere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So applying the right amount of consent rights to them, so saying, you can vote on their behalf and do all these things, that makes that a bit easier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so, there was never any challenge there, because essentially the founding team had full control of the business. We had financial stakeholders as friends and family. We\u2019re not talking about huge amounts of money, but it was basically enough to pay three or four people\u2019s wages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, they didn\u2019t take any sort of control. And I think that\u2019s quite important because you know you might get into this situation, where you\u2019ve got professional VC versus\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Uncle Barry or something.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, Uncle Barry, and you\u2019re thinking, you can almost imagine cringing and stuff like that. So, that\u2019s an important thing to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just to make sure that the rights, that you give them, probably reflect what input they\u2019re going to be having.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And you mentioned you\u2019ve got a hundred people now, and this must be such a far cry from when it was just a small gang of you, working on this idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n How did you decide what kind of leader you would be, when you\u2019ve got that many people who report, who are relying on you, who are looking for guidance and leadership?<\/p>\n\n\n\n How did you mould yourself into someone with a hundred staff if that makes sense?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think they mould you, more than you mould yourself. I think if you try and mould yourself and then, I am a proponent of reading all sorts of business books and ultimately there\u2019s some good tips and advice in there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s always useful to have some sort of a reference book if you\u2019ve never dealt with something before, you can read about something like, how to fire a friend, as an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You think, God, how am I even going to start to think about it? So, I\u2019ve used that example, because it\u2019s one of the worst things you can ever do. It\u2019s horrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ultimately you need to be true to yourself, you need to be your own leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are lots of inputs out there, but if you\u2019re trying to fake and be someone else and put on a front, it\u2019s not genuine. I\u2019ve seen that in practice and it\u2019s not right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So there\u2019s a more degree of that. I think you have to identify with your strengths and weaknesses, and certainly hire for your weaknesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obviously, you\u2019re trying to address your weaknesses, but you got to be realistic about them and beyond that, it\u2019s people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So treat people as you\u2019d expect to be treated. That\u2019s very, very simple. We were told that, as kids, and it\u2019s just the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the point about people as well, because I read that you said one of your great strengths when hiring, was to actually hire people from outside the industry, so not always getting fintech finance experts, and I thought that was really interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I wanted to know why that\u2019s helped you build a kind of more engaged workforce?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think there are some bad cultures out there, quite frankly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s some really bad company cultures out there, and what you really want to do is try and create your own culture, and you\u2019re trying to do something different and new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You don\u2019t want to just take people that have grown up in, or say grown up, or learn from very rigid structures that, for example, they view risk in a certain way, because risk is about compounding uncertainties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s not about a yes or no, sort of decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, you need those kinds of people that can take ownership. Because we\u2019re looking at the financial world, a long time ago, pre-fintech wave. And so I think, we wanted to do everything quite different to how that was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So really today it was the same thing as before. It wasn\u2019t about hiring someone that had done lending before. It wasn\u2019t about hiring the smartest person on paper, because we\u2019ve done a lot of that and that tends not to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019re hiring for personality, you\u2019re hiring for someone who is accountable, who takes ownership for what they do, ownership when things mess up and ownership when things go well, that can be creative but also, they want to get stuff done, and they can deal with the uncertainty of growing a business from nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, whether they had come from a finance background, they could have done, but mostly it was just people that were smart, emotionally intelligent and wanted to do stuff and wanted to, would take ownership that we wanted to hire for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what their background was, whether they went to university or not, whether they worked at a bank or not was neither here nor there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think we\u2019ve always thought about what a hiring superpower is now more than ever. Hiring superpower is even more flexible than it was before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You know, can hire that person anyway in the world. Hopefully we\u2019re trying to build structures where we should be able to hire an engineer from anywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s interesting because I\u2019ve heard from a lot of founders actually, who had startup or fast-growth businesses, and they thought the best thing to do, would be to hire a really experienced executive from a massive rival, just one of these multinational corporations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the number of times they\u2019ve regretted it because you take someone who\u2019s used to having massive resources, who\u2019s used to doing things a certain way, and they\u2019re being certain amounts of process, and then you thrust them into a startup environment, and they just flounder and then, very expensive to get rid of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I had heard, sometimes what looks good on paper doesn\u2019t work in practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, when I think about trying to hire, we\u2019re a very young team, and I always think about this, do you want to bring in some senior execs, people that been there, done it before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think, time and time again, I come back to this point, and I say this now, maybe by the time this podcast comes out, I\u2019ve had some super senior exec on, not planning on it, but might do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think it\u2019s that person that is, really fighting for that next position, maybe as you might perceive it, they\u2019re a level below where you want to hire for, but you can see they have got all the ambition there, they\u2019ve got the drive, they\u2019re hungry for it, they\u2019ll do anything to get there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They\u2019ve got some frameworks that they\u2019ve learned from other places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think those kinds of people, you want to bring them in and enrol and say ultimately, you want to be here, you want to get to this next role, let\u2019s say where you\u2019re taking a UK focus team, and you want to be managing a team across three markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, they want to get there, you want them to get there. So they\u2019re going to figure that one out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think that for us, it always seems like the best value and seems like the right culture for us, is that person that isn\u2019t trying to sit above a team and say, \u201cI don\u2019t do the work, I sit on top of people that do the work and if you throw me into the deep end, I\u2019m not going to go do the work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Take sales as an example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If I\u2019m hiring someone senior in sales, I expect them to do their own outreach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, they have business development people, yes, they have marketing, but they should be networking. I\u2019m always on LinkedIn messaging people, as is my co-founder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have a bit of competition of who can do the most outreach, and sometimes it might feel weird if this year is reaching out to a junior person in the company trying to sell them a product, but hey, that\u2019s the nature of the game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everyone needs to be selling here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But you do have some heavyweights, you\u2019ve got them on your board though, so is that where you need to have the big names?<\/p>\n\n\n\n The people who might not be in the trenches, but they\u2019ve been there, done that, got a T-shirt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The scariest thing is the type of things that you have no clue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s naivety of doing things. So, that\u2019s what they give us. So if we\u2019re entering a new scenario, maybe do we expand to a new country? Ok, there\u2019s this regulatory thing coming up, what do we think of it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n You want to turn to some people that done it a couple of times before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a co-founder or CEO or C something, you have more information about the decision you\u2019re going to make than they do, but you just want to run it past someone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then, ultimately nine times out 10, they just give you the confidence to execute, like Ramon and Stanley, really, they\u2019re advisors and mentors to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It just kind of pays to keep your eyes open, see who you get on with, see who adds value and just hang on the people that really do. That seems to be great advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, I guess advice on board composition and thinking about boards, and so I\u2019ve done these lots of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve had lots of different people on the board, coming up to eight years now, and it\u2019s those people that you can really get along with, and I think there is as a young founder, as in first time founder, there\u2019s this idea that I need to be trusted as a business. I need to build a board. I need to build this prestigious board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t necessarily buy into that. I did at the time, and maybe I\u2019m sort of doing that classic thing. It worked for me, but you know, you shouldn\u2019t do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So take that advice with a pinch of salt, but I don\u2019t know if necessarily, just throwing a bunch of names onto a board is the right thing to do. I think you need to be very careful about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Good advice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And then, just one final question Ed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the headline, the name of this podcast is, \u201cGet year one in business right\u201d. So I\u2019d love to know for all of our listeners, who are in that first year, try not to make mistakes, making those mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is there anything that you remember, from your early days in business, that you think, I wish I\u2019d known that, or I wish someone could have told me to do something a little bit different?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Is there one piece of advice that you would share?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yeah, so I often dream about starting another business, not that I don\u2019t love Bud, but it\u2019s just the idea that because you make so many mistakes no matter what you read, it\u2019s very difficult to really put that advice into practice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I think ultimately, you\u2019re going to make a heap of mistakes, and some of those mistakes might haunt you for years, but you need to forgive yourself and just keep going. I think that\u2019s the main thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thing is, I kind of have this idea that if I started another business, I\u2019d make all these mistakes and I wouldn\u2019t do them again, but I\u2019d make other mistakes. And it would be because I\u2019ve made these mistakes, so I would maybe not do things, I did in the early days, and that wouldn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So it\u2019s very difficult to say anything other than just move on, forgive yourself and go to sleep. Go to sleep. Because when it\u2019s painful, and it feels like nothing\u2019s going to work, when you have a good sleep, it feels possible again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I like that. That\u2019s the opposite of the sort of hustle porn where it\u2019s like, live on three hours a night, drink energy drinks for breakfast, keep going, keep going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is like, okay, good night sleep, forgive yourself. I prefer this approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To use a sports analogy, which I know is a bit tried, but you know what a performance athlete, whether they\u2019re a marathon runner or a sprinter, thinks it\u2019s a good idea to be un-rested and have poor nutrition and not look after yourself and try and go out and perform to your peak ability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So if you\u2019re selling something, if you\u2019re being a B2B, you need to go out and be able to pitch a business, and look energised, and feel energised. I have lots of pictures of me looking in terrible place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you are B2C, you\u2019ve got to come up with some marketing concepts, ultimately to again, sell your product, and to have the creativity to take your message and get it narrow enough that people understand it and agree with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think both things are a creative endeavour. So I think you do need to look after yourself, definitely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That hustle mentality is mental.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes you got to put it in, but sometimes you got to forgive yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well Ed, thank you so much for making time for me today, and especially after raising that mammoth round of investment. You guys must be so busy and have so many plates spinning. I really appreciate you making the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I hope something of what I\u2019ve said is useful to anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wherever you\u2019re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes<\/a> here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are also on Spotify<\/a> and anywhere else you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Join our community to share your insights and stories on Twitter @SageIreland<\/a> using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial<\/a> or in the comments below!<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can check out Bud on their website<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can also find Edward on Twitter <\/a>or LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \n Get your free guide, business plan template and cash flow forecast template to help you manage your business and achieve your goals.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Join 1.5 million subscribers and get the best business admin strategies and tactics, as well as actionable advice to help your company thrive, in your inbox every month.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Learn how Edward Maslaveckas cracked his sales by finding an organic growth hack to get his financial banking platform, Bud, off the ground.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1161,"featured_media":13052,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"audio","meta":{"_sage_video":false,"post_featured_image_hide":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[130,132,332,153],"business_type":[5],"lilypad":[],"context":[],"industry":[],"persona":[232],"imagine_tag":[230],"coauthors":[439],"class_list":["post-13062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-audio","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-growth-customers","tag-grow-business","tag-start-business","tag-sound-advice-podcast","tag-startup-stories","post_format-post-format-audio","business_type-small-business"],"sage_meta":{"region":"en-ie","author_name":"Bex Burn-Callander","featured_image":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2022\/10\/Blog_Episode-49.jpg","imagine_tags":{"230":"Small business"}},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Sage Advice Ireland","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/users\/1161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media\/13052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"business_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/business_type?post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"lilypad","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/lilypad?post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"context","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/context?post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"persona","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/persona?post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"imagine_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/imagine_tag?post=13062"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/api\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=13062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Shifting your idea from B2C to B2B<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Using fear to fuel your business venture<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Having a friend as a co-founder can be great\u2014but it isn\u2019t for everyone<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Running off adrenaline to scale the business but realising your own burnout point<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Finding an organic growth hack by channelling someone else\u2019s community or data<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The reality of working with fintechs and banks<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
From sleeping on a friend\u2019s sofa, to game-changing deals worth millions<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Find a friend who wants and understands equity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Complications: Moving to private equity but friends and family have previously invested<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
When in a leadership position, treat people as you\u2019d expect to be treated<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Hiring isn\u2019t about the smartest person on paper\u2014it\u2019s about personality<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Where to start when building a board of executives<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Make mistakes, forgive yourself and get a good night\u2019s sleep<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Bex Burn-Callander:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Edward Maslaveckas:<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Inspired by this small business story?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Want to know more about Bud and Edward Maslaveckas?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Small business toolkit<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2021\/08\/YBCA_FY19_Intacct_V3_0338-1-1215x810.jpg\")
\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\nSubscribe to the Sage Advice newsletter<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sage.com\/en-ie\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/13\/2021\/04\/z.5E3A0481_All-Uses.jpg\")
\t\t\t<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"