Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In this episode of the Cult Products podcast, host Phill Keaney-Bolland speaks with Natalie Peire, a former co-founder of a startup focused on sexual wellbeing, GASM. They discuss Natalie's journey from personal development to entrepreneurship, the lessons learned from running a startup, the importance of emotional investment, and the dynamics of co-founding a business with a partner. Natalie shares insights on finding the right advice, the significance of prototyping, and the challenges faced in the early stages of a startup. The conversation emphasises the need for clarity in goals, the evolution of branding, and the importance of focusing on specific challenges to achieve success.
takeaways
Emotional investment in your business is crucial.
Choosing co-founders wisely can make or break a startup.
Seek advice from founders a few steps ahead of you.
Prototyping helps in visualising and communicating ideas.
Focus on one specific challenge to start with.
Your brand will evolve as your business grows.
Testing and iterating quickly is essential for success.
Building a community around your product is important.
Don't rush into partnerships without due diligence.
Be prepared to pivot based on market feedback.
keywords
B2B tech, startup, emotional investment, co-founders, advice, prototyping, sexual wellbeing, entrepreneurship, personal development, lessons learned
Creators & Guests
What is Cult Products?
Dive into the essentials of start-up success with Cult Products, hosted by Yaya's co-founders, Adam Yaya-Durrant and Phill Keaney-Bolland. This podcast delivers sharp insights on creating revolutionary products, radical branding, and attracting a loyal following of early adopters. Whether you're starting out or scaling up, each episode is packed with actionable advice and stories from those who've built successful businesses. Join Adam and Phill as they help you transform bold ideas into start-up success.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (00:17)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Cult Products podcast where we are talking about all things B2B tech startup. And this week, Adam is away. He's at a live action role play camp in Kent with his friends dressed up as a dragon. So fortunately, he's not with us, but I have a very special co -host.
Natalie Peire (00:39)
you
Phill Keaney-Bolland (00:46)
with me today, Natalie Peire who has just wrapped up a stint as co -founder of her startup, going, taking a break, looking for what her next step is. Welcome to podcasts, Natalie.
Natalie Peire (01:01)
Thanks Phil, I'm very curious about this action replay situation but maybe you can tell me more about that next time.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (01:09)
Yeah, it's a very curious thing. And people will probably be surprised that that's how Adam spends his holidays. But he does it every year. He made a big cardboard dragon costume. And him and his friend Matt have got that it's a very coveted role in the whole thing. I don't know very much about it. But it's very important to Adam. so yes, we used to work together. 10 and with Adam and with previous
Natalie Peire (01:20)
So good.
Yes, we did. And with Adam.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (01:39)
podcast guest, Benjamin Weston as well. At chemistry, that was about 10 years ago now, I think.
Natalie Peire (01:42)
Yeah.
Yeah, must have been. It was my first job out of uni. So it must have been about 10 years ago.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (01:52)
Yeah.
Yeah, Exciting times. There's another podcast probably just about that that I'm sure we can do at some point. So yeah, let's just hear a bit about what you've been up to since then and what the startup that you've been working with was.
Natalie Peire (02:15)
Yeah, great. So obviously, there's always a long and a short story when it when you're trying to cover 10 years of life and work. But the short story is the short version is after after chemistry, I ended up going off traveling backpacking. And my mom had always said to me, you're not allowed to go traveling until after you finish university, because you probably won't come back.
And she was absolutely right. So off I went and yeah, I ended up experiencing a lot of different personal development modalities from around the world. I traveled in India and then also got led to Brazil. And my first kind of role was in, I found myself a job in a startup in Brazil and we were building a personal development center. And I kind of joined as the third person.
to this big vision and some friends who bought this piece of land and they wanted to create a space to learn and grow across kind of health, mental well -being and diet and nutrition. And at that time I was really interested in all of those things. What does it mean to live well? What does it mean to have a healthy life both on a physical and a non -physical level? And whilst I was there, I kind of did everything from creating the initial vision and values of the place through to like managing.
the volunteers that we had with us and then all the way through to actually starting to run the retreats and sell the retreats and yeah, manage this kind of 120 person beast that we created with all the highs and lows that come along with that. But yeah, it was an amazing experience and actually it's really what led me into doing what my startup was, was that I found that whilst I was there, I started to be really interested in the workshops around.
relationships and intimacy and I found that actually no one was really talking about that yet. People were talking a lot about our mental health and our mental wellbeing, what it means to have a healthy diet and a healthy body, but no one was talking about what it is to have healthy relationships. So I kind of decided to make that my passion and I started to train in what it means to be a relationship coach and therapist and then spent the next sort of five years traveling around the world, running workshops and
events from I ran a workshop at Burning Man for 50 people in the desert which was incredible. I ran a few back in the city of London and we had everyone there from kind of people from the finance industries to more creative industries and these workshops were just taking these tools and techniques and therapeutic practices from all different areas whether it was from kind of ancient traditions from
India or whether it was kind of more sex positive teachings from the kink space or therapeutic teachings from more of the psychosexual side of things and just making them really accessible really down to earth and in a way that people could understand. So that was kind of what I was doing for the last five years and my partner Lauren and I, started to do that together in London and we found that we were selling out and kind of asking ourselves, how do we scale this thing? And that's when we
thought of the idea of sex tech and got introduced to who then later became our third co -founder Douglas for a more digital version of these workshops, which was a sexual wellbeing app, was Chasm.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (05:46)
So interesting, such an interesting route into this. I have worked in a lot of different industries. I haven't really worked in anything that's like sex related or sex adjacent yet. And I'm curious, first thing, working with Lauren.
Natalie Peire (05:47)
you
Mm.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (06:14)
as co -founder in a startup, did you meet through work or was that kind of a, you decided kind of after getting to know each other to start working together?
Natalie Peire (06:14)
Mm.
Yeah, so we met on a training together. And when I moved back to London, we were talking about we did the same, we did the same education, and we decided to team up and start to run the workshops together. But we already starting our personal relationship as well. So yeah, Lauren, Lauren is my partner, both in love and in business, which some people are like horrified to hear. But actually, I remember quite early on, one of our
Phill Keaney-Bolland (06:30)
Okay.
Natalie Peire (06:57)
investors said they were like, it can either be the making of you or the breaking of you. So make it your superpower. And I definitely think we did, but it took a lot of like, careful boundary work to be able to separate life and work as well.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (07:09)
Thanks.
Yeah, I think I tensed up a little bit. mean, you know, love and very much respect for my wife, but I feel like working together with a partner is there's going to be a lot for us to talk about that later in the podcast. So, you know, we can get into that a little bit. So the format today is to be slightly different. We've asked you to think about some things that you've learned over the course of running that startup.
Natalie Peire (07:24)
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (07:43)
lessons learned, bits of advice for aspiring and current founders who are out there at the minute. And I think you've come up with five things that we're gonna get into. So yeah, without kind of further ado, what's your kind of first lesson that you picked up from running your startup?
Natalie Peire (07:55)
Yeah.
Yeah, so I'm also just going to caveat this with like, there are so many, and it was very difficult to choose just five. So these are five, but the list could go on. So we'll start here is these are these are probably the five that I wish I kind of had more foresight for at the beginning. So the first is around having emotional investment in your in your business. So that passion and that drive the second
is around picking your co -founders and relationships with co -founders wisely. The third is around how to get great advice. The fourth is around the value of having a stage appropriate brand and my experience of having our click through prototype and why I found that was really supportive at the beginning of our journey. And that also kind of leads into the final one, which is not getting too far ahead of yourself and making sure that you
really prove what you need to prove at the right stage to be able to move on to the next thing.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (09:06)
Love that. Love the sound of that. So maybe let's get into the first one then about emotional investment. I know something about this, been potentially overly emotionally invested in what we're doing at Yaya. What was your experience of that? And what's your takeaway?
Natalie Peire (09:18)
Yeah
Yeah, I think, obviously, because I'd been working in this space for five years in on kind of on the ground working with one to one with clients and also facilitating workshops and having having themselves sell out as well as having had my own personal life transformed by some of these teachings and education. It meant that both
Well, my three co -founders, myself, Lauren and Douglas, we were all had gone through this similar sense of training. So we were all real kind of very evangelical about what we were doing, which is an amazing benefit because number one, we're like hugely passionate. So it didn't always feel like work because we really believe deeply in the mission for how it could transform people's relationships that and therefore their life.
And obviously there's the other side of the coin of that, which means sometimes it's hard to see the wood for the trees and to know where to begin. you get, it's with all of these, with all of these pieces of advice, there's a sense of like, there's a plus and a minus, and you just have to kind of like balance, like be aware of the balancing act that you're going through with that. So yeah, I think on the side of being hugely passionate and understanding the industry so well.
It meant that conversations with investors were a lot easier because they really bought into us as founders. We had a really clear reason as to why we should be the ones to do this. Because actually we understood the market and it was a market that lots of these investors hadn't really looked into or maybe it was still a bit stigmatized, but they were curious about the growth potential. And it meant also that customers were inspired by our story and they were really interested in.
Yeah, they were really curious of how that could apply to their life. So it meant that starting a conversation, people were just inherently interested in what we were doing because we were so passionate about it and people feed off and respond to that passion. I don't know if you experienced that with what you do as well.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (11:32)
I really well, so I think for us and for most of the sort of the best founders that we work with, the founders that end up really seeing a lot of success is, you you tend to not just randomly wake up one morning, decide to start a business, you know, Google, what are the top five, you know, growing industries that we can get into and then just figure something out and do it.
Natalie Peire (11:55)
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (11:59)
you know, for for Adam and I, we'd obviously, before we started, yeah, we were doing a lot of design work. And, you know, was what we were actually really loved doing. And there's this, you know, I think I think it's a Paul Graham thing, which is which is like, if you can
find something to do and it feels more like play than work, then that's a good indication that you're on the right track. I would find myself in my spare time helping other people with brands or thinking about different product ideas and all of those kinds of things naturally. So being able to make it into a business was really cool for us. Your journey sounds like...
because it's got that element of self discovery in it as well. I think that's, that's really compelling. And I think, you know, as a way to, you know, draw motivation and all of those kinds of things that that level of emotional investment, I think is really important. I definitely have a preference for working with the kind of founders that are really passionate and really understand their space really, really well, as opposed to people who are just kind of in it for the
the money, guess. know, that's, that's, that's fine too. I'm curious with the journey that you went on, when did you start to think about creating a digital product, as opposed to the workshops and experiences that you sort of started off with?
Natalie Peire (13:18)
But yeah.
Yeah, so...
It was after the workshops were selling out and we realized that there's a, you're blocked by what growth you can have because you're limited by either your particular time or the amount of one -to -one clients you can see in the day. There's not that sense of having like an exponential upside. And that was actually kind of like the second part of the business model was that we would have more of a creator marketplace as well. So we start off with Gazem as the educator and the
platform but the next stage was to create a marketplace where you have multiple educators, therapists, creators there to reach even more niches and audiences as we grew.
Yeah, so we would always imagine there being a physical element as well as a digital element. And I think because you only have to look to like other companies, so dating apps grew so much online industries around sexuality. They're massive. are relationships and intimacy touch every person's life, whether you're in a relationship or you're wanting a relationship. There's a sense that
it is one of our fundamental human needs and having a physical aspect for a lot of people is really important. So the actual workshops and one -to -one face -to -face, but for many people it's really scary. And that was something that we found in our research was that for a lot of people, the privacy and the intimacy to be able to learn about these things from the comfort of their own home is really important and not going to a workshop.
The people that were willing to go to a workshop were definitely our early adopters, they were confident enough to show up in a room full of people where there could be someone there from your work or, you know, there's a level of vulnerability to saying, hey, I want to learn more about boundaries and consent, or I want to learn more about how to love myself more, etc, etc. So the fact of having the digital platform to complement the in real life aspect of it was really important. So
Phill Keaney-Bolland (15:46)
Mm.
Natalie Peire (15:47)
We didn't want to lose that. I think that was potentially one of our flaws was that we paused all of the physical workshops to focus on the digital experience. And in hindsight, that was the part that we were really passionate about from our own experience. And that actually grows initial community anyway. So in hindsight, could have been nice to continue that along as we were building the app and also just start generating more, some income for the business earlier on.
and then have when people have been to a workshop say okay now you can download the beta version of the app but you live and learn.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (16:25)
Yes, yeah, and, and, of course, I always, I always think you never really know, if you're going to enjoy and get energy from stuff until you've tried it, you can read about it in a book and hear about it. But, you know, we've certainly had experiences where we thought that being bigger and things like that would, would make us happier. And actually, then you sort of realize I was kind of happy doing what I was doing before and then scale back. But
I'm curious, what you described there is basically like a sort of, you know, what we would preach to people to do, which is, you know, try and get a group of early adopters, try and, you know, run some sort of pilot scheme. And then when you find something that works, you know, use the digital element, or perhaps a more developed version of a digital product to scale it and reach more people.
What I'm curious about is how strategic were you and Lauren being at that point? you thinking about it as, there's a digital product at the end of this road and we're working towards that while doing something that we're really passionate about? Or was it a bit more of a case of we're doing something that we're really passionate about and it's just naturally gravitating and evolving towards that digital element?
Natalie Peire (17:46)
Yeah, think so we also had Arthur, co -founder Douglas who had a lot who had the tech background and the UI UX experience. he from early on was really keen to get the digital up and running, which we also agreed with was it was a great decision. think.
Thank
I think we were strategic about how we were designing the platform. However, the area that we struggled in was the focus. So, as I've even said to you in this, I've probably made clear, like, we felt that this product could support so many people at so many different stages of their life, which is great in 10 years time, but we needed to start somewhere and we needed to start with one.
particular customer and one particular problem. And that was something that we found quite tricky to hone into because what we were experiencing was a shift in who our audience was, a shift in how then the product would look. And we did some initial reach out around promoting the app. And we found that very early on we had 70 % men had signed up for early access.
Even though at the beginning we hadn't specified whether that was for men or for women or for couples and there was a 50 -50 split in that for those in relationships and those that were single. So we were following the data and we decided to focus more on a male audience to begin with. But then as we were evolving through, that was shifting the way that the product would look and then what the initial offering was in relation to men that were in couples to them and that were single.
we spent a lot of time trying to really get to the root of who that first audience should be. And in hindsight, spend too much time doing that. So yeah, the we did have a clear sense of digital product, but where to begin with it, I don't think we were strategic enough. I think we didn't do enough testing to really validate our, our ideas and our hypothesis with payment or
least incentive to pay early earlier on enough to be able to pivot quickly.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (20:17)
Hmm. That's really interesting. You mentioned testing. Are there any specific things that you would do differently if you were going back over and having your time again? I'm sure, lots, I'm sure.
Natalie Peire (20:28)
Of course, so many. I would have probably made a very quick website before focusing on building an app and would have had a payment factor to that. Either it would have been £100 lifetime access to Gazm or sign up for this workshop for this amount of money.
chuck it out over lots of paid, like platforms for paid ads and see what comes back. It's just something very quick that you can do on a website to get some data.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (21:08)
Yeah, why that specifically? What difference would that make?
Natalie Peire (21:15)
Because obviously it's so much quicker to iterate on a webpage than it is to build a whole app experience.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (21:19)
Yeah.
We did a whole episode, which we can put in the show notes, all about testing value propositions quickly with websites before jumping into investing in products. I'd recommend anyone listening to this who hasn't checked that one out. After you finished listening to Natalie, that would be a good place to go.
Natalie Peire (21:43)
No.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (21:46)
And do you think that, you know, the, we obviously started this point talking about the level of emotional investment that you had in what you were doing. Do you think maybe that was a factor in some of the decisions that you made in that early stage?
Natalie Peire (21:54)
Yeah.
Yeah, definitely, because there's so many things that play into that. There's one which is like just the bias of how of the impact it's had for our lives rather than actually what one problem is it solving. And I think all three of us as co -founders had gone on quite alternative, unique journeys over the course of a long period of time to get to where we got to, to feel like we were confident enough to share this with the world and communicate.
about it in a way that people could understand because it is still very progressive to talk about relationships and intimacy. It's not really done very often. And I think, yeah, that's a benefit, but it also meant that I think we were a bit disconnected from who our first customers were and who would pay for a digital product. I also think that
We did a lot of research and you can also fall into the trap of following what people say rather than what they do. And, you know, it's all, it's all textbook stuff. It's all in the lean startup, but you know, sometimes you have to make these mistakes ourselves, but I am.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (23:07)
Hmm.
Natalie Peire (23:12)
I think that we achieved a lot and...
just having that one clear problem to begin with would make the world of difference.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (23:23)
Yeah, I found it's hard. mean, you know, bear in mind, we help a lot of other businesses navigate these kinds of things. I find it much harder thinking about our own business.
Natalie Peire (23:36)
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (23:41)
to separate that emotional investment, you know, things that you want to do and don't want to do from what people actually want and need. And, you know, I think, as an example, you know, we've always been quite resistant to do things like copywriting, or things that are more kind of linked to like marketing specific things, SEO, advertising, stuff like that.
But I think, you know, we kind of know that, especially when people are thinking about websites and things like that, those are things that are all just sort of part of that, that project. And, you know, I think we probably need to think about an answer that is less, this is what we want to do, and more, how do we find a way to address the actual need that people have. But it's hard to be dispassionate about something that you, you know, especially with
a startup where you're putting so much of yourself into it and actually putting so much of your life on hold to try and do this thing. If you can do that without being emotional, I'd say you're probably a very, very unique type of person.
Natalie Peire (24:47)
hugely
you
Yeah, exactly. also know like knowing, sometimes knowing when to stop as well is also, it's also part of that. Because if you're so hugely passionate, sometimes you can, like our bias is to ignore the things that aren't working so well and focus on the things that are working rather than looking at it objectively. And that's, that's, that can be difficult and
That question is something that I think founders who really believe in their business is a really important one to ask themselves is like, if I was looking at this cold right now, what would be the direction I would go in and let go and follow that. But then there is also the other side, which is creating a business is also for you. And if there's a certain area where you really don't want to go, you don't have to. I think we had a really clear
understanding that if we went down one track, we probably would have become a dating app, but we really didn't want to build another dating app, even if it was a different dating app, you know, we've felt quite passionately that that wasn't the route we wanted. So we were steering in other ways. So you do also have choice around what the proper proposition is and how you want that to evolve. But also it's important to look objectively at the facts too.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (26:07)
Mm.
It's just, it's so messy, isn't it? There's no framework that answers all these things. A lot of it is subjective. A lot of it is like choices that you want to make, experiences that you have, opportunities that present themselves, all of those kinds of things. there's no...
Natalie Peire (26:29)
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (26:36)
you can look, can just be sort of data led up to a point. And, you know, maybe that maybe that works in in some places, but you you aren't doing things in a vacuum. And you know, you're a person trying to make yourself happy and all those those kinds of things as you as you go through.
think messy is probably quite a good word. There's always going to be tension between different factors pulling you in different directions. And really it is a bit of a, you know, it is a bit of an always going to be a bit of a journey and always going to be trying to navigate those things to the best of your ability. But, you know, I guess the thing about the emotional investment for me is...
when times get really tough and you need to kind of keep going, that I think is probably the thing that makes the difference. Like if you really do care about it and you really are invested in it, when things look pretty bleak, you're more likely to try and push through to the other side than just kind of give up. Certainly, you know, that's...
been one of the biggest things that's helped me keep going when, when things have, been tough. But the flip side of that is it's also sort of makes things tough because, there probably is an argument that you should quit earlier. Probably is an argument that you should spend the rest of your life worrying about all these, these kinds of things. And, know, I go on holiday and spend a week just thinking about work and then, you know, it takes me a long time to switch off. And those things are not necessarily healthy. But again, it's just, you know, it's just messy as
and it's all about kind of balance and trying to figure out what works for you.
Natalie Peire (28:18)
Yeah, and like try it and trying your best. I think that's the other thing is that everyone is doing their best and it's okay to mess up sometimes and it's okay if it takes you a few extra days to switch off on holiday, but also trying to build healthy habits and into the daily routines and because sometimes it can be so all consuming and
Yeah, that stress that founders put themselves under or are put under is so huge. And actually, at the end of the day, if people's mental health and health is suffering so much, there has to also be a line of like, okay, well, where can I rein in a little bit? And if you've got good investors, they'll also say to you, take a break. And that's the type of investors and the people that you want around you to be able to also say, okay, just have some time, come back to it.
nothing is more important at this stage than XYZ and sometimes you need to push through and that's also okay and it's like kind of reserving that right to be able to make a good choice.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (29:20)
Yeah. Well, I think that's an excellent segue into talking about the people around you and your second big lesson, which is around co -founders. So what was your experience there?
Natalie Peire (29:23)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah, I think I fully admire people who go out to create a business on their own. Solo founders, I would not be able to do it solo on my own. I just don't think I have that makeup. But I do think it's really important to pick a co -founder wisely. For us...
some of the most important things are having complementary skills and experiences. So picking someone where you really have that balance. We did have that. And also, yeah, a lot of there's that balance. Some people are friends before they become co -founders. And like my partner and I, were in a relationship before we became co -founders.
us I think we did a pretty amazing job considering everything that was going on but I know some horror stories for friends that kind of end up not friends anymore with no company and just like well what was that all for and I think that it's really important to work with people that you trust and also to really nourish your relationship outside of the business as well so whether
your co -founder was a friend or it's somebody that you've picked specifically because you have those complementary skills and hopefully both. Giving yourselves time to actually just be friends outside of that or have a relationship outside of work will mean that when times really get tough, you're able to actually navigate it together and keep that trust and keep that communication clear from the beginning and that.
That means on all the levels on both kind of having fun, nourishing your mental health and just generally like switching off. My partner and I at the beginning we had, well, all the way through we had two separate WhatsApp groups, one for work and one for life. And if you mentioned something about work in the life chat, we'd like send it over and immediately have to have separate threads for that, which really helped us to create those boundaries.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (31:34)
Hmm.
That's a great idea. Yeah, I really agree. I we use, when Adam and are chatting about work, we use Slack and WhatsApp tends to be for more football memes and music things. I'm not into the dragon stuff. That's just him. yeah, I think that...
Natalie Peire (31:49)
Yeah.
Great. And dragon costumes.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (32:15)
being friends and having a relationship outside of the co -founder stuff is really important because it is so hard running a business. I see people who are just thrown together with random people and they have a...
some in some cases, you you end up becoming more than just sort of co founders and things, but like, you end up with a fairly transactional relationship. And when things get tough, you're then looking outside of, of that relationship for the support, which, you know, is
It's great and kind of fine, but I don't, it's really hard for anyone else to understand what it is that you're going through the way that somebody who's also going through it can. So I think you would lose a lot if you didn't have that kind of relationship with a co -founder because I can talk to my friends about it, but...
Natalie Peire (33:07)
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (33:18)
it's really different to having a job. Unimaginably different. Especially when you start to, you know, become responsible for other people's employment and things like that. Adam and I have always been pretty good, I think, at that side of things. And we worked together before we started a business together. So
Natalie Peire (33:18)
They don't get it.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (33:44)
you know, we always kind of knew that we could, we could do the actual functional stuff pretty well. And, you know, we were obviously friends and, but it, but it grew out of that work relationship. I think, I think, you know, when you maybe go into business with a friend, I imagine that that would be quite difficult. So for me, the sort of ideal co -founder is somebody who you have worked with in the past, and you know, that that side of things can work, but then you've become friends or
you know, or even more with outside outside and then you kind of you know that you've covered both bases and you can go in and do it and it's actually the thing that not everyone has that luxury so you know sometimes you have to do do things differently it's actually the thing that if anyone ever asks me for advice about starting a business I'm always like find somebody to do it with
And I think ideally an equal person as well, because I think it you're not giving away half of something. And you're not making it half as difficult. It's it's a massive multiplier. And I think probably more so if you're you know, because you're not just sharing the upside, you're actually sharing the risk and the suffering equally.
if you do go in on a level footing.
Natalie Peire (35:13)
Yeah, totally. And I think it's also important to be able to disagree with each other and have healthy conflict and discussion because it's going to happen. It's like a relationship. It honestly is and you have to look after it just like you look after your intimate relationships as well. staying up to date, making sure that kind of you're not harboring
frustrations that then build up and just kind of burst out, knowing when to have conflict, how to have healthy conflict. It's all really important because that conflict is a tension which allows the growth and the expansion to come and to have someone where you can do that with is really, really important and to always then come back to, okay, and we both have the same vision and the same intention is what's at the heart of this matter and how do we navigate back to that is really important.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (36:11)
but being able to talk directly and you having that kind of relationship I think is really essential you don't want to kind of just be like padding around each other trying not to upset each other and actually I don't think we do upset each other a massive amount but
Natalie Peire (36:19)
No.
Not that you know at least. No, I'm joking.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (36:30)
I know. Well, he didn't invite he didn't. I'm still so he didn't invite me to be his co pilot in the dragon thing. you know, him and him and Matt having a lovely time. I'm glad he I'm glad he has relationships outside of work. And the flip side of this, I suppose, is that and I think I've seen this happen a few times. Generally speaking, where it has been people who've just been foisted together is that
Natalie Peire (36:38)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (36:57)
there is inherent risk in sharing your business with another person and sharing that much of your life with another person and getting getting the wrong kind of co founder. And, you know, that that can be potentially quite catastrophic. And, you know, again, I just, sometimes you see these sort of accelerator programs where they typically go, here's a non technical co founder.
Here's a bunch of potential technical co -founders speed date and then just decide who you're doing this massive thing with off the basis of not very much information and then just kind of like hope it works. that's not how I would choose to get married. It's not how I would choose to find a co -founder either, to be honest. So I haven't seen that be very successful ever.
Natalie Peire (37:43)
Right.
Hmm.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (37:52)
if I'm honest.
Third thing, what was your third lesson?
Natalie Peire (37:58)
Yeah, it was around advice, where do you go to get advice when you're starting a business for the first time and who do you listen to? And it can be quite overwhelming because you get lots of different advice and then knowing how to find your way. And I think it's really helpful to have some kind of bigger names on your desk.
early on to show that you're kind of reputable and you have this person from
company who's very well established endorsing you, but actually knowing kind of calling a spade a spade and knowing that that's good for the kind of ego tick of we've got a great name behind us here, but actually practical day to day advice. The best that we had were from founders that were a few steps ahead of us and
We managed to find a few communities and different groups of founders where actually you can just have very transparent conversations with people and share your struggles and be pointed in the right direction from those that can still really remember and are connected to what it is to be in an early stage startup rather than running a kind of 100 ,000 person big corporate or whatever.
which is a totally different management structure, a totally different speed, a totally different cadence, a totally different set of problems. So yeah, really one of the biggest things that I would do again quickly is find communities of other founders and have chats. People are often really open to go for a coffee and share their experience and find other people that are in your space that you can.
Yeah, just have as part of your team rooting for you.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (39:46)
you, you, I think you made such a, such a good point about just being able to remember how to do stuff. You have these on paper, it looks really cool to be able to say, yeah, we've got the person who did this massive job at, you know, a big tech company. And, know, sometimes that's good because, you know, an investment deck is a piece of paper and it looks good, but
it's also not that helpful in terms of this sort of day to day practical stuff to have somebody who is so far removed, either because the bit of the journey that you're at was such a long time ago for them that they probably don't really remember the specifics of what to do in that scenario. Or the other thing is where it's just not transferable. And you've got somebody who, you know, if you were
starting a new digital bank. And you said we've got the, you know, the form, the person who used to run, you know, NatWest as an advisor. I don't know what they're going to be able to tell you about trying to get something off the ground if they've spent the time already running something that that's really massive. So while it looks impressive, and intuitively like, yeah, this person must be really switched on.
doesn't necessarily always translate into actually being that useful in the process of growing the startup. So it almost becomes like a a brand element more than a actual practical thing I think. I don't know if you had any thoughts on that stuff.
Natalie Peire (41:34)
Yeah, completely. that's really what I mean around having knowing what role, what advice are playing and being able to not commit too much money to the big name for the high level advice and being able to really discern that good advice should come for free, but also to be able to
Phill Keaney-Bolland (41:42)
you
Natalie Peire (42:01)
know that you know your business the best and you're going to advice from one person that says one thing, you're going to get totally the opposite advice from the other person. So really being able to, okay, trust your gut and sometimes making a decision and testing it. that's why the kind of fast iteration process is so helpful because you actually don't know what's going to work. And that kind of goes back to the first.
first concept of being too close to your own product is that you have your own bias. I have my own bias of what I thought would work. And actually being able to mock it up, test it really quickly and then see what the market is actually asking for and responding to and paying for is really important. yeah, with that advice, it's okay.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (42:36)
Mm
Natalie Peire (42:51)
Yes, great, a brand, make it look good and have the right people behind it there. But also on a day to day level, be close to people on the ground who are going to be advising you more around testing and iterating and saying, okay, just respond to what also the market's asking of you.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (43:08)
Yeah, yeah. mean, it's a tough one, isn't it? I think some of the worst advice to give a startup is to try and be more like a very established company. that's one thing we were very cognizant of when we started our businesses, when we met people who were giving us advice. Sometimes we were like, I'm just gonna ignore that because it's just not that important.
one of the things that for some reason, for some reason, we just kept hearing this over and over again, when we started saying, you need to have a board meeting every month. It's really, really important that you have that cadence. It's just me and Adam, there's just two of us. And we were like, we're not, we have firstly, we haven't got time. And the process of doing this makes no sense. But it always led into, and by the way, I can be the be the chairman, and I can chair the chair the board meetings. And we're like, okay. And then it's
only going to cost you, know, however many thousands of pounds a month for me to do that. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then we have a word in a startup that no, I'm with a startup, but you know, you know, I ran this huge multinational business. I don't know, we're all right. So I think I think you do have to be kind of wary in the early days that there will be a lot of people who will just circle around to you. Generally, they'll also ask for equity as well with our with our experience to come come and help you.
Natalie Peire (44:08)
like two grand a month and you're like cool yeah thanks
next
Phill Keaney-Bolland (44:37)
don't don't jump into something because it sounds impressive on paper listen to what their advice is and like like it's okay to just not listen to advice even with people that you have brought in as advisors it's okay to not listen to them sometimes you have to do that because you're much closer to what's going on and you do have to trust your gut a bit but but I think also
The point at which somebody introduces the prospect of being paid for something is actually really, really interesting indicator of what relationship you're to have with them. And I don't think it's about getting free labor. But I think we found the people who've been the best advisors to us haven't actually asked for any payment at all. In some cases, they've just resisted and say, I'm not doing this for money. This isn't, that's not what it's about. I just want to help you. And in others, we've actually turned around to them and said, you know,
we pay you for this? Can we formalize this? Can we make it into a, you know, proper professional relationship? Because you're just giving us so much, so much value, and we really trust you, and we really just want, we want more of it. And I feel like we've never gone the other way, which is somebody who's tried to sell us something very, very early, without demonstrating any value to us. So I would say
that's another one of those relationships, just not to rush into too quickly and do your kind of due diligence on it.
Natalie Peire (46:10)
Yeah, definitely. I think speaking to other people they've worked with, also was really good representation for us as well. saying like, can you show me, like, can we chat to other people and really do the due diligence there as well is really helpful for us.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (46:32)
Cool. Okay, that feels like a good spot to go to a break and we'll be back in a minute.
Okay, welcome back. We are still here with Natalie talking about her experience of running her startup, Gasm. We're on to the fourth lesson that you learned. What are we going to be talking about next, Natalie?
Natalie Peire (46:56)
So this comes down to really how you communicate your idea. Because let's be honest, right at the beginning, you're selling an idea before your pre -revenue. That's what you're selling. And for us, we had a big shift when we created our clickable prototype.
So we just used Figma. I'd never used Figma before. My co -founder Douglas kind of walked me through it, showed me how to use it. And then, you know, within a couple of weeks, I was getting more fluent there. Occasionally I'd get stuck down a hole that I couldn't get myself out of. But we found that it just really helped to visualize the story that we were telling. And at the beginning, when you're trying to get investment, whether it's SEIS or you're looking to bring on early stage angels.
like so much of that is the story that you're conveying. So we spoke about the value of being passionate, like hugely passionate and evangelistic about your product. We spoke about the benefit of having a team that's really complimentary and finding a clear problem solution if you can testing it and validating it through having monetary payment. The final part is yeah, having some sort of clickable prototype and
That was beneficial on so many levels. The first I mentioned was with investors, so actually bringing the story to life and having people visualize what it would be like to actually use our product. The second was being able to test it with early adopters and having people go through the flows and understand where they're actually clicking and what they're interested in, how to kind of simplify it and...
remove some of the excess that we put into the product and just keep it as simple as possible. I was doing some early partnerships development with some of the educators, therapists, creators that we were hoping to work with down the line to start to build out that partnership side of the business. I found that demonstrating that through the app, people totally loved as well.
So once we kind of refined it and really got it looking nice and branded, it was a really good tool for them being able to see themselves. And we used to tweak it a little bit. So depending on who we were talking to, we would put their face into there and a little bit of their content as well. So they really felt like they were connected to the product. And on a few levels, we also converted those creative partnerships into investors for the app as well, which...
again, was just a really great kind of tick of endorsement from, okay, yes, this app initially is going to be for, it's going to have a smaller kind of reach. But as we grow, really expanding out that creator marketplace side and having creators that already invested in the business, again, there's another big, big tick for investors. So yeah, I think there's so much there. And just being able to, if I go back to them,
testing it with early adopters and also testing it with blind audiences as well that aren't, haven't signed up for early access people that are just kind of from a test group. It's also really great to check our biases against and make sure that the flows are really working and that we're not just building a product for ourselves, we're actually building it for an audience in the way that they want it.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (50:24)
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do, we do a lot of prototyping and user testing and things like that. You know, we often say, you know, you should sort of expect it to be kind of 90 % wrong the first time you test it with somebody because there's biases and all those kinds of things that, well, you can come up with a good idea overall for a problem that you're trying to solve and how you might try and solve it.
But once you kind of have that first contact with actual users, you just learn such a huge amount that you couldn't possibly know yourself as just one individual. So I'm a huge, huge advocate of doing this and also doing it in a design environment as opposed to investing in engineering and code and stuff.
you I think, I think that can save you so much time and money as well. When you think about the difference in costs between just creating something in Figma and, and, and you said you, actually created the first version yourself. Is that, is that right?
Natalie Peire (51:36)
Yeah, so Douglas worked with a UX designer and then we developed our initial brand. So they made the basics and the basic template and then I was editing and changing it and by the end of our start up I was building complete flows myself and testing them with people and doing all the rest of it.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (51:42)
Okay.
I think that is probably more possible than people realise without needing to go and learn how to become a fully fledged designer, especially given everyone spends most of their lives using products and things, so you of absorb a lot just from kind of doing stuff.
Natalie Peire (52:19)
And actually, we found that because I wasn't experienced in UX or UI before, I had less biases of like the way that things should be done. And it also meant that I was just using it more intuitively than kind of the way that one of our designers or experience team members were looking at it. And it meant that also we were able to simplify it in a way that was more, more beneficial to the initial users. And what we found was that we started off with a bit of a like,
kind of discovery screen with lots of content. And as soon as we put it in front of potential users, they were just like, well, overwhelming, just show me the one thing that I need to begin with. And then I can go from there. just even that is simplifying and stripping things back often.
I think is found as we have the big vision and we want to like throw everything in. And that was one of, one of the things we had early on was a mock -up that had everything in it, but it was the vision 10 years in the future. And then the question was, okay, how do we simplify and strip it back to just the simple flow and the simple journey? And I think if, if people have been using any type of design, simple design software, whether it's like Canva or
Phill Keaney-Bolland (53:30)
Mm.
Natalie Peire (53:37)
I always likened it to when I was a kid and I used to use the Sims and I'd build houses. Essentially, I felt like Figma was kind of giving me that ability to do it and it doesn't take long. I mean, just giving it a go, having a basic template and then giving it a go as a founder is a really great skill to learn. And I actually really enjoyed that part of the journey.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (54:01)
And sometimes you do have to throw a lot of stuff at the wall and see which bit sticks. you know, it's not unusual to get that feedback, I think, if that just make it more simple. You don't really know necessarily which specific bits of a product are going to be the most valuable until you can actually test it with somebody and they can tell you what it is. So I think having a mindset which is at least, you know, at least to start off with.
when you're still just testing very conceptual stuff is you're not ultimately trying to design what your product looks like in one go and then just get it validated. What you're trying to do is to put a whole bunch of stuff in front of people and see how they respond to it and it's going to end up at the end of that process looking very different to how it did at the start of the process and just being comfortable that it's exploratory rather than you you're not necessarily just
trying to get it right. I think that's really important in that process. I was wondering actually if you'd be happy to talk a little bit more about your experience of using those prototypes and specifically in the sort of Figma space with investors and what that looked like and what kind of feedback you were able to get and maybe how it helped you through that process.
Natalie Peire (55:23)
Mm.
Yeah, so the process of, well, it depends initially on who the investor was, whether they were a more experienced investor, whether they were an angel that had lots of startups in their portfolio already, whether they were more of a friends and family, whether they're a creator, and this was the first kind of company they're investing to different people.
had different needs on us and of what we're able to communicate. Some people wanted just things to be really simple. Some people really cared about the brand, what I was looking at. Some people really just didn't give They wanted to know about like the financial model, which is obviously super, super important. But I think the experience of using the prototype with investors was that it was just a really important part of the sale.
the kind of process and kind of calling it self process, because it was that that journey of storytelling from like an initial meeting to then sending them the first version of the like, sending them the deck, having a meeting about the deck, then booking in the second meeting to show them the prototype. Again, you're answering their questions and being able to go deeper. then that was a that gave us a great foundation to then have a final conversation of like, is there anything else that you'd like to know about the business and then going to the point of
either investing or not. I think that the prototype was a nice kind of after you've given them a deck that has everything that they initially need in it and able to answer their questions. It's a great, yeah, it's just a great way to tell the story. And I think for investors, it really supported the conversation and being able to be able to prove that you're able to deliver something.
a high standard that's looking good, that's working well and that hopefully that you're doing this in the first kind of few months of your business, you're able to really deliver on something as well. And they're always testing kind of how are you executing as a team and what does that look like? being able to get something together is also proving that and it just supports the conversation. And I think lots of investors are really
interested to see how that works and lands.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (57:51)
Did you bring data from the user testing that you've done with the prototype into the investment conversations?
Natalie Peire (57:58)
Yeah, definitely. was a lot of, I think also one of our challenges is maybe that we did too much research if there could ever be a thing. But yeah, lot of our, you your investment deck is a living breathing document as well. So it's not that you just have one investment deck and that's it. It's like each stage you're kind of evolving it and growing it, the more kind of validation you get, you build that into the deck.
The same with the prototype, you take the learnings there and you integrate into the storytelling. My co -founder, Lauren, was really brilliant at doing that kind of beginning to end process with investors. Her background was that she studied English literature and was a storyteller and writer throughout her early 20s, both in film and play. So she understood this kind of concept of story really well and she was able to like...
coach both me and Douglas on that as we went through and using the tool of having the clickable prototype really helped in that story.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (59:06)
That's awesome. Cool. So I think that brings us on nicely to our fifth and final lesson from your experience. What's the big finish?
Natalie Peire (59:25)
So the final piece is really about having clear markers for the stage that you're at and what you want to achieve at that time. there is a formula of starting a business and there's a clear kind of goals that you want to be hitting for the stage that your business is at and whether that you've got...
got your SDIs investment knowing what you want to achieve by the time that you are coming towards the end of that and that means that you've kind of proved these key metrics to be able to go into your next stage of investment so your pre -seed, your seed and onwards and really just not getting too far ahead of yourself and okay it's so important to have this big vision and to see what that could be.
but there's gonna be so much learning at that beginning stage of the startup. And I think if I could go back in time, I think we would have just spent less money earlier on. We built a really amazing brand, but maybe spent too much on that earlier on. We could have done a lot more for less. We could have validated a lot more financially quicker without taking on investment. And I think that...
for founders, especially in the UK, the more you can do with less is really, really important. Investors really love that. And they're looking for the kind of the biggest proof, the biggest traction for the smallest investment. really planning out strategically at the beginning how much you're wanting to spend on what things and things like brand are so important.
sometimes and for me, I was kind of visualizing the brand again in like 10 years time, rather than being like, what's the brand that's relevant for right now for my early stage startup and how can we really just focus so specifically on that one problem and one solution and either testing until we get to that or validating once we've got there and having a brand that can be that because your customers are probably going to change the...
direction of the industry is going to change and not getting so wedded to a particular brand early on is really important and you'll save yourself a lot of cash and lot of headaches and knowing that it's going to keep evolving so kind of having that mindset from the start of this is this is this is going to be an evolution and not feeling and just feeling like kind of curious to
respond to the insights and the data you get and really allow your decisions to kind of come off the back of that. yeah, making sure you have that clear, like contained period of time, contained amount of budget, especially to spend on things like brand and UX and prototyping and web. And then utilizing that budget and making it stretch and trying to do as much as you can for the least amount of money because there's going to be so many shifts and changes along the way.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:02:30)
Yeah, I mean, I think the you mentioned, you mentioned a couple of things there, the financial validation and traction to big, big things and doing more with less, I guess, it's basically, you know, how can you how can you do more of those two things with, you know, the in the most efficient way possible? Is that is that a fair summary of what you're saying?
Natalie Peire (1:02:58)
Yeah, completely.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:02:59)
Yeah, I totally agree with that and I think I would build on it that...
this lead generation is really, really critical as any business knows. If you have an overabundance of people who are interested in paying you money for what you're doing, then that feels a lot less stressful than having nobody at all. And so I think that should really be the first priority of any business at all. And trying to put in place
the structure that you need to do that in an early stage business is really quite different to what it will eventually end up being because you are targeting these early adopter type people and because you know you're you're going to be going to market with something that is going to be a percentage of your vision that you know that
They're just those two things, the audience that you're going after and the value proposition of the thing that you're initially taking to market versus what they will be in the future. It's so different. That's why there's, that's one of the reasons why there's change, because actually you have to think about this as like different steps, but you also, you might know where you think you want to get to, and you probably know where you're going to start, but
what will also change is that vision will change. And from where you start to where you actually get traction and product market fit, there's going to be so much change there. So you're constantly on these shifting sands where everything is basically just a hypothesis.
And so I think there's a bit of tension between when you're doing your investor deck and you're making sort of promises to investors about where you think you can get to, and then actually thinking about in the moment, when you think about things like brand and product and marketing as well, what it is that you need to do right now with the product that you start with and the market that you start with, which as well as being newly adopted is also by the way, probably like more of a
within a larger thing as well because you want to try and capture a...
specific segment and try and kind of build from from a sort of monopoly position there. But that tension, I think, can be really tough, because you're like, yeah, we need to go out and present ourselves as this like massive, big, you know, life changing, industry shifting thing. And at the same time, we need to find like 100 people who are just going to give us some money right now for this thing, which is which is like a small, small percentage of that.
And I don't think it's the worst thing in the world to say, you know, brands, brands evolve, but they also just pivot and change. So, you know, you could, you could say, well, the brand that we need right now, and the brand that we need in five years time are just not going to be the same. So let's just carve the bit of this product and proposition and brand that that is, is the priority. We know all this stuff, but let's just keep that to one side right now.
And what's, what's kind of the minimum that we could, that we need to do to get those first customers through the door, prove that we can generate leads, prove that this is a viable business, get the financial validation you mentioned, show that show the traction. And then the next stage is a different thing. And it's actually another, another project. So, you know, and this may be kind of bad news, rather than try and stretch a thing from
initial brand to mainstream brand, just accept that actually you're probably going to have to do three or four. we've kept our logo the same throughout the entire business, but we've done about three rebrands and about 15 different websites in that period of time. And that's been because we've learned more because we've changed as a business, because our market shifted, all of those kinds of things. think it's kind of unavoidable.
Natalie Peire (1:07:18)
Yeah, completely. I think with that, that also gives a lot more permission for the founder to like focus on. It also gives you clear, clearer sense of focusing on like, well then these are the things that I'm doing now and these are the things I'm not doing. It's what to say yes to and what to say no to. And sometimes as a founder, feels like you have to do everything all at the same time, but just in that decision, like.
inherently you then say actually well then that means I'm not doing this I'm not doing this I'm not doing this and when you're so stretched anyway that really just allows to have that tunnel vision and that focus and I think that yeah in my experience it also frees up a lot of time to focus on the things that really matter and not get distracted by the things that feel very exciting and and and and more kind of more of like the vanity metrics just focus on the core
underlying proposition for that smaller niche aspect of what you're doing. And then if that goes well, and you can prove that you can scale up now. And yeah, I think you're always going to make mistakes as a founder, even if it's your third, fourth, fifth business, and as a first time founder, just really giving cat cutting yourself some slack. But
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:08:20)
Hmm.
Natalie Peire (1:08:38)
to definitely try and just focus on that small piece first and then grow from there. And there are great, great advices and great examples out there of companies that have done that really, really well. And I think that doing that quicker and doing that from the beginning would be the most important part.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:09:01)
Can we get into that a little bit? If you had the time machine now and you could go back and have your time over, what would your plan be? What would the actual specific steps you would take be? And how is it different from what you ended up doing?
Natalie Peire (1:09:05)
you
Yeah, I'm also going to caveat this because Gazm is still going, Douglas, my third Kaifander, he's still carrying it on. So there's also this sense of like the jury is still out and he's taking it on to this next stage. I still really believe in the problem that we can be solving. think
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:09:28)
Mm.
Natalie Peire (1:09:40)
I would have continued doing physical events, I would have probably specified for couples sooner and maybe just focused on the couples market at the beginning and that would have meant that the product we built was a bit different. The challenge there was that we really wanted to build a product that men felt was accessible to them and one of the reasons we chose not to do this was that often it's the woman and the couple that makes the decisions for
where they should grow. So our niche would have been that we were targeting the guy and the couple, but maybe that would have also been a bit tricky to begin with, but I would have probably done that through experience -based events and built up the community and having paid for, yeah, paid for experiences and also kind of paid for.
courses online, there's a website and then expanded that into the app service. I mean, there's many things, there's many things that routes we could have gone down. Yeah, that's one, that's one of infinite.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:10:40)
Mm.
I guess with hindsight, it's probably a lot easier to point at a specific segment and say that's where we probably should have focused earlier. I'm curious that how you, if you think back on the...
way that you got to understand that, was there a different process that you could have gone through to understand that quicker and differently? are you saying with the online courses, you know, that would have been a smaller effort in terms of building a product that would have enabled you to test things a bit more in a more agile way?
Natalie Peire (1:11:25)
There's so many arguments for and against, was the internal dynamic over that time.
Yes.
Yeah, I think we would have focused on one specific challenge for couples. One of the main ones is...
is, there's a teacher called Esther Perel, she talks a lot about this, this, the balancing couple of like, say, like comfort in relationship, but then also desire. And it's a, it's an ongoing thing that couples have challenges with. So there's many of those kind of like specific areas, I would have probably just focused on one particular problem that couples have focused all of the attention on that really carved a space for us there and generating events, whether it was like
web series, online, converting to physical and then also probably had a connection and threw into like one -to -one support, therapeutic side of things and just really solved that problem to begin with in a really good way because one of the other challenges is that lots of people don't feel like they want to go to therapy because that's not for them, that's way down in the future but we know from experience that actually any point, any transition point
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:12:30)
Hmm.
Natalie Peire (1:12:49)
a person, a couple go through, that's a really great time to do some self -reflection and do some growth. So we would have probably focused on that one at a specific transition point and building the story around that. yeah, testing out pricing points around it at different stages along the journey, but really just kind of honed in specifically there. But there's some great companies out there doing that in the space. No one's fully, no one's owned it just yet.
But yeah, there's a few out there. Who knows?
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:13:26)
Yeah, yeah, who knows where we'll be when we next chat.
Natalie Peire (1:13:32)
Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:13:33)
Cool, okay, well, I think that's been really, really valuable and thank you so much for sharing all of those experiences. It's always good to get the sort of perspective of somebody who's been through all of those things very recently. So before we wrap up, Nasty, people have, I'm sure they will have enjoyed listening to you today. How can they get in touch with you and yeah, where can you be found?
Natalie Peire (1:14:03)
Yeah, so you can find me on LinkedIn. It's just Natalie Payou, my first name and last name. Feel free to drop me a message. I'll happily share some of my experiences of recently leaving my company. I'm also looking right now for what's next and kind of just putting some feelers out to decide what my next role is. yeah, also open to people reaching out around any freelance work or areas that they think could be interesting.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:14:34)
And having worked with Natalie, I would suggest that you are very quick about it as well, because I'm sure that you're not going to be available for long. So yeah, please, please do reach out to Natalie. And please do like and subscribe to the podcast as well. If you have enjoyed what we've been chatting about today, we will have plenty more stuff all aimed at startup founders every week. And that's it. We'll put some
Natalie Peire (1:14:40)
Yeah
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:15:04)
some links and things in show notes to some of the some of the other content that we've created but thank you so much for joining us today, Natalie, and yeah maybe we'll get you back on in future to talk about some of the things we haven't managed to cover because that was super interesting. Thank you.
Natalie Peire (1:15:25)
Yeah, thanks Phil.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:15:27)
Great. Okay, well, stay tuned and we will be back next week.
We done? We done it? We done it.
Natalie Peire (1:15:37)
Yay!
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:15:41)
Yeah, that was great. That was great.
Natalie Peire (1:15:43)
Whew, hot.
you
Yeah.
I hope I didn't sound too burnt and like everything was a failure. But well, here we go. I guess I just, I felt like I was quite honest.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:16:15)
No, I didn't.
I didn't think you were to be honest. didn't think you were really, I didn't think you were negative about leaving the business. I think that was, yeah. I don't know Alex.
Natalie Peire (1:16:25)
Okay, Good.
No.
So just as a career, was like yeah, and my co -founder is still running the business, so who knows. Yeah.
Phill Keaney-Bolland (1:16:48)
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Cool. Well, I should probably stop the recording.