Confounded
A high energy podcast with its own video channel featuring interviews with amazing people who have overcome adversity and life’s challenges to be successful in unique and wonderful ways.
Confounded
Mastering Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Darren Fell's Journey with Crunch Accounting
Embark on an enlightening journey with Darren Fell, the maverick behind Crunch, as he narrates the amazing saga of transforming the accounting landscape for the better.
Darren spills the beans on the genesis of Crunch, the hurdles faced, and the triumphant moments that cemented its place as a haven for small businesses and contractors in dire need of accounting bliss. From the early days of battling sceptical bloggers to the expansion of services that bolster the backbone of micro-businesses, Darren's tale is a testament to perseverance and innovation.
As we navigate the crossroads of modern entrepreneurship, Darren sheds light on the seismic shifts in business practices, remote work phenomena, and the fintech revolution spurred by open banking. Young visionaries are flipping the script, crafting turnkey solutions out of mere ideas, all while Crunch steers through the complexities of a global workforce post-Brexit. Darren’s insights on maintaining culture in a remote world and the agility required to thrive amid unforeseen challenges, like the COVID-19 pandemic, are not just thought-provoking - they're game-changing for any business looking to stay agile.
This episode is more than just a chat; it's a masterclass in entrepreneurship, resilience, and the relentless pursuit of bringing fairness and innovation to the marketplace. Join us for this compelling episode that promises not just insights but the inspiration to mould the future of your business ventures.
So welcome to Confounded TV. It's Darren Fell, the founder of Crunch, the online bookkeeping and accountancy practice. Hi, Darren. Hello Anastasia, how are you? I'm very well. We have to caveat this. We've known each other for a very long time, since your very early days at Crunch.
Speaker 3:Very, very early days. We were in a little basement and I think I had not even 16 people fitted in 800 square feet. I think I had about eight people in that space and I had the commanding view of the extensive office square feet.
Speaker 2:I figure with the CEOs. That's the important thing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:I think we should go back and tell you a little bit. Can you guys explain what Crunch is, why it's different to the others, and then we'll go back through the whole journey of hope from there to here. Cool, cool cool.
Speaker 3:So Crunch, and I'll start with. I'm not an accountant, but I was approached by an accountant at the tail end of my first startup, which is Pew360, an online email marketing firm and consultancy to get you delivered into the inbox, and I'd come to the end of that wanting to send lots of emails out correctly and non-spare me, God's add.
Speaker 2:And ahead of your time. It has to be said. Here we are talking about time. People are trying to settle that stuff now and you were doing it back then.
Speaker 3:Yeah, back then, but it was more around a mission of wanting to send something without having to ship truck loads and tum loads of paper out in vans and deliver IE direct mail. I hate direct mail and I wanted to do it cleverly via email in a non-spam way with loads of amazing reporting. So yeah, that was launched in 2002, 2003, from a tiny little bungalow around the back of Brighton Station, but that's going back before Crunch, so yeah it got to back to that.
Speaker 2:There are people listening to this who are working into it now, who were like five or ten when that happens. But even understand back then, that would have been revolutionary.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but you'll make me feel old of which I actually am now. There's some of the team members we take on here at Crunch is like you look at the data burst on the CVR, I really am an old git now. So anyway, coming back to Crunch, an accountant approached me wanting to talk about a piece of software that would help contractors and I thought you know, that's terribly dull, really boring. But then I thought about it and I thought that the whole world of accounts had never been disrupted at all, ever. So I wanted to take that idea to work with them to build the software, but add in the account to CSide as well, the bit that I'd experienced many problems with, with accountants not calling me back, getting fines and you hear this routinely amongst all your mates as it gets the January time and people go, the accountant won't call me back, I don't know how much tax to put aside.
Speaker 3:So I wanted to solve the whole kit and caboodle so an account manager, an accountant, and create a whole piece of software that was actually easy to use by the end user. That would send out invoices, handle expenses, you could snap the receipts and it would automatically go in. It would tell you exactly how much tax to put aside, but with all of the endless questions you have, you could pick up the phone, send an email and go what's my allowance on that? How do I do that? And a client manager and an accountant would help you all for the princely sum of £59.50 per month for limited accounts with VAT as well.
Speaker 2:And this is the original phoning idea, not where it is today.
Speaker 3:That was the original phoning idea and that's what we still do today, but it's obviously expanded a hell of a lot and that's where we started. Now Alastair, as you know. Had I done any due diligence crockfully into this mad idea, then I would have run a million miles. We do.
Speaker 3:Oh, absolutely, absolutely the hell I went through. So I wanted a double entry accounting system, the WeepBuild. I did want to cobble together and plug into anybody else's. I want to do live tax preparation, which is like a practice management system, which is a whole other world. It needed to have feeds from the banks, which didn't exist. Then it needed to do the live tax calculations. Of course, VAT feeds into a machine, you name it. I wanted it to be the package and I wanted to help micro-businesses, which I felt were not really well looked after by the accountancy world. Because they start off looking after the self-employed and very small businesses and contractors and then it's what I call the magpie effect. They would go oh, slightly bigger company customer, oh, I can make a fee of eight grand on that one and not the two and a half grand from this lowly small business here. Oh, there's a high net worth individual coming in and he's got racehorses. All I can make 25 grand a year out of him and then they forget about looking after the small customers.
Speaker 2:And of course, there are millions of the small customers right, so you both stay up in the system.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. So that was the premise of the idea. It turned into be the most ridiculously complicated thing to build. But you know me Well, I go for it. I go for it. And we had to build the teams, the Java programmers, the original architect that put it together. We had to build teams for counters. We did build teams of client managers and understand how to scale all of these things out. And, yeah, then I got hit.
Speaker 3:In the early days it was still when I was, you know, that little gimp seller that you came to visit me. At that time we were attacked by a blogger who wrote about yeah, about accountancy software and he called up our team. In fact, he ended up calling up and speaking to the marketing manager bizarrely and asked him if it's the biggest question. So the marketing manager kept saying but I'm the marketing manager, Would you like me to pass you to the sales team so you can come on board, so you can talk to the countered?
Speaker 3:And out came on his very, very well trafficked site. You know, incredibly poor advice from crutch accounting. You know, don't use them. And he tweeted out to the Brian communities I definitely is, freelancers and contractors, Don't use this company. And were he like why is this guy on? And he did another blog post and, yeah, seriously, he was. It was called I think it's called ACMAD Pro, so it's like the top site, the top journal writing about accountancy software and I like this something up here. Let's have a look on company's house. Oh, he's a shareholder in free agent central. No.
Speaker 3:Which is yeah, I know. So I don't believe I didn't tell you about this, but yeah, it was so painful experience. So every time we searched for crunch underneath it it was like, oh no, that was it. I was only bit cock up by crunch, don't use them.
Speaker 3:So every time you search for it and our traffic and you know the sales were really difficult at a time that I was funding it right, right, right at the beginning, my accounts approached me in the first place and a friend of his we're all been equal partners and they'd offered to carry on funding it until about oh God, it's 70 months in they realized it was just too complicated and it might fail. So then I had to take it on. So as funding it myself, I'd agreed a high percentage of controlling percentage of the business as a result of their not willing to help me at all. So I was in massive stress land and this painful blogger tried to kill us, and there was a reason why I was trying to kill us. Now, of course, I fell out utterly with the CEO of free agent, ed, and the story goes and it sounds a bit bit wanky really. But I then met him at Buckingham Palace and they selected 300 tech entrepreneurs, which goes to the palace to meet the queen.
Speaker 2:Where was my invite?
Speaker 3:I'm sorry, Sorry, mate. Yeah. So, and this was like years and years afterwards. We'd had some massive fruiting going on between crunch and free agent and comparable piece of software, but still very, very different. They had just software and they sell to accountants and to the end users. And they were at the palace was amazing. They kept coming up with mum's champagne and filling up my glass. So I was really happy, wondering around in the throne room and almost everybody else had gone. I was still taking top ups of my champagne and I heard this oh Darren, and I turn round and in the throne room it was Ed Moninu for free agent, walking towards me. I'm going, Shit, I'm going to have a punch shop in the palace, you should have done.
Speaker 2:You should have done that. I mean, that's the best advertising. Get founder of crunch ejected from Palace for fight with other founder.
Speaker 3:I know I could see blood on the walls, you know, like BS courted out by beef eaters. No, no, they're in the Tower of London, are they?
Speaker 2:I don't know, Darren, because someone's haven't been to the palace.
Speaker 3:I know, but it does sound a bit wanky. But when I got the thing through the post, it's all very elegant. I've got it on the, on the, not these shelves, but where the shelves out in the reception of crunch, and it's like like, oh, I'm being invited to fucking pass. How did that happen? Yeah, but yeah, it was. It was all for show. I think you know they were trying to say the Queen doesn't just have to meet like top petroleum. You know, like You're not just a Jamie.
Speaker 3:Brown for it. You know, yeah, and all all are like the Uber level, she must. There was some PR strategy is going they, she must meet, you know, all these tech entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:Because, probably, andrew, he likes a young tech entrepreneur. So I hear, oh, yes, yes, because they're interesting about that. I think there's two things straight away for that. For for younger founders I was on a call last night with some young founders and the key thing is, of course, he's actually quite good to go into the stuff blindly and just, and if you're, if you're, the right kind of character, you will just carry on because it'll morph and change you anyways, it's good, it's good learning, isn't it? And self funding is also an interesting journey. But I think the thing is, when you get attacked, it's probably because you are right, right, and somebody doesn't like what you're doing because either they don't understand it or they don't get it.
Speaker 2:And I've worked with Kizoo a lot and this will upset some of my car industry friends. But Kizoo right, yeah, raises lots and lots of money. Sponsors, all these rugby teams, football teams will be on TV endlessly and their goal is to say, get X percent of the used car market. Let's just say it's 10 percent, right? Everyone doesn't believe they can do it. They're not cars, they don't know about cars, it's not, it's not tech, it's all blah, blah, blah. But the point is, yeah, will be a name like I'm going to look for a house, I'll go to RightMove, I'll go and buy a car, I'll go to Kizoo and I've 800,000 people here, I'll go to that, right, it makes it one of the most valuable car companies in Europe, or hasn't used car sales, right? So they know what they're doing and I think that thing.
Speaker 2:You've got there where you get somebody like free agent or this guy who shares in free agent going. Stop this guy, stop this guy, stop this guy. There's two things that person does doesn't understand. One is you. The character will continue and this just digs you in. And the second thing is it's a big market. Everything is a big market. You know, and people will forget that. You can see that now because obviously zero didn't exist in the UK at all. In this situation, obviously what they do isn't what you do. Actually, I can phone you up and say hello, accountant, I'm thinking of buying a Tesla. How does that impact on my car tax this year? You can't do that with three-aged. You just enter the information. After you've done it, there's nobody to help you with this stuff. It's the real differentiator.
Speaker 3:However. However, they are trying to get finally into our marketplace of actually adding the accountant and the software together.
Speaker 3:They have this thing called co-pilot, but they obviously need accountancy practices to come in so they present the price to the end user, but an accountancy firm has to fulfill it with that software. I've heard it's been difficult for them to get accountancy practices to come on board, but you get good on them. The market needs more of the service and software. I've been banging on about this for a completely long time and since 2009,. Software and service is the new play because, well, you don't realise and in fact, what a lot of people do realise is that finding the accountant is the real gamble in the whole thing. So you ask your mate and Dave down the pub and Dave goes are you going to go and check out Phil? You know Thulke, john Huy's and Smithwise From the gold Accountants, yeah, yeah. And you go there and you get this. You're baffled with that tax knowledge and everything. And they sign them up with these wad of papers that come two weeks later and then he never calls you back because you're a small person. Yeah, it's always a gamble.
Speaker 3:So what free agent are now doing is exactly what we're doing. It's like guaranteed service levels, really good accountants, really good client managers to solve all of the issues. I mean some of our clients, given our lowest price now is $7150. Some of our clients cost just thousands of thousands of pounds every year because we spend so much time helping them and tuning things up. Other clients will be beautiful and fantastic and use all the DIY software the way they're meant to and get back to us when they're meant to. Get back to us and click accept on the annual accounts, that it's okay and we make good money there. So it's very much the gym model.
Speaker 2:It's something people will the high rules and the non-turner uppers, but I think that that's the whole way. You deliver that service, though, because I can be a low-cost, low-impact client and you make more money on me. When I do need your help, you'll be there, so I can go tick tick for month after month, paying you this money, never using it, but when I do need you, you'll be there and you'll help, as opposed to actually paying a lot of money every year for nothing. Let's not talk about feet. Let's talk about crunch, because how many Are you going to tell us how many customers you have now? Yeah, of course.
Speaker 3:So we're in a transition at the moment. So there are 10,000 full-service accounting customers at Crunch. Now, going back to the original story of Free Agent, but Freelance Advisor, which is the portal I created to genuinely help the market I think I mentioned that at the beginning. That picked up all the traffic, the genuine help, loads and loads of guides.
Speaker 2:This is a website with guides and help and stuff.
Speaker 3:Guides and any help, and also it helped me to go and present and try and help people and do loads of seminars. So that merged about four years ago I think, and we turned that community into Crunch Chorus. So with our accounting customers, we have 50,000 members in that community and there's loads of plans to make that even more interactive. So there's loads of amazing knowledge guides and there's loads and loads of benefits. I'm trying to pile it in and I'm utterly passionate, as you know, about people breaking free of, like, dire businesses, dire corporates, and doing their own thing or doing their own thing so they have the flexibility to do what they like, which might be helping a charity or working on an environmental project.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, the passion is going into the community. So it's 50,000 at the moment. It's been riding about 2,000 new members a month. After COVID it's dropped to about a thousand. But recently the really exciting thing I wanted to add in and we had tested years ago was to give the biggest benefit we could to the entire market and to help people, especially now and it will stay forever free. We have re-platformed everything, we've rebuilt our whole system and we're giving away the accounting software completely for free. So that is really, really exciting. So it's got unlimited invoicing, unlimited expensing, the banking and the reconciliation, the systems going in there in the next weeks.
Speaker 3:All of that because we really, really want to help and it's not going to go away after COVID goes away. It's going to stay forever free. So I imagine the biggest benefit in the community used to be the knowledge. Guys like how to be a freelancer, how to get a mortgage, how to ensure yourself properly and they're getting the right PI cut. But that's got in 2,000 members every month. But we've only just launched the free accounting software and we didn't have SoulTrader in there. But because we've got a new platform, we can plug in the services and start correcting things much faster than what is now our old core system, which is very hard to program on some 10 years later.
Speaker 3:So I did SoulTrader in Alistair and the numbers are going mad. So, yeah, this is whole plan to merge the community into this single application and that free benefit. So there's nice little things. And this is where it's been so hard building this business, because you've got software and service. Now, software is hard work but relatively doable. Then you mix it with service and that really makes you think as a business how to utilize the people, how to phone them, do you have pods? Do you have them remote? Do you have them in one place.
Speaker 3:So I wanted to be able to give all of this away for free. Of course, if you sign up for the fault thing, the pro and the premium, you've got all the different dashboards and how to pay yourself the dividends. If you're limited, all the rest of the functionality, but it comes with the account manager and the accountant. As much as you want unlimited, but in between that people are going between free and 70, 150 months ago that's a massive jump. But what happens if they were trying to do it themselves and they can do it themselves on our software, but once they got stuck. So we launched Ask an Accountant so they can spend a whole hour with an expert, qualified chart accountant for 39 pounds and get the report afterwards. So now you have the concept of bite-sized services bookkeeping.
Speaker 2:Ask an Accountant. It's almost transactional. I can use it. If I use mine, mine I can be free. And then I go, oh the bit on this truck, I'm a bit stuck, or whatever the thing happens, and also right now we'll come back to COVID. So what you're basically saying is it's almost becomes a menu and I go I can use it for free. And this is like anyone can use it for free. Yeah, anyone can use it for free, but I need an hour of somebody's time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I need an hour some of the time. Oh, actually, I really hate this stuff and I want a bookkeeper. And they even buy bookkeepers in bite-sized services. But actually, let's come here across one. Yeah, you can buy hours of that type. That's the better way of buying people. Yeah, that'd be a different.
Speaker 2:To be honest, I do do that Because I know I've got friends that are wasting money. You just receive to do all yourself. Yeah, but really entering all that, I'd rather spend an hour on a client's work, give that client the extra hour, and then the client's happier because I'm servicing my account better. Right, yeah, and that must be, but if somebody wanted to do it.
Speaker 3:sorry, I'll just do it. Yeah, but if someone really wanted that and you're the same as me and that's what we communicate out to all the customers, like your day rates, like set for 50, say, or it's 500, and yet you're insistent on doing it yourself. No, limited, there's a lot of peculiarities, there's a lot of tax knowledge, there's a lot of changes. Some people want to do that, but they can on that software, they can do it completely themselves, but it's a complete poor use of that time. But some people like the control and understanding of how to do it.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of that. I would always advocate and if you listen to Tim Ferris the 4-Hour Work Week. It was like massive application of everything. Hand everything over, have two virtual assistants in the Philippines or one of the states and don't get your own sandwiches, have those delivered. But now there's a little root service. You have to do everything mapped out and just oversee. I think there's a bit of overkill, but honestly, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I think there's a lot of people who have the right kind of jobs to do it, but don't see it. And also there's a lot of grassby graspingness which is like I must make every hour, it must be billable. And then, of course, if you get to our age, you can look back at them and you think honestly, guys, you could be working from a van in Australia, especially now, when this is as this starts to lift. I think there'll be plenty, plenty of people who are changing how they view stuff at a younger age than perhaps getting to our age and going.
Speaker 2:I haven't had any time off, not properly. We now come out of carstip and I haven't stopped since. But the logical thing would be to take a break, do something else. And I think, of course, I think that Tim Ferris thing yeah, you were right, 4 hours and also not everyone can do it. It's a bit privileged in what you do. But for software devs, I mean, really, was there not that famous guy who got about four contracts to do software dev and outsourced a whole lot to China and basically did no work apart from QC?
Speaker 3:You're right, you could do that. That, actually. That reminds me think about the early days of P360, where I was building the system for the email marketing and the proof of concept had been a party business which I called partitasticcom. I love this. This was yours.
Speaker 3:This is mine. It sent emails and the SMS reminders out for all these parties and I did keep the money coming in and to pay for mortgage. I got this job cold calling for an internet security company, the Dotplans, and it was really, really painful. I can do cold calling, don't mind you, it's not very nice. So I then found one of my other mates had been, you know, lost his job at an internet company and got him in the position and then went home and carried on building P360 whilst I made the lanes.
Speaker 2:But he did your calls.
Speaker 3:He did all my calls and I made the margin. Yeah, he just reminded me about that.
Speaker 2:If you just written a book called Bullshit Jobs or no Work, sit back. You'd have been Tim Ferriss, because a lot of his stuff is. There's a really interesting guy coming on, I see, in a few weeks I mean well, after Christmas now, because there is a back clock there's over 250 subscribers. Everybody goes up every month. It's great, but he's coming on.
Speaker 2:He's a really young guy, like 24, 25. And he actually just sells sites on Flipper. So basically he build you a site so you know, garden trees direct. He works out who all the wholesalers are. He builds the site the guys in the Philippines that he works in, his company's based in the Philippines and the guys over there. They build the site, they do the, they do the right, all the stuff, they do all the integrations, whatever he needs done.
Speaker 2:You basically buy the thing in Flipper and you've got a business and it's not very much Like and he does e-book ones, like you know, and he gets the stuff written specifically for you. It won't be on 25 other sites. You pay a few high hundred pounds and you've got a business and then it's up to you to promote it in LinkedIn, which of course, will be the death of LinkedIn as everyone sells there how to be a millionaire book, but you know that's really smart, so he goes out there and he can skip winter over here and he's I mean there's some really smart young founders out there, because they don't have the same. We were tied.
Speaker 2:I think this is fair to say, isn't it Back then? Because I remember meeting you and I think I was at the time coding one of the first incorporate your companies at company's house the really bad long PHP form with lots of offense stuff, but it did work and you could incorporate a company on my website which basically incorporated into their awful API and now it's terrible then, yeah, as a guy I am, Cluxetcom is a Russian guy, so I outsource it to a Russian guy, I think cost me 500 bucks plus my sort of tidying up the front end of it, and then a couple of other people paid thousands for that.
Speaker 2:And I think these shortcuts don't exist, because that clunky-nosed doesn't really exist too much does it. We were trying to fix problems because it was so shit and now actually there you know there are graceful solutions for almost everything. Now, even open back, because open banking is going to change everything that your business doesn't. I mean when you just take the business bank account and sort of yeah, no, you doubt classic, you.
Speaker 3:You make it sound so, so easy and effortless and it's not. No, no, no, obviously it's. It's so not, and it's bloody well similar to that original API of companies house that we had to plug into as well, which is a nightmare. Now it's a lot, a lot better, but the open bank banking fees was another classic like crunch expedition, and we we had. We're not just software providers, we're obviously an accountancy firm, so we have a duty of care, so you get the feeds in right and they are a dire mess.
Speaker 2:Not still.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course the banks don't give a monkeys really.
Speaker 2:But not even Tidermonzo. And these Neobanks, they must surely have guys building they probably have better feeds.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it might have been from our aggregates that we first chose that. You know they were originally screen scrapers, which we were avidly against. We never plugged into your delay. We hate the whole concept, so we we we Just just a bit of a listing.
Speaker 2:That was you, you, you. Basically they logged in as you onto the bank website and script all the stuff off your digital they're scripting off off the screen.
Speaker 3:And what they didn't tell you is, if your bank account, your business bank account, got cleaned out and they saw that you'd actually released your details you were meant to keep secrets yourself to a third party, they were a liability. They would not be responsible for that at all. So I was always campaigning about not using Yodely. But my competitors on the soft running side zero and free agent and clear books, all happily plugged into those horrible feeds and kind of like they had a tiny little disclaimer. You know teeny little words down down there. If you give your details here, you will be really screwed for the rest of your life. So don't be that. Leave any money in your bank account, no. So, yes, the experience with, with open banking fees by the aggregators, absolute dribble coming through. So of course the crunch engineers like, want you to do this amazing duty of care. Like, like trying process the data, try normalize it, try and clean it all up and it. You know it took us so much to do these feats. Nobody else is pumping out yes, we've got 250 feet. Well, how many feet Feats?
Speaker 3:And I said to them one day well, how are they doing it? And they go oh, they just put in a holding pen and let the, let the end user decipher it and choose which is the, which is the right transactions. I mean, well, they will copy the. Then don't try, try and normalize data. So that's a difference. So, yeah, crunch is always innovating, we're never copying it. And sometimes I'd say like, don't spend too much money on that project and deliver perfection, this perfectly normalize data. So we now have very nicely normalize data, but with the big, you know, I think, too big a delay. So we're, we're looking, of course, to add in, like expert, like the next level of normalization at water categorization would be, would be lovely for our, for our customers. But yeah, that that whole area of thinking beats you think, yeah, this comes and just plug it in and it'd be amazing.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, no, it took a lot longer than I imagined, because the front end of it is actually quite useful. I will have fellow, you know he can take a transaction using that process. You can log in with your bank account, you know, and he's basically building a. If you're a charity, when a race of money, they can send you a link, you click it, you actually opens your bank, you do the transaction. It costs them a fraction of what a normal transaction or just giving would do.
Speaker 2:It's a really, really good idea which actually can go into mainstream business as well. But that works because that is just allowing the access to the bank account to validate the user and take the money. What you're seeing is that behind the scenes, you want the feed out of that bank account, which does explain why on my business bank account of unnamed bank it doesn't always work, and that's why, because of course, it's not as good as it doesn't it doesn't, but it is at least as better than the, the old yodely feeds and used to look on zero and they had a whole dashboard for it.
Speaker 3:And like you see what this red like marks across the, across the color there's like, uh, lloyd's down today, you know, like that West down, down for last eight hours never bloody works because, because, what well, they didn't tell you it was so, so funny.
Speaker 3:Hopefully the listeners are watching us, are half interested in this. So if the bank changed their user, the UX, the menu is slightly different way, doesn't it? The way that the code had gone in click, click, click there's these details, and then extract what's on the page that it completely broke. So, um, and never forget, speaking to the, the, the UKMD, and you say he's going, that's not a problem, we'll have it up and running fast. We've got 400 engineers in India and they quickly busy themselves and and correct the feed and get it, get it cut like, oh wait, what? When I realized the screen scrapping, that not interested. So so we, we, we wouldn't have been competitive for a period. We were connecting directly to the banks and, uh, and a point, we had more banks directly connected than was it bank stream. Uh, a company that was, um, dedicated to getting proper bank feeds, but of course, the banks didn't want to give fees. They wanted customers coming into that, uh, into that world, so they can sell them other bits and bits and bobs.
Speaker 2:Other bits, so um, you mean highly expensive insurance bills.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, yeah, exactly, all low interest accounts, all horrible things, like you know. Uh, invoice factoring, oh yeah, yeah. So that's where, that's where they make you know to on business. That's where they make a huge amount of money the insurances and all the other bits and bobs. The key amount of insurance may jack diddly compared to what they can get out of invoice factoring. And that's the only time the banks will be asking for direct fees they go. Why would we do that? Whoa, you've got lots of data on customers, haven't you? Well, yes, well, if we had that information, obviously with the customer's permissions, we'd give you the feed. In return, it was like, no, I don't mind.
Speaker 2:So that's you, that's using you and how many people do you do? You need to service these 10,000 customers now.
Speaker 3:We have a lovely team of 182 team members.
Speaker 2:Are they all in the whole Brighton area?
Speaker 3:Well, now that now that they've distributed, we've got the eight looking and looking onto Preston Park, where Gay Pride ends up. I thought all the listeners would want to know that where Carly was when she here not last year either, for so we look on to directly onto Preston Park.
Speaker 2:The founder of Meet Piley. That's the, that's the. Yeah, well, that would have been I sort of reminded that.
Speaker 3:So we've got the massive whopping space of 18,000 square feet in a. How many people have you got in it this week? We have what. I think I've got six other people up there but amazingly, you know, just coming out of lockdown. You know I'm very, very careful with the costs. We had not been funded to date with any venture capital or growth funds or anything.
Speaker 2:we've done All of this, I'm sorry. I'm talking about COVID responsibilities and distribution of your team, and you're already on to my next question, so you don't have any external funding for, for, for, for I get there. Have you done all this?
Speaker 3:External funding. It makes you super tight and what I bet it does.
Speaker 2:So this is all your own money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was, it's all. We've got some private investors and we've got some amazing people that I can tell you about that. But coming out of lockdown, I was like to the leadership team like we need to shift, and luckily enough it's a big horseshoe and you can, you can, we have rights to sublease half the office. So it's about 8,500 square feet and they're all looking at me on the camera again. Darren is highly unlikely you'd find a tenant to go in there. No, no, no, just just get it out the door. Talk to the agents.
Speaker 3:I'm sure we can do it, because we just don't need that much space on the East side that looks onto Preston, preston Park. We got 9,000 square feet and I'm not even sure we're ever used this. So let's do it. And amazingly, we found a tenant who is just moving in right now. So that's fantastic. So we, we've, we've turned ourselves into a landlord as well, but we've we've obviously halved the, the mohose of costs for this beautiful office and it's not UberPosh, but this is Pryley AmExabino on this floor. So it was all pucifully decked out with lovely glass offices and we, we managed to move in without you know Does.
Speaker 2:Does COVID mean then? Do you think you would now recruit from further away? Do you like having the office in every local, or do you think you'd be happy now with people in Amsterdam or America or wherever they needed to be? Because now there's a real moment to employ the people you want to employ, you know, anywhere in the world, rather than the sort of the best not seeing anyone is, of course but the best available near you. Cause who wants to commute like three hours to Brighton? Not, not many people. So you've got a limited pool of people, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So what we're going to do is every is obviously working remote when we have the backseat and we can come back. We've got 9,000 square feet of space, we've got a beautiful training academy for the bigger meetings and events and the culture of crunch is really good. Everybody's super friendly, the teams work really really well. We have quarterly town hall meetings and have a load of drinks and food. So I think it's really important we do that. But we are allowing the team to move further afield in the UK, but at that cost. They have to come back and do these quarterly meetings or at least do that that team meetings. So that's the goal.
Speaker 2:Couple of times. Actually, you can move away, but I'm not paying for you to come back from Devon, Exactly.
Speaker 3:We could possibly. You know you've picked the out of Hebrides because you've got your family up there. It's a 467-pound fight back to Gatwick. No, we can't do that. So that's. We feel it's a really beautiful compromise.
Speaker 3:But in all honesty, we are being asked about international locations and people wanting to be with their wife's family in Germany or Spain or whatever the circumstances. We've had the states as well and you don't realise the complexities to it because you know I really want to support the team wherever they want to be, as long as it's not bizarre time zones. I think you know plus or minus one is fine. The states doesn't work at all. So you know I was getting to a point about actually announcing to the whole team, like you know, fully accommodating wherever you want to be, but don't go too far and bear in mind you have to pay for coming back and accommodation. But when you look into it, alistair, the complexities are massive. So if you're permanently basing yourself in that country, you still have to. We still have to pay PAYE and national insurance contributions, because it sounds like a big drink choice.
Speaker 2:It's the excitement I'm on my private TV.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I know I am, I'm very excited to be here.
Speaker 2:This is the first one I'm streaming live, oh, is it?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, but by the entrance you made, you know, like pulling the blue screen across, I knew that you weren't going to do that to me. So yeah, you nearly did. So yeah. So say, if they want to be in Germany, we're now at just that point of looking at do they have to pay local taxes as well? So could it be a double tax situation? And that's what I'm mature of. They certainly need to. If they're going to stay there, they need to be bound by the employment of that country. So you know from what things like could, perfectly innocent, of course, you can base yourself in the south of France where your family is. You know they'd be fine. Oh, you're now subject to French employment law, which means they are really hardcore.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, I think we're on a case by case basis. We're talking to the team wherever they want to be in the UK, absolutely no problem, on the basis that they have to pay to come back and source out their accommodation.
Speaker 2:It is one of the things, because it is. You know, when you read all the stuff about Brexit unless I go there but if you read all the stuff about Brexit there's oh, it's all harmonized and relieving. My sister works in Germany. There's nothing harmonized with this at all. She's got a flat in France and she lives and works in Germany and the difference between the banking, getting mortgages, living, working, tax you pay. You know.
Speaker 2:Her boyfriend came here to work for a year and be my assistant. You know we're not, we haven't left or anything. He came here for a year. He went back at the beginning of April because COVID he lost his job and a pin third old I'm sure hi allowed to cool. He went back to Germany and he can't get any benefits, even if he's unemployed, because he left the country for a year and you can't imagine that happening in this country. So I think there's that lack of harmonization. But there are a thing good up there's our spines and the data with this transformational moment now where, like you, can employ anyone anywhere, because everyone's in another two years and working from home and working like this will be completely normal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, exactly exactly, but I know I do love the remote working and it works surprisingly well for crunch. Now to give you a bit of my background again. I don't know if I've ever spoken about this, but my background was in internet hosting and my first startup was internet provider startup with dial up. But you know, I learned a lot, you know, in there. And the hosting company, which was Colt Telecom at the time, which is part of cable and wireless, and the, the centers that I showed these top customers and top, top, top, top cops were, were just so overkill so we had numerous flaws. They were very so security, you know, to try and get in into. We had two Rolls Royce diesel generators. You know, down in the basement area we had two weeks worth of fuel, diesel fuel in tanks underneath them. We had massive battery backup rooms. Everything was n plus one or n plus two, so he's always got plus one protection or plus two protection on it. So I kind of grown up in this.
Speaker 3:So we started crunch and I like everything had to be backed up. We had to have, you know, cloud. This cut and I was very, very early in going to Cloud Telephony and we got all of these systems in place and, like you know, the thought of kind of like wondering why I've got all these things. And we just upgraded the Cloud Telephony system just before December, you know, of last year and it COVID kicked in and literally the engineering team left a week before Boris called it. I called it on the morning before Boris called it at five o'clock and it worked seamlessly. Everything in our disaster recovery, all business constitution plan worked and it was, you know, it was really good to see. You know, all of that protection, all of that you know learning I'd had for years of these massive, outrageously expensive co-location centers. Yeah, it was okay. Have you got a video in the feed again?
Speaker 2:No, you're back.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm just listening.
Speaker 2:It's funny without your face. You have to concentrate a lot more. So when I can watch you, it's easier. The screen goes actually harder because you have to sort of focus on your headphones. See, I know.
Speaker 3:So I've been blowing cool air on it and gently nursing it back to health. But I tell you this is already a lesson learned about cameras that I think trying to charge the thing at the same time is going to create too much internal heat. I've never seen that. I mean, these lightness we've got weren't that expensive from Amazon, but the LED, so they're not pumping out that much heat, so it's not that warm in here. So I think it's just the fact you're charging at the same time as giving me a little more.
Speaker 2:Okay, and the warning is okay coming out of that, and the warning, of course, is it's getting too hot.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I know Right. So lesson learned. I need the main adapter and it's like head of finance. Can I have another adapter please? I've already asked for another couple of gadgets, so I can actually, they said I could tell you, prompt her.
Speaker 2:Now you can tell the quality. I can see the quality difference in my mind. I don't. My book and yours is yeah basically it's the vloggers camera.
Speaker 3:I think there's a new one out, but yeah, I've always wanted to do this. So, yeah, so it's here for the whole team and I'm going to you know. The other thing I haven't told you. I have told you, actually, because we spoke about it. I want, I want to help and I think it's the perfect time to help, so I'm going to do a whole YouTube series helping people set up businesses or helping them find find an idea of what they could do, they might be, they might they might be.
Speaker 3:They might be made redundant. They're going. Oh so I'm going to despair. I don't know what to do. And when Crunch was created in 2009, self-employment absolutely boomed. It was it was recessionary time. Lots of people have been made redundant and a lot of people headed into self-employment and setting up their own small business, and I believe that's going to happen again Once we get into next year. The businesses that we're employing lots of people will take ages to build up steam again. So I want to help and I'll be doing the same as you creating a YouTube series inviting lots of people in but also showing them loads of examples of what you can do. And, like you know, I want people to look and go. Okay, he makes his money. How Really that's. That's really cool. Oh, you know, to let them get this going and you know they do three days a week and then they go two days a week on the environmental charity or whatever, or a children's charity.
Speaker 2:So it is the interesting thing isn't it? Because I think you now got lots of people, friends and people in contacts over the year and it's like, how'd you do what you've done? And it's like, well, basically I didn't have a job. You know, when I set up UK data, I said I didn't say, well, I met Paul. We did the online credit card buying of credit ports when you were doing crunch. Nobody'd done it before. But we had a sort of he had a business and he sort of paid me I think he paid like five to quite a month something to build web pages, something equally other than 1999, we received equally visionary looking back, you know we didn't. He had enough money to buy beer and pay the rent and then we built that thing because he didn't have a job, if you had a job.
Speaker 2:But the hardest thing ever is the people I know who've tried this have jobs, set up a company or set up a product or whatever it is you do. That's the hardest way ever, right? So actually, if you're unemployed, you're backs against the wall. That's when you really graft it out, because you have the thing of there is no safety net and you see, some I've seen some people now in my LinkedIn feed have been made redundant, started again, and I've now already, in the six months since they've been made redundant and COVID's impacted them, are now getting to the point there actually making some money, enjoying it. And of course, the other thing is, if you enjoy what you do, work isn't work, it's just part of your life. Right, that's the fundamental shift. If you can get to that point because you've done this for how many years? And I don't think you're sitting here at 5.61 on a Thursday night talking to some idiot from confounded TV because you think, oh, when I finish, I'll finish work, because it's you.
Speaker 2:I said this last night and this thing people were and I wanted to touch with this. So these guys last night, they're all trying to raise funds and I was trying to say that's fine, that's great, you don't have to do that. One guy's got a conversion rate where he's at least a tenth of the price of the industry norm for what he does. So I want to say he would tell us Wow, actually, I will, edmund, the lease will Right, so you can lease a car. His website he's converting people into lease cars at two quid a pop. Right, that's at least a tenth of the average in the industry. Right, that's all struggling to raise money for various reasons, but it's not exactly the easiest time.
Speaker 3:I mean, you can raise money now.
Speaker 2:Well, there's loads of it. There's loads of it, the desperate shift of the money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but it's not exactly easy.
Speaker 2:You could have done all over video and it's not the easiest, but there is money out there for the because they're still, because you have to think of the time lag. I was once told it's one of my investors the funds get their money and they get it. Think last year it's got to be distributed this year. It can't sit and sit and sit like a bank until hey, things are better, right, because they only get their 2% and they get their carrier and the whole thing's got to be moving, otherwise it stops. Yeah, they have to shift the money out, they have to shift the money. So what's interesting, of course, is the thing you said you haven't taken any institutional money is probably the right way of putting it, is it no?
Speaker 3:No, no, institutional. Well, actually that's a lie, because a bank is institutional money.
Speaker 2:So because we do. I mean it's a structural VC type money.
Speaker 3:Yeah, definitely not that money, because it's just not being right. I turned away all these conversations, it's just a time waster. So we've only ever had our own money and the money from Michael French Fay, who set up eBay Europe and was on the board of eBay and he's our chairman. He's the most amazing guy and so believes the crunch that we've inherited and he's stuck with us for nine plus years because he knows we're doing something very disruptive and different and we will break through, and I think he completely supports that. We shouldn't take that money because they will give you the money, get you on a trap that's not right and then, if you miss a few targets, shoot you in the back of the head and push you out the back door. It's pretty ruthless. So we've been completely in control and built up to this point. 50,000 members growing, say, 2,000 members a month, including the free accounting software, a 10 plus million turnover business, a position 60 in the and I never knew this. There's a top one, some trippy accounts, two firms Of course we're in position 60.
Speaker 3:Now we keep going up 60 on what? On staff turnover? No, no, no, it's on turnover. So obviously the big four are up right.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. On turnover, you've gone from nowhere to in the top 60. Nowhere, yeah.
Speaker 3:I know, I know. So that was funny when, just in the UK so yeah, that was when I go onto the top 100, I was like, oh, I'll have a reference point, we're not doing too bad and we keep creeping up. But it's been quite slow creeping up over the last couple of years because we're doing something that no other accountancy firm is doing we have built a complete accountancy software platform with, as I explained to you, all these different things, so we have an ability to properly scale now. So it's now, at this time, that I'm happy to start having those investor conversations. We've done it with practically nobody really, I think, in total. Actually, I was going to come back to the other bit where we have got some money which has lept us forward. So I think we did it originally with about 1.2 million in total and I put 250K down like a nutter but it was so unlikely to work. So that got us through the early years which started generating stacks of cash because we're delivering the whole accountancy services and it was two years ago.
Speaker 3:Barclays is our bank and they have been amazing. Graham is our bank manager. He's been with the banks into I think it was 60. You know that proper like bank manager that really Cares and knows, knows where a business is good. We borrowed some money from them and an amazingly low interest rate and they barkers have been amazing, and that chunk of money enabled us to to finish Replatforming on and create all these different effects like negobricks of services so we can have crunch free we're limited in sole trader and all the other cordial services and move away from the, the almost the monolithic code block, and that's enabled us to see the this, this big growth, and now, now we got the growth numbers, we can now the only not speak we could, we have, we can, we can remember, we can, as I say to multi by 80 months old, we, who we can now like, talk to the investors and I can talk to them properly about real, proper growth and and we know exactly how to spend the money.
Speaker 3:So we got like, was the dev team, including all the scrum, the design and Various components of it, is about 50 here and we you can't find enough developers. There's always the problem out here. So we've had to near, near sure that. So we we've perfected you know outsourcing or near, you know nearshooring these developers and you can see exactly how to put the money in to To really super scale the platform and then obviously put portions marketing and then what? Then you really start revving.
Speaker 2:What stops some of your competitors, who are very highly funded, just going? Hey, we can put some accountants at the end of the phone.
Speaker 3:They are, they, they want to your free agent are trying, but they're trying to do it with with practices because they know this operation is it's really complicated but we, we, you know, we know how to make it work. But you know an answer to a question Intuit the owners of quick turbo tax have also been watching us. They flew over and we had, you know, a lovely chat with them and they were interested in sharing knowledge. Yeah, of course they were, but they were. They added CPA so that tax advisor to Turbo tax is really, really cool and I get really excited when I see people add service cleverly done with the software. So turbo tax has been in existence for, like eons, you do your IRS return and they added the, the CPA and I've lost my camera again so let's just turn it off so they, they added that. So I think it's like 75 95 bucks for turbo tax due return, but for another 95 bucks or and maybe a little bit more if you want to more premium service over video, you can talk to the, the CPA, the, the tax specialist and go through it on your phone, your your return and they. They've obviously grown massively now by adding service on there. So that's, of course, why they wanted to, wanted to come over and have a good old chat set, and then they've done the same with bookkeepers on QuickBooks.
Speaker 3:But the main channel to market, alice, of course Is is the accountants out there. So they're straight Dangerously in the market. You know we got bookkeepers now and the counters is going whoa, whoa. What are you doing? You're coming into our, into our turf. Yeah, it's really really interesting. If you're a software house and you can see that service ads, those revenue, how would you do it without really really obsessing your channel? And that? That is that's the big problem for them. But they're pretty still doing go, you know, they may be, you never know a middle finger extended to to the whole accountancy channel because they go, ha ha, we've now got accountants on the on the end of our software. You never, you never know.
Speaker 2:But this is where you know, remember that famous phrase itself or elite the world. You know, look at, look at, look at hardware, like cars. You know you buy the ID three. You can buy with a Volkswagen website. Right, you, the dealer is a deliverer, a deliverer of that car.
Speaker 2:What happens, these big franchises, when you know if you were Car maker now you're gonna make any more new diesel engines because in ten years time you can't sell them. So immediately you get the shift and then you get the reliability, and then you don't need the service departments, of which makes up X percent of these companies, and I know it's. And then you take delivery and and you know, and Justy and you, if you want to be on it, you have to pay this much to be on it, otherwise people aren't coming to your restaurant and you and you know one by one, by what. So they're. In the end They'll say we'll get the customers. You can say you can help us service that customer because there is no choice. You know, isn't turbo tax the one I'm sure reddit's got a bit of an issue with isn't turbo. That's the one where you actually just charge it for what you could just file yourself on the on the IRS website in the states.
Speaker 3:I think you probably could like HMRC. Yeah, you do that your own risk, but the IRS forced them to give a free, a free version away and yeah, they do. That was reasonably recent, but of course it you got got got wraps on the knuckles because they did Hidden away. Yeah, it's some dark, dark place in the website, but yeah, that's the experience, you experience, go remember that.
Speaker 2:You know it's too quick free experience, or, unless you click this link, excuse me, and that is completely free Pre. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. You're a next thing. That is proper conversations with investors. You've got. You spent the time grafting out the platform. The process is how it works. So what you're really seeing now is, if you give me this money, now is the time, because there's going to be another Surgeon. You know own operators and small limited companies. I've done it before. I'll do it again. Give me money, I'll scale this up to 10 times what I'm doing, just, and then you get in that top 10, top 20 of the UK's biggest accounts. It practices, yeah that'd be bizarre without being an accountants.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, I know, but.
Speaker 2:Hmm, the accountants, accountants. Yeah, isn't it run by an accountant?
Speaker 3:No, no, no, no, but that was the other thing I was going to say to you is is I never forget going to the the British Council awards for the first time? And and you've got the bit. The bit I didn't mention is right.
Speaker 3:At the beginning, of course, we were hated, hated by the whole shit, because we, they were charging two and a half grand a year for you. Yeah, that's that, have no incident accounts. And we've come in eight, seven hundred fifty quid or were 800 quid, and I used to have dreams of walking down the street and rotten fruit and fetch big thrown at me like, oh you, well, man, how dare you come into our space? So yeah, we, we Remember going to the British Council once we won one of the ward and we won loads of wards since in that world and they, yeah, you walk in, you go, they're all staring at you. It's like that's the whole cell, that horrible land that came into our world. So, yeah, but it's all leaving moving up this.
Speaker 2:Anyone disrupting something like that is easy to fix. Don't take the piss like my. My guys really good Fear pricing right. See when they live as we use and Carson it. I think we paid compared to something cost of others, but we were paying like a third, getting excellent personal service. You'd recommend them to everyone and I have several times mentioned them and LinkedIn over the years. And then if people ask me, who would you do for you know this deal, or for setting up a company, for you know, for raising for funds, whatever I go over here, speak to this guy and that happens because good, well, excellent service at a fair price will win every day of the week. If you're taking the piss, right, your margins aren't safe, because the fact is, if there's lots of people in a sector who can take the piss Excuse my language it means that the margins are too fat. Right, that's. That's just a sad fight of life.
Speaker 3:No of course, of course, yes, and they've, and they routinely, they routinely worked the, the smaller markets especially yeah, you know it was a prerogative market of, because that's face-to-face Meetings lots then do the quality of the customer, shoes like, oh, very nice, very nice shoes there, yes, that'd be A five and a half thousand pounds per very simple set of limited accounts. Is that a case? Yes, fine. So yeah, we, we literally have had customers have been paying a fortune For for that, for their account.
Speaker 2:It's not a measurable. It's not a measurable service I want things about. Can see, it's not a measurable service. I can't tell if you or Bob are any better than this if you sound the same and say the same things. But I don't know if you really know what you're talking about because I have to just completely trust you. You know how it's like you meet measuring dentists or measuring doctors. You know people say, oh, my local GP, he's great, how'd you know? All right, is that the guy who's?
Speaker 2:missed all this trust pilot for dentists and doctors. Oh, that's not goes a trust pilot. My favorite person on internet's, callum from reviewsio. You know, yeah, I know Callum, yeah, yeah, he's a great guy. He's like poke hole, poke hole, poke, keep poking, keep poking. Right, because you know.
Speaker 3:I just saw him ever have a popper trust. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to find out what that was all about.
Speaker 2:I went to them when I had, when I had, we had I was 1.8 million companies and on UK data, that was a dick. You get his peak when it was like millions of visitors was 2000 at peak time of day, right. And I said, well, I've got this great idea, I've got all these pages. You type in any company name. This is in their boardroom. You type in any company name and I'll be the first result. Why don't I have a tab called reviews? Right, you populate it with the reviews you've got right, and then if people then sign up, I'll get you the revenue. They said that's great, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So we had a chat about this and, okay, so you need to pay us 20 grand for the API. That's a lot of. I'm gonna pay you 20 grand for the API. 20 grand, 20 grand. And this this is you use early 2000s or mid-year, I should clearly remember. There's 20 grand for the API. So you want me to pay for the API, to then put a link on 1.8 million company pages, which means that, in effect, you will see no reviews.
Speaker 2:Yet you know, is this your company, claim this review page or whatever. I'm gonna drive you traffic for my game 2000 concurrent hits here, you know in real time, peak times at lunchtime, whatever, and, and yeah, so how much will I get then? Oh, I'll give you 5% of any conversions. So I've got the audience, I've got the companies, I've got the data. You've got nothing. How many companies you've you got so we can actually know I understand any reviews we can put on there. He said oh okay, 1800 doesn't. And if you got the limited company names so I can easily matches? Oh no, no, no. So no limits, company names, only 1800. I've got 1.8 million on here. I was like this is a weirdest conversation in the world and so I left the office. Oh, that was a waste of a train ticket, and I think you know when you see what Calum does, you think I good for you, mate, you know, yeah, yeah, no exactly.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, we used to use it all the time, but we had a new head of sales and marketing and he had a you know, he knew some people at Trustpilot. We need to needs to be honest. We went on there and never knew. Yeah, reviews Um doc, coo UK was, I think we still got it running, but it's it's not the one routinely used. So, yeah, I don't do much, while I rather support the, the, the, the, the local man than the big big corporate until you until you become one yeah, well, no, no, the.
Speaker 3:That's that we know, adam and not to become a big corporate. That's why the cultures so important, why you look, you look after the, the team, and you do special things like we're talking about, like where they, where they could, they could be. I'm maybe the corporates are thinking about that, but we are far. Yeah, never, ever. That's why I will never let it be a be Phil corporate. Why wouldn't you crowdfund? Ah Well, that is a brilliant subject because it gets you loads, of loads of free PR as well.
Speaker 2:I you know lots of loyal customers. You've got enough of them there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but Um, let's let's put this delicately we were about to do it. I loved it because it's very, very community centric. Totally, yeah, yeah, but I was a you know a lot of people. I know some really great entrepreneurs in Bryson had done it. It is a photographic Marketplace of really amazing photographic marketplace and he got the whole crowdfunding up and running and he was obviously revealing Some information. You will reveal too much but all of his competitors were seeing what's going on and also slating him. So his experience was really really bad. He's just down.
Speaker 3:Don't, just don't do it. I know you want to know to share the success of crunch for the community, but really it's just not worth it. Everything's on the other side of everything. See what's going on, so don't do it. So we, you know, told you the story about about Barclays being amazing and supporting us. They supported us and we didn't need to do it.
Speaker 3:Now you come to this point and you and you question Do you need to crowdfund or you, would you work with a? No, really great investment firm? It would have to have to be a really, really great investment firm. It's so much, so much easier. I mean. Also, don't forget, I mean if you've got a nominee shareholder that accommodates you know lots and lots of different shareholders. It makes it easier.
Speaker 3:But there's the one thing you hear from the best firms if they come in and you haven't crowdfunded, have you yeah, no, thank God, the due diligence on that is it just a nightmare? And you can imagine I mean the, the cap table or the shareholders it starts becoming problematic and they they don't really like that, unless it's Unless, it's just gunning. Yet and they could, they can spend, you know, you know, a load more time and therefore a load more money like really investigating and checking out, but it puts the business into it, into a different position. So you tend to see our crowdfunding used by firms that you know Really are, really are perfectly in that place to raise money that way, and the only other times you see it is is just to To fill up the coffers. So they got investment from some major investment Banks and they made crowdfund on that and I'm just kind of wondering if revenue did that, because they created a massive Evaluation. They still crowdfunded the end of that round. But yeah, last part.
Speaker 2:Excuse me, that's part of the game sometimes. In there You've got yeah, sorry, already you then do it. You've immediately hit the button. You got a third of it instantly.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly. But what we see in a particular market? No, very unfair valuations going out and people very well, yeah, I don't know that kind of obvious but really unfair valuations to look. No, no, no, no, I'm raciously high.
Speaker 2:I was going to say exactly what I've seen on Seafront. This is like really. They've got the crown of five million, and they haven't started yet.
Speaker 3:You can go so high, but the trouble is, if you do that and you don't get that growth, there is nowhere else for you to go Down low, go back. I mean, yeah, you have to go crown funding again. So, personally speaking on crown funding for YSEAT and in our own marketplace, people crown fund at very, very high levels and then hide away that there are options and debts that they've not. No, I'm wondering why the SCA doesn't regulate this market more. I love the whole concept of crown funding you don't get me wrong but I feel there just needs to be more control over the valuation set and being complete, transparent, because the people are investing, are investing in the idea and don't know.
Speaker 3:Not often some of these crown funds don't reveal all the financial data, but then the end investor isn't what they'd call a sophisticated investor to go. Well, actually, that is right, that is a good valuation. So, yeah, I think it helps your question From right at the beginning. I love the concept of sharing the success with the community. Now I just I think it's kind of a little bit tainted. The original founders at CrowdQ really love what they do, and Darren and the rest of the guys it's. When used correctly, it's brilliant. I've seen some examples that we use really, really poorly and I think therefore, it's a bit tainted and we would never, ever use it.
Speaker 2:That's pretty final, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3:Now, if I come to the show, we could get any investment and we're crown funding and crown funding is lovely really. Yeah, hello crowdfunding, hello.
Speaker 2:I'm Full of Poopoo. My name is Darren. I'd love to crowdfund Flee, yeah, and they're going to go. You're the guy who was on that really popular podcast talking about how you shouldn't crowdfund. I think it does. The answer is you the answer. The question, sorry, the statement isn't that you shouldn't. The question is when you should, because I think some of the stuff on there it's perfect. They're community-based products, they're a consumer. People buy them and then talk about them and then other people walk into the house and go where did you get that kettle from? Like the funky kettle company. That all makes perfect sense. Professional services, perhaps not? No, no, I know something valuations are insane. I literally send them around. People go. Have you seen this? Literally, I'm selling fresh air in a can, raising 300 grand at 5 million, and then have you got for that factory yet to put the fresh air in the can? Oh, no, no, no. We've found a good site in the Ukraine. What?
Speaker 3:Steve Brough, head of Finance, was looking because he invested a few things and I think this is where I, you know they got to protect their interests and I think some firm did a massive phrase, got a load of money and six months later the directors like Nickel Data to the business. So they're right for going after them legally. And not something else done that it feels just like an era right with potential to con. I know they do that, but it doesn't.
Speaker 2:We should be fair to them here. On the whole, it does really well for a lot of people, yeah, it raises money.
Speaker 2:It gets community money into good businesses and most of these people are just raising money and it's a good way to do it, to take away the grief of walking around South Ken going into post conference rooms and being feeling a bit humiliated because you're not a billionaire. So I think there is definitely a place for it and I think there are those frauds. I've got a friend who went to work for a guy, believed his story and I was very good salesman, very good CEO. He had all this stuff, raised 200 grand for this new business and then two weeks later, a couple of years later, he had no idea. He got paid door shut, no answering phone, I mean literally. But that is illegal, right? It is a course of law.
Speaker 2:It is a blatant con and he will one day pay the price and I think on the whole the stuff he sees is actually really good. Stuff like the funky cat will come is pretty clever if you like.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm going to check that out Now. I see lights going out in reception there. Luckily we have to go.
Speaker 2:We have to go.
Speaker 3:We have to go, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go, we have to go. But I am going to just catch up. So I have to go to celebrate. I don't know how to lipitor. I don't use the internet. I have to buy a couple меньше pair of device. I go to video channel. I see on TV and you might be질 I go to video channel bye, bye.
Speaker 3:I go to some area by the Ch נ re inc. E. Thank you, Thank you. Music you.
