Amy Wilson

Amy Wilson is a consultant on commercial marketing strategies to early-stage startups (or, as her LinkedIn page puts it: "Venture Lead/Portfolio CCO/CMO & Advisory Board Member for Startups & Scaleups 🚀 Fundraising Support 💰 Founder Mentor 🌱 Ethical Investor").

This episode is a little different. The vast majority of the Innovation for Sustainability interviews are with someone who is working on sustainability directly and exclusively. Amy tries to bring her environmental and activist beliefs into her work, but that isn't always possible.

One of the things we explore is the challenge that we all face about how to make good choices in the direction of the values that we have in a complex world where there are many forces which make it hard to deliver a just sustainable transition.

Another is how the personality of the founder and their behaviour dictates whether company is going to be viable or not. In particular, we talk about two behaviours: exaggeration / lying makes it harder to learn and adjust quickly; and only allowing narrow life experiences into senior positions makes a team vulnerable to groupthink and blindspots.

Amy has an innovation case study with a circular economy startup.

She also talks about how a small business can struggle when an employee goes on maternity leave, and so the importance of statutory payments to support diversity in the startup ecosystem.

This is part of a series of interviews about innovation for sustainability conducted for the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources, as a contribution to a module in this Masters. You can find out more about these interviews, and the module, here.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Music,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:08

hello. This is one of several interviews on innovation, business and sustainability for students studying for the MSc in sustainable resources at UCL. My name is David bent, and I'm an honorary lecturer at the UCL Institute for Sustainable resources and CO lead for the module on business innovation and sustainability. Most of the course gives people latest academic theory and insight. These 30 minute interviews are with practitioners to give some of the grit under the fingernails of innovating for sustainability today, I'm glad to say we're joined by Amy Wilson, who's a portfolio advisor with multiple startups in that portfolio with advice on commercial and marketing strategy. Hello, Amy,

Amy Wilson: 0:47

Hi, David. It's up to the chat.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 0:50

So first off, explain your role, because it's slightly and slightly different from most other people we've been interviewing. So what do you get up to?

Amy Wilson: 0:58

Yes, I'm an independent business owner. Have my own consultancy. I specialize in growth so the commercial marketing strategies, and I work predominantly with startups around seed or series A stage. And what that means is that I go into their business and I work as part of the team, but instead of working full time for any one business, I try to make my services really accessible for companies while they're kind of very early on in their life cycle and not nothing, not necessarily making revenue yet. And by working with me from anything from two days a month, it means that they can tap into someone with all the experience I have. But it's not the same price point that's hiring me full time, and that tick my boxes, allows me to work with a diversified client base and keep me on my toes, cool,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 1:46

and there's just a little piece of jargon, or two pieces of jargon in this seed and series A So how big does that mean a company is, if it's in a seed funding or series a funding, what does that mean? So that

Amy Wilson: 1:58

terminology relates to fundraising. And it's, it's seed is usually the first, or one of the first processes of fundraising and getting capital into business, whereas series A is usually a large ticket. It comes, comes later on. There's not really a specific amount allocated, but it usually relates to kind of seed is going to be quite small, probably that a million dollars, a million pounds, and then seed is a little bit later on, so it's probably something like two to 5 million. But they're not specific boundaries. They're kind of relative, and they'll change slightly with that, with different markets that you're operating

David Bent-Hazelwood: 2:41

absolutely and in my experience, often seed may have an idea of a product or may have a prototype of a product. They may not yet have sold anything, so maybe pre revenue, whereas series A they started to prove that the product can be sold, but they need some money to get to the next range of customers and to start manufacturing or otherwise produce the thing that they're producing. So there's but it's still very, very early, which explains why they don't have the cash to employ a marketing officer full time, and why a fractional chief marketing officer would be attractive.

Amy Wilson: 3:15

Yeah. And I think you know, doing that is a signal to their investors or potential investors, that they're running things as pragmatically as they can with the resources they have at that time. Yeah.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 3:26

So then let's unpack what does commercial and marketing strategy mean for that very early stage of startup? So it's C, pre Series A, maybe they'll have a product, maybe they're starting to have customers. What does commercial marketing strategy mean for an organization of that size?

Amy Wilson: 3:45

That's a really good question. And because I'm a sector agnostic, and I work with companies all different shapes and sizes, that is an arbitrary answer I can I can give you for that, I'm afraid David, and for me, I come up with the answers to that question when I sit down with the founders and like, take a brief from them, and it's always developed in terms of what they're trying to achieve within a specific time, whether it's three months, six months, 12 months, but commercialization is usually involving revenue coming into the business. So that would involve selling business development, growth partnerships, potentially even investors, you know, bringing strategic investors into the company because they have relationships that that you want or can get you, you know, if it's a product, can get you in a chain of shops, for example. So the commercialization is all about how you're going to realize those revenue new goals the business has, and marketing, depending on the structure and the size of an organization. Marketing can sit within that, or it can be a separate, complimentary function, but the marketing is all about articulating what it is your company actually does. And I know that sounds like a really obvious explanation, but so many companies don't, don't do that well at all, and then it's making sure that that messaging reaches. The right the right people to support the commercialization, make sure that it sells overboarding jargon that

David Bent-Hazelwood: 5:09

day, and just to break it down for a little bit for people. I mean, it might be that you've got a startup that sells, for want of a better way of putting it widgets to other businesses. So that's business to business, marketing and commercialization. That might be about getting a small number of really important clients, but if you're B to C, so you're trying to reach business to consumer, that's how can you get in front of as many consumers as possible? And what's your channel to market? Who might sell your product for you? Or can you sell it directly from a website? Those are the kinds of questions which you're trying to engage with with these organizations.

Amy Wilson: 5:46

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say, in my experience, most businesses that are doing something in the innovation around environmental sustainability, most of them do, tend to be business to business, but there are, there are businesses operating direct, direct to consumer, and in the early stages, using partnerships to try and do the heavy lifting for you is a key part of how we would try and get that off the ground, to keep the burden off the marketing, marketing strategy, and, you know, having to spend like tubers or bus ads or anything like that,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 6:18

sure. And so the next question, and you've said already that you're sector agnostic. But the next question is about how is sustainability framed for you? So what do you try to look for in your customers? Which says to you, this is an organization which is worth working for, that you want your you feel attracted to in some way.

Amy Wilson: 6:38

I think it's really interesting that you raised that question, because the way that I work doesn't necessarily mean I can always be picky about businesses that I work with. You know, I'm not going from one permanent full time job and interviewing to get another dream permanent full time job portfolio advisor. Sometimes I have to take the work that's there. Sometimes I get to be really picky and choose kind of ideal companies that I want to work with. And the thing for me, as someone who's come up, you know, that talked about it through communications, I don't think it's been a harder time to think about sustainability, you know. And the reason I say that because I've been an activist my whole life. I think the first time I was changed something. I was only 17, and, you know, on a protest, I remain nameless, but I think, you know, back when I was it was really easy, because no one had airs and graces about what they were doing, right? If you bought a pair of trainers, you knew they came sweater shop, right? All these things were really obvious. And I think what's got really hard over the last 20 years is, you know, our whole generation has been brought up now with these, these facts about in our life. You know, we know certain things are bad for other humans. We know certain things are bad for the planet, and instead of actually tackling it, the difficulty has come about with organizations that are talking about it and actually misleading you. And I think that makes it harder now, in a way, than it was when I was chained to the petrol station, because then we knew. And I think what's so confusing now is that you've got airlines, petrol companies, that greenwashing into so for me, it's a complex thing, and quite often, as marketing advisor or commercial advisor, I get asked crazy questions. You know, the company's done something really bad, and they're looking for me to get marketing as you know, to fix it with marketing. And you know, I can't fix something bad. My answer is always, you should have done the bad thing in the first place. You should have taken advice and hired a PR before you did the bad thing. Right? I work with loads and loads of different organizations, and some of them are just hands down, not sustainable and terrible and greenwashing trying. Others are trying to do better. I think, you know, there are labels like B Corp. I think it is worth noting that the process to go through that is really, really expensive, so you might actually get companies that are much more ethical, that don't have B Corp, they always seem to think about. And I think I would always hope to work with a company that has sustainability creds. So either they're trying to achieve something that's going to be a greater good, or they've got sustainability ingrained in their culture and in their processes, or ideally both. But it's a moving goalpost for a lot of organizations still. And I think for me, I'm lucky because I work with founders. So for me, a founder's behavior can be the biggest parameter of how sustainable a company is, or could ever potentially be. So that's how I'm going to

David Bent-Hazelwood: 9:58

answer that question. Cool. And I think there's some some different things to unpack there, one of which is, and I appreciate your sort of honesty about even with the best of motives, we don't get to choose the world that we're in. And therefore, we don't get to choose what's going on in the space where we can get employment and maybe and get income. And it's fantastic that some people are able to have careers which are like relatively pure play. But even the pure play process, they want to organizations which I often interview on this channel of podcasts, they will have something. There will be a shadow side. There is always a shadow side to almost everything. So I think it points to the challenge that we all face about how to make good choices which are in the direction of the values that we have in a world which is complex and in which there are many forces which make it hard for us to deliver a just sustainable transition to a world where people get to choose their version of the good life within environmental limits. That doesn't just come into being on the back of the fingers.

Amy Wilson: 11:06

I think that's really good point, David, and I think you know, while this is an interview about sustainability in the workplace, all of us have much greater power as a consumer than we do. You know, probably most of us, unless you know we're the CEO. I've mentioned oil company, but yeah, most of us have more powers up with our purchasing decisions and how we vote for the future from our purchasing decisions, rather than the power that we might have within a very large and nefarious organization. I think we need to take heap of that so we need to remember that

David Bent-Hazelwood: 11:41

we can use the various powers we have various dimensions of our lives, in work, as consumers and also citizens, in our votes. There's one thing I would like to come back on, which was you're saying about founders, and the behavior of founders is a sort of a sign for you. Could you unpack that for us? Is it to do with how? I mean, my assumption is that that's to do with how the founder, sort of personality effectively becomes or deeply influences the culture of the organization, and so how they behave becomes part of how the organization behaves, and then that lays the tracks for what happens next.

Amy Wilson: 12:25

Yeah, and I think it's much simpler than that as well. David, I think how the founder behaves dictates whether that company is actually going to be viable or not, and sustainability is obviously a large component of that. But, you know, I guess, I guess I would describe them. My career, it's been very, very varied, but one of the greatest benefits from that is I've seen so many different types of behavior, and I've also seen the patterns that result from all those different types of behavior. And I guess, you know, I'm a serial monogamist, so I can't compare it directly, but I'm guessing it's kind of like dating a lot of people, some people who go out in the world and just a very short sighted and self serving and probably not the best person to date, right? And then there'll be the other people who have a bit of a longer game. They're a bit more considerate. And I, you know, it's a very, very clumsy analogy, but I think that sort of, that's what I'm getting at with the founders. You know, you go through investment processes with founders, and some of them just lie through their teeth. You know, you get founders who say different things to different people, and you know, none of those sort of things are aligned with acting with credibility or sustainable focus, and the founders that are more honest and have more integrity and more focused on sustainability, there's just a series of patterns and behaviors that, from what I've witnessed in my career, you see the ones which all by the wayside are the ones that succeed. And certainly sustainability tends to be, you know, sustainable focus tends to be more aligned with the sort of positive behaviors that are more conducive to the company succeeding. Obviously, there's massive, like, nuance to that. You know, there's, there's a whole narrative about how, you know, white and male, the environmental tech innovation community is in London, and I've personally been treated in some really misogynistic ways by men that are out there saying how amazing they're going to be for the planet. So there are, like, kind of really weird, but I would say that generally, you can you can spot patterns.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 14:26

And I think within the Master's module that we teach, one of the things we say is extremely important in those early stages of startups. I mean, it's true for organizations across their entire life, but it's extremely important in those early stages is about being able to learn quickly from an experience, and usually we frame that in terms of, every time you put out a product, can you learn quickly about why did or didn't succeed? But there's another aspect to that, which is, if you're lying as the CEO or founder of an organization, if you're lying or behaving badly in the ways you described, is. So much harder for you to learn because you're not consistently testing particular hypotheses. You've got a very bumpy data set and all kinds of things like this, which make it much more difficult for you to adjust to good, as in, useful feedback and adjust your organization. So there is a there's an ethical dimension, but there's also just a sheer strategic learning dimension as well, to why having someone who is consistent, you can't trust what they're saying, it's so difficult for that organization to operate in a way that is adaptable in a complex, changing environment. Anyway, let's Sorry,

Amy Wilson: 15:42

what I would actually add to that is that when you're thinking about sustainability, you should also be thinking about whether the status quo of the company is sustainable. From that point of view, are you bringing in diversity of thought into your leadership decision making? Because if you have this kind of tech row problem where you have this massive chamber in your leadership team that probably isn't sustainable, and it's probably not sustainable because it's probably not inclusive, and it's not looking at all the different ways different people contribute to the decision making process. So for me, I don't know that that sustainability and like diversity really come up. They're both bundled into the same narrative, but really are they integrated? And for me, that's where it gets really interesting. If you've got that extra negative thought on your leadership team, and it's going to challenge and interrogate much more, your decision is only going to be beneficial. And that

David Bent-Hazelwood: 16:35

reminds me of two things, firstly, in in systems thinking, there's the idea of requisite variety. So an organization or a system is only able to evolve and adapt based on its own internal differences, and if those internal differences are much less than the outside world, the outside world be able to change more than the organization can, the system can. And so that's an argument for diversity, not just on an ethical basis, but in terms of, are you able to adapt and learn from what happens in the outside world, and particularly like most of the world is not made up of tech bros. So if you're trying to sell to the world which is not made up of tech Bros and you are only tech rose, you're in a disadvantage. And then the second thing just to shout out to conduit connect, who have one or two connections to they deliberately try to seek out founding teams which have that diversity, and in particular, all female founding teams, actually, because they have recognized how much of a bias there is within how teams get funded, and are trying to correct for that bias. They over invest in diverse teams because they think that's an advantage they can have. These are teams which are more likely to be able to adapt, to adapt, more likely to reach on important issues, and that's something that they are taking a bet on in part of their their own thesis, investment thesis, and theory of change. I will try to find a link to that in the show notes. But

Amy Wilson: 18:04

also, studies of the c3 50 have shown that I think something bonkers. I mean, I can't quote myself on this thing, and maybe I won't google it, but I think it was something like 30% higher revenues from menacing companies as soon as she had a woman in the board. It was a bonkers it was significant. It's

David Bent-Hazelwood: 18:22

one of these situations we go there's a clear business case. It still doesn't happen. Perhaps businesses are not as rational as they pretend to be. And with that, let's move into some stories. So it'd be great to hear. So you've been you're operating as this sort of fractional chief marketing officer, two days a week, two days a month to two days a week in an organization. Give us some stories of of where you have been able to bring that commercialization, that marketing lens, and help organization to innovate so they can grow.

Amy Wilson: 18:55

Probably, for me, the most relevant example in my portfolio is a company that I'm not working anymore, that the company fits my, my profile of like ideal bit Rick the founder, came straight out of uni, out of doing his PhD, getting a pattern, launching a company, and so he was one of his genius founders. But he, and I'm sure he would admit this himself, he if you could stick him in a room doing randd All day, he'd be in heaven and run his company. And he hated that side of it. Hates us. Remember, he didn't like that. He's happy to kind of hand that part of somebody else. And I think, you know, he was very, very, he's a very, very intelligent guy, but it just wasn't focused commercially at all. All he wanted to do was spend all his time and investment on perfecting the products, but the product needed to go to market or it wouldn't have a future. And so this particular product was a manufacturing. Was manufactured thermal packaging, but it was made, made. Out of refuse, and it was part of a circular economy, so you can just take back but the problem was, even though that this product is thermally and environmentally superior, so they're kind of incumbent in the market is much more expensive, and so the first few years of trading, the founder was trying to sell it to food food producers. So like, imagine sort of recipe kits and things like that, products that come direct to your door in them packaging. But the price point was just so, so high, it became quite clear that the market wasn't going to absorb that, and that that wasn't going to be a viable future for the company. So what I, what I did with this founder, is I leveraged my network and we kicked off pilot to produce the same packaging, but for the pharmaceutical industry. Now, I learned so much about the pharmaceutical industry during this process. You know, there are, there are cancer drugs that cost 30,000 pounds, so people aren't going to really care about paying 10 quid for a thermal liner. You know, within the food industry, if you're selling dog food, people do care about 10 quid for a thermal liner. And so really, I think my my work there, was not just to ensure the future of the company and, you know, help kick off a viable commercial strategy, but it was also about transforming the pharmaceutical industry because the amount of pharmaceutical packaging. I mean, you know, when we were doing our research, when we were engaging early on with Big Pharma, pretty much all their packaging was Irene. So for me, I just felt so passionate Lee about this product that it would be when to commercialize the startup and give it a credible, viable future, but also to create lasting, meaningful change to the pharmaceutical supply chain. So for me, there was not really any free to spot on this particular project. Yeah, that's really enjoyable, and I think

David Bent-Hazelwood: 21:54

there's a couple of different aspects of that story to unpack. One is the idea of a bridgehead market, or the first market that a product is trying to hit, and how it is quite normal to try for, if you like the wrong one, but you don't know it's the wrong one necessarily straight away. But finding the niche from which you can grow is actually that product market fit is a really important part of that first stage. And it sounds like the the person here, great technologist, not necessarily the person to find that product market fit. He'd rather be on the in the bench, doing the r, d on the product, rather than necessarily out finding which is the which is the marketplace, which can tolerate this cost?

Amy Wilson: 22:40

Yeah, I think, I think it's, it was a tough one, because when the company started out, the fundraising market was a lot easier, and the trend among startups was just to grow, grow, grow, grow, get your target is whatever costs. And a lot of businesses were raising money while they were loss making, but growing huge audiences, you know, especially in the door to consumer space. So that thinking might not necessarily have been completely wrong at the time, but, you know, I tend lots of different panels of investors and founders, and one common thing that comes up a lot is just have to know the commercials of your business. So if you create a mark, you know, there shouldn't really be a scenario where you're creating a mark, a model to take your product to market, and it's not profitable. And so I think, you know, some of that maybe could have been avoided at the start, if you run the numbers and go, Okay, well, it cost me five pounds units produce, and I'm selling it for two pounds unit, you know, that's not something you should really taping any any further. Obviously, there's, you know, there's you know, there's other things that can happen, like, hopefully, when you scale productions come down. And it's also, I've definitely worked with some founders who get, like, this inertia, where they can see that something's not working, or it's not got a long term viability, but they don't know how to respond, or that they're too overwhelmed respond. So for me, it's about thinking about that commercial model right, right from the start as well. And you shouldn't be taking it to market if it's not going to pay for its own cost, kind of thing.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 24:11

Yeah. And you pointed there to the sort of learning effect where, over time, the unit cost can come down a lot, depending on the product. It can come down. I mean, in the case of solar and wind, it's come down by many orders of magnitude over the last couple of decades. But you have to start with the market which can bear your current cost. What though your future costs? So that's that's an important part

Amy Wilson: 24:35

of it. Some really, really investors that are going to cover those them for a

David Bent-Hazelwood: 24:39

long time. Yes, getting very patient investors. Uber has had the most patient investors ever, but that's a whole other story. Is there another story you'd like to tell us, or should we move into the methods that you try to use?

Unknown: 24:54

Let's move on to methods, methods. So

David Bent-Hazelwood: 24:57

one of the next question is about methods. Practices. So when it comes to innovation management, coming up with the ideas of how to help this startup do this thing, are there some techniques that you always turn to, or that you often turn to, which you find help you a lot in your work?

Amy Wilson: 25:15

I think what I would say just before we answer this question is that innovation management is a generally part of my my role in a company, but that said, I work with companies very early on, and I think when we're thinking about innovation, if I start in an advisory capacity, perhaps before it's gone to market, I would rely on experts in the field of patenting and IP and licensing. I find that, you know, massively fascinating. I was working with a startup last year that was building but I had a vertical farming operation, but it was raising to build a much larger facility. And when the fundraising was stalling, there was an amazing session that we had with this IP lawyer who came up with about five different revenue models through licensing and none. It hadn't occurred to any of us that we could monetise the business while we run out capacity to farm anymore. Any more salads. So so that, for me, is absolutely fascinating, and quite often that the patenting, IP and trademarking does fall within my remit. When we're talking about a brand ideation, renaming or something like that, we would always have to run that through trademark tests and things like that, but having gone through that experience last year that was just so fascinating. That's something I would always encourage, like, say it's out of my lane, but I would always encourage any sort of any businesses building products, to take advice. Take advice about where they are in that process, how they've protected themselves. Because the other thing that's worth mentioning there as well, David, is, if you have a startup that fails, and many do, for many reasons, if you have any sort of protectable IP or licensing income, you can sell that. But you know, you can become founder, even if you've actually your business, you become an exited founder on on paper, when actually maybe the business wasn't that viable. So so there's lots of things you can do around protecting your IP, which for me, is a key part of the process.

David Bent-Hazelwood: 27:33

Often a question from investors, what? What's the defendable position you have here? And often that will require some sort of, as you say, intellectual property IP, that is, you can claim as your own and is rare and is valuable. Actually, one of our previous interviewees on this podcast, the chief executive of oxwash Kyle, he talked about how their growth plans, which I think is what you're hinting at with this vertical farm, their growth plans for ox wash are to grow the business in the UK, but then to license the IP to other regions so other parts of the world can use their laundry approach and massively reduce the amount of energy and water that is used in laundering clothes and sheets and all kinds of other things, but without them having to raise the money to go into all of these markets they don't know and don't understand and have huge risk. Yeah,

Amy Wilson: 28:34

we did that. We tried to do that with the company. I was just talking about thermal lining company, it's not, it's not without its challenges. We were lucky that we found a company that a very, very established manufacturing company, which were able to essentially co invest to launch a pilot in Michigan. And essentially, I mean, the way I would, I look at that as they absorb the cost of doing a part pilot. But the problem with that, practically was that they weren't as passionate about the end result and the quality of the founder. You know, they were kind of manufacturing experts and not experts in the patented material that this founder had created. So they're opposing cons to different approaches. And I would just say that that's what the advisory board for. That's what you know your IP lawyers for. And certainly, if you're thinking of licensing in another region, you must have trademarks and protected and patented in that in that region, or else they can just, let's take all the like manufacturing instructions to go up and they hit basically. So it's really, really important. And so many founders that I've worked with over the years haven't been aware of the absolute nightmare that happens when you haven't followed that process by a trademark challenge, and it's so expensive and it's, you know, the legal fees to protect or defend. And can quickly, you know, quickly escalate. And when you're a small startup, you don't have, you know, the reserve to bump against, you know, a big, you know, big competitor that might stolen your resources. So it's a tricky one, but it there are lots of great advisors around who take a bit of time to explain to you and give advice, but it is tricky, because to start trademarking and patenting licensing in different countries starts to rack up very, very quickly. So you need to have a pragmatic approach, and you need to have a strategic cadence as to how they're going to approach list for markets. And certainly don't launch multiple markets at once, because then you have to do all the legal work all at once, and might not be getting revenue. So cadence is really it's really important part of that. Yeah,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 30:44

and it occurs to me also, from the story you told, that our theme of the of our interview is this requisite variety, because what you bring as someone who's had all these different experiences in different startups and have a portfolio, you're not sitting within the one side or the one organization. You've seen the challenges that that one organization has in other contexts, and you can bring that you talked about leveraging those other networks, so it could pivot, in the case of the example, away from food into big pharma, so that that is like the innovation method there is about bringing a range of experiences and a range of connections to come up with a different way to sort of ideate what's the route to market for this particular product, and even to which market should we try to find a route, because the first one you've landed on may not Be quite the right one. So the and that's that points to one of the challenges for any kind of startup of being time poor, cash poor, and potentially having quite a narrow range of experience. How do you make sure you just don't get stuck on your first idea?

Amy Wilson: 31:56

It's it's a really interesting point you made, and I would say the simple answer is being slightly old and boring and pragmatic. You've got a first time founder. They want to launch the new market, and this first time founder wants to do it in, I don't know, Indonesia, because they like surfing, right? You know? Why not? They could, they could go and have their green life in Indians, but actually that their board advisor is based in North Carolina and is on the board of a company that's a potential customer, these kind of straightforward decisions that you would make. But I, believe me, I've seen founders do some, some crazy, crazy things. So, so that's that's just a hypothetical example of a really obvious low hanging fruit decision versus a lifestyle decision. And that's that's the kind of decisions you face, and you're working with founders sometimes. And there's

David Bent-Hazelwood: 32:50

also the reason why it's worth being part of accelerators and incubators that that gives you access to that range of different experiences. And again, a previous interview in this series was with Alyssa Gilbert of undaunted, as it's now called, and their greenhouse. On to our next question. In the kind of roles you're taking, what's the biggest challenges you face, and how do you overcome them?

Amy Wilson: 33:16

I think the answer is always the stakeholder environment. I think, you know, there's all different variations of those kind of challenges. I think sometimes you get first time founders who fill their advisory network with lots of other first time founders. So they're taking lots of advice, but maybe they're not thinking about the quality of the advice. I guess then at the other end of the scale, you know, VC or PE might have come in, they might bring in some ex corporate, super expensive, you know, like, really process driven executives, and lifetime of corporate experience doesn't necessarily fit dynamics of the team and the startup. So it's usually, there's also, you know, there's this expression that I've heard, which is the scaling point, and you go from seven to 17 to 70. I usually come in around the time when, if I come in around series A it's the time when, for the first time, the people that have been with the company from the beginning might have a new manager inserted between them and their CEO, who they sitting next to for five years. So for me, that point in startups lifestyle bike was always full of drama. It's because ultimately, the team respond one way or another. Either they get in with it and they're great and they stay or they throw their toys out of the pram, and you find that someone who's been, who's been in the company for a long time, has to be the base, because they weren't adapt to the, you know, perceived, you know, reality of reporting in someone who's not the CEO. But of course, not everyone can carry on reporting into this founding team when, when a company's scaling like that. So scaling at that point is obviously for it's really from this. It's, it's from. Problems around the team, but it's also problems around the amount of founders who that you go in and say, Look, you need a process about this, the process about that. And they go, but we're a startup. We want to be like a startup. And you're like, you are a startup. But trust me, if you don't put this process in now, yeah, but they have to go. So many of them have to go through the process of seeing what goes wrong before, during the grown up, they end up having the process right. So that's that change, that the scaling points are always the biggest challenge for me, and it's always about people behaviors. Yeah,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 35:31

and it's worth saying some people are well suited to the whole of that journey, and some people only suited the very first part of that journey. And actually the self knowledge to go to understand which where you've what suits you. So it's not just product market fit, but it's also sort of personality fit with different stages of scaling, from the very early through the growth and into maturity, if there was one thing policymakers. So if you were talking to somebody writing the labor manifesto or the Tory manifesto we're talking in the internable long run up to the UK General Election, which will be at some point in this year. We hope, if you're just speaking to them and saying, one thing policymakers could do, which could make your life much easier, make startup life and ecosystem, the startup ecosystem in London, more successful. What would you say? Wow. It's

Amy Wilson: 36:23

the subject close to my heart, and you might not think beginning the three ties into sustainability, but it's something I've thought about a lot, and for me it would be about statutory leave within companies. The reason I say that is because when I had my own agency many years ago, I had, I had one in my team who was approaching age where she might want to have children, and I just didn't know in a better competitive environment, like how I was going to afford to pay her maternity leave. Okay, so let's put this into context, like she was on 30 grand a year, or something government statutory pay that she would have been eligible for. I think it would have been like 900 for six like, the first six weeks, 900 months, 500 good month, right? So significantly less what she'd been earning. But because there's no statutory guard, like, that's the end of statutory as a company, if I wanted to pay her anymore, I have to take it out of my own pocket. So then it's like, well, do I just pay her? Her leave and I cover her work and the team cover her work, or do I bring someone else into company, but then I can't afford to pay her her leave. And the thing is, what I'm trying to articulate here is that I wanted to do the right thing, yeah, but I was competing against companies that had unpaid interns. And, you know, the commercial environment is not conducive to paying maternity leave, or maternity leave, or sick leave, or adoption leave, or any of these leaves. And I think, you know, you've got to weigh it up, like, do I want a viable business that I can take some money home from myself? You know, I'm not an altruist.

Unknown: 37:54

I'm running it for, you know, but, but

Amy Wilson: 37:56

can I compete with these companies if I do this? And there's no, it's been a race to the bottom of pricing. Anyway, you're also competing against massive companies at scale that have much bigger cost efficiency scale. So think, for me that would really make a difference, just to startups and young companies, is to have that statutory leave introduced by the government that covers a liberal amount. You know, furloughs 202,500 a month. Why is maternity 500 a month? If we all agreed that furlough was like cost of living, right? Like it just bonkers. Rebound safe with still, seems these are statutory amounts that are unlivable, basically. So for me, I think if the government brings in those statutory payments that are actually a livable amount, then it actually evens the playing field, and it means that those leadership teams in the future can be more diverse. People won't be leaving the job market. So it's a long, rounded answer, but it does point to the thing that you know, if we have these diverse leadership teams and people can comfortably interchange like maternity and paternity. Long term future outcomes are much greater, but small businesses can't afford to compete and pay what they want to pay in terms of these disease I think that's what, that's what I would say will make a really big, long term different

David Bent-Hazelwood: 39:19

great. And I think it's and it's not just when somebody goes on to maternity or paternity. It's also about who you might hire as well. Because if you're afraid that somebody might go on maternity leave and you can't pay for them, then maybe that affects your hiring choices. So there's a lot of consequences there, and it points to, well, just points to the role of public policy in creating, as you say, a level playing field, which there's a number of different aspects. If we had more time, I would want to unpack things like, what do they call it? Universal Basic Income, universal basic services. There are other kinds of Yeah. I just. Sure. So there are, there are lots of policy ideas being battered around in my world which would make those kind of choices easier. They also have their own shadow side. Everything has a shadow side. Nevertheless, a really interesting one to bring to us. And just the final question, what's your priorities going forward when it comes to, well, I suppose, particularly around sustainability, if you have priorities there, like, what's, what's your hopes for the future? Um, my

Amy Wilson: 40:30

personal hopes, or my my commercial votes,

David Bent-Hazelwood: 40:33

well, either or whatever works, whatever speaks to you in this moment.

Amy Wilson: 40:37

Um, for me, personally, I'd like to stop being the only woman on the board in the leadership team. I It's no fun to be the tokenistic player in ethical sector, putting ethical inverted commas even ethical sectors, I'm still, quite often, the only woman in the room. And I would say that there's been a lot of acknowledgement about how in these ethical sectors, they're much harder to access, because usually, certainly, when I was leaving uni, you had to have an internship for two or three years. Where are you living? Who's paying your bills, you know, and that people down effect, means that now when you look at founding teams of ethical startups, they are, you know, still predominantly white men, right? So I want to see, I want to see that change, and again, it ties into these policy, obviously, decisions that need to be made. Personally. I would like to be able to divulge my whole income from working with companies that I really believe in, in the innovative space companies that are making the planet better for people, environment I'd just love to focus on that solely. And if I can't do that, you know, I'll still take a Robin Hood approach and work with corporates and actually subsidize some of the ED sheds, work that I do, startups that are in a willingness

David Bent-Hazelwood: 41:59

Robin Hood is stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Perhaps not the exact metaphor, maybe a bit like, a bit like what we're told Hollywood stars, do they do one franchise movie and that finances them to do an independent movie? That's

Unknown: 42:15

a bit of a Robin Hood approach as well. But I guess different definitions, presumably

David Bent-Hazelwood: 42:20

don't say to your corporate clients, I'm stealing you from you to be able to give to the poor. That's the thing there. But anyway, that's a question. Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. Thank you very much for your time. We are at our towards our time of it. So I want to say thank you. It's really it's great to have an insight into the like part of the ecosystem from which we might hope that these sustainability related startups come, and the different challenges of that, how to help them grow. But also, if we're going to have an ethical and progressive ecosystem, what that means in terms of, how do we make sure we don't just have white tech rose men who are forming all of these organizations. It's much bigger than just just climate in that sense. So thank you. Amy

Unknown: 43:10

pleasure, David, I'm really enjoyed after that, you.