Total Innovation Podcast

9. Runar Reistrup: Unicorns in our midst

• Wazoku Team

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Runar is CEO at YunoJuno, one of the most impactful companies to come out of the UK in recent years. Runar was previously the CEO of Depop (sold to Etsy for $1.6bn), scaling the company through multiple funding rounds from early stage startup to market dominance in the UK and successful expansion into US with millions of users. 

Prior to Depop, Runar was part of the founding team that built mobile social network ZYB and successfully sold it to Vodafone Group where he went on to hold several leadership positions including the group’s Global Head of Product. Runar enjoys building and expanding community-driven companies that drive positive change. At YunoJuno he is championing flexibility and empowerment as the future of work.

If you're inspired by the insights on innovation and scaling shared in this podcast, discover how Wazoku helps organizations turn ideas into action. Learn more about the importance of systems thinking in corporate innovation by visiting this resource, and see how Wazoku supports businesses in building vibrant innovation ecosystems.

Brought to you by The Infinite Loop – Where Ideas Evolve, Knowledge Flows, and Innovation Never Stops.

Simon Hill:

Welcome everyone to the Total Innovation Podcast, where we explore the minds of visionary leaders and innovators shaping the future. As always, I'm your host, Simon Hill. Last year, I was invited to speak at an emerging technology event on the Faroe Islands. The event, Tonic, which we will share a link to in the comments, is an annual event bringing together a collection of disruptors, innovators, and business leaders in the awe inspiring surroundings of the truly unique Faroe Islands. Whilst there, I met today's guest, who is one of a number of incredibly successful entrepreneurs from these very remote islands. He has an impressive track record in the startup ecosystem, particularly known for his role as the former CEO of Depop, the popular social shopping app that redefined the way Gen Z interacts with fashion and secondhand goods. Under his leadership, Depop grew exponentially, becoming a cultural phenomenon and attracting millions of users worldwide, building a unicorn business that was eventually acquired by Etsy. He's now the CEO of JunoJuno, a platform that connects companies with freelance professionals across various creative, technical, and business sectors. It serves as a marketplace for businesses to find, hire, and manage freelancers. And with that introduction, I'm personally delighted to welcome the wonderful Runo Reistrup to the show. Bruno, welcome to the podcast.

Runar Reistrup:

Thank you, Simon.

Simon Hill:

Good to see you. So it's good to reconnect. Um, I'm not sure everyone is listening will even know where the Faroe Islands is. They may or may not know you, though they definitely should. May or may not, may or may not know much about Depop. So, um, why don't we give a little bit of an introduction first of all, about the, uh, amazing place that you are. partly from, you've informed me, part Danish, part Faroese, but we're going to dig in on the Faroese piece. Um, a bit about the background of you and what led you to, yeah, the successes that you've had.

Runar Reistrup:

Very good. Um, yes, the Faroe Islands, you've been here. It's, I guess you can explain it as it looks a lot like Scotland, but it sits about thousand miles further north. Um, so that tells you a lot about the weather, um, during the summer, which is my favorite time. It doesn't really get dark. Um, so it's a very energetic place in, in the summers and the winter is quite a, uh, kind of a work. Some people, people tend to work a lot. Um, and, um. get quite good at what they do, because there's not so much else to do, if you like. So it, it's kind of creating some interesting characters, um, uh, in, in different kind of fields. And it's quite small. We forgot to say that it's 50, 000 people. So there's not a lot of, of basis, but, um, yeah, it's an interesting place. I've, um, I've enjoyed coming back all my time in, all my time I'd lived in London. And now. In the air of remote work, I kind of enjoy spending my time between London and the Far Islands.

Simon Hill:

Especially now they've put direct flights back on again, it makes it helps.

Runar Reistrup:

It helps.

Simon Hill:

Innovation in the airlines. There you go. Um, what about, what about your background then? So, you know, I don't know if you reflect on this and think there's anything specific about, I don't know, the water, the air or something else magical coming out of the Far Islands, but is there anything that you attribute to those, you know, those formative days growing up there? That has helped you and quite a few others. Actually, there's 50, 000 people, but there's a few pretty impressive companies that have come out of those 50, 000 minds up there. Um, punching above its weight, I think is one way of putting that right from an innovation perspective. Any, any reason why just brilliant people?

Runar Reistrup:

Well, I can think of two. So one of them is that. It's, it's a small place, so everyone's quite self sufficient, but also it's, it's easy to innovate here because, um, you can get in touch with everyone quite easily. So it's smaller than a megacorp. Um, and within that, it, it counts everyone from the prime minister to, to the janitor, right? So, yeah. I think it, it has that part of connection across all spheres that I think is very important for innovation. Um, so I guess you come with a bit of an innovative mindset because you have to innovate, um, or you have to innovate is a big word. You have to make things work and you can't always call an expert. Um, and I think that that's the foundation of some innovation. The other thing is, and this sounds really counterintuitive, but I think it, helps you to think big. Um, because if you come from a place that's that small, there is never any point in thinking up a business that just limits itself to those islands. Um, unless it's a fully domestic business, but that's very different, but there's not the allure of saying, Oh, let's build something for people in this country, right? Britain is big enough that you can, conceivably build a very big company in Britain. You can't in the Faroe Islands in that sense.

Simon Hill:

Yeah, I think there's two aspects of, um, of community, which I think we're going to dig into more in this conversation. Um, and that, that needs to think big because your domestic market isn't, isn't as big. Uh, isn't big enough to support that thinking big. They're quite interesting paradigms that somewhat compete with each other as well, right? Um, from a, from a business perspective, and obviously you've ultimately got on a plane and left the Pharaohs, which I guess is somewhat of an inevitability as you scale something out as well, but still kept those roots there. And certainly the, the, the conference that's now springing up and building, building some momentum. It's quite a nice link between those things, right? Between innovation that's happening within the region. Not just the fairways but more broadly and then bringing that network in to also showcase that community piece. I know it's walking around how everyone basically knows everybody as you said from the the senior politicians and the restaurateurs who are Michelin star chefs around the world and everything else down down to the every everyday person on the street like it's it's a real community.

Runar Reistrup:

No, you're right. And it was great to have you there. Yeah, you know, because it, these, these communities are so dependent on inputs, right? If you don't, if you don't have a constant stream of input, uh, nothing progresses.

Simon Hill:

Well, let's, let's dig into the, um, the businesses that you've been involved in, right? You've, you've joined scaled led. And exited a number of, you know, a number of ventures and you're, you're currently well on your way to doing another one, I'm sure with, you know, do you know, talk, can you talk a little bit about the experiences of those and what, and kind of what, what combines them, right? This is a, it's a focus, a podcast that's focused on, on innovation and. I know when I first approached you about potentially coming on to this, there was a little bit of head scratching around what sure I can fit in what I do. And I was like, no, we're not. Everything you do is innovation, right? You build and scale ventures, which is exactly what innovators are trying to do inside large, large corporations. You're in the open talent space, which is very linked to, I think, how innovation at scale needs to happen going forward and everything else. But you just talk a little bit about. The, the businesses that you, yeah, that you've built and scaled and in your mind, what binds those different things from a career perspective?

Runar Reistrup:

So, so definitely what, what binds it is trying to build something new where a shift has happened and it could be a technology shift, it could be a shift in regulation, could be a shift in mindset even. Um, so Deepop was born out of. The fact that everyone started having a phone or a smartphone and every competitor out there the big one obviously being Etsy and not really made any big changes to how they were doing the day to day Etsy was a full scale Etsy sorry eBay was a full scale. And it was, it kind of worked as it worked. Meanwhile, a whole new generation had grown into very savvy smartphone and social media users, and they definitely wanted to express themselves. Um, fashion became a big. area of interest for much of this generation. And there was nothing really there in terms of tooling for them. So we just ended up building a tool very specifically for them. And it didn't even have a website. It was just a mobile app at a very early stage, which seemed like madness. And I think Probably in the beginning nine out of ten people to download a deep upset oh that's not for me and that was the point the point was that one out of ten downloaded and said this is exactly for me this is built for me so the community that built around it really started to. Not just use the app or try to practically make some money, but they, they started having an emotional connection to the rest of the community on there. So it became a real community for buying and selling. And even though the people that didn't buy and sell, they would open the app Eight times a day just to kind of see what was going on find inspiration etc but then of course kind of acid matured it kicked off as a real shopping platform and people could build a little livelihood on it right. University students could start funding their studies on it and people. Down to the age of sixteen operating through maybe their, their parents bank account, uh, we're able to start building small empires in the, uh, in the bedrooms. We, we met a lot of these people that came in, we hired a lot of them as interns and a lot of them, they were kind of 16, 17 years old. They already had. Staff right they had employed their one of their parents and employed their younger sibling to run to the post office three times a day and some of them are really starting to think well this could be my this could be my life's work at 16 and I realized okay this these people do not. buy into this general kind of 15 year old, 15 year career job trajectory. So these people are going to come out on the other end of say a study or any, any sort of specialization. And they'll start. selling those skills, be it social media manager skills, because they've been graded in DPOP or designer or developer or whatever. But these people, when they come to say the general age where we would expect people to step into the career ladder, they, many of them won't want to do that. They're, they've been self operating mini entrepreneurs since the age of 16. Um, they're not about to sign up to a, to a job and kind of start at the bottom of the ladder. Why would they? So, you know, Juno became a really interesting kind of evolution of that. Um, and that was the reason why I got involved with the company initially as an advisor, because I thought, look, I can see what's coming around the bend when it comes to the work force, I think. And it looks a lot less, uh, FTE full time employment based and a lot more skills and flexible based.

Simon Hill:

Which is a, which is a nice parallel, right? And I. And I, um, I definitely like that thread of the emerging workforce with different expectations and different parameters. And you kind of following them through. I don't know if you've seen any deep hoppers emerge into, you know, Juno land. I haven't followed that thread, but that's amazing. So right. So really sort of evidence that over, over a longitudinal, you know, lifespan of, of these people, but it is also phenomenal, right? Like I think that the, um, you know, I saw a stat recently that showed that, you know, these, the top. earners on this, on this less formal, informal, open talent, marketplace, influencer marketplace, whatever the language that might exist around it, you know, that outperforming celebrities, they are celebrities in many cases, right? And then there's a whole curve beneath all of that, that are outperforming the traditional working Pathways much earlier in their careers and their Yeah. You know, their concerns don't really lie up, whether that's a job for life. Right. So, well, I'll just pivot into something else if necessary and follow the, follow the trend, which is constantly bending. Um, but I'm sure you see, you see as well. So Yeah, if you, if you've, if you've got any stories you can share of that, you know, Depop to, you know, Juno evolution, that would be be super interesting.

Runar Reistrup:

Well, there's, there's obviously, we, we don't market that as a, as a natural evolution of course. But Unigine started as a creative marketplace for creatives. And if you've been great at building up your own fashion shop using social media, um, that's obviously a very sought after creative skills. So we see those people that kind of, I recognize the names of some early users there are. going in and they're generally kind of showing up in the more social media creative side. And there might be, they have multiple careers, right? There might be a micro influencer here. They might still be running a pretty profitable secondhand shop over here. And then they're contracting their skills out two days a week. Um, and it reminds me a little bit of when I was a student where I was, I was lucky to become a student off the internet, uh, just when it was taken off and it was quite easy for me to fund my university studies because I had. After. One year of digging in, I had skills that were sought after by pretty much every single large enterprise in the world. And there were too few of us. So in a way I did the same thing. I passed the, the, the beginning of the career ladder. There's certainly the earnings potential of, of, of, of that because you just start saying, well, if, if you can plug these skills into somebody that needs them, um, you can help them and you kind of, you're, you're a pretty attractive asset. on the, um, on the market pretty quickly. Um, and I think that's what happening every time there's a shift of some sort, um, kind of benefits the, the new generation coming, coming through.

Simon Hill:

Thinking about this, this podcast beforehand, I was thinking about this concept of community building. Um, and Clearly on the depop side, and I wouldn't mind drilling into that, you know, sort of vague stat that you gave of in the early days, you know, maybe eight or nine out of 10 people thought this isn't for me. If you think about that from an experimental point of view, from an innovation perspective, those kinds of key performance indicators could kill a lot of projects, right? And it's like, well, you know, like when we're not, and I, I guess part of that is knowing your market and understanding what you're doing. Part of it, I guess, is being a startup and You know, using that data to keep evolving what you're doing, right? You can, maybe that was the story at the time. Maybe it wasn't right. It was, uh, maybe that was a cause for concern, but how would you lean into that a little bit from a innovators dilemma perspective and everything else? Like, what is the strategy that sat behind that from, from your memory?

Runar Reistrup:

So I, I dug a lot into old theory of innovation and adoption. And there's this great book written in, I think 1956 called the diffusion of innovation, uh, which is, All about how an innovation in one sector spreads to all the people that would benefit from it and bottom line is it spreads really slow and this kind of 56 is pre internet so this is not about how the iPhone spread, um, the author of this, Everett Rogers, he dug into farming and How, how does, how do innovations in farming spread from one farm to the next to the next? And you think, well, it's obvious if, if one farm figures out that, uh, whatever, this pesticide makes a massive difference, the neighboring farm takes it on immediately. They don't. Um, and he was the father of this, um, adopter curve where it starts with the innovators, then comes the early majority comes to the, uh, uh, the late majority, et cetera. And every business I've built, I've always had that curve when it was drilled into me so early that I never think that, okay, we'll build this, um, that it's an innovation and the entire market will adopt it in one go. On the contrary, you should expect nine out of 10 to kind of wrinkle their nose and say, no, surely not for me. And you know, as the innovator, um, that if that innovation is successful, it's only a question of time. Um, so I think it was very conscious actually to say, look, not everyone is using their bones as their main digital device. Um, and we even tried, we failed to go after some of the big super sellers in eBay and say, Hey, why didn't you come over to our platform? And every single one of them says, No, it lacks all the features I need. Seems very fiddly to walk around with a phone and I'm pretty happy where I am. So all the super sellers on eBay, none of them saw these, these new platforms coming and jumped onto them as the innovators. I'm sure they did at the kind of earlier late majority, and I'm sure they're benefiting massively from it now, but as the innovator, they had no reason to innovate that there was, there was no need for them to take a risk. Um, and. Quite frankly, they're kind of, they weren't looking for new solutions. Um, they were kind of the kings of their castles. We built this for the people that didn't even have a laptop. We're probably never going to have a laptop in their life until they joined university and had to write bigger thesis. Um, and probably to this day, see the laptop as a very side device. Remember, remember back then the mobile was a side device. for most of us, we thought. Yeah. But for this generation, it was not. It was where everything happened. Exactly. Yeah. Um, so yeah, no, I would say it was a very specific idea that like let's build this for the innovators. Then once we've kind of run out of innovators, let's adapt it. So it becomes more early adopter like, and then once we run out of those, let's adapt it. So it becomes a, a mainstream App like it is today. Um, and then it was pretty quick. Took us about 18 months to go through that cycle, but we, we went through those cycles.

Simon Hill:

Let's, let's dig into that again. So, you know, a little bit more, the building for scale piece, right? You know, no, I don't know whether you like the term a unicorn or not, but you built one, right. By, by, by the, by the definition and congratulations for that. What, you know, we've talked a little bit on, on, on this, but every, every innovator's dream is. To build for scale, right? Get, get out of the lab, get it into the hands, find product market fit and drive and drive impact and therefore create value in whatever term that value needs to needs needs to find, right? So can we, can we think through that from your perspective? And I, you know, maybe that starts with all the way back to that, that slight difference of what, what, what do you get coming out of the Faroe Islands, which is community. And also, you know, a needs to think big outside of your existing Boundaries right you know for for planting words in your mouth i think there's a piece of that there right but what does it take how do you how do you build how do you build for scale

Runar Reistrup:

so i think in order to build for scale you have to plan for scale um i know some companies evolve from a small idea to something bigger but for me it's always been around well How big do you want this to be? Um, what, what kind of impact do you want this to make in a world? And this is where maybe you need a little bit of madness to be a founder. As you know, Simon, uh, you have to go, uh, against what you're kind of brought up with saying, think realistically, don't, don't shoot too high, et cetera. Um, when, when we built Deepop, we said, look, this is not really going to work unless a hundred million people use this. So there was no point in building something that was always going to be limited by the UK borders. One, they're not a hundred million and a certain not a hundred million of the target audience, maybe just four, five million. So, so we had to very quickly way before it was. Prudent. We had to start expanding. We launched an office in the US way before we had the UK sorted. And that kind of goes against conventional wisdom. Is it just, okay, focus on your home market, then spread out, right? That's what we all learned at school, but it's just not true. Because if you're trying to build something that becomes a global phenomenon, then you don't want to build it too much down one nationality or country border. You want to build it as global as possible from day one. That makes it very risky and, and most sane people would never embark on that strategy. So I think that's kind of the, maybe what you get from coming from a too small place is you don't really understand the difference between very big and very small and everything between the nuance kind of just gets lost. And, um, I think I, again, a couple of, uh, of comments when I said, um, if the UK is too small and somebody said, well. Look at, look at yourself in the mirror. Where, where do you come from? UK is not small, but it isn't small, but it's, it's, it's too small. If you're building a hundred million users of gen Zs, it just, that's the reality.

Simon Hill:

Do you think, um, I'm going to, provocate a little bit here and feel free to dance around this if you want to, but what was the mix of madness, look and strategy and all of this, right? You know, I look at this from. From a, you know, dream big and, you know, be willing to be the pirates in the Navy, I guess. Right. And from, from that perspective and everything else. So there's an element of that, right. You know, thinking and believing in, you know, in the impossible. There's a big piece of luck, right. It was an era of cheap money, which meant that we could, you know, we could throw cheap cash at this and scale. Would that be possible right now? I don't know. Right. And you're, you're living and breathing that in a different guys right now. So definitely welcome your, your, your take on it. And then obviously there was COVID that, that obviously impacted as well, right? So neither of those two things, I, I don't think cheap money is coming back soon and hopefully there's no more pandemics. Right. So, you know, that was, that was a unique time. Then obviously there is strategy and the brilliance of the team and the people and the execution and the timing and everything else. Right. Do you, how do you reflect on that, on those, those three, maybe there's other parameters, right? Well, yeah, add

Runar Reistrup:

timing to that, add timing. If we had built DPUP two years earlier, we would have. been too early. If we built it two years later, it would have been too late. That could be strategy and brilliance

Simon Hill:

though.

Runar Reistrup:

Yeah, exactly. Well, it fits in sort of timing is part of strategy. Um, I think there's, there's a certain level of madness needed, uh, at the beginning just to dare think it. Um, but it's not really madness if it's backed up by a strategy to say, look, it makes perfect sense. There's a new generation coming there's a big one of the big technology shifts in in the history of mankind has just happened and it normally takes about five years for existing companies to adapt it takes about two three years. Or that technology to, to, to mature. So you have a small window about two years where you can start something properly and we hit that to to your window perfectly. Um, so I think that was strategy in a sense. If you talk about. cheap money. Luckily, you know, Juneau grew up during the time where it was actually quite tight. So 2012, 2013, 14, it wasn't actually the, the, the year of, of, of, of cheap money. And once cheap money started coming, um, the company didn't actually need money anymore. Um, so it was, it was, it was going quite well without the need of, of, of, of money. So it was Um, an efficient growth story in that sense. Very European. Uh, but when it then comes to exit times and are you a unicorn or you're a failure, that has so much to do with luck, right? There's no two ways around it. Um, but there have been very many unicorns by now in the UK by kind of round value, I think 30, 40 or so. And how many AC exited unicorns have you had? Not many.

Simon Hill:

Not many, exactly.

Runar Reistrup:

A handful, maybe less. And the reason is that, yeah, they've been a unicorn at some point in the luck curve, but they might not have exited at the peaks of the luck curve. Um, I would hold my hands up and said, Deep Up definitely exited at the peak of the, of the luck curve or the post pandemic value boom curve. Um, for sure. So if you're a founder, please do not use that as a measuring stick of your success. Use impact.

Simon Hill:

So I think there is a piece of that that's worth considering, right? You know, we, um, we can move on to the, you know, Juno story a little bit now to sort of keep this thing taking a longer bit. And I was talking in a previous podcast with Balaji Bondili, um, of Deloitte Pixel. And so, in the, in the, the Deloitte Pixel case, Balaji talked about, you know, creating a business from within, uh, the ventures part of Deloitte, right? And in their case, they So a future where work was becoming more pixelated, which I think fits into, you know, the, the, the open talent aspects of, of, you know, do you know, how do we, how do you see the future of work? You know, what was it that, you know, built on that depop story that got you into, you know, June? I'm sure there's many places you could have applied your brilliant business mind. Um, but what was it that excited you about that? And what role do you think, you know, Juno and firms like them are going to play in the future of work?

Runar Reistrup:

So a number of things excited me on the very kind of base human level. Um, I've always been on the side of the mini entrepreneur, but I, I like, I like the people who, um, I like, I respect the people who, um, Have their own business and it doesn't really matter in which field it could be very manual, right? The, the, the, the janitor to set up their own company. As a child, I was always more fascinated by that than somebody hitting a C level at a big corporation. I, I just thought, Oh my God, this is interesting. You run your own company. Um, and so I've always admired that and. Building the foundation for that entrepreneurship to happen is, is, is something that we did a lot of the pop and I see every single freelancer as a mini entrepreneur, and they have their core skills. Which is what is really valuable to the company. And then they have all the other skills that are needed, kind of selling themselves, accounting, compliance management, all of the things that are probably not their skills in many cases. Um, some, some cases they are, but in some cases, people are just brilliant developers and everything else is faff. And could we take that away? Could we build the infrastructure for them to just show up with their talent? So that was the first one. And I thought, well, the world's going to need that because so many more people are not going to go into the kind of prepackaged PAYE way of engaging. They will have to take care of all of these things. And maybe it helps that I'm not very good at taking care of those kinds of practical things at a, at a ground level. So I, I can kind of. empathize with that. But then there was also, okay, what is the Biggest area of impact you can have what was the biggest what's the biggest part of people's identity very often is their work their family and their work and if that whole identity changes what do you really need around you when you embark on a journey where you say okay. I'm going to be brave. I'm going to just rely on my skills. I'm not going to rely on a career path or tenure or whatever. I'm just going to rely on my skills throughout the year. That's a pretty big, uh, commitment for anyone that says, okay, we'll support you on that journey. Um, and it requires a lot more than just being good and practical. It, you require some sort of an emotional connection with these people. And I think when I saw you in Juneau, they had acquired that personal connection, clearly doing good all the way through. Um, And then it's just the size of the market, Simon. The size of the used t shirt market, whatever you call the second hand is big. It's a multi billion market, but the size of the labor market is absolutely huge. It's insane.

Simon Hill:

Yeah.

Runar Reistrup:

And, and. I think in the world as marketplaces and no one's actually going to utilize the internet to build a proper marketplace around the higher skill sets. Yes, there are in the, in the lower skill set levels where work, I think, pixelated very quickly, right? They kind of. I want to color this logo in, or I want to translate this text to 10 languages that pixelated pretty, pretty quickly. You could compartmentalize it, send it out, get somebody to do it. But the, the high quality work, the work that's going to differentiate you as a company, um, leading your brand strategy, those things were always in the domain of, no, no, we need somebody who we hire in becomes part of the company, et cetera. Um, but the reason why that happened, I think, was because of the But there wasn't really the, the infrastructure and trust, um, to make sure that you can actually find those people and those people could work for you in a flexible manner. Especially not for larger companies, right? Smaller companies can do whatever they want. Larger companies, I don't know if you've worked in one, they're inflexible. Especially when it comes to talent, um, it takes you six weeks to onboard somebody. You already know, right? I have a project. I want you, Simon, to help me deliver it. It needs to be delivered in three weeks. There's no way I can engage you. No way. Um, I think the talent

Simon Hill:

market is huge, but that incumbent traditional way of working, it's shifting, but it's not shifting as fast as, as we'd like. Right. You know, there's a, there's a big, Elephant in the room, I guess, around all of this, which is still, you know, how core is the work that we're doing and, and how, how do we help accelerate that? Right. There's something about getting to those millions of users at Deepop that meant that, that the community could build in a different way, right? The supply and the demand. Of that two sided marketplace work differently than the incumbent elephants on the other side of this these large enterprises that, you know, there'll be a few people that are dabbling around the edges of people, you know, businesses like Deloitte pixel and others that are adding to their workforce for, you know, for certain things to improve margins and, you know, whatever, whatever it might be. But in reality, we're scratching the surface, right? Like it's a tip of an iceberg with 90 plus percent of that stuff still fully wedded to the permafrost at the center of the earth, right? And not really going anywhere. How do you, how do you see that, that shift happening? Because the data says it, it should, but it's not, it's not moving fast, right?

Runar Reistrup:

Well, I'm the optimist, I'm looking at the world in the, uh, in the adoption curve lens. So if I'm looking at that, 10 percent of companies have adopted this, that have taken a strategic approach to flexible workforce, things are moving not at light speed, but pretty fast. If you look at the tail end of that adoption curve, it's not moving. It's hardly moving. I don't think it's moving. Um, as you say, there are. There are these little experiments here and there and they will remain experiments until someone else, uh, there's also a big elephant has moved and everyone else starts moving. So I think, cause a lot of companies, a lot of enterprise companies have a stated second mover strategy. So how do you get a second mover to move on something when the first mover hasn't? Well, you can't, uh, you know, there's just no way. So I think, I think it's about. connecting with the people at the top of the organizations that have completely shifted towards this pattern. And there are some industries that have, um, you won't find a modern tech led, uh, consumer tech company, um, that is dying to get their first MSP in, right. It's not going to happen. Uh, or is dying to implement SAP. It's not happening. Um, they, those companies are. coming to a scale and they're looking for a different kind of solution. That's one place it starts. Or where work needs to be done really fast, or where the quality of work of the, of the contractors, freelancers is so important, right? Take the creative agency segment. Who you bring in to do the work is directly correlated with if you win the pitch. So who do you want to bring in? You're not going to bring in employees. They've adapted to a flexible working model. You're going to bring in the best people that you already kind of can see, okay. They've been skilled. Their skills have been validated. We might've seen them in the organization for the last five years, coming in, coming out. We've seen what else they've done. Actually, they've become so much better after they worked for Google. skillset. Um, those people are really important to the success of those companies. Um, and that's where we're looking and where we're looking, it's going pretty fast. I made the mistake of looking at the whole market and yeah, you, you know, you, you can be deceived to think that nothing's happening.

Simon Hill:

I think that draws a nice parallel between your D pop generation example earlier before, right? It's like the nine out of the 10 isn't your market. Basically it's the, it's the one, two out of the 10 that we're, that we're looking to drive the change of and. It's been initially in this call that Gartner didn't invent that hype cycle that, uh, that, you know, that, that someone else did in the 1950s. So studying

Runar Reistrup:

farmers, studying

Simon Hill:

farmers, exactly, exactly. So, look, I think we're, we're going to draw things to a close. It's been, it's been a great conversation. I think it would be an interesting way to wrap this up, to share any, any closing thoughts or salient advice that you might have for others that, uh, You know, looking to share the success that you've got, right? You know, are there any, any Aruna's top tips that, you know, do this, do not do this as you're looking to place the right bets and, you know, scale for impact in from a little idea upwards and outwards?

Runar Reistrup:

Well, I do kind of, we haven't touched on this, but it's, it's core of innovation. We've maybe said a bit of it in the beginning, but don't, if you want to look at, The success of anywhere i've been the ceo don't look at me look at the rest of the people in the organization right as one ceo you achieve very little and if i didn't need reminding or i would have a reminder in the last couple of weeks half of my team has been on holiday and i've been picking up kind of the functional streams and it turns out. Look, this thing would not work because not even, it's not the fact that someone is out and work needs to be done is the fact that the people that usually do this work are so much better than you are doing it. And you come in, I've even apologized to clients saying, you're stuck with me because our sales leader is the holiday and, uh, he, he's going to be the better person to speak to. But, um, yeah, I'll, I'll. Keep you warm until then. So I think, yeah, that's always been my principle, right? Hire people I would work for and, um, try to get them into a coherent team. If you don't, um, keep trying with any means because once that coherent team around you becomes the organization, you're the least, you're the least important, right? If you go on holiday for, for three weeks and come back, you'd be shocked how well things went.

Simon Hill:

It's the dream, right? That's the dream. I think also, you know, keeping things as lean as possible. It was interesting in your response to my Era of cheap money point that you made the very right point that you know We did this when it wasn't cheap and when by the time we got there we'd scaled it to a point We didn't really need the money and I think that that piece of don't think that throwing, you know Millions at this is the answer to it I think you know keep it as starved and as lean as you possibly can for as long as possible with the best core team That you can Is absolutely the right mindset for any innovation journey, any venture building, any business that you're trying to build, right? You can, you can get too overexcited about scale, scale, scale, meaning spend, spend, spend basically.

Runar Reistrup:

Yeah, it's, it's, it's easy to follow that, but of the, the valuation, uh, and the rounds as being the ultimate indicator of success. Um, but again, as we discussed, It's not, and it has less to do with you than the market.

Simon Hill:

Exactly. Well, listen, thank you very much. I know that you're a man in high demand and also very busy. Building your business and covering for your team's vacations. So they're

Runar Reistrup:

back, they're

Simon Hill:

back. Yes. Hallelujah. Right. At the end of the summer. Um, so thanks Runa. Um, for everyone that's listened today, we hope you enjoyed the episode as always, please share your thoughts and comments as we put this out into the marketplace, hit subscribe, which is one of many great podcasts that we're recording and have already recorded. Please feel free to go back and check any of the other episodes that we've referenced today or outside of this, this podcast today. But for today, Luna. All the best with, you know, Juno and congrats on everything that you've achieved so far.

Runar Reistrup:

Thank you. And thank you for starting this podcast. The podcast needed, uh, the world needed a Simon Hill in it. I'm sure.

Simon Hill:

Well, let's see. Hey, so far it's going very well and I massively appreciate you giving me some time today. Thanks, Luna.

Runar Reistrup:

Thank you.

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