The Effectiveness Files: HIVED

Murvah Iqbal, CEO & Co-founder of all-electric delivery company HIVED, joins the IPA Effectiveness Files to talk about the journey HIVED has been on so far, the origins of the business and the core principles behind the brand.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:14

Welcome back to the Effectiveness Files with me, Lawrence Green, Director of Effectiveness at the IPA. This podcast is brought to you in association with our good friends at TracSuit. I'm delighted to be joined today by Murva Iqbal, the founder and CEO of Hived, a logistics business that I'll be honest I didn't know about until I found out about you. So we'd love to hear more about the business as well as the brand you're building because our attention was drawn partly to the fact that it looks and feels like a brand from day one.

SPEAKER_01 0:49

100%. It's all intentional. We'll get into it later.

SPEAKER_00 0:53

And we and we we thought we'd start for sport just with your own personal brand because you've told me on the way down that um your name was misspelt on your birth certificate.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

So Yeah, so I've kind of grown it with various interpretations of my name. Um I guess it builds a bit of character that you just are I'm not fussed. But also how names it's led to interpretation, maybe there's some psychology that's left on me from there.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Maybe that's true. Good good early brand management uh uh guidance or or or malpractice.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

One thing is very unique, so every Instagram handle, every email address, it's it's available. So it's really good actually for branding name.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Oh, very good. Yeah. So uh before we chat about the business uh and then within that your brand, because that's what's really useful for our listeners to understand how the two work together. And indeed, because of the unique nature of what you do and your sort of founding premise, how you are helping other brands create a kind of end-to-end branded experience rather than just your own. If that makes sense. Um I'd love to hear about your history and how you how you came to set up the business.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Yeah, well, we have to go back quite early. So um from Manchester, maybe you can hear a little bit in accent, I'm not sure. Grew up in Manchester and I was surrounded with a family of entrepreneurs, small businesses though, not huge-scale businesses, more we do business because to make ends meet, as opposed to I'm going to build a billion-dollar company. So it's a bit different. Um, and so dinner table discussions were me around for me were primarily around business and whether that's just about understanding the key terminology from a really early age about profit, PL, etc., it was ingrained into me. And then um, I when I was 15 years old, social media was starting to make its first wave from the US to the UK, and my pair groups of 15-year-olds, we were the early adopters of Instagram, Twitter, etc. And my uncle had just started a fast food restaurant in Manchester called Archies. If you're from Manchester and you're listening, you definitely know what it is. Um, and I approached my uncle and I said, Hey, look, can I create um an Instagram for Archie's? This was really early on before any brands were leveraging social media for their brands. I'm talking like the Gymshark era, like really early on. No influencer marketing, I don't even think was a term. And he said, Yeah. Then I also subshed to Twitter. And then I was just because I was really ingrained into social media, because it was my peer groups, I just really loved it and started creating so much content for Archie's. No budget, had a shoestring budget. It was just creativity. And I was doing this from 15, 16, um, which kind of distracted me from my schoolwork in a positive way because I realized I got a lot of energy from creating um and understanding small things like photography, branding, menu design, store designs, how it all comes together to create more of an experience, and that can be more powerful than just actually how the food tastes. And if you get them both right, you can create an incredibly powerful brand. And Archie's became one of the fastest independent growing food chains in the UK and the highest grossing um, one of the food delivery platforms. So it was a phenomenal growth journey. And then um Archie's launched into Selfridges when I was around 18, 19, and I was in really senior meetings about designing the Archie's concept and Selfridges concession food. So I did it, I was going through intuition of what I felt was right, what I felt was cool at the time, no science behind it, but it was really important for me because I really understood then how brand, how social media, etc., was driving so much positivity to the business in ways that you wouldn't even believe or imagine creating this hype. Archie's had his cues up from on a Tuesday midnight around the block, and that was because of the hype and the virality on social media was creating. And then alongside that growing up, I was also playing football. I was also captain of Man City Faith Ladies Football Club from around um eight or nine to seventeen. And importantly, when I was there, the UAE um the Abu Dhabi owners took over, and I could see the whole shift of everything, of the woman's brand, of the game, of everything they were doing, and how much they thought about every single detail from the trading complexes to how they looked to how the junior team represented themselves. So that was also kind of an important experience for me. But then I think juggling all three, right? So I had school, and my parents had to make sure that I did really well at school because they wouldn't allow me to play football. And then at football, I was I didn't ever want to lose and super competitive, so I was putting my all into that, and then obviously the archie stuff as well. And so from an early, really early age, I had a very demanding schedule of balancing all three. Um, I managed to do so successfully, and then I went to university, I was doing archies at the same time, but then when it got to my third year of university, I was like, I actually have to really pass my degree and do well. So stopped the archies, and then football. I left when I was like 17 because I wanted to go to university. But I guess the story is that business has always been in some part of me, but most importantly, really early on, I've understood the power of brand. Um, and anything, any business that I've wanted to do, I've you know started multiple businesses that didn't that didn't work out post you know, Hive didn't just we wake up and work from that period of leaving university to 21 until I was 25 when I founded Hive, started lots of different businesses, some that worked, some that didn't really work. Um, but everything always revolved around brand and the potency of brand. And so that's how I guess my business journey started. I guess I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I just didn't know how that would be. But I always knew I wanted to. I think there's something creative about being an entrepreneur, which I always had in me.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

That was a pretty explosive response to that. No, no, no. Uh I didn't think there's ever been a I mean you're our youngest guest by a long way, but you also by the age of 17 you chalked up more than most uh people have. But even when you I really want to talk about Man City, but we won't do that. Even when you talked about the Archie's brand, which I think I knew about but have never eaten at or from, um you were describing two things. You were describing hype and virality, which are kind of outward manifestations of the brand, promotional aspects. But you're also describing menu choices and design and stuff, which are very much those sort of organizational principles, aren't they? So how do how did you know, or do you think this is just a supernatural gift?

SPEAKER_01 7:18

I think it was intuitive because I knew if we did the right things on the menu and designed the right look of the burgers and supported with that, people were inclined to take more photos that would post online and chatter about it. And we actually had a collaboration, so with Hellman, the Mayonnaise brand, and I designed a burger that I was like, okay, what can we do? Because Archie's is known for burgers, Hell Hellman have got in touch, and then we created this hot as Hellman burger, like a chick a chili burger, but that was using Hellman's massive traditional brand with a Archie's. So for me it was all in it was all one, it was all the same goal: how to drive virality, how to drive brand appeal, and anything we could do with that. So where there's how the store looked, how the how the names of the milkshakes, everything kind of revolved around that purpose. But there was no book that I read or nothing that kind of I learned, it was just intuitive for me, I guess, from an early age. And I just it just kind of all clicked in my head. And I always say this, and I think a lot of female l listeners who are probably lead listening to this, intuition guides me all the time, even today. And the biggest decisions I'm making my business, it's always intuition. And sometimes I won't have, I'm not sure why, but I listen to it. And now, as I've been trained as a leader, I've learned to tune into it more and more. But I've always been led by by my intuition, and it's kind of, and I think a lot of females do. Um, but I can't say that I read a book or I learned anything, it was just all happened naturally for me.

SPEAKER_00 8:41

And then that that period between university and hive, short as it was, you said it was pockmarked by failure. W were they um were there lessons in there that have helped you?

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Huge lessons. Um so after I graduated from university, I actually got a few job offers with consulting firms. And my parents said to me, Well, if you're gonna stay in London, we're not gonna give you any money, take the jobs, and I was like, Oh, I don't want to take this consulting job, I want to start my own business. Even though my dad had started his own business, he just knew how much risk there was involved in that, and so he didn't want me to go through that. And so I from that 21-25, there were so many lessons learned. But the one lesson, the biggest lesson I came out from it was just to kind of realize that when you do fail, that's when you get the biggest lessons. And I was really quick to adapt and learn and change during that process. So the reason why Hive actually started because when we when I was 23, I started a business called Van Vers, which was a van advertising business. So we saw lots of delivery vans in central London driving all the time. You know, they're all predominantly white, big space. I thought, why is no one advertising on these in a similar way to tubes are and taxis are, etc. So I started that business. Um, but what it taught me was um we actually had a few customers, like we had a couple of really big uh customers that actually signed up for us and we were actually revenue generating. But the key problem was it was that outdoor advertising wasn't was declining, it wasn't on the rise that digital was, and the market size was never big to become a massive behemoth tech company. And I always wanted to build a massive behemoth tech company because I went to San Francisco when I was 19, 20, and I was and I learned all about Silicon Valley or the startup logic, and I was like, that's what I want to do. And so with the outdoor advertising, it wasn't really working, but inside me, it didn't, I didn't wait for it to just fail. I already knew, okay, this is it's and it's hard because you are revenue generating. You can go through wrong signals that oh no, it's working. But really, I had to like zoom out on like, is this really what I want to do? And that early on taught me though that you know, I don't regret anything doing that, but it taught me to really make sure you don't go from the false negatives almost, right? Like you're going through the wrong signals, and a lot of a lot of business entrepreneurs and founders will do this, just keep going at it until it becomes something, and taking that step back. And ultimately, if we didn't, and the van advertising company in hindsight, probably not the smartest idea, but the reason why we're at Hive now is because we had so much data from all the delivery vans driving around London and realized, well, this is really inefficient, we should do something about this, and then looked into the market size of parcel delivery, etc. etc. So led into that. So everything's a journey. You know, success is never linear, it's uh you know, ups and downs constantly. And that 21 to 25 year old was extremely formative for me because it didn't have much time, it didn't have much money, and I just had to figure something out. But it was arguably one of the best learning curves I went through by removing that safety comfort blanket of not taking the job and just figuring something out.

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Yeah, and I love that it makes sense in retrospect, even if it didn't make sense at the time. Yeah. It's um yeah, they say when you crash you should you should always grab the black box recorder. So do you know what I mean? Rather than just cur curse your luck or um re reach the wrong conclusions. Um so hived then.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

So where does it start? On a napkin, or was it directly sprung from the those van journeys that you were mentioning?

SPEAKER_01 12:10

No, honestly, so we so when I when we did the van advertising business, I would spend a lot of time actually applying physically advertising on these vans late night, wherever the vans were parked, or at the delivery depots, interact with a lot of delivery drivers, and we had GPS trackers inside of all these vans to realise, analyze the data of where they were driving to display the right advertising. And me and my co-founder just looked at it and thought, this just doesn't make sense how massive the market is. These delivery drivers are driving in nonsensical routes, they don't have any technology because we were interacting with them daily basis. We went into the delivery depots and they were just a gigantic mess with no organization. And we were like, looked into more and more into the market. And this was just before COVID really kicked off. I looked into more and more and it's like, okay, e-commerce is nearly 10% of UK GDP, which means that e-commerce delivery is probably a percentage of that. So you've got this behemoth, like, you know, part of society which is run on old spreadsheets and no technology, and it's only getting bigger. And then COVID happened and it did get bigger. And so when COVID happened, we wound down Van Vers and we literally got on our bikes and started delivering parcels. And that sounds like, oh, how did you do that? But that's literally what we did. I went on LinkedIn, messaged a few small business owners because I knew they were frustrated with their delivery because I would go back on their trust pilot, it'll go back to brand. Hey, you're affecting your brand because I'm seeing that a lot of your trust pilot bad reviews are nothing about your product, it's always about the delivery experience. Can we do something about it? And we got a lot of traction really early on. My co-founder built the first version of the product technology, very, very low-skilled, like a lot of manual stuff at that point. But just to get up and get going and to validate is there, is there is there something to to you know cotton onto here? But when we started, we had four principles that we still have today, which is funny because I wasn't like stuck to them. I just, this is the thesis we had at the start, and I was you know, you know, open if it changed. But what the four principles of how we wanted to create, always based on technology and AI native, etc. for sure. But when we were pitching to like the logistics buyers, I always had in my mind, like the people who were logistics buyers, it was like four key things. One was reliability and SLA. Does the parcel get there on time? If you if you can't do that, then you can't speak to logistics buyer. But secondly, it was quality. There's no point the delivery getting there really quickly, but was it throwing over the fence? Was it a bad delivery experience? Thirdly, it was sustainability, end-to-end electric. That was default for us. We were never going to compromise on that. If you're building a delivery network in the 21st century, by default should be electric. And fourthly, brand. Um, and I don't think any you know B2B delivery company would think of brand as one of the core principles, but those four things are still what resonates today.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

So you're describing those as four founding principles, but I really recognise them in the brand that I see today. I mean, obviously I'm not I'm not a cus I'm not a not a not a customer. Yeah. I may be a beneficiary of a better parcel delivery, not thrown over my fence. Um but it seems that those four things still really hold true. But I'm interested in those first few weeks and months of knocking on doors metaphorically. Who who responds who responded quickly to that proposition?

SPEAKER_01 15:24

It was a lot of up-and-coming direct consumer brands. So a lot of single founder brands doing everything and were trying to get their business off the ground, but were churning and losing customers due to a bad delivery experience. So that was small jewelry brands, um, cleaning product brands, like really small brands we're talking who might be only doing 20 deliveries a day, but that's still a huge amount to them if they're starting their business up. And the main reason that they were losing customers was a bad delivery experience. And so they those were our first ilk of customers. And then we graduated slightly to a bit more of a mature SME brand. So something like Minor Figures, uh, which is an oat milk, that ilk of brand and like Percival clothing. And then from then we were able to graduate. But really, it was the early, you know, the the the early brands that were feeling the pain day in, day out, who had the decision-making power as well. That's really important because you want quick sales at that point. Some of the sales cycles of big enterprise customers can be a bit longer, but we didn't have time to wait. Whereas if you speak to a founder who's struggling with their deliveries, they can get you onboarded tomorrow, um, if if that makes sense. So that's how we targeted, and obviously we've evolved our go-to-market strategy as we've scaled.

SPEAKER_00 16:30

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I'm guessing that some of those early customers were subscription businesses as well. So the idea that someone would cancel their subscription because of something out of their control, I would feel that pain.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

And actually cost as well. So if you're actually so subscription for sure, if the delivery's not going right, the customer will be like, all right, the delivery's not happened to me a third time ending the subscription. But if the package gets and it's broken, that brand or that retailer has to send out a new delivery if it's et cetera, if they're you know, or a refund. So there's a there's uh an iceberg of hidden costs associated to going wrong with bad delivery. And that's what brand owners, D2C brand owners and retailers, they feel and they know, and they know that a lot of that is with the delivery, which they don't control. And so Hive came in and said, Hey, look, we can do this better. We work in partnership with you, not as a supplier, and to get rid of all these issues.

SPEAKER_00 17:19

And within that, so um proposition four brand. Yeah. That doesn't just mean that you wanted to understand that you were a brand, but you wanted them to understand that you respected their brands as well.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

100%. The way we look at it is you you know, these brands spend millions of pounds on their websites, on everything, make the product, everything looking great, but the actual physical touch point with your customer is at the doorstep. We also have to have a brand that represents your brand. And I think that's what a lot of our customers that we work with, big retailers, they really value because that's really important, it's make or break that physical touch point. And we're in control of that journey, not the brand, right? But we say, like, we invest into our brand just as much as you do. And that's in the in this day and age as well, now when customer acquisition cost is a lot higher, brands are looking into more how can we actually retain our customers. And so we we we position ourselves as an extension of their brand, and that's how we've positioned and that's how we think about it, and that's how everyone at Hive thinks about it.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

So I'm gonna come back to brand so so that we can unpack that more fully. But tell me how you how you scale, because for most of our audience, most people who work in advertising, scaling the business is not an alien concept, but it's something for other people to do. You know, we we'll um we'll provide the moving images, you know, that create the space or the promise or the fame for the business builder. But you started on bikes.

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Just me on my bike, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Yeah. Okay, so tell my personal bike. Help me to understand the supply side. That's what I suppose that's what I'm saying, is advertising people tend to look at the demand side. Yeah, but I suspect that actually.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

You have to do supply and demand.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

Yeah, okay. So tell me about tell me about supply.

SPEAKER_01 19:02

So if we don't supply, we have no demand, right? And so they're equally as important for us. And every every single day since I started delivering parcel on my bike that day, we've never stopped, and we've always had pretty much 99% SLA time, and we've never had one downtime or failure or nothing like that because you can't you can't afford to get the supply wrong. In the initial six months to a year, honestly, between me and my co-founder, probably slept about five-six hours. The every other working hour was hived, and we actually slept in different shifts, so that my co-founder was in the night time because our operation is also 24-7. And so, genuinely, for the first year, it was a lot of brute force and energy and being on top of anything. We then obviously raised some capital um around£1.75 million, which depending on the audience, some people say that's a lot, some people say that's a little. And at that point, it was a lot for us personally because everything else was on credit cards, but obviously nothing near what we've raised today or where we needed to head to. But as soon as we raised some capital, then we started hiring people, building system, building processes, and scale the supply side really quickly. But the supply side has the one fundamental thing that we built the business by is by technology. And if you bake in technology in every process and system that you've built, then it becomes a lot easier. And that's our core advantage over these incumbent networks because the incumbent networks aren't technology driven. They've laid on technology after, but it's a lot harder. Whereas for us, we've designed all technology first and we've had the luxury of starting from scratch almost from new in this day and age of not using monolithic architecture for technology platforms, etc. So the supply side has been extremely robust, and you only we're only like no one in logistics, it's hard, right? Because no one really doesn't care about what you've done. It's about every day has to be amazing. And so reputation is really important. So if we get the supply wrong, we get the demand wrong. And that's what I've said to all my team. Majority of our biggest customers have actually come through because our supply is so brilliant. They've actually been receivers of personal parcel, parcel delivery and thought, hey, I've received your parcel from Zara, exceptional service. Can we use you for our brand? And so I've always said if we get the supply right, the demand will follow. And that's something that we've we've led with, and still to this day we do.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

So we'll come back to that as well because that makes sense, but I'd like to talk a little bit more about it. But along the way, or maybe before you got on your bike to deliver that first parcel, you have built a brand, you've got a name. So why is why is it hived? Where does that come from?

SPEAKER_01 21:35

That's a funny story. I I'll give you the actual real story, not the PR story. Um, so when we were actually starting the business, the um I think that Innovate UK had an application that they would give a grant for innovative companies helping in logistics and supply chain. And we had about an hour to submit our application. We did all that application, and I was like, name of the company. It's like, oh, name of the company. I have no, I have no idea. And so me and my co-founders on a whiteboard brainstorming for one hour. And I guess it was probably playing on my mind because I'm from Manchester. The symbol of Manchester is a bee. And we always thought of like hived as in like this network of like the bee thing. So and I also think it's we I wanted one short, powerful word. And I think it is quite powerful. Um I didn't want a long company, and I it needed to be short, the name, so people could remember it and catch it. But I wish I had a better answer. It was just again spontaneous and intuitive.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

No, it's it's a good answer. I I I know the B from Boddington's and the transport network, and that explains your colourways as well.

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

And the gilets and stuff that your team wear. Um supply and demand.

SPEAKER_01 22:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:45

We've heard this a little bit when we've talked to other entrepreneurs that and this is why it's very helpful for our listeners, because we tend to be asked demand questions or find demand answers for business problems when often they are supply-led. But at some point, surely that has to flip to be a demand well, or not. You you tell me. Um at some point does it have to either flip to be demand-led or at least be building a pipeline or building out reputation above and beyond just the service.

SPEAKER_01 23:24

Yeah, for sure. So it's interesting because supply is our product, which is quite different, I guess, from a lot of maybe people you've had on the on the podcast before, but our business product is getting the parcel, supplying the parcel from the warehouse to the customer. But obviously, as Hive has evolved in scale, we've had to build up the demand function of the business quicker than the supply because I'm looking already at 20 or 28 targets and I'm working backwards because we're, I think we're we're growing, you know, ridiculously fast year on year. Um we were ranked, I think, seventh fastest growing company Sunday Times. And so I'm like, how do we get to number one in two years? And so I'm constantly like trying to be ahead of where we need to be the demand, and that works backwards from today and what we need to do. And a lot of that is how we get our customers to talk about us more, how we build a great brand, how we build a great reputation. Of course, we do all the other things like being at events. Now we've had a sales team and things have developing, but equally important is like when you get to some scale, when you pass the famous inflection of product market fit piece, um, you definitely have to start building demand and supply together. And supply and demand for us are kind of just building together. And and I know the team are working really hard on the supply side of like where we our network's gonna be like in 2028, um, and the demand team are doing their own as well. And so for us, we have it all goes down to though, I think, you know, the demand will happen if we produce a great product. If we if I can speak to a customer and have trust in the product and the service that we deliver, it makes my pitch a lot easier. It makes the customers' pitch, it makes our team's pitch a lot easier. And so for me, that focus hasn't shifted of making sure the supply, which is our product, exceptional, and demand will happen. And people talk to each other, you know, heads of buying at these logistics at these big companies, they speak, referencing is so important. Um, I'm forever grateful for our first customers, even no, no matter how big or small they are, but that flywheel is intact and reputation is so important. And some of our early customers still have me on WhatsApp. And if something's, you know, might have you know happened and not gone right, I you know, tell them to message me, and they do, and I respond immediately, even though they might be a tiny compared to where of some of our big customers, but we wouldn't be here without them. And reputation and you know, word of mouth is so important, and arguably a majority of our demand has come from word of mouth, inbound. Um, and that's because our supply is good, but also customers feel that they can talk about us, and word of mouth is always the best form of rep of demand generation, essentially.

SPEAKER_00 26:00

And so uh I'm sitting opposite you rather than your head of marketing. Yeah, but if she was answering that question, uh so she's one way of framing her role is demand generation. So, what what does demand generation look like in a business where you have a business audience, first of all, and as you quite rightly point out, supply is your product. Tell me about what that sort of marketing plan or marketing objective looks like.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

Yeah, it's quite funny. So our head of marketing has actually led our CS team, customer service team, which for me allows her and she she gets a lot of insights into what our customers like and recipients, I mean, who people are receiving the parcels, what they like, what they don't like, and what can we double-click on. And you can get those insights by people speaking to each other, but actually owning that team, you feel it a lot more, uh like actually owning the CS team. And we have a very lean team and team for marketing and always have been extremely lean, but it's one of the most critical things for our company. And I've always believed in like the creative brand side of marketing being quite lean for us because it just fosters a lot of creativity, and we're in logistics business, margin is everything at the end of the day, and that but we have such a small lean team, and what how we've done really well in the early days is also leverage other brands that we work with. So, for instance, and this is still on the roadmap to continue to do in the early days when we worked with Candy Kittens, we did a co-branded van with Candy Kittens. Jamie Lang posted about it. Jamie Lang has a massive platform that didn't cost us anything, it just cost us the you know the wrap of the vehicle, but it was very clever to leverage their brand for our brand. But also, how can we create a brand that other brands want to leverage our brand, if that makes sense? And then we we also look, and I think the more our head of marketing is doing this a lot in the what we've evolved is where our customers are, where our audience is. And for us, that has been LinkedIn. LinkedIn has been massive for us, and we continue to do more and more on LinkedIn, but it all has to feed together, right? How does the website look? To how does the the LinkedIn look, but then to how does our email footer look, to how does our presentations look, to how does the internal depot signage look. Our head of marketing is on top of everything that touches like visual brand of Hived. And that can be anywhere. Honestly, the toilet sign for the depots get signed off from our marketing team. And it goes the whole thing because if you're a customer and you're coming to visit one of our sites, you want to feel the continuity of the brand everywhere. And we want to feel that internally. And so everything we do has quite is quite measured and quite thought out and really important for us.

SPEAKER_00 28:35

So there's a couple of things in there that I think are really helpful. So first, your head of marketing coming from CS. I mean, that doesn't happen very often, but if if marketing is arranging your organization around the needs of your customers, then it's strange that that doesn't pull through more often. But secondly, if I was visiting a depot and I could see that you were taking your brand seriously enough that the signs to the loose are correctly typed and presented, I think you would respect my brand.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Which presumably is another little flywheel within the bigger flywheel.

SPEAKER_01 29:09

And no one will notice the toilet sign, but they'll notice a bad toilet sign. Do you know what I mean? It's like a lot of the things are like subconscious in marketing. I always think and brand building. It's like how you walk into our office, like the things displayed on the desk, the wall, features, the wear office, everything is is created intentionally, but no one really thinks about it's a subliminal, it's the subconscious. And I think that's what we've had to do really well, is tie it all together.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

So just because you use that word, how much is it intention and how much is it just culture? Have you created something that is self um propelling in terms of an understanding that you're a you're a brand, not just a margin needy logistics challenger?

SPEAKER_01 29:56

It's absolutely intentional, but breezes the culture. Everyone knows about it. And everyone, when they join Hived, have a part of their onboarding experience, have an element of brand, which I don't think many delivery companies would do, right? Like, this is how you speak about hived, this is our brand values, this is what we do, and this is the colours you use, this is what we don't use, the typography. Like people know to like it's intuitive in everyone now, is like how how we show up, how we look at trade fairs, what uniform are the sales team we're wearing. Everything is thought out. So it's very intentional, but now it's in in everyone's culture. And I'll be the first one. If I see something externally, I'm like, that's off brand. They know I'll be the first one to look at it and pick at it. But now the team do that themselves, and I don't have to do that. But we have a great opportunity because we're in the physical world and the digital world. So we have millions and millions of touch points with customers every every month, right? People receiving our packages, have the delivery experience, the tracking pages, everything, but also the physical vehicle that that dri that arrives at the door with the uniform of the driver. So we have so much touch points of brand that it has to be all tied together nicely.

SPEAKER_00 31:02

What have been what have been the pinch points? So you make it sound very easy.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

So uh yeah, tell tell me about the pinch points or the uh or the yeah, the the hurdles you've had to clear along the way.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

I think just being 25 and starting logistics business, not many people take you seriously. And to be honest, it's completely fair and reasonable. Um and that comes with a f a lot of challenges along the way, but you know, tr truthfully, in the first two years of the business, I slept with my phone on loud 24-7, and it did ping throughout the night constantly, and it you just sacrifice absolutely everything. And I have um probably taken one holiday since we started the company for one week, and yeah, of course, you have like the bank holidays here and the weekends off here or there and Christmas and stuff, but actually you don't really ever switch off. I've never completely switched off, and that comes at a cost. Um, so that's on the personal side, um, but in the business, ups and downs, so many. I said at the start, success is not linear, it goes up and down, up and down, up and down. We opened one of our uh we made a massive investment into a massive new warehouse that was right next to the Heathrow uh airport, which uh the fire that happened. That was a very scary moment because we had to close our warehouse down and we had two weeks worth of customer stock just stuck down, we couldn't access it because it was closed off by police. That was outside of our control, and the world does throw you things outside of your control. But our whole proposition that we sell is high-quality delivery experience. But what can you do if the police have not let allowing you access to your site? So you have to manage those relationships. We had one of our worst Christmas peaks was in Christmas 2022 when there were strikes from roll mail, there was snow, so our parcel volume went through the roof and we didn't have enough supplies for the demand. And I was doing deliveries, and and so there's so many challenges that I can look back at. But what what excites me is that we've been through so many challenges, and now I'm like, well, we've got through that. So whatever we're faced with, we're gonna get through it. And again, goes back to that resilience you build along the way because you're like, Well, we've we faced this something before, you become a bit immune to it almost. Um, but definitely a lot of personal sacrifice has gone into it, as well as, of course, day-to-day issues on the business side. And unfortunately, as a business owner and a founder, you never feel like you're doing a good job, you always feel like you're failing, and so that's pretty hard. You're working constantly hard every single day. No one's telling you, oh, great job, well done. And you're you're you're you're yourself's biggest critic, and you always want to do better. And you know you're failing at a million things because what you work on in a daily, day-to-day basis is the big fires, and you know there's all these little fires happening. So once you get through the big fires, solve something like, oh, okay, this is got this is the this. And so you're never you're never content.

SPEAKER_00 33:53

So um let's r reach towards the close of this conversation by putting some numbers on this thing. So it started five years ago. 2021. And what what do your numbers look like now? Just give us a sense of the scale of the business, quite how quickly you've got to today's size.

SPEAKER_01 34:11

In 2021, we started off and we, yeah, like I said, we're doing maybe a few uh by the end of the 2021, maybe a few hundred parcels a day, which we felt massive. I think in the end of um end of last year on a daily basis, we were doing upwards of about 50-60,000. So that's in the parcel numbers. Um this year we're expected to triple. So every year we've tripled or doubled, um, more than doubled, sorry, last year. So yeah, it's it's growing pretty, pretty big in quite a quick succession.

SPEAKER_00 34:45

And if I picked up the Sunday Times, what what numbers would it report? It would have revenue and it's it's it's it revenue.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

Um we're we've raised about 60 million in venture capital, so we're still venture capital backed. Um but they did our financial year from actually 2020 uh 20 mid-2024 to mid-2025. So it's actually quite behind where we actually are. That's why hopefully next in the next year you'll pick up and see a lot different. But I think they reported about 10 million. That was in that 2024 to 2025, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

And you sound like someone who's still sleeping with your phone on, or have you managed to put it on silent?

SPEAKER_01 35:23

I it's hard. It depends on what's going on business-wise. And we now have like footprint of like, you know, even though we're locally based in the UK, we have like investors around the world. So I do a lot of travel um as well. And generally, I'll be honest and say no. Um, I think there's it it's just what keeps me going though, because yeah, some days I will sleep great, don't get me wrong, but other nights I'm still not really sleeping very well. Um, but this year it's for me, it's all about okay, we've done five years, we want to get to another, we know it's gonna take another five years to get this company to the stage that we want like massive, you know, billion-dollar company. And it's marathon, not a race, so this year is all about sleep, nutrition, and exercise for me. I've probably neglected that more than ever in the past few years, which is hard for me because I was an athlete growing up. And you I have to sort of train and be like an athlete for this journey. So trying to get better at the sleeping stuff, but and the I'd definitely take off more days now on the weekends and things like that, but ebbs and flows. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:28

That's a classic founder's story, isn't it? That mad mix of personal and corporate. I um I wanted to close there by saying uh well, it would be wrong for us just to talk about revenues because you said right at the top that one of the four values or corners of the mission was sustainability. Yes. And so how how do you measure that? Yeah, so it's all electric?

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Everything. Every vehicle in our fleet is electric from the final mile and the middle mile. So we collect in bulk from retailers' warehouses across the country in the electric lorries, which we're one of the only companies to do in the UK.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

And are you capturing what carbon impact? And then that in turn becomes part of the supply side proposition?

SPEAKER_01 37:09

Yes, so um, every parcel shipped with Hive reduces emissions to up to 76% carbon saved, um, which is quite significant if you think about comparing us for a like to like who use a traditional network. Um, and that has come with a different, you know, we've had to make big investments into this as well. And we've never gone against that premise. I mean, it's a lot easier to chase revenue. We probably in a lot more make a lot more revenue or different things or not as expensive as much and installing these fast charges, etc. But it's something that we believe in the long term for.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

But even things like B Corp, which you got pretty quickly.

SPEAKER_01 37:47

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 37:47

I mean, that's resource allocation that is discretionary.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

Yep, we have a head of impact as well. Like we a lot, we do a lot internally as well. But we I think the B Corp thing is great because it holds a mirror to you. And uh we have an impact report that we publicly announce every year on our website, holds us accountable as well that this is what we set out to achieve this year, this is what we did achieve. Um, and brands and retailers, you're earning trust and respect by doing that, and we own up to where we need to improve as well. We don't say we're perfect, and we share this is what we need to fix and what we need to do. But it builds trust, it builds a reputation. And if a retailer, they're really they're really afraid of greenwashing. They don't want to work with a partner who's claiming all these things but then can't back it up with the science and the data or the accreditation. So for us, the B COP was like, well, we want to hold a mirror to ourselves, we want to show you know this trusted entity, but we also do a lot more. We've done independent lifecycle analysis that have come in and explored. So it's not our findings that 77% stuff was an external agency came and done a lifecycle analysis. So it just builds trust. And we're showing we're we're sharing the learnings and the journey along the way publicly, and we are not perfect. You know, there's still things that we want to work and get right, but at least then it holds the whole team accountable, even if some of the team members don't really know about this, and even drivers, drivers, we've educated them and what how much impact they're having, and they feel a lot more better about doing their job. It's not just about earning money. And so it's all the small things that come together, but for us, it's never that's never been our USP, sustainability. And it never will be the quality of it for us. If you're building any business in this day and age, it sort of has to be in your DNA, right? Like you have to build from the best principles. That's how we've always seen sustainability.

SPEAKER_00 39:30

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. What what else would you like to tell me? Um, but it's been a fascinating journey from the kitchen table via Man City to some failures and now success thus far on an epic scale. The fact that you can sit opposite me and talk totally confidently about a billion dollar business. I love to pieces.

SPEAKER_01 39:55

One funny thing is, and I guess really to brand is that I'll guess ask you a question how many deliveries do you think people receive on average, maybe a year or whatever.

SPEAKER_00 40:06

Well, I always overcook my averages. So, and I've learned that like when you're asked like how many times people go to a restaurant in a year and you go, it's two. You know, what? Um I'm gonna say 30, 3-0.

SPEAKER_01 40:18

In the whole year?

SPEAKER_00 40:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:20

So the average UK person has one parcel to them every single day. You are I mean every week, sorry, week, week, week, week. Okay, so I'm not so far away. No, once a week. But it's every person in the UK, whether you're two months old or 99.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

And growing.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Yeah. And so the brand impact, value, like parcel delivery is becoming part of daily society, which is just crazy. And it's just growing even further. So it's that's in it's like it's it's it is part of society now. It's like sho online shopping is just part of daily life almost.

SPEAKER_00 40:53

Yeah, I think that's right. Well, congratulations on having the most dynamic, fastest growing brand in that space. I think that's been an awesome ride just to listen it, listen in to rather than to live through.

SPEAKER_01 41:08

We want we want to we want to be the delivery brand that everyone, if you if I ask you, what's your favourite delivery company? I want it to be hived, and I want everyone to say hived, and that's what we're going for. Because unfortunately, delivery doesn't have a great reputation when people talk about delivery brands. We but we want to be the one that everyone thinks, no, hived the best. I love hived. And that's kind of our aim and vision, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 41:27

Yeah, well, it makes perfect sense. I think you've but you've built something that has a pretty good chance of doing that.

SPEAKER_01 41:33

A long way to go, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Yeah, well, I'm sure. But well done for the for getting where you have got to so quickly. Um and good luck for the five years ahead. Thank you. Then have a holiday. Thanks, Merva.

SPEAKER_01 41:48

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Effectiveness Files. Stay tuned for further episodes coming soon.