Latest / Let Them Fly - Heather Harries Ed Hub / Success starts by thinking differently with Matt Hagger
Transcript
- 0:18SPEAKER_00: Hello, welcome to Let Them Fly, the podcast that answers questions that parents have from across Jamaica.
- 0:25SPEAKER_00: We enjoy interviewing guests that have got varied careers and hopefully produce some options and some interest for your children.
- 0:34SPEAKER_00: So today I'm really well I'd really like to welcome Matt.
- 0:37SPEAKER_00: Matt Hagger, I think we can say we're old friends.
- 0:40SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 0:41SPEAKER_00: Matt has he fascinates me.
- 0:43SPEAKER_00: He's perhaps one of the most um exciting people that I know in terms of technology.
- 0:48SPEAKER_00: You're an entrepreneur and a technology pioneer.
- 0:53SPEAKER_00: Is there a better way for us to be saying that?
- 0:55SPEAKER_01: I guess so.
- 0:56SPEAKER_01: I guess so.
- 0:57SPEAKER_01: It might be the way my brain works, yeah.
- 0:59SPEAKER_00: I think your brain working is, yes, we'll come on to that.
- 1:02SPEAKER_00: Um and you started your first company when you were around 20.
- 1:05SPEAKER_00: I did.
- 1:06SPEAKER_00: And um you do startups.
- 1:08SPEAKER_01: I do.
- 1:09SPEAKER_00: And several of them have done very well, I believe.
- 1:12SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 1:12SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, worked quite hard.
- 1:14SPEAKER_01: We've had we've had a a good run up and down, but uh and they include things like Net Sorcerer.
- 1:20SPEAKER_00: Yes.
- 1:20SPEAKER_00: Um, you've done Zoom Doc.
- 1:23SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 1:24SPEAKER_00: Um, you've done work for Disney, Nicole, Nickelodeon, and Home Mount, and you've also just launched Tailtree.
- 1:31SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
- 1:32SPEAKER_00: Start by telling us a little bit about your new project.
- 1:35SPEAKER_01: Of course.
- 1:36SPEAKER_01: Well, Tailtree is slightly different in the way it tries to encourage children to hold on to their creative genius.
- 1:43SPEAKER_01: I have a belief that all children are geniuses.
- 1:46SPEAKER_01: When you look at kindergarten children and how they play with the blocks, they are it's a box of wonder, the world.
- 1:53SPEAKER_01: When a child starts to walk, they fall over, they understand failure, they understand how to randomly chat to people they don't know.
- 2:01SPEAKER_01: All these things that we were born with, um kindergarten kids have it in abundance.
- 2:07SPEAKER_01: So I think uh creativity is a natural energy source that humanity has, and that curiosity needs to continue to thrive within us as we grow older.
- 2:19SPEAKER_00: So, how have you harnessed that into Telltree?
- 2:21SPEAKER_01: So, Telltree provides a space, a safe space for children to explore and reflect upon their authenticity.
- 2:29SPEAKER_01: So, how we we've created a methodology that started during the pandemic out of Silicon Valley.
- 2:35SPEAKER_01: My uh co-founder Sumi she saw children that were stifled during lockdown, they had no school to go to, and saw it as an opportunity to launch creative camps where she could have children literally brainstorm and flex this creative muscle that often rigid curriculums fail to exercise quite as much as what we're trying to do.
- 3:01SPEAKER_00: You don't need to be politically correct.
- 3:03SPEAKER_00: We want you can you can you can just tell us it how it's how it is, Matt.
- 3:06SPEAKER_00: I I know I know you've got strong views on creativity.
- 3:09SPEAKER_01: I do, I do.
- 3:10SPEAKER_01: I guess I'm building it for the child in me, if if I'm honest.
- 3:14SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 3:14SPEAKER_00: So tell me about baby Matt, Matt, when you were little.
- 3:18SPEAKER_00: I'm assuming school wasn't your playground.
- 3:20SPEAKER_00: It wasn't somewhere you absolutely felt.
- 3:21SPEAKER_01: Recess, the playground was definitely my playground.
- 3:24SPEAKER_01: I was buying and selling.
- 3:25SPEAKER_01: I was buying computer games, selling them, getting into trouble for you know, a bit of a mischievous kid.
- 3:32SPEAKER_01: Sure.
- 3:33SPEAKER_01: I guess.
- 3:34SPEAKER_01: But I guess that mischievousness comes from an out-of-the-box thinking.
- 3:38SPEAKER_01: So I guess when I went to school, I vividly remember looking around me and seeing everybody dressing the same as me and learning the same.
- 3:49SPEAKER_01: Or I I I I could immediately see how you know the curriculum was trying to compare us to our peers and how we were supposed to compete against each other.
- 3:59SPEAKER_01: I've I saw that as quite a selfish way to enforce learning upon me and my friends.
- 4:06SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 4:07SPEAKER_00: And so your thinking, I mean, what we do know from the success you've had is your thinking is not in the box thinking in the slightest.
- 4:14SPEAKER_01: No, it's not.
- 4:16SPEAKER_01: My thinking is based on day uh well, I would say that uh the thing that got me into trouble at school made me as a as a as a human being daydreaming.
- 4:26SPEAKER_01: I got ridiculed for staring out the window, not focusing, not concentrating.
- 4:31SPEAKER_01: I think I had an an inability to memorize facts and figures that had a yes or no black or white rationale behind them.
- 4:41SPEAKER_01: I think I was more curious and wanting to understand why I was being taught what I was being taught.
- 4:47SPEAKER_01: That just took my brain off into other other dimensions, I guess.
- 4:52SPEAKER_01: And there were other kids like me.
- 4:55SPEAKER_01: Um, I there's four or five other kids that I I could resonate with.
- 4:59SPEAKER_01: They were the ones that either didn't wear their tie straight or had to look a little bit different to everybody else, and they were also sort of slightly out of the box.
- 5:08SPEAKER_01: And when I look at these guys now, they're certainly not living in the same town that some of the other kids that went to the same school.
- 5:14SPEAKER_01: They're all over the world doing different things.
- 5:16SPEAKER_01: Whether that's a good or a bad thing, it just is what it is.
- 5:19SPEAKER_01: But I do think that as we move forward, um human progress AI, where AI is taking up the need to memorize, we need to really start including and transitioning the uh current um not the curriculum, but we need to be aware of what's coming and how to cope with it.
- 5:42SPEAKER_00: I know I'm I'm going to cat keep with you in the school playground for a minute.
- 5:46SPEAKER_00: Um, and I know you talk very fondly of your dad and and and his influence on your life.
- 5:51SPEAKER_01: 100%.
- 5:52SPEAKER_00: How did you go from being the one that didn't fit in the box and to not feeling stupid that you kind of gave up and felt like you were a failure and didn't go on to succeed?
- 6:03SPEAKER_00: It could have been a very easy switch to massively.
- 6:05SPEAKER_00: How why did you go one way?
- 6:07SPEAKER_01: I think there's a fine line between feeling hopeless and going on a down a dark path and actually being able to um, you know, succeed.
- 6:17SPEAKER_01: Um, I would say my father, as an entrepreneur and somebody that might possess some of the same traits as me, could see quite clearly that um, you know, I needed an outlet.
- 6:28SPEAKER_01: And then I had key friends in my life.
- 6:30SPEAKER_01: You know, like when you were growing up in school, you uh have key people in your life that are also a little bit like you, and then you come together and create together.
- 6:39SPEAKER_01: So I had a f two friends, one that I was building a business with while we're at school, and we and one that was a musician.
- 6:47SPEAKER_01: So he could quite clearly see that as a creative guy, I could probably write music.
- 6:51SPEAKER_01: So we started writing music together, and that along with my father, who helped me um step inside the world of business through children's board games, actually, where I could create the game mechanics, I could build board games, I could learn the cost of production, how to generate profit, and how to distribute the games.
- 7:10SPEAKER_01: He took me to the retail uh head offices and he would show me how to negotiate things.
- 7:17SPEAKER_00: So, what board games did your dad produced?
- 7:20SPEAKER_01: So he was um so he actually created um a board game called the Dudley Dodo Environment game in 1985.
- 7:28SPEAKER_01: I was a like a very small child.
- 7:30SPEAKER_01: He was on Newsround.
- 7:32SPEAKER_01: Um you remember the the BBC program, Newsround?
- 7:35SPEAKER_01: That was a very proud moment to see him walking around talking about this very future thing.
- 7:40SPEAKER_01: He was basically talking about sustainability and creating a game that helped the environment using this little character, Dudley Dodo, who is obviously the dodo, the last dodo.
- 7:49SPEAKER_01: So that was really that was very inspiring for me, and I think I took a lot of what my dad was doing into my life, and also, you know, as well, I wanted to help children be as creative as they possibly could.
- 8:01SPEAKER_01: So I was I I ended up working on products for Disney and Nickelodeon and uh 20th Century Fox, Paramount, not entrepreneurial ventures, but very creative ventures, so I could take the Disney properties and build products and services to support the launch of those movies in theatrical and home entertainment.
- 8:23SPEAKER_01: Um, I was building board games for them through my father, of course, he had the contacts, but he was giving me the playground to express myself, and it was huge for me.
- 8:32SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it gave me a lot of confidence because school didn't.
- 8:35SPEAKER_00: And did school teach you anything useful that you use today?
- 8:40SPEAKER_01: It taught me um ris I guess resilience more than anything because I had to push myself to get through what I needed to get through.
- 8:49SPEAKER_01: And I did pass my exams, but it was more for my mum because she was completely unhappy with my progress, so I would cram at the end and and get the grades.
- 8:59SPEAKER_01: So I went through the system and I was six I was I I got good grades, but not because I believed in what I was doing, because I already knew that I was gonna do other things.
- 9:09SPEAKER_00: Um at what point did you know you were going to do something else?
- 9:13SPEAKER_01: I think as young as seven or eight, just because just because like I just could not express myself, you know.
- 9:20SPEAKER_01: Like I wanted to ask questions, I wanted to be more curious about why I was being taught what I was being taught, but it just felt like you just gotta get through it, even if you don't like it.
- 9:31SPEAKER_01: And kids, that light of learning that goes off in children when they're forced to do something.
- 9:37SPEAKER_01: I I I agree that discipline is important and g and and and taking exams is very, very important because it you learn, you know, we can't allow people to just go off and do whatever they want to do, right?
- 9:48SPEAKER_01: Because it's just like you need some sort of structure as a child.
- 9:52SPEAKER_01: So I think routine and structure is hugely important for young people, but I also think having a voice to share what's truly on your heart, because that's when you learn what your gifts are, and you can serve the world with that, so you don't take this second life and end up being a lawyer when you're actually a ballet dancer.
- 10:10SPEAKER_00: I love the analogy.
- 10:13SPEAKER_00: Um, you've obviously built things that have reached millions of people.
- 10:17SPEAKER_00: When you've had a good idea, how have you known it's a good idea?
- 10:21SPEAKER_01: Because everybody else thinks it's crazy.
- 10:24SPEAKER_01: There's a guy called um Peter Teal, um, who uh was part of PayPal and he was the first investor in Facebook, and he talks about this thing called the the contrarian truth.
- 10:34SPEAKER_01: Contrarian truth meaning that when you have an idea that everybody else thinks is crazy, like my idea to share photos publicly into a feed, and people thought that was crazy in 2007.
- 10:46SPEAKER_00: Explain that a bit more to me, sorry.
- 10:47SPEAKER_01: So that's essentially what we do today, but my my project scattered.
- 10:52SPEAKER_01: So when I went to Silicon Valley, this is a little, this is akin to this idea of um the you know, so I was in the UK and I was trying to bring this idea to life.
- 11:00SPEAKER_01: I had this overwhelming sense of I see the future.
- 11:04SPEAKER_01: I was playing around with a Windows mobile phone in like 2005, and I was playing with the camera and the mapping technology, and I was thinking, this is huge.
- 11:12SPEAKER_01: Imagine when humans have access to this camera, they can actually broadcast what they see in real time.
- 11:17SPEAKER_01: We can aggregate information as a guide for other people in certain cities and towns.
- 11:22SPEAKER_01: I gotta work on this.
- 11:24SPEAKER_01: So I was in my venture studio, I literally said to my business partner, I just gotta go and work on this.
- 11:30SPEAKER_01: This is much bigger than what we're doing at the moment.
- 11:33SPEAKER_01: Please allow me the space to navigate this.
- 11:35SPEAKER_01: So I started though, there was no mobile app store or anything like that.
- 11:39SPEAKER_01: And I was just sort of conceiving the idea out of my own mind, building the wireframes and mapping out what the the app would look like.
- 11:47SPEAKER_01: Um, there was only one app store at the time, the Ovi store from Nokia, Nokia.
- 11:52SPEAKER_01: So I built it on that um and then transitioned um into Silicon Valley, where I was lucky enough to get some financial commitment to scale it.
- 12:03SPEAKER_00: Do you say this like this is a really natural thing to do?
- 12:06SPEAKER_00: This is so not natural.
- 12:07SPEAKER_00: This is not what normal people do, Matt.
- 12:10SPEAKER_00: You just said, you know, you started by saying, Oh, I just built it on a wireframe and I just did this.
- 12:13SPEAKER_00: Where did you learn that?
- 12:15SPEAKER_01: I didn't.
- 12:15SPEAKER_01: It just it comes from daimy dreaming, the thing the exact thing that I got scolded for and ridiculed by my friends.
- 12:23SPEAKER_01: You know, I was pretty much like in the clouds quite a lot of the time, you know.
- 12:27SPEAKER_01: So people were thinking, like, this guy just you know, wake up.
- 12:31SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but but you're you're frustrated.
- 12:34SPEAKER_00: I mean, your mum, I can feel what your mum's frustration must have been.
- 12:37SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, I can understand completely.
- 12:39SPEAKER_01: She probably thought, like, this kid is going to end up on the streets, you know.
- 12:43SPEAKER_01: Like, what's he gonna do?
- 12:45SPEAKER_01: Yes.
- 12:46SPEAKER_01: Because the whole system prepares us for you know participation in society.
- 12:51SPEAKER_01: And it comes really from the seeds of the silent generation, I think, after the second world war.
- 12:56SPEAKER_01: Because I've done a lot of research on why the curriculum has evolved the way it's evolved, and I'm sure it comes from the fact that after the war we were just desperate to fit in to organize ourselves and get back to normal life, right?
- 13:09SPEAKER_01: So the education system, um, it did feel like a little bit of a prison, right?
- 13:14SPEAKER_01: You have the bell ringing, you have the canteen, it's very dark, it's quite cold, and you go in thinking, oh, another day I've got to get through, right?
- 13:21SPEAKER_01: But I think learning should be much more colourful than that.
- 13:25SPEAKER_01: Much more colourful than that.
- 13:26SPEAKER_00: I absolutely agree because the more fun learning is and the more it allows you to daydream and explore new boundaries, the more children are going to do.
- 13:33SPEAKER_00: And I absolutely hear you when you say that.
- 13:35SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah.
- 13:36SPEAKER_00: No, carry on.
- 13:37SPEAKER_01: No, I think I think through Telotree we have the data that that's true.
- 13:41SPEAKER_01: Because when children have the ability to listen to their authentic voice and literally share that with other kids, they build empathy and kindness towards each other.
- 13:51SPEAKER_01: The traditional curriculum does put us at war with one another.
- 13:56SPEAKER_01: I remember being like a kid and trying to help my friend, and the teacher was like, What are you doing?
- 14:02SPEAKER_01: This is cheating.
- 14:03SPEAKER_01: But how are we going to work together in society to make things better if we're not allowed to share information?
- 14:09SPEAKER_01: We're not allowed to share information because we're at war with one another to get the best standard of misery.
- 14:16SPEAKER_00: Okay.
- 14:18SPEAKER_00: I did say be honest, but let's not be too honest.
- 14:20SPEAKER_00: Um, when you've you've done so many projects, you've done so many amazing things, um, and you've obviously got so much more sort of ahead of you to do here.
- 14:29SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
- 14:29SPEAKER_00: When what is the highlight?
- 14:31SPEAKER_00: What is the thing you're most proud of achieving?
- 14:33SPEAKER_01: I think I'm proud of um keeping going in the dark times because I think success doesn't come from financial success, it comes from like meaning uh the meaning that I've sort of acted upon an idea and I've like cultivated it and turned it into something that people are actually using, and I've continued to push on when most of the world have thought I was crazy.
- 14:56SPEAKER_01: You know, I think I think that's where a lot of the satisfaction comes.
- 15:00SPEAKER_01: And I think with children um and like entrepreneurs, you do have ups and downs in life, but you have to remember that um it's very fleeting, and you have to have a vision for who you are, what you want to achieve, and understand that failure, a bad grade, it's just feedback.
- 15:20SPEAKER_01: Um, and you learn more from the negative feedback sometimes than you do with the positive feedback because you can be very lucky and you just get it right first time.
- 15:28SPEAKER_01: So I think it's important for even parents like to understand that um failure is good, it's healthy, it's um it builds resilience, and you have to accept challenges and rise above them and not compare yourself to other people.
- 15:44SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I I mean I think you're right in in so many ways, but I think there's a point where when you feel very different and you're constantly being told that you haven't got potential or you shouldn't be doing it this way, or you're learning, your learning's not effective.
- 16:01SPEAKER_00: There's a point where you actually stop listening to your inner voice and you start listening to your external voices.
- 16:06SPEAKER_01: That's that is a problem, yes.
- 16:07SPEAKER_01: It's sort of that light of curiosity within you sort of turns completely off.
- 16:12SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
- 16:13SPEAKER_01: And I think you just gotta have people around you.
- 16:16SPEAKER_01: I think I was lucky to have two good friends and my father to just grab me and and give me turn that light back on, really.
- 16:26SPEAKER_00: I think it's quite interesting, and your dad obviously was into um producing games which were for children, and you're coming back to that in some way, kind of it's like a full circle, but you've got the electronic or the the digital version of the board game, so it's like it really is a second generation of the same industry.
- 16:41SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is, and uh one thing I've learned about board games, and I think like it would be a great pursuit for schools.
- 16:48SPEAKER_01: When you say to a child, create a board game, you find so much out about that child.
- 16:55SPEAKER_01: The mathematic mathematicians, the creative children, you know, depending on their persona, it's a really good challenge.
- 17:02SPEAKER_01: You learn a lot because board games can be anything, right?
- 17:05SPEAKER_01: It can be any type of uh board game.
- 17:08SPEAKER_01: So I I learned a lot about who I was through that, and just um applying uh like real life pursuits to learning.
- 17:18SPEAKER_01: So when we used to go, and my father we used to go and watch uh football all around the country, and I would be holding the map, and as we were getting towards the city, he would ask me about that city, and I became obsessed with maps and geography and how urbanization was actually, you know, like how cities evolved.
- 17:37SPEAKER_01: And in my A levels, I got a uh a challenge in the geography decision-making exercise.
- 17:43SPEAKER_01: Luckily, to um um plan the relocation of Millwall Football Club, right?
- 17:50SPEAKER_01: That was the decision-making exercise.
- 17:52SPEAKER_01: I am head of the London borough of Bermansey, and that was that was the I got like an A plus for this, right?
- 17:59SPEAKER_01: That was written for you, exactly, and that was part of the exam that you you just didn't know what it was gonna be.
- 18:06SPEAKER_01: But uh interesting, my geography teacher told my mom I needed to quit geography.
- 18:10SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna mention his name, but I turned that one around, thankfully.
- 18:15SPEAKER_00: It's always very nice.
- 18:16SPEAKER_00: I told you so I could do this, yeah.
- 18:18SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so so in terms of the projects, obviously we've got tail tree ongoing.
- 18:22SPEAKER_00: What else are you working on at the moment?
- 18:23SPEAKER_01: So I'm really passionate about um blockchain um and also being able to give humanity a return on attention.
- 18:32SPEAKER_01: This is a new thing.
- 18:33SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think financial literacy is also really important.
- 18:37SPEAKER_01: So I'd like to teach um young people how to not I I want to see them feel less free, and I want to build innovative financial models to help young people navigate how they spend the money that they earn to build a better future for themselves faster.
- 18:55SPEAKER_01: That's really I'm very passionate about that as well.
- 18:58SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, I mean uh I just I just you know for me, I like I want to build uh solutions that help the world and um hopefully you know the purpose can precede their profits.
- 19:13SPEAKER_00: That's a lovely, very small, unambitious type of aim there, Matt.
- 19:19SPEAKER_00: Um tell me a little bit, because I know you're also working on XTOA.
- 19:22SPEAKER_00: Tell me a little bit about Xtoa.
- 19:23SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes, of course.
- 19:24SPEAKER_01: Well, Xtoa obviously is a digital nation built on the principles of the Gulf region.
- 19:29SPEAKER_01: So if I hadn't have moved to Dubai, I would never have um been able to build a simulated environment like Xtoa.
- 19:37SPEAKER_01: So XTOA provides um people who become citizens of the nation with a space to actually create and launch things and interact with one another.
- 19:47SPEAKER_01: It has an AI governance attached to it.
- 19:50SPEAKER_01: So it works on the basis that we all have like a chip in our brain that connects to this supercomputer that gives proof of activity, whether it's good or bad.
- 20:01SPEAKER_01: So, in my simulated environment, let's say you're unkind to other avatars, you will be put in jail and you will sit there and you cannot enter the game.
- 20:12SPEAKER_01: Uh if if you know, so it's built built on like uh proof of activity and a new is a new it's like a digital nation, but it's modeled on the principles of this region.
- 20:23SPEAKER_01: Um and yeah, it's a it's a you can play games, you can earn rewards, you can redeem things, and it's built on the blockchain, and we have a currency that rewards the inhabitants for good work.
- 20:37SPEAKER_00: You I do know this conversation could go on forever because you talk a world that I I'm just not part of.
- 20:42SPEAKER_00: I'm way too old to be involved in.
- 20:44SPEAKER_00: I know every so often we have these conversations, and I my son, after the after the conversation, sort of translates it into conversation into sort of level I understand.
- 20:51SPEAKER_00: But you're so, so fascinating.
- 20:53SPEAKER_00: And I really appreciate the time you've taken to come.
- 20:56SPEAKER_00: No problem.
- 20:56SPEAKER_00: I have one final question that I ask everyone.
- 20:58SPEAKER_00: I think we've touched on it very slightly, but knowing everything you know about the world now, everything you've done in your life, if you were to give your seven-year-old self advice, would that advice be?
- 21:10SPEAKER_01: It would be to try and it's hard at seven, but to sort of blank out the noise and listen, try and listen to this spark that's in you.
- 21:22SPEAKER_01: Try and that authenticity, that that gift, try and like hold on to uh this precious gift that you were born with and nurture it.
- 21:32SPEAKER_01: Um and don't um overthink the day-to-day challenges that you're facing.
- 21:40SPEAKER_01: Try and um continue to um hold on to who you are.
- 21:46SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
- 21:47SPEAKER_00: Matt, it has been an absolute pleasure talking to you once again.
- 21:51SPEAKER_00: I will never cease to be fascinated by conversations.
- 21:54SPEAKER_00: And I think when we have conversations, you push everybody to think outside the box and to just think further and deeper and bigger.
- 22:02SPEAKER_00: And I absolutely love that.
- 22:04SPEAKER_00: So, once again, another episode of Let Them Fly.
- 22:07SPEAKER_00: I hope you've enjoyed this conversation.
- 22:10SPEAKER_00: We are, as always, available on Spotify, Apple, and on YouTube.