Latest / The SME Stream / The Kiwi fintech startup hacking the admin hell out of financial advice

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The Kiwi fintech startup hacking the admin hell out of financial advice · The SME Stream

0:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Business of Tech powered by two Degrees.
0:05
Speaker 1: I'm Peter Griffin with my second interview from London. This
0:09
Speaker 1: time I'm talking to Hardy Michelle, co founder alongside Shaquill
0:14
Speaker 1: Lala and Ben Robertson of the AI powered fintech startup Marlou.
0:20
Speaker 1: Hardy's a veteran of the New Zealand startup scene, having
0:23
Speaker 1: helped build Chare's Eads from the ground up. He's now
0:26
Speaker 1: in London building Marlou, an AI powered operating system for
0:30
Speaker 1: wealth managers and advisors. The core idea is simple strip
0:34
Speaker 1: out the soul crushing admin compliance paperwork and manual note
0:39
Speaker 1: taking that can eat up around seventy percent of an
0:41
Speaker 1: advisor's day and let them focus on what they actually
0:44
Speaker 1: signed up for, real human quality advice. We talk a
0:49
Speaker 1: lot about the rise of AI in the financial sector,
0:53
Speaker 1: but Hardy isn't any big advocate of so called robo
0:56
Speaker 1: advice or automating the entire process seeds an essential ongoing
1:02
Speaker 1: role for humans in the loop when it comes to
1:04
Speaker 1: dispensing financial advice. Marlou is a type of hyper specialized
1:10
Speaker 1: smart assistant that listens to client meetings structures. The key
1:14
Speaker 1: advice points and auto generates drafts of advice documents in
1:18
Speaker 1: minutes instead of days. Hardy also talks about why this
1:21
Speaker 1: isn't just about efficiency, but transforming the economics of advice
1:26
Speaker 1: so more people can actually afford it. Marlo, which was
1:29
Speaker 1: founded in August twenty twenty four, recently raised four point
1:32
Speaker 1: six million New Zealand in a seed funding round led
1:36
Speaker 1: by Blackbir Adventures, with a host of successful founders also contributing,
1:41
Speaker 1: which is always a good sign. Hardy recounts his Estonian
1:44
Speaker 1: adventure working for light Chair, which is like the robin
1:47
Speaker 1: Hood of Europe, and what it's like growing a key
1:50
Speaker 1: we start up in multiple countries simultaneously while it still
1:53
Speaker 1: has its roots back here in Wellington. Here's Hardy Michelle,
1:57
Speaker 1: co founder of marlu Hearty Welcome to the business of tech.
2:06
Speaker 2: How are you doing fantastic?
2:08
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me, Well, thank you for having me.
2:11
Speaker 1: I'm back in the tech space after meeting Matt Herbert
2:14
Speaker 1: from track Suit yesterday. This wonderful place. You just had
2:17
Speaker 1: a big gathering of New Zealand Australian founders and investors
2:21
Speaker 1: a couple of nights ago. Rowan Simpson trade Me co
2:25
Speaker 1: founder was in town, so it definitely seems like this
2:29
Speaker 1: is a bit of a gathering point for antipathy and entrepreneurs.
2:33
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's becoming a second home. So if you're visiting
2:36
Speaker 2: or in town, drop on by, you'll definitely run into
2:39
Speaker 2: a few familiar faces.
2:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called the tech space in Farringdon and a
2:44
Speaker 1: lot of businesses here, big, big buzz and yeah, and
2:49
Speaker 1: how long have you been in London? Now?
2:51
Speaker 2: I've been here for just over three years. So I
2:55
Speaker 2: was previously at Chasia's in Wellington where I was there
2:58
Speaker 2: for kind of six or seven years and actually got
3:01
Speaker 2: headhunted for a roll over here kind of just as
3:04
Speaker 2: the kind of pandemic and travel was starting to become
3:07
Speaker 2: a thing again. In kind of mid twenty twenty two,
3:09
Speaker 2: I received a LinkedIn DM from, funnily enough, some Estonians.
3:15
Speaker 2: And you would think when Estonians are sliding into your
3:18
Speaker 2: LinkedIn dms that you may not want to respond, but
3:22
Speaker 2: they looked really interesting and so kind of the long
3:25
Speaker 2: story short was there were two Estonian founders who were
3:29
Speaker 2: previously at wise the money kind of transferred company that
3:32
Speaker 2: you might have come across that as a phenomenal Estonian
3:35
Speaker 2: founded business, and that actually kind of spun out of Skype,
3:40
Speaker 2: another very well known company. So Estonia Punch was massively
3:42
Speaker 2: above its weight. And these two had been very early
3:46
Speaker 2: at wise, they'd been responsible for building a huge amount
3:49
Speaker 2: of the product and that business kind of across operations,
3:52
Speaker 2: product and engineering, and they decided to build a retail
3:55
Speaker 2: investing platform very similar to Chaz's. And they had gone
3:59
Speaker 2: all around the world looking for people who had actually
4:02
Speaker 2: built these companies from scratch. And really what that meant
4:05
Speaker 2: was the infrastructure that was required to kind of run
4:09
Speaker 2: the you know, the systems, the money flows, the share trading.
4:14
Speaker 2: There's a lot of infrastructure that's required to do that,
4:16
Speaker 2: and not many people have actually built it. And they
4:19
Speaker 2: looked all around the world and they found me.
4:21
Speaker 1: Wow, So light Year. I think it's been described as
4:25
Speaker 1: like the robin Hood of Europe. So another shared trading platform.
4:31
Speaker 1: So what was that like? Sort of coming to London
4:34
Speaker 1: but a very different environment to obviously what you were
4:37
Speaker 1: dealing with in New Zealand one country, were much smaller country,
4:42
Speaker 1: much closer access to all the regulators, and had to
4:45
Speaker 1: figure out what you needed to do to suddenly being
4:47
Speaker 1: in London working for Estonians with the European focus.
4:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was a massive shift, I would say.
4:56
Speaker 2: So for like contacts, there was a between that LinkedIn
5:01
Speaker 2: DM me having spent a couple of days interviewing and
5:04
Speaker 2: receiving a full offer to relocate that included my now
5:07
Speaker 2: wife as well and visa sponsorship, and we moved six
5:10
Speaker 2: weeks to the day after that. So it was very
5:12
Speaker 2: clear from the outset that there was no messing around here.
5:15
Speaker 2: It's like we were doing this and we landed in London,
5:17
Speaker 2: and so the business was set up between Talent and
5:21
Speaker 2: Estonia and London. We're building teams in both places. And yeah,
5:24
Speaker 2: we ended up launching twenty two European countries at once
5:27
Speaker 2: straight off the bat. We you know, were licensed both
5:32
Speaker 2: in Europe and in the UK, and then eventually became
5:34
Speaker 2: directly licensed in the UK. So you're just dealing with
5:38
Speaker 2: this kind of just phenomenal scale, but also a huge
5:42
Speaker 2: amount of local nuance and context that you don't necessarily
5:46
Speaker 2: get in New Zealand because you're only dealing with one market, right.
5:49
Speaker 2: So it was a really amazing experience and kind of
5:52
Speaker 2: taught me one how to think about kind of building
5:55
Speaker 2: at scale and being in big markets and then two,
5:58
Speaker 2: the team there was exceptional, So it was early robinhood wise,
6:02
Speaker 2: you know, Revolute Skype, kind of all of the big
6:05
Speaker 2: global kind of fintech success stories that kind of cherry
6:08
Speaker 2: picked some of the best people from those companies. So
6:11
Speaker 2: it was amazing for me to kind of place myself
6:14
Speaker 2: into that environment, really test and challenge myself and take
6:18
Speaker 2: away a huge amount of kind of personal learning and
6:20
Speaker 2: knowledge in addition to you know, the day to day.
6:24
Speaker 1: What insights did you get into working with colleagues and
6:29
Speaker 1: founders from Estonia's there's some similarities smaller advanced nation like
6:34
Speaker 1: New Zealand, but just what they've managed to achieve on
6:38
Speaker 1: the digital economy front, both as a nation but in
6:41
Speaker 1: terms of some of the companies that they've created, and
6:44
Speaker 1: that serial entrepreneurship where people are investing in the next generation.
6:48
Speaker 1: Is a bit of that going on in New Zealand.
6:49
Speaker 1: But they really have cracked it in Estonia, haven't they.
6:51
Speaker 2: Yeah. I would really encourage people to travel and go
6:54
Speaker 2: to Talent if you have the opportunity, you can kind
6:56
Speaker 2: of do Helsinki and Talent in one weekend because you
6:58
Speaker 2: can varry between the two. But I was basically building
7:01
Speaker 2: a team in talent. I was there a week a
7:03
Speaker 2: month for kind of eighteen months, spent a huge amount
7:06
Speaker 2: of time, and they're an amazing group of people for
7:10
Speaker 2: a few reasons. One, they're kind of essentially first generation,
7:16
Speaker 2: you know, like business owners as how it would frame it.
7:19
Speaker 2: So you know, they were part of the Soviet Union.
7:21
Speaker 2: Most people there over the age of thirty, you know,
7:24
Speaker 2: grew up with a huge amount of hardship. And so
7:28
Speaker 2: you know, through the founding of Skyte and Wise and
7:31
Speaker 2: now several other companies that have spun out, they've seen that,
7:35
Speaker 2: you know, being entrepreneurial, working really hard, getting equity and
7:39
Speaker 2: upside is a real and concrete way to generate wealth.
7:44
Speaker 2: You know. So I think the said I saw was
7:46
Speaker 2: like Wise employees one percent of Estonians as an example. Yeah,
7:51
Speaker 2: and they're able to earn you know, like really well.
7:54
Speaker 2: Wise is now ipo, Skyte was acquired by Microsoft, I think,
7:58
Speaker 2: and it's just been a real way to realize wealth
8:01
Speaker 2: in that country. And so everyone is just so driven
8:03
Speaker 2: and on board with the mentality of we're going to
8:06
Speaker 2: work incredibly hard and we're going to do it in
8:09
Speaker 2: this like incredibly productive way. And then kind of the
8:12
Speaker 2: overarching pieces that the you know, Estonian government is incredibly
8:16
Speaker 2: forward thinking and tech first and so you know, for example,
8:20
Speaker 2: I have like an Estonian like e residency for example,
8:25
Speaker 2: so you know, you go through an application process, you
8:27
Speaker 2: pay one hundred euros and you actually have the ability
8:30
Speaker 2: to start a business in Estonia. And they have you know,
8:33
Speaker 2: a very fair tax system. Basically everyone holds their assets
8:38
Speaker 2: within a business. They have a flat twenty percent tax rate.
8:42
Speaker 2: You can you know extract or kind of pay out
8:45
Speaker 2: a certain amount tax free every year. It's really interesting,
8:49
Speaker 2: but anyone in the world can come and build a
8:50
Speaker 2: business in Estonia. There is a key concept. So it's
8:54
Speaker 2: really really interesting.
8:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're really yeah, setting out putting all the ingredients
8:59
Speaker 1: in there for to encourage that sort of entrepreneurship. So
9:02
Speaker 1: hopefully we are we're part of this group called I
9:06
Speaker 1: think the D seven or something, which we do talk
9:08
Speaker 1: to Estonia and Ireland and Denmark and that quite a bit.
9:11
Speaker 1: So hopefully we're we're taking on board some of those lessons.
9:15
Speaker 1: But just going back that, yeah, quite an extensive startup
9:20
Speaker 1: experience all the way back to a really cool startup
9:23
Speaker 1: book track, which as someone who've been publishing and that
9:27
Speaker 1: really loved. You know, we're basically an audio soundscape for
9:31
Speaker 1: a book that you would buy. That would have been
9:33
Speaker 1: a really interesting project to work on.
9:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was fascinating. That was my yeah, kind of
9:38
Speaker 2: first foray into working for a startup. And yeah, we
9:43
Speaker 2: built amazing technology and worked with you know, incredible companies
9:48
Speaker 2: Audible for example, and the US. You know, probably unfortunate
9:52
Speaker 2: market timing. I would say, like had that company been
9:56
Speaker 2: founded a few years later or with the technology that
9:58
Speaker 2: we have now, I think it would have been you know,
10:01
Speaker 2: really well changing. But there was a timing element that
10:04
Speaker 2: that wasn't quite right. But you know, I was able
10:06
Speaker 2: to work kind of alongside the founders to really kind
10:11
Speaker 2: of drive and understand kind of everything that they were doing,
10:14
Speaker 2: how they were operating, how they were raising capital, and
10:16
Speaker 2: so yeah, it was just the perfect kind of early
10:18
Speaker 2: learning experience in the way that I would probably phrase
10:21
Speaker 2: my time in New Zealand was just trying to learn
10:23
Speaker 2: from the best possible people who ahead of me, who
10:27
Speaker 2: I could absorb knowledge off with the goal of one
10:29
Speaker 2: day starting my own company.
10:31
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then obviously that that was a great experience
10:35
Speaker 1: at Shears's. You had those you know that founding team
10:38
Speaker 1: is one of the strongest founding teams to have a
10:41
Speaker 1: three CEO relationship that after all these years, are still
10:45
Speaker 1: going strong with you sign your Brooke and Leyton and
10:48
Speaker 1: seems to work really well where they have, you know,
10:51
Speaker 1: complementary strengths, but they will make decisions collectively to care
10:57
Speaker 1: there and just proliferating in terms of the the service offerings,
11:01
Speaker 1: you know, going into credit cards and all sorts of things, loans,
11:08
Speaker 1: So helping set that up. Being head of operations, you know,
11:11
Speaker 1: back in the early days, that must have been quite
11:14
Speaker 1: a job, you know, trying to figure out how do
11:15
Speaker 1: we put this all together in a way that is compliant,
11:19
Speaker 1: is trustworthy, get people out of these stodgy brokerages, and
11:24
Speaker 1: you know, tens hundreds of thousands of people are investing
11:28
Speaker 1: every week now as a result of the groundwork that
11:31
Speaker 1: you helped lay.
11:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was such a cool experience on reflection, incredibly
11:37
Speaker 2: hard work at the time, And I think the interesting
11:39
Speaker 2: thing for me is I was kind of the first
11:41
Speaker 2: person to join the business who wasn't one of the
11:44
Speaker 2: founders and didn't actually know anyone, so I was introduced
11:48
Speaker 2: through some mutual friends. I was moving from Auckland to
11:50
Speaker 2: Wellington at the time. It was kind of all very
11:52
Speaker 2: serendipitous and kind of my decision making process was I
11:55
Speaker 2: actually grew up doing a bunch of cycling, so I
11:58
Speaker 2: wrote and track Cycling, I representing New Zealand. I won
12:01
Speaker 2: national titles kind of through the age group, so it
12:04
Speaker 2: was super fun. And one of the people I cycled
12:07
Speaker 2: a bit with was Elliott Crowther from push Pay, and
12:10
Speaker 2: I didn't know too much about what he was doing
12:12
Speaker 2: other than you know, he was like selling home ventilation
12:16
Speaker 2: units with HIV and then he started this kind of business,
12:19
Speaker 2: push pay, and it was around you know, egiving and anyway,
12:23
Speaker 2: they tibsequently ended up ipoing right, and I wanted to
12:25
Speaker 2: buy push pay shares because I knew Elliott, and I
12:28
Speaker 2: got halfway through the sign up process with ASP Securities,
12:32
Speaker 2: I think it was, and I pulled the pen and
12:34
Speaker 2: I only had, you know, maybe five hundred dollars to invest.
12:36
Speaker 2: Even if I paid the brokerage, it still would have
12:39
Speaker 2: been a phenomenal investment in that point of time. But
12:42
Speaker 2: I'd actually never invested before and I really wanted to,
12:46
Speaker 2: and I knew that there were a bunch of other
12:48
Speaker 2: people that I knew that were in the same position
12:50
Speaker 2: and kind of having come from a few startups beforehand,
12:53
Speaker 2: like they had enough capital to pay me for at
12:55
Speaker 2: least twelve months, and like that was a pretty good bet.
12:58
Speaker 2: And I was moving from Auckland to Wellington anyway, So
13:00
Speaker 2: to be honest, that was the extent of my thinking.
13:03
Speaker 2: It wasn't necessarily that we were going to go on
13:06
Speaker 2: to be the company that Shares is now known at.
13:09
Speaker 2: It was like the ingredients were correct in terms of
13:12
Speaker 2: the team was seriously impressive even in those early days.
13:16
Speaker 2: You know, everyone I talked to said the same things
13:19
Speaker 2: about having worked with them and who they were, which
13:22
Speaker 2: meant a lot. And I was open to taking some
13:25
Speaker 2: risk and making the show from Auckland to Wellington and
13:28
Speaker 2: kind of figuring out what had happened. Like to be fair,
13:30
Speaker 2: I'd only done like an accounting you know, one oh
13:33
Speaker 2: one paper in it. I had no idea about this world.
13:35
Speaker 2: But it really comes down to backing yourself to be
13:39
Speaker 2: up for the learning curve, to be ambitious enough to
13:41
Speaker 2: know that you can figure it out eventually. Over time,
13:44
Speaker 2: you'll make some mistakes, but generally if your course great,
13:46
Speaker 2: that's fine. And so The journey for me was I
13:49
Speaker 2: was essentially kind of a one person team or basically
13:54
Speaker 2: taking a bunch of Layton's work off him. That was
13:56
Speaker 2: doing everything from reconciling deposits. I was texting people for
14:00
Speaker 2: withdrawal confirmations off my personal mobile phone to begin with.
14:04
Speaker 2: Like all of that was manual. It's just me being like, hey,
14:07
Speaker 2: you've got a withdrawal for you know, five hundred dollars
14:09
Speaker 2: to an account ending in this number, Please confirm yes
14:11
Speaker 2: or no. And so we essentially built out this operations
14:16
Speaker 2: function to span everything from customer support to financial crime
14:20
Speaker 2: and compliance, clearing and settlement, tax custody, investment, on boarding,
14:25
Speaker 2: you know, like all of the above. It was an
14:28
Speaker 2: incredible machine. But that kind of started from a position
14:30
Speaker 2: of kind of one person doing all these things manually
14:34
Speaker 2: off spreadsheets and then figuring out how to productize that,
14:38
Speaker 2: how to bring people on board to build the team.
14:40
Speaker 2: So that kind of eventually after five years, that operations
14:44
Speaker 2: function was kind of sixty or seventy people. It was
14:47
Speaker 2: across eight teams, and you know, we built everything ourselves
14:51
Speaker 2: in house. We had the licenses and we were seamlessly
14:55
Speaker 2: processing you know, huge volumes hundreds of millions or billions
14:58
Speaker 2: worth of train it's on a very regular basis.
15:01
Speaker 1: It's billions a year now. It's incredible and a beautiful
15:05
Speaker 1: experience as well. That's the thing, like a laser focus
15:08
Speaker 1: on the user experience and making it really simple. That
15:11
Speaker 1: was the real breakthrough. And I think the great thing
15:14
Speaker 1: about Cheersy's you know, it didn't come up against some
15:17
Speaker 1: of the barriers that others in our fintech sect to do,
15:20
Speaker 1: where that you come up against the bank basically in
15:23
Speaker 1: the middle of it, where you have to try and
15:24
Speaker 1: get the customer's data. It's changing now open banking, but sharebroking,
15:30
Speaker 1: and that avoided that problem, which was nice, which was
15:34
Speaker 1: able to allow Cheersy to grow really quickly.
15:37
Speaker 2: And I think it was also the founding team had
15:40
Speaker 2: such a clear vision and belief and they were unwavering
15:43
Speaker 2: in that where I think most people in that scenario
15:46
Speaker 2: probably would have wavered, and it wasn't obvious for the
15:50
Speaker 2: first two years the number of no's that you would
15:52
Speaker 2: receive from people like I was part of the first meeting.
15:55
Speaker 2: I was in there with the NSID acts when we
15:57
Speaker 2: first went and said we're going to become a market participant.
16:00
Speaker 2: We were laughed out of that room. The rhetoric was no, no, no,
16:07
Speaker 2: you should not become a participant. I'm being using on
16:10
Speaker 2: stock Exchange. But the thought process from our perspective was one,
16:13
Speaker 2: we absolutely are, two you don't know who you're dealing
16:16
Speaker 2: with here, and then three just continuing to ask questions
16:20
Speaker 2: to understand the rationale and the thought process. So it
16:23
Speaker 2: was just like okay, tell me why, Okay, tell me
16:26
Speaker 2: why again until you get all the way back and really,
16:29
Speaker 2: like you know, the thought process or the belief that
16:31
Speaker 2: we couldn't become a participant wasn't grounded in any truth.
16:35
Speaker 1: That says a lot about management and the insine egxs
16:38
Speaker 1: and some respects with a lot of our companies that
16:40
Speaker 1: are going going oh sure.
16:43
Speaker 2: To their credit, they came to the party once they
16:46
Speaker 2: realized that we were not going to go away at
16:48
Speaker 2: that stage. And you know, clearly like Chares, he's brought
16:50
Speaker 2: like fantastic tail winds too Exchange as well, like it
16:55
Speaker 2: was super cool to the point where when we became
16:57
Speaker 2: a credit and did the first trades, that particular person
17:01
Speaker 2: in the war a pink suit. Yeah, so you know,
17:04
Speaker 2: it was their way of saying like, okay, eat my
17:07
Speaker 2: hat here.
17:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's probably been the single biggest thing
17:11
Speaker 1: to encourage participation in investing in New Zealand companies. You know,
17:16
Speaker 1: ever probably I mean the ASP security is they're still
17:20
Speaker 1: going and all of that, but what a clunky experience
17:22
Speaker 1: that was, and that's forced them to improve their game
17:25
Speaker 1: and Hatch and others have come into the market as well.
17:28
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's just one of those moments, that sort
17:30
Speaker 1: of uber moment really that that happened. So what great
17:33
Speaker 1: experience is there? And I guess that brings us up
17:36
Speaker 1: to Malu. So you come to London, you're working with
17:42
Speaker 1: the Estonians. That was like a blistering couple of years,
17:46
Speaker 1: and I guess that gave you the confidence to go, right,
17:48
Speaker 1: I understand the fintech world really well. Now I've had
17:50
Speaker 1: many years of experience, it's time to do my own thing.
17:53
Speaker 2: Yeah. There were kind of two trains of thought. One
17:56
Speaker 2: was I felt like I'd really round it out probably
17:59
Speaker 2: the most seeing piece of my knowledge and learning, which
18:01
Speaker 2: was kind of how do you build the machine at scale?
18:05
Speaker 2: What does that actually look like? Which you know, kind
18:08
Speaker 2: of just by operating New Zealand or Australia, you kind
18:10
Speaker 2: of like limited and your understanding of and so that
18:14
Speaker 2: was really evident to just learning from you know, operators
18:19
Speaker 2: and people who had done that too was massive. And
18:21
Speaker 2: then probably the second piece was I'd done a bunch
18:25
Speaker 2: of early stage investing actually with Blackbird. Yeah, so when
18:29
Speaker 2: they got set up in New Zealand kind of around
18:31
Speaker 2: twenty twenty twenty twenty one with Samantha Wong, the kind
18:34
Speaker 2: of Australian partner who came over to New Zealand and
18:35
Speaker 2: set up Blackbird in New Zealand, they established a scout program.
18:41
Speaker 2: I don't know if too many people kind of know
18:43
Speaker 2: about it, but it was the likes of myself kind
18:46
Speaker 2: of archbolve from track to kind of like three or
18:49
Speaker 2: four others, and their goal was to see every early
18:52
Speaker 2: stage you know, pre seed or seed deal in New Zealand.
18:55
Speaker 2: And like sam couldn't do it by herself having just arrived,
18:58
Speaker 2: and so kind of the exchange change was, hey will
19:01
Speaker 2: teach you the world of venture investing as we see it,
19:04
Speaker 2: and Blackbird are some of the best in the world,
19:07
Speaker 2: like objectively at this and so we were able to
19:10
Speaker 2: write small checks into companies on their behalf and subject
19:14
Speaker 2: to kind of an expertite due diligence process, but also
19:17
Speaker 2: take part in kind of a very structured set of
19:20
Speaker 2: sessions and series with not only other investors at Blackbird,
19:24
Speaker 2: but other funds around the world. Got to be part
19:27
Speaker 2: of investment committees for all kinds of companies and deals
19:29
Speaker 2: that they were looking at, like really kind of open
19:33
Speaker 2: our eyes as to what venture investing looks like. And
19:36
Speaker 2: so that complemented kind of both sides to the table
19:38
Speaker 2: for me, which is, on one hand, how successful companies
19:41
Speaker 2: actually built, which is a lot of hard work, blood,
19:43
Speaker 2: sweat and tears, and then how kind of investors actually
19:48
Speaker 2: evaluate companies, and then it can be a disconnection between
19:51
Speaker 2: those two things, right, And so I felt like I'd
19:53
Speaker 2: seen both sides of the table, and we took a
19:55
Speaker 2: pretty unusual approach, which was most people go and work
19:58
Speaker 2: on the wrong thing in a market that doesn't matter,
20:02
Speaker 2: or it's not materially growing, or there aren't strong tailwinds
20:05
Speaker 2: to act as a force multiplier for your work. And
20:08
Speaker 2: kind of the role of venture capital is to fund experiments,
20:13
Speaker 2: and so bear with me here, but basically venture capital
20:17
Speaker 2: is to fund experiments where you're trying to answer a
20:20
Speaker 2: true false question and if you can answer it true,
20:22
Speaker 2: then you unlock huge upside and another set of true
20:26
Speaker 2: false questions you need to answer. And so we took
20:30
Speaker 2: a completely new approach which as far as I'm aware,
20:32
Speaker 2: no one in New Zealand or Australia has ever done before,
20:34
Speaker 2: where we said we are going to raise a little
20:38
Speaker 2: bit of money to answer a true false question in
20:40
Speaker 2: twelve months, which is can we land on an idea,
20:44
Speaker 2: can we validate it, can we get a product and
20:47
Speaker 2: market with paying customers within twelve months? But that we
20:50
Speaker 2: are absolutely convinced of that, We have conviction about where
20:55
Speaker 2: we've applied rigor and the foundation is just like so
21:00
Speaker 2: solid that we are confident we can spend the next
21:02
Speaker 2: ten years working on this and it's going to be
21:04
Speaker 2: a massive business. So we were able to raise from Blackbird,
21:07
Speaker 2: and we actually had twenty angels on top of that.
21:10
Speaker 2: It was a relatively small amount of money, about six
21:12
Speaker 2: hundred thousand Ye Zealand dollars. That was enough for myself
21:15
Speaker 2: and my co founder Shack, who was also at Chazeas
21:17
Speaker 2: to basically go through the search process. It was extremely
21:21
Speaker 2: uncomfortable at times, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for people.
21:24
Speaker 2: But kind of the key insight that we landed on
21:27
Speaker 2: was we've built investing products from millions of people around
21:30
Speaker 2: the world, we never gave any financial advice, and that
21:33
Speaker 2: was super frustrating. Right Like, you know, I'd done probably
21:37
Speaker 2: tens of thousands of support tickets at Chaze's in a
21:40
Speaker 2: light year, and the question that would always come through
21:43
Speaker 2: is what should I do with my money? How should
21:45
Speaker 2: I invest? Should I buy? Should I sell? You know,
21:47
Speaker 2: also phone calls with kind of larger customers who had
21:51
Speaker 2: made deposits that are triggered enhance due diligence or a
21:54
Speaker 2: source of fun, source of wealth, and you would always
21:57
Speaker 2: ring them up to have a chat and it would
22:00
Speaker 2: always come back to hate, what should I do with
22:02
Speaker 2: my money? And so it was incredibly frustrating because we
22:05
Speaker 2: could never help anyone.
22:06
Speaker 1: Right now, Why is that, like with Shars, he still
22:09
Speaker 1: hasn't gone into financial advice. Is that just the regulatory
22:13
Speaker 1: threshold you have to reach to do that just is
22:16
Speaker 1: so much more complicated.
22:17
Speaker 2: I think it's just a question of resource and focus,
22:19
Speaker 2: and I think it's something that every retail investing platform
22:24
Speaker 2: globally is moving into. I think it makes most sense
22:27
Speaker 2: probably to build a wealth management business, to be honest.
22:29
Speaker 2: So you'll see Revolutes building one now, Robin Hood's building
22:33
Speaker 2: their own wealth management business. And so at the time
22:35
Speaker 2: this was kind of a few years ago, we looked at,
22:37
Speaker 2: you know, do we do robo advice? If robo advice
22:40
Speaker 2: was kind of as good as it was cracked up
22:42
Speaker 2: to be, we'd all be using it right now, And
22:43
Speaker 2: the reality is we're not. Do we bring human advisors
22:47
Speaker 2: onto the platform, which I think is like a really
22:50
Speaker 2: positive good thing to do, or you know, do in
22:52
Speaker 2: house your own kind of wealth management business where you
22:55
Speaker 2: can have like a high touch service. Obviously like would
22:59
Speaker 2: cost more, but kind of you can figure out a
23:01
Speaker 2: way to deliver that experience in a way that aligns
23:03
Speaker 2: with kind of the ethos and the values of your company.
23:05
Speaker 2: And so, like Check had actually written kind of the
23:08
Speaker 2: board papers at Shares is evaluating all of these things.
23:11
Speaker 2: We'd both spend a lot of time talking to advisors
23:14
Speaker 2: all around the world, and it's something that we really
23:18
Speaker 2: believed in and felt was important because in my view,
23:21
Speaker 2: the importance of financial advice at the right time and
23:24
Speaker 2: some of its life can be transformational and it's not
23:26
Speaker 2: just what should I invest in, it's you know, scenarios
23:30
Speaker 2: every day, Like, you know, can I afford to retire?
23:34
Speaker 2: Can I support my parents as they become older and
23:38
Speaker 2: stop working. I've got this inheritance because of you know, X,
23:42
Speaker 2: Y Z and family tragedy or event, or I'm separating
23:45
Speaker 2: or I'm growing my family, or I need to have
23:48
Speaker 2: a bigger hat. Like all of these things a massive
23:52
Speaker 2: problems to kind of navigate in life, and they're fraught,
23:56
Speaker 2: they're very emotionally complex, and we're typically not set up
24:01
Speaker 2: to deal with them very well. And so that's the
24:03
Speaker 2: value of an advisor, right Like if you were to
24:06
Speaker 2: ask an advisor, hey, what am I actually paying you for?
24:10
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily the differentiated you know, portfolio strategy or
24:13
Speaker 2: asset allocation, because no matter who you go to buy
24:17
Speaker 2: and large, you're getting a very similar kind of product.
24:21
Speaker 2: But what you're really paying someone for is the relationship
24:24
Speaker 2: and the trust for me to understand you, your motivations,
24:27
Speaker 2: your goals and to be there to guide you through
24:30
Speaker 2: these moments and to make the best possible decision for
24:33
Speaker 2: you kind of given everything that we know, Like, that's
24:36
Speaker 2: what you're paying for. And the human element is the
24:39
Speaker 2: key there because it comes down to trust and understanding
24:45
Speaker 2: and that's exceptionally hard to replicate, and I think it
24:50
Speaker 2: will continue to be an exceptionally hard thing to replicate.
24:53
Speaker 2: And so we went and actually spent six months last
24:56
Speaker 2: year in house. We didn't write a line of code.
24:59
Speaker 2: We went to kind of firms all around the world,
25:01
Speaker 2: from your individual advisor up to you know, like your
25:04
Speaker 2: enterpriser and New Zealand like keep we Saber firms for example,
25:07
Speaker 2: and we spent time, you know, days at a time
25:11
Speaker 2: with manager directors, CEOs, heads of compliance, general managers, practice managers, advisors,
25:17
Speaker 2: lead advisors, power planner support stuff, call centers. Because we're
25:20
Speaker 2: not advisors ourselves. Our superpower is building great products and technology,
25:25
Speaker 2: definitely with a consumer lens and focus. And we went
25:29
Speaker 2: in house. And this was part of our approach and
25:31
Speaker 2: our thesis that we laid out for Blackbird. It's like
25:33
Speaker 2: you need to go so to go fast to build
25:35
Speaker 2: a generational company, and that means having done the work
25:40
Speaker 2: and find insights that compound over time. So like what
25:44
Speaker 2: can we learn or where can we form a view
25:47
Speaker 2: that other people haven't found or as a result of
25:51
Speaker 2: them not having done the work will never reach and
25:53
Speaker 2: that gives you a big advantage in the early days.
25:55
Speaker 2: And so we went ahead and we did this work.
25:58
Speaker 2: And kind of the overarching takeaway would be the wealth
26:03
Speaker 2: management and advice industry is a very, very challenged at
26:07
Speaker 2: the moment, and there's a kind of variety of forces
26:09
Speaker 2: that are acting and kind of driving that. One massive
26:14
Speaker 2: increase in reggatary and compliance burden, and so that's resulting
26:17
Speaker 2: in seventy percent of advisor's time not being client facing,
26:21
Speaker 2: doing kind of menial like low value paperwork, which doesn't
26:27
Speaker 2: necessarily improve the advisor experience. It definitely doesn't improve the
26:31
Speaker 2: client experience. It doesn't necessarily lead to better outcomes in
26:34
Speaker 2: a lot of the cases.
26:35
Speaker 1: It's just like anti money laundering sort of checks, and.
26:39
Speaker 2: It's evidencing the suitability of the advice that you've given.
26:42
Speaker 2: I agree with this in principle, it's more just the
26:44
Speaker 2: mechanism that it has to be delivered in. So, given
26:46
Speaker 2: everything that I know about you, Peter, here's why the
26:49
Speaker 2: advice I'm giving you is suitable for purpose, good value
26:53
Speaker 2: for money. But the result is that you know, like
26:55
Speaker 2: a fifty page document which no one reads, so it's
26:58
Speaker 2: not particularly digestible. It becomes much more of a tick
27:01
Speaker 2: box exercise and you know, we'll file that in the
27:04
Speaker 2: cabinet and like that's all good, but when it pulls
27:08
Speaker 2: away from the core purpose or you know, your service delivery.
27:12
Speaker 2: What we've seen is limiting the pool of one advisors,
27:17
Speaker 2: So the number of advisors has been shrinking, and two,
27:20
Speaker 2: the number of clients they're able to serve as also shrinking.
27:22
Speaker 2: So we came across firms that have completely shut off
27:25
Speaker 2: onboarding or advisors who have one hundred and twenty clients.
27:29
Speaker 2: They haven't onboarded a new client in two years. They
27:31
Speaker 2: would love to, but they're at capacity with the amount
27:34
Speaker 2: of work that's associated with each incremental client that comes
27:37
Speaker 2: after that point. And so the opportunity for us is
27:41
Speaker 2: they're dealing with heavy manual paperwork. Generally it's like very
27:46
Speaker 2: low value and their existing software I would describe as
27:49
Speaker 2: Windows ninety five esque. It's very clunky and it really
27:54
Speaker 2: fights them and so it's not loved. And I've never
27:57
Speaker 2: met a group of customers that has had a more
27:59
Speaker 2: visca reaction when you ask them, hey, can you tell
28:02
Speaker 2: me about the software you use? Your CRM. Do you
28:05
Speaker 2: enjoy using it? What's your experience been? Like like crazy
28:10
Speaker 2: crazy responses that we've had. We've had, you know, people
28:13
Speaker 2: going red in the face, swearing, like all just the
28:16
Speaker 2: most unimaginable things. And so that presents a huge opportunity
28:20
Speaker 2: for us when you kind of put this confluence of
28:22
Speaker 2: things together, it's like what we believe in is that
28:25
Speaker 2: there should be more advice, that the advisor needs to
28:30
Speaker 2: be turbocharged. Essentially, the human in the loop remains incredibly
28:34
Speaker 2: important for the actual advice delivery, and the best thing
28:38
Speaker 2: that you kind of are equipped to do is to
28:41
Speaker 2: build relationships with your client. It's not to do everything else.
28:43
Speaker 2: And so the opportunity for MALU is to basically be
28:47
Speaker 2: the operating system or the piece of software that wealth
28:51
Speaker 2: managers and advisors live in on a daily basis to
28:54
Speaker 2: get the work done that they actually need to do
28:56
Speaker 2: and uplift them kind of above the paper the menual
29:00
Speaker 2: tasks so that they become I would describe as like reviewers,
29:03
Speaker 2: not doers. So you finished a meeting with your client,
29:06
Speaker 2: you know that you need to put together an annual
29:08
Speaker 2: review later. For example, that could take you a week
29:11
Speaker 2: or you might need to outsource it to someone else
29:13
Speaker 2: to do, whereas we can now deliver a draft in
29:16
Speaker 2: two minutes and it's ninety five percent there, and you
29:18
Speaker 2: can spend thirty minutes doing a once over and a
29:22
Speaker 2: check off to tweak and edit and understand you know,
29:25
Speaker 2: how that document has essentially rived at that place.
29:35
Speaker 1: So you're using a lot of artificial intelligence here. But
29:38
Speaker 1: this isn't a robo advice player or anything like that.
29:40
Speaker 1: This is taking all the admin and burden off financial advisors,
29:44
Speaker 1: so they've actually got more time to focus on understanding
29:47
Speaker 1: what their clients need.
29:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the way that we're described as like, you know,
29:51
Speaker 2: clients not paperwork, or you know, your your purpose is advice,
29:55
Speaker 2: not admin. Like if you were to ask any advisor,
29:58
Speaker 2: you did not get into this profession for the admin.
30:01
Speaker 2: You've got in it for, you know, the reason of
30:04
Speaker 2: helping clients, building trust, delivering advice. And so the way
30:09
Speaker 2: we delivered the product was one as a wedge with
30:13
Speaker 2: a note taker that it's hyper specialized to financial advice.
30:18
Speaker 2: That might seem counterintuitive to people, but it's extremely powerful
30:20
Speaker 2: for a couple of reasons. One, there's a huge amount
30:23
Speaker 2: of nuance in the advice space. So if you were
30:25
Speaker 2: to use a generic transcription tool as part of a meeting,
30:28
Speaker 2: you just get a chronological A to Z of that
30:30
Speaker 2: exact conversation, And an advice conversation could be ninety five
30:34
Speaker 2: percent relationship building and there could be five percent kind
30:37
Speaker 2: of smattered throughout that conversation that's actually relevant to advice
30:40
Speaker 2: your goals, your motivations, your rest tolerance capacity, fees, all
30:45
Speaker 2: of the above. And so we can use templates to
30:48
Speaker 2: extract and structure the most relevant pieces of the advice
30:52
Speaker 2: conversation for your internal facing compliance purposes. But then also
30:56
Speaker 2: like an external facing follow up to a client for example,
30:58
Speaker 2: so an advisor no longer has to take notes after
31:01
Speaker 2: the meeting, have second person in the meeting taking notes
31:03
Speaker 2: for them, rely on anything else other than our products,
31:06
Speaker 2: and because where so will hyper specialized to advice, we
31:09
Speaker 2: become an incredibly powerful tool and product and part of
31:12
Speaker 2: their day. And the feedback that we've had is incredible,
31:15
Speaker 2: like unsolicited on a daily basis, This is changing my life.
31:19
Speaker 2: This is the best thing that's happened to me in
31:21
Speaker 2: twenty five years of the industry. Hey, I can onboard
31:24
Speaker 2: more clients already and we're only just getting started. And
31:27
Speaker 2: now what we're able to do is move into the
31:28
Speaker 2: post meeting workflows. So you have the context for a meeting,
31:32
Speaker 2: you have an incredible kind of set of information, and
31:35
Speaker 2: now we can begin to action and undertake work on
31:37
Speaker 2: the behalf of the advisor, for example, generating advice documents. Yeah.
31:41
Speaker 1: It's incredible, isn't it. And there are other companies in
31:43
Speaker 1: this building I think that are doing a similar thing,
31:46
Speaker 1: for instance in healthcare for GPS. So it starts with
31:49
Speaker 1: transcription and having a conversation, as you say, feeding it
31:52
Speaker 1: into a general transcription service. It's powered by AI. Like
31:56
Speaker 1: an offer or something like that isn't going to get
31:58
Speaker 1: you the results. It's all the work that you do
32:01
Speaker 1: to fine tune that for a particular use case such
32:04
Speaker 1: as financial advice. That's the real power of it.
32:07
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and it's really resonated. So you know, we
32:11
Speaker 2: have been live in market for seven months now. We
32:14
Speaker 2: have paying customers in the UK, South Africa, Australia and
32:17
Speaker 2: New Zealand. We're doing Singapore shortly as well. I'm there
32:19
Speaker 2: next week. So this is like globally applicable. We are
32:23
Speaker 2: seeing like a huge amount of kind of pool and
32:25
Speaker 2: demand for the product. And yeah, it's a super exciting time.
32:30
Speaker 1: You've just raised some preceed money, what four point six
32:33
Speaker 1: million dollars? Yes, yeah, correct, so's the what's the plan
32:36
Speaker 1: for what runway will that allow you to use?
32:39
Speaker 2: It mainly allows us to accelerate product development and so
32:42
Speaker 2: that's kind of twofold one. It's resource the team up
32:46
Speaker 2: more to make the most of the opportunities that we
32:48
Speaker 2: see in front of us, so go faster and as
32:51
Speaker 2: a result of having more people, you know, within reason,
32:53
Speaker 2: actually be able to ship the product faster as well.
32:55
Speaker 2: So it's to grow our teams you know in London
32:59
Speaker 2: and Sydney and in Wellington, and then also look at
33:01
Speaker 2: opportunities in other markets too.
33:03
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I've just been reading great book nineteen twenty
33:07
Speaker 1: nine Andrew Ross Sauken, getting really inside what happened with
33:10
Speaker 1: the Great Crash of nineteen twenty nine and drawing parallels
33:14
Speaker 1: to today. Are we in a bubble? Yeah, an AI bubble.
33:18
Speaker 1: So I think there's a lot of people who invest
33:21
Speaker 1: are looking for better quality advice to navigate, not just
33:26
Speaker 1: be sheep that are jumping in the latest thing. That's
33:29
Speaker 1: what happened in nineteen twenty nine, although back then it
33:31
Speaker 1: was all margins. You know, people were borrowing to buy shares,
33:35
Speaker 1: which is never really a good thing, and then the
33:37
Speaker 1: margin calls came in and they're all bankrupt, you know,
33:41
Speaker 1: so interesting your views on what the future of financial
33:43
Speaker 1: advice is. Obviously in the background is artificial intelligence and
33:47
Speaker 1: robo advice, and it stands the sense that this is
33:50
Speaker 1: a very data driven industry. There's huge amounts of data.
33:53
Speaker 1: If you can get hold of that data, there is
33:55
Speaker 1: incredible value that may augment or even replace some of
34:00
Speaker 1: the functions that that advisors play just looking at it
34:04
Speaker 1: screens of data coming into them.
34:06
Speaker 2: My view on the future of advice is that it
34:07
Speaker 2: will be hyper personalized. It will be available to anyone
34:11
Speaker 2: at scale, and this is probably more of the kind
34:13
Speaker 2: of tenure of you. I still believe in the value
34:15
Speaker 2: of the human in the loop. I think the main
34:19
Speaker 2: constraint there is regulation. Regulators will not move to, at
34:23
Speaker 2: least in my opinion, you know, open up huge swaths
34:26
Speaker 2: of the advice market to a complete kind of software
34:30
Speaker 2: driven experience that maybe possible. Who knows, like a lot
34:33
Speaker 2: will play out in that space. But I still very
34:35
Speaker 2: much believe in the value of the human and the loop,
34:37
Speaker 2: and ultimately our goal is to transform the underlying unit
34:41
Speaker 2: economics of what it means to deliver advice. So at
34:45
Speaker 2: the moment, it's very much if I wish to grow
34:48
Speaker 2: my advice firm or offer advice to more people, I
34:50
Speaker 2: need to make a set investment in terms of growing
34:54
Speaker 2: headcount or ability to resource all the admin that is
34:57
Speaker 2: associated with each new client, and I don't necessarily have
35:00
Speaker 2: a set return for that. So it's changing that equation
35:03
Speaker 2: saying that you can grow your firm without having to
35:07
Speaker 2: make these big bets or take on additional risk, and
35:10
Speaker 2: ultimately bring down the minimums which are now existing and
35:13
Speaker 2: actually are going up at a lot of these firms
35:15
Speaker 2: either you know, liquid assets of five hundred thousand or
35:18
Speaker 2: a million dollars for example, and start to move that
35:21
Speaker 2: equation in the other direction. So, for example, I think
35:24
Speaker 2: the average advice fee in the UK has increased like
35:26
Speaker 2: six percent in the last twelve months, and so really
35:29
Speaker 2: it just continues to price consumers and people who need
35:33
Speaker 2: access to advice out of the market. And so for us,
35:35
Speaker 2: the mission is transform the underlying P and L and
35:38
Speaker 2: the unit economics of what it means to deliver advice
35:40
Speaker 2: to a customer so that we can actually reverse that,
35:43
Speaker 2: and I think that to me is the more pressing problem.
35:47
Speaker 2: Then we're just going to have an AI you know,
35:49
Speaker 2: driven advisor that's going to deliver advice to everyone, Like
35:53
Speaker 2: that could well happen in the future, but you have
35:55
Speaker 2: to understand like the fundamental drivers of what it means
35:58
Speaker 2: to one be an advisor to deliver advice, and then ultimately,
36:01
Speaker 2: like why you will doing this? It's to deliver a
36:04
Speaker 2: better experience for the end consumer. Yeah, And I think
36:08
Speaker 2: that's probably the second piece that gets lost in all
36:10
Speaker 2: of this. It's a lot of software. I think in
36:12
Speaker 2: the AI space at the moment, it's never been easier
36:14
Speaker 2: to build. That is true, but it's also been never
36:17
Speaker 2: been easy to deliver a really shitty product experience. And
36:20
Speaker 2: I think if you look at adoption of many many companies,
36:24
Speaker 2: they have very high churn. It gets you know, forced
36:27
Speaker 2: from management and a business setting down upon teams, and
36:30
Speaker 2: a lot of the individuals won't adopt it. And so
36:32
Speaker 2: our goal is to build a product that is delightful,
36:37
Speaker 2: is loved, so you know very much the shares is framing,
36:40
Speaker 2: but for business setting like is truly valuable and allows
36:44
Speaker 2: the end user to realize value very very quickly. And
36:48
Speaker 2: then from there it's about how do you actually elevate
36:51
Speaker 2: and uplift the experience for the client. So a lot
36:53
Speaker 2: of people right now will say, hey, there's this manual
36:55
Speaker 2: piece of paperwork. There's steps one, two, three, four, five.
36:58
Speaker 2: We're just going to understand what they're steps are, and
37:00
Speaker 2: we're just going to use AI to like, you know,
37:02
Speaker 2: write the paperwork or kind of take that down to
37:05
Speaker 2: steps one or two. Whereas our view is you need
37:08
Speaker 2: to understand the outcome that you're trying to achieve, what
37:11
Speaker 2: the customer and client experience is at the end of that,
37:14
Speaker 2: and then just design with that in mind, forget everything else.
37:17
Speaker 2: And so it means that you can kind of fundamentally
37:19
Speaker 2: re architect how a lot of this work actually gets
37:21
Speaker 2: done in the background. And I think that's part of
37:24
Speaker 2: this kind of Shares is a light year and consumer
37:26
Speaker 2: late approach which we're bringing to this kind of antiquated
37:29
Speaker 2: when those ninety five esque like industry, when it comes
37:33
Speaker 2: to software, it's build for the consumer, build something that
37:36
Speaker 2: they love that you know, stacks up against any other
37:39
Speaker 2: kind of social or social media either that they might
37:42
Speaker 2: use in terms of experience and force adoption. So I'll
37:45
Speaker 2: give you like a really concrete example. It doesn't matter
37:48
Speaker 2: whether you're an individual advisor or whether you're the managing director.
37:51
Speaker 2: You get the same experience when you come to our product.
37:54
Speaker 2: It's self serve onboarding, sign up in two minutes and
37:59
Speaker 2: you know we've got a test or a demo meeting
38:01
Speaker 2: for you, or you can upload your own or you
38:03
Speaker 2: can add Marlow to a meeting straight away. So the
38:05
Speaker 2: time to value is very very quick, but it results
38:07
Speaker 2: in like a bottom's up, like sales motion. So I
38:09
Speaker 2: did a demo on Friday with a pretty large UK firm.
38:13
Speaker 2: We already had two of their advisors and customers of ours.
38:16
Speaker 2: And so what that means for the first time ever
38:18
Speaker 2: is that the advisor in this situation as a product
38:21
Speaker 2: that they love, they can turn around to their management team.
38:23
Speaker 2: They can bang their fist on the table and say
38:26
Speaker 2: this is changing my life. I love it. We need
38:29
Speaker 2: to roll this out across the whole firm. So it's
38:32
Speaker 2: a very different kind of sales process and cycle, and
38:35
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases is resulting in way way
38:39
Speaker 2: higher adoption. Of the product and durability. So to give
38:42
Speaker 2: you some numbers, we have had almost zero churn after
38:48
Speaker 2: seven months with hundreds and hundreds of paid seats globally,
38:52
Speaker 2: all on monthly contracts. You can leave us at any
38:55
Speaker 2: point in time. But it's because we are starting to
38:58
Speaker 2: get that kind of ingredient in that next in terms
39:00
Speaker 2: of B two C to B which is built for
39:03
Speaker 2: the consumer and the individual and have them kind of
39:07
Speaker 2: advocate on your behalf to roll out the product. We
39:10
Speaker 2: have advisors who are running training sessions for their colleagues.
39:13
Speaker 2: We have firms who are talking to their competitors about us,
39:17
Speaker 2: and like the anecdote that comes back is, I can't
39:19
Speaker 2: believe I'm doing this, but I'm talking to one of
39:20
Speaker 2: our beggest competitors and I've given them a demo of
39:22
Speaker 2: your product, which is an incredible piece of feedback to
39:28
Speaker 2: have it. But it's because the focus is on the
39:31
Speaker 2: user experience and the value that you're delivering opposed to
39:35
Speaker 2: in a lot of cases just automating steps one to
39:37
Speaker 2: five and then trying to extract as much money out
39:39
Speaker 2: of someone as you possibly can.
39:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pushing up the price of giving that advice
39:43
Speaker 1: as well making it inaccessible. So yeah, that's great. You've
39:46
Speaker 1: got a team back in New Zealand of small team
39:48
Speaker 1: and Wellington of engineers working on the coding and then.
39:52
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so we're kind of building engineering and product
39:55
Speaker 2: across Sydney and Wellington. We kind of have a go
40:00
Speaker 2: to market function now for Asia Pacific out of Sydney
40:03
Speaker 2: and are doing the same in London as well, so
40:06
Speaker 2: kind of go to market for UK, Europe and other
40:08
Speaker 2: countries in that time zone. So South Africa for example,
40:10
Speaker 2: or East Coast US works pretty well for us. And
40:13
Speaker 2: then also building kind of like marketing and growth function
40:16
Speaker 2: in the UK as well. So our view is like
40:20
Speaker 2: New Zealand companies should be building global from day one.
40:22
Speaker 2: You need to be in big markets, and it just
40:25
Speaker 2: makes sense to front foot a lot of the pain
40:28
Speaker 2: that most companies experience and go through, which is we
40:31
Speaker 2: spend a year or two in New Zealand maybe Australia,
40:34
Speaker 2: we kind of do okay or reasonably well, and then
40:36
Speaker 2: we decide or raise our level of ambition and then
40:39
Speaker 2: go offshore. And you could have just kind of chalked
40:43
Speaker 2: up all those learnings made the mistakes earlier in the
40:46
Speaker 2: piece and be so much better off for it. So
40:49
Speaker 2: a lot of people ask, oh, how do you work
40:50
Speaker 2: a cross time zones or and the answer is we
40:54
Speaker 2: figure it out as we go. We have the opportunity
40:57
Speaker 2: to build cultural infrastructure, is what I call it in
40:59
Speaker 2: terms of how we run the company, how we work
41:03
Speaker 2: together onboard people allow people to kind of do great
41:06
Speaker 2: work or get their best out of themselves, and it
41:09
Speaker 2: results in a really high level of autonomy, but very
41:11
Speaker 2: kind of clear guidelines for how we operate, and as
41:13
Speaker 2: we grow, the onuses on the whole team to provide
41:16
Speaker 2: feedback and input into how we shape that because we
41:19
Speaker 2: don't have all the answers. But in my opinion, you're
41:21
Speaker 2: way better off to being big markets because it's a
41:23
Speaker 2: force multiplier for everything that you do from day one
41:26
Speaker 2: and you can just back solve all of these problems.
41:28
Speaker 2: It's not to say it's easy, but it's much better
41:32
Speaker 2: off in the long run. And the reality is, like
41:34
Speaker 2: we run a twenty four to seven operation, Like we
41:37
Speaker 2: work pretty big hours, but it's incredibly rewarding and we
41:41
Speaker 2: spend a lot of time on planes going back and forth.
41:43
Speaker 2: But we're kind of at the age and stage where
41:46
Speaker 2: you know, we're up for that. We're making this choice.
41:49
Speaker 2: We're fully opted into this. Yeah, and it's for people
41:52
Speaker 2: to kind of like be up for that, to join
41:55
Speaker 2: the mission or not. And it's a great filter.
41:57
Speaker 1: And like this is the norm now for there are
41:59
Speaker 1: more people employed by New Zealand tech companies offshore than
42:04
Speaker 1: in New Zealand by a rapidly growing margin. So this
42:08
Speaker 1: is the reality global from day one for tech companies
42:13
Speaker 1: and we've seen incredible success s. That's where the high
42:16
Speaker 1: growth comes for AURA first, AML, all these other companies
42:20
Speaker 1: that often have a co founder that has moved to
42:22
Speaker 1: the US or the UK to build that bridgehead. That's
42:26
Speaker 1: the recipe now.
42:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's a great community of people who have
42:30
Speaker 2: kind of gone before and done that. Now, it's still
42:33
Speaker 2: really important to me that we, you know, operate out
42:36
Speaker 2: of New Zealand or have a presence there, you know,
42:41
Speaker 2: to transfer learning's economic value like everything else back. And
42:45
Speaker 2: we're seeing more and more successful companies be able to
42:47
Speaker 2: keep their entity there for example, not have to flip
42:49
Speaker 2: it to the US or the UK or another country.
42:52
Speaker 2: It kind of like it can depend depending on what
42:55
Speaker 2: age and stage and tiples dictated by investors or certain
42:58
Speaker 2: other factors down the line, but the New Zealand connection
43:01
Speaker 2: for us is super important and we think that we
43:04
Speaker 2: have like a really really good talent pool there and
43:07
Speaker 2: kind of one of my personal goals is like, how
43:10
Speaker 2: can we find, you know, super bright, young, ambitious people
43:13
Speaker 2: and how can we kind of share our worldview with them?
43:16
Speaker 2: How can we get them over to the UK. It's
43:18
Speaker 2: super easy to move here. Yes, it's a long way away,
43:20
Speaker 2: but like I want to be exporting as much talent
43:23
Speaker 2: as possible or signing people up and saying like, hey,
43:27
Speaker 2: you've got to do your first six or twelve months
43:28
Speaker 2: in New Zealand, like learn the business, get across the
43:31
Speaker 2: New Zealand Australian context, and then move over to London
43:34
Speaker 2: with us. Like we just have kind of this talent
43:36
Speaker 2: pipeline and machine that you can't get anywhere else, and
43:39
Speaker 2: we get on really well. We've shared cultural context and
43:42
Speaker 2: understanding and it's just a great way of building like
43:45
Speaker 2: a global business in my opinion. So that's something that
43:47
Speaker 2: I'm keen to kind of keep pushing alongside everything else
43:50
Speaker 2: that we have going on, and it's important to us.
43:51
Speaker 1: Well good luck for the future. I'm sure you'll be
43:54
Speaker 1: raising more capital before too long at the growth rate
43:58
Speaker 1: that you're experiencing at the moment. And congratulations on that
44:01
Speaker 1: international expansion South Africa, Singapore coming online as well, so
44:06
Speaker 1: plenty of upward momentum. So congratulations and thanks so much
44:10
Speaker 1: for coming on a Business of Tech.
44:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love the chat. Thank you.
44:22
Speaker 1: Thanks so much to Hardy Michelle, co founder of Marlou,
44:26
Speaker 1: explaining how AI can finally free financial advisors from the
44:29
Speaker 1: mountain of admin so they can spend more time doing
44:32
Speaker 1: what matters given quality, human centered advice. I think Marlou's
44:37
Speaker 1: approach is a really great case study in using AI
44:40
Speaker 1: to augment people, not replace them. If they can help
44:43
Speaker 1: financial advisors reduce the admin associated with dispensing their advice,
44:48
Speaker 1: that will hopefully mean more affordable advice, lower fees, but
44:52
Speaker 1: more importantly, better advice as these advisors are freed up
44:56
Speaker 1: to focus exactly on what their clients need. So thanksfull
45:00
Speaker 1: listening to the Business of Tech powered by two Degrees.
45:02
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe
45:05
Speaker 1: wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Peter Griffin and I'll
45:08
Speaker 1: be back next Thursday with more on the Business of Tech.
45:11
Speaker 1: Catch you then