SaaS Hypergrowth: $1M to $18M ARR in 8 Months (Richard Hollingsworth - Fyxer.ai)

Richard, welcome to the show.

>> Hey, thank you so much for having me.

I'm so looking forward to this. Uh, we

have had a crazy last six months and so excited to talk talk it through with you today.

>> You have a great story and um I'm going to do my best to pick your brain as much as possible so people can learn from your experiences and and and hopefully be able to apply some lessons to their

own businesses. So, before we get into

own businesses. So, before we get into that, do you have a favorite quote?

Something that inspires or motivates you?

>> Yeah. Uh that's a good question. I think

the thing that stuck with me most this year has been uh like we've experienced as hell of a ride in terms of growth this year. Um and it's because of how

this year. Um and it's because of how intensely we focused on being the best we can in terms of execution. And the

mantra that my team live by and that we repeat to each other every week is what is the one thing that you will put unreasonable effort to this week to contribute towards our most important

goal? and every single person in the

goal? and every single person in the company should be able to answer that question at any point during the week.

>> That's nice. Nice. That that that's a great way of getting focus. And we're

going to talk about the importance of focus shortly. Um so tell us about

focus shortly. Um so tell us about Fixer. What does the product do? Who's

Fixer. What does the product do? Who's

it for? And what's the main problem you're helping to solve?

>> Yeah, sure. So um for for those that don't know uh Fixer is uh the world's largest AI email assistant and our job

is the way we look at it is saving people from their emails is the biggest productivity opportunity in AI. If you

ask anyone on the street what's the thing they hate most about their work, they'll tell you it's either their manager or it's their inbox. Um, so like a $10 billion company is going to be

built in this space and we are currently we're the market leaders. So our goal is to predict the next email that you're going to write. You can think about it a little bit like cursor whose job it is

to predict the next line of code that you're going to write. And if we can do this uh if if we do this then it is just going to change the way that people work. Uh it's email is the first thing

work. Uh it's email is the first thing that I look at in the morning and it's the last thing I look at before I go to bed. I'd love to change that.

bed. I'd love to change that.

>> Cool. And give us a sense of the size of the business. Where are you in terms of

the business. Where are you in terms of revenue customers?

>> Yeah, we've had an hell of a journey this year. Uh we started the year um on

this year. Uh we started the year um on January 1st with a team of four people uh and doing about a million dollars in ARR. Today we're a team of 40 people

ARR. Today we're a team of 40 people split across New York and London and uh we're doing 18 million in ARIRL and we're growing at about threequarters of a million a week. So the speed and rapid

growth of the company's just been absolutely crazy. Uh the thing that

absolutely crazy. Uh the thing that we're most proud of though uh actually isn't revenue. It's it's it's about

isn't revenue. It's it's it's about retention for us. in order for the business to grow at the clip that we want, it's so essential that we build a

kind of lasting um a lasting product.

And the thing that we pride ourselves on is that 90% of our customers who pay for fixer are still with us after 3 months.

Now, when I looked when I was researching for for this interview and I looked at Fixer and and this hyperrowth period you've had where you've gone from like 1 to

18 million AR in what 8 n months, it's like ridiculous, ridiculously fast. Um,

but then I looked at your background and I was like, this doesn't look like a typical founder startup founder background. I mean, is it true that you

background. I mean, is it true that you and your brother Archie, who's one of the co-founders, like, did you guys grow up on a farm?

>> Yeah. Yeah, we absolutely did. I think

I'm the only tech CEO I know who who started Life on a Farm. Um, and

actually, Life on a Farm is uh so Archie and I used to work on the farm together in the summer holidays, and it was very obvious to us that that farming life wasn't right. Um, it's a really slow

wasn't right. Um, it's a really slow pace of life where you have to plant something at the beginning of the year and you have to wait 12 months to work out whether that was the right decision

or not. And a lot of the results of

or not. And a lot of the results of farming are totally out of your control as well. So the price, the weather are

as well. So the price, the weather are the things that determine the result the the sort of most for you. Um, and those totally out of your control. So we

plotted a way of uh what was like the opposite environment to that and we saw tech as that opportunity. Um but it sounds a bit like you know we have have

had this overnight success in terms of we only launched our product 15 months ago. Uh and to be sitting here with 18

ago. Uh and to be sitting here with 18 million ARR sounds like we've had an overnight success but actually uh we've been working in this space now for 8

years. So, prior to Fixer AI, Archie and

years. So, prior to Fixer AI, Archie and I started uh what became the UK's largest executive assistant agency. So,

I've hired hundreds of executive assistants. Um, in that business,

assistants. Um, in that business, Archie, who was our head of sales, sold millions of dollars of uh contracts to companies from small startups all the

way up to uh PWC. Um, and I think the takeaway we have from that business is we learned so much uh by doing it. It

was a remote company. Um, so learning all of the basics of how to run and lead a team. Uh, all of those things were

a team. Uh, all of those things were huge lessons for us. But the real real thing that we took away and have taken into Fixer AI is that we know more about what customers want from this product than anybody else in the world. And that

gives us a huge advantage.

>> Yeah. So you you built that business to I think it was you grew to around five million.

>> That's right. Yeah, we we we bootstrapped it as well. So it's just such a different world. Um and uh it's like remember like how difficult that

is. Um for anyone that's bootstrapped a

is. Um for anyone that's bootstrapped a company, you kind of know like cash is king and just quite how difficult it is to scale the business.

um our early customers were century back startups and Archie and I worked out that all of them had the money in in the

bank. So what we did is we asked or we

bank. So what we did is we asked or we insisted as one as our terms of working with us was that you had to pay us 3 months in advance for the service and that was how we funded the whole

business. they uh you had to be really

business. they uh you had to be really creative uh and it taught me a lot about cost control and all of these sorts of things that have been really helpful in in fixer AI.

>> So what was the point where you guys decided that this was going to become a software business?

>> So on day one of the company we saw this as an AI business. The challenge was there was a whole bunch of other people in the market at the time. There was a company called X.AI AI uh who were

building in the space and uh a sequoia back company called Claraara Labs as well but none of them really seemed good enough in our view and the popular opinion at the time was that you would

use humans to close the gap to where AI wasn't able to to answer the questions.

So we knew that the first step to building the AI company was going to be top tier human assistants that would be able to to close those gaps for us. And

on day one of the company, what we did is we asked all of the assistants to time to log and to describe all of the tasks that they did for the clients so that we would have the map of what it is

that people actually use assistance for.

Uh and then could verifiably say these are the key workflows to work on.

>> And uh so so you started the the the executive assistant business with the software business in mind.

How long did it take before you wrote that first line of code?

>> We had many failed attempts at leveraging technology to make the exe essentially the executive assistant service cheaper.

So we saw this as going to be a a service business and then a tech enabled service business and event and then a tech product. And we spent 4 years

tech product. And we spent 4 years building uh attempts at a tech- enabled service. And the premise was that we

service. And the premise was that we were working mostly with kind of executive level customers. Uh folks that were on like 200 grand a year plus. And

what we needed to do was work out how we could pull the price down so that we could service like this massive much larger group of people that sat beneath them. but uh and had all of the same

them. but uh and had all of the same dynamics in terms of volume of emails and meetings and all of this thing but none of the support and that was our

goal was was to try to service those people and when GP23 came out um they I even remember where we were like sitting in our office in our co-working space in

Shortorditch in East London and just being like oh my god this this is the solution to our problem. We've been

working and grinding on this for six years. Four of which spent probably

years. Four of which spent probably working on three serious failed attempts at trying to uh kind of leverage technology to pull the price down. And

in one invention, it felt like suddenly the price would fall 99%. And so the the the version of fixer that we see today

that really you really started working on that after GP GPT3 was available.

>> Exactly. Yeah. So what became clear once that technology came out was that if you were very very focused on what you asked GPT to do and you spent a lot of time

training it to do that specific thing then you could get results that across the right workflows would exceed the quality of what a human can do. So the

best example of that is our first workflow that we built which is organizing your inbox into folders. So

this is a very logic based workflow and what we did is we uh asked the assistants in the agency business how do you do this for your clients and so we

built the AI to mimic their exact workflow and then what we did is we used the assistants to train the AI to be more accurate than them. So we would pit

10 assistants against our AI and only launch the product when we had uh when we could see that it was beating the assistance in terms of accuracy. That

was really really key because it meant that when we launched the product we had total confidence in it just flying off the shelves because this was a workflow that people were paying our agency

business $60 an hour for. And so if we're charging 30 bucks a month, we knew that this was something that people really wanted and we were able to do it more accurately than a human can do it.

This was sort of dead to to um to be a solid product market fit. How did you figure out where to focus the product? I

mean, you've got GPT3 and then suddenly, you know, there's so many things you could do, so many things that you could build and an EA is is probably juggling

multiple things for, you know, the the this executive. So, how did you decide

this executive. So, how did you decide what features to focus on?

>> Yeah, the first problem that we had was we it was just Archie and I and neither of us are technical. So, uh, our first challenge was we had, um, been wooing,

if you like, for a while, uh, Matt, our now CTO and co-founder, um, who was, uh, Ochre partner of Archie and, um, we knew

he was the guy that we wanted to build this, but, he was very much in demand, uh, from other people pitching to him.

So our pitch to him was we have six years of this time tracking data that tells you exactly what people use assistance for and then we have the

assistant agency itself to a show you exactly how the workflow should be built and b to use the human assistance to be able to train the AI itself. Plus uh we

have already been selling this product for $60 an hour to people. So we are a really solid go to market bet and uh

that that uh pitch really really resonated with him and what it reminded me is that actually for the go to market

folks out there is such a strength in that in terms of your pitch to technical founders as well as you know I think people think the power dynamic often is how do we get the technical founders

rather than they are also looking for folks to uh you know jump on their sales calls. Yeah. So,

calls. Yeah. So,

you alluded to this earlier that if we just look at um what Fixer AI has done over the last year or so, it doesn't give us the full picture of all the

pre-work that you guys did to get to that point. And now what I'm hearing is

that point. And now what I'm hearing is it wasn't just the experience of building that EA business. It was also

the data that you had collected over that time that gave you a whole bunch of valuable insights about what the software product should do

as well as all the failures that you had trying to build uh a software business and sort of like you know the the the Edison thing about you know I'm not quite sure about the right software but

here's all the things we've tried and failed at that we know that don't work.

Yeah, that that I think that's exactly it is it gave us the ability to say no to things and it gave us the confidence that when we released things that we knew that what we were releasing would

work which saved us a huge amount of time and gave us this instant product market fit. So that um yeah, that was

market fit. So that um yeah, that was just incredibly valuable because this it's so tempting as we all know when we're building a product to go off and listen to a customer say they want

something and go off immediately and start building it without really being that confident that it was the right thing to spend time on. So there was four of you, you the three co-founders.

So Matt came on and then you hired one other person and that was a team of four that got you to the first million in ARR.

How long did that take to go from like zero shipping the product to getting to the first million? Yeah, I think we we launched the product in January last

year uh for beta users and then to paid users in something like May last year and um we we approached it slightly differently to

how most people would I think. Um we

were fortunate to have a kind of initial group of customers that we're able to share it with from our agency business.

And then what we did is when we would at this point we maybe would have three or four signups a day something like that.

We would spend our rule as a team was to spend time doing one of two things. You

were either building product or you were speaking to customers. That's all we did. And uh every single person that

did. And uh every single person that signed up to the product we would speak to. And eventually we started speaking

to. And eventually we started speaking to people who initially you would just be solving kind of customer support issues like oh I wasn't able to connect my email or I don't understand how this works and we would then feed all of that

back to the product team and we created this really high velocity cycle where we would solve problems within an hour of finding them out um which was really really valuable and just helped speed

things up as much as possible and then we would cross reference uh new customers with their LinkedIn following and spend lots of time with customers and then if they became happy customers

asked them to post about us online. We

knew that we were just four British guys in you know in London. Nobody had heard of us and so and people's emails are incredibly

uh you know incredibly close to their hearts. You know people do not want to

hearts. You know people do not want to give access their emails all these things up very easily. So trust is really really important. So we knew that

for these folks that had 20 30,000 followers on LinkedIn uh their credibility uh and trustworthiness would be the thing that would get new

customers over the hurdle um and start using the product. And so it created this great cycle where we were simultaneously learning how to uh improve the product

by spending more time with customers and growing the customer base as a result of it. So, it sounds like the first 10

it. So, it sounds like the first 10 customers at least came from your existing client base from the EA business. And then with with LinkedIn, I

business. And then with with LinkedIn, I think it's really smart rather than you posting on LinkedIn about how great Fixer is, getting your customers to post

about their experiences and telling their followers about that.

Did you ask every single customer to do that?

um or if if you sort of picked people, how did you decide who to pick, who to ask? And then was the request simple as

ask? And then was the request simple as can you go post something on LinkedIn or did you did you write something for them or like what what what was just the logistics of making that work? Cuz it's

kind of it's a very simple thing, but it's not always that easy to pull off.

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's great question. So we

question. So we the way that we would approach it is we just spent loads of time with these people and we would look at what their

following was and you'd need their following to be more than 10,000 people.

And I suppose there was a correlation between if you've got a high number if you've got an email problem you're probably more likely to have a high number of LinkedIn followers. there's

probably a higher density of people with lots of LinkedIn followers in in that group of people than maybe for another product. So we we were sort of fortunate

product. So we we were sort of fortunate from that perspective and um just by virtue of spending time with them and proving to them that we were able to

solve the issues that they saw in the product extremely quickly. People

believed in us and got confidence in us as a team and as a product and believed that the product would get to this the place that it needed to be. So when we would ask them, is there anybody that

you know that could use the product um and would you be happy to share about it on LinkedIn? We would sometimes write it

on LinkedIn? We would sometimes write it for them um if that was a hurdle. But we

always try to steer them towards authenticity as much as possible because it's always quite obvious I think when people um kind of you know somebody's written it for them particularly if

Chhatty written it for them. So I think that got you to about 10 15k MR maybe. You were talking about 200

MR maybe. You were talking about 200 200k.

>> Yeah. By by about September I think we were at about 200k something like that in ARR.

>> And then you decided to abandon the UK for a while. Um and I know you you joined an accelerator but it wasn't just the attraction of going to the US and

working with an accelerator. It was also to maybe just step away from some of the challenges that you were experiencing in the UK.

>> Yeah. Yeah. It's it's fair to say we think Europe and the UK is the right place to scale our company, but starting up we found it quite difficult. Um

the thing that um this is probably the thing that we got most wrong in those first few months was we just weren't thinking big enough and everyone in the UK it it wasn't helped

by the fact that everyone in the UK just kept saying to us oh but but what if Google do this? Um and we found that really demotivating and kind of frustrating that that people couldn't

get over that hurdle. Um so we decided to come to San Francisco for a week uh to meet some of our uh some of our customers and to get inspired really and

we ended up staying for 4 months.

We in that 4 months also eight times our revenue as well. Uh and that's what broke a million dollars. Um so what happened was is we we came out and one of our customers said you should join

this program called HFZ which is uh it's an AI residency which is not something I had heard of before. Um, but the premise is that you live in a huge mansion in

the middle of San Francisco with 10 other startups and they remove everything from your day uh so that you can spend all of your time working. And

so food is cooked for you, cleaning is done for you, even your washing is done for you. Uh there's a gym in the

for you. Uh there's a gym in the basement with a personal trainer and you can just spend your entire time either eating sleeping exercising or

working. That's it. And that was

working. That's it. And that was incredibly motivating for us. And the

thing that the narrative shift from what if Google do this to became uh what they would say to us this might not work but

if it does it's going to be huge and we totally fell in love with that uh because it was belief in ambition unlike

anything we had seen in the UK. Let's

talk about that growth, the hyper growth period, right? Because that's super

period, right? Because that's super interesting. So, as we said earlier, you

interesting. So, as we said earlier, you went from million AR to about 17 18 million in about 8 months.

Just walk me through how that happened and what what you feel put you in a position to be able to have

that kind of growth cuz this is not just about, oh, we found a new growth hack or something, right? there was there was a

something, right? there was there was a bunch of things that needed to come come together to make this happen. So what

like just just walk us through that.

>> Yeah, absolutely. So uh during the course of that program at 8 zero as I say we we kind of grew revenue from zero to a million and I think most people when they launched their product think

great now I need to start marketing it and we took the entirely opposite approach just continued doing what we had been doing before by just selling the product. So getting on the phone

the product. So getting on the phone with any customer that instead of getting on the phone with all customers, we started getting on the phone with customers who had five or more employees, 10 or more employees, 20 or

more employees and started just growing that number. And again, we were just

that number. And again, we were just still a team of four people. So we had the two engineers just building product and then myself and Archie just speaking to customers and we didn't do anything else. And

else. And that that was the motion that got us all the way to a million. And at the end of the year we raised a series A and um

came back decided to come back to the UK and build the company from London and we started marketing the product which is something we just hadn't done before.

>> So up up until that point everything had just been inbound through LinkedIn word of mouth that was it >> and then sales. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And

what we had done is we've managed to take customers from one seat to five seats to 10 seats to 20 seats in like within one company and learning how to do that.

>> Just just just explain that a little bit what you mean by that. So t typically what happens is like one random person in an organization comes and discovers fixer starts using it and then that is

your sort of entry point into the organization.

>> Yeah. Exactly. So, usually an individual signs up and and probably pays for this themselves and but they put their work email address in because that's the one that gets all the traffic, right? So,

probably 95% of our revenue comes from people's work email addresses. And then

usually there is other people at their organization that also have a meeting and email problem. And so what we do with the product is by virtue of uh them

using it, they start to tell the people in their organization or uh people see that they're using it and start trying it themselves. And so you start to get

it themselves. And so you start to get this kind of spread through a company.

And this is really important for the long-term thinking. We knew that in

long-term thinking. We knew that in order for us to ever, you know, for us to hit a billion dollars in revenue, you need to have a really strong sales motion. And because we had Archie in the

motion. And because we had Archie in the business um whose background was sales, we decided to do that as early as possible. And what that does is it meant

possible. And what that does is it meant that the marketing dollars that we eventually started spending at the beginning of this year were so much more efficient than they would otherwise have

been because for every one person that you acquire through marketing, you might acquire one or two people through sales.

>> Okay. So,

talk me through you said you started marketing specifically. What did you

marketing specifically. What did you start doing to to generate more leads and and how were you finding those people? Because it it kind of sounds

people? Because it it kind of sounds like Fix It could be for anybody. And

that's that's good, but that's also bad because that makes marketing like incredibly difficult like who are you targeting?

>> Yeah, it's it's it was super interesting and quite confusing question that we had to answer to. We are building the product for customerf facing people and

professional service companies. So not

the tech industry and so actually being in San Francisco was uh a bit confusing from that perspective because everyone there works in tech right so it was

really important for us to we in order for this company to be multi-billion dollars of revenue it needs to be uh targeted at the non- tech industry

because that is the industry for whom email is like the biggest problem. So uh

people like real estate brokers, people like recruiters, uh people who work in consultancy, they suffer much more heavily from the pain of email uh than

developers do obviously. So that was that was the our goal. And so we started targeting people through cold email um through uh and and through kind of paid

advertising through Meta and Google search and that sort of thing. Um the

the the other thing that we really had to overcome was how to acquire people at scale because we just hadn't done uh kind of low touch or no touch self-s

serve motion as well. And um we hired uh a fantastic growth engineer who completely transformed the kind of onboarding experience for people so that we were able to do it at 10x the volume

of what we've been used to.

>> Okay, great. So you're using cold email, you're you're u running some ads and you have some you did have an idea of who you were targeting, right? So you talked about the professional services and and

the the types of people that make the most sense and then the playbook really is like productled growth, right? So they they get to Fixer, they can sign up

themselves, they can connect it to their email, and hopefully they start to see the benefits of using the the product.

Uh walk me through how you then turn that into one person at some real estate company to uh selling 50 seats at the company.

>> Yeah. So, I I can tell you how we closed um the largest deal that we closed this year is um a 5,000 seat, $1.2 million deal, and we

closed it in 7 days.

>> Wow.

>> The way that that happened was uh the CEO of the largest real estate brokerage in the US, a company called EXP Realy, where they got 80,000 staff. He signed

up via a Meta advert. It's one of our first adverts. It's very good. Um it was

first adverts. It's very good. Um it was a very good stroke of luck this. So the

first um he signed up and he called us at the end of his twoe trial. Uh it's 7 days the trial now but back then and it was 2 weeks and he called us at the end

and said I have 40 of my team using this because we have such a bad email problem in this industry and we have I have shared this with so many of my team

members. uh we have 40 people using it.

members. uh we have 40 people using it.

I want to roll this out to 5,000 of my staff and uh his what he was explaining to us which is so um really told us like

we we had we were on to something here was that uh for him there like more meetings equals more money. So the more

viewings that his team do, it's their best lead indicator for revenue. And

currently all his team do is either do house viewings or prepare for or debrief from or schedule those meetings. So if

we can take the second thing away, they can do more meetings and he currently works on one and a half% margins. So if

they can make 20% gain that might have 50% impact on uh net margin and could triple his stock price. So this is a

really transformational opportunity for him in AI and we had this fantastic call with him and at the end of it we said you know so how quickly can we get this

done and he said oh it'll take 3 to 6 months that's we're a public company that's that's just how it works and Archie and I got off the call and

he lived in actually not far from from uh where he used to live he lived in Bellingham Washington um on the sort of border with Canada and

Archie sort of was like he's the majority shareholder of the company. I

believe that he really wants to do this.

Um what if I just fly there? And so he got the the first flight out in the morning. um got to Seattle, drove 2 and

morning. um got to Seattle, drove 2 and 1 half hours having rented a car to Bellingham and then text uh Glenn the CEO when he arrived and said, "Look, I'm

in town and I want to do a deal this afternoon." Um, and I think he was just

afternoon." Um, and I think he was just so bowled over by uh the kind of uh the the drive of Archie that he invited him up to his lake house and the two of them

spent the whole afternoon together and by the end of it they said we can get this done in the next week.

>> That's a great story. Um, obviously most CEOs weren't reaching out to you and saying, you know, I want to have 5,000

people using this at my company. So

what what in in other cases where you have somebody join from a company, you know who that organization is, you know they're a good fit.

How did you then start that sales conversation or or how did Archie start that conversation? Who did you know who

that conversation? Who did you know who to reach out to? Would you go to the CEO? Would was there another ICP you had

CEO? Would was there another ICP you had in mind? But like how did you convert

in mind? But like how did you convert that one sign up to another sales conversation when they weren't reaching out to you?

>> Yeah. So what we would do is we would just pull the users and rank them by the number of draft emails. So the value of the product is in our ability to predict

the next email that you're going to write. So what we would do is we would

write. So what we would do is we would rank our users by the volume of emails they send and the percentage of our drafts that are in that in that group.

and um then cross reference that with the amount of employees they would have at the company and then just pick up the phone um or send them an email and ask is there anything more we can do to help

improve the experience of the product for you and our calendars I'd love to show you uh we just looked just insane in these days cuz when there were four

people and we were living in this in this crazy environment in San Francisco we we did slightly lose uh like perspective on a normal working day. We

were probably working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. And um the reality was that for me, most of my day was just sitting in front and talking to customers. And

you do that for long enough and you get some really fantastic opportunities, but it's uh you know, you got to put in the hard yards was our takeaway.

>> Yeah. So the scaling I mean that playbook, brilliant, right? So you

you've you've done you put in all the hours or the years into getting to this point. You have really focused on two

point. You have really focused on two things. Building the product, talking to

things. Building the product, talking to customers, and and just feeding that those conversations into continuing to build a better product. And then now you're at a point where one person can

sign up. uh it's basically a PLG type

sign up. uh it's basically a PLG type model getting them to be as successful and then you switch to sales and then it's from that one person to maybe 5 10

100,000 whatever and then it just sounds like it was just sort of rinse and repeat and keep doing that and doing that as well as you can but scaling that

quickly I'm sure also comes with a bunch of challenges um whether it's hiring or I think even with support support very quickly became

a struggle for you, right? For something

that you'd been very proud of, very quick to to to um address suddenly became an issue because you hadn't expected this type of

success to happen so quickly.

>> Yeah. Uh so this was at the beginning of this year and we grew from 1 to 5 million within 3 months and I absolutely kicked myself because we found ourselves

again not thinking big enough and uh what we hadn't done is we had spent a lot of time thinking about what if this this marketing and growth engineering strategy doesn't pay off and what we

hadn't thought of is what happens if this works and so as we kind of 5x the number of people that were using the product. We 5xed the number of support

product. We 5xed the number of support tickets that we got and our CS team was just two people at this point and uh

basically our response time on support tickets went from 5 minutes to 5 hours and customers became very unhappy very very quickly. Um, as you can imagine,

very quickly. Um, as you can imagine, you know, the expectation is an immediate response, uh, not 5 hours later. And we had to get everybody in

later. And we had to get everybody in the company to start jumping on responding to customer support tickets.

Had to aggressively hire support people to help solve uh, the gaps, get them on boarded and trained and write documentation for the first time. And

all of this work that really should have been done in January was being uh, crammed into about 10 days in March.

That was such a massive pain point and it reminded me like you have to plan for what happens if this works as well as what happens if it doesn't.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I think I think in many ways we're so stuck into that mindset of things not working and and what you're going to do next that um I mean it's

it's a quite nice nice problem to have to think about what if this succeeds, right? It

right? It >> it's is a nice problem to have for sure, but it doesn't feel like it at the time.

um you're absolutely kicking yourself cuz you you you think it's the only chance and you worry that you've that you've missed it. Um so it was um you're

right it it it now looks like a nice problem to have, but it didn't feel like it at the time.

>> And and tell me about hiring as well.

You've gone from 40 four to like 40 people now in in a very short space of time.

>> Yeah, that's the thing that we we sort of worry about, think about the most. We

see it as our biggest challenge is when you're four people living in this sort of perfect work environment really in San Francisco. Uh you're able to the the

San Francisco. Uh you're able to the the sort of potency of our focus and of our work ethic and of our intensity was just absolutely crazy. And as soon as you

absolutely crazy. And as soon as you start hiring people, you you worry about that being diluted. uh particularly with folks having a kind of UK mindset when it comes to work ethic and when it comes

to belief that it's possible to build these companies and so it's absolutely essential to us that every person that joins fixer experiences a kind of re-education if you like about what is

possible to do in a week and that's why we ask them that question of what are you going to put unreasonable effort to this week uh to move our most important goal >> and and are you hiring um are you

building the whole most of the team in in the UK.

>> So, our engineering team is here. Our go

to market team is in New York. Uh we're

probably 75% London today. Uh and by the end of next

London today. Uh and by the end of next year, we'll probably be 50/50.

>> Awesome. Okay. Um we're going to have to wrap up um before we get into the lightning round. One other question for

lightning round. One other question for you. Uh I came across something when I

you. Uh I came across something when I was researching. Is it true somebody

was researching. Is it true somebody said Fixer saved their marriage?

>> Yeah. Yeah. Um that was uh there was a customer call I had uh maybe six weeks ago now where uh it was with a real

estate broker and uh he said that we had saved him from getting divorced. He

said, and this is a story we hear quite often that folks will go home from from a long day's work, maybe out on the road all day, come home, put the their kids to

bed, and then the hour that they spend with their partner before they go to bed, uh, is spent writing follow-up emails, and fixes fix drafts all of them for them now. So, they could spend 10

minutes doing that rather than an hour.

And that hour's changed their marriage as a result of it. It was uh a really uh it really reminded me of why we do this.

I've been doing this job for uh my whole career now. I've been supporting people

career now. I've been supporting people in this way and uh it's a like really firm reminder about why this is so important for people.

>> Yeah, that's love it. All right, uh let's get into the lightning round. So,

I've got seven quick fire questions for you. What's one of the best pieces of

you. What's one of the best pieces of business advice you've received? our

first investor uh who when we were deciding to do fixer AI um supported our decision to had and said the key thing is to always invest where you have an unfair advantage and we were trying to

work out oh what if Google do this you know we were being very British about it he said you have an unfair advantage here you should invest your time >> what book would you recommend to our audience and why

>> the CEO of Snowflake or the ex CEO of Snowflake a guy called Frank Slutman wrote a book called Amp It Up. And it's

all about uh how intensity at work is is a about the number of hours you work, but b it's all about like what you get out of every single hour and how always you need to shorten the time period. So

if someone tells you they can do it in a week, ask them how many days they can do it in. Someone tells you they can do it

it in. Someone tells you they can do it in a day, how many hours can you do it in?

>> What's one attribute or characteristic in your mind of a successful founder?

The thing that people tell me about myself is that I'm very calm in a storm.

Uh when there's an emergency, um I just know what to do. And this really highlighted me when we raised our series B. Uh like

B. Uh like this so far this year, we've added $2 million in valuation every day. So us

stepping out of the business was very expensive. And we decided to run the

expensive. And we decided to run the process for raising the bee in 9 days.

Um, and I was running probably 10 meetings every single day. Um, and

you'll see we actually released a vlog um, on LinkedIn today, uh, of like our experience doing that. And you might think that would be really stressful.

Um, we always had a smile on our face.

that doesn't jive with the like I see you and you seem just so chilled and laidback and then you sort of describe this sort of

days and I see I I sort of imagine a sort of a type A go type guy but um you seem to seem to uh deal with that well.

>> Yeah, I think that like juosition I really like. Um, we like to approach

really like. Um, we like to approach things with really intense time frames, but but try to do it in a kind of calm and like uh with always with a smile on our face.

>> What's uh your favorite personal productivity tool or habit?

>> So, I'm super protective of my mornings.

Uh there are three things I like to have done before midday. Um one is I need to I have an 18-month-old son and I like to spend at least 15 minutes with him every

morning. uh usually at like some

morning. uh usually at like some horrible hour early in the morning. Uh

the next thing is I like to have 3 hours of focus time. Uh usually between like 6:00 and 9 um where I can just work totally undisturbed. And lastly, I like

totally undisturbed. And lastly, I like to go to the gym.

>> Cool. Uh what's a new or crazy business idea you'd love to pursue if you had the time? People often say you should build

time? People often say you should build uh kind of businesses out of like the things that you build in house for your own needs as it were a bit like Amazon

did with Amazon Web Services. Uh we have built inhouse a like incredibly sophisticated uh human training uh sort of a data

annotation unit in our business. We have

over 100 data annotators that build custom models for our product which is what makes it so accurate. Um, this is something that lots of companies uh are

starting to do as a kind of service for AI products, like people like Scale AI.

Um, and I think I'd just be fantastic at at building that company. So, in another life, like I I uh I would do that and I just really enjoy the kind of paradox of

it being a human orientated business, but it being on the front lines of AI.

>> That's a cool one. Uh, what's an interesting or fun fact about you that most people don't know?

>> Uh, well, as I said earlier, I'm like I'm definitely the only tech founder I know that grew up on a farm. Um, uh, for any Star Wars fan, um, I'm also related

to the original Obi-Wan Kenobi.

>> How, how are you related?

>> He is my great uncle.

>> And finally, what's one of your most important passions outside of your work?

Sadly, the combination of uh running a startup and and having a young baby means that um like hobbies and things outside of work really really just revolve only around him. Uh hobbies and

friends and stuff have sadly fallen away somewhat. Uh but prefixer AI and

somewhat. Uh but prefixer AI and pre-baby uh I used to spend a lot of time traveling the world driving motorbikes. Uh so I've been to Europe,

motorbikes. Uh so I've been to Europe, been to India, been to Nepal. I've

driven on the highest road in the world.

Uh that's where like I used to sort of spend my holidays, my trips.

>> Nice. Love it. Well, Richard, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure just sort of trying to sort of unpack the last couple of years.

Congratulations on on everything that you and the team have uh accomplished so far. If people want to check out Fixer,

far. If people want to check out Fixer, they can go to fixer.ai. That's Fixer

with a Y. FY Xer.ai.

Um, and if folks want to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that?

>> Just reach me out on on LinkedIn. It' be

the best. Hit me up with a DM on LinkedIn.

>> All right. Well, uh, we'll put your link to your LinkedIn profile in the show notes. Great. Uh, well, thank you so

notes. Great. Uh, well, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure and, um, I wish you and the team the best of success.

>> Thank you so much. My pleasure. Cheers.