"your heart drops is this it is this the moment the company dies tom bloomfield entrepreneur investor and founder of monzo i've never actually talked about this before after six months i just thought i..."

"the cost that nobody seems to talk about is sometimes greater than the reward on offer this is one of the most emotional raw honest vulnerable brilliant gripping conversations i've ever had on this po..."

"depending on how you count why were you fired so often um my first ever job was a consulting firm in london i actually wasn't fired from this one i was um but i wasn't promoted and they said i was uh ..."

"into entrepreneurship have you heard about this idea of first principle thinking absolutely yeah my co-founder jonas at monzo was just i think he would say first principal thinking at least once a day..."

"just what what many entrepreneurs would consider to be an immovable object you took on the banking system um danielek took on the in this massive music industry that was seemed to be immune to change ..."

"the company's still doing fabulously so i'm incredibly proud of of what we built i find that point about naivety so interesting because it almost feels like founders like yourself need to be deluded o..."

"um which i i find super interesting when you're looking at founders in your investments now from your own experience of being a founder yeah what are the attributes you're looking for i mean the reall..."

"cardless you've built evidence over time that you could do things so i i i sometimes think of confidence as like a self-reinforcing cycle either upwards or downwards um i think i was more confident wh..."

"was enabled from a place of huge privilege because i could take the risk and i actually think people in this country um with great supportive families don't take enough risk in general i think people ..."

"wasn't direct to consumer really and i didn't b2b sales i found uh really difficult and frustrating and not something i was good at and the tech kind of was built um and that had been my role so i sor..."

"cliff revenue declined 70 um within about two to four weeks without any kind of macroeconomic this wasn't covered or something this was back in 2014. the world was going well the dating site just was ..."

"you got fired uh yeah most the company got laid off actually yeah and then you took how long off before you swung back into the next thing um so i uh about two months but only about two months um beca..."

"um the entire management team the office manager everyone so one one would say well you know tom must have ripped them all away [Laughter] no no i just didn't want to work with anne like really i've n..."

"that's not true two people happened to not be in the office so they weren't at the meeting where they got fired so they had to work two weeks notice because they weren't technically fired but everyone..."

"operates i can't quite wrap my head around the idea of one person resigning and then firing everybody as a show of i don't even know no it's not something i would do where did that leave starling thou..."

"to compete with starling though um it was unavoidable that feeling of [ __ ] them kind of but we didn't i didn't really know that that she you know and was going to rehire a bunch of people it was ove..."

"and that was a sort of very convoluted week or two um where we almost had a deal a couple of times and it just similar thing happened you know huge blow up and we just walked away um but no we never i..."

"our newest bank yes and they sort of scratch your head for a bit and said how about this sort of very experienced guy next to you this co-founder of yours how about they didn't say that they said we'd..."

"debate are we going to really try and do this again or you know is this it we just go back to whatever we were doing before and so to keep everyone together i think it wasn't a and so i think we were ..."

"industry what was it oh gosh uh insecurity i think for me it was i was much of the reason i started my business was probably based on deep childhood insecurities about wanting to be rich and yeah like..."

"circa 2014 2015 was still relatively unknown it was doing well but not it wasn't a breakout success yet in the way it is today i think um just on that feeling of wanting that validation from friends b..."

"um and i'm not i'm your next question what is your purpose i'm not sure i have one it's sort of more like living day to day and enjoying life and i i was never good at that i've really really driven f..."

"it is in the moment was it reprogramming yeah i guess like you know like you i i left my company i didn't um and that was really really hard and that was not a that was um you know deep deep anxiety a..."

"i'm um i'm uh reluctant i've talked about this before i'm working in the in the i'm volunteering the vaccination program and it sounds like a sort of i'm proud of doing it and it's like a great feelin..."

"times at monzo the times you look back most fondly small team so sub 100 [Music] being able to um go from a kind of an idea or a customer insight or something like a conversation with a customer about..."

"a really really long way whoever your target demographic is i am one of the things so we talked a little bit there about the your best times at monzo and i wasn't surprised to hear that it was when th..."

"and that was just so confusing um yeah that was tough at one point we had a bbc camera crew outside our office um and this was when we we'd grown big enough we had um a small a small minority of peopl..."

"just i just ignore it all and did that have an impact on your mental health the worst parts of the press coverage it didn't help and i stopped reading it you know i genuinely stopped reading it and i'..."

"i will stop on the final one which was um just organizational politics when you get to we were almost 2 000 people and when you're 100 or 200 people you can know everyone and you can you develop a rea..."

"having to deal with that was was tricky you talked about not being profitable i've heard you talk about you know that being one of the um probably in hindsight one of the things you should have though..."

"free cards yeah expensive with that it's like the long tail it's you know it's the um the very small number of people who are ordering 20 or 30 cards a year most people they order zero to one that's f..."

"of that and it can become um a bit of an echo chamber where you just get the group of investors around the table who are all big supporters who all really believe in the model and there's not really a..."

"what are those answers in hindsight that you wish you'd um you'd known sooner so one of them's obviously you know getting to a profitable business model sooner making those transitions profitable busi..."

"whatever 10 years until you can slash and i'm not sure if he was right or not actually um that's when i still debate um i've noticed revel revolute's uh customer service has declined month almost mont..."

"12 or 13 pounds per customer per year to provide that and i think the benchmark that everyone's aiming for is less than that clearly and so the drive is always to automate more to put you know chatbot..."

"and that was just i mean for so many people in the world that was horrific for us our revenue declined at least 50 percent within about a week or so uh the cost base was the same revenue goes down 50 ..."

"straw that broke the camel's back and about six weeks into that six to eight weeks which is like i'm i'm working seven days a week i'm not sleeping here this is just you know i need sort of throw the ..."

"who's doing really well at 200 you're now 2000 people and the person's burnt out or you know not doing well and you have to replace them and so it was like whack-a-mole [Music] and i think that was th..."

"do you think if you'd gone to the board with more urgency and decisiveness yourself though you would have been taken more seriously if you said listen i'm going to go next week if these issues aren't ..."

"a football team you're starting in the i don't know what the fourth division now is cool but you know you're there and you get promoted and you want to hire someone for the third division but everyone..."

"have been over the last three months we need everything from websites to logos to editing work done to some sort of admin stuff done and it's crazy that even me even though i have a lot of financial r..."

"have their services done on fiverr.com so go to that website now links in the bio and let me know what you think you said you weren't sleeping working seven days a week talk me through those moments w..."

"um the realization was sort of when the round closes when the money's in the bank and that weight lifts you then look at all these other problems and they're very very easy actually like you re-energi..."

"yourself um you know and the solution is easy to say and hard to do which is exercise more and you know stay off alcohol and get to bed early and don't have your phone in your bedroom and like turn of..."

"and the it's a very depressing thing to say but sometimes when i did sleep a sort of full night i'd wake up at 7 8 9 a.m whatever and for about three or four seconds i'd forgotten what my life was lik..."

"volume had been switched down to one out of ten because like anxiety was just 10 out of 10. and that was no fun how long did that last a year and a half two years maybe [ __ ] you know god i can imagi..."

"like emotions that were one out of ten when they're not being crushed by a ten out of ten anxiety like sort of start to bloom back which is cool which um i like this is life yeah yeah the girlfriend t..."

"um and so we just ended up not enjoying spending time together sadly um and i i think she was doing a lot to try and you know make our lives together wonderful and i was just a monster because my prim..."

"relationship i mean i never managed but i believe it is possible i've seen other people do it and then i think um part of it is maturity and um uh detachment but not in a bad way and i mean detachment..."

"emotionally that i would never even on holiday i could never switch off the nagging feeling about the work um so towards the end there was a little bit more detachment and talking to jonas my co-found..."

"i think i described as a red phone it was a pink it was an old nokia um uh and why so the reason why um is first of all because to help sleep i didn't keep my own mobile in my bedroom so i turned it o..."

"better it sounds way better in the movie it'll definitely be a red phone yeah um it'll be in like a box with like a maybe a code on it um i find that what you just said they're really interesting so t..."

"outside of the business and the chaos of the business what was your life at that point um fairly normal um we had a pretty good culture around sort of work-life balance at monzo um you know mostly i w..."

"the mental load the inability to switch off outside those hours and then boom pandemic yeah comes around term sheets get pulled yeah you're sat there you've already you know it's by the sounds of it y..."

"in a in a genuine way but um what i have learnt over the last few years is that um vulnerability is the best way to inspire is confidence trust sort of become a leader to show if it's genuine you know..."

"really i think i am an extrovert um i thought i thought about this a lot i really i get energy from being around people and i was with four people just working all the time and um in the middle of rur..."

"pressure i guess yeah and it seems like you're focusing on things that give you like an intrinsic joy yeah and learning i really like learning um any really anything so the process of going from a com..."

"um the thought process goes something like um i love the early stage so you get a few of your mates together people you've always wanted to work with perhaps and you start something and one of two thi..."

"birthdays that's what he says i don't want to have to think about people's birthdays right so what he does is he comes he'll have a passion in his life say psychedelics yep and he'll go and assemble a..."

"thinking i was just thinking of one incident at christmas party because you said christmas party i'm not going to me and my co-founder stopped like we would go until 8pm yeah and then leave you'll be ..."

"and it's the right thing to do but uh it should be the chief people off the handle yeah right like that's sort of my that was my problem like there were periods of time when we didn't have a chief peo..."

"um and we've got people turning up to the office being we had security full-time security at are office and still do now because customs would turn up sometimes with weapons um they threatened to turn..."

"some of them were like wild there was a big ring a couple of years no probably three or four years ago now where um if you've got a fuel pump you can um you basically put your you sort of pay at the p..."

"who were like meh you know you got us this time we've got these other rings so like whatever but it was mostly the amateur ones who get really really angry you know they'd scanned three or four grand ..."

"don't have to deal with that kind of [ __ ] but now you're enjoying the small things in life yeah yeah maybe i should go back to therapy now and like you can make it even better yeah there's small thi..."

"don't know i really enjoy meeting new people but after six months or a year or something i'm sort of like um i don't know what it is it's sort of like deciding to commit to each other and spend the re..."

"something i'm puzzling around in my head apart from that just sort of enjoying life and um helping out other startups is a is a nice way to feel like i'm giving a little bit back without taking my lif..."

"yeah and also the loss if i were to lose all the money it wouldn't have a material impact on my happiness or life i've heard smart friends say similar things which is basically take a you're basically..."

"um and because i didn't necessarily i think that it's been kind of you know rock star like jet ski you know whatever millionaires loads of money private jet um whereas there's a real as you've explain..."

"i would do some things differently i'd try to i'm not sure it would change the outcome but i think today for smart ambitious people i think becoming a founder is probably one of the best choices they ..."

"driven to kind of jump over ever increasing hurdles um without thinking about why did you think happiness was the outcome kind of yeah i thought that was the end yeah sort of like yeah i didn't even r..."

"sort of achievement and um and money have you got to the crux of you what makes you happy they're very not foundational for things um two or three things i know definitely learning um new skills whate..."