Tink Taylor is the Founder & President of the dotDigital Group PLC (dotdigital). Tink has over 20 years of experience in the field of digital communications and has introduced digital marketing to companies large & small. Tink has been pivotal in the development of digital marketing since its outset in both the UK and the USA and is generally considered to be an absolute legend in the industry. Tink first launched dotdigital in the US in 2012 and later took dotmailer to APAC in 2015. He constantly strives to help individual organizations, and the industry as a whole, to develop & progress, acting as a serial tech advisor and investor outside of dotdigital. Commerce Famous is proudly presented by Shopware, the leading open commerce platform for all your B2C and B2B needs. Find out more at: www.shopware.com/en/
Tink Taylor is the Founder & President of the dotDigital Group PLC (dotdigital). Tink has over 20 years of experience in the field of digital communications and has introduced digital marketing to companies large & small. Tink has been pivotal in the development of digital marketing since its outset in both the UK and the USA and is generally considered to be an absolute legend in the industry.
Tink first launched dotdigital in the US in 2012 and later took dotmailer to APAC in 2015. He constantly strives to help individual organizations, and the industry as a whole, to develop & progress, acting as a serial tech advisor and investor outside of dotdigital.
Suggest a Guest for the Commerce Famous Podcast
Commerce Famous is proudly presented by Shopware, the leading open commerce platform for all your B2C and B2B needs.
0:01 Welcome to the Commerce Famous podcast where we present you with the defining stories behind modern commerce.
0:07 I'm your host, Ben Marks.
0:10 This is episode number two and with me today is someone who knows a thing or two about coastal winds in Greece.
0:15 Tink's other claim to fame is being a co-founder of dot digital, a customer engagement platform and all around marketing and customer insight super tool.
0:25 Both Tink and dot Digital formerly dot mailer have been around since the web was young.
0:30 Now, full disclosure for this episode dot Digital and my employer shop wear have been going steady for quite a while, but that doesn't mean we won't be digging deep into Tank's experience and perspective.
0:40 Think why does being the co-founder of dot Digital make e-commerce famous?
0:46 Hi, Ben.
0:47 Thanks for inviting us on.
0:49 So that's quite the question to start with commerce famous.
0:52 Am I famous?
0:53 I don't know, infamous, maybe I mean, obviously from a technology standpoint, you know, being the founder or one of the founders of what is now dot Digital, you know, we went through a few different iterations of that, you know, we obviously do made before we found it out of the website design development company initially.
1:12 So obviously one of the innovators in the industry, you know, was there right at the beginning.
1:19 You know, I remember sitting in, in a pub in South London when we actually coming up with the concept of dot mail or even just sort of saying we want to build a tool that is known, used and love around the world.
1:32 And, you know, I think 24 years later we're pretty much there, maybe take a bit longer than we hoped.
1:37 But yeah, maybe the other element of it, maybe what's maybe famous is, you know, much like yourself.
1:42 I think for a significant number of years as technology companies were building out in this space, we were almost on a world tour together for many, many years.
1:54 I think it was probably at my peak at 100 and 50 flights a year.
1:58 And, you know, I would turn up in Singapore, Sydney, London, you know, Austin L A where Ben was there, Taylor was there and there, there's a whole host of other people that were there, you know, friends, foes, competitors, you know, we were all friends together.
2:13 But yeah, and, you know, sometimes, you know, competing for the same business but we were on the same planes and traveling around.
2:20 It was, it was quite the world tour.
2:21 So I, I've got myself known globally.
2:25 in this space.
2:26 As a result, I think we've all stood on stage and been seen as thought leaders giving out our, you know, our, our knowledge and our findings, you know, bringing forward some of our, our clients that are doing you know, various interesting elements to kind of, you know, teach the world and the matters about, you know, what's the best thing to do.
2:43So, my fame is that led from the technology probably driven by the innovative work that the the clients have done.
2:50But we've empowered with our, with our, with our tech.
2:54Well, that's that it's funny that that vision that, that vision initial vision.
3:00So, so I have two questions.
3:01One you know, is, is there like a napkin like a cocktail napkin frame somewhere like this is this is where that digital was put together that was from, from a pub in London.
3:12That would be boy, that'd be almost invaluable, wouldn't it?
3:15Well, we got, got better than that.
3:16I mean, I mean, we do have a, we have a different napkin.
3:19we took investment or an investment, you know, we bought on someone a long time ago as a consultant, he bought in and he, you know, we did a deal on a napkin.
3:28I think it was about $100,000.
3:31Is it fair that like all of the other money that people have had put into their business?
3:34But is it too late for me to retroactively get in at that level?
3:39Perhaps?
3:40So, I've got that, that Kim somewhere.
3:43I have to take that out here in my house back in London.
3:47but in terms of like, what do we have in the pub?
3:49I'm not sure, I'm sure you've been to our, our HQ in London number one, London Bridge.
3:56the pub that we came up with the concept of dot dot Digital was called the Tree house.
4:00It was opposite our office and the guy surprised us when we refurbed the office and did the launch that the, the, the lunch area where everyone eats.
4:11They did a replica of the pub.
4:13They call it the teahouse being British.
4:15So that's where everyone goes to have lunch and within the tea house are the very tables from that pub.
4:20So they went back to the pub and explain what they're doing and the pub donated their their table.
4:24So it's probably still got my chewing gum on it.
4:26But we have, I have the table that where door was conceived.
4:29Oh, my gosh, that is absolutely amazing.
4:31Now, one of things, I actually, I think before we go any further, you know, you, you mentioned, you know, part of the vision even all the way back then was you wanted to build a tool.
4:40And I guess at the time to really solve problems that really hadn't even been conceived yet, but you wanted to build a tool that would make people empower people and people would love it the world over, right?
4:52And that vision, you know, I asked Roy Ruben a few years ago, you know, if, if he was, if he was shocked that at, at, at the success of Magento and was he surprised by it?
5:02And you know, but he, and he, he said flat out like that was his goal.
5:06It was actually his intent to democratize e-commerce and basically to empower, you know, empower the, the the people actually working hands on in the space to, to do the things that they needed to do and to have the insights that they needed to have.
5:18And that sounds, that sounds similar to what you all were setting out to do.
5:21I mean, what you're saying there is this just resonating in my mind.
5:24I've been asked that question so many times.
5:26Are you surprised by the success of this?
5:28You know, no, that we set out to do this, that was the mission.
5:31We rolled up our sleeves.
5:33You know, I still think we've got work to do.
5:36And you know, 100% we wanted to build this technology, we knew it was good, we knew it could go global.
5:41And you know, that that was the mission and until that's, that's accomplished, that's why I'm still here.
5:45I still love doing it, still enjoying it and still finding things to do so.
5:49Yeah, I 100% agree with, with Roy and he's probably faced that question.
5:52Are you surprised?
5:54And I'm not surprised his answer is no, because that's what we set out to do for me.
5:58It's still, it just, it, boy, I don't even know if I was ever confident or ever would be confident enough to think I could, could do that at an industry level.
6:05But, you know, I think we're all, we're all lucky in this business to have to have founders who have that kind of vision and especially grit to, to be able to, you know, to accomplish what you've accomplished.
6:18I mean, and just so I can frame things properly for people for our listeners.
6:24you know, so starting, you know, dot Digital founded 1999 making, making websites and doing marketing for the BBC in 2002.
6:37Deloitte Fast 50 I'm sorry, Deloitte Fast 500 in 2008, publicly listed in the London Stock Exchange 2009.
6:47I mean, and then you yourself have ended up on numerous councils and panels and everything.
6:52So, you know, clearly you've, you've not only, you've not only helped sort of define the category, you all at dot Digital have not only helped define the category, but you've also, you've also, you participated in sort of the curation in this space.
7:10You know, what is, what has that been like, I mean, that must have been, that must be quite the perspective to have as you go from as you go from the beginning of that digital to where we are now.
7:19That's a good question.
7:20Actually, I, I don't think I've ever faced that one.
7:22So kudos to you for, for, for asking that.
7:26So yeah, it is interesting looking back with hindsight.
7:31I've worked for the Direct Marketing Association in the UK being an elected board member there.
7:36I'm still on the equivalent in the US that what's called the E C is now part of the A N A and worked with the movers and shakers and that dates back 20 years now.
7:47I I can, it's starting to age me this this book up.
7:52But yeah, and on those councils, there would be, you know, a splattering of vendors, you know, my competitors that are still really good friends on a 1 to 1 basis.
8:01Obviously, we're not friendly if it's in the pitch.
8:04you know, a number of clients and, and, and sort of agencies and, you know, and such like, and they really were the movers and shakers in the industry and you have shaped a lot of best practice.
8:17It's definitely shaped the dot mail and dot digital platform because, you know, speaking to the end clients, speaking to those agencies are on the cutting edge, you know, they, they were sort of, I, I wanted them as clients and they will all be saying you can't be clients.
8:33I mean, we can't be client of yours if you don't do X Y and Z, this is what we want to be able to achieve.
8:37So between us, we kind of set out to do that kind of thing and, you know, that sort of, you know, we, we shaped each other and then we shaped the industry in turning what people, you know, what they should be doing and what is possible to achieve.
8:49And we've shaped a lot of legislation, you know, right, right back, way back to things like the cookie law, you know, right through GDPR and, you know what we're seeing now in the US and, you know, up here in Canada and the Castle Act and what have you and it all sort of has come out of that and, you know, we've lobbied the data protection officers globally on this and for a long time, those, those bodies, you know, we really sort of set the barrier for best practice higher than what the, the law was at the time because we knew if we, if we encourage people sort of, you know, to push the limits all the time legislation would be forced upon us and then it shuts the whole industry down.
9:25So as a collective, we really did push the industry raise the industry.
9:30We were, you know, back in the early days, you know, there was very much the, the, the fight we've on versus offline traditional marketing.
9:39And then over time, we've had all sorts of other channels come in from seo and blah, blah, blah, you know, email is dead and now we've all gone on in channel.
9:47So it's really helped shape the, I'd say the exciting bit and reflection is we, you know, have been part of shaping industry and the legislation and there's not anyone you can't talk to these days who doesn't know about data protection and data leaks.
10:01You know, our friends at Facebook have done a very good job of getting us in the news and in the headlines all the time, on that, on that subject and it's something I've worked on for, for decades.
10:10Well, I, I mean, that's, I, you know, I actually, I had no context there that, that you all were so involved.
10:16I think you mentioned it to me before, you know, maybe over a, a coffee or a beer.
10:19But, but, you know, just, just the, the, the proactive sort of self regulation, right?
10:25And, and I love that, I love that that approach of, hey, you know, right now it's the wild west, but it won't always be so and at some point, the the people who are, you know, so, you know, desperate, so, so, so, so far away from this industry, you know, they're they're gonna be coming in and probably doing a bad job of it.
10:43So let's take, let's take care of it ourselves.
10:45Now, you just said something in there though that about channel, I mean, just for further perspective because I think there are, there are a lot of people in this industry, you know, this, this, it's always, it's a self It's a, it's a, it's always a self renewing space, right?
10:59So we see the, the younger folks coming in.
11:03And yeah, but we're talking about so the advent of like what started, you know, where dot Digital started, you know, 1999 like Google had literally just moved out of someone's garage, right?
11:16And this was, this was five years before Gmail was even, was even released as a beta.
11:23And, you know, and then for further context, it might connect might resonate a little bit more with, with, with, with folks like, like Omni channel as a term wasn't even coined until 11 years after dot Digital was created.
11:35And if you think about it though, like that, that was probably the first, you know, two channels.
11:40You, you had websites and you had email and they were really not very well, they really weren't ex orchestrated at all.
11:48So, you know, my question there is what more, what more could you share about the landscape back then?
11:54You know, I mean, it was basically less of a, it was just a frontier, it was wide open.
11:58Yeah, everything was, was hand built.
12:00I think we'd just come out of the era of sort of brochure where websites and yeah, what made us quite niche as a web design development company is we built a content management system funny enough that was called dot editor.
12:15And you know, that was revolutionizing people's people's worlds so they could update and maintain their website easily with a visual editor.
12:22We've always been ahead of the curve on that front.
12:25You know, even today, I think our, our editor is, is sort of the best on the market.
12:29But, you know, we were the first on the market way back then and that's how sort of dot mail came around.
12:33We built a number of websites, you know, most people are probably familiar with Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear.
12:38So we built the Top Gear website BBC, had a number of publications like Top of the Pops Garden as well.
12:43And what I mean, we built these websites, we put a load of competitions on there and they collected a load of emails and they said, you know, our email system is, is terrible.
12:52Can you help us with that?
12:53So we were like, well, we can let you build your own.
12:55So for us, it was taking all the power of our content management tool dot editor and saying, well, we only need to edit one page, that's your email.
13:03So that was the start of it.
13:04And then obviously the rest of the mechanics about how you, you can send and you know, profile and upload data, what you came, came there after.
13:12But, you know, that was kind of the, the essence of how it started.
13:15And at that very table that I talked about in the pub, we had a, a very unique character Roger who was our, our sales guy at the time was selling websites.
13:25He used to come into the office every day.
13:27He sort of dressed as a secondhand car dealer.
13:29You just sort of stuck out like a sore thumb.
13:31But over a pint, he kind of described putting it in an invisible gift into an email to make it tracking.
13:38He used all the wrong words.
13:39He was completely nontechnical, but it was the eureka moment and we sat there with Simon, my co founder and we kind of looked at each other and we went, we could do that tomorrow, like literally get that done tomorrow.
13:49And that, that's kind of where the tracking and that's where all that sort of comes from.
13:52But yeah, it was a, it was a couple of beers and the second hand car sales.
13:55But if I'm honest, so, so yeah, I mean, that's, that's your, that's your, the eureka moment that you've talked about, I think in, in other, in other interviews.
14:02And that's, and, and for, for people today, it just seems, it seems so obvious.
14:06But, but I, I, you know, I remember those days and it was, oh, wow.
14:10If someone opens this email and that email, that email pulls in a, a remote image that, that, that sort of the fact, if that is, that is somehow uniquely, you know, uniquely identified, then great.
14:25You now you now have proof positive that someone opened that email.
14:28Absolutely.
14:30You know, genius wizardry back in the day, we were going to a trade show and people were doing the offline marketing and we'd say, look, we know someone's opened and clicked on this.
14:38They were like, what is this sorcery that you're doing?
14:41And then obviously, I, I kind of mentioned there that the, you know, protecting the industry and the legislation to this day, you know, with, with the legislators, you know, it's, it's still a fundamental argument, you know, what level of cookie is an invisible gift.
14:54You know, it is something that's downloaded on the machine, blah, blah, blah, you know, what's it being used for and all of that sort of thing.
14:59So, yeah, that, that's something that's been a big part of our world for a long time.
15:03And that's a, that's a, that's a perfect segue.
15:05because that was, that was back then, right?
15:08And, and so you had the problem of, of, of, of, of having any insight at all into what, you know, what people are doing what, what's actually what's actually happening with the content that you're pushing out there.
15:22Now today, of course, we have the other problem which is, you know, that from, from where I see, like we've traveled, you know, the diameter and, you know, each app in, in a, in a, you know, a merchant solution is trying to do, you know, they're all trying to do more.
15:38So they're all, every single app is trying to push, push out against its boundaries.
15:43you know, rather than like a paucity of, of feedback mechanisms and, and data like businesses are swimming, you know, like treading or drowning in lakes of data and, and they need, they need curation analysis more, more than ever before, but it's, it's coming in at a rate that it's not like you can just have someone responsible for the pipe of data like there has to be tools around this.
16:06So I mean, given, given that reality today, you know, how does this inform what dot Digital are building, you know, really for today and, and even looking forward into the future?
16:16Yeah, I mean, we we, we transitioned obviously from web development into email.
16:22I think we became email marketing automation now omni channel.
16:25And that marketing automation really was the first stage of what you were describing because of the lakes of data and the insights that you.
16:33Yeah, just the data that people come with.
16:35We've got all this legacy data.
16:37We've been doing digital marketing for a while.
16:38We've got this website, maybe we got P OS, we've got, you know, offline presence.
16:42Then we got all this, you know, digital insight, you know, the tracking we've done for various different tools.
16:47What what can we do with it?
16:49You know, firstly, how do we get it into your platform?
16:52So we, we, we, we work very extensively sorry extensively to, to make that easily and consumable for our clients to sort of, you know, pump the data into us.
17:03And then we've had to build technologies, you know, automation segmentation, things like the reports R F M modeling.
17:10So we can see, you know, recent and frequency of, of purchases and what have you and, and you know, identify valuable segments that you, you you could do this by hand and some people do that to a degree.
17:22But you know, a lot more automation is in play these days and you know, obviously moving into the future, you know, things like A I making decisions for us on that front because they can, you know, scan through the data so quickly and then can get you get the best results.
17:39So yeah, we we've had to change absorbing that data I think is a summary and then is is providing the tools from automation segmentation now A I to be able to make that really usable.
17:52But yeah, it works there's no question.
17:55Well, it, so, you know, if, if I, if I'm just getting into the industry today, so if I'm thinking, if I'm thinking from the, the, the shoes of a, you know, standing in the shoes of an entrepreneur, you look back 20 years and yes, of course, it was the wild, wild West, but some of the things that work in business, probably a lot of what worked in business back then still works really well today.
18:17And there's, there's something actually that you said you know, a moment ago when you're talking about the building a, you know, visual editor, right?
18:24And I can also remember when, when these, these first content management tools came around and you were effectively, I mean, at best, you might have a couple of, of formatting buttons, you know, with way less functionality than a, than a, like a word processor software.
18:41But what you said was that, hey, we, you know, we built this thing.
18:46It was, it was the best thing that had existed and we were the first, but you didn't exactly sit on your Laurels there because I think, and, and I say that because I think when I finally met the dot digital team in person at, at another platform conference in Vegas years and years ago, and I saw the, the dot digital editor just I framed into the, the back office for that software.
19:10It was, I'm looking at it.
19:12I'm like, wow, this actually makes the software, the other software look really cool because what you had built, you all had built was, was, was so amazing.
19:21But I'm gonna, I'm going to assume that that's actually what you've done in, in, in, in pretty much every corner of your business is ideally lead the way and then not sit there and be satisfied with it, but continue to evolve and, and, and push forward.
19:36Is that, is that a fair characterization?
19:38Yeah, there's a, there's a man that I used to use internally which it's sort of somehow externalized along the, along the way.
19:47And I'll, I'll probably take to my grave, but I had a, a strap line.
19:51It's like, you know, always to the developers and let's build NASA technology, but with a Fisher Fisher Price interface, I think a lot of our competitors and our tools back in the past, you know, they, they, they, they did lots of clever stuff so they were designed to look clever, but then it terrified the, the intended user, the marketer.
20:09He, you know, he would need a massive manual to read that.
20:12And I think, you know, moving right to the present day.
20:15I mean, that's, that, that, that's still relevant.
20:17You know, we do like to make that those really difficult things easy.
20:20I think it's, it's quite easy to make stuff look easy but not actually be meaningful in terms of the depth and breadth of what can be achieved.
20:28So we've actually seen quite a few competitors now where yeah, things look easy to set up.
20:33But if you actually want to go back to that data lake you described and do something really deep and meaningful with that, you know, some kind of like your wordpress wordpress analogy.
20:43There is, is it was a bit skin deep.
20:45What you can actually achieve maybe your segments and automation and what you could do the basics.
20:50That's OK.
20:50But if you, you know, if you, if you're more than entry level in the world of e-commerce, there's definitely a lot more that can be done and that obviously presents a problem when you get more and more complicated, you layer more and more channels on top with just a tool that's got more stuff in it.
21:05There is always a challenge to, to, to keep the U I really simple.
21:09And we look at that all the time.
21:10I think we did our most recent product release just a couple of weeks ago.
21:14And you know, a big part of that was, you know, enhancements to the U I and just, you know, we would like like to review that every now and again and, and sort of update where we see, we think we can make a difference and, and I, I love, I love, I just love these little nuggets of wisdom there, you know, make, make the difficult ea easy or make the, make the complicated, simple like that is, and that is, I think the irony of, of, of, you know, well laid out tools and even, you know, from, from where I sit on a day to day basis, like the, the better, the better that a platform or, you know, e-commerce platform, e-commerce solution is ironically, the less I think the end user actually even thinks about the fact that they're working in software, they, they literally just sit down whatever the scope of their work is and they just do their job and, and ideally, they don't feel any friction as they're accomplishing their tasks.
22:02They're, they're, they're keeping a very high level because the people behind the systems have, have, have put in all of the thought and effort to build that interface that either, you know, does does probably 80% of what it should by design.
22:16And then maybe there's another 20% that is, that is configurable and adaptable.
22:21So the people are seeing exactly what they need to see and not seeing what they don't need to see.
22:26that must be, that must be a huge I mean, how big is your, how big is your, like your, your product team in terms of prioritizing the these decisions about what to build, what not to build and then how to do it.
22:40Yeah, I mean, we go quite, go through quite a process on that.
22:44you know, sort of well well do documented internally.
22:46We obviously have to listen to our clients.
22:49So we, we, we do a whole load of that and we take feedback, we look at you know, what we're being asked for by our prospects, we then go around to the various teams in terms of CS MS and, you know, a and what you can see what they are doing.
23:01So we do that as a collective globally.
23:03Obviously, there's the innovation is a, is a key part of that.
23:06We do hack weeks where, you know, the, the development team come up with their bright ideas and anything that's good in that will ultimately move into production at a later date.
23:16You know, A I Winston A I, as we call it, you know, Winston's, our company mascot, Winston was a technology as well back in the day, Winston was our watchdog.
23:26and he watched all the data that was being pumped into our system when we go back to saying it was the wild, wild West in terms of data protection and laws, you know, Winston, the watchdog would look at what was being uploaded into the system to make sure there wasn't any spam list and what have you on there because people were very cavalier back in those days and that would not only get us blocked but get them blocked and nowadays you would get like fines in the tens of millions of euros and under G pr or whatever, you, you send the wrong stuff that you don't have permission on.
23:53So Winston was like this amazing technology.
23:56No one really had it.
23:57I think Maj came along and did a replica of it.
23:59A couple of years later.
24:00I still don't think there's many out there that do what Winston does day by day.
24:04But we surfaced him in the app.
24:06Finally, he's appeared as our A I engine.
24:10And so he's helping advise people on content subject lines and, and things like that.
24:14So it's a nice sort of innovation for him.
24:15I feel like we're delivering on the the pro the, you know, the, the, the sort of Jetsons like dream of what clipping was clipping is now actually going to be really, really smart and, and and the, the A I, the A I assist, I mean, the whole, the whole concept of copilots.
24:31I know, you know, we, we shop where have, have just announced, you know, just announced this.
24:35And I know I know every single platform and not just e-commerce but any tool with any kind of breadth of user base and breadth of, you know, like scope of like wide scope of responsibilities is going to be doing this.
24:48It, it's, it's, it's, it's really the, it's where the industry is headed now.
24:53I, I did actually, I, I'm sorry, I can't I can't let, given what you just mentioned about various actors and, and people being cavalier.
25:02What is this?
25:03I hear about a profanity thesaurus.
25:07That, that, that story.
25:09There was something I think you got, you got an email once with a, with a fairly salty word which, which when someone from the UK says, oh, this was some salty language.
25:18I'm like, wow, that must be really salty.
25:20What was that?
25:20Yeah.
25:20Yeah.
25:20It was, wasn't all technology to be honest, but it was, it was someone else's, technology.
25:25But, yeah, I emailed, I forget who it was now.
25:27It was a long time ago and I received a one word response that was, you know, the, the, the, the sea bomb, which probably has less impact in the UK, but it's still impactful than it does here in America.
25:39And I was like, wow, who, who have I, what have I done here?
25:42Who have I upset?
25:43And then I got an email about an hour later going.
25:45So we've been doing some experiments with our Profanity profanity software and, results have been unexpected.
25:51So I imagine I just emailed everyone a random swear word.
25:55I mean, I've, I've, I've certainly had my, you know, my, my production screw up.
25:59So that, that, that one's pretty bad.
26:01Ok.
26:01Well, so, so, look, you all, you all clearly have spent a lot of time, a lot of thought.
26:08and a lot of and, and, and something else to, to call out there is, is the collaboration, the, the collaborative nature of, of finding your building.
26:17If you build a great product, then you get, you get great partners and great customers to work with and they're probably pushing things forward.
26:25And would you say it's a fairly essential exercise to innovate, not purely for innovations sake, but also because in, in creating the thing that people need, even before they need it, you're gonna attract the kind of attention and the kind of you know, feedback and product input that will help you then build the next great thing.
26:50Have you seen a lot of that in your, in your time in the business?
26:53Yeah, I mean, I, I think a lot of the work, as I said, has worked on these industry bodies and with various partners and might be, we would go and have a, you know, a board meeting.
27:02But, you know, we, we would always have a, a pint or two afterwards.
27:05It used to be the, the, the, the soho house in, in the, in, in London was the epicenter for for many years.
27:13And the, the strength of character involved in the industry then in those kind of boards was, was, was phenomenal and I'm not sure if it's still quite the same, but it, it was all owner founders back in those days and they had a real passion and to be honest, a lot of people, you know, they were all friends but they did rat heads on, on, on ideas.
27:34But so we would just, we would have a few beers and the ideas would just, you know, keep coming and coming and coming,, about what, what could be done, what could be pushed and just through that, a lot of collective innovation came in the industry and that's where, you know, I'd Scott back to the office again.
27:49I think we should build this, you know.
27:52So it's, it's something that we've, we've, we've always liked to do.
27:54And I think now, I think especially our development team, you know, someone like a name check, a couple of people like, you know, Steve Shaw, I think you've met is he is now our C T pe O.
28:06Yeah, he was, he was arguably our first ever employee some 20 years ago, you know, he came in with some work experience, went away and got to have a great career and then we, we poached back but, you know, our, our, our actual first official employees, sort of, you know, still one of the head guys involved in our platform, John Atkins, you know, it was just a couple of weeks later and a number of their teams have been with us for that period.
28:30So the depth and breadth and knowledge they have in this field is, is just simply phenomenal.
28:35So, yeah, those guys, you know, come up with a whole host of ideas about what we should be doing from an innovation front and then you layer that on from what we're seeing in industry as you say.
28:44And then listening to customers is so so critical and feeding that and putting it all back together.
28:51The, the challenge really is we, you know, we have to decide what we're not going to do in the next release all the time.
28:56So we have the product team come in and present to our, to us as a leadership team, say, this is what we're trying to ratify.
29:01These are the things that we're picking and why and this is where it's come from.
29:06These are the voices that were saying it and here's the things that we're gonna part for now, but it would do later.
29:09But you know, we label that out in our public road map.
29:12Do you now?
29:13And for, for the listeners, like I'm, I'm about to hit tank with like with the question that there, there's been no preparation really?
29:18I don't, I don't like to prepare these too much.
29:19I like them to be off the cuff.
29:22Is there, is, is there looking back, is there something that you wish like you, you, you, like, you missed the opportunity or something that you might have, you wish you might have done a little bit differently?
29:34Oh You kind of made me think of that earlier when you mentioned Google.
29:40in our very, very early days, we acquired a company in the UK and we acquired it primarily because we wanted the office furniture but they did pay per click.
29:52Yeah, so we, we had a company that did paper click way before Google and we were just too busy doing other stuff that we'd never really put our hearts and minds into.
30:01It wasn't our focus.
30:02But yeah, we could have, we could have been Google.
30:04Paper click.
30:04So that's probably the biggest mistake.
30:06I don't really know if there's much money in that.
30:08Moving on.
30:09I think so.
30:11But, but moving on, but in the same, in the same.
30:13So, you know, from your, from your, you know, your, your perspective today and, and it really is true.
30:19I mean, the, the, the stories of dot Digital and, and, and Tink Taylor, I mean, you know, like sort of getting Tink is a thing that exists in this industry among a certain number of people.
30:29But i it's, it's really about, for me, the experiences are about just what happens after the event.
30:36What happens, you know, when, you know, outside of the conference and it's about hanging out, it's about hanging out and spending time and having conversations sometimes late into the evening.
30:46Right?
30:46So, so you, you have, and you have in the past and you continue to put in a lot of like face time, you know, on the ground with people listening.
30:57and I think that makes you an ideal person to answer, you know, to, to, to prognosticate about the opportunities that you see.
31:05Like if, if for people coming into the industry today, and I say, and I say the industry, you could take that to me, e-commerce, you could take that to mean customer engagement, whatever, however you want to bound that.
31:16But for people coming into the industry today, what are the opportunities available to them?
31:21And then what do you see opportunity wise going forward?
31:26Are, are you meaning like players coming into the market as you know, new, new platform services or, you know, people moving into the, into the market in terms of job seeking and what have you, you know, I, I think you could, you could, you could answer both questions probably.
31:41I mean, you have, you have employed what we have what 400 people now?
31:46Yeah, bit more than that, I think now these days about 500 is kind of lose count after a while.
31:50Yeah.
31:50So I mean, so, so you, you've, you've, you've been directly and indirectly responsible for hundreds and hundreds of careers over a couple of decades.
32:00So I think that gives you, that gives you the right to talk about, you know, to have some perspective on the industry as it relates to individual contributors or people moving into the space and then what do you see also out there for, for potential business opportunities for people or areas of interest?
32:19Yeah, I mean, I, I, one bit of advice I've always given, you know, people in my, in my team is, you know, and this is something I, I, I got from previous employer actually, but it was, you know, kind of make yourself redundant in your role if you get really, really good at your job.
32:34And then you can tell the people around you how that's all done.
32:39That means I can sort of helicopter you out of that role and elevate you to another position.
32:44So we did employ a lot of people and promote a lot of people from within.
32:47But that was only possible because they sort of manage their backfill.
32:51So I was able, always able to stretch people and give them opportunities to grow and, and, you know, we have, you know, probably, you know, the total number of staff we have today.
32:59But, you know, over the 20 years, there's probably, you know, hundreds, if not thousands of, of lies we've touched.
33:05And, you know, it's something I always really hope that, you know, I take to the grave will be, you know, I've made a difference in people's life that, that we've been able to, to touch in that way and going to your question on coming into the industry I mean, it's, you know, you're shopping now, you know, the things of it, it's, it's, it's, it's a very fragmented market.
33:26I think if I was coming into the, to the industry, right now, whether that would be as a vendor or a service partner, I, I'd really look at what is my niche.
33:39unless you just got tons of money because there are some, some folks that, you know, have raised a load of money and you can say you can do everything for everyone.
33:46But the reality is you can't, you know, even, you know, you got the likes of Shopify, so, so strong at the bottom end had Shopify.
33:53Plus for however many years they've seen successes there.
33:56But you know, how, you know, where, where do they, where do they really are known for their strength?
34:02It's where they came from, you know, Magento back in the day, you know, same thing, open source to trying to go up market, blah, blah, blah, you tend to be good at where you started your niche and where you got your, what you came from, you know, results and drive for growth determines that we should look beyond that.
34:20But, you know, really?
34:21Are you that good at it?
34:23So definitely, if I was coming in, I would, I would take a view of what is my niche and make a name for myself in that niche specialize in it.
34:32Maybe you know, it has certain terminology because it's in the finance world or the charity sector might be things that technology is the same but can be talked about in different ways.
34:42So make make sure, you know, where you, where you sit in terms of size of client as well, you know, that would determine things like marketing budgets, you know, an approach to market is very different to going after the small end of sme than it is, you know, the large end of, you know, corporate enterprise.
34:58Well, that sounds like pretty, you know, portable and broadly applicable advice held for any industry.
35:04So, as far as, as far as outside of that digital, are you, you know, are you building or advising or investing anyone that you, you'd like to talk about?
35:18I've been, I have invested in a number of things over the years.
35:24kind of built out that investment portfolio from people within industry and that network that, you know, you know, I invested in a couple of Carl Hartman's businesses.
35:37Yeah, Carl obviously was in to back in the day and yeah, that's kind of, that took me out of technology.
35:43He had some hr technology that I invested in.
35:45but he also has a non-alcoholic spirits company that, that, that's flying.
35:51And so that was sort of, you know, that was my transition from just doing tech, which is sort of what my, my, my sort of specialization is, I guess, into more businesses outside of that.
36:04So I've got all sorts of wonderful, weird and wacky things and some of them I advise on, I like to advise on most or at least, like to know that I can make a difference saying cars hr software, I, I brought in one of the sharks and shark tank, Australia.
36:21yeah, he was a guy founded monster dot com.
36:24Yeah, there's a, there's a bit of a hero but I knew that, you know, with his background in recruitment, bringing him in as an investor and advisor.
36:32And actually I think he's a chairman now would make a significant difference that, that, that business.
36:36So, yeah, I, I, I have got my fingers in a few pies and it's, it's just a bit of fun.
36:41I do advice and, you know, I'm available for advice if, if, if, if folks need it.
36:45But, you know, the thing that time has taught me is to only get involved in ones where I know I can help with my connections won't be, that's what makes it fun.
36:53So, yeah, yeah.
36:54So, so, so whatever the scope making, you know, making a difference and being able to actually have a practical impact, that seems to be a common theme with you.
37:03Well, you know, take, I think that takes us to you know, to the end of the episode here.
37:07But I just absolutely fascinating to spend this time with you and and, and get to hear some of these, some of these, just this amazing perspective from, from two decades in the space, you know, creating, you know, helping to create and curate a significant part of the industry and a significant driver of, of, of, of value over time.
37:30what, what an absolute journey.
37:32And I can also say it's been, it's been a, it's been a pleasure knowing you for many, many of these years.
37:38Thank you.
37:38I appreciate having you on.
37:39I feel honored to be second behind Roy.
37:41He's also a good friend.
37:43Well, very well.
37:44OK, folks.
37:45Well, that is all for us today.
37:46I want to thank each and every one of you for listening in and stay tuned for our next episode.
37:51Take care.