Presentation to Centre for Entrepreneurs, March 2020

1. How to
repeatedly
succeed at
failure
George Bevis

2. WTF are you?
•2002 – 08: Banker ☹
•2008 – 11: Retail ecommerce startup
(angel funded failure)
•2011 – 14: Freelancing (more banking ☹ )
•2014 – 2018: Created Tide (pretty good...)
•2019+: Incubating more startups

3. 2000...

4. 2000...

5. Look people up
Share contact details

6. Look people up
Share contact details

7. Messaging
Join communities

8. $550bn
$0

11. • 150+ pitches
• Total raised: <£200k
• Returned to investors: £0

13. Why SpeedSell failed
Good
Customer proposition
Execution
Marketing / distribution
Management (obvs)
Bad
Unit economics
(Hard)

17. Culture
• All DNA set in 1st year
• Work out your “mission” and
bang on about it
• Write down desired
behaviours/values and recruit
against them
• Last round interviews with all
staff
• Keep standards high (but
compromise is inevitable)

18. • “Rough patch” is going to happen
• More to whinge about
• “Entitlement” kicks in before revenue
• Performance management helps manage expectations
• Spend
• Laptops
• “Waste” budget: swag, socials etc
• Identity politics
• Interpersonal disputes
• OKRs only work at scale

19. Brand = DNA
• Most important thing you’ll do
• Creates organisational focus, assists hiring and enables ultimate
handover
• Takes 6-9 months + an expert
• Cost €100k-€200k
• Words more important than pictures

23. What failure looks like
1. Slow
2. Everyone takes it better than you
a. Staff
b. Investors
c. Customers
d. Partners (if they aren’t unpaid)
3. A relief

24. Why failure happens (mistakes you won’t make twice)
• Unit economics
• Customer lifetime value < 3x marketing cost
• Excessive willingness to do something hard
• Management inertia
• “Board already agreed X”
• Insufficient paranoia
• Why won’t customers like this?
• Why will partnerships go wrong?
• Why might this hire be wrong?
• How can this stakeholder screw things up?

25. What to do when you’re failing
• Be honest
• With yourself (10% chance? 30% chance?)
• (Consider insolvency obligations)
• With investors: make it their problem too
• Be honourable
• Try to find jobs for all staff
• Insist on paying all staff salaries
• Pay creditors if you can (even out of own pocket)
• Look for a sale

26. After failure happens
• Well done! You got your “MBA”
• Cheaper than a real MBA
• Much more employable
• Investors won’t mind (unless they are jerks)
• No guilt (once you’re on £20k/month you’ll understand)
• EIS / SEIS
• Take 1-2 years, sort the bank balance, then do it again
• Your reputation won’t suffer if you’ve been honourable

28. Questions?