Navigating Business Growth and Team Dynamics with Abeed Janmohamed

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast, where we explore cutting- edge strategies to keep teams human- centered, and empower you with the tools and insights needed to help your teams excel and thrive in today's rapidly changing world. Your host is Dane Groeneveld, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience in enhancing team dynamics and innovation. Have you ever wondered what it takes to turn a good business idea into a great success story? This week we're joined by Abeed Janmohamed, an expert in elevating businesses. Abeed's expertise spans a broad spectrum, including enhancing sales and revenue tactics, assembling effective teams, guiding investment decisions, and navigating mergers and acquisitions. His accomplishments span various sectors demonstrating a versatile approach to business growth. They'll kick off by discussing how Abeed assists entrepreneurs in understanding and managing the intricacies of mergers and acquisitions. You'll gain insight into vital tactics to ensure your team's wellbeing during pivotal changes in your business's trajectory. Then they'll dive into the critical aspect of finding your business's ideal niche. Abeed will provide his perspective on recognizing you and your team's core competencies, and what sets your business apart. This segment will emphasize the importance of deeply understanding your business category to thrive in a competitive market. To conclude, they'll examine an intriguing concept, sourcing talent from unconventional places. Abeed will highlight the benefits of innovative thinking in team composition. Discover how a diverse team can introduce new viewpoints and creative approaches to overcome business challenges. So, teamwork makes the dream work, and we're here to inspire your next collaborative breakthrough. Gather your team or put on your headphones, and let's dive in together.

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name is Dane Groeneveld, CEO of HUDDL3 Group, and today I'm joined by an old school friend, Abeed Janmohamed. Abeed is over there in the UK where we went to school together, and he's a founder and director of Volando, which is a M&A and growth advisory, doing some really cool work, particularly with technology businesses. So, it's going to be a good conversation today, particularly zeroing in on values, culture, people in those growth environments. So, welcome, Abeed.

Abeed Janmohamed: Thanks, Dane. Thank you for having me. Looking forward to it.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, you bet. I got a bit of a laugh on old school friend. Does that make you feel old?

Abeed Janmohamed: It does make me feel old, actually. Well, given we left school, oh God, almost twenty- five years ago. Well, I left school twenty- five years ago. You're a bit younger than me, but yeah, it's quite frightening to think that it's been that long. But I guess one of the things that, the fact that we're both still sat here having been to the same school, that kind of talks to the strength of the culture and value set that the school has.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it does.

Abeed Janmohamed: And I think as an organization, which I think they all are these days, the value in culture set is very, very similar today as it was back then, because I know that kind of unwritten rule of working together and helping old inaudible still applies. So yeah, there you go. That's the first piece around the culture of teamwork.

Dane Groeneveld: That's it. So maybe for the benefit of our listeners moving a little bit past school, you can give everyone a quick update on your story, how you've built your expertise, and come to be doing all this great work.

Abeed Janmohamed: Yeah, sure. I mean, for me, I've sort of come to M& A slightly different route, securities route. I always wanted to get into M& A when I left university, but I went down the operator route, started life in digital advertising sales at Cricinfo. com, was part of an acquisition into ESPN, and then helped build the ESPN digital business in Europe, before making a transition to the world of startups at Radium One, which is a San Francisco based ad tech startup, where I was for five years and helped launch the various teams in Europe, and then moved into more of a sort of central role focused on corp dev and partnerships, where I was very much focused on how we worked with the big enterprises, the Adobes and the Salesforces of this world, and how we could really partner up and develop closer alliances. Which ultimately in an ideal world would've resulted in M&A, an exit of sorts. But the company, unfortunately, we didn't get that far. So then, post that, I spent a year, 18 months in retail tech working for Sir Terry Leahy, who was the CEO of Tesco and the main investor. Left there after 18 months and I effectively was trying to work out what I really wanted to do, and again, culturally what I didn't want to be was on this sort of merry- go- round of ad tech and digital advertising sales. So I started talking to my old VCs and they asked me to, they said, "Well look, why don't you help US companies stocks in Europe, and set up a business to do that," which is essentially the first incarnation of Volando, where we effectively launched seven US businesses into Europe, help them with their first hires, help them do the first 10 deals, and then stayed on as advisors for a period of time. And in a couple of cases, I'm still involved with the founders of those businesses, even though inaudible since. And then we started to, over time, advise funds on their growth strategy and their investment strategy focused around people, especially a couple of the early stage funds that we work with. And then started over time to get more into corporate finance, helping companies raise money, and then working with two corporate finance boutiques to help them build out tech divisions, and really kind of help them accelerate their route to building out a bit more of a technology slant to what they were doing. And also in the MarTech or marketing world, where there's a lot of agencies and service- based businesses involved, a lot of those businesses have over time transitioned to hype to hybrid, what I would call tech enabled businesses. So it's important for a lot of these M& A firms to understand how technology plays into service- based businesses. So yeah, that's kind of how I've got here today, which it's been an interesting route to get to where I wanted to. It's taken me 20 years to get here, but it's been fun. And I think I've learned a lot around in that time. And also, because of the way that I've got here, a lot of the approach that I take when it comes to helping a company sell, or prepare to sell, is a bottom up not a top down approach. A lot of M& A advisors will take a top- down approach, because they'll go into the heads of M& A at various companies, which is fine, and that obviously works. But when you're dealing in that slightly smaller companies, or you're dealing with companies that are very deep tech related, I think having the ability to understand how those companies fit in to bigger organizations is important. And I think that comes from having been an operator for so long.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think it's hard. I've got a lot of friends in the vCMP community that kind of came up through the analyst pathway, super smart people, but they haven't been in the operator seat. So while academically they get it, what a company could be, should be, is, how they're managing their people. They just can't quite wrap their hands around it in diligence or, once invested, in supporting and advising some of the founders, I don't find.

Abeed Janmohamed: Yeah, no, I agree. I think you need a combination of experience. Now, in a lot of the work I do, I work very well with a CFO, but two CFOs depending on the type of business we work with, and I bring them into a lot of conversations. When it comes to transactions, they will help get the finances and get the finance story right, based on the strategic story that I want them to try and tell. And that's essentially how it works really well, because you tend to have two sides of the same coin working on any deal. And also, in our case, you have effectively two senior people that have been around that do that work together, rather than having junior analysts and others involved all the time. So that's not to say we don't use junior analysts, but ultimately we tend to take a slightly more senior approach to the deals that we work on.

Dane Groeneveld: And what's interesting about that, every deal team's different. Every deal structure is different, but if you get the right dynamic on the team moving through a lot of information, a lot of complexity, a lot of different motivations by different parties, you can get far more quickly to either a go, no- go decision before too much time's burnt, and then ultimately find a structure that's going to work. There's been a lot of talk in the press about structures that don't work with the market we've come through in the last six to 12 months.

Abeed Janmohamed: Yeah, there has. I think the culture and values piece is always, for me, that's the starting point. Whether I'm doing working on the buyer side or the sell side, the most important thing ultimately, there's always people involved in every transaction I've ever done. It's very much making sure that it feels good culturally, you have to align with the person that's buying. I always say to people I work with that I think it's not my job to sell your company. It's my job to help you uphold the value of your company. You will sell the company better than I will. I'm just going to put you in the right room with the right person. And then ultimately, that process of you working with them will hopefully create an alignment. And then, my job is to sit there and say, " Right, the value of this business if you really want it is this, and this is how we're going to get there." But that for me, I try and take a bit more, a lot of the time, a human approach to it, because I think it delivers better outcomes and ultimately, in all cases, doesn't matter whether it's technology or service- based, in all cases there are people involved. And if you can understand that dynamic, I think that puts you in a good place.

Dane Groeneveld: The people piece is really interesting, in so far as what have you really bought, or what have you really invested in? You were saying just before the show, even if it's a technology company that has great code, it still takes a lot of people to maintain that code, go through release cycles on improving the features, functionalities of the platform, build partnerships. It's still a remarkably human endeavor.

Abeed Janmohamed: 100%. I think I remember sitting at advertising week about five years ago, and I forget which VC was on stage, but he was talking about recounting a story between Peter Thiel and Brian Chesky of Airbnb. And basically, when Peter Thiel invested$ 150 million in Airbnb, Brian asked him for some advice, and basically the first thing he said is, " Whatever you do now, don't inaudible." Which is completely not the advice that Brian was expecting from someone that's just put that much money in his business. But the whole cultural piece is so critical, whether it's growth and whether you're trying to advise companies to scale scale towards something, whether it's investment, or whether it's an exit, or whether you are in an M& A process, that kind of cultural alignment piece is so, so critical. And I've seen lots of scenarios where deals just haven't gone through, because there's a lack of alignment on culture. I've also seen lots of very good companies, technologically very good companies, with great ideas and pretty good product market fit, just not achieve what they want to achieve. And I remember this VC saying, he said, " Good technology, great team will always win over great technology and average team." And I just thought that was a really, that's kind of stuck with me. And I tell that story to lots of people when I'm advising them, and when I'm sometimes pitching for work, I tell that story and it kind of resonates with them, because it's very simple, and ultimately it does come down to people in my mind.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, you used a great phrase there, Abeed. You said when you go and work with a founder and owner, you help them uphold the value of their company. How do you do that? How do you explore first, and then explain what the culture and values are?

Abeed Janmohamed: So I think there's ultimately, there are some kind of unit economics within every business that needs to, and fundamentals that we have to understand first to say, " Right, from a financial standpoint, does it tick a lot of those boxes? What's the story here from the financial perspective? And then what's the other, what are the kind of softer areas that people can't necessarily see, and it's very difficult to find during diligence?" And that's everything from employee retention, customer churn, there's a whole bunch of things that you don't necessarily understand unless you can really get under the skin of the business. And then a lot of what I'm doing is going right. Well, when I'm talking to a buyer, a lot of the time it's very much, " Okay, we see the business, our average model is seven times EBITDA, and it's a three- year earn out, and this is the way it's structured." Part of my thing, because I spend a lot of time with the founder, I understand them, I understand what their needs are, and I understand both personal and professional ambitions first and foremost. And if there's two or three founders, I want to make sure they're all aligned, because nothing worse than having two out of three founders not aligned. So once I've done that bit of work from a discovery standpoint with the founders, I then understand their point of satisfaction. And that for me is a critical point. And then when we're in a negotiation, because I understand where they're at and what will be possible to them, creating a deal structure that allows them to achieve what they want to achieve, but in the right way, that basically gives them potentially even more upside, but just helps them understand that you may not get$ 5 million on day one, because that's just not a structure that appears. However, because of the fundamentals, however this business really wants you, and this is how we're going to structure a deal that gives you perhaps an accelerator, or we're going to give you a shortened earn out that gets you equity, or a long- term incentive plan in the new business. That then allows you to then realize that value that you wanted, that$ 2 million that you wanted for yourself, and actually to realize that, or $ 10 million, or $ 20 million that you wanted. How do you realize that as part of the deal structure over two or three years? So I work quite hard with the founders up front, just to make sure that I understand them, and what their motivations are. Every business, every founder, lots of founders think, believe, and they should do believe that their business is worth more than sometimes it is. But that's because they put blood, sweat and tears into it. But actually once you get under the skin of it, you understand them as people and you go, " Actually, what do you actually want?" And in most cases, founders are fairly realistic and they just really want, in a lot of the deals that I've done and other people that I've worked with, it's very much financial freedom. So once you understand what that number is, being able to then uphold value becomes a much simpler exercise.

Dane Groeneveld: Oh, that's interesting. And how often do you see, when you're working in with founders, going back to the people that do the work, how often are they going deep on what does their team get post- transaction, whether it's options in the new co- op, just strategic or employment guarantees, does that become a serious work effort looking at team post- transaction?

Abeed Janmohamed: Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's a key area, because ultimately a lot of the founders, the founders you want to work with, the good founders, they're very passionate about their teams, they recognize they wouldn't have got there without their teams. And that's a really, really important part. Sometimes and depending on how early we start work, I start working with companies. So in a couple of cases right now, I'm fairly early on, so businesses, they're doing$2.5 to$ 5 million revenue. They've just started thinking about employee option schemes. They've just started thinking about how they incentivize people to stay, beyond the great culture and values that they have as a company. And they're thinking about an exit in three years time, three to five years time. So now's a really good time to start thinking about which employees you want to reward, which employees you want to keep post- transaction, or critical to the business post- transaction, and how do you incentivize them to stay. And then during that transaction is then making sure that they are positioned in the right way. And a lot of that is part through various calls and conversations with inaudible, you make sure that these key people are put in front of them to basically raise their profile, and demonstrate why they're so critical for the business. But the good founders are the ones that realize that actually they've got a succession plan. And I talk to almost every founder I work with today who spends their life... A lot of founders will spend their life in the business, and I keep saying, " You've got to be on the business and you want to step up, and you have to have a succession plan if you have a succession plan." But they always look at me when I ask that question. I'm like, " What's the problem?" They're like, " Well, you're basically telling me to put myself out of a job." I'm like, " Yeah, you need to be able-"

Dane Groeneveld: Exactly.

Abeed Janmohamed: "...Have the business run itself without you being there, and not have to worry about the strategy and the culture and all this stuff." And you've got to be comfortable in your own skin to be able to do that. And also, if you are comfortable to have a succession plan, you end up hiring people that are better than you, and the company goes further. So there's a real kind of dynamic that you've got to work with some founders on in that early three to five years out, from an exit or an event, whatever that event happens to be.

Dane Groeneveld: That's a really good point insofar as, particularly if you're selling a business, there's always founder risk, which you hear spoken about. If the founder hasn't truly developed a capable team that can keep building, growing, delighting customers, then why would the buyer be interested in it? Because if Dane gets his payday, he just walks off, and plays golf and surfs all day. So it makes a lot of sense that you've got to build that succession, you've got to hire good people, you've got to build those values that show that team's capable of taking the business maybe to places that the founder hadn't even thought of. When does that become the right time? Is it at a certain level of revenue, at a certain level of customers? Does it differ much between the type of technology and market you serve?

Abeed Janmohamed: That's a good question. I think the smart founders, and the ones that are building forescale, and trying to build businesses to be successful and not worrying too much about an exit, but know that there's something they want to do at some point in the horizon, but focused on success, I think they're the ones that tend to be the ones that lean in first. I would always say, once you get to sort of$ 2, $ 2.5 million in revenue, that's when you've kind of broken through the, " Okay, this is validated. There is an opportunity." You've got a set of enterprise customers, or set of customers, that you can see more blue sky that you can go after. That's when I think you need to start to think about employee option schemes, start to think about how you incentivize people, bring them closer together, and then perhaps at that stage you might be in one market, and you may need to now go actually strategically, " I need to move to the US, or I need to do Asia." When you start to go into different markets and you start to bring different cultures into the whole mix, and different nationalities as well, that's when that culture and value set is so, so important as you move forward. So how you bring people together and bind people together, I think that's a real skill. So I would say good founders will think about it early doors, because they recognize that without people, without their people, the business won't scale. And if you get people, there are lots of, we said it before in the pre- show, there's a whole bunch of people that understood today, because we've had 20 years worth of startups and scale- ups in the digital world. There are people that understand their sweet spot. And I remember a story a few years ago, when I was on the blockchain, working in blockchain, and there was an old CMO friend of mine, and he was CMO of a very big company, a growing company at the time, and he took the company from$ 10 million to $100 million, and then when they got to $ 100 million, they brought a new CMO in to take over, or to basically be his boss. And he got really kind of like, " Well, what I've just done all of this stuff, why are you bringing someone in above me?" And that person had the role to basically go from$ 100 million to a billion. And what he did, it took him 18 months, and 18 months later I had a beer with him. And he said to me, he said, " You know what? I was bitter and twisted for the wrong reasons." He said, "What I realize now is my sweet spot is 10 to 100. That's what I'm really, really good at. And actually when it gets post 100, it's the center of power and all of that stuff just becomes too much for me to handle, and I didn't really enjoy business that was that big." And I've met, my old CFO similar kind of thing, very good up to$ 50 million and post$ 50 million he's like, " Well, I want to find me the next startup, because I'm good at that 10 to 50." And I think there's a lot of people now that understand where their superpowers are and where their strengths lie. So that again, we've now got probably two generations, two and a half generations of people that have been through this startup ecosystem, that understand what their skill set is and how to maximize it in the time that they're there. So I think the world is evolving in terms of how teams are being put together to drive this.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I'm seeing a matrix here as you talk about that. There's the sweet spot of the type of role I'm really good at, the type of selling. You mentioned pre- show, like some people are great at solution selling and partnering up with other products, other people are brilliant at selling picks and shovels, that's just a quick fix tool. So knowing what your team's sweet spot is in terms of how you're positioning your product for customers and selling it, and then at what scale of business you're at, I think that matrix overlay is really interesting for teams.

Abeed Janmohamed: Yeah, definitely. I think understanding the type of business you are, I talk about positioning a lot with a lot of businesses I work with, and it's not necessarily, I'm not really talking about marketing positioning, but it's more around business positioning. So what type of business are you? There's a great book by April Dunford called Obviously Awesome, and she's a positioning expert. It's worth the read. And there's another book called Play Bigger as well, that's also, that's another very, very good book around positioning and messaging. But I think when April talks about it, she talks about three different types of businesses. One's a head to head, one's a big fish in a small pond, and one's creating a new game. And all of those businesses have their inherent risks and they also have their own pros as well. But it's very important in her mind, and I completely agree with it, for you to understand what type of business you are, and it's fine to be a head- to- head business. It's just, if you recognize you're a head- to- head business, you know what type of people you need, you know what market you're after, what the scale of the opportunity is, and you know that actually if you're head-to-head, you are probably going to get taken out by somebody you become an annoyance to. Or actually, if you're head- to- head and you're a technology business, is there some kind of IP protection that you need to go and get? So then you become a nuisance and then someone can go, " Actually, I'll take that out." If you're going to create a new game, that is a whole nother play. Everyone gets excited by creating a new game, but actually it's not for everybody, because the risks involved, and the energy that you need to expand to be able to go and create a new market category is different. But then also, some people are brilliant at understanding how to twist the sector that they're in, and actually take something that potentially is legacy, and say that, " The way we're doing it in that legacy sector is, we are actually creating a new game, because we're using digital tools and we're changing the way people think about it." Give you an example is a business in market research, and market research has been around forever, and a business I worked with probably during the pandemic, business has been around 16, 17 years. Really good, really good, little business. And we've talked about, we went through positioning, and they were like, "Oh, ultimately we're a head- to- head business. But what we're doing is we've built a platform, so we feel that actually we're creating a new game, because no one else in this space is building a platform that allows us to operate in the way that we do." So I sort of flipped it on its head and said, " Right, okay, so market research is the how, but tell me what you actually do." And they went, " Well, we help our clients get closer to their customers." Like, okay, fine, so effectively you do customer closeness. And they went, " Yeah." So we reposition, the business is creating a new game within a legacy sector, and their whole positioning is now focused around customer closeness. So when they're going into sales conversations, they've got this big statement that says, " We help you get closer to your customer." And what they're finding is that people are going, " That's really interesting, come and tell me how." And I think there are lots of great examples of businesses that I've worked with, or worked for, that have been through that and gone, " Actually, we're in this bit here, but we are doing it in a slightly different way. So while we are head- to- head, we're actually also creating a new game in the way that we're approaching it." And I think that's a really important thing to understand as a business, is what type of business you are, because that then effectively also relates to the type of people that you need within the business. If you're a head- to- head, do you need more technologists? There is a certain type of salesperson that's happy going head- to- head, there is a whole another type of salesperson that wants to be the first guy or girl over the fence and get bloodied, and want to be talking about some new concept or whatever else. So just understanding what type of business you are I think is a really critical part of anything from a growth standpoint, but also from a transactional M&A standpoint. Because then you know very quickly what type of, who your potential buyer is.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That concept of customer closeness with the market research firm you described, you talk a lot about culture and values, but that also has to help you really codify the behaviors, because if your team know that you are helping your end customers get closer to their customers, then that has to translate into some pretty obvious ways that we work with each other, build technology, service the customer, create experiences. So that's got to be a pretty tight lens I would imagine. So with that example, how did you play that out?

Abeed Janmohamed: We went through the positioning piece, we redefined the business, and we basically redefined all the messaging and collateral, and all of that. And then the next stage was then, right, the whole team, we're doing a culture and value session. And culture and values, we called it a reset, because I think, and I'm doing a reset tomorrow for another company that I'm working with right now, where it's not that you don't have a culture and value set, but a lot of the time when those were created, maybe 10 years ago in some cases, they've not really been embedded. The world has moved on, we've had a pandemic, we've got a whole new generation of workers that want to operate in a totally different way. Are these fit for purpose anymore, yes or no? Or maybe you are transitioning. In another case, you are transitioning from father to son from a leadership standpoint, and the son's 29 and the father's 58. And you kind of go, " Actually, how is this business, is the culture and value set of this business? Is it going to be able to transition with the shift in leadership, yes or no?" But ultimately, again, you probably, as I'm talking, you're going, " Well, there's people involved there, and there's people involved there, and there's people involved there." So it all comes down... I personally think cultural values is right, has to be at the center of everything. All successful businesses have a very strong culture and value set. A good friend of mine, he's written a book called Building Corporate Soul, and he was the CEO of Spark44, which was Land Rover's in- house agency. And Ralph is actually someone you should probably get on your podcast, he's fantastic. I'll introduce you to him, but he's written this book on this whole concept of corporate soul. So soul in his mind goes deeper than just a culture set. And you think about some of these big businesses that, I remember your dad used to work for Rio Tinto, I think from memory, and then I worked at ESPN and Disney, and these are businesses that have been around, and they have a very deep- rooted cultural set. And people really, in the world of Disney, it's easy to buy into Disney, and ESPN, and all that, but they genuinely make you believe that the world starts and finishes within their four walls. I remember looking at Rio Tinto graduate program when I was leaving university, because obviously, I've been meeting with dad at inaudible once, and I was going, " What companies do I know?" This is pre- information age and pre being able to kind of just look at Twitter and go, " Actually, well, I need to look at the newspaper, and look at the FTSE 100, and who are these companies?" And I remember going through that process and actually, cultural values didn't really come into my mind at that point. I was like, " Well, Barclays, Rio Tinto, these are all FTSE 100 companies. They're all big companies. They'll have a graduate scheme, let's apply." The world's changed all these, the new generation, they're all... And I lecture at Myles University for one semester a year, and these guys are, scary thing is, and I'm old when I stand in front of them, because none of them were born in the'90s. They were all born in 2000 or after 2000. I'm sitting going, " Oh my God." But one thing that is very clear with a lot of them is, they will make decisions around what they buy, who they work for, what they do based on values. And whether that's diversity and inclusion related, whether that's sustainability, gender, there's a whole load of things that will basically influence decisions, and more so than anything else, the work. Who do I want to work for? How are they going to treat me? Can I be remote? Have I got unlimited holiday? All of these things that are really, really important to these graduates today. And so they should be, because the world's moved on. And I think organizations now need to think about how we evolve if we want to hire and retain the best talent. And I think that's a really key question that I would say, if I was a CEO of a business today, that's the one thing that I'd be thinking about. How do I retain the best talent and how do I actually put myself in a position to hire the best talent? What do I need to do to evolve the way that we do that?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I love that example of you as a graduate looking at who the big brands are, the FTSE 100, the FORTUNE 100, whatever country you're in, and the fact that now it's all about what that brand stands for, what difference am I going to be making in the world? It's very real. And actually one of our marketing guys I was just speaking to today, he was asking me about growth goals, and I was thinking he was talking about new customers, revenue, but then he paused and he said, " Tell me about our employee growth goals. How is my effort in marketing the way we talk about our brand and what we do to the outside world going to lift the number of recruiters you're going to hire in that business, or developers that you're going to hire in this business?" I thought that was a fascinating challenge/ question.

Abeed Janmohamed: It is. I think a lot of these graduates today, it is very much around... Someone this morning today asked me about a personal development plan, and I'm like, I don't remember ever asking about that when I was 24- years- old. I just got on with it, and just got on with doing what I was supposed to be doing, and trying to execute on it. And if I did, then stuff would come. But this is where again, I think the way organizations have evolved, I think that whole piece around growth, it's a mindset shift. A lot of the, I say kids, I'm 20 years older than a lot of these people. So I'm sitting here saying that the young people that are coming into these organizations, they have a different mindset. And I think that's really, for me, it's important as a senior leader within an organization, if I'm in a fractional role or if I'm advising a founder, that it's really, really important that they understand that. And I think you've got to sit there and think, what are the key drivers for this business? And what are the key types of people that I need in this business, and those are the types of people I want. What are the key things that are really, really important to them? Because I want them to come and love what we do. But also, they're all publishers these days. They're all consumers and publishers of their own content. And actually, I was talking, someone asked me the other day, " What's the one thing that kind of scares you?" And I said, "Well, actually, two years ago, maybe two and a half years ago, I was working on a transaction, and I didn't look at Glassdoor, I should have done, I didn't look at Glassdoor. But Glassdoor, in my mind at the time, was a bit like Tripadvisor for companies, and all people can kind of make up reviews, et cetera, et cetera." And I got a call from the buyer who said, "Have you looked at the Glassdoor?" And I went, " No." They said, "Have a look. While I'm on the phone, have a look." And I looked at it, I was like, " Oh my God, wow."

Dane Groeneveld: Problem.

Abeed Janmohamed: There's some really, really interesting ratings here, and you've got to accept it, and literally had a deal fall down. Not just one, I had a three deals fall down, because of Glassdoor. And I think that whole piece is really important today. You see lots of examples in social media where, for example, United Breaks Guitars is one of my favorite ones, where a complete disaster from their customer service team, which then went viral and smashed their share price by a significant material amount. So the world of consumers today, and the world of the next generation of workers, or the current generation of workers, they're all very favorable on these platforms, far more so than a lot of us, and even more people, and people older than us, who the next generation up who might be running these big companies. So if we don't understand what they need and are not receptive to a lot of this stuff, I think you can see people get themselves in a lot of trouble, and companies actually have share prices affected, et cetera, because of just not understanding how this group operates. So really for me, that's something to bear in mind as a watch- out as you move forward.

Dane Groeneveld: To watch- out, but it's also a force multiplier if you flip it on its head. If you bring in young people and they shout about the great experience... You shared with me pre- show about how it's really hard to find sales and marketing people, and yet some of the graduates that are coming through have got phenomenal abilities to just plug straight in and start growing. So that's a perfect example.

Abeed Janmohamed: Yeah, they're so hungry and the world is so competitive these days. And I always talk about it a little bit with companies about growing your own wood, and I just think sometimes that you could go and hire expensive people, it'll take six months to ramp, it'll still take six months to ramp with a graduate, but actually you're training. Sometimes grads come with no, because come with no previous experience. " So I worked like this here before and this is how we used to do it." You don't have many of those challenges and you are kind of unencumbered. You've got a blank sheet of paper and you've got someone that's just like a sponge, that just wants to suck it up and really kind of understand what works in this business, and just wants to... Can you do this? And this is how we think it works. But they come to you with all these different ideas. And what is really interesting is around when you hire, we hired grad the other day for a company that I advise in the new business team. I'll tell you what, she is an absolute rock star, because she's come into the business and she's gone, she's just taken everything in for a month and just gone, " Okay, interesting." And then a month later she's come in and she's asked the CEO, the head of your business, the board and whatever else, " Can I half an hour in your next board meeting? I just want to just run through," offer her own back completely. And we've all gone, "Okay." She's come and done this presentation to us, " You're gone. Oh, you're gone." Oh my God. Yeah, actually, yeah. Wow. Everyone's been so-

Dane Groeneveld: Humbling.

Abeed Janmohamed: ...in the business like that. And you go, " Wow, you've done an amazing job in a month. You've identified a whole bunch of things that we're not doing, you've..." She, in Venice, echoed something that I said to the CEO, that this agency is a very well- kept secret. She was like, " There's hardly any footprint and you're supposed to be a social agency, or have a social team, and you're not doing it." So we literally, overnight, we've kind of gone, " Right, okay, well here's the keys to the car. Can you just help us put a plan in place for this, this, and this, and then go ahead and execute it, work with us and it's your project, you own it now." And suddenly she's kind of gone, " Oh my god." So I've actually created this opportunity for herself to really shine. And then there's probably 10, 15 examples of that over the last four or five years that I've seen, where I've said to companies, " Hire a grad, hire an intern, just see what they're like." And if you actually spend a bit of time early on in the process making sure they're onboarded properly, because they all want to be onboarded properly, and you spend a bit of time just making sure they've got the right support, and framework, and access to the right stuff, they're phenomenal. And I think that is also, there are lots of great examples, probably everyone that you speak to and businesses that you work with, that probably got in that space. But I think the world has definitely moved on from when I graduated 20 odd years ago, when it was just scroll through the FT and go, " Who are the 100 companies?" We'll get that Times Top 100 list of those companies, go to a website, fill in a form, and then hope to God you get through an assessment center, and then you get a graduate role, and you go, " Okay, great, I'll do this, because I've got a job," kind of thing. I think also a lot of these students are spending, and graduates are spending, a lot of time doing work experience, whether that's in university, or whether they, in the first years post- university. So they're trying to get a feel of, " Actually what do I want to do, and where do I want to work, and what kind of companies work with me, and don't work for me?" I think that's a really, we've all done work experience in the past, but again, it was very much like, " Dad knows someone here, or I know have a contact here through sport, or something. I'll go and do some work experience there," but this time it's very intentional, which I think is a good thing as well as you move forward.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, I think it is. And I think there's a lot out there in media right now about teams are no longer as hierarchy driven, because the hierarchy was there due to access to information and knowledge, which is now at all of our fingertips. Whether you're a graduate, whether you're a returning mother, whether you're a transitioning veteran, you can come in having lived in other circles, and just get a hold of stuff straight away. So there's a lot of promise there that you can build these teams, bring diverse experience, diverse thought, and actually just start building, just start trying stuff, and not get too hung up on, " Well, have you done it before?" I think that's very exciting.

Abeed Janmohamed: Is there much in the US and where you are at, have you seen much around the job share stuff?

Dane Groeneveld: I've seen a little bit on job share, but not a lot. I know some of the platforms that are focusing on bringing moms back to work are really looking at job sharing, because of school schedules, for example. But what are you seeing? I think it's a fascinating space.

Abeed Janmohamed: It's a really fascinating space. There was a business a couple of years ago that I was advising, that they were building a platform for job shares, but I think that's a really interesting space. I think the returning moms piece is brilliant. I mean, there's a couple of, a friend of mine actually, someone who's a bit older than us at Cranley, he created a business that was focused on returning moms and lawyers, basically. And they were people that, well, both returning moms, but also people that wanted to work remotely, and wanted to have a bit more freedom and autonomy, and didn't want to necessarily have to be in London, or be in a major city. They wanted to spend their evening surfing, or whatever it was. So he built a business focused on fractional legal support. And I think that that whole space is really, really interesting. I think especially in the kind of growth and scale- up stage, there is this sort of misconception I think, where if you're working with P&G, or trying to work with P& G, or Coca- Cola, that you'd need to have a link later, or a top magic circle firm working alongside you just to prove that you're serious about working with so-and-so. I think that's outdated and legacy thinking. And I think actually a lot of these back- to- work, moms, lawyers, the people that want more autonomy in their lives, but are happy to do kind of fractional and commercial work from wherever it is in the world. A lot of these people have worked at some of these firms before, just because they've had children, or just because they want more freedom in their lives doesn't necessarily mean they're any worse at their jobs. And I think this whole concept of, especially in those types of service industries, accountancies, lawyers and whatever, having these sort of, " Well, we have to work with PWC." I think that, in the growth space, I think a lot of people are starting to realize that we don't need that anymore. We just need people that are very good and very competent, and can help us achieve what we need to achieve. And that could be a set of projects, it could be fractional a day a week. But I think that that whole world, again, that sort of, I guess you'd call it the gig economy of sorts, but that space for professionals I think is a really interesting space, and an interesting opportunity for in the growth startup, scale- up phase. I think that's a really interesting space. And I know there's lots of US companies, and companies that come over to the UK, or to Europe, from different parts of the world, and they look a lot to those types of organizations to be able to get the expertise that they need. But I only need a lawyer to help me launch the business, that has expertise in setting companies up and doing that bit. I don't need that person full time in the business, and I don't need to retain someone. I just need a project done, and then I need someone to do some stuff retained on a privacy basis, because that's a really core part of my business. I'm a data business. So there's all those things that I think what you're starting to see in the world is actually, " I need that skill set, and that skill set, and that skill set, but I need it for this period of time." And there's lots of people that are available to do that and really help drive things forward. So that kind of evolution is also, I think it's creating more dynamism in the growth space, which is also, I think, a good thing.

Dane Groeneveld: I do too. And not only are you supplementing your team with some expert skills and experience, but you're exposing your team to the wider ecosystem, because that fraction or profession, whether it's you or one of your team members, or a lawyer, they're seeing all of these other businesses, they're seeing customers, they're seeing different practices, so they can introduce you to someone that might be a partner, or a merger target. And I think that whole ecosystem play is is also very powerful. Well, this has been an awesome conversation, Abeed. It's been an awesome conversation. We've had a lot of key points. I loved your sound bite on, " Okay tech with a great team is always going to build be great tech with an okay team." So it's all about the people, talking a lot about cultures, values, allowing the team to shine, founders working on the business and not in it, as important for growth stage as well as for exits. The sweet spot I thought was a really cool topic too. Individual team members and teams within teams, knowing where they play best. Is it at 10 to 50 million, 50 to a hundred, a hundred to a billion, in a consumer market versus a B2B market. That's all super real. And that last part of the conversation around the corporate soul and attracting people into the business, whether they're graduates or returning mothers, to come in and build your own talent, build your own capabilities. Lots of good stuff.

Abeed Janmohamed: Good. It's been really good fun. Thank you very much for having me.

Dane Groeneveld: You bet. If any of our listeners have a tech business that they're trying to take to Europe and need some help with, or conversely, there's folks over your side of the pond that are looking for some help, how do they best find you and the team at Volando?

Abeed Janmohamed: Just via our website or via email. I guess if they contact you directly, feel free to give them my email address, and I'll be happy to have an informal conversation.

Dane Groeneveld: You bet. Thanks, Abeed.

Abeed Janmohamed: Thanks a lot.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Remember that by embracing vulnerability, trusting our intuition, and approaching challenges with compassion, we not only strengthen our teams, but also pave the way for a future where collaboration thrives. If you're hungry for more insights, strategies, and research on collaboration, head over to thefutureofteamwork. com. There, you can join our mailing list to stay updated with the latest episodes and get access to exclusive content tailored to make your team thrive. Together we can build the future of teamwork. Until next time.