18. What The UK needs to learn from Silicon Valley about AI: The Hollingsworth Brothers, Fyxer AI

Summary

Podcast Summary: Episode 18 – What The UK Needs to Learn from Silicon Valley about AI: The Hollingsworth Brothers, Fixer AI

Released on March 10, 2025 | Host: James Reed

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Introduction to the Hollingsworth Brothers and Fixer AI

In Episode 18 of "James Reed: All About Business," host James Reed engages in a compelling conversation with Richard and Archie Hollingsworth, the dynamic sibling duo behind Fixer AI. The Hollingsworth brothers, in their twenties, successfully bootstrapped their agency to a $5 million valuation before venturing into the AI landscape in 2024 with Fixer AI—a personal assistant tool touted to be five times faster at responding to customers, promising to save users one hour every day.

Notable Quote:

James Reed [00:00]: “AI is not new. Some businesses have embraced it. As we watch both the impressive and terrifying advancements, many push back out of fear. But what if we don't have a choice anymore?”

AI Adoption in UK Businesses: Current State and Future

The conversation delves into the current landscape of AI in the UK, addressing prevalent fears and misconceptions. Richard Hollingsworth emphasizes that while AI garners significant hype, its practical application in day-to-day business operations remains limited. He asserts that AI won't replace most jobs in the short term but underscores the importance of integrating AI tools to stay competitive.

Notable Quotes:

Richard Hollingsworth [02:36]: “The closer you get to it, the further away you realize we are from AI actually being able to ever replace the creativity and tenacity and initiative that humans have.”

James Reed [02:59]: “A human who knows how to use AI is going to replace you if you don't learn to use it.”

Building Fixer AI: From an Agency to an AI Solution

Archie Hollingsworth explains the transition from their successful agency to founding Fixer AI. Leveraging their extensive experience in managing nearly 2,000 tasks monthly, they identified key areas where AI could streamline operations. This led to the creation of Fixer AI, focused initially on three primary functions: organizing emails, writing replies in the user’s tone, and attending meetings to take notes and manage follow-ups.

Notable Quote:

Archie Hollingsworth [09:14]: “We decided to build this product by focusing on what we did best in our agency—organizing emails, writing responses, and managing meetings efficiently with AI.”

Growth and Traction of Fixer AI

Fixer AI has exhibited remarkable growth since its launch. Within eight months, the company achieved $3 million in annualized revenue, adding approximately $1 million in revenue each month. This rapid expansion is attributed not only to the product’s effectiveness but also to exceptional customer retention and word-of-mouth referrals.

Notable Quote:

Richard Hollingsworth [07:19]: “This week we just crossed $3 million in annualized revenue, starting from scratch last year.”

Lessons from Silicon Valley and the US Startup Ecosystem

The Hollingsworth brothers recount their transformative four-month stint in San Francisco’s accelerator program. They highlight the stark contrast between the American and British business cultures, emphasizing the American directness and agility in decision-making. This experience underscored the importance of action over hesitation, leading to their swift acceptance into the accelerator and a subsequent investment of $1 million.

Notable Quotes:

Archie Hollingsworth [32:01]: “Being direct and unapologetically direct and asking people if we should have a deal versus letting deals just run.”

Richard Hollingsworth [24:55]: “The accelerator is an investment program where distraction is eliminated, allowing founders to focus solely on building their company.”

Challenges and Strategies in Scaling the Team

As Fixer AI scales, maintaining the original team’s effectiveness and cohesion becomes a priority. The brothers are strategically hiring senior leaders from their extensive network to manage key functions like marketing and customer success. Their approach emphasizes hiring individuals who are willing to "roll up their sleeves", ensuring that even senior members engage in fundamental tasks to foster a high-performing, cohesive team environment.

Notable Quote:

Archie Hollingsworth [46:03]: “We’re hiring senior people who can roll up their sleeves and do the really boring jobs to maintain our high-performing culture.”

Sibling Partnership in Business

Operating as siblings, Richard and Archie leverage their trust and shared mission to navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship. They emphasize the importance of being willing to take credit for each other's successes, ensuring a supportive and collaborative working relationship. This dynamic allows them to complement each other's strengths and maintain a unified vision for Fixer AI.

Notable Quote:

Richard Hollingsworth [41:44]: “We’re both willing for the other one to take credit for something that I did, and he's willing for me to take credit for something he did.”

Future Outlook: The Year 2025 for AI

Looking ahead, Richard Hollingsworth posits that 2025 will mark a pivotal year where startups, rather than established companies, will lead in delivering substantial value through AI. He believes that while many incumbents are layering AI onto existing products, it’s the innovative startups building AI-first solutions that will truly harness AI’s potential.

Notable Quote:

Richard Hollingsworth [58:27]: “I think 2025 will be the year that startups start to really add value with AI, that startups create products that people really start using.”

Closing Remarks

The episode concludes with the Hollingsworth brothers sharing their motivations and visions for Fixer AI. Archie emphasizes the importance of fun and teamwork, while Richard highlights their dedication to maintaining effectiveness as they grow. Both express their aspirations to position Fixer AI as a leading AI company in London within five years, driven by a commitment to customer-centric product development and strategic growth.

Notable Quotes:

Archie Hollingsworth [60:24]: “Having fun and working with people I really like on an interesting problem is what gets me up on a Monday morning.”

Richard Hollingsworth [62:11]: “This year we want to be the most exciting AI company in London.”

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Key Takeaways:

• AI Integration is Essential: Businesses must learn to integrate AI tools to enhance efficiency and remain competitive.

• Directness and Agility: Emulating Silicon Valley’s direct and action-oriented culture can lead to accelerated growth and success.

• Strategic Hiring: Building a strong team with senior leaders who are hands-on ensures sustainable growth and maintains company culture.

• Sibling Dynamics: Trust and mutual support in sibling partnerships can drive cohesive and unified business strategies.

• Startup Innovation: 2025 is poised to be a transformative year for AI-driven startups offering genuine value, surpassing traditional companies merely adding AI features.

For entrepreneurs and business leaders, the insights from Richard and Archie Hollingsworth offer a roadmap to effectively harness AI, build resilient teams, and foster a culture of innovation and directness essential for thriving in the rapidly evolving business landscape.

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Learn More:

• Fixer AI: fixer.ai
• James Reed & Reed Global: reedglobal.com

Transcript

[James Reed]

Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who bootstrapped companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. AI is not new. Some businesses have embraced it. As we watch both the impressive and terrifying advancements, many push back out of fear. But what if we don't have a choice anymore? Joining me today on All About Business are Richard and Archie Hollingsworth. The Hollingsworth brothers. In their 20s, they bootstrapped an agency to $5 million and in 2024, founded Fixer AI, a personal assistant tool that they say is five times faster at responding to customers, giving you back one hour every day. They're here to tell us why 2025 is the year we need to adopt AI into our businesses in order to succeed, what could happen if we don't, and also what we in the UK can learn from their time in San Francisco. Well, today on All About Business, I'm really pleased to welcome our first sibling partnership builders, the Hollingsworth brothers. And we have Archie and we have Richard Hollingsworth. And you know a lot about AI, which is why I've invited you. And you've got a fabulous new business called Fixer AI, which you're going to be talking about. And AI is everywhere. It's in. In the news every day. Even the Prime Minister's giving speeches about AI, and people are, in varying degrees, I think, excited and sort of worried about AI, And I think many workers are worried that AI might be coming for their jobs. Should they be? Richard, I'll start with you.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah. So I probably start by saying I think there's been a lot of hype about AI in the news, and there's a lot of press about it, as you say, even the Prime Minister's talking about it. But I'm seeing less of it actually being applied really valuably in companies day to day. I struggle when I think about companies that I know that are really ahead of the curve, how many of them are actually using AI materially. And I think that worry that you speak to is for people who are further away from AI than are close to it. The closer you get to it, the further away you realize we are from AI actually being able to ever replace the creativity and tenacity and initiative that humans have.

[James Reed]

So you shouldn't be worried about it taking a job, at least not in the short term, or at least not most jobs.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think the key thing is learning how to use it and work with it. It's not going to go away. So the kind of common phrase in this world today is AI is not going to replace you, but a human who knows how to use AI is. And I think to a degree that's really true.

[James Reed]

A human who knows how to use AI is going to replace you if you don't learn to use it.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, I think that absolutely. People adopting AI is the biggest hurdle that it's got, for sure.

[James Reed]

So that's interesting. So, Archie, I'm going to ask you, so how do humans use AI? How should we be looking at it, thinking about it, adopting it, making it a sort of part of our working life?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah. So Rich and I ran a services company ourselves before starting Fixer AI, and to bring ourselves up to speed with AI, we actually just watched ourselves working. We said, what are we doing in a day? And then you can look up tools like ChatGPT or anything like that and just start asking AI itself, like, how it could help you. And so just take a note at the end of each day and ask yourself what you did that day. Maybe then put that into ChatGPT and say, how could you help me? Or how could other AI tools help me? And then maybe set yourself a goal of by the end of the month, maybe just doing one or two tasks in that month with AI and you'll be further than most people in the entire world. And I can really understand the anxiety that people are feeling about where this is going, how fast it's moving, particularly when it's just everywhere in the press. You know, who's really feeling the anxiety? People like you, James. People who are at the top of the company. And I spend a lot of time with those people, and they're saying to me, archie, what's happening? And what they love is people in their company who are adopting AI and telling them. And so if you take those learnings from your role and then go to the people at the top and say, look, this is what I did. This is what I learned, they are going to adore you in your role. They're going to think that you are invaluable to the organization because they have as much anxiety as you do.

[James Reed]

So you're depositing anxiety on me. Two things came to mind when you were telling me that Arch. One was, I met a young woman at a dinner the other night who was working in pr. And she said that she'd started putting all the press releases she was working on or asking AI to help her create press releases for her clients. And, and her manager had recently said to her, your writing's really improved was interesting. And she, she was. And then, and then I asked my assistant the other day, I said, so could you do a bit of research to find out what jobs are most at risk from AI? You know, what jobs are most likely to disappear in the long term, I guess we're not saying in the short term because of AI. And she came back within about three minutes with a list. I said that was a bit quick. And she said, I used AI. Oh, there's one job. You're talking about assistance here. And of course I say that in jest, but it's become, that's your business. It become a very valuable, very quickly assistant to people if they know what to ask or how to, how to use it. So talk me through your business idea, Richard.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, so we're building an AI executive assistant. And we started working on this probably eight years ago when Archie and I started the services business. He talked about a second ago. And that business was a human executive assistant eight years ago.

[James Reed]

So that was the services business.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

That's the services business, yeah.

[James Reed]

So it was remote assistants. Yeah, someone to answer the phone for you if you were self employed.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Exactly, all that sort of thing. And we worked on that business for about six years and saw this opportunity with AI come along and understood that our insight into how executive assistants did their job would be a big advantage in the market versus other people who were trying to solve the same problem without that experience necessarily. And so probably two years ago we started working on building fixer AI. We brought our third co founder on, Matt, who's our cto. He got to work actually building the product itself. And we took all of the insights and knowledge and learnings that we had from the first business and built a product. We released at the beginning of last year to beta users and then to paid users in the middle of last year and have just seen absolutely crazy traction in that time.

[James Reed]

So you say crazy traction. Come on, tell us, how's your business growing?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

This week we just crossed $3 million in annualized revenue, which is starting from scratch last year. Starting from scratch last year, we're starting launch to paid users in the middle of last year. It's taken about eight months, so to.

[James Reed]

Get to $3 million.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah.

[James Reed]

So that's going to get people's attention.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, it's moving Very fast.

[James Reed]

What's your sort of growth rate at the moment?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

It's a good question. We're adding about million dollars a month in revenue. So have a good degree of confidence.

[James Reed]

So people like this service.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah. And actually really importantly with this is what's happening with a lot of AI tools and it speaks to the point at the beginning about this kind of short term thinking with it is lots of tools, people pick up, they use them, have a kind of excitement, fun playing with it. Lots of people have experienced this with ChatGPT and then a month later they're not using it anymore. And what we're really excited and most excited about our business is that underpinning the growth is really, really exceptional retention. So not only are we seeing customers stay with us, but we're seeing them use the product more and more and most importantly share it with their team as well.

[James Reed]

So I was talking to our producer Frankie at lunchtime before you came in and she said your product is fantastic. And she was using it.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Oh, that's pretty good.

[James Reed]

And you know, not only does it do your emails, but it sounds like you and it sort of, sort of adapts so quickly to what she wanted it to do. Which I'm not just saying that as a plug, I just think it's really interesting that you've achieved that in such a short period of time and it's such an effective and and she said to me, and I don't mind sharing this, that you, she could imagine someone like her that runs her own business saving an hour a day using this product.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah.

[James Reed]

That gives you an extra day a week to do other stuff.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

That's what we're aiming for. Absolutely. There are like lots of applications for people who are self employed or work for themselves, but there are also lots of applications at a team level as well, which we're really excited about.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

And it's important to note that when we decided to build this product, we had our team in our agency business, did nearly 2,000 different tasks in every month. We've actually only picked off three so far to do. And so, so what are the three you picked? Firstly, it's just organizing your emails, all the people that are trying to reach you, James, and taking your attention and going through the clutter of all that marketing noise. We organize for you, we then help write replies in your tone of voice and then we also attend your meetings to take notes for you and yeah, take your actions and follow ups.

[James Reed]

How do you attend my meetings? How does that work?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

So literally like a human assistant Would joins the meeting with that you join Switch. If you're in person, you press a button. But if you're. Yeah, if you're, if you're joining maybe via Zoom or whatever tool you use, it will just appear in the meeting and take the notes.

[James Reed]

Knows your diary.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

It knows your diary. Exactly.

[James Reed]

Going to a meeting. So.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, exactly.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah. So.

[James Reed]

So people really appreciate that.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly. And it helps when someone says James, are you free next week? It knows if you're free. Um, it knows when you like meetings.

[James Reed]

I might want to be free for some people, not for other people. How do you know that?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Well, yeah, it's, it's good at detecting if this person's a customer or if they're a relationship. There's. It knows the history with the person and so it can.

[James Reed]

Someone's trying to make a cold call.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly, yeah.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Prioritize people who you previously prioritize. Right. If you've never met them before, then it will be like.

[James Reed]

Which is an important role of a human assistant.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly, exactly.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

That gatekeeper role is super, super important, particularly for, you know, know somebody like yourself.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

And I think it's just important to note that took a good, good example where most of our customers didn't have assistance before and now because of the cost of this, we're able to then serve it. Assistance is a very small market. Maybe again people like yourselves can afford them but the majority of the market can't. And so yeah, it's just enabling.

[James Reed]

Everyone can have an assistant now.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Everyone can have an assistant now. It's, it's.

[James Reed]

Why wouldn't you want one?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

It's a dollar a day.

[James Reed]

Yeah, it's a dollar a day. Well that's.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah. And then the key thing is that.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

The focus of it is just on these three tasks because actually what we learned in our executive assistant agency in the previous business was that every single person, every executive's needs are different. Your needs for your assistant will be totally unique to anybody else. So can never build an AI tool that's going to be able to replicate that experience for you. But if somebody, everyone who is a customer of Fixer AI has the same problem with a really high volume of emails and meetings. So that's something that we can laser focus on.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

We could just laser focus on that. Those problems alone and that satisfies the needs of lots of customer facing people typically who otherwise wouldn't have access to an assistant.

[James Reed]

And it's great for self employed people.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly, yeah.

[James Reed]

And entrepreneurs who are starting out I imagine takes a lot of headaches away.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, exactly. When you don't have a team around you to support, it's really, really helpful.

[James Reed]

I've got a friend who's entrepreneur. He told me, I was shocked. He said he does 300 emails a day. I said, why are you wasting your time? That. So I'm going to tell him about this.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, please do.

[James Reed]

All day. Yeah. I mean, what are you doing?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Typically our users will have something like 50 a day, which is still a lot to get through.300 is if you're.

[James Reed]

Going to write a reply to everyone that's.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Well, normally they reply to about 20%. Something like that.

[James Reed]

Yeah.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Because lots of them are just, you know, marketing and that sort of thing.

[James Reed]

Yeah. We're delighted that you're listening to this episode. Hit the follow button so that we can continue to bring you the best business insight and actionable advice to help your business and or career. So, okay, so that's your product, which I think you've described very well and sounds appealing to me and I can see why lots of people would be interested in it and why you're growing as fast as you are. But going beyond your product and just looking at the AI space, you mentioned that, you know, people should be embracing it, getting going, trying it partly you said to I think impress their boss, but really to be more effective at work. What, what, what types of activities are particularly suited to that? You know, what, where do you see people using AI most effectively beyond your product?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

I actually think that it's, it's still really early. We. So Rich and I have just come back from San Francisco and we were amongst some of the most sort of impressive startup founders in AI growing companies and it's, it's amazing. I put a message out to everyone and just said could anyone explain how they're actually using AI? And it was amazingly rare how even the most people who are the most interested still are actually using it. So I think the lesson and the takeaway I have of that is, is still really early. And so if you're feeling this anxiety of, well, maybe it's a bit late, have I missed the moment with AI, it's still very early that you can actually get involved. And so I would again kind of follow the process of what do I do in my day specifically. So if I'm a marketer at Reed and what am I doing with my day? Maybe I'm writing social media posts, I'm trying to build up the awareness for social media. I'm trying to reach potential partners or PR and so probably email Writing or copywriting is a big part of my day. And could I then condense down, could I get back an hour from using different AI products? And you could really just Google those or ask friends or even ask ChatGPT and just say, okay, could I get an hour back a day? Because I think the mistake people are thinking is that AI is going to. Suddenly it's so far ahead. It actually really isn't when you look at, like, where people are really applying it in their day. And the other thing with AI is thinking about it as a first pass. So, like, Rich and I over this year have started, like writing LinkedIn posts. But the worst thing you can do, I think, for your personal brand and why you want to tell your story is actually look like AI just wrote it all. And it's really.

[James Reed]

LinkedIn offers you that opportunity. I've always refused to touch it because.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly. It just feels so obvious. Yeah. I've got a bit of a format.

[James Reed]

It becomes formulaic.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly. But they might be able to give you good. It might be able to give you good ideas. It might be able to help, like reshape an idea or reformat an idea. You know, if you're not great at spelling, it's probably help with spelling. Like, thinking about instead of being like, okay, how am I going to do AI in everything I do? Just an hour, two hours a day back is what we feel is like the achievable goal and what even the best people in the world and the most informed people in the world are doing. It's. Yeah. Still very early.

[James Reed]

So where you were framing that, Archie, or at least what I heard, is that a good way of thinking about it or starting to apply AI is just, how can it help me save time?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah, I think so.

[James Reed]

So the tradable is time, ultimately, which is so precious.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think it's about, as you say, like, first becoming really aware of what your workflow looks like. And we all kind of just go into work in the morning and just start our day and aren't necessarily consciously aware of the process that we follow in doing that. And becoming aware of that in the first instance was what we did in order to build our product. So we just started with what are the consistent flows that everyone is following, and then looked for ways to be able to automate those.

[James Reed]

So that works, Richard, doesn't it? Both at an individual level, but also at a corporate level. As a CEO or business manager, I could be looking at the organization thinking, how can I apply AI? And you'd Be looking at systematic.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think that generally people are asking that question of how do I apply AI? As though that's the answer or that's the goal. But actually the goal is how do I make my team more efficient, more effective, et cetera, do an analysis. And AI is one of the tools available to you that potentially has wider reaching applications than other tools have historically. But not having AI is the goal.

[James Reed]

I think that's a really important point you make, actually. How do I improve the business? How to make the team?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

It's the means, not the end.

[James Reed]

How do I make people happier? How do I give a better.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

[James Reed]

Better outcomes.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

We really tried to focus on, we really tried to focus on the customer and the product and not on the tech. Maybe so much that's behind it. The tech that we have behind it is exceptional. But focusing on the customer problem really helped us narrow down just to these few workflows because it became really aware to really obvious to us that these workflows for our customer type are burning problems and technology of which AI is a part of is really capable of solving them to a high degree of accuracy. But it wasn't starting from a how do we build an AI product? If you like.

[James Reed]

Yeah. So what's the problem to be solved here?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Exactly, yeah.

[James Reed]

And then you use it to help deliver the outcome.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, exactly. And as Arch alluded to, we just spent four months living in Silicon Valley and I think there can too often be how do I build a AI company, how do I build an AI product? As the first question, as opposed to, you know, how big is the problem that I'm seeing in front of me?

[James Reed]

So let's talk about that. Yeah, so you, you're based here in the uk, in London, I believe, but you decided to go to America for a bit. Who had that idea and why?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Actually, I mean, I, I'd love to take credit for it, but it was totally Archie's idea.

[James Reed]

Is Archie your older or younger brother?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

He's my younger brother.

[James Reed]

That must be hard.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

He has plenty.

[James Reed]

It was Archie's idea.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

He, Archie came to me and said, you know, this is where all, all of these companies that are trying to do what we're trying to do are based in San Francisco. 70% of our customers are based in the US. We should be out there meeting them. And for context, we had been probably four months, this is probably July or August, four months since we launched the product for paid users. So we're starting to get traction. We were really excited. We were probably doing 300 grand in annualized revenue at that point. And we were really excited about what was happening, but we're really still doing it in isolation in London. So we took a week out to go to Boston, New York and then San Francisco. And my abiding takeaway from the trip, which we ended up staying there for four months, just much longer than the week we had planned, was that in America? It seems that magic happens that I haven't experienced in London before.

[James Reed]

Talk me through that. What do you mean?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

When I landed in New York, the first person I met suggested that we have a call with an accelerator program that was based in San Francisco. And it's quite an unusual concept.

[James Reed]

JFK Airport. You mean the first person you met?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah. No, first person I had a meeting with.

[James Reed]

Okay, yeah. Not the port control or anyone. I thought that really would be magic.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

No, the first person you'd arrange a.

[James Reed]

Meeting with, this person. They help me.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

They suggested that we go and do this, that we go and do an accelerator that's in San Francisco. And so they connected me with the founder of the accelerator. We had an interview and they said, can you be in San Francisco in the next four days? I said, you know, fortunately we are actually planning on being there in four days with my two co founders. And we arrived there to an interview that we were told in advance would take 10 minutes to decide whether we would get into the accelerator or not. And it's a part of the deal with that you would receive $1 million on that day.

[James Reed]

The accelerator is an investment program.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Exactly. And can just from us stepping outside of the speed and intensity at which London moves into this was. It was already very exciting. And we came out of the interview 10 minutes later with the offer to a million dollars and for us to join the accelerator.

[James Reed]

So you had a 10 minute pitch for a million dollars.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

So who did what actually was. It was an interview format. Yeah. Where they asked us.

[James Reed]

What did they ask you?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

They asked us a series of questions faster than I've ever been asked questions before. And we were cut off.

[James Reed]

Come on, give me a couple of examples.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

The first question they asked us was as you walk into the room and when you only have 10 minutes in an interview, there are very few niceties.

[James Reed]

That are available to spending time with an expensive lawyer.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, you just sit down about the web and it's back to back. The first thing they asked us was, what are you building? And so they're looking for the like short 1 minute or 30 second tagline. We said that we're building an AI executive assistant, professional service people.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Then they jumped in and said, why won't Google do that? And then they would jump in again.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

We said that Google focus on building features for a billion people rather than for, you know, 100 million. And that's what we're focused on. And they said, good.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

What was the next question?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

And who's building this? And we went to our engineer, Matt, and they're like, what keeps you at the company? What allows you to move faster than your competitors? He said that the insights and the data direction that we got from our first business is our guide and has allowed us to hit product market fit instantly rather than having to wait a year to hit it.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Then he jumped in and said, yeah, but what about this product, this other startup product or this product? And you're like, well, the answer to that is that we're actually not from Silicon Valley. And what's interesting is that the previous SaaS, so software revolution was really focused on technology hubs like Silicon Valley selling to a lot of each other. But now actually the big opportunities outside of that is how do you get the everyday person to use AI? And so we just played to our strengths about not being from there for that answer. Yeah.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Because we think the big market in this space is how do you, how do you go after people who don't use technology today? You know, you can just sell to other tech companies, but it's only 10%.

[James Reed]

Uses technology to an extent. I mean, we all have phones and.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Absolutely. And those companies have done. Have done what we're looking to.

[James Reed]

That's what you're trying to.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Unprecedented. Yeah. You know, the way in which Apple has immersed itself into, you know, my grandmother has an iPad, is a good example of, you know, in the business.

[James Reed]

Software, if you can afford them. So I want to finish off on this. This 10 minutes.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah.

[James Reed]

So. So you walked out with a million dollars after obviously answering these questions.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

We actually had to accept the offer, which is the first.

[James Reed]

No, no, but I want to know what they got then. What did you have to give them?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

So the I'll talk just for a.

[James Reed]

Second walks out with a share in your business.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah. They get a share up front of the business and the million dollars is uncapped.

[James Reed]

What's that mean?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

That means that they invest at the end of the program. You go out for a funding round and they will invest a million dollars at the price at which you achieve the funding round at. Exactly.

[James Reed]

Right.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

They see it as like early access. Yeah.

[James Reed]

So but they get a stake. Do they have Bigger stake.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

So they get a stake as a part of that. Their million dollars.

[James Reed]

You don't want to tell me.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I'm not entirely sure what I can and can't.

[James Reed]

But it's interesting because you might look.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Maybe on the second a great deal.

[James Reed]

You might look back on it, like, what did we do that for?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Right.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

You're right. Well, but actually, I think the. So I'll just talk about the accelerator itself. It's kind of unusual. The concept of it is that our biggest enemy in building a company is distraction. And so often in normal life, we are distracted by the 10 things in our business that we don't need to do but draw our attention or indeed just general life chores. So the premise of what they do is they build. It's very San Franciscan, this, but they call it the monastery, which is. They have the second largest private residence in San Francisco. 10 companies all move into the residence. And you live there with 30 or so other people building your company. And they take care of absolutely every aspect of your life so that you need to do nothing except work. So all your food is cooked and cleaned for you. Your clothes are washed for you. There's a gym in the basement. And the concept is that you essentially just wake up in the morning and work 16 hours a day, seven days a week for just over three months.

[James Reed]

So you were in the monastery?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

We were in the monastery.

[James Reed]

You escaped. What happened?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Monastic in name only. I would say it.

[James Reed]

They do a fabulous job.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

American people, I think of. Of like really going for it with those sorts of things. So the equivalent.

[James Reed]

It's a bit like being on the Apprentice, isn't it? You get shut away in a building.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Exactly like, probably quite like that. And so during the process of that three months, we took our revenue at the time, which was 300,000 in annualized revenue, and we got up to two and a half million when we left three months later. So we. We knew that this system of just laser focus was how we like to work.

[James Reed]

So this was the three of you.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

There was. We. We have one additional employee who joined us.

[James Reed]

So you're recreating this monastery here in London?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

That's exactly what we're trying to do.

[James Reed]

For lots of people, you could create a monastic setup for all the other entrepreneurs.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Well, that's. That's what they're trying to do there, actually. Yeah, that's exactly what they want to do. I have to say. The, like, the role of. You have to be a kind of facilitator of. Of the monastery, which is a job.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

That you'd be not good at.

[James Reed]

So years ago I was lucky enough to go to Harvard Business School. You reminded me of this joke and some. Someone used to say people were being rude about Harvard Business School. So it was a bit like being in a monastery, except instead of thinking about God, you thought about your wallet. But what you're doing here is thinking about your new venture and it's service to its customers, really. Nothing else, by the sound of things.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah, they do something that. There are a few things that were taken away. We haven't taken away the 16 hours a day, seven days a week. We think that some, some breaks are helpful as a moment in time for that type of intensity. But there was.

[James Reed]

So you're keeping that up.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

No, no, no, no.

[James Reed]

This is interesting because America is known for its work ethic.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, we tried to bottle that up, but actually this was, this was the crucible of that. It was so intense.

[James Reed]

But you can't do that.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

It's not family. And they're open about that. They talk about it as your sustainable. Exactly. An unsustainable moment in time for you and a bonding between your kind of founding team as well.

[James Reed]

But you have big family commitments. You're both young guys.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

The first call I had to make after we got the offer was to my wife and my nine month old son.

[James Reed]

Oh, this is quite tricky to ask.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Them whether they fancied moving to San Francisco for the three months. I was amazed. My wife just immediately said, yeah, let's do it.

[James Reed]

So you can take your wife to the monastery.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, well that's good.

[James Reed]

She came with you. That's good. Yeah, Was young enough to be able to.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

We had my nephew. We had my nephew in the office every day. So it's really sweet because we're all next to. Yeah. Next to each other.

[James Reed]

You were able to do it quite.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah, there was a. Yeah, the team were kind of were really ready for it and yeah, we wouldn't suit.

[James Reed]

I mean, lots of people at different stages of life would not be able to do that. You know, they've got children at school.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Ironically, we were the youngest team.

[James Reed]

You were the youngest people there. Had sort of given up everything to go there for a bit.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

They had. I mean, so that was showing a.

[James Reed]

Big level of career from them.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Of the 10 companies that, that are in the program, I would think six of them or seven of them maybe had kids. People with, you know, people with kids in their team. And for the most part the, the parent that was in the program would leave their family at home. And they came, you know, often from countries like China and that sort of place.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

An amazing mix of cultures. We had two Chinese companies, one Vietnamese company, a kind of, a kind of mixed company of like German, Indian. We had us as the Brits and then we had. The rest were Americans.

[James Reed]

That must be an amazing learning experience.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Amazing, yeah.

[James Reed]

You'll never forget it. So, so, so what else did you learn from sort of. I mean it's interesting to me because I've often observed that ideas come from America to the UK to Europe. And we started a website more than 30 years ago now based on, you know, things we picked up from America, like you're doing now, this next generation of technology. What, what else did you learn there? I mean our listeners are predominantly going to be in the uk, There are quite a lot in the States. But what have you brought back to London with? You think, well, we need more of this or both as a company, but maybe more widely in our business community.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

The first thing, when we touched down, you know, in first day in the accelerator, it became very clear that our kind of British habit of being self deprecating whenever we've done something good would need to go very quickly. They just didn't have any time for it at all. And we would each week have to pitch in front of everyone else what we'd done that week. And we would be loudly abused for not speaking loudly enough, for being too long and drawn out, not being direct enough and also for just for any self deprecation that wasn't relevant to the piece. You know, it's just sort of a real English habit to whenever you've done something good to then qualify it with why that's not down to you. For example, that was the first thing that they really tried to get out of us as much as they could. It was quite a battle.

[James Reed]

What was the second thing?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Oh, I'd say the second thing was the power of being very direct with people. And while that again for English people can feel quite uncomfortable because people in America. Yeah. Teach you that you're very, very direct. And I'll give you the best example was we had an amazing opportunity come up during the program at almost the most opportune time, which was two weeks before our big presentation at the end, where the largest real estate broker, realtor for American listeners had people using our products and was very interested to look at rolling this out. We said, well, what if we could get this deal to happen before our presentation day, which was two weeks away? Something that felt like unimaginable to when we were in the uk, but this kind of feeling that magic can happen out there. And we went to the guy who runs HF0, the accelerator and I said, look, I've asked him, does he want me to go see him? Because I'd be happily go see him. And he said, here, you just don't ask, you just go. So he then rewrote an email for me which said, by the way, I'm going to be in Bellingham, Washington tomorrow, I'll be there all day and I'm ready for a deal to happen. Let me know if you'd like to meet, otherwise I can just work from there. And then he booked the flight with me then and there and I arrived in Washington not knowing if I had a meeting. This was an eight hour travel to get there. It was that kind of magic. And we ended up getting the deal done that happened there. And it was, you don't ask, you just do. And I think, you know, there's obviously limits to that, but there's this, this magic, this takes out the British prevarication or whatever. Exactly. I'm here keen to do a deal. And that phrase.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[James Reed]

It's kind of direct.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly. Being direct and trying to apply that. And, and actually when we had a team member come out during the program and we had switched from this kind of British to kind of us British and one of the things, the first thing we said to him, we said we're going to be unapologetically direct right now. We don't have time for it because every week we felt like we were competing with people who were our friends that we'd have lunch with and dinner with. But really there was an element of competition about on Monday nights when you stood up, you wanted to be the company that had had the winning week. And when you're working to such tight deadlines, you just have to be very direct. And so we kind of inducted him into that directness when he joined us for the program. And yeah, I'd say being direct, being unapologetically direct and asking people should we have a deal versus letting deals just run.

[James Reed]

So are your friends getting used to this?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

I think maybe it's more my family.

[James Reed]

Must be a bit of an adjustment for people who know you because I.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Think it requires of qualification at the beginning of.

[James Reed]

We've been in America for a period.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Four months in America.

[James Reed]

We're serious, we mean business. Well, that's interesting, isn't it? I mean I think that that's a valuable lesson What I found when I lived in America is quite a long time ago, there was a great sort of optimism and enthusiasm around ideas and entrepreneurship, which I found infectious. And it's interesting now, you look at the American economy, it's growing much faster than the uk and there's also a real preference for some dynamism and growth, which feels more qualified in. In the UK these days.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah.

[James Reed]

You sense that. You sense that.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Absolutely, yeah. I feel certainly when you're starting out particular, the. When you just have an idea, that idea is in England, seems the first thought is to pick out what might be wrong about that idea rather than picking out what could win. Like for us, when we first started out, everyone just said, oh, what if Google do this? What if Google do this? It was always the first question and.

[James Reed]

We didn't get asked that question by the accelerator.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

That's true. Yeah. But it was a good question they asked.

[James Reed]

No, it wasn't the first question. That's the point, I suppose.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, exactly. It's a good question to ask, but it's not the most exciting thing about it or the most interesting thing about it. And it's the obsession with what might go wrong rather than what could go right that I think's the question is.

[James Reed]

Always the other side of that question is, what if they don't.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

What if they don't do this?

[James Reed]

Google.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, exactly. Don't do this.

[James Reed]

Then you're onto a real winner. Why wouldn't you take that chance?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

[James Reed]

Google have got a lot on their plate, haven't they?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They're very busy.

[James Reed]

Yeah, very busy, yeah.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

And if it's hemp on their list and first on mine, quite.

[James Reed]

I mean, there's a lot of space there. Anything else you took away from America that you'd like to share? For our listeners who are predominantly entrepreneurs.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

And business people, I think the game is set up for success there as well. You know, the market is so much bigger there that if you're not selling in America, you're limiting yourself so much.

[James Reed]

So you'd advise British entrepreneurs to try and get into the American market.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I mean, the way. Yeah, the way that we're looking at it is, is so I'd heard for the first time that while we were out there, this temple, British shoring, which is when Americans utilize British labor, because we are now half the price.

[James Reed]

British shoring. I haven't. Yeah, I've heard shoring and the near shoring, but British, because we speak the same language.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Speak the same language. We're really well educated, there's nothing to be more direct but at half the price they can, they can stomach it. I mean certainly compared to Silicon Valley.

[James Reed]

So you're, these are technologists you're talking about or.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, it's actually was, it's kind of across the board, but it was a term used and I don't know whether Britain knows that. That's how I do now, being seen. And so we're, we're sort of looking at it like that, that we're going to have our team based here, this excellent talent here. But the market you have to sell into is the US because it's 10 times bigger. So your limitations that you're putting on yourself by only selling in the UK is really significant. And to build a really successful business, as you know, you guys have done so well in the UK is much harder than doing that same thing in the us.

[James Reed]

But one of the things I think as well though, if you're right, that the sort of, the average person is less inclined to sort of start something because they're being put off by these negative questions. If you do start something, maybe you've got less competition, you know, so that, you know, if you can bring a great idea or develop a great idea in Britain, you can actually do really well.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

That's true if it's, if it's geographic, you know, if the American business can't come here anyway, then that's definitely true.

[James Reed]

So. But your message is there's a big old market out there in the west and it's called America and you should be thinking about it.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Definitely, yeah.

[James Reed]

Certainly anyone in the technology space, certainly.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

In technology, I mean, not least because Americans willingness to pay is so much higher. $30 a month, you know, a dollar a day is less to an American than it is to a Brit. So yeah, particularly the dollar's going, the.

[James Reed]

Pound'S going against the pound. Unfortunately. Yeah. I mean it seems like a no brainer if you can have an assistant for a dollar a day. To me that does the things that you describe. It does. As well as I've heard it works.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

It does, but it's amazing. I mean, you know, you're gonna have.

[James Reed]

Other people coming into the space I guess competing with you.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Absolutely, yeah. It's a really big space so you kind of expect there to be.

[James Reed]

So for people listening, how do they find your service if they wanted an assistant for a dollar a day?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

F y x e r.com you couldn't sign up. Free trial. You're not going to get tricked with any credit card like you would Netflix, and then they're going to charge you. After seven days, you can just sign up without a credit card, try the entire product, and then decide if you want to pay.

[James Reed]

Very good. That's very clear. Thank you.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Archie, you are the chief revenue officer.

[James Reed]

I thought that was the case. And your brother's the CEO. I think it's all I said to you before we started talking. I like relationship officer.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah. I think I might start a relationship.

[James Reed]

With all these people who aren't paying anything to start.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly. Yeah.

[James Reed]

There are lots of precedents of brothers or siblings, but especially brothers being successful in business. And my sort of analysis or take on that is because ultimately you trust each other. You've got the same mission or goal or objective, and you know that you're working towards it in the same spirit. Is that. Would you agree with that?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Completely.

[James Reed]

Yeah.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think that's why that comes down to. More than anything, I think families are.

[James Reed]

Very strong in that respect. If they work, if, you know, as long as they get on well, then they're working towards the same goal.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think that's the key thing. Often some people will come up to me and say, oh, you know, you're so lucky. You get to work your brother. I wish I could. And other people go, I can't believe you work with your sibling. I can't imagine working with mine. And I think my takeaway is, you know, there's so much that can go right about it. You need to focus slightly on, like, you know, is it the right dynamic? What could go wrong? And the key thing there for me is Archie's. And I am. We're both willing. The best test I have is we're both willing for the other one to take credit for something that I did. I'm willing for Archie to take credit for something I did, and he's willing for me to take credit for something he did. That's super important in business context. And often siblings could not quite imagine being able to do that.

[James Reed]

So your advice of siblings who are thinking about this is you've got to be able to do that.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think you've got to be able to do that. Yeah. And not get uncomfortable about them succeeding off of your hard work.

[James Reed]

What about decision making? I mean, we touched upon it, but decision making is such an important part of what happens. If you really disagree on something, how do you resolve that?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

It happens all the time. We disagree on how to approach situations. We usually agree on what the outcome should be, but we have different, very different styles as you might have mentioned, you know, the slightly more reluctant American sitting here and you're east coast, these west. Exactly. Yeah. So I think the. How we approach things is different. And that's where the dictatorship piece is so important. Because if it's my decision, it's my decision.

[James Reed]

But that's understood by you both. The beginning that you're.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

We actually agreed that when we first. Yeah. I've seen brothers do it in different ways where they have a kind of co CEO relationship and I've seen that done successfully. I don't think that would work for us because the volume of disagreements we have about how to approach certain situations, but I think it would lead to kind of paralysis really. But we like this. This system seems to work for us.

[James Reed]

Okay. So I'm observing that you have a good relationship, you have a business that is in an exciting space that seems to be growing very, very briskly, which is good news. So you're going to have to grow your team, aren't you? You're going to have to bring in new people.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

We are, yeah.

[James Reed]

Where are you going to start and how are you going to make sure you get that right?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

So when we finished the accelerator program at the end of last year and we closed this deal that Archie flew, you know, eight hours to go and close, it became immediately obvious that it was now time to start hiring. So we actually got to work on that over Christmas. We were a team of four people. We're now a team of nine people.

[James Reed]

So what sort of people are you looking for and how do you know?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Senior leaders. So what we want is to take the main functions of the business off of the kind of four existing team members and take them to the best people that we know in each of those areas.

[James Reed]

Such as what functions.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Marketing, for example, was historically done by Archie in quite a light touch way. But it's an enormous function with an enormous budget behind it. Now it needs somebody who has done that before. So we hired the best consumer marketing person that we know who actually joined us for the end of the accelerator program as well.

[James Reed]

So that was someone you already knew or someone you went out into the market.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

And this is something that's useful about. I mean, one of the lessons, just stepping back a little bit, which was when we started our first business and a mistake that I've seen a lot of people make is, you know, maybe you can just instantly out of college, start a tech business that's going to, you know, grow really fast. But I saw a lot of people do that and fail and burn out and really give up on entrepreneurship. Actually, what's nice about building a services company is because it's not technology, it just can't grow as fast and so but you can get going on a fairly low budget. I remember you, James, when we came to see you in 2019, you were like, well done. It was our first few years in, but we weren't making enough profit. We took that advice and went and made some more profit. And you can learn a lot of the basics, but one of the things we did was along that journey of six, seven years, we met thousands of people. And so we built this network of people. And so we've kind of had people in our network kind of that actually not knowing it really proactively, but who then came to be obvious choices for us, people that we trusted and people that we always kind of dreamed of working for us and with us. So, yeah, we hired head of marketing, CMO from our network, our chief customer officer as well. So all in charge of customer success, customer support.

[James Reed]

You've got a lot of chiefs in your business. You're going to need some foot soldiers.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, that's absolutely next. And we want them to be the people to hire those team members.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah. So they're joining on the assumption they might have a fancy title, but yeah, it's a roll up your sleeves. I think one of our values, we kind of haven't fully formed values or anything from the company, but one of the things that made us succeed, I think against the other companies in our space is just the willingness to roll up the sleeves and do the really boring jobs. So Matt, our co founders, like read and labeled and organized millions of, I think 50,000 or so emails. I've gone through thousands of customer support tickets and asking and speaking to customers and sorting out problems for them when things are breaking. And so we're hiring senior people.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

The last time Archie spent, you know, he's the person that you reach when there's a problem with the product. And so he's having dinner, he's at the pub on a Friday night and the phone goes and he's got to answer, you know, customer support tickets.

[James Reed]

It's a good demonstration to do that.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Well, you can do.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

But then you don't learn how to do it yourself. Yeah, that's the problem.

[James Reed]

So you need to do that first is what you're saying. Do it yourself. Exactly.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

And that's when we're hiring these people on the assumption that, yeah, they're kind of, they need to have a understanding and A low ego to be able to, for the next, while we're still in this early phase, join, but also getting senior enough people that can grow with us. And that's how. Thinking about the chiefs is that hard.

[James Reed]

To find someone who's low ego, as you put it, but grand title and roll your sleeves up.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

I think the mistake we made in our first business is trying to appease to the needs of the candidate or the wants of the candidate to win them, versus actually being very upfront about what we're doing and our values and how things will work and saying, you don't have to join us. And it does help having a fast growing, exciting product in a space that people are interested in, but actually being very direct with the person that this is the expectation. And again, a bit of American sort of directness about this is just how it's going to be was something that we took into ourselves.

[James Reed]

So what are the sort of things, just how it's going to be that you share with candidates straight off so that there are no misunderstandings?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah, I think Rich did a presentation this week, actually for new people, but just being like, we're willing to do the jobs that other people aren't. And again, just giving those examples of me wanting to do the customer service tickets. So I gave a real life example to the person who's going to be chief customer officer. And she was even saying it in her interview, which is a good sign. Anyway, she was like, oh, I'll be spending the first week or two just reading through those tickets and answering tickets myself. And it's that kind of job of like the. Yeah. A thing that they might have done 15 years ago in their career they now need to do because it's just great fundamental learning and being like in the trenches with everyone is how do.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

You build your value to the team as well? The team mostly respect the people that roll their sleeves up. So that's kind of first port and call when starting. So at the moment there's a lot of that going on.

[James Reed]

Yeah, I went once years ago, I went to where the Royal Marines do their training down in Devon. And one of the things I learned when I was there is that if you want to be an officer in the Royal Marines, you have to do every assault course, every run that the regulars do faster or quicker. So everyone respects the officer because they know they did the same thing that they had to do, but they did it faster. And that's the only way you can be an officer. And what you're sort of describing Is the same.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, that's a real leader.

[James Reed]

You've got to show that you can get. That's a great example, into the thick of it.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Also, people love, I think, working in small companies and the longer that we can have, you know, we don't need people to be doing completely useless tasks, but if they're willing to do more of a 360 role and really get their hands dirty, then we can be part of a smaller company for longer, that can be part of a high performing culture and not become a bloated company. A lot of people are coming to us from, oh, I joined this company, it got very big, it got very bloated and we just went to meetings and nothing really happened and I just got. They lost their enthusiasm. And so that's a big thing. We're trying.

[James Reed]

We're going to try and retain things where nothing happens.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly.

[James Reed]

So is that your goal, that you want to keep this sort of lean in terms of numbers of people, but.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Grow as much as possible? Yeah, technologically, the, the team, last year we were four people doing two and a half million and we wouldn't. That pushed us to our extremes, to the limits. We won't try to replicate that, but we want that mentality going forward around being really, really specific and really careful when we hire somebody because what they bring is so much more than the work that they do and wanting to make sure that all the things fit.

[James Reed]

We run a chair of trustees of a charity called Big Give, which uses a lot of technology. We call it Filtech Philanthropy Technology. It's interesting to me that we've kept the team really small, deliberately at the Big Give and there's only 10 people, but they raised £60 million last year and yet it's exceptional and it's the biggest fundraising platform now. But we've kept the team really small because there's so much you can do with technology. And I think that the culture you retain as a small team is more focused, definitely. Also the donors like it or the people, the customers like it because they know that their money's not being wasted. Same in business. I think if you have a small team, you can offer your service for less.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think it's really easy when things are moving very quick to just use hiring as an answer to solve problems rather than, as you say, being like, what if we took a week to automate this process as much as we could or decide actually to stop doing this process rather than hiring somebody to fill it in?

[James Reed]

Yeah, I mean, I think there's It's a question. What I heard from you is that you were being sort of thoughtful and strategic about that rather than just it just growing. And I think that's interesting because there are occasions when it's obviously a good idea to add people and you definitely.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Can support, particularly if you get somebody.

[James Reed]

Exceptional, because I think it'd be important in your business that the customers have a good experience and a good service and sometimes they're going to need to talk to someone.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly.

[James Reed]

At the pub on a Friday, whoever it is, and as it grows, there's going to be more need for that.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Exactly. Absolutely.

[James Reed]

So that's. That's interesting. Anything else brothers in business related that you'd like to share?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Rich said it already. But having different skills and kind of this. This need for each other. Yeah. Allows you to. Yeah.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

We have very little crossover. There's nothing that I'm doing that Archie wishes he was doing or vice versa. You know, it's just very clear who should be doing what. So.

[James Reed]

So just sort of wrap this up from a business point of view. We talked about brothers in business being in America. So what's next for Fixer AI? The top three objectives. What are you looking to do now?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

The main thing for us is we were a team of four operating incredibly effectively and we're hiring a whole bunch of people into our team at the moment. The thing I wake up every day thinking about is how do we maintain that same degree of effectiveness and team gelling and energy and drive and sort of tenacity that we've had in the last year with a larger team? Because if we do that, then nothing else, we don't need to worry about anything else. So, yeah, we're spending a lot of time just gelling the team together as much as we can at the moment.

[James Reed]

Going back to what's on your mind.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

I use the framework of that. It's like you need a really great product. So first and foremost, the whole energy and the focus is around the customer having a great product that people will then tell people about. Number one, get a great product. And so just huge energy and efforts into that. You then got to sell that product. Growing is powerful for the customer. It makes us allow us to invest more into the product. It's great for the team, it's great for everything. And then the third thing is not running out of money. So, yeah, us three co founders really take each of those roles of building the great product and selling it and then not running out of money. And those are.

[James Reed]

It's quite expensive. Running AI, isn't it?

[Archie Hollingsworth]

It is.

[James Reed]

So obviously the finances of this we haven't explored in detail, partly because Richard refused to tell me what to do with the accelerator.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

I might be a bit more generous.

[James Reed]

I mean, what is the exp. Because you have to pay for the computer system to give you the.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Yeah. It's not nearly the same margin as other technology tools that don't have AI involved.

[James Reed]

There's a huge amount of computing power.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

There's a huge amount of computer power which costs money. Exactly.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

You need to buy that from a provider, you know, like OpenAI or something, something like that. You can't do that yourself. So. Yeah, you are. The skill from a product perspective is not only building an incredible product, but building one that uses that resource efficiently.

[James Reed]

And pricing that in an intelligent fashion.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, I think, yeah. The pricing thing is really interesting because at the moment we're pricing ourselves in the same way that software tools have done over the past 10 years or so, the same kind of formatting. I think there's going to be loads of innovation into how people do that with these tools because they're adding significantly more value than traditional software tools have done. So there'll be some new way of pricing it.

[James Reed]

You've got any thoughts around what that might look like?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

We thought like. I mean, ideas like tasks completed, for example. So, you know, if you. If we create an email for you that you end up sending, we could charge you for that as opposed to just dollar a day, you know, so our interests therefore are more aligned.

[James Reed]

So it's output related more.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, yeah. And with AI, you can do that much more effectively than you might have been able to before. So it's not an area I'm sort of really knowledgeable on, but I just think there's loads of opportunity there that people will be trying new things.

[James Reed]

If the cost is. Is directly related to usage, there's an argument for making the price also directly, but you're just putting a margin on it. I suppose there is, but maybe that's not the best way of selling.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, we try to avoid thinking because the environment that we're operating in is one where the cost of this computing power is coming down so dramatically. So if one thinks too much about the cost today and does pricing based off of that, you can miss the opportunity because actually in six months time we know that it'll be half the price. So when you're getting those kind of rates, you want to try as much as possible to focus on the value. We're creating value for the customer. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's what we're trying to do. But when we're building the products as quickly as we are, that changes as well. So.

[James Reed]

Yeah, this is such a moving space. Yeah, that's the other thing. You're hiring people who know about AI is pretty difficult because there aren't many, are there? Because it's been around. I mean, you've been over there for as long as anyone.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, well, luckily in London actually, of all places in the. Particularly the technologists, London's a got a really big depth of talent here and that's globally recognized as, you know, a universal truth because companies like DeepMind were founded here and so people have a lot of prestige towards London AI talent. But absolutely, it's pretty nascent for everyone. So certainly like this new wave of it.

[James Reed]

Yeah. So your messages. Have a go, I think.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Have a go.

[James Reed]

Yeah, you just qualify that in a British way. Englishness. Both of you. My question, my question here, maybe Richard, you want to take it, is we've heard a lot about AI. We're at the beginning of 2025. It seems like, you know, a lot of companies want to adopt it, but they're not sure how and people are thinking about how to use it still. But is this a make or break moment? Is 2025 the year of AI or not, in your view?

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think my. To my earlier point, I think that lots of the companies that have deployed AI so far, people aren't getting huge amount of value from. I think 2025 will be the year that startups start to really add value with AI, that startups create products that people really start using. I don't think it'll be a make or break for consumers and companies to be adopting those yet, but it'll be the start to be the point at which we can see how people are actually going to get value from AI rather than have it as a sort of shiny sticker on top of an existing product.

[James Reed]

And why do you think there are going to be lots of startups? Is that something you've already seen? Can you see them coming through or.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think it's more about looking at the combination of the incumbent tooling out there that is just putting AI on top of what they've already built and saying they're an AI company. We probably all experience this with, you know, whether it's Outlook or it's, you know, Slack or all the tools that we use now have a shiny little button in the corner that you can click and do something with AI. But People who aren't really using those very much. It'll be startups that are people that are starting afresh and saying, how would we build this product entirely with AI that are going to be the ones that start delivering in 2025?

[James Reed]

Very exciting. I like the sound of that. That's good. Glad I asked that question. We might have something to show you later this year. I'm not going to say any more, so I think that really, that concludes that very helpfully where I was hoping to go with our discussion. I just want to ask you, I'll ask you both these questions, but questions I ask everyone kind enough to come into the podcast. And the first one I'll start with you, Archie, is what gets you up on a Monday morning.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

I think what we're doing is really fun. So, like work with people I really like on an interesting problem. It's at a pace that I love. It's just you don't know where you're going to be by the end of the day, let alone by the end of the week. And so, yeah, it's really rewarding. And yeah, just sort of making sure that you actually have a laugh during the whole process is really easy to forget to do. It was again, a lesson we took from our first business. We had amazing times there. But just actually making sure that you're having a good amount of fun during it really helps on those days where things are not going well, which for anyone who's thinking about starting their own business needs to recognize that that's going to be the majority of the time. And yeah, so having fun, Richard?

[James Reed]

I'll get you up on a Monday morning.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

I think it's just the pace at which we're learning is so fast. There's like no other job I could do.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

I get that.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

And I sometimes wake up on a Monday and look at my calendar and think, oh my God, I have all these meetings that I don't know how to do and I have no idea how I'm going to close this deal or do this one right, et cetera. And I look back at the last week and go, like, I did all of that last week. I can do it. And I love that feeling of accomplishment that I get each week.

[James Reed]

Sounds very exciting to me. And I like the fact that you have a laugh as well. That's important. And what about. I set the final question, which is one from my interview book, why you? I'm looking forward to your answers to this one, is where do you see yourselves in five years time? I'LL start with you, Richard.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

As a company.

[James Reed]

Well, yeah, just personally as a company. I mean, I was guessing or assuming you'd still want to be doing this business, but maybe not.

[Richard Hollingsworth]

Yeah, absolutely. I think the goal last year we felt like we were the most exciting company in our accelerator. This year we want to be the most exciting AI company in London. Five years feels like a really long way away.

[James Reed]

That's a good goal, Archie.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

You sort of got out that answer. Yeah, I share that goal. I think there's something to be said about being in a team where people really value your skill set and you really value theirs. And so the team we want to build and my team and the team I'm a part of as part of that. Yeah, I'd love to just be in the position that I'm in today where people feel valued and you're playing to your best skills.

[James Reed]

Well, thank you both very much for coming to talk.

[Archie Hollingsworth]

Thank you so much.

[James Reed]

Thanks for having me. Thank you to Archie and Richard for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host, James Reed, chairman and CEO of Reed, a family run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Reed Fixer AI or the Hollingsworth brothers, all links are in the show notes. See you next time.