B (3:35)

Yeah, it was after Christmas, I'd just been to see my cousins in Yorkshire and I was driving back to London and I'd finished listening to all the music I could and I tuned into a UK national radio station and there was a phone in about dyslexia. I was expecting really nice stories about it, but everyone was phoning in with complaints about it and saying it had ruined their lives or their kids lives and how difficult life was. And obviously all these things are true. But for me, I think I can do the work I can do because of my dyslexia, not in spite of it. It can often come with useful traits like lateral thinking, visual thinking, problem solving, all of which I use for my work. So I was really upset by this phone in. So I thought, well, what can I do to help other people understand that it can be good to have dyslexia? So I wrote to a journalist and I said, look, here's some examples of some designers and artists who are dyslexic and they do very original work. And he explained, well, it's great, but it's not really newsworthy. Nothing's really happened here. So I'm like, right, I'm gonna put on an exhibition and make something happen. It's the thing I'm most proud of in my life, that I've worked on, I think more so than my own work, just cause it really did change the perception of dyslexia. And a lot of people wrote and said how much it meant to them.

A (5:01)

Well, yeah, and it's. It can be one of those things that can be the spark for someone's creativity, which is an amazing. Imagine, you know, a kid maybe, as you said, who's wrestling with those contradictions that they get confounded with in education. And it can be the moment that changes everything. Tell me then about the development of, of your brand. How long did that take? And do you think that was always the sort of inevitable end game of that next step, if you like?

B (5:25)

I don't know if it was always inevitable, but it wasn't straight away. So after graduating, I did try and get a job. I applied to some studios, two of which were very promising, but in the end they didn't take me. Yeah, one was Thomas Heatherwick, the architect, who obviously I'm a massive fan of. And I entered this design competition that was in the south of France, the design parade. Part of the prize was to go to Philip Stark and, well, he invited us to. They said it was a collaboration. And I got there and he said, well, do you want to work here? And I was a bit confused and I said, well, I need to talk to my girlfriend at the time about this. And it wasn't really what he was expecting, so he didn't offer me a job, which was a shame. It would have been wonderful. So, yeah, so I was job hunting and sending out the applications and then I would enter competitions or do exhibitions. I did a very, very nice internship with Michael Anastasiadis, which in retrospect was quite influential. I got an internship in India at a stainless steel company called Idenox, and they do, like, domestic things like jugs and plates and cups, everything from stainless steel. And the idea was to, they said, just design something that we can produce. And I had a look around the factory and it was very interesting just to see how incredibly stretchy everything was made from a flat sheet of stainless steel. And, you know, I see it as quite solid, but it's very stretchy and they can stretch it into these amazing shapes and work it. And I wanted to show evidence of this stretchiness in the final object. So I designed this fruit bowl. The original sheet is circular and they punch it in stages into shape. And I, I wanted to put these holes in the sheet before it's punched into shape so that we could see how they'd distorted and stretched. And that would be the outer wall of a double walled bowl, so the inner wall could hold the contents. And I was really happy with it. It was a really nice piece. But they explained it's too much work in it to be commercial for the amount of money they can sell it for. I said, well, can I keep my design then? They're like, yeah, you can have it. I'm like, that's great. I went to the buyer at the Conran shop and I said, I've got this bowl. And I'd developed it a bit by this point, bit further than on the internship. And I said, you know, will you sell my bowl? He said, well, possibly, but you need a few more things. When we set up an account with a vendor I'm like, okay, I'm a vendor now, not a designer. You need a collection. It's not just one object. I'm like, that's easy. I'll just do a few more things. I didn't realize just how difficult it. It is to set up a brand. But in my ignorance, I had a go.

A (8:10)

Well, that's the other superpower we always hear on this program. People say, like, naivety. People say, if I'd known, I never, ever, ever would have started. And what. And really? And that was the origin story.

B (8:19)

Yes. Yeah. So. So I had to. So this bowl, the three holes that I had in the outer wall originally, they were symmetrical, but by making them different sizes and at different positions, you could then sit this bowl at different angles. And I thought, well, what else can I do? So it's a consistent line. What else can be at different angles? And this friend told me, well, a wine decanter is a very commercial object. So I'm like, right. I'm doing a wine decanter at three different angles. And it made this nice story that as you drink, you can lean it over more and more, and it's as though the decanter is getting drunk with us as we drink. But I made an error. I drew it on this architect on Band of Brothers. She very kindly gifted to me a drawing board. You know, the parallel motion. This is what I worked on. And I got the volume wrong of this decanter, and it didn't look that big on the drawing board. And then when it came back from the glassblower, it was massive. And I thought, oh, it's a monster. This is a terrible idea. And I kind of, for some reason, left it. And it wasn't till I did a trade show, 100% design, that I was going to exhibit the bowl at. My intern at the time, Alma, she told me, look, you can't just go on this show with one thing. You've got to have something else. What about your decanter? I'm like, no, not the decanter. It's terribly ugly. She's like, you know, you have to. I'm like, okay. So I did what my intern told me and put the decanter. And everyone went crazy about this blinking decanter, ignored the bowl that I was trying to launch. And I thought, well, okay, I better sort out the decanter then. So I did a. I started doing some drawings on the computer. You could tell the volume better and refined it, made it smaller. And then it. Yeah, it became the most popular Object,

A (10:11)

actually, is there a single or a singular product or one expression that is the embodiment of the values you have, that commitment to creativity, this idea of valuing the unexpected. Is there. Is there one? I don't know. Is it a piece or is it a moment in the process where you can say, this is what I have been striving for?

B (10:33)

They all hang together. They all fulfill what they're supposed to be doing. They're playful and sculptural and surprising. For me, the moment in the design is it's the sort of breakthrough moment when you solve this problem. It's kind of like a relay race. One object leads to the other. So the bowl led to the decanter. And then I explained the decanter to someone at a trade show. I said, you know, it leans over as we drink. And they're like, what? It leans over on its own. I'm like, no, no, no, you've got to pick it up and reposition it. But I thought, oh, maybe I can do a container that, as the liquid does reduce, it does look levo over autonomously. And I was trying to work out the shape that would do this. You know, it's a difficult problem to make, this shape, and I don't know if it's gonna be possible. And I used to play with this wooden darning sock mushroom my mum had when I was a kid, and so I'd play around with the balance and I was thinking, yeah, this shape, you know, if it was hollow and filled with water. And I'd sort of do these experiments in my head, and it was quite silly, really. I was kind of lying in bed imagining the shape, and, like, what if it had that much water? And that much water? And it was a year I was thinking about this, and I should have just tested it out. And I went down to the glassmaker in London and they'd built this sample of it. You know, I didn't even take it home. I'm like, can I test it out? It was going to be a flower vase because I already had a wine decanter. You know, they didn't have flowers there. And the glass blowers. And so I took a pencil, put it in, put the water in and filled it, and it was stable and then tipped some out and it was less upright and empty. It lent over completely. So it worked. You know, this is a really happy moment that you've cracked this mechanical problem, because you don't always know it's going to work.

A (12:25)

That was Jim Rokos, the founder of Rokos and you can find out more by heading to roccos.com. You're listening to the entrepreneurs. Joe Woodward is the co founder of Visi, a new kind of work platform that overhauls the CV for a generation that's frankly outgrown the one page resume. Bringing together the best parts of a portfolio, personality and proof of skills, Visi helps people showcase who they really are while helping businesses hire the cream of the crop. The idea was sparked during the pandemic after Joe lost his role working in Mumbai with the Rajasthan Royals cricket team and found himself back in the UK somewhat frustrated by the limits of his own cv. After a brainstorming flip chart session with his sister Jess and her husband Chris, the three eventual co founders made a breakthrough. Today Visi is being used by hundreds of thousands of people across more than 100 countries and adopted by brands like Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Disney to discover talent in in a completely new way. Joe popped by Midori House to discuss the challenges of hiring in the age of AI building with family and why the future of recruitment might be a lot more human. He also told us how and why his sister and co founders Dyslexia was a singular advantage in the building of Vizzy and why the platform better serves all of its community as a result. I began by asking Joe whether not coming from an HR background was actually an advantage.

C (14:05)

We'd all obviously been candidates. I was at that time, if you like, we'd been on that side of the fence and so I think that was lovely in so much as it the origins of Vizzy was very talent first and people first. We weren't, I suppose, hindered by the known practices of recruiters and talent acquisition teams. And fortunately now working with so many amazing talent acquisition teams, we've been able to learn from them and they've been able to help shape the products for what they need. But definitely those origins of okay, how can we just really help people express themselves and showc what they can do in a new way. But I think it was also very quickly recognizing that we knew teams and from our own experiences hiring teams. The businesses wanted to identify skilled people, diverse teams and culturally rich teams. So we were also just really trying to prioritize that as well.

A (14:52)

Talk to me a little bit then about the mechanics of doing it because often these things, as you said, it's just the way it's always been done. But I guess for a lot of recruiters the system, as flawed as it was, was working to a degree. So what were the sort of mechanical things. If someone say, using the VIS platform from the candidate side, at what point are they going to go, whoa, okay, this is different? And what are those key differences?

C (15:15)

Anyone can make a Vizi profile. One of our users described it as. It's like my CV had a baby with Pinterest, which is a lovely kind of picture to paint. And really what we wanted to try and harness is really kind of use all these lovely multimedia tools so that people could really tell a story. Initially, the layout of the profile was actually inspired by magazine layouts and Monocle was a wonderful reference. In there we have the ability to showcase your work, your qualifications and skills like a cv, but really bring that to life and prove what you have done with video, web links and so on. We also have a psychometric assessment built into the profile. So with a quick assessment you can actually discover your skills, your strengths, your working style, personality. And then we have a sort of collection of lovely prompts and questions. Things like a trend to watch or work I wish I had done, a brand I admire or the greatest city in the world is things like that that create a really great framework within which people can add substance, but knowing that it is in the right context that businesses can draw great insights out of it. So really it's about allowing people to showcase their work like never before and with real pride, but also demonstrate their ideas, their industry knowledge, their opinions and ambitions, which again, from the other side of the fence, businesses can then really get a great picture of who this person is.

A (16:37)

And it's interesting. I probably did you a disservice when I said this wasn't your. Because in a way it's about bringing some of that marketeer's rigor, thoughtfulness and the sell. And I'm doing those air quotes. It doesn't really work for radio, but that is interesting, isn't it? Now, I did mention at the top, obviously your sister was a co founder. I think your another brother is in the mix as well. Don't they say Joe never work with. Well, it's sort of, you know, family, children and animals. But there's so many family businesses actually on this show. But I do always ask those founders. I mean, it looks like it's working pretty well. Any trepidation? Have there been things where that's made it more difficult? Actually, does that funny kind of family shorthand make internal comms easier? Tell me a little bit about that.

C (17:15)

We're very close, we always have been. And like I say, with an idea like this, they would always be the first people I would go to, to kick it around with. And, you know, I think it was just a very natural thing, to be totally honest, as we then kind of looked at it, I suppose a bit more after the fact, because at first it was just this great excitement that we had this thing that we wanted to build together. And then as we then started to rethink, okay, what roles should each of us take in the business, we kind of more naturally realized, actually our skill sets are really nicely aligned. And I think it's as I'm sure any entrepreneur and anyone kind of leading any business is tough. It's hard. And you go through some pretty tough moments and also some just wonderful moments. So I can't really imagine doing it with anyone else. And we also now have our kind of Wider team with 10 here in the UK and sort of wider teams around the world. They themselves as well, I think, have just come in and just thrown so much into Vizzy and such incredible kind of commitment alongside the four of us family members. So it's created a really lovely dynamic, I think. And whatever happens, we're so close. We're all good.

A (18:12)

I'll take your word for it. They're not here. Maybe they might just try and disagree. I'm sure they wouldn't. And now you mentioned your work with iconic brands before and listen, there's some iconic brands who have adopted Vizzy. Worked with you, your first client, even Burberry. Amazing story. Talk to me about those moments. That's the validation, I guess, as well as ob, obviously looking after the sort of the consumer side and the candidate side. When you strike a relationship like that and get to work. That must have been an incredible moment.

C (18:38)

It really was. And we launched Vizzy just with the profile, our kind of beta version of the profile where anyone could make a Vizzy, threw it on Instagram with a sort of the CV is dead stand out from the crowd with Vizzy. And the response was awesome. It was amazing and actually quite emotional where people were sort of making their Vizzy landing dream jobs, but saying that, you know, for the first time they feel that they've taken control of their narrative that they feel seen for the first time. So that was. That was huge for us. And it was. That was great. But we kind of was like, how do we really build a business around this? And so, you know, the answer to that was businesses should be asking their candidates to submit Visi profiles and to see their talent in this more meaningful way. We had a friend at Burberry and She pulled together three or four members of their hiring team. And to be honest, the first pitch was a nightmare. It was a shock. I didn't know what I was pitching at this point. But fortunately, Burberry put the pieces together, if you like, and Burberry saw the potential. And after a couple of more meetings, they agreed that everyone applying to their internship that year would be submitting Visi profiles. And so the belief that they showed in us was just awesome. There was a bit of a catch because we had been presenting features that weren't yet developed. We're very transparent about it, but it created a race to get them over the line. And, yeah, I'll never forget those candidates. Vizi profiles rolling in. And I think that was the moment we knew Vizzy was different, but now we knew it worked well.

A (19:59)

And it's funny and there's obviously quite a lot of your. I guess the stars on the client list that jump out to me, given Monocle's lens, are also. There's LV and Tiffany and so forth. Do you think it's because if the experience for the user on both sides is enhanced, that obviously is going to appeal to brands who are sitting in a premium sector, right?

C (20:16)

Totally. And I think these businesses and any progressive business, yes, you want to get to the skills and you want to see proof of these skills, but also you want great people that have a point of view and are curious and have ideas and are ambitious. And I think the problem with CVs at the moment, businesses are just overwhelmed by CVs and this kind of one click apply, and now 70% of them are written by AI and things. And so the insights are just too shallow and not proven. So by kind of making it this more human, more authentic process, the candidates love it because they're given the freedom to really express themselves. And the businesses are able to say, look, we're using Vizzy because we want to learn more about you. And when they're given that opportunity, they just really go for it. And in doing so, the businesses then get all these incredible insights to really, really understand more about the person and their skill set earlier in the process and differentiate the great talent from the good because they obviously get lots of great people applying. But it's about. And particularly in their competitive landscape, it's a real bun fight to get the best talent. And that's what we're able to do right at the beginning of the process.

A (21:23)

Just, it's interesting, I guess, the elephant in the room. And it's funny because, you know, 2020, it's six years ago now, over half decade you probably can hardly believe. But if you think about the acceleration in AI's capacity potential just in that period, obviously the pace of change, not even year to year, month to month, week to week is so fast. What does that mean for you? Because I guess on the good side, it's a real enabler, it's a great tool, it can help to facilitate lots of these processes that are in, built into what Visi does. But you've flagged it there, right? There's this sort of tyranny of the AI, initiatification of so many of the other processes. How and why are you and your team confident, Joe, that actually you can navigate through this and if anything you're only going to get stronger as AI becomes more potent?

C (22:02)

It's a great question and in many respects it's kind of the question for the industry at large as well. And I think you sum it up really nicely. AI can't make a visiprofile. It is far more authentic and real sort of expression of the person. And I think also where businesses are able to ask more searching questions and draw more interesting points out of the individual, the person. It's an interesting one at large because businesses also want to hire for those AI skills. They want to identify people that have these great and are going to be able to adapt to these technologies. But I think fundamentally this idea that you can have a CV written in one minute and it will automatically apply to a thousand jobs, that's so problematic and it, it can seem very convenient for talent, but it's actually, it's really not helping them because. And it's not helping the businesses because they're just getting further overwhelmed with the same homogeneous kind of applications. Business is about people and I think that's more relevant now than ever. So how do we really get to this person, get these insights that yes, the businesses can still understand, organize, screen fairly and efficiently, but we got to really make the effort to get to that and I think that's where Visy does a great job in prioritising the quality applications over the quantity.

A (23:15)

Well, it's funny, as you said, obviously you've got to checkbox the hard skills, but the soft skills are just so critical and people are coming to work and again now increasingly they are going to work in offices and settings and you want to have those soft skills. And it's interesting to me that again at VISI's also prioritized looking after people who maybe the traditional CV machine didn't look after. Whether that's because they couldn't see it well enough or they had dyslexia and they might be prone to making mistakes that might preclude them from a job that actually they'd be well suited for. This is another sort of positive, progressive part of the busy story. Tell us a bit about that.

C (23:50)

It really is. And I think it's Jess, my sister, she's dyslexic as our co founder and. And it's something which from the very outset she saw as a huge opportunity for Visy. I think hiring is, you know, a lot of hiring practices is quite intimidating and particularly if you're having to write big paragraphs and all this kind of stuff. And I think one of the best things about Vizzy is it allows people to play to their strengths, whether that's how they answer a question by video or by audio or the visual materials that they can bring in to support their answer. So from a technical standpoint, we have lovely software that can change the platform in an instance to suit different accessibility needs. And again, the tone of the whole kind of hiring campaign, when a business says we want to learn more about you and we have people just proactively on their busy talking about the challenges of being dyslexic or how they've adapted around learning that they have ADHD and things like this and these are just amazing things where businesses can just really understand the person more. But really then when they come into the building, play to their strengths to a whole different level as well. And I think again, just when you look at people through a very narrow space CV lens, you're just going to still be prioritizing the same kind of people. When you widen that lens or kind of broaden the spectrum of how you see talent and potential, people just stand out and shine who otherwise you were missing before. And I think that's what our hiring teams then get really excited about when they know they've brought someone into the business that their competitors aren't seeing but who they know is going to be an absolute superstar.

A (25:20)

You put that beautifully and I think that's a really impressive and important facet. Well done to you and the guys. Let's talk about you say look, scale, ambition, obviously the sort of the B2B full service model went live only in 23, so it's still pretty, pretty young. But there's some amazing numbers, not just your kind of users in 60 odd languages, well over 100 markets. Just give us a couple of the stats again. It must give you a bit of a buzz to reel them off. But just give us a sense of where this has gone and maybe then hint at where it might go next.

C (25:49)

Yeah, we, I think we have users across maybe 130 countries now and that was pretty straight off the bat. So we knew that, as you said, we had to bring in. Can you name them all right now alphabetically or. And that's why, you know, we wanted to bring the languages in and then equally as we. Burberry was an amazing platform to launch from. We now work with Tiffany Co out of New York, VML, one of the great WPP agencies across. We did a campaign with them across sort of 12 markets in Europe and the Middle East. Louis Vuitton, we work across Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea. So this has been incredible. There's over 100,000 people now making and sharing Visi profiles. The numbers are staggering. When you then take these campaigns and you look at, okay, the number of skills that have been expressed or the number of people who answered the question, three entrepreneurs I'll invite for dinner and things like that and how we're then able to just cultivate these insights and I can just go, just flick through these profiles all day and you end up learning so much, not just about this person and what they can do, but also, oh, this would be a great podcast to listen to or that's a really interesting take on the future of supply chains and these kind of. And businesses that they've discovered and all this kind of stuff. So yeah, it's been incredible to see its growth and also across different markets, you know, marketing, finance, audit, all this kind of stuff. But people regardless of what the job title is, just throwing themselves into it and really getting stuck in. So it's been amazing.

A (27:09)

Maybe a last thing just quickly. I'm sure people listening will say, okay, I guess the first tip is get a Visi profile. That's pretty easy. But what are other tips just for you know, and actually on either side, whether you are an aspiring candidate who's got a lot of ambition but maybe hasn't been able to just align the kind of the stars correctly thus far, or if you're a recruiter or a big corporate is looking to grow a team in a market and whatever the traditional means, just haven't quite been working a couple of bits of best practice.

C (27:35)

The best thing I've heard came from a recruiter who used to lead a lot of apples work and she said the number one thing that she looks for when interviewing someone or is have they taught me something? And that can be about a new product or a new innovation, but it can also be about a great new show on Netflix or a great new coffee spot. And so I think that idea as a candidate that I think is how you stand out. Because if you can teach someone something, you're instantly memorable. And I think it demonstrates all this curiosity, adaptability that businesses are looking for. And again, that's something that we just really prioritize as to how can we encourage that in a visi profile, this kind of AI cv, combat that by really being yourself. And it's funny. Businesses now, they're happy when they see a typo or a comma at a place where you see throws a cv.

A (28:25)

Maybe not, maybe not for journalism, maybe not for journalism jobs, I get that.

C (28:29)

But they can see now, oh cool, this is actually real. But and then I think on the business side again, don't be drawn into how many applications can we get And I'm sure there's a good one in there. Really prioritize the quality over quantity and don't worry that the one click appliers, they will fall away. The people you'll be left with are those who are most engaged and invested and into this opportunity. And then by getting all that insight at the beginning, you can then make better decisions. And again, that's what we've really kind of prioritized at Vizzy.

A (29:00)

That was Joe Woodward, the co founder of Vizzy. And you can find out more by heading to vizzi.com. And that's all for this episode of the program. We'll be back at the same time next week. The Entrepreneurs is produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack. Find out more about the show@monacle.com and that's where you can and should subscribe to Monacle magazine and ensure you're reading more about better business every month. If you'd like to get in touch with the team, do email Laura. She's on LRK monocle.com I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye and thanks for listening to the Entrepreneurs.

C (29:50)

Sa.