Podcast: Kate and Jonathan Zatland, Forme Partners

Our latest Industry Leaders episode is out now with Kate and Jonathan Zatland at Forme Partners.

Forme Partners are an Executive Search & Growth Advisory firm serving Europe’s equity backed, technology enabled businesses. Kate, Jonathan and the team work with founders, investors and non-executives to unlock growth, inviting seasoned industry into the conversation to shape a brief that will attract the best commercial talent and realise maximum business potential.

In this episode, Kate and Jonathan share their journey in building Forme and the lessons learnt along the way. We talk about how to nurture and find leadership talent and what fuels hyper growth brands from a people perspective.  Rich with insight, they show us how they help brands identify the gamechangers for their specific organisation and growth stage, whether internal or external. 

Listen to the full episode below or search Industry Leaders wherever you get your podcast

You can also read the interview below: 

Sorcha: Welcome to the Industry Leaders podcast. I'm Sorcha and on the show with me today are Kate and Jonathan Zatland, the brains behind Forme partners. Kate, Jonathan, it is great to have you on the show! How are you both?

Kate: Great. Thank you, Sorcha. Well, how are you?

Jonathan: Really good. Thanks. Lovely to be on the podcast. Excited.

Sorcha: We’re delighted because you're kind of a little bit different I think to the people we normally have. Normally we have brands and generally founders or kind of senior commercial people, but you guys are a little bit different. I wonder could you give me kind of a rundown of what exactly do you do?

Kate: Cool. Of course. OK. So we're founders, obviously ourselves, but supporting founders. We came to market to do that. I've got 20 years in head hunting, but for corporates and PLC's and private equity businesses and actually it was getting really quite dull and uninspiring on that side of things so we decided to try the bottom up approach of saying: ‘Look, why don't we serve founders who are scaling innovative, cool, interesting businesses and then try and go back into much larger scale businesses to try and get them to push innovation that way and that's what we've done and we're very focused on certain functions.

Jonathan: Yep. So we're sort of niched search firm, if you like, we call ourselves the experts in sort of senior commercial mandates. So that's the marriage of sales, marketing and go to market. That's our core functions that we focus on. I don't have 20 plus years in the head hunting experience at all, unlike Kate. I come from an operator background. So originally actually I was a screenwriter living in Los Angeles, doing that for about 10 years, mainly movies and producing some documentaries as well. And then I sort of moved back to London out of the industry and found myself founding a business in retail, which I sort of scaled a business over eight years in some luxury accessories and then took that experience to go and work at Etsy running their multi channel international division outside of North America across about 8 international markets.

And then from there, after a few years scaling that through to IPO, I left and then went to join a startup, right back in the trenches. Sort of six employees, I think at the time, called EVE Sleep. It was an online sleep Wellness company focused on, at the time, mattresses and other various accessories. So I was Chief Commercial officer there again through to IPO after about 2 1/2 years and became MD and the after IPO I left, started consulting and then my wife head-hunted me, because she does have more experience with that than me, into coming to really focus on scaling Forme because obviously as a former commercial operator myself and that's our core function as a search firm.

It seems to work really well in terms of what we do. This is obviously advising, as Kate said, Founders and growth stage businesses on those commercial functions, so they really find us quite relatable because we have operator experience plus head hunting experience and you know a team around us. So it seems to, hopefully, work well so far.

Sorcha: I didn't know about the screen writing post – that's really cool. Maybe that's for another podcast so could you tell me, when a brand comes to you, what kind of thing are they looking for? What stage of the business are they typically at in terms of the life cycle and what is the problem that they have when they come to you guys?

Kate: I guess because we serve such a broad range of clients, I would say the minimum when a founder comes to us, they would be doing is probably between 10 and 20 million revenue, so it's not really that early. It's really very much post product market fit and then it's all the way through to post IPO. We've served global financial services businesses, but they aren't specifically commercial challenges that they have. At that stage, it's quite a different matter to obviously a huge financial services business that's trying to innovate in a certain area.

Jonathan: Yeah. When you say, what do they come to us for? Obviously they come to us for mainly a specific function that they're looking to sort of find a new senior leader for but the conversation is not too dissimilar to this really. I mean, up front, it's very, very consultative. We're both learning about each other. We're trying to get under the hood, if you like, of their business and that side of it is the best part of it because we get to meet so many interesting people.

So many interesting founders and CEO's and learning about technologies that are really impacting and changing our world and the really exciting part of the job is actually being introduced to someone or them knocking on our door for certain reasons that makes sense for them at that moment in time and just learning about their business and then it gets to the sort of nitty gritty, if you like the work and focusing on the function and what it is they're lacking or wanting to change.

Kate: Yeah. And the reason I started the business really was because I felt unchallenged by big, big companies. Now perhaps we're a little too challenged because actually Founders, particularly as they scaled successfully. So we're talking about founders who have scaled from, you know, sometimes 1 to 400 million within a very short space of time, you know, two to three years. So it's real hyper growth, hyper scaling.

It's a skill set within itself actually to manage and also challenge those personalities. You know to say, look, we've been there and done it, we've been on many, many journeys with founders over years. These are our thoughts and our learnings from that. And of course, there isn't a playbook to how we approach a certain challenge in a business. But of course we have that experience to take to them and they are very clear and set and they have their vision and their ways of doing things.

So that actually is why I felt so impassioned to do this in the 1st place. It's quite an interesting one and usually, back to a question, it is they're looking for a CMO, or a chief growth officer or they're looking for a general manager. We have to be very upfront to say at that point what is the challenge that you are looking for them to face here – actually to solve for you because you know if it is to double triple revenue in the next two years, we have to be realistic and we need to sort of coach them and give them the realities of that on the journey.

Sorcha: Yeah. And what then? If you're talking to somebody who is going to that hyper growth phase and they are thinking about what they might term a growth hire, how do you deal with that kind of situation.

Kate: How we approach it is I guess, as I've just said, people come with ’we want someone to be really focused on growth’. What we would say to that is everyone in the company is focused on really whether you say growth marketing or growth, it’s every head in the business to be responsible for that, accountable for it, and I think more than anything what we're looking for is somebody to help and mentor/coach/steer the ship's leadership more than anything because, when you get to that level in an organisation, you're not really the expert in the room. You're the orchestrator of many people and many ideas and thoughts.

So we would definitely encourage, and I think this is the challenge, even going through to corporates where they'll say we really need somebody who's, you know, super analytical or really data-driven and you're like ‘not at that level, you don't, no’. What is the crux of the role? Forget all of the things that you can hire the best experts in the world for at the stage of revenues of these businesses. So the crux of it really is honing in on ‘What does growth mean to you’, #1, but also don't focus on the nitty gritty of the role, whether it be deep data or whatever. Of course, the background of the person might come from, you know, data science, engineering, whatever else it might be, but that does not mean that they need to be that person at the top, otherwise we're setting them up for failure.

Jonathan: We recently hired. There was a growth hire into, well, a 300 million turnover business.

Kate: Yeah, that one. I mean, that's doing like 200% growth year on year but so hyper scaling and for that we put in a general manager. So somebody who had scaled international markets for a much bigger business and coming back into what they call growth marketing. But aside from that really it's kind of the entire business and all orchestrating Product sales, customer success, marketing and getting them working towards one goal rather than getting somebody who's extremely performance or data or analytics driven.

Jonathan: Lately I think more so than ever, we actually think of ourselves as a bit of a challenger brand. Because we always challenge the way we're thinking but we also try and challenge the way others are thinking about growth hard as well, because actually sometimes the growth career of a particular senior candidate is actually sometimes not the best hire. We try and look for someone that can really flex across the whole gambit of departments within a business and then, as the business grows, they can also flex across the stage of growth of the business. So it's sort of a horizontal across the business and then a vertical line up as the business sort of builds and goes through various stages of growth.

So sometimes someone that's done growth, growth, growth, growth, growth is actually maybe not as capable as someone who has been in general leadership as a sort of career path. We've kind of challenged ourselves all the time in terms of what we're looking for and also our counterparts.

Kate: Yeah, I was gonna say, if you look at, for example, the placements that we've advised on, a lot of times, oftentimes we come to, whether it's for business that's doing 20/30/40 million revenue or in the hundreds, millions, billions. They will say, oh, I want that person, you know, somebody like that, just in my business. And then you go, OK, brilliant. But the realities of that and also how many other candidates are like that? So I can give you the landscape of other people like that, because if you can't get that person, which is unlikely what else are we looking at, so give the realities of when that business was at that stage, they didn't have that person.

So we have to give clients the data behind what these companies did and it's not a playbook because every company has different challenges, even if they're in the same sector. But it's about looking back and saying actually, they didn't have that person then either and this is the kind of profile that they had. And secondly to that I would say a lot of the most successful hires we've made are not the most senior.

It's so interesting – if we look at the background, the most tenured individuals that we've placed on the boards are sometimes between 6 and 12 years into their career and they have done so well against people 20 years into their career, you know, different thinking. They're kind of, you know, still developing their leadership skill set, but really engaging, super smart. It's quite interesting, if we look back at the data, the most successful hires have been the candidates that haven't been at board yet.

Jonathan: But they make good leaders. There's DNA within their character and skill sets.

Kate: Yeah, yeah.

Jonathan: They're not quite there yet a lot of the time, but they're seasoned enough to still be.

Kate: Yeah. And we're talking about like 50 million revenue plus businesses where they have the confidence and so do we and you can't always see it on paper - you have to meet these people.

Sorcha: Yeah, that's so interesting. I wonder, could you tell me what does that DNA of a leader look like.

Jonathan: I mean, how do you unpick these strands of leadership? I'd have to have a think as to how to be as succinct as I can about that. I think first and foremost, there's gotta be a cultural fit and someone being able to read people and read a room and a situation, having really strong EQ, I think is a big element of leadership. That's not to say that some people who are more introverted can't be great leaders. It's not about that. I think it's about having a really good listening ear and very clear decision making abilities when needed.

So you're strong character, but you're also able to sit back, listen, and soak up information. You're as much a scientist as anything else, you're always questioning, asking why, probing a lot. I think those kind of characters we've seen certainly from people who you wouldn't necessarily think on paper might make a great leader but the way they interact and the way they question everything and asking the right questions, I think is absolutely key to leadership on so many levels.

Kate: People who are given the space in a business to lead different teams to manage different personalities, whether they're two months or three years or 10 years into their career, it's really important that people are given the space to develop their skill sets. A lot of the time, people don't move through organisations, they have to leave in order to get that next step of ‘OK, I'm now going to be able to lead a much bigger team’ and the people who we have hired into our client businesses across the bar and we can name a few of the companies is they have moved from team to team. So it's quite interesting how they've just made it work within their business, but they've been able to develop themselves and be developed to go, ‘OK, now I'm leading the engineering team’ or you know, as a commercial exec or ‘now I'm leading…’.

So it's quite interesting, and that comes along with businesses going through enough of a rate of innovation, transformation stroke growth are able to offer people that so that they can develop it within the same organisation. And when I look at our business as well, it's up to us, it's up to the founders, the CEO's and the boards to enable that success and that freedom and space for candidates to go, actually I don't need to move anywhere. I'm being given this extra team or I've been mentored by somebody externally from the board to say, OK, this is how I could be. I'm looking to either the board or or elsewhere – good mentors within the business so that's successful for us.

A lot of people have stayed in role and then we have taken them out for quite a while because they've had room to grow within their roles and I think that's what makes them. And of course it's innate. So leadership is sometimes a natural and sometimes it's learned and you know the good mix of, as you said, Jonathan EQ IQ. But I would say you need to be given the space to develop as a leader and that is successful. Whether it's a CEO or founder, doing their job well is giving the space to their employees to do that if they so choose.

Sorcha: That's really interesting. There's kind of a theme coming out there about giving people space and not kind of micromanaging and not being down in the detail, you know, as a leader, being able to respect the abilities and the knowledge of your team and enabling them to succeed, that seems to be something that's coming out from this.

Kate: Yes, exactly.

Sorcha: Yeah, really interesting. And another thing that actually I've been thinking about quite a lot recently is about, you know, specialist versus generalist, which is also coming out quite strongly here. I think sometimes, and you may disagree with me, I think sometimes the way degree universities and degrees are set up, people specialise very early on. They say maybe I work in, in paid search or I work in paid social and these are two kind of distinct specialities. I just I wonder whether people are maybe specializing too early in their career. I don't know what you think about that?

Kate: Well, I think it's look, there's space for experts, of course. And specialists. Because otherwise no one would have anybody to lead.

Jonathan: Every business is full of specialists for sure.

Kate: It's full. Yeah. So it depends on what track you want to go on. You know, say if you were in paid there are multi billion dollar businesses that you could aspire to be in as the leader within that segment. So I wouldn't say that's the case. However, when you are looking for a leader of a function or functions, you kind of do need to be more of a generalist unless you say, OK, the clear mandate is to build a world class brand over the next 10 years because you know it takes at least 10 to 30 years to build one, right? So it's obviously the clear mandate of that but of course then it doesn't mean OK, they have to be comms and PR through and through at all because a lot of the time you rely on agencies and so on.

Jonathan: What you tend to find, which is kind of obvious is that most people start off in an area, you know, whether it be they've started off in PR & Comms, or they started off in paid marketing. We all tend to have an area of specialisation that sort of kickstarts us on our journey, but I think hiring specialists at like C Level, I think what we tend to look for is someone that maybe has indexed in a certain direction, either earlier on in their career or of late, but they still need to be capable of being deep generalists rather than specialists. So they need to be able to sort of get under the hood, if your like, on different swim lanes of of a business, but they might be preferred because they have in their background some area of specialisation that totally makes sense. For instance, recently working in the travel sector, sort of finding a leader that does come from sort of ad tech sales backgrounds, even though they're not doing that currently and they're much more sort of considered generalist now. Having that experience in their background, that tends to be in this instance the right sort of match for that particular founder of this business. So I don't know whether there's hard and fast rules hiring specialists or generalists, but deep generalists I think, can really shine.

Sorcha: And how do you go about finding those people? Who are the culture fit for the brand that you're working with.

Kate: Yeah, it's quite funny. We were discussing this earlier this week, you know, to some of our clients we work with, they'll look at a CV and be like, no, we don't like that one. It's like, meet them. Our process is really extensive so the pain is taken out of the process for the client and we absorb that by meeting so many people and of course, because we are spending so much time with clients, we know, you know, everybody will say I'd love to have that person from that company as we said before. But it's like ‘Do you know that person? They're probably not a fit with you.’ You know, we, you know them, that's not a fit.

So we underestimate and undervalue, like fit. And are we going to want to work with that person every day as a management team versus what's their actual experience? And we've proven that out time and time again.

But how do we find these people? Extensive network. We work all over the world primarily though in Europe. So because we work in sales and marketing if we’re working in marketing, we reference people in sales to understand who the best people are – who we should be speaking to and vice versa. And then we've got a much broader network than that. We constantly reference, so we back up what we're saying as well, because again, if you're working with founders, they have a very strong point of view. They'll say, oh, they're not data-driven and enough, and then you go, OK, well, this person I spoke to said that they're the most straight data-driven person or and little person that they've worked with. So it's quite interesting.

You always have to back up what you're saying. So we really have to do our research. So it's really like a goose chase. Around the world trying to find them and then obviously you meet them and then you say brilliant experience, but I don't really feel, you know, there's a lot of feeling that it's not only just data, but it's quite a fit. So hopefully we're entrusted to do that for people.

Jonathan: Yeah, I think also what's really important is examining what they already have, because sometimes I think it is easy to look externally. Well, it’s not easy, it's a difficult thing, but it's an easy solution, if you like, to say we need someone in the business now - there's a clear gap. But, I think sometimes if you're looking internally at the business, there are often characters that will possess a lot of what you think you need or what you think you're looking for. And sometimes you don't look at that because they've been doing their everyday gig. So long and that's what they do. And then then you'll just assume there's a gap for whatever you need going forward at that stage. But I think it's really important - sometimes that puts us out of a job because actually. We end up sort of saying that this person actually feel like, what about them right under your nose in terms of your business? I think that's really important. I think if you can nurture and promote from within, I think that really sets a great precedent for developing and growth, and there are a lot of people in organisations who might be considered step ups that actually if you went externally, you wouldn't find someone totally different - you just have a different CV.

Kate: If you look Adyen, the global financial tech company, that's it's a multi billion dollar business. Well, you look at their management team, they've all been there pretty much since the beginning. We managed to take out one person after 11 years or so of that business, but they have nurtured talent so well, top talent has become top at the table and that's such success. That's resounding success from a company that you know had a financial controller, in there, and who is now the CFO. And so all of those things are such markers of success and then you can upfill the other gaps as well and say, OK, we've got this, give them the chance, the room to breathe, as we've said before, that's real success.

So yeah, does put us out of a job though, but you know, sometimes you need, a new perspective. But what we're looking for is longevity 10 year enrolled. People say, the average tenure of CMO is you know 18 months – we're not interested – that's not a marker of success for us. We want our clients to have some of the people we've put into businesses there 10 years later. And for us, that’s success that that you go from, you know 50 to 200 million and they're still there. So really that's what we're looking for. So if you can promote from within great and we usually help with that before we actually start searches.

Jonathan: There is a great business called Tech Wolf.

Kate: Yeah. So it's a really interesting platform that is still early stage, but it's useful for any business listening that is interested in promoting from within and understanding where people are best suited, best fit. So it records a huge amount of data tracking data on teamwork, projects, communication style, everything, and it uses AI to create a picture of where these people are best suited within an organisation. So it’s revolutionary technology and these technologies are, you know, there are a few other players, but these guys are really doing extremely well. You can even use technology today to understand who would be best where. It's brilliant. Really, really good.

Sorcha: Yeah, that's fantastic - it's really jumping out at me that you really build a really personal relationship with the brands that you work with, you know, and it sounds maybe this is the wrong word, but it sounds like there's almost. Yeah, I think mentor is the wrong word, but you're kind of that guiding hand sometimes, you know. You were saying there's no playbook but we can tell you what's worked for other people and what's been effective for other people.

Jonathan: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, they're not only hiring us because they believe we have a good read on who we're vetting, and we're obviously very focused in certain area. But we are the voice of their brand in the market. We're telling their story and we have to embody that almost. I get so excited telling the stories of the businesses that we're working for, almost to the point where I feel like I'm part of the founding team.

Kate: He wants to join!!

Jonathan: I genuinely… Really, really excited to be that part of the job because we're their mouthpiece. And we are their marketers. We have to try and find people who are not interested in leaving their current positions, sell them a really, really interesting story, talk to them in detail about the intricacies of a business that maybe we've only been working with for three weeks, but we have to feel like the relationships been going on for years. And it has to be authentic and we really, genuinely, most of the time, build a really good relationship with the founders that, you know, obviously in any service based industry repeat business is really important and then that is kind of again a testament of success that people want to continue working with you.

So I think that is the personal area. Not only are we personally working with them – we're not a huge organisation. We're a boutique firm. Everyone in our organisation works on every search in some way or another. It's not delegated out to a few here and there. So we're all moving ourselves internally as a team and I wouldn't say we're part of their team now. Well, we're not, we're not paid to do a service. But I think the way we provide that service does feel personal and most importantly, the storytelling aspect for me is absolutely key. They're relying on that so much. They're doing a download of their wants, their needs, who they are, how they started, where they're currently at, where they want to be.

And I think once you've captured all of that, the really important bit is consulting and challenging them on the brief like we talked up front in the beginning of this conversation. Are you really, really clear? Are we all very, very clear on what we need, being able to challenge that again, being leaders ourselves, asking why and just sort of getting ourselves into the headspace of making sure we've got the freedom of a tight brief. And that's absolutely key. It's a very, very tight brief but there's the freedom within that because we're all very, very clear on what we want and need. It sometimes goes a little bit of pear shape when it's not like that. It could be very difficult when things are murky upfront, and I think we often try and really take the time to get that right.

Kate: Yeah, I'd say challenger when we say Challenger brand. Sometimes I think you are definitely more the consultant. I'm the challenger. I would say I'm sometimes I'm called too challenging, so I guess it very much depends on do people really want to think outside of the box. I think it's so easy to go ‘that company has done X, I want that’ and there is a balance to be had between stakeholders, whether they be investors or angels or whoever who have also opinions and are working with us on the mandates as well. But it's about a balance of that. Yes, getting people with the logos on CV’s but also for me to go, guys, do you really need that? Because ultimately I don't really believe that you do. And so I'm there to challenge and then that you're there to soften the blow.

Sorcha: Yeah, actually, I don’t know if we mentioned but people probably guessed from your names, but actually this is a husband and wife team. How did that dynamic develop? Was it always there in business terms Did you always kind of have the good cop, bad cop kind of approach?

Kate: Well, I don't know. Look, I have wanted for Jonathan to work with me for a long time. He's now gone through two IPO's, had quite a lot of personal success, and it was a matter of either going on that track again, finding a business that he could get excited about. Or working with a number of businesses and helping them scale globally. And sometimes he'll consult actively for clients, but ultimately, it's a really nice balance because I've never been in a business before and he has and also our extended Advisory Board, Jonathan's part of but we also have top execs from all over the world who also consult with us. People like it and we work, I think we work quite well together.

Jonathan: We do very well, I would say on the whole.

Kate: He would say no!

Jonathan: I don't think there was ever a plan – I think it was just sort of the natural progression. I worked when I set up originally a retail business, maybe close to 10 years ago I set that up with my sister and my brother in law. So I do have learnings from working with family members so it can be difficult. Certainly the separation of work and life and it bleeding into your personal life and literally sort of thinking about things when really you should be focused on different areas of your life that can definitely be challenging because we are quite intense about it. And it's service business with people in different time zones. We work across the whole of Europe; we work with US based businesses. They're looking to sort of scale within Europe so we are constantly on the hook with our clients for a lot of things. So it can be challenging from that perspective.

Sorcha: Yeah, for sure. And if you were to give some advice to a brand who's going through a growth phase and they're thinking about growing a commercial team. What would you say to them to bear in mind?

Kate: To bear in mind, I would say I think that a lot of people jump to the hire stage. So what I would say to bear in mind is that you have a company, you have people within it and you need to do an audit as we've discussed before. So bear in mind that there are people in your organisation that will be affected by hires and you really need to work through that. You need to do the work upfront. It's a huge investment in not only in money, but of time hiring somebody. It's very intense process and really important decision if you're looking to bring somebody in at a senior level. So I would say if you are not ready to really invest the time because you know it's a weekly biweekly process and also to bear in mind that you can't fix problems with one person. So if you actually have issues or challenges in your business do not think that if you bring somebody in, it's going to solve all of those for you.

Jonathan: Yeah, that's what I was going to say. It's not a magic bullet. There's no magic bullet to this. I think it's really being quite instinctive and reflective yourself as a founder and really going, you know, we're weak in this area. Why are we weak in this area? What is it? Are we missing something? Is it the team? What's happening with this business? This stage of growth, where it might have flattened out or you know how do we get to the next stage or you know it's pivoting or whatever it may be. I think it's understanding the growth levers that you're trying to pull but realising there's no magic bullet to this. It's ultimately being very reflective and self reflective about what kind of culture you've created. Where are we trying to get to, what stage we're at. Because businesses mature just like we all do and then they go through different phases or market economics that might change your business, or competitors might come into a space that totally undermines certain things that you're doing or whatever it may be. It's constantly changing and I think someone who's really reflective, I guess and really understanding what they've created so far, what’s happening, taking a sort of holistic view of things as much as sort of getting into the weeds is really important to think about first and foremost, and then realise that it's not just a magic bullet hire that's gonna change those things. It's really having a vision and being driven towards that vision and your overall mission and being able to shape towards that next stage with your whole organisation. As we said, everyone is in charge of growth, everyone, that's the point here so that they might need someone who can lead that better or just defining what what it means at that moment.

Kate: There are so many different scenarios, so it very much depends on what we're talking about here. So as an example, overall Founders, whether now we're talking about 20 million or a 300-400 million revenue business, they all have their areas of expertise where they like to be. Some like to be in sales, some are product leaders, you know they own the product vision, some have no interest in that and they like selling. The challenge we face is a lot of the time we are bringing somebody in, right? Usually first, sometimes second time. That is to replace what the founder is doing. Now if they like doing what we're bringing in this person to do it is extremely challenging.

So we need to bear in mind there if we're talking about what should they bear in mind. It is ‘Where are your strengths? Because you're now not going to be jumping out of marketing if that's your thing. We worked recently with a 400m revenue, but it was 200-250m at the time. So a business where the founder is the CMO, very good at creating the buzz, driving the brand, the assets, the visual brand, the experience, excellent. And so who did we bring in? Not one of those, because if we did, what would happen? And you know, we were interviewing those people as well. Had we done that, it would be that they would fail in role. Because the founder would be like, well, I'm so much better, you know, and I will always be better. And then conversely, we've just placed a Chief Commercial Officer, a Chief revenue officer into a 50 million revenue business where the founder to date has been the Chief revenue officer pretty much and that's quite late to bring somebody in, you know, yes, you've had a VP of Sales but you have been the person who is the closer of the big clients so that. Quite late stage actually to bring in somebody so experienced at that point, but that is very different as scenario because that person, you know the founders now matured and said listen, I'm ready to step away from being so into the detail. You know we've got the business to a very different place now and I need to be more external facing with stakeholders in the city and you know different things. So there are so many different scenarios that it very much depends what people need to keep in mind before they hire. But look, if you are the expert within the function that you're hiring, so ie commercial for us, we need to balance skill sets because if we don't and we bring in somebody very similar, it's not going to work.

Sorcha: Great that that sums it up, I think. Listen, Kate. Jonathan, that was absolutely fascinating. I really enjoyed that. Really really did.

Jonathan: You say that to everyone, but thank you.

Sorcha: No, no, I really did because that was different. I learned a lot there actually. Yeah, you had little things like freedom of the tight brief and you can't fix issues with one person. Yeah, there is kind of stuff that there that's actually really helpful, really interesting for me and I think that listeners will find really interesting too.

Kate: Thank you so much

Jonathan: Was lovely to meet you. Thank you so much.

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