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Founder@ Interview
Interview with Joe Darwen
Credit @Joe Darwen
“I would say think of the business as what it can for you and for the world. A vision bigger than yourself will always be a more resilient business model..” – Joe Darwen
Today we feature Joe Darwen, the founder at Veo. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.
Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
I’m Joe, I’m the Founder of the UK’s largest and most sustainable online shopping destination, showcasing thousands of unique products from hundreds of independent brands across Fashion, Beauty, Food & Home. We are taking a tech-first approach to finally solving the problem of sustainable Retail, and we’re on a mission to make sustainable shopping mainstream.
A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?
I have worked in web & digital for over 20 years, but it started when I was working at UK Government’s Department for International Trade, as International Digital Trade Advisor, delivering the E-Exporting programme.
There I worked with over 40 of the world’s leading marketplaces (including Amazon, eBay, Alibaba, etc.), which gave me intrinsic knowledge of highly successful marketplaces, their technology, infrastructure, logistics and operations.
Working with these leading global platforms though it became evident that none seemed to consider the ‘Real Bottom Line’. Also known as the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) for Profit + People + Planet, this is a business framework that commits to focusing as much on social and environmental concerns as it does on profits.
So finding that none of the world-leading marketplaces seemed to support these values, I founded Veo as a vital future-facing alternative to other platforms that fall short of these ideals. In January 2019 I took the leap to go full-time on the business and left my employment to become a Founder.
Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?
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Veo is the sustainable marketplace: an immersive online shopping & lifestyle platform to discover the most unique independent sustainable brands in Fashion, Beauty, Food & Home.
A place for people and businesses to connect, shop, and change the world. We’re seeking to solve huge real-world problems, empower the consumer, and champion ethical and sustainable brands. We have been described as ‘Greta Thunberg meets Jeff Bezos’.
Through our tech-first approach to building the go-to sustainable shopping platform we’ve recently won an Innovate UK grant. This demonstrates the unique new and novel technology that underpins the business, and our tech that solves the scalability problem inherent in large platforms.
We’ve also developed an industry top-rated assessment matrix which qualifies and approves the full life cycle of products from brands to join the platform, and which instils critical consumer trust and independent assurance for shoppers.
We believe in quality & sustainability; that they are intrinsically linked and one cannot exist without the other. We don’t believe consumers should have to compromise in their choices if they are wanting to shop sustainably, so Veo is here to show that embracing a sustainable lifestyle requires no compromise.
We’re based in Manchester city centre in old Granada studios. You can see our offices in our video below…
What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?
Whilst it started with myself the success for Veo has definitely come from being able to find a team to help deliver the vision. This includes the angel investors who strategically advise the business, and also the day-to-day team who shape and develop the platform- including the developer team, but also the the VM (visual merchandising) and brand relationship team who curate the products and brands, and marketing who craft the messaging and content to engage our audience and amplify what we’re doing.
I spent a couple of years as a sole founder, doing a lot of research into what such a platform would require to succeed, and once this all came together I began looking for team members who could come on board. When I was creating the Proof of Concept I created a v1.0 MVP of the platform and began to engage brands who could join the platform.
I also reached out to partners and organisations who aligned with our vision and mission, and leveraged their audiences to create brand awareness of what we were building. As the platform develops we saw the ‘network effects’ associated with marketplaces start to increase, with the more brands and products we have the more customers and shoppers we attract and vice versa.
The value of our platform grows for both shoppers and brands. This was the ‘aha’ moment, and is now where we are looking to create the largest and most sustainable shopping destination.
Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?
The challenges have been things that many founders will be familiar with: how to deliver the vision without a team or capital. And then beyond this getting passed that concept stage to product I would say the challenge is gaining the early traction.
The way we found to do this was exploring growth hacking tactics, and doing what Paul Graham at Y Combinator advises all their startups: “do things that don’t scale”.
This is linked to another startup adage “perfection is the enemy of progress”, so rather than focusing on trying to get the most efficient growth and scale, there’s huge value in just getting traction by whatever means you can, that might not be efficient in the long run, but will get your customer base, get customer feedback, allow for optimisation, testing, feedback, iteration, etc.
Ultimately this process improves your product, and your key metrics become more favourable quite quickly- when compared to trying to perfect everything behind the scenes.
A few more quotes in this area are Facebook’s “move fast and break things”, or Reid Hoffman’s “if you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late”.
These are quotes and advice that I learned later in the journey than I would have liked! But then that’s a false belief, because in retrospect you would always have been better, moved quicker, if you knew then what you know now. So I don’t dwell too much on these, they’re just good to keep in mind for going forward, because they say you should never stop thinking like a startup.
Everything. But more specifically, to know our customer, profiles, and market positioning. There was a good amount time and research that went into where we needed to position our platform for success, so it would be great to deliver this to us 18 months back in time. I would definitely say that this should be figured out more early on in any startups journey.
If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
Continuing on from the above, I would certainly give all these quotes and advice to my younger self. However, you can’t tell someone something that they are not ready to hear- so telling my younger self these things I know now might not land.
I think the main thing for entrepreneurship is to establish the reasons why you want to create your business. Find your purpose, that is almost always bigger than the company itself. And once you establish your purpose, and what goals you want to achieve with your business, you should develop your vision and maintain that clarity of vision. If it’s something new, novel, unique, game-changing, different, disruptive, or ‘contrarian’.
Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh also advise in their book ‘Blitzscaling’, to “Be contrarian”.
This is challenging the status quo, and doing things differently. So by doing this you will undoubtedly have people doubt you, even friends and family. That’s why it’s important to. establish your purpose and vision for the venture you set out to build, because this is what keeps you on track.
With a company like Veo, our mission is to ‘save the world’- or at least dramatically improve huge parts of it, challenge disrupt and redefine old antiquated systems, install new paradigms, and replace with new models that work for society, the economy, and the environment. This is the mission-driven approach that keeps us all motivated and excited.
We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?
Communication- Slack is a life saver. This is used for the team whether we’re working from home, or across from each other in the office.
Collaboration- Google Apps / G suite. Perhaps a contentious one as I’m sure people have different tools they like… the ease of Google makes sheets, docs, slides, calendar etc really easy to use, contribute, and share ideas, concepts, brainstorms across the company and external.
We have ClickUp for our task management, as we found this to be better for us than other apps. Just these are huge for the team, and enables us to work efficiently.
We’ve used these from early on, and can’t remember what we were using before, but they’re not complicated, and we don’t require any huge enterprise SaaS systems (yet). We do also like Hubspot though for CRM.
What do you know now that you wished you had known before?
Everything. But more specifically, to know our customer, profiles, and market positioning. There was a good amount time and research that went into where we needed to position our platform for success, so it would be great to deliver this to us 18 months back in time.
I would definitely say that this should be figured out more early on in any startups journey.
What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?
The greatest or proudest achievement is taking the team from just myself 1, to 11 in 6 months during the pandemic. I had raised capital, and written the winning Innovate grant, but building the team was a huge win. We have a great culture of innovation and intrapreneurship amongst the team, where each department and team member has great ideas and solutions to achieve growth and deliver the business goals. Our team also understands the vision for the company really well, and we share the very ambitious roadmap for success for Veo.
Another key achievement is bringing all our Brands on to the platform, as they are incredible businesses solving real problems with their products. Bringing our partner Brands together on Veo creates a unique and trusted retail space for shoppers to shop in line with their values, and discover everything in one place.
We found early on that it is critical to instil this consumer trust which is why we developed our industry top-rated assessment matrix to qualify and approves the full life cycle of products.
What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?
We are now continuing to grow the platform, both brands and products, and customers, sales and revenue. We have some really exciting plans that we can’t say too much about yet, but it falls in line with our wanting to create a truly immersive lifestyle and shopping platform for sustainable living. A platform that really can ‘close the loop’.
In terms of life goals I want to continue having a positive purpose, being creative, exploring new ways of doing things, and making sure what I do has a wider positive impact.
These are the foundations of what led me to create Veo. Life goals and business aren’t that far apart, and support each other. If in the future Veo becomes the household name envision for it, then I hope to use proceeds and revenue to contribute to and create awesome projects- whether that’s for people, environment, wildlife, food sovereignty, more equitable systems, promote equality and access to opportunity for all people and communities. We’ve started with these things already, but when we can scale these activities with our core business activities is the real goal.
To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?
I would say think of the business as what it can for you and for the world. A vision bigger than yourself will always be a more resilient business model. Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle that is a real challenge at times, but it creates awesome opportunities and satisfaction aswell. So if you can align your purpose with your business that is a great foundation for starting your entrepreneurship journey.
“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Veo”
To learn more about Veo Visit https://veo.world
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