The Solo Impact Founder Who’s Delivered £20M In Funding w/ Ren Yi Hooi | Lightning Reach

00:00
Ren Yi Hooi
We have some of the numbers, like now we're just getting close to 200,000people reach to our platform. We've facilitated about 20 million pounds infunding.

00:09
Amardeep Parmar
That's Ren, CEO and founder of Lightning Reach, a tech for good startup.

00:15
Ren Yi Hooi
So we now work across these sectors of local authorities, housing associations,utilities, alongside the charities.

00:23
Amardeep Parmar
Wren saw a clear problem and want to do something about it. It all started witha small grant.

00:28
Ren Yi Hooi
Covid hit and I think it only hit me at that point in time that there were lotsof people financially struggling in the UK. I'm not an engineer, so I can'tbuild myself. I think I applied for an Innovate UK grant. I was quite luckythat we managed to secure an Innovate UK grant. That just gave us a little bitof funding, enough to build out our MVP.

00:48
Amardeep Parmar
Their growth in the B2B impact space is incredible.

00:52
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, we're now a team of 14, most of us in the UK, but we also have peoplebased in Lithuania, Barcelona, Georgia, Amsterdam, which is quite exciting.

01:03
Amardeep Parmar
You can hear a journey so far, but it's also big plans come in.

01:06
Ren Yi Hooi
Ideally globally as well. In the longer term, I think there are lots of peoplearound the world that need support. I don't think I really knew. I liked horsesand animals, so I thought maybe a vet at some point or a jockey, but I had noidea. My sister actually was clear on that she wanted to be a millionaire,which she perhaps good on her.

01:34
Amardeep Parmar
What kind of decision did you then take though? If you weren't sure what youwanted to be, where did you go to study or what did you take next?

01:40
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, I think I started down quite a conventional route. Like in Singapore,people tend to go down the route of being either doctors or lawyers oraccountants. So initially I studied a bit of science. I did research in a laband realized that science and probably being a doctor wouldn't be cut out forme. So I ended up going to the more business side of world. I think I washonestly quite a journalist, so I went to university, wanted to study economicsbecause it was pretty broad and that would allow me time to figure out what todo. I was also supposed to be a scholar with the Singapore government, so thatwas initially with the Foreign Service, which would have bonded me to thegovernment for six years and I think been quite interesting because that'sanother typical route that people take.

02:30
Ren Yi Hooi
If you're lucky enough to sort of get offered an overseas scholarship, then,yeah, it gives you funding to go to school and you join the government afterthat. So I started that decided not to pursue that route when I was nearlygraduating from university, got an offer from a management consulting firm atBain and sort of started going into management consulting because that was sortof helping solve problems and trying out a range of industries and things likethat.

03:00
Amardeep Parmar
I did economics as well, mainly for the same reason of delaying decisions like,oh, from economics I can go and do anything, right?

03:06
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah.

03:07
Amardeep Parmar
And once you're at Bain, how did you enjoy it? How did you find thatexperience?

03:11
Ren Yi Hooi
I think it was great learning and I really love my colleagues. Like some of myfriends today are still. My best friends are from Bain. But I think after doingit for a few years, I realized a little bit was sort of about working with bigcorporations to help them get richer. And I wanted to do something with moremeaning and impact. And I think that was probably the main turning point forgoing down the social impact route, which I'm working in today. I think Bain,we dabbled a little bit, like did a bit of pro bono consulting with charitiesand social enterprises. And I realized I liked that quite a lot. So yeah, afterBain, I went to business school to sort of figure out where, how to sort oftake that next step of having a more meaningful career.

03:56
Ren Yi Hooi
And then I tried working with a social enterprise in Tanzania that was quitefun. It was like a fast growing off grid electric startup that was helpingpeople get electricity when they normally wouldn't have it. And also with theRockefeller foundation, which was a nonprofit that was helping with a range ofprograms. So I think through that I realized that I still quite like the fastpace of being in the business world and sort of seeing change happen versussometimes a much longer term approach with foundations, some foundations andcharities. So then I went into BIMA, which is a micro insurance and healthbusiness. It was sort of one of these social enterprises that had grown tosignificant scale, was helping something like 15 million people around theworld get access to insurance, but paying using their mobile phones. And thatwas really interesting.

04:50
Ren Yi Hooi
It was sort of a chance to try out being in different markets, work with peopleon the ground and sort of launch a market. Myself and Malaysia, so veryinteresting stuff. But that sort of was the gateway, I suppose, into thefinancial inclusion space.

05:09
Amardeep Parmar
So mainly, obviously working at Bain, like you said, is where you're advisingsomebody else on how to do something, right?

05:13
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah.

05:14
Amardeep Parmar
Whereas when you're at BIMA, you're in charge of that and you're leading thatfor your own company, right?

05:19
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah.

05:19
Amardeep Parmar
How did you find that experience, that comparison there? Right. Of where beingin house versus consultant got it and did you enjoy more?

05:26
Ren Yi Hooi
I think definitely in house, you sort of actually get to take action and seethe real impact. I think from a consulting perspective, it is interesting. Getthe big picture, you get to influence. But a lot of it is like makingPowerPoint slides, making things look good as compared to making decisions anddoing real things on the ground. I think even within BIMA, it's not to say thatI got to sort of do everything on my own. We were working in a cool context ofhaving sort of a global head office with a regional office and then localmarkets.

05:58
Ren Yi Hooi
So when I first joined BIMA, actually a lot of that first role was also workingwith the different markets and working on partnerships across those places, butsort of navigating that sort of dynamic between being in a local market andalso doing things that align with what the head office wants. So it's not tosay we could go out there and just like make all the decisions on our own, butit was definitely interesting, like, was exciting.

06:26
Ren Yi Hooi
When I started working the Malaysia market, we had about six weeks to launch itand you know, be having to set up the business, get regulatory approval, get apartnership up and running and get products into the heads of people withinthat timeline was definitely really exciting and I think created that spark of,oh, actually it's quite fun to be able to work through a few different topicsand like create something from scratch.

06:54
Amardeep Parmar
So you mentioned it as well. So, like, from your journey so far, you'll see youmust have done pretty well at university to get into Bain. So Bain is veryprestigious. And then you have that consulting job which is like so many peopleseek. Right. And you then went in to do an MBA again, like you've done allthese different things which many people want to do. And from there you're nowlooking at, okay, could I go and do this myself? And how was that as anidentity shift for you? Was it something which was crazy, okay, I'm going toget on this different path now and build myself? Or was it a more gradual.

07:25
Ren Yi Hooi
I think it was probably a bit more gradual. I think starting Lightning Reachand starting my own company was a bit almost like random. I stumbled across theproblem. I didn't sort of like plan out this career to say I'm going to start abusiness at some point. But yeah, I think I was very lucky to sort of like getinto places like Bain, get some of that training and then realizing that thereis something in me that doesn't just like to sort of work within constraintsand sort of likes to come up with new things and try them out and prompted meto do that. But yeah, it was a bit gradual in the sense that I sort of pivotedfrom consulting to looking at how do I do something with more purpose andimpact.

08:09
Ren Yi Hooi
And that was still within the constraint of working within a biggerorganization like BIMA. So I kind of kept going backwards from, like biggercompanies into smaller ones. Because after BIMA, I went to railsa, which was afintech startup that was about Series A. And that was a very different stageagain. BIMA had like a couple of thousand people employed and rails, I had 30when I joined, and then sort of took a step back from that into startinglightningreach, which had no one else when I started that.

08:39
Amardeep Parmar
So you said you came across a problem by almost luck, right?

08:42
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah.

08:43
Amardeep Parmar
So what was the problem that you discovered that you really wanted to solve?

08:46
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah. So Covid happened, and I realized that a lot of people were struggling toget support. So there were places like my local coffee shop that had to shutdown, or people like my neighbors that lost their jobs. Hard to go on furloughwhen Covid hit. And I think it only hit me at that point in time that therewere lots of people financially struggling in the UK. I had worked in emergingmarkets. I had initially thought there was a bigger problem there and like Icould do more there in the future. But then I realized there's sort of twosides to problem. Firstly, there are individuals that struggle, don't knowwhere to turn to, and then sort of have these complicated application forms tofill up, or they have to ring people up, tell their story and repeat that timeand again.

09:32
Ren Yi Hooi
And it would be great to make that whole journey easier for someone that wantssupport to get it at the time they need it, rather than go through this wholepain of trying to find out what's out there and apply and repeat their storytime and again. Then on the other side, when Covid hit Rails, at the time westarted working with a charity that wanted to give out emergency funding out toindividuals. I realized there's also the other side where organizations aretrying to help, but they don't always have processes that work for them. It canbe time consuming. When I was at Railsbank, we solved for the payments, bit oflike getting money out to people faster.

10:10
Ren Yi Hooi
But then talking to charities, I realized a lot of the problem comes evenbefore that, when they're trying to reach people that need their help, whenthey're trying to verify and figure out who to help or who not to and processthe application and paperwork. So then I thought, that's an opportunity tosolve that gap. I've worked in tech and fintech a bit and I could see how usingtechnology could improve the lives of people. If could sort of bring everythinginto one place, make it easier for individuals to find and apply for support,but also for organizations to save time so they're not spending lots of time onadmin and trying to do the paperwork, but actually helping as many people asthey can.

10:53
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously, like that work you've done there has gone into help so manypeople and it has to start somewhere. Right. So you've got this idea, you cansee its problem, you know you want to solve it and you've. So far you've workedin like different organizations at different tech companies. Once you had theidea, what was the first step you took to try and make that reality?

11:12
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, I think when I left Railsbank, I sort of knew the problem a little bit.What actually happened is one of the charities that I had met reached out, sortof saying, we want to do a little project, we want to understand how we canimprove our application process. So I sort of did that as a bit of anindividual consulting piece to understand problem a little bit better andprovide some solutions. I think then the next step was looking at if there'ssomething we can build to solve this problem, then I think the challenge thatoften you face as startup is there are so many problems you could solve,There's a huge vision you want to build towards and as you say, just me at thetime. So start thinking about what do I need to actually make it a reality.

11:59
Ren Yi Hooi
So what's the first bit of product that I could build to sort of validate theidea and sort of get a first customer? And who do I need on the team to be ableto make that happen? I'm not an engineer, so I can't build myself. I thinknowadays there are more sort of local tools available. But a few years agowasn't so easy. I applied for an Innovate UK grant. I was quite lucky. Therewere a few people that were just helping me out during COVID and go on furloughhad time. So we managed to secure an Innovate UK grant that just gave us alittle bit of funding, enough to build out our mvp, which was basically a bitof tech that uses open banking to help support the application process.

12:44
Ren Yi Hooi
So people could apply, charities could use open banking, which they didn'tnecessarily know about, to get financial details of someone and then processthat more quickly than sort of gathering reams of bank statements andpaperwork.

12:58
Amardeep Parmar
So mentioned about the grant as well, that kickstarting and being able to helpyou to get the people you needed to start making this reality.

13:05
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah.

13:05
Amardeep Parmar
I think a lot of people in this business, they don't say, think about grants asmuch as they should and how did you one know about the grants? But also thenthink about, okay, how do I process this, which is the right grant for me? Howdid you go through that process to try and get that capital?

13:20
Ren Yi Hooi
It's a good question. I feel like I don't really remember how I found out aboutit. I do think I was quite lucky in the sense that Innovate UK had these grantsthat came out during COVID so those were outside of their usual cycle, but Ithink they were announced and I came across them and just thought, oh, thislooks interesting, we might as well give it a try. I didn't really sort of gothrough the research of saying, what are all the grants out there that we couldapply to? So it's a little bit more organic in that way. But I do think itwould be worth if someone is starting out a business, taking a look at whatgrants are available. I think there's someone, Esme Verity, that has a databaseof grants that could be worth.

14:03
Ren Yi Hooi
Worth checking out because those are useful. And I think grants are helpful ata point where you don't have any traction because then you're not trying topitch to an investor saying, I've got this great idea, but nothing yet to makeit a reality.

14:20
Amardeep Parmar
Yes, that's considered capital by Esme Verity, et cetera. Really good. And Ithink even now, so people who are probably watching this and people who aredoing different things like looking at businesses, they probably may startgetting ads for this stuff as well. And sometimes it's a case of, like yousaid, you sort in your feed or something like that, is that you just have toactually go follow through and take the ad. Right. So you had a potential. Youcould have just skimmed over, like, oh, there's no point in me applying. Right.

14:45
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah.

14:46
Amardeep Parmar
But it's just that, that like that decision to actually know, I can do this,let me try. Makes all the difference. Right. And then obviously, because youdid that then got you the money, but there'll be many other people who wouldhave just scrolled past it.

14:58
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, it's quite easy. I think sometimes you look at the rates of acceptancefor Innovate UK and can get very disheartened, be like, well, there's no pointbecause they only take. I think it was like 2 or 3% of the last round ofapplications. But I think sometimes it is worth just giving things a trybecause you never know what comes out of them.

15:18
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously with the grant as well, you still have to be very scrappy at thebeginning. Right. To make sure you're getting the most you can out of thatmoney.

15:24
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah.

15:25
Amardeep Parmar
How did you think about that? Like, how are you thinking, okay, this is thebest way I can use the money just to get. Did you set yourself goals ormilestones or how. How did you think about that?

15:32
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, I think for Innovate UK, we did have to sort of put together a bit of aproject plan to say this is what we're going to do. But I think in the heart ofit was how do we get a product out as soon as possible and test it and getsomeone to buy it or actually to be fair, even get someone to buy it beforeyou. You have the whole thing built. So that's why we're quite focused with thescope of our initial mvp. We wanted to do a lot more when we started out, butwe just thought about sort of what is one bit that we can do that solves onepart of the problem that we know well and start from there and then after thatwe could sort of evolve it.

16:10
Ren Yi Hooi
Once we had gotten our first couple of customers on board, we could sort ofreach out to the wider sector, get feedback and then start building out therest of the product. But yeah, the first bit was very much we don't have a lotof money. Let's see, can we build something in like two, three months, get thatbeta version live and then test it and continue iterating.

16:32
Amardeep Parmar
Quick interruption to let you know a bit more about BAE HQ. Quick interruptionto let you know a bit more about bhq. We're the community for high growth Asianheritage entrepreneurs, operators and investors in the UK. You can join ustotally free@thebayhq.com join there. You can also get access to our freestartup fundamentals course by joining. You can also get access to our freestartup Fundamentals course by joining. Let's get back to the show. And yousaid you've done some work with some charities at this point as well. How areyou finding other customers or people to try this beta?

17:11
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, so yeah, we started with the first charity that I mentioned that had sortof come to me and were then introduced to the association of CharitableOrganizations. So they are a membership body for other charities that givegrants to individuals and they've been super helpful. I think it's great whenyou speak to sort of people who are connected in the industry because then theywere able to sort of invite us to a couple of the events. I think we got tospeak at one of the events a few months in and that even though it was verymuch conceptual, we've done this little beta and anyone want to test it andwe're thinking about building this thing next. It meant we had sort of anaudience of people that could be in our target market to speak with.

17:55
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously you've done similar work before at different paces, but gettingthat feedback from the customers. How is that process of. Because obviouslythere's iteration at early points and things like that. How did you find thatpart of like, are you building the right thing? And you said you streamlinedand you cut down what you're trying to build. How are you making thosedecisions?

18:15
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, I think it's one of the most important fun and messy parts of the processis not always clear cut because customers don't necessarily tell you exactlywhat they want. They tell you the problems and then you sort of figure out howto shape that into a solution that solves those problems. And I think it wassort of being open, talking to as many people as possible and like using thoseinsights to help shape our product that was important. We got a bit morestructured along the way. So when we first started it was just sort of casualconversations. And then as were sort of building the next iteration of ourproduct, which is the lightningreach portal as you see it today, in a way, thenwe ran a bit more of a human centered design process.

19:03
Ren Yi Hooi
So we got a group of our potential customers involved in different parts of thejourney, from sort of talking to them about their problems to actually gettingthem in workshops, showing them well, going through the ideation processtogether so that we could sort of prioritize some of these ideas and thenshowing prototypes and sort of like refining it based on their feedback beforewe had a beta version that they could test. So we sort of went step by step andI guess brought them along the journey first, which maybe is quite unique.Often charities sort of get a finished product at the end saying, do you wantto to buy this? To buy this?

19:50
Amardeep Parmar
So you mentioned we there a few times. Right. And you said how you started offas just you.

19:54
Ren Yi Hooi
How did that team grow and how did you decide who's the next hire and how togrow that team out?

19:55
Amardeep Parmar
How did that team Grow and how did you decide who's the next hire and how togrow that team out?

20:00
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, yeah. We're now a team of 14, which kind of blows my mind. It's stillsmall, but it is a lot more than we started. So the first couple of hires, onewas one of our volunteers that sort of became our first employee and I had acouple of other friends of friends that came in. So I think how I thought aboutmy early hires was sort of first having someone that could build the product.I'm not technical, I can't actually code, so definitely really important. Buki,the person I mentioned joined us our first operations manager because again, Idon't think operations is my strength.

20:34
Ren Yi Hooi
So getting someone that can come in and run things and processes quite early on. And Robi as well, the UX designer.  So it's the four of us tostart with and I think it was very much a question of what do we actually needto get off the ground and who's going to sort of complement the gaps that Ihave and do the things that I can't do or can't do well. So it's the four of usto start with and I think it was very much a question of what do we actuallyneed to get off the ground and who's going to sort of complement the gaps thatI have and do the things that I can't do or can't do well. And yeah, that'sprobably the rough approach as we've continued to scale getting more people in.

21:14
Ren Yi Hooi
I think we later on got a sales first sales hire, which is really helpful. Ithink it's helpful to do a founder let sales at the beginning because you needto understand the problem, you need to understand the customers. But Dave, whocame in about, gosh, a year and a half ago now has been also game changer inthe sense that he actually knows how to do sales well. He has a natural way oflike talking to customers and I think it sort of cascades because if you getmore customers then you need more people ops to like support them or customersuccess to onboard them and then you need more tech people to build and makesure you're keeping customers happy and sort of looking ahead.

21:55
Ren Yi Hooi
So it now becomes this balancing act, if they were in the middle of it now oflike being okay, who do you need to hire next? What's the biggest pain point?And oh, if we grow this part of the business, then what do we need to do withanother part of the team to sort of balance things out and make sure no one islike dying in the process.

22:12
Amardeep Parmar
And you've done it fully remote as well, right?

22:14
Ren Yi Hooi
Yes, because we started during COVID there was no point getting an office. AndI think the benefit has been we could hire people that came from anywhere inthe world. So most of us in the UK, but we also have people based in Lithuania,Barcelona, Georgia, Amsterdam, which is quite exciting. I think it's. Yeah, itis really nice to have that flexibility where you're not constrained by aspecific location. It also means you have to think about how to bring peopletogether, how to still create a strong enough culture when you're working fullyremoted. But I like it.

22:50
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously now you've been going for several years, you've done really well.What were you most proud of? What do you think the biggest wins have been forLightning Reach?

22:58
Ren Yi Hooi
I think it's really the impact on people that it's amazing to see, like we havesome of the numbers, like now we're just getting close to 200,000 people reachto our platform. We've facilitated about £20 million in funding out toindividuals that need it. So it's quite nice to see we've reached a certainscale. But I think what also really strikes me is when I talk to real people,hear their stories of how they've been able to use lightningreach, maybe find agrant or find support they never heard of, and that then enabled them to paytheir rent, get the bills. I remember there was one of our early users, Luke,he came and actually spoke at our event and that was amazing to hear firsthandfrom him.

23:41
Ren Yi Hooi
I remember there was one of our early users, Luke, he came and actually spokeat our event and that was amazing to hear firsthand from him. He was sort of sotalking about how he had been street homeless with a pregnant wife and didn'tknow what to do when he got signposted to Lightning Reach, signed up and gothousing and support from the Royal British Legion as well as the RAF BenevolentFund. And that was sort of life changing, a sense that he went from streethomeless to having a house that he could bring up his new baby in and he lateron got a job with a council. And I think it just shows how much of a differenceit can make to someone to get the right amount of help they need at the righttime.

24:27
Amardeep Parmar
Now it's amazing to hear. And one thing that is too, because you mentioned howyou started a very lean in terms of what you talked to the product and what youjust mentioned there, we've been able to do in terms of help you get housingand all these different things. Who do you serve today? How has the productiterated over time?

24:43
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, we brought it up a bit so that I guess we work with a wider range ofsectors. Now we started working just with charities that give grants toindividual, whom we continue to work with today. But what we've realized isit's a cross sector problem and individuals need to get help from a range ofplaces. They're the charity or their local council or their utility provider.So we now work across these sectors of local authorities, housing associations,utilities, alongside the charities. And we have about 2,500 support schemes onour portal that individuals can access, which is a bit broader and holistic,more holistic than what we started out with, I think.

25:27
Ren Yi Hooi
We've also been building out the product functionality so that people don'tsort of only go through a small step in applying for support, but they can usethe Lightning Reach portal throughout their journey of finding what supportthey're eligible for, getting matched to that and then being able to apply forthe different support schemes directly. And we're sort of thinking, oh, workingon sort of the next step as well, which is getting some of that supportdirectly into the hands of the people.

25:55
Amardeep Parmar
Awesome. And obviously this journey is like the amount of people being able toimpact all these things are amazing. And along that journey, what do you thinkthe biggest lessons have been? If someone's listening to this right now islike, I want to be like you. What are some of the lessons you can maybe sharewith them so that they can shortcut some of that hard times you must have hadalong the way?

26:14
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, I think one learning is sort of expect the ups and downs. I don't think Iexpected as many ups and downs and gray areas as when I started the journey. Ithought it would be a bit black and white. You start something, you test, seeif it works, and if it doesn't work, then, all right, it's fine, go and dosomething else. If it works great, it would just sort of take off. But hadn'trealized how much of a messy middle there is and how many constant ups anddownstairs. And I think it's quite difficult sometimes to like deal with thatmentally and emotionally. So probably one lesson is just knowing that, to justkeep talking to customers, listening to their needs, because that's been socritical to how we've been able to build our product and end up supportingcustomers.

27:03
Ren Yi Hooi
So I just say remember to like, be brave and go out and talk to customers, showthem something, even if it's not perfect. So I just say remember to like, bebrave and go out and Talk to customers, show them something, even if it's notperfect.

27:25
Amardeep Parmar
With those ups and downs, have you dealt with them yourself? Have you used anytechniques or any. Anything that you've done that has been able to help you tokeep going and keep pushing forwards?

27:35
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, it's a good question. Probably still learning and figuring that out. Tobe honest, I think there are sort of moments of burnout or moments of thingshappening in your personal life, which also then affects the business alongwith the business ups and downs. I think one of the learnings has been tocelebrate the wins. I tend to go quite hard on myself and I think that's hardfor the team too. If I forget to celebrate the wins when everyone's workingreally hard, then it means the ups aren't celebrated as much as they should,and that means doubts are harder. So that's something I'm trying to be muchmore mindful of, I think. Secondly, also having a bit of a network of otherpeople that you can talk to, founders, advisors, when things go wrong so thatyou're reminded it's not just you.

28:24
Ren Yi Hooi
Things like that happen all the time and you can sort of get back up from thelows. That's also been really helpful. And I think thirdly, just sort of beingable to take time out and step back sort of first. When I first started, thefirst year was like very much almost 24 7, like thinking about business all thetime and going very hard. And that's a fun and that. But I'm lucky now to havea team in place and be in a position where I can sort of take a step back, goon holidays and come back and, you know, things are still running on that partas well.

28:58
Amardeep Parmar
As you mentioned, you were able to now take holidays and to have those thingsin place. How are you able to get that transition right? Because obviously atsome point you were like, I can't go on holiday. But what enabled you to nowfeel comfortable? Like, yes, I can do this.

29:12
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, I think just really having a great team in place, I'm so grateful forthem. So, for example, my coo, she does like, honestly, much more than I do forthe business at this point. So I think we have a bit of a leadership team inplace across sort of operations, technical and commercial, which means thateach of these areas actually has an owner and I'm in a sort of privilegedposition of being able to dip in and out rather than having to own any of themspecifically and sort of just step into, help out or be a sounding board forsome of them.

29:29
Ren Yi Hooi
So I think we have a bit of a leadership team in place across sort ofoperations, technical and commercial, which means that each of these areasactually has an owner and I'm in a sort of privileged position of being able todip in and out rather than having to own any of them specifically and sort ofjust Step into, help out or be a sounding board for some of them. Which is whyyou took the grant right at the beginning from Innovate UK.

30:03
Amardeep Parmar
Mitch, is why you took the grant right at the beginning from Innovate UK. Howhas the other funding journey been? Have you been mainly bootstrapped sincethen or have you been able to keep momentum?

30:12
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, we've had a hodgepodge, so we had a combination of grants and equityfunding and sort of other types of funding come in. So I guess to summarize, westarted with the Innovate UK grant, we then applied for and got into thetechstars accelerator program, which gave us our sort of next tranche offunding. And we also got another grant from Nesta, which was in partnershipwith one of the charities that we started working with. We then raised andequity round, which was about a million pounds, and that had a combination ofimpact investors, so the likes of Joseph Roundtree Foundation, Barrow, CadburyTrust and Big Issue Invest, as well as a bunch of other angel investors. And Ithink that's a great group to have involved because they're all very missionaligned.

31:02
Ren Yi Hooi
They're sort of investors that want to see the returns, but they also want tosee the impact we're making. So, yeah, that was in the sort of like thirdquarter of 2023, which is the last round we raised. We're lucky enough to becash positive in the last financial year, which means that for now we don't.Thank you. We'll see how it goes, because we're growing our team. But, yeah, itmeans that we haven't had to raise again since then. But it was definitelyhard, like trying to get all these bits of funding in along the way, especiallythe million raised in 2023.

31:36
Amardeep Parmar
I think especially in the social impact space, it can be quite difficultbecause one hand you've got the mission, what you want to achieve, but thenalso in order to get the funding, you need to make sure that you're not justsaying, give us some money because we're going to do good. It's got to be,we're going to make you money too. And how are you able to get that messageacross to bring those investors on board?

31:54
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, I think that's a common misconception. And also because we have awebsite, lightningreach.org, so a lot of times we talk to investors and they'llsay, are you just a charity? Or assume that we are a charity. So we realizequite early on that we do have to be clear about the messaging, could probablyhave even done that even better along the way. But I think it was being clearabout how we make money, how we can be a sustainable business and how we canscale. Because our business model is we partner with organizations, we savethem time, we help them reach the right people and we help their clientsdiscover support. And actually that's a real business case for the partnersthat we work with to invest in a product like ours.

32:39
Ren Yi Hooi
So it's not about sort of charging lots of individuals that are struggling thecost to access the product, but having a B2B and business model. So when we'retalking to investors was making that clear that we have a business model thatis in place, is already generating revenue, and that we have a path to scalethat further. Because it's not just about saying we can sort of get to thatfirst million. It's sort of demonstrating that there is a path to growsignificantly beyond that as well.

33:11
Amardeep Parmar
So on that note there, what's the dream for this? Where do you hope someday thelightning reach will get to?

33:16
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, good question. I think ideally we want to be in a place where in the nextfew years we're helping millions of people access support, initially in the UK,but ideally globally as well in the longer term. And we are this platform thathelps them to get there end to end, from like finding support to actuallygetting it in their hands and doing that across all the different pathwaysthat, yeah, they could get help from, so that's the dream. And what we're doingnow.

33:54
Amardeep Parmar
So that's the dream and what we're doing now. So we're 250 episodes into thispodcast now. Right.

34:00
Ren Yi Hooi
So episodes.

34:02
Amardeep Parmar
And if you come back in. So we're saying 200 episodes later you can come back.And if were to play this back. Right. So if I say, when you're sitting herenext time, what would you love to have said that you're able to achieve in thenext two years?

34:14
Ren Yi Hooi
Ooh, good question. We'd love to be in a place where we have reached a millionpeople, we've grown our revenues significantly. So we're sort of multimillionin revenues and we are starting to look at other markets and we have a happyteam in place to deliver all that.

34:36
Amardeep Parmar
So thanks so much for sharing your story. We're going to get to a quick fivequestions now.

34:40
Ren Yi Hooi
Sure.

34:41
Amardeep Parmar
So first one is who do you think are free Asians in Britain doing incrediblework and you'd have to shout them out.

34:48
Ren Yi Hooi
I really liked Radha Vyas from one of your podcasts. I really liked Radha Vyas from one of your podcasts. I think her story of. I haven't met her, but herstory of how she sort of reached 20 million revenues and then went down to zeroand managed to start all over again is incredibly inspiring. Second, AshishGoyal. He is the first blind trader on Wall street and the first Whartonstudent that was actually blind. I met him as an alumni a while ago and I thinkit's incredible what he's managed to achieve given the challenges he's had toovercome. And Jenny Chong, who's one of my advisors and investors, just anincredible person. And Jenny Chung, who's one of my advisors and investors,just an incredible person.

35:32
Ren Yi Hooi
She knows data, she knows AI, she helps and supports startups, but she also hasthis brilliant portfolio career where she's helping with different charitiesand arts and sciences and so, yeah, always inspired by her.

35:48
Amardeep Parmar
Awesome. And then if you want to find out more about you and what you'rebuilding, where do they go to?

35:52
Ren Yi Hooi
They can go to lightningreach.org it's L I G H T N I N G. I realize that a lotof people actually spell Lightning reach wrongly, so we get all typos. Half theadvice we get are like lightening or lighting or some of the variations.

36:12
Amardeep Parmar
So I just need to just buy the other domains.

36:15
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, yeah. We should probably buy a few. Few more actually. We've also gotlightningreach.com so you will get directed to that if you put inlightningreach.com but yeah, like if you want to find out more, get in touchwith us then. Always happy to chat. Especially if you're sort of working in thespace of helping people access financial support or you're working in any ofthese sectors that help people in some way. We're always up for partnershipsand collaboration.

36:44
Amardeep Parmar
So if people listening now can help you, is that the best way or is there anyother way they can help?

36:48
Ren Yi Hooi
Yeah, I think if there's sort of anything interesting in terms of partnershipsthat you'd like to discuss, feel free to reach out to our website. They canalso help by following us on LinkedIn. It's always sort of nice to grow theaudience and story, so if there's something else that comes up, then we can bein touch.

37:11
Amardeep Parmar
So thanks so much for coming on. Any final words?

37:13
Ren Yi Hooi
No, not that I can think of, but thank you so much for having me.

37:18
Amardeep Parmar
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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