5 Million Users After Sleeping on Cofounders Floor w/ Neil Tanna | Howbout

‍00:00
Neil Tanna
We're at 5 million users now and those 5 million users have added 100 million pieces of content. 

00:06
Amardeep Parmar
That's Neil Tanner, co founder and CEO of How about the social media app. He's got a beautiful journey that started with heartbreak. 

00:13
Neil Tanna
Sadly it was a terminal diagnosis and I spoke for about the idea I'd had and thankfully she was nothing but supportive. She told me to go for it so it was kind of my way to cope as well. 

00:23
Amardeep Parmar
His idea is in a classically difficult area. His innovation and grit was remarkable. 

00:29
Neil Tanna
We got our first 1000 CFOs to join the platform and the network effects took off from there. So we just, we got over the cold platform by Getting the first 1000 CFOs to find out about it and we coined it the cfo, the Chief Friendship Officer. But we're going to reply to every comment as just Neil. 40,000 replies from myself and go find a date with the flying greet button. 

00:50
Amardeep Parmar
They smash through the cold start problem and the network effect is a full flywheel. He's also a great boss. 

00:55
Neil Tanna
You have to have four out of five DWA Atima 17 now, right? We've only ever lost one person. We've had people say we're four and five year anniversaries with us. 

01:03
Amardeep Parmar
They just raised their series A and there's new something that big plans are coming. 

01:06
Neil Tanna
5 million today. We're going to be at 50 million within two years, if not more. So when I was growing up it was just all about being a doctor. My granddad always wanted to be one, he couldn't. My mom wants to be one, she couldn't for various reasons. And so the kind of expectation of me growing up was that I was going to become a doctor. I don't know if I ever wanted to become a doctor, but that was kind of like the story that was brought up. And then I realised very quickly that I didn't want to be and I actually went on to study law at university. To be honest, I don't know if a career in law was ever one that I really saw myself doing. 

01:40
Neil Tanna
I funnily enough when I was growing up I kind of always was an ideas guy and I knew I kind of wanted to work in tech but when I graduated I got a training contract, I moved into corporate law. It hit me really fast that actually I wanted to be the guy who I was ultimately just advising. I wanted to be the guy who was building and that's where the idea came very quickly when I started my career in law. What was that idea, the initial idea you had. 

02:04
Amardeep Parmar
The initial idea you had right at the beginning? 

02:06
Neil Tanna
So fundamentally, it came that when I suddenly became an adult, right, I was working as a lawyer, I was only about six months in, but it hit me really fast that all of a sudden I was really busy all the time and my friendships were fizzling out. And what I mean by that is, and we all know it, right, your friendships feel like they go on pause when you stop chatting every day. So at university, you can literally wake up every morning, know that your friends are within 10 minutes of you and you've got nothing to do with your day, apart from maybe the occasional lecture. And otherwise you can just hang out with your. With your mates, right? So time is something that you're just not worried about. Contrast that to when you're at school. 

02:42
Neil Tanna
Time is also something that isn't your responsibility, right? Your parents are in charge of your time or the school is in charge of your time. But then as soon as I became a lawyer, as soon as I became an adult, I could be doing anything. It hit me really fast that, oh, I'm in charge of my time. I have to wake up every day and I've got work to go to, I've got commuting, I've got personal relationships, I've got hobbies. And this new thing I realised I need as an adult called downtime. And it hit me really fast, okay, this meant that I just wasn't hanging out with my friends and just my friendships are fizzling, right? And what was meant to connect me with them was social media. 

03:13
Neil Tanna
But social media wasn't doing that for me anymore, because even five years ago, when the idea came, it was actually just turning more and more into entertainment channels. It wasn't so much video like it is today, it was all about memes and ads and brands. But life in the office time was very different because time was multiplayer in the office, right? So in the office, it's really easy to schedule, it's really easy to see when colleagues are free, it's really easy to plan meetings because time has been sold, it's been made multiplayer. But outside of the office, time was still single player. So calendars were all boring, dry, single player focused just on me. Group chat was apparently the solution for keeping me up with friends. 

03:52
Neil Tanna
We all know the pain of just like constantly trying to go back and forth with your friends, constantly needing new triggers to message. And then you do this classic thing was like, hey, we haven't met up in a while. Should we organise a beer? And then you go Back and forth, you realise you can't find a date that works and another three months passes. So I wanted a way to socialise the experience of time and make it a multiplayer experience, but outside the office. So that's what sort of where's where the idea came from. And I just, to be honest, I just sat on it for a few years. 

04:17
Amardeep Parmar
What then triggered you to be like this? I'm going to do it. 

04:20
Neil Tanna
Well, it was like, I, I, to qualify as a lawyer, there's years of exams, you then have to get a vacation scheme, training contract. There's a whole process, right. So when I had this idea six months into my career, I just kind of went with the flow. I thought, oh, it will happen one day. And then sadly, in 2019, my mum passed away and that was the wake up call I kind of needed to say, the hell am I doing with my life? Like, I liked my career, I definitely didn't love it. Money was good. 

04:47
Neil Tanna
But you realise very quickly into, okay, speaking to a lot of friends about it, when you're at university, you think it's all about the money, you think it's all about the career, you think, you know you're going to build up this amazing career and of course you're going to love it. And you realise very quickly that the money doesn't matter if you're really not enjoying what you're doing every day. You don't feel that sort of passion in what you're doing. And I, we knew my mum was going to pass away. Sadly. It was a terminal diagnosis and I spoke to her about the idea I'd had and thankfully she was nothing but supportive. She told me to go for it, so it was kind of my way to cope as well. 

05:18
Neil Tanna
My mum sadly passed in March 2019 and in April the business was incorporated and I just literally went straight into it and haven't looked back since. 

05:26
Amardeep Parmar
So obviously with your mum, right. So I think, you know, I had a swim experience, so BHQ started quite soon. My dad passed away and I want to dive into that more because sometimes you can have quite surface conversations, right, where, yeah, you know, okay, that's a motivation for you. But as I know, it's like it gets a lot more complicated than that. 

05:43
Neil Tanna
Right. 

05:43
Amardeep Parmar
Where the, when you're tying that relationship with. Okay, so I'm doing this to like, fulfil my mom's legacy or like, make sure that I'm doing a proud. Yeah. That also then creates a pressure and it's like that Balance of that motivation versus pressure and what's the healthy level about it? And like, what would you say your relationship is there with. 

06:00
Neil Tanna
Yeah, it's a brilliant point. So I, I definitely have, and I think a lot of Asian kids would feel the same way that we're talking about right now. Like, there was definitely an expectation. I really want to make my parents proud. Like, the amount of sacrifices my parents made for me growing up, my education is just a small part of that. So many elements of my life where, like, the school they could get us into, the sacrifices they made with extracurricular activities that they weren't able to have when they were growing up, the opportunities that they offered us. So throughout my life, I kind of, my parents never sort of made it clear to me the sacrifice they make, but you could just see, you know, you can see what they're, how much they were doing. And so I've always sort of carried. 

06:39
Neil Tanna
I, I, it's not a burden, but it can sometimes feel like a burden. 

06:42
Amardeep Parmar
It's like a responsibility. 

06:43
Neil Tanna
Responsibility is a great word. I feel the responsibility of, like, making all the sacrifices they made worth it. But the way that even as an adult now and in my early 30s, I still, it still feels as like I want to make my parents proud. Right. I want my dad to hear what I'm doing, and my mum, and I'm sure if she's keeping an eye on me, to hear what I mean would be like, that's my son. And, you know, and all the sacrifices were worth it. But also, fortunately or unfortunately, it goes beyond that. I want people to know that, you know, when they hear of things that I'm doing, they're like that sculpt Natana's son, you know, and that's the things he's doing now. So is it motivating hugely? Is it sometimes. Does it get a bit too much? Yeah, absolutely. 

07:27
Neil Tanna
And it, so you have to try and find that balance. We all have our motivators. Right. For me, it's actually nothing to do about funds or money or income or anything like that now. It's purely just constantly striving to make myself a better version of myself tomorrow than I was today. The difficulty with that is where do you complete it? When, when do you get to a point where you're like, okay, my parents are proud enough now. I am, I am a good enough version of myself, and maybe I'll never feel like that. I don't know. It's, it's something I'm constantly battling with. It's the hard thing with having a level of responsibility that you never can achieve or succeed, that when, if you ever figure it out, you know, you let me know. 

08:05
Amardeep Parmar
I think your copy is heading you. Right, so one interesting thing. So when my dad was in hospital, I told him about the idea for bhq. 

08:11
Neil Tanna
Yeah, yeah. 

08:12
Amardeep Parmar
So like with my dad, it wasn't terminal. So he. We thought he was going to come out and then he didn't come out. But the idea meant to be part of it. Right. And then for me, like, what the idea was three years ago is very different to what it is today. But it is that element of like, he knew about it. Did you tell your mom about the idea? Was she like, was she encouraging you to do this? And then now you feel like you've. How does that relationship. 

08:33
Neil Tanna
That was it, man. So back then, like, with all products, I. We're five years into our journey. The product is so different back then. I mean, five years is the journey. But I told her of the idea at that time, but I still had the idea three years earlier than that. So the idea was an idea in your mind and what you end up actually building is entirely different things. But yeah, I literally. She wasn't totally lucid all the time, so I. It wasn't like I was able to get too deep, but I was able to just basically fundamentally tell her that, mum, I'm thinking of leaving this stable career I built for myself and wanting to follow an idea I have and wanted to build my own business. 

09:11
Neil Tanna
And I gave her some of the sort of high level, the point of it, but it was fundamentally, I just wanted to talk to her about the fact that I was going to take this massive risk in my life, in my career. So nothing was sported. Almost like I, I was. I surprised that she was sported. Yes and no. Almost. It was like on the one hand, I'm like, it's my. Like, it's your mum, right? Like, she wants what mum doesn't want their kid to be happy or follow their dream. But on the other hand, I'm like, mum, this wasn't part of the plan is surely what you're thinking. Like, you know, it's like, okay, you work, you become a doctor. A lawyer is another great career. 

09:46
Neil Tanna
You like, you know, it's really hard to get a training contract and to qualify as a lawyer in this country because there's so many people going for so few jobs and I was one of the lucky Few who managed it and now I want to give that up. So I don't know what the reaction I was expecting, but Nash was. Nothing was supportive. 

10:02
Amardeep Parmar
What about the people around you as well? Because where they're like, okay, because his mom passed away, he's now having a psychotic break and is ditching his career and he's throwing all away. How is that kind of relationship too? Because I'd already quit my job by the time I had boss, so I was kind of pivoting a little bit, but I'd already quit my job. 

10:18
Neil Tanna
It's likely we're there. That's. That's exactly what happened. Right. So thankfully, my dad and sister were nothing but supportive. My dad's always known that I've had an entrepreneurial side. So I think for. And he, my dad himself set up his own business. So I think for my dad, the way he was looking at it is like, look, you've had this idea, you're passionate about it, go for it. I'm going to be nothing but sported. If it doesn't work, you'll still have, you know, you'll still have a career that you could go back into. My sister was nothing, got supported, but it was the wider family. I don't want to say they weren't supported. Everyone was supported. But there were definitely questions after, like, hey, are you sure you're not doing this a bit too quick? Your mum's just passed away. You're. 

10:56
Neil Tanna
You're doing you two weeks after you're leaving your job. Like, this could be like a, like emotive reaction. Like, so they're. They were being supported in a concerning way, like in a. Are you sure this, like, should you not sit on this for six months, a year? And then if you feel the same way. But I knew exactly what I needed to do. And so, like, they were. They were still supportive in a more like, are you sure this is the right thing? Way. 

11:19
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously, okay, you decided to all into it now, right? 

11:21
Neil Tanna
Yeah. 

11:21
Amardeep Parmar
What is this actual first step to get this going? You've got the full motivation now. You're doing this because you've got all of this passion behind it, but you actually need to make it reality. 

11:30
Neil Tanna
Yeah. So the first couple of years were the best and the hardest because you have no idea what's going to come. So you're like, it was the naivety that really kept us motivated because you just have no idea what you've been doing. But the naivety is also really difficult because you have no idea what's coming so it's definitely a double edged sword. But at the beginning were naive to the point that we thought just would by we. I have two co founders myself, Jake and Duncan, went to university together. So I started as a corporate lawyer, Jake was an investment banker, Duncan a spacecraft engineer. So very different to each other. We all left good careers and we thought like good backgrounds. Granted nothing in tech, let alone consumer and an idea we'll be able to raise some funding, none literally. 

12:22
Neil Tanna
That was one of the points where were so naive. We really not only had to prove out the idea, we had to prove ourselves as founders. Right? Because if you're a tech investor or even angel investor, you're like what does a lawyer or investment banker know about building a whole audience in consumer social right? Which is a very valid question. So in the early days we did what every first time founders should do, right? And I literally say this to everyone who's asking, who's since asked me for advice about how we started. You have to read every book under The sun on 0 to 1 Cold Start problem Network Effects, if you're building in consumer social, building in other platforms that some of these will still be applicable but I'm sure they'll be better. But you can learn a huge amount. 

13:06
Neil Tanna
It's always best to learn in practise, but if you can't learn in practise or you want to speed up that process, learn in theory. We read every book that was applicable. And the other thing is we surrounded ourselves with advisors who later became investors who we could just learn from. So we had early advisors from Deliveroo, Snapchat, Facebook, Fintechs, in the London tech scene. And we just, we're just sponges. We just learned a huge amount of them, made mistakes that made mistakes in front of them that they could then help us learn from quickly. And the other thing is we just had to start building. So were in the fortunate. I always say this openly, were in the fortunate position because we came from careers where we could build up savings, right? 

13:51
Neil Tanna
And it was those savings that we lived off for the next nine months. So don't get me wrong, we're not going out to restaurants, we're eating pot noodles. But were still fortunate enough that were able to just focus on the business without having to worry about okay, well how, what are we going to do to pay a mortgage? We didn't have any of that at that time. We were in our early 20s or mid 20s. So instead we just slept on Duncan's floor. Why his floor? Because he's the engineer, he had the best tech setups. We slept on his floor, we just worked on his kitchen table. But for six months we just built the MVP, the B1. Constantly thinking that were only a month away. And then each time when you get feedback and like, we need to make it better. 

14:30
Neil Tanna
And then when we got to the point that were happy with our V1, we launched it. And at that point you have the cold start problem. Right. And looking back on it, we should have launched it earlier. Like, I came to this point where it's like every you constantly thought you can make it better, you never get to the point where it's going to be good enough for launch, but you have to launch it because you have to figure out how you're going to get over the cold start problem and how you're going to. What users are going to actually think. Because before that you're just getting your friends and family to give you feedback, but you need just random people who've never heard of your product, never heard of you, and what did they think of it? 

15:01
Neil Tanna
Thankfully, the first couple of months we'd really put in place a good foundation for that and then that's how we got the flywheel going and thankfully it's just grown since then. 

15:10
Amardeep Parmar
Hello, Quick interruption to let you know a bit more about Bay hq. We're the community for high growth Asian heritage entrepreneurs, operators and investors in the UK. You can join us totally free@thebayhq.com join there. You'll get our CEO structure in your inbox every week, which is content, events and opportunities. You can also get access to a free startup fundamentals course by joining. Let's get back to the show. You mentioned there about the books as well. Right, yeah. It's one of the things that always shocks me is just how many founders will come to me and ask me questions like, have you googled this? Have you like. Yeah, yeah, it's like ChatGPT. It's AI. It's always like at this point and I think one of the things like we've got movies, books here, right. It's like Unity. Yes. Practise. 

15:58
Amardeep Parmar
But it's like some of the questions you're asking random strangers. 

16:01
Neil Tanna
Yeah. 

16:01
Amardeep Parmar
You could probably just figure this out or get a good knowledge enough to then ask more advanced questions. 

16:06
Neil Tanna
Yeah. 

16:07
Amardeep Parmar
And listen, when you're asking questions, you're always asking questions that are based on some kind of Theoretical knowledge. And then how do you apply it to your particular situation? Yeah. Whereas if it's just like, oh, tell me what this is. 

16:16
Neil Tanna
Yeah. 

16:16
Amardeep Parmar
And so I'm not a Google. Right? Yeah, yeah. And I think when you can do that level resourcefulness, you can talk about stuff like the cold start problem and know what it is. 

16:23
Neil Tanna
Yeah. 

16:23
Amardeep Parmar
Then it makes such a difference when you're talking to potential advisors because they're. 

16:27
Neil Tanna
Going to respect you there. 

16:28
Amardeep Parmar
Because then, okay, this person's doing some work, they know some stuff, they're hungry. Whereas if you expect everybody to tell you what to do. I totally agree. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's what shoots many early stage founders in the foot because they're like, oh, nobody's helping you need to help you. 

16:41
Neil Tanna
That way were able to use our advisors in the early days is we would understand principles and get their take on how to apply them in the best way, but we didn't need them to explain the principles to us. That's what books can educate you on. Books can teach you the principles and the different mechanisms of how you can apply them. But the best thing an advisor can do is with their experience, they can say, okay, this is the best way to apply that to your business because that's the thing where experience really does help. But if I'm going to an advisor and saying, hey, what are network effects? You're not going to get the same response on that because everyone is short of time. 

17:18
Neil Tanna
Whereas if I say, hey, I understand what network effects are, I understand there are these ways we can apply them, we're thinking of applying it in this way to get over this problem. What do you think about that? We're going to have a very good conversation. 

17:29
Amardeep Parmar
And we talked about earlier as well. Right. How with the idea of building something as social. Yeah. It's like very consumer based. And then the challenge is always, like you said, with the cold start problem, network effects, like, what makes you stand out? Right. And how are you going to make people actually use this app when everybody. 

17:44
Neil Tanna
Has an idea about, oh, we're going to get people associated, you're going to. 

17:46
Amardeep Parmar
Solve the loneliness problem. Right. But you've actually been able to scale and grow that. 

17:49
Neil Tanna
Yeah. 

17:49
Amardeep Parmar
What do you think you did better than other people did at that stage? 

17:52
Neil Tanna
So it's a really good question because. And this, thankfully we put a lot of time into only because we knew that. I mean, every single day, two and a half thousand apps get released every day. So how do we cut to the noise with that? And I think we took it so seriously because, and I mean this respectfully to ourselves, were nobodies, right? We didn't have an audience. We're not influencers. We. We probably have a combined less than 1,000 followers on Instagram. I wouldn't really have a whole network to launch it to. So we have to find that network. And what theoretical reading did is we have to figure out who our niche is, right? Because if you go after everybody, you go after nobody. 

18:31
Neil Tanna
So we have to figure out, right, this app and it's the dangers of social technically could be for everyone. How do you, how do you trigger that network? Who is the first person, and we coined it someone who would now like someone called the cfo, the Chief Friendship Officer. Because we said, and we figured out that every single friendship group has a planner or an organised type, right? It's usually a she, not always. 

18:55
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah. 

18:56
Neil Tanna
And guys are generally useless. But if, like, if you, and if you think of any friendship guru, it doesn't matter if it's your family, your friends, your work colleagues, your sports team, there's always the planner, the person who gets that group together. But if. Just because you're not the CFO in one group doesn't mean that you're not in another group, right? Personas always change. So we knew that if we could get the cfo, she usually would bring in a couple of friends. At least one of those friends should be a CFO in another group and the network should continue. So we don't need to build for the friends or the group, we need to build for the cfo, because we're making at the beginning, we're making their life a lot easier because we're going to make the first problem, we focus on the scheduling. 

19:39
Neil Tanna
We're going to make their life easier to schedule, to see when all the group are free to hang out. Right? So what we did is we had to figure out where the CFO was going to be and we just did a number of growth hacks to really understand who the CFO was. Bearing in mind at this time, we didn't have budgets to spend on marketing. And it's not like you can just put paid ads at CFOs. So five years ago, it was all about Facebook and Instagram memes, right? And we saw a meme that we then worked with meme pages to do more and more of, because meme pages fundamentally want to go viral themselves. So we showed them ones that go viral and it was all around the problem that were trying to solve. Right. So the meme said something. 

20:18
Neil Tanna
It was different variations of. Wouldn't it be amazing if there was an app that could instant. That could sync your schedules and instantly show you when you're all free. And the awesome thing was is it would get flooded with comments, tens of thousands of comments of friends tagging the CFO or the CFO tagging the friend. So what we had created is the place where the CFOs were now going. So we knew the. Where the CFOs were. The next step was how do you convert them? Right. We realised early and thankfully this learning is just continued that nobody trusts the brand that they aren't already familiar. But no one trusts a new brand. Right. Especially that's why everyone checks reviews. But new brand, there aren't reviews. So. But everybody trusts a stranger. 

21:06
Neil Tanna
It's a fascinating phenomenon where if you follow, if you look at a TikTok and this is the latest trend or die or anything, it doesn't matter if you. This person's got no credibility. You're just like, okay, look, yeah, there must be poo. So were like, we've got all this here, but we're going to reply to every comment as Neil, not as Neil, co founder of how about or as how about the business, but just Neil friendly guy Neil, who replied to every comment saying, hey, there's an app that does this. You should check it out. It's called how about if anyone ever opened all the comment. But thankfully all the comment replies were nested. But if you ever open one, you see 40,000 replies from myself and my co founder Jake, that's applying to each one. 

21:43
Neil Tanna
And that's how we got our first 1000 CFOs to join the platform. And the network effects took off from there. So we just, we got over the cold start point by Getting the first 1000 CFOs to find out about it and they did the rest. 

21:55
Amardeep Parmar
So you mentioned as well, like the first bit of funding you did right, was 100k. Yeah. And then you've now been able to I guess get the product out. Yeah. You've now got the CFO using it. When we sit now, like, okay, we've got like attraction. We really are solving the problem. Where did you start? Think, okay, now it's ready for the next stage. 

22:10
Neil Tanna
Yeah, really good. So we have always, in our early days were just focused on the uk. Right. We've never limited the app outside the UK because if it was going to grow organically, fantastic. So we've been were the top app and a top social app at one point in Hungary and I think the number three in Denmark. Now, those are not target markets for us, but it's awesome to see that this pain point and problem is felt then and how that is being found organically to solve it. But the point where we really knew, right, it's time for scale. We've reached that product market fit within the UK is when we decided after our seed round to really go after the States, right? 

22:49
Neil Tanna
Because when we started talking to US VCS at our seed ram, no one was interested because we didn't have a USer base, right? So they were like, UK is a small island. Okay? Yeah, you've got a lot of users in the uk, you've got random European countries where you're showing traction, but us, this is a whole new market, it might work, it might not work. So that's what we realised, right? If we really want to become something that's a serious business here, we need to stop focusing on the UK and really start focusing on the us. And so it was that point. Thankfully, now the US is our largest user base. But it was at that point we had to really shift gear and think like, we can't limit ourselves to cities in the uk, let alone the whole of the uk. 

23:29
Neil Tanna
We really have to go into the us. And that was a whole different plover because how do you trigger new networks in the United States, Right? And the best bit of advice that was given to us is when you are launching a new consumer business in the uk, in the us, don't go where everyone thinks they should go first. Don't go L A, San Francisco, New York, because everybody goes to those places, right? So it's ultra competitive for new brands to break through. Instead, we focus on big cosmopolitan areas that was still much larger than most cities in the uk. We're talking like Dallas, Chicago, Utah, other big cosmopolitan areas in the. In the United States, where were then able to trigger networks that way. 

24:08
Amardeep Parmar
And you mentioned the original product, right, was aimed at the schedulers. 

24:10
Neil Tanna
Yeah. How has it evolved since then? What does a product do today? So we started, interestingly as a social planning app, right? A place to make it really easy to make plans together. It's the idea that everyone on the street has had because we all used to use Facebook events. No one uses Facebook events anymore, right? So we're like, I want to be wicked to organise this, make this, like, event planning app. But we took it a step further because how about also instantly shows you when you're all free. But what we found fascinating is that for Gen Z and now incoming Gen Alpha, they were using how about not just as a planner together, but they were using how about as their go to calendar. And that's not what we built it for. 

24:47
Neil Tanna
Which was fascinating because were like, oh my God, everyone, they're not just putting in their social plans, they're putting in everything. And I mean everything. They're putting in what time they are going to sleep, what time their buses in the morning are what times they're working. Because so many of them work shifts, right? NHS hospitality, retail, leisure. So they love showing their friends when they were all free and busy, they started putting in everything. And so we're like, okay, this is really cool, we're evolving into this like Gen Z calendar. Then what we saw is actually what users are doing is there's some. There's a lot of utility in what we've built, right? Because if I see that you're busy next Saturday or free next Saturday, it makes it easier if I'm coordinating, meeting up with you, right? If I. 

25:26
Neil Tanna
If you're free and I'm free, let's hang out. But what a lot of them were doing now it's our majority of the use case is they are looking at your. Each other's candidates for interest. Because it's not just, hey, what are you doing next weekend? Let's hang out, it's what are you. What are you doing next weekend? Like, because I'm interested in you as a person, right? How we. We have built authenticity into the platform because on Instagram and social media it's all about the ratio, right? You want more people following you than you follow. It was Instagram that hasn't been. The authenticity is gone. Where it's nothing to do with your friends anymore, it's just about. It's so performative, right? Whereas on how about it's your close friends only. So the majority of user on how about have between five and 10 friends. 

26:05
Neil Tanna
It's your closest friends and family who you want to share time with. So what users are now doing is they are interested in what each other do with their time. It's exactly the same with social mapping, right? Social mapping took over find my friends life360 snap maps. There's some utility because I can see if you're nearby and we can hang out together. Most of it is just nosiness. It's interesting. What do you. Where do you go with your day? Time is exactly the same. What do you do with your day. And it's turned more social than utility now because users, their content is their time. And so people are triggering each other in making friendships closer. Because it's like, okay, let's say you've got a date next Saturday. You've decided that I'll be like, mate, good luck, you've got a date night. 

26:48
Neil Tanna
You haven't had a date in such a long time. On the day I'll get push ups, it's, you're on your date right now, I'll be like, I'll send you, I'll react with the love hearts. Be like, mate, all the best. Good luck. After the day, I'll ask you how it was. So your content, what you're doing with your time, is connecting us closer as friends. Because you're not going to, you're unlikely to just randomly message me on WhatsApp, being like, hey, I've got a date next Saturday. I'm like, okay. And then you're not going to message me at the date. Be like, I'm out of date right now. So, like, because users are adding content that they're already doing for themselves, they're not adding it to be performative. We're connecting friends just through how you're spending your time. 

27:22
Neil Tanna
And that's why it's working so well now. 

27:23
Amardeep Parmar
What feelings in there? You said it's about Gen Z and Gen Alpha, right? Yeah. Because I would say you're a millennial as well. 

27:28
Neil Tanna
Yeah, I'm on the cusp, let's say a millennial. 

27:32
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah, Because I guess when you're not. 

27:34
Neil Tanna
Part of that user, how are you. 

27:36
Amardeep Parmar
Understanding the behaviour and how did you. 

27:37
Neil Tanna
Go about maybe digging down and this is a really good question. So when I first had the idea I was building for myself, one of the hardest things you realise as a founder is when you stop building for yourself and you fight against it. You do fight against. You're like, no, I'm a Gen Z. I totally get 21 year olds. And then you're like, well, I'm early 30s. I really don't understand, like 21 year olds. It's at that point when we are like the people in our growth team who are fantastic people in our product and design team, fantastic. They're Gen Z. 

28:10
Neil Tanna
And because they understand the target user now more than I do, and don't get me wrong, I can be empathetic, but I really can't be subjectively, like, I can't really understand what triggers you have, how you feel every day because I'm not a 24 year old, 25 year old anymore. Right. When I was, when I had the idea. So yeah, so it's a real lesson that you can like become objectively aware but you never have that subjective understanding anymore. 

28:35
Amardeep Parmar
And you mentioned there as well about like how it's grown in the States and how much growth there is now. Can you give us some of those numbers of like. 

28:41
Neil Tanna
Yeah. 

28:41
Amardeep Parmar
Where you've got to. 

28:42
Neil Tanna
Yes, we're at 5 million users now. The majority of that are in the states. I think it's about 60% of that are in the States now. Which is, which is awesome. And those 5 million users have added 100 million pieces of content to the app. Which is, which is just fantastic. That's what we're really excited about. So it's growing fastest in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, randomly Canada and Australia. So Canada, Australia, surprising as less English speaking countries. South Africa is also doing well but Germany is one that continues to surprise us because we're. That the app not yet hasn't been language localised yet. It's a, it's a big problem we have to face now with like right, US is doing well, UK is doing well. If we want to move into continental Europe, you need to localise that now. 

29:22
Neil Tanna
AI will make this a lot easier, but it's still not as easy as just translating the entire code base for me because there are certain colloquializations that we have to make the app feel authentic. Right now this is a really bad, outdated example. But if we had Houston, we have a problem in our copy for a push notification if you're locked out of your account, that doesn't naturally translate into German. So you have to have the equivalent of a colloquialism in. Yeah, exactly. So there's a lot that we would have to go. But it's the next challenge of how do you unlock continental Europe. Language is the big thing. 

29:56
Amardeep Parmar
Did you ever think a few years ago that you'd be able to say like we've got 5 million people using the app? 

30:00
Neil Tanna
No, genuine. It's a great question because when you're starting, you have to be so naive that you're going to be the next best unicorn. But you also never. You also have that innate like. Because you're fighting fires every day that oh my God, are we ever going to reach her? But genuinely in the. The sad thing is about it we probably celebrated more. We had our, we had user number 5,000 and we had user number 5 million. Because you at the beginning, every new user is like such a massive milestone when you, the difference between 4 and 5 million feels less impressive than when you go from 4 to 5,000. So. And truthfully, no, you never probably think like, oh my God, we're gonna. Because this is what we try and remind ourselves as founders every day. Right. 

30:45
Neil Tanna
The where we've got the business today we would have only dreamt of when were back five years ago sleeping on Duncan's floor. Right. But you're too much in the, you're too often in the weeds. We're already thinking well how do we get to 10 million? And so as you and I were talking about like how do you pause, take a breath and look at what you've done? Because you're just otherwise just in the race to make constant further progress. 

31:08
Amardeep Parmar
And you said you're going to use AI potentially for the localization. Yeah. How's AI changed though your boot as well? 

31:14
Neil Tanna
So there's like the internal facing use of AI and there's like the product facing internally. It's, it's completely changed how we like we've been able to reduce costs and speed up things. So one example is like user success. When you have 5 million users, you have a huge number reaching out weekly. Ideas, new features they want, problems they're facing. Locked out my account, I want to change my password. Previously that was the founders you were like when were earlier. You're like responding to every message you got like founders on, on WhatsApp. It's AI that does that for us now. And AI is just, it's just phenomenal at what it can do and help you with the user success side of things. It's orders. 

31:54
Neil Tanna
It's also just made us better product people like you can, we're all data scientists now to an extent because you can take what the data is giving you and just like form better insights and judgement from it. But with the product is getting really interesting because we've got 100 million pieces of content have been added to our platforms. Right. Which is a huge amount of insight you can learn from to make the product better for users. Right. So like what is the top date night spot for users in Paris? Where do users in California like to go if it's raining outside? Like we know a lot about what users want to do with their time that we can learn from those insights and then make better like product decisions to learn to like apply to them. 

32:37
Neil Tanna
So AI is just, it's just been fast and it's just lowered the, the education bar for so many things. It's increased efficiency, it's just opening doors of things that you just didn't even think were possible with just the data set that you had before you went. 

32:50
Amardeep Parmar
To the user base as well. But how are you then being able to monetize issues? 

32:54
Neil Tanna
Yes. 

32:54
Amardeep Parmar
What was the. Is it been a smooth process there or has it been you've been have to go through different iterations? 

32:59
Neil Tanna
Yeah. There will only be one winner in this space. So this isn't like dating where you can have five dating apps on your phone and you've just flicked between them and they're all competitive but they can all work side by side. You only need one gen Z only need one calendar on their phone. Right. So it's an interesting like juggle between. Do you focus so hard on monetization because you've got 5 million users now and the great thing, the mobile, even more exciting for us than the number of users is just how engaged and retentive they are. We've got really high levels of engagement and retention. So you can monetize that. But if you monetize too fast, too early, you will slow down growth which allows a potential competitor to come in. And thankfully there aren't any who are close to us right now. 

33:46
Neil Tanna
But we don't want to ever get complacent now we will monetize through subscriptions. You're monetized through partnerships and there are insights that we can learn from. Do what user using that could make advertising smart, fast master then and actually make it useful for the users. It's not just ads that you don't care about. It's high intent. Now all of that we have validated but we have that we've turned off because it will impact growth. So growth for now is the number one focus of ours. And when we then get to the point where we like when we want to sort of start weighing up that seesaw the other way around, we'll then start with this, with the, maybe the subscriptions first. 

34:22
Neil Tanna
But the interesting thing with the subscriptions is as has been shown in sort of in the consumer landscape now we do not need 90 of users paying for them. Like 90 of users will have the same experience. But we're not going to take away features from anyone. It's how can you build additional Features that your power users want, they'll be willing to pay for. So it's going to make their experience even better. And the great thing about the product we built is that there is a lot of utility underlying the social use case, this utility that you want to make even better. So whether it's even more personalization, even more optionality, those additional options is how we can generate revenue from the people who already love the product and just want additional optionality on top of it. 

35:02
Neil Tanna
There's a constant trade off between those two things. 

35:05
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously now you've got some pretty big investors on board too. And how's that relationship been in terms of encouraging you to go for growth versus flexibility? And have there been any insights in the investors? 

35:14
Neil Tanna
Yeah, maybe you've challenged you that made. 

35:16
Amardeep Parmar
You think in a different way. 

35:17
Neil Tanna
Yeah, yeah. So there's a big difference here. I'm making a generalisation because there are things that go against this. But overall, the European venture capital system versus the UK venture capital system versus the United States ven capitalist system look at monetization and consumer apps very differently. So when were just starting out, I would say our seed round was harder than our Series A round was to close because we had no United States user base. So the US VCs weren't interested and all the UK and the Europeans wanted to speak about was how are you going to monetize this? Right. And this is when were in the hundreds of thousands of users. So this is where we start taking subscription seriously. 

35:54
Neil Tanna
We started talking to advertising platforms and we looked a lot in the insights for partnerships and we tested a bunch out because that's how were able to show that were taking monetization seriously, especially to the European VCs. UK it was a bit more like some really understood that, okay, why are we focusing so much Monetization, it's all about growth. No point in monetizing 100,000 people. How do we get this to a million people? But as soon as we close our Series A and like I said, we've brought on some phenomenal usbcs into our onto our cap table. The first board meeting said why are we focusing on mana said, why are we putting any time into this? It's all about growth. Because there's no point at that stage, there's no point in monetizing a few million users. 

36:37
Neil Tanna
We need to build a big user base of people who love how about and they are retentive. So you've got a high number of them using it six months later, 12 months later, we will then make money in a way that enhances the user experience with them. But there's no point if you haven't built a audience. So the US and the UK and the European ecosystem look at it very differently. 

36:58
Amardeep Parmar
It's just fascinating how much the benchmark exchange, like it's only a few million users. Yeah, yeah. 

37:03
Neil Tanna
Can you imagine saying that by this? Right, yeah, that's absolutely it. That's the thing. You just lose the value of the numbers. Now that we're at 5 million, it's how do we get to 10 million? Whereas when you're at, you know, when you are 80,000, 100,000 felt very far. 

37:17
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously in that journey as well, you're going to change quite significant yourself and your role and how it's evolved over time. How's that journey been? What do you feel like now? Where do you think you've grown the most? 

37:28
Neil Tanna
I take like company culture very seriously because I fundamentally believe that the people are the most important parts of our business. Right. So we have hired very well. But the reason I'm bringing that up is right at the beginning, I was one who did everything right. Like you as the three founders, you are the people who are doing growth, product design, user success, fundraising, investor relations, you do everything and that's where the magic is that you learn so much. But then as you get sort of the, the startup gets larger and larger, you realise actually you just become a bottleneck. If you do everything, there's no way you're doing everything. You can't be involved in everything. So then the three founders start splitting up. Okay, you're involved in this, you're involved in this. 

38:09
Neil Tanna
But as you get bigger and bigger, even still, you're like, okay. You then bring on people who are far smarter than you was like, okay, you know, you're going to do this to a much better degree than I ever could. And that might be, for example, one example right now is everything to do with our Tick Tock marketing. Right? Tick Tock is a huge part of our brand. Why? Because that's where Gen Z and Gen Alpha are. I used to, when we first started, be the face of our brand. Thankfully now I am no longer the face on our Tick Tock. We've got like, we've got, you know, the 60 of our users are women. The vast majority of our users are under 25. 

38:43
Neil Tanna
So now the face of our Tick Tock, a girl called T. Who's Brilliant, is under 25 and is a woman because she is the face of. She represents our users. Right. So things like that, you realise there are plenty of areas that you have to let go to. To succeed. Plenty of those areas you want to let go. So that's fine. 

38:59
Amardeep Parmar
And so you mentioned about how much growth has been the last couple years. Right. But what we're trying to do now so with this can be like this might be episode 250, so you might be the landmark episode, but we're saying is that 200 episodes time to get you back on again. So it'll be basically two years. What would you love to say that in those two years have been your. 

39:17
Neil Tanna
Biggest achievements, biggest achievement in the next couple of years? For me, I don't like it's. It's the number one goal that we'll work on now. So it'd be strange if I didn't say it. Which is continuing to grow within two years. I'd love if we're at 50 million users, but 5 million stay. We're going to get 50 million within two years, if not more. But that's like a base goal for us and to just continuing to scale our like culture as our team gets bigger. That's really important to me. So many places like. And don't get me wrong, we're a hard working culture. Our values are extraordinary. People working extraordinarily hard building something extraordinary. Right. So don't get me wrong, we work hard. But a big part of those values for me is something that we've coined DWE days. Waking up excited. 

40:02
Neil Tanna
You have to have four out of five DWE at how about which basically you get. You're excited to go to work if you are feeling valued, which is a huge part of it. And value not just is in how you're sort of paid or the options to get given, but just like are you listening to. Are you. Are you a valued team member? If you're challenged, if you're working on new things every day and if you fundamentally feel like you're making progress in your career. Right. And those things we've done a really good job at. We've got great retention with the people who were a team of 17 now, right. We've only ever lost one person. How do we. 

40:32
Neil Tanna
In two years, how do we continue scaling that in a way that is efficient but in a way that we've still kept to our core values and built a place where people enjoy working out and get the best out of them? That for me is success. 

40:43
Amardeep Parmar
The fact that you've only lost one person over the last year, like the time you've been going is incredible. Yeah. And I guess one of the things I would love to learn there as well is like, is one element of how you're treating them and retaining them. Yeah. It's also getting the right person in. 

40:54
Neil Tanna
The first place we take hiring really says that. Thankfully, we've not only had people celebrate their one to, we've had people celebrate their four and five year anniversaries with us. So Callum, our first employee, is still with us. Claudia and Aiden, next to, they're still with us and people enjoy working here. But it links back to these values. Like, we give people a lot of responsibility and we want them to like, the best way that you can get out of your talents and your team is ownership thinking. I really believe in that. Like, if you treat them like part owners and that isn't just like through giving your team share options, it's actually treating them as partners because then they're incentivized and they are expected to. How can I make my team, my department, my area, 1% better today than it was yesterday? 

41:38
Neil Tanna
Not treat them as just people who complete tasks and just ticking off a list that you set them is like, how do you really inspire them to believe in your ultimate vision? And as we talk about every day, it may sound like a cliche, but we want to change the world. We do what we want to do because we do what we do every day because we want to change the world. And so if you're influenced and inspired by that vision, that's how we get the best out of team and that's why people are staying. 

42:02
Amardeep Parmar
So just before we get to a quick five questions, right, so you said the day is waking up excited, right? So what is that for you? What makes you wake up excited to continue doing what you're doing and, you. 

42:12
Neil Tanna
Know, to come at that point. The reason it's four out of five and not five out of five is because one day there could be a train strike, a coffee spill. So that's why we can't promise you five out of five. But if it's four, if it goes lower than four out of five, the first thing you do is you come speak to me and we'll get you back up to four. What gets me excited, it's genuinely just learning something new every day. The, the great thing about working in startups is no, two days are the same and you Learn that every new fire that you're fighting every single day is just a new chance to learn. 

42:42
Neil Tanna
And the fire that was stressing you out last week, no longer stressing you because there's another one and you figured out how to put out that fires if it happens again as much. I think that's what I constantly love about it was in my previous career. I just didn't feel like I was. I didn't feel like the variable reward was high enough. Like I felt like I was. It was very repetitive. Whereas what I'm doing now, like you're just literally just doing something amazingly new every single day. I love the people I work with. I love the problem I'm trying to solve every day. And so, yeah, it puts a big smile on my face and I get motivated to do it. 

43:10
Amardeep Parmar
It's one of the things that I think. I don't know if it's my memory, what it is, but because like I said, the semi fires all the time. When people ask me about something that happened two weeks ago, I was like, I can't really remember. That was like yesterday's problem. The great thing of people who don't. 

43:21
Neil Tanna
Work in tech and people who don't work in startups, especially like my friends and families, I'll be like, what do you do all day? Like, the app's already out. Like, what do you do all day? Why are you hiring more people? What is there to do? Like, you've already built it. It's just like, it's a great question, but I literally, I work all day, I love it. But like that's the thing, it doesn't feel like work. Work. Yeah, right. But also you never get anywhere close to the end of your to do list. There's so much to do. 

43:49
Amardeep Parmar
When people ask me, what do you do on the average day? It's like, I don't know. There is an average day. Just do stuff. And yeah, and it always seems like you said like there's never any to do this. I never run out of things. 

43:58
Neil Tanna
So that's it, that's it. 

44:00
Amardeep Parmar
But really enjoyed this. Let's go through a quick find out. 

44:03
Neil Tanna
Yeah. 

44:03
Amardeep Parmar
So first one is who are pre Asian Britain you think are doing incredible work and you want to shout them out. 

44:11
Neil Tanna
Great question. First one has to be Samir Singh. So Sameer Singh is one of our investors. He is one of the best people I've ever met. Genuinely, I can hardly say that because not only is he insanely bright, he if you ever have Samir on your side, he is one of those people who, he'll just, he gives you so much time, so much energy, so much care. We are only here because of that man. So just, yeah, if you ever are lucky enough to ever have the chance to speak to Samir Singh, take up the opportunity. He's phenomenal. He's a network effects investor, an expert, but just generally a guy in tech that you want to know. So he's 12 is Shivani Powell. So she has created a whole platform, she's created a whole podcast around a millennial mind. 

44:56
Neil Tanna
But I would be a fool not to raise it because the vast majority of my family are obsessed with her content. So I hear her name regularly. I'm a fan of everything she's done. So she's my second one and my third has got to be my dad. Not from the sobby way of he's my dad, but he's an accountant. And we always joked growing up that perhaps I was going to be an accountant. And thankfully that was an area that I, I always managed to shut him down on. But we always show that in future how cool would it be if I was a client and thankfully now how about is a client of his. And so speaking thankfully, I don't get involved in the day to day with him. My co founder Jake does. 

45:34
Neil Tanna
But everything that he has ever been able to do for us and I'm like, I get now why clients love you so much, dad. Because the. He's a, a brilliant, brilliant accountant for entrepreneurs and startups. So he's got to be my third. 

45:46
Amardeep Parmar
What's your dad's name? 

45:47
Neil Tanna
I didn't even mention my dad's name. 

45:49
Amardeep Parmar
Yeah. So then they can go and look him up and get some clients. Yeah. 

45:52
Neil Tanna
Look at, look at BJ Tanner. If you're looking for an accountant for your startup, Vijay Tanner is fantastic. 

45:56
Amardeep Parmar
And if people want to find out more about you, how about where they go to? 

46:00
Neil Tanna
Yeah. So just go straight to the app store search. How about if you want. If you're interested in downloading the app would love your feedback. Other than that, Howbout app is our website and you can always find me on LinkedIn. Neil Tanner, is there any way that. 

46:10
Amardeep Parmar
This can help you other than downloading the app? 

46:12
Neil Tanna
The constant thing is feedback. We are constantly wanting to get better. The best way you get better is by hearing from people you don't know about what they do like, but more importantly what they don't like about the app. And so many times someone on the street has stopped me to say, hey, I've used the app, but you should do this. I'm like, such a good idea. So, yeah, that's a great one. 

46:34
Amardeep Parmar
So thanks again so much for coming on. 

46:35
Neil Tanna
Thanks for having me. 

46:36
Amardeep Parmar
Any final words? 

46:37
Neil Tanna
No, just thanks for having me. And congrats. If this is episode 250, congrats for building such a phenomenal platform. Well done. 

46:44
Amardeep Parmar
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time. 

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