The Hard Truth About Finding Product Market Fit w/ Mandeep Singh | Trouva

Mandeep Singh: 0:00

We ran the Sean Ellis product market fit survey and we had actually a massive vocal majority of customers who hated us, absolutely hated us. And weirdly enough, those are the customers we went after, because when we spoke to them, the reason they hated us was because they said, hey, I found this really cool product on your app and why can't you deliver it to me? And in hindsight it really was the obvious that we just weren't spending enough time listening to our customers. So we actually focused on our detractors, we went after those guys and we actually built a more traditional marketplace. It was. There's a real lesson there in how, you don't really realize you don't have product market fit until you do.

Amardeep Parmar: 

Today's guest is Mandeep Singh, who has many incredible achievements and positions.

Amardeep Parmar: 0:45

He was one of the co-founders of Trouva, which exited and was one of the fastest growing companies in the early days of the tech boom in London. He's an international board member to Amnesty International. He's a venture partner Hoxton Ventures. He's personally angel invested in dozens of companies. Manly was a huge part of the tech ecosystem in the UK and he's one of those early pioneers who created the companies that's inspired so many others. You're also going to hear his story, because this is not conventional. He was a bit of a rebel. He's done so many different things growing up and you can see that mentality they had from that young age and how that took them to different places and where he is today. So I hope you really enjoyed today's episode. I'm Amar from the BAE HQ and this podcast is powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. So great to have you on today, Mandeep, and really excited to see all the different stuff you've done. But if we rewind back to when you were growing up, what did you want to be? What was your childhood like in terms of your ambitions?

Mandeep Singh: 1:46

Yeah, so I guess, not to be too much of an Asian stereotype, but my parents wanted me to be doctors to be a doctor, sorry and I was a pretty geeky kid so I was quite into my physics, so I think I wanted to be a particle physicist, actually, weirdly, when I was a teenager.

Amardeep Parmar: 2:10

And then that's where I went off to study, actually, yeah, so when you went to go and study, then where did you go to study and what was that like? Was it what you hoped it would be when you studied with physics?

Mandeep Singh: 2:13

Yeah, so I grew up in um well, home was Preston, went to school in Blackburn and thought, right, I need to get away. So, uh, so luckily got into Cambridge to do um physics or natural sciences and I think I was probably the I was definitely the best physicist at school not blowing my an ego too much and I was probably the worst physicist at Cambridge right, and I was served a real shock. So I think it took me about three weeks to realize, hang on, there's no way in hell. I'm like clever enough to be like a political business. So, uh, I guess it wasn't what I cracked up to be, but like I was totally convinced until then, that's what I wanted to do.

Amardeep Parmar:

How was that adjustment?

Amardeep Parmar: 2:53

Because obviously if you think in your head, okay, you're obviously at school, you're the top person, like everybody's looking at your scores, you know the teacher's pet. In some ways, I guess you're getting the top marks to then having this identity, if actually maybe I'm not as good as I think I am.

Mandeep Singh:  

Yeah, I think I was never.

Mandeep Singh: 3:08

I was never teachers pet because I always like messed around with other stuff. So I was actually building a web design business when I was like when I was 14 um, so I kind of like I guess I always like did the minimum I needed and so, uh, I remember um in sixth form. I was off doing the business and then hanging out with mates, so I never really turned up to classes and I guess you can get away with that right when you're at school. And suddenly, you know, and then I took a gap year as well and worked for that. So I was hadn't really studied for like two years before I went to university and I remember, uh, like our um supervisor in the first tutorial he asked everyone in the class what grade we were hoping to get and everyone put their hand up saying first right. I mean, who doesn't right when you're

Mandeep Singh: 3:58

at school who doesn't want to get an a. I thought I remember thinking what a bonkers question, right, and then actually after a month or two I got it right For the first time in my life. You realize, oh, hang on, like you can't just do the minimum right and get the best score. So I think that was a bit of a shock to me, but maybe this is easy to say in hindsight. I guess I was always kind of the person who wanted to do other things, not just study, and in an environment where, like people I remember like walking past the library like two in the morning when I was like very drunk on a friday night and there were people working right, and so it's um, I guess that was the the shock, right, the culture was like there are trade offs, right, you can't be the best everything, right, you can't, you can't get away with, like you know, not doing your work. I think that and that was, that's still something I grapple with actually.Yeah

Amardeep Parmar: 4:44

So you said about the web design agency there as well, that you did when you're younger. Did you keep the apple? What made you start it? And then think I'm guessing you monetize that and you were making money inside there

Mandeep Singh: 

Yeah, and I guess again, once, once you're a proper entrepreneur, I guess you look back in your like childhood and realize you did these weird things. So I was always like doing like dodgy things on the side. So, like I started like a primary school, I started a magazine which I flogged to like like mates.

Mandeep Singh: 5:14

Then, uh..

Amardeep Parmar: 

Well, you just print, printing off on your own? 

Mandeep Singh: 

Yeah, we'd do like crosswords and stuff, and then I'm actually getting photo, get them in my dad's work, getting photocopied and then flogged them, uh, and then calculated, well, we're making a loss. I just wasn't paying for the photocopiers. And then, I guess, when I was 12, me and a mate invested in a CD copier and started copying CDs and flogging those to mates at school. And then I was quite. I was lucky that my parents got me a computer. So I got online in 96 when I was like 12, 13. I had a 14.4K modem so I just started building websites, right, so doing a bunch of front-end codes and pretty simple stuff.

Mandeep Singh: 5:56

And then I realized people who were mates of my dad were like, oh, you can build a website. What if I gave you some money to go build this? And we're like, yeah,hell, yeah, right.

Mandeep Singh: 6:07

So it became like a business over time, right, just because we could make money from it, right? Yeah, I still remember getting the first check when we got paid. It was, I think it was a grand and we split between three of us. I remember queuing in HSBC to get like for to cash a check, and we insisted on taking our cash, and 333 quid, when you're like 14 and like the 90s, is like it seems like all the money in the world. So, yeah, so that's why I started doing it and then I carried on until I got to university and then, when I got to Cambridge, weirdly enough, uh, I was told I had to immediately shut it down because, like, you're not allowed to have a job when you're at Cambridge alongside your work, so entrepreneurship was not encouraged.

Amardeep Parmar:

When you say not allowed. How would they find out in some ways?

Mandeep Singh: 6:48

Yeah, so if I was less naive I could have just not told them right. But I think I mentioned it to the director of computer science, right, because I thought it would be interesting. I've been coding for four years and he wasn't very happy. Basically, yeah. I think that culture's changed a bit now.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:09

It's interesting, right, because now you'd think that would be encouraged, or actually I don't know, but you'd expect it.

Mandeep Singh: 7:14

Yeah, I still don't think it's great, and one of the things I'm actually going to the Valley next week and one of the reasons I love being in the Valley right is  like the ecosystem around Stanford, right, where these things are encouraged. Now, arguably, there's probably more people going to entrepreneurship than going into research right, which is obviously super valuable, but there's definitely and I think it's still there it's definitely a culture at british universities, certainly certainly a Cambridge of, like research is what you should do if you're really smart right. Going off to do something else, right, is not that valued right, and so your assessment is on on your grades, right, not on what other things you're doing. So I don't think entrepreneurship is respected in the same way in the UK as it is in the US

Amardeep Parmar: 

So when you're at university, I guess you knew that you didn't want to become a particle physicist and were you thinking I want to go down the entrepreneurship route. At that point, and knowing that almost it was, was, did that affect your mindset around what you do in the future? When you're hearing or getting this vibe from people that maybe actually I should be doing research because that's respectable, whereas me going do my own thing isn't looked at the same way?

Mandeep Singh: 8:13

Yeah, it was. It was pretty clear to me that I wasn't going to be a researcher. I just wasn't. I didn't care that much about it, right, and I wasn't as smart as the people who like who, who could do triple integrations in their heads, right, um and so. But actually it would have made this story make a lot more sense if I then went to be an entrepreneur. But I guess, bearing in mind it was like 2003 in Cambridge where, like you know, I was actually told to stop coding um, I guess I did what most people do, which is, go, I have no idea what to do, so I'll go do some generic corporate career, right? So that's what I ended up doing.

Mandeep Singh: 8:47

And, to be fair, when I was running the website business, I actually got, did start to do less and less coding and more and more just, I enjoyed like selling to clients. I enjoyed like the finances bit of it. So so I just started thinking about like a general career in business, basically. And then so you started off in consulting, right, that's right. Yeah, so I did a internship in strategy consultancy, joined as a graduate, like a nice, comfortable kind of job to do, especially at the time. Um, I did that for a couple years. Then I was there and I still didn't know what I wanted to do. But most of the people who left consultancy at the time just I was just after financial crash. So I was there 2007 to 2010. You know most of the people who were there while at least pre-crash like the ones who seem to be like the top rated or went to be investors. So I was like, right, I'll go join a private equity fund because that's what everyone does, right? Yeah, and so I did private equity for the next couple years 

Amardeep Parmar: 

And how did you find private equity compared to consulting, which do you think you enjoyed more?

Mandeep Singh: 9:46

So private equity was a great fun because you kind of are the client, right, and it was a. It kind of is the stereotype like it was a leveraged buyout fund, so it was $20 billion fund, so you were buying like companies, typically like a billion to 10 billion in value, and there was kind of a stereotype of, like a kid in the 20s like sitting on the board of like these companies when I didn't have a goddamn clue what I was doing, right, um, so it was complete farce, right, but it's pretty good, fun, right. You know, I remember my old boss from OC & C. He, he was now head of media at PCG and he came to like he was like bugging me for to catch up and he came to pitch me and I'd be lying if my ego wasn't like this is awesome, right, you know, my partners are now pitching me, right, and isn't this fun? So the status and money is really fun. Right, the hours were mental, totally mental, and it was only after like a few years I started to think, like what am I actually doing? Right, like, I sat on on the board. I was a board observer at Foxton's um, the real estate agency, and I only got that board observer seat because it was the smallest business in the portfolio. And, uh, I remember turning up to the board meetings and just walking like the business was doing great, like ceo would take me for a tour around Foxton's.

Mandeep Singh: 11:02

I remember thinking one at one point right, wow, it's like if I got hit by a bus, there's like a hundred thousand other kids from, like, banking or consultancy to come take my job right, like from russell group, unis or whatever. But if this guy got hit by a bus, right, we'd be screwed right, I couldn't do his job right. So I like I became more and more like envious of, like the people who'd founded these businesses right, and the operators. That made me quite unusual. Most people in private equities love being the dealmaker, right, so I really enjoyed the job. But I just started to think hang on, is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? 

Amardeep Parmar: 

And how did you start coming up with ideas of what you could do in your own business?

Mandeep Singh: 11:44

So classic like YC thinking and this is still the right thing to do is to think about a problem that you care about and you want to solve. The problem when you're working in like a really narrow and you know pretty well paid field like private equities, that the problems you see are not so different but very different to everyone else, right? Yeah, so you get a lot of private equity or ex-consultants, like building solutions for consultants and private equity guys. So I didn't do that, but I actually did the opposite of what you're supposed to do, which was a friend who was working P with me. I think we were up at three in the morning doing some large but totally boring deal and we both had this slight epiphany on why what are we doing here? So we talked ourselves into quitting first. We basically agreed that, like, if he quit, I'd quit with him, and we had a few ideas but we didn't actually know what we were going to do.

Amardeep Parmar: 

How was that like your friends and family, when you made that decision to quit what you're going to do, how was that reaction around you?

Mandeep Singh: 12:43

So I wasn't a doctor, so my parents long since didn't really care what I was doing. I'm paraphrasing, but not by much right, it's kind of true. Um, I think mom thought I was an accountant or something, so anyway, um, but then I had to explain I didn't have an accountancy qualification, so she was very disappointed with me. Um, so I think it wasn't so much family but but like everyone in the fund thought we were totally insane. I remember, like Maxime, my original co-founder, he was like a top rank guy in the funds. He was essentially on partner track and then one of the partners came over to him and was like I have like a thousand kids from like Goldman's and McKinsey, like knocking my door down for your job.

Mandeep Singh: 13:21

Right now you're in, why are you quitting, right? So it was just like it kind of and again it was 20 to 2012 not many people had gone to do startups, right, and it was kind of like, once you're in, no one kind of leaves right. Um, it was kind of a job people aspire to, I guess. So everyone thought we were nuts. Um, I guess we thought we were nuts because we didn't have an idea. But, candidly, the reason we did that is because we thought we need the fear, like if we have the fear, then like we'll pick an idea, right? Yeah, if we sit here, it's too. We're working too long hours and getting paid well enough that it would just be too easy to sit around.

Amardeep Parmar:

So obviously, once you've now quit your job and you're now looking at different ideas, you're looking at different problems.

Amardeep Parmar: 14:00

How did you pick the problem that you eventually went for?

Mandeep Singh: 14:02

So we had a couple of ideas working ourselves. For example, like Maxim was Swedish, so he was looking at, so HelloFresh is a copy of a Swedish business called Lin Aspag, something like that.

Mandeep Singh: 14:17

So he thought like oh, we should do that in the UK and I thought it was a stupid-ass theory and that was HelloFresh's $10 million business. So first thing, it shows like your criteria of what you think a good problem is or not is very subjective. And then we also just started. We started looking what was going on the US, which is a slight cheat. But we were like, okay, what's going on in the Valley? And we saw that, um, a few people in the Valley, well, square, was doing really well and it was just starting in the Valley and doing, obviously, credit card payments on mobile. No one was doing that in Europe yet and that was because of chip and pin. So iZettle were in stealth. So we heard about it then.

Mandeep Singh: 14:57

But we started looking in that kind of area and so there were a bunch of businesses in the US doing point-of-sale software on iPads. So essentially, if you're running a retailer, you you kind of track your stock, like you actually see what's sold, you synchronize your inventory with the website and it was going to be. And they were essentially building software on ipads rather than having old school barcode pointer cell systems. So that was the space we started looking at and honestly, how we did it. We we picked about five or ten, we did a lot of like lean and dirty things.

Mandeep Singh: 15:28

We tested them, right, yeah, and we built like fake versions of websites ran like adwords, campaigns, looked at like performance. We kind of built fake versions as point of sale software, pounded the streets and tried to sell it to a bunch of independent retailers and claimed we'd built it. So we did like, yeah, I guess, going back to my childhood, right, I always did a bit of like slightly edgy things, right, but you know, this is like yc kind of sf, like school of thought, right, and just being lean and dirty, yeah so one interesting thing as well.

Amardeep Parmar: 15:58

So obviously you, you started the company originally with somebody who's doing a similar job to you, right? And when you think about, obviously usually like you don't have the tech background, I guess you did do the tech coding earlier but, you're both kind of in the finance, more background and the investment side, so the overlap of skills there. How are you thinking about how you're going to manage your different roles at this point as well, because obviously, if you're both similar jobs, I guess there's some level of similar skill sets too.

Mandeep Singh: 16:25

So it's a really good question. And I didn't quite realize it until Maxim left quite early in the journey. Because you're right. Initially I thought, hey, I used to code, it'll be fine, I'll do the tech.Realized I hadn't coded in a few years and that's an eternity right in development. So we did end up finding a third co-founder who joined out of Entrepreneur First One. He's a half German, half Cypriot guy, Alex, and he was like a deeply technical guy. So when we had the three of us you might have thought that Maxim and I were you know more. I guess I was relatively technical for a commercial founder and Alex was very commercial for a technical founder.

Mandeep Singh: 17:05

But this is where people get it wrong by looking at your backgrounds, because actually your personality type is more important. And one thing I realized over time is that Maxim was like a great cool type, like he loved doing stuff in the background. He hated like going to sports investors. Right he was. He was like, he was kind of enjoyed the finance side of things. Right, I enjoyed the selling.

Mandeep Singh: 17:21

I enjoyed talking to customers. I enjoyed thinking like doing products. Right, um, I like the ideation strategy more. Right, he definitely liked doing like he did the set. He did like the ran the sales team right. He was, and he was great with people, much better with people than me, so we actually were a very complimentary team. When maxim quit a few years later, I remember the investors weren't that bothered because they were like, oh, you two are from similar backgrounds and I think they didn't quite realize how valuable he was to the company because from outside in you look at CV, you don't actually think hang on, what are your strengths and weaknesses? What's your personality type? What are you doing under the hood of the business?

Amardeep Parmar: 17:59

So I think we'll come back to that later on with my investment as well, because it's quite interesting when you think about when people are analysing pitch decks and things like that. They are basically using what the people's jobs were beforehand to try and ascertain what that is as well. So you've started the company. When did you start to set on Trouva as the main idea that you're going to work on?

Mandeep Singh: 18:18

So it's now 2013. We've chosen initially to proceed this point, to pursue this point of sale software for independent retailers. But when we uh, a mate of mine who, um, who worked with, as you can see, he'd gone through YC with his business, so he was like, help me out a bit on this lean startup. When we'd faked this point of sale software and gone to speak to these independent retailers, we realized, oh, hang on, like you're solving a problem. That made a lot of sense as an investor, right, it made a lot of sense as an ex-consultant, that the world, that traditional point of sale systems are going to be displaced by sas, right, that inventory data is going to have to be managed in the cloud, that independent retailers would need to use live image data from their store to power their website. That was like I remember pitching this to independent retailers and they were like, what the hell are you talking about? Right, you know I've got a website and I get like five sales. I was like, okay, five sales a week or five sales a year. They're like, no, no, like five sales ever. So cut a long story short, it turns out Not one say pivoted, but we changed the idea into building a marketplace for these cool independent retailers which curated beautiful products like beautiful homewares, beautiful fashion you can't find anywhere else in the world, and put them.

Mandeep Singh: 19:36

Put them on a consumer marketplace, with the point of sell software in the background, it became a essentially SAAS enabled marketplace. Having said that, the marketplace we initially looked at was not Trouva. What we settled on initially was this mobile app called Street Hub, where you could pull out your phone, download the Street Hub app. It would show you all the cool products around you in independent stores. You could pay on your phone and go pick it up instantly, or you could get a 10 minute delivery or half an hour delivery from the store to your home. So in 2013, we'd settled on this business called Street Hub and we went to raise for that, and Trouva didn't actually happen until 2015,. Two years later

Amardeep Parmar: 20:17

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, HSBC Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistant or you're talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what it is you've been trying to do. HSBC have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hsbcinnovationbanking.com.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:56

What's the thing about private equity? So, like, Foxton's was the smallest company in our portfolio, so obviously in that space, the decision making is probably a lot slower, a lot more red tape and bureaucratic, whereas what you're doing here, you're changing your ideas quite significantly quite often. How did you find that adjustment to go from that large scale business which obviously, like I said, because they've got a lot more mature, they're generally doing pretty well? They might make a few changes, but it's not going to be okay. Now we're going to scrap this and completely change for another thing. How does that mindset shift you there?

Mandeep Singh: 21:26

It's a really good question and I think it comes back a little bit to I was quite an unusual consultant and private equity person, right. Like I say, I was kind of whilst I was at university I kind of didn't have the patience for the research, right. I like things in the real world. I wanted to move quickly. I was, you know, maybe going back to school, school days. You know, I would kind of look for like the minimum way right to get the desired outcome and I think those personality traits like help me in very good stead for being an entrepreneur.

Mandeep Singh: 21:57

And a lot of ex-consultant and private equity and hedgy types make terrible entrepreneurs right because their cv might look good and they're very smart but they're not. They can't do like lean, dirty things in the real world. It's often why, like those from like a typical age, un age, age, age old, background, make, make, you know, people who haven't dropped, haven't gone to university, make great entrepreneurs. So I think it was yes, it was very different to what I was doing, but I think it was my personality type to to think that way. So that's probably why it didn't feel like such a shock. Um, but also I spent a lot of time with other entrepreneurs and just kind of picked this up right over time and probably still should have moved quicker than we did, right.  

Amardeep Parmar: 

So what made you settle from street hubs to Trouva? What triggered that change?

Mandeep Singh: 22:42

So we went out to raise money for the street hub in 2013. We were building an mvp in the background and we built a very, very simple two-week version of the I won't call it point of sale software, but inventory management software for the retailers. We built a simple we haven't built a mobile app yet, but we built a front-end website in two weeks and again, you know, we're having a technical co-founder. What's helping right? Um, to get very, very long story short, we somehow ended up with this massively oversubscribed brand led by index ventures, um, who europe's biggest venture capital funds, and and um, they had invested in, like farfetch and etsy and you know, dropbox and you name it right, so, but certainly every marketplace we admired, right, and just eat as well, um, so we kind of ended up raising like 1.2 million dollars on a pre-seed rent when we were looking to raise quite a bit less, and almost that became like a bad thing, because we'd raise money to go sell, build this mobile app and go get it out there. We hadn't actually gone and figured out if that was going to be like a really good idea or not. So money almost slowed us down in a weird way, because then we started hiring a big team. Um, it was also like it was a cool concept. Right, it was a lot of. There was a lot of um noise around the time about, like, helping the high street, and it still is. Right. I remember I got invited by like bbc to talk on bbc one breakfast news about the future of retail and like uh, so I was, so I was on TV from the 7 million people wobbling on about the future of the high street and street hub. Right, the funding round was a big funding round for the Times that was announced everywhere. So we were like I thought like we had made it and in hindsight, they were all bullshit metrics. Right, funding is like not is,  means to an end. Right, like the ideal world is you never have to raise funding? Right, funding is like not is a means to an end. Right, like the ideal world is you never have to raise funding? Right, yet funding is seen as a metric of success. So we probably like

Mandeep Singh: 24:36

So we spent all this money building the Swish mobile app, hiring a team, putting money in marketing, and it wasn't until we were running out of cash towards the end of 2014, like, when we started speaking to investors about the next round and I started looking at the numbers and we're like something is really wrong here. Right, like um, another bullshit metric. But Stephen Fry had, like downloaded the app and tweeted about it. Um, I emailed him and he agreed to tweet about it. Um, so we had like loads of downloads, right, tens of thousands of downloads, and virtually no transactions, like no one was buying, right? Um, so something was fundamentally wrong, but we didn't quite realize that till the end of 2014. We went out to raise money for the street hub, um business.

Mandeep Singh: 25:20

I remember um street concept and, um, I remember everyone going like oh, why? Um, like, what's your revenue? I was like what, what a stupid question. What do you mean? Revenue? Right, like, look at this cool app, right, look at it. Like we've been on TV, right, you know. So I didn't understand the question and at first I was like these guys just don't get it. You know, if I was in the Valley, people would be throwing money at me. And over time.

Mandeep Singh: 25:51

You're like, how much you spent on marketing? Like 100 grand, how much you made in revenue? Nothing, okay, something that this math doesn't work, right. You're like, oh yeah, um, so we actually managed to get uh Index, uh, Local globe and Octopus three VCs basically to give us more money, um, on the basis that we had executed the plan correctly. It's just that it was the wrong plan, right, and it wasn't until we closed and we were very lucky, it was very painful we went within, like I think, like three, I think it was in three days of just shutting down the business when Octopus stepped up and said they'd lead the second round. So it wasn't until we closed a bit. So we closed another $2.5 million, right, and it wasn't until we closed a bit, so we closed another $2.5 million, right, and it wasn't actually until we had the funding that we took a step back and went to do what we should have done, which is speak to our customers and figure out what they really wanted, and that's how we came up with Trouva.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:39

I think I've heard this story a few times from different people about when there is too big of a pre-seed, it can actually really hold you back because then, like you said, then you don't do the thing about proving the customers and talking to that. You're like, oh, I've got the money, I'll just go and build it, and then it causes problems later on. And it's interesting because we'll talk about this now and on how many people listening who can be like, oh, yeah, but I'm still going to raise a big round, and it's like it's that whole thing of where

Mandeep Singh: 

Yeah, and the funny thing is that if I mean these numbers are relevant nowadays.

Mandeep Singh: 27:06

Right, you know like raising whatever it was. You know like three, four million dollars at seed funding, but at the time I think one of Europe's best funded seed investments. So the number now to make equivalent will be 20 or 30, right, um and um. If someone offered me 20, 30 million dollars in a pre-seed investment, I probably would still take it. It's like crazy to say no to capital. Right, it's against, like your DNA as a founder.

Mandeep Singh: 27:32

But I think what I would have done, best advice I ever got that never managed to follow was raise as much money as I could and spend half of it. I would have acted as if I had less capital, right, yeah, and it's virtually impossible to do. Right, because the minute you've got more capital, you want to hire more people. You're always busy. You want, like you know, people want pay rises. You think, oh, hang on, I can hire this really senior person, not this junior person and um, but um. It's crucial for two reasons. One, like you think, if I had less cash, how would I prove this sooner rather than later? You want to prove it in three months, not not a year. And secondly, finding product market fit is the hardest thing about a startup and it's the bit that can take two days or it can take 20 years right.

Mandeep Singh: 28:17

No one really persists for 20 years, but you could, right in some businesses, and so where you get in trouble is if you run out of cash along the way. So the benefit of having money in the background would be when we needed that extra cash a second time to be able to tap our reserves that would have been really valuable, right, and buy ourselves extra months extra runway. So, weirdly enough, it was the way we acted with the cash, but it's not the cash per se, right I could have as a second-time founder if I was to do it again. Um, I'd like to think, who knows, I'd like to think that I'd be able to act in a lean way and kind of almost lock up half the money right, and just not even touch it and that would be the ideal, right.

Amardeep Parmar: 28:59

So obviously, now building Trouva is the new idea. Can you tell us, like, where did that end up? So that journey from so you've pivoted to Trouva and obviously Trouva was massive success over time. What happened there? What was the story of Trouva?

Mandeep Singh: 29:13

Yeah, so I'll touch a little bit just on the beginning story. But essentially this mobile app had loads and loads of users and downloads. But essentially, if you were nearby the store and in hindsight this is obvious you'd just go into the store, right. So we had people going into the store and just picking the items up there. We did some really like doing a 10-minute delivery in 2014, got us on the front, or like got us an evening standard about how we're taking on Amazon, but it turns out like no one cares about getting a Tom Dixon lamp in 10 minutes, right, I'm not even sure anyone needs grocery in 10 minutes, let alone homewares and fashion. But what we did have when we were talking to our customers is that we ran the Sean Ellis product market fit survey and we had actually a massive vocal not even minority, majority of customers who hated us, like absolutely hated us and weirdly enough, those are the customers we went after, because when we spoke to them, the reason they hated it was because they said hey, I found this really cool product on your app, or I saw it on the BBC. I downloaded your app and I'm in Manchester and I found this amazing, like you know, lamp or vase or bag in a shop in Shoreditch and I can't get to the shop and why can't you deliver it to me? And then I went online and looked for this product and I couldn't find it on amazon, I couldn't find it on asos and I'd just do anything to get this product and you won't sell it to me. And in hindsight it really was the obvious that we just weren't spending enough time listening to our customers. So we actually focused on our detractors. We went after those guys and we actually built a more traditional marketplace where it was a website. We could still see these beautiful, curated home and fashion products from the coolest independent stores, but get them delivered to you. It took us a couple of months to figure that out, a couple of months to build it, and we launched that in q3 2020, 2015. So it's once in then. And you it was. There's a real lesson there in how you don't really realize you don't have product market fit until you do yeah, with street hub, everything was painful, like everything was tough right, like just even getting like people to buy.

Mandeep Singh: 31:17

We, I remember giving out free vouchers at Christmas and people still wouldn't buy, right, Stephen Fry. Ironically, he'd email me and said, like I can't be bothered traipsing around eight stores to pick up all these products, and I think we sent, sent the team around to go pick it up for him. You like, I can't be bothered traipsing around eight stores to pick up all these products, and I think we sent, sent the team around to go pick it up for him. You know, like most people can't be bothered either, right? So it was really hard work and then we launched free of it and it really did like take off almost straight away.

Mandeep Singh: 31:40

I wouldn't say it was an overnight success, because the reality is it was like a two-year overnight success in the making. But I remember, like the first month these are rough numbers we did 100 orders, right, which was our record on the street. Second month, we did like 200. Third month, you know it was 400. And we were doubling month on month, right, and we went into Christmas and we were doing thousands of orders in the first few months of launching.

Mandeep Singh: 32:04

So in a way that was like amazing and from we went from like uh, zero, a million dollars of GMV to 40 million dollars run rate in three, three and a half years. I remember we were the second fastest growing business in the UK, apparently tech business, I mean. You know it was a lot more fun but it just brought different it's just different problems, right? Um, that first Christmas I was doing customer service myself, right, and these independents just couldn't cope right. You know, people were calling up saying their items hadn't been sent by the shops because they couldn't handle logistics. So that's when we had to go solve all the problems of a lack of scale. But, um, I think there was a much more fun problems to have in hindsight, yeah

Amardeep Parmar: 

And as that journey scaled on right, so you said the different problems to solve there, how did that evolve for you? So obviously eventually Trouva exited. How was that journey towards the latter half of where you're now gearing up towards exit and, I guess, letting go of that baby?

Mandeep Singh: 33:03

Yeah, so, um. So I was a CEO from, I guess, 2013 to end of 2019, so that was until after the series b. Then I moved to non-exec and and then Alex, who took over for me. He sold the business in 2022, so I was on the board till the exit um. But my personal journey was more about going from that, like finding product market raising the first money to actually I don't know we were 120 people or something about that time Step back, we raised another 40, 50 million, 40 million a year of funding. And you know it was a very different job as a founder, right, you know, having to build a senior team and like, actually that was harder for me. I really enjoyed that like day to day kind of grubby work, right, even if I'm romanticizing a bit.

Mandeep Singh: 33:49

You know, standing on the street giving out flyers in the rain, well, everyone's telling you to F off on a Friday night and all of a sudden and ironically, one of the reasons I left private equity is because I wanted to build, and the irony is is you get more successful, you kind of step away from that again, right? So by the end of my time there, you know my job was hiring, raising enough money so the team could get on with it, and then setting the, maybe setting the strategy Right. I did more than that, but that's probably what I should. That's all I should have done, right, and that that for me was a harder transition, and I think a lot of founders like micromanage Right, because they find that transition really hard. Yeah, so definitely the hardest bit of getting out of the weeds right and not and trusting other people right to to do it for you.

Amardeep Parmar: 

and then, well, I guess, once you step into that non-exec role, where did you spend your time?

Amardeep Parmar: 34:44

Where did you start? Where do you decide? Okay, now, this is where I want to spend my time, or this is where I'm more interested in obviously I know you do investing and advising. How did that all come about?

Mandeep Singh: 34:52

Yeah, um, it was somewhat organic, so I I think I actually it wasn't publicly disclosed, but I think I quit or handed. I tried to handle my notice anyway. September 2019, just as essentially we'd close the series. Uh, be my. My wife had just given birth to our first kid, so we're going through.

Mandeep Singh: 35:08

Like you know, personal stuff changed my priorities a bit. Um, I didn't. I didn't actually get to fully leave for like a year, um, so I had to do transition periods. So I was still full-time for a while. That was the worst time right. Still being full-time in the business but not being CEO. I didn't really have a job, sounded great. I was still being paid, but I think I was trampling on Alex's toes. The team was still coming to me in some cases like, and I wasn't moving on.

Mandeep Singh: 35:35

By the time I did start to wind down, it was the COVID pandemic, so it was a forced transition. I was effectively at home looking after the kid, the baby, um, not being able to go to the office. I was dialing in a bit, um, and I was fortunate enough to um have sold a chunk of my shares a couple times on the way, so I had some savings, wasn't really doing anything, wasn't really spending any money and I'd always loved helping out other founders. Um, I mentioned you know I'll give a shout out. I mentioned my mate had been through YC, so that was Tom Blomfield. He used to work at YC, um another mate.

Mandeep Singh: 36:11

He'd started co-founded funding circle.

Amardeep Parmar: 

For the people who don't know, Tom Blomfield is obviously the Monzo founder, and he's done lots of other things too.

Mandeep Singh:

Right, yeah, and he's now part of y combinator, but at the time he was one of the three co-founders of go cardless so he'd help me out a lot,  co-founder funding circle. James Meekings had been OC & C, so he'd help me out a lot, um and um, a couple of others. So if it wasn't for them I wouldn't.

Mandeep Singh: 36:35

I wouldn't have got going and because, when we were because we were growing so fast and we'd raised relatively large amount of money for Europe at the time we were pretty well known. So I'd get a lot of VCs introducing me to earlier entrepreneurs and I love spending time with them and essentially sharing much more detailed, boring versions of the story I've given you not really talking about. Oh yeah, hey, you know, we were growing 600 year on year and we raised like a 10 million dollar round. No one wants to hear those stories. Right, it was all the things I did wrong, basically. Right, this one I shouldn't have raised so much money. This is what I should have like pivoted earlier. This is how I found product market fit.

Mandeep Singh: 37:09

So, and a few of them had gone on to build like really valuable businesses. So, essentially, in 2020, I was doing that and had a bit more money. So I was like, oh hey, I'll angel invest. So it kind of blended into one. I was like giving informal advice to founders who were earlier stage and then, this time, putting some money in and it's not really a job. It still isn't a job, but that's what occupied my time and then I also got approached by a few non-exec board roles. I started doing a few non-exec board roles, a couple of startups. I joined the Global Board of Amnesty International as well, so that takes quite a lot of time. So I guess that's what's kept me busy.

Amardeep Parmar: 37:52

So I'm going to get to see Amnesty International in a second. But obviously you mentioned before about how, when people look at your CVs when you started the early version of the company, that they wouldn't necessarily realize your skills and your personality. So now, when you're assessing startups to invest in or to advise, how do you go about that? Because obviously you're getting the same things everybody else gets. The pitch deck usually says x this, x that x, that you don't really know what their personalities are until, I guess, you have a good sit down and chat with them, which is not always possible.

Mandeep Singh: 38:17

Yeah, it's a really, really good question and one I'm still grappling with. Funnily enough, it came up with the founder earlier today. They had a private equity background and I used to get entrepreneurs assuming I'd be more sympathetic because of their private equity background. I'm almost like a self-hating PE consultant. Right, Because I knew nothing when I left, right.

Mandeep Singh: 38:41

I hadn't really done anything in the real world, I hadn't managed people, I hadn't built anything. So I become somewhat skeptical of people like that. But it's a bit harsh because, like you say, um, it's figuring out the things behind that. So in fact, actually with this chap today, I asked him if he had ever broken the rules. There was an old y combinator question, the first question in the YC form.

Mandeep Singh: 39:03

Don't know if it still is, but once back in day was it, tell me about a time you've hacked the system. It's a brilliant question, right, and it doesn't mean literally have you competed to compete, but like some of the time, you know you've done something, you've gone outside the norm, right, because you do have to think that way and I think you have to have got something in your background that drives you. Like some motivation is an important one, but also shows that you've got some evidence. Being able to execute and build my personal book there with VCs at the moment is that they, they less do that. Actually it's less. Oh, you've worked at Goldman's or whatever. It's almost a negative, but there is a kind of like oh, you've worked at Revolut, you've worked at x, y, you know Stripe, you've worked at blah blah unicorn and that clearly is can be a breeding ground for the best entrepreneurs and in fact even at true.

Mandeep Singh: 39:50

I think we've had six or seven stops come out of that right, um, but just because you worked in mid-level at Stripe in Europe doesn't mean you're great. You're entrepreneurial material. So the same logic needs to be applied to people who've worked at, you know, big tech or even startups that become successful, and often it's the ones who are there very early on. They were there for that initial journey or that. The culture is highly entrepreneurial at these places and that, like you know, Revolut still has a notoriously like entrepreneurial culture, right, for good or bad. So I think it's digging under the skin of it.

Mandeep Singh: 40:26

But you're right, you can't speak to everyone, I think. First thing is you, in my learning experience, to speak to more people than you think, like, judging based on like, see on, like logos, right, is a really terrible idea. So try and speak to. So even spending 20, 30 minutes speaking to a founder um, can be way more valuable than looking, sitting there and looking at their Linkedin, and most people have time to do that, um. The second and it's somewhat somewhat depressing, but I kind of get it is it is the validation of who knows someone, right? If someone says like I work with this person, they were super smart, right, or they're really great, then I kind of is the logos are irrelevant, right, I'll have that conversation if it's someone I trust. Unfortunately, that does create the kind of tech ecosystem where where getting an introduction makes you much more likely to be seen, but it kind of is rational, because otherwise there's a million more people with the same logos. How do you know that, unless you have time to speak to them all?

Amardeep Parmar: 41:22

I find it really interesting when somebody says, like ex-Google, for example, and they're there for two months in a summer internship, how does that prove that you're going to be more likely to make a unicorn or a billion dollar company? It doesn't really show that, but then that might get them a foot in the door, which is really interesting, because people say x, this without actually giving any more detail about that, and you obviously you've invested, like quite a few startups now isn't it that you feel like you made, you took a chance. Somebody maybe other people didn't see, and then you feel really validated now because they have gone on to do very well and you thought you spotted them well early.

Mandeep Singh:

Yeah, and listen, define doing well right, because I mentioned before, like um, you know, even though true, the sold right, we um, we're more highly valued, like between between us after a series b right, so most thought don't even sell at all, right. So but if I look at like current revenue or current valuation, yeah, there's definitely a few. I mean um 11x is definitely one that jumps out. It's um found by Hasan, Hassan's um who originally moved here from Syria and he did go work at McKinsey right, so you could look at the logo, but actually it was like his hustle, his drive right. I kind of backed him. They actually that was a pivot. By the way, that was started as a different business. Two original founders one of the founders left, Hasan pivoted the business and I think what's public is that he launched nine months ago. He's now at $10 million of ARR right certainly on the fly.

Mandeep Singh: 42:52

I've seen, not quite whiz, but not far off is that he launched nine months ago. He's now at $10 million of ARR. Right, he's certainly on the front line. I've seen right, not quite whiz, but not far off, and so it kind of resonates with our story. It's like backing the founder and them and their hustle and drive right, rather than looking even necessarily at the business right, let alone the logos on their CV.

Amardeep Parmar: 43:10

So just before we go to a quick follow-up question, we’re a bit overtime now.. So you mentioned Amnesty International. How did that come about and what do you do there?

Mandeep Singh: 43:17

So I'm on the international board there. So there's seven of us who sit on the who are the board of the International Arm of Amnesty, and then there's 60, 70, like constituent country sections as we call it.

Mandeep Singh: 43:31

How was that? I was, um, when I was stepping back from true, as I say, I was starting getting approached by a few, quite a few non-exec boards. Um, I did. I did do a startup board, I'm still on the board of Trouva, I got approached by quite a few. I got approached by footsie board, by headhunts for a footsie 100 board, which, um, probably would have been less stressful and more pay.

Mandeep Singh: 43:50

But my parents were actually originally refugees from Burma and maybe that's why. But you know, I'd always been like kind of obsessed with the refugee rights. I joined Amnesty as a member. So when I heard that they were doing an external call for candidates, looking for people with non-human rights backgrounds to join the international board Um, it was I was like that's my dream. Non-exec, non-exec role took six months, had to go through an entire process and election, but, um, the the point was that actually they were looking for people who are interested in human rights, but not from a business background, commercial backgrounds and ultimately, you know, it's a 350 million pound turnover organization. So it's, it's a serious like uh, it's not, and it's actually technically limited company, so it's serious business. Um, even though it's not a business, it's an ngo yeah,

Amardeep Parmar: 

So how's that experience been, what impact you feel like you've made?

Mandeep Singh: 44:46

Yeah, it's, um, it's been a complete culture shock, right. Um, people talk about this in the ngo space quite a lot, um, um, and my terms wrapping up pretty soon so I can probably say a bit more after that um, I think I have, I think, what, what is kind of been both a way to add value but also make it so difficult, is that things that would seem very obvious coming from the commercial world, right, that you know how you manage people, right, and that you know sometimes people need to be managed out and not necessarily kept in an organization, or that measurement of metrics is like crucial. Those are like difficult concepts actually to a lot of people from that background, right, and so I've been like the one pushing for, like you know, I've definitely focused more on like, hey, what's the KPIs? What about the finance? What about the people? How do you measure the MPS of the people who work here? Right, I focus on culture and things like this, and historically, amnesty has had like issues in those areas.

Mandeep Singh: 45:45

So one of the other reasons that I'm motivated to do it was that whilst I, you know, fascinated my human rights I'm no expert in that, but I thought I can bring my expertise of things I've picked up as a, as a CEO in the commercial world that would add value to to an organization like Amnesty. So those are the things I focused on. You know, I've been on the recruitment, finance and audit committee. All these kind of um, very fun things

Amardeep Parmar: 

Yeah no, it's really interesting because I would love to learn more about that as well off camera, I guess. So got us going quick fire questions now, because we're quite a lot over time. So first one is who are three British Asians you think are doing incredible work and you'd love to chat them out?

Mandeep Singh: 46:24

So I guess I'll pick on tech just because I know it better. So Ria Grover at Sequence is one of my angel investments. She's raised a big round from Andreessen Horowitz at FinTech, serial entrepreneur, though. Previously sold her company. I think she's brilliant. You know, it's not easy being like a sole founder, right, especially when you've got family, so I think she's doing an awesome job. A real hustler In the investment side I think you've already had him, but I'll still give a shout out to Reece Chowdhury at Concept Ventures doing an amazing job, like positioning themselves as being the home of UK Pre-seed and there's not enough investors who back Van Bazili.

Mandeep Singh: 47:10

And then I'll pick on a founder who hasn't raised venture money, so Paramjit Uppal, who's CEO of A&D Digital, which is essentially a network of development studios, so they build tech for a lot of big companies. Amazing business, I think. £140 million of revenue last numbers, publicly disclosed and founded that himself himself. He's also a big, big supporter of british asian entrepreneurs from something called the punjabi professionals network, so and he's been really helpful to me as well.

Amardeep Parmar: 47:42

Awesome. And then, if people want to find out more about you and your story, where should they go to?

Mandeep Singh: 47:45

Uh, good question. I don't have a company, don't have a website. Um I, I guess, Linkedin, um, I've now made like 80 angel investments, so always looking for, like great entrepreneurs, irrelevant background. Um to back earlier the better, even if it's just for advice. So, um, yeah, send me a LinkedIn, I guess, or a or a tweet.

Amardeep Parmar: 48:07

And then, is there anything that people could help you with right now, that maybe someone listening could help you with?

Mandeep Singh: 48:11

So, yeah, sorry, exactly, probably exactly that. So if you know great founders who are building, they're early, they want to raise money. I'm also a venture partner at Hoxton Ventures and maybe it's with that hat on, but, especially as an angel, that's where I get my energy. I get my energy from people who are thinking of starting things. It doesn't matter how early it is, so can't speak to everyone, like you say, but people who you think are great and either looking to raise money or just advice that would help me.

Amardeep Parmar: 48:39

Awesome, so thanks so much for coming on. Any final words?

Mandeep Singh: 48:42

No, thank you for having me. It's a great initiative. It's taken me a while to do it, so thank you for bugging me and, yeah, I'd recommend it to anyone.

Amardeep Parmar: 

Thank you for watching. Don’t forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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