Bae HQ New Studio and 2025 Updates w/ Amardeep Parmar | Bae HQ

00:00
Amardeep Parmar:
Hi, everyone, this is Amardeep from our new studio. So I'm just going to give you an update about BAE HQ, what's been happening this year so you can keep up to date with all the different things that have been happening, how they affect you and the new opportunities you can get from us as well. So if we start off with the new studio, so obviously you might notice it looks different, especially if you've been watching the previous episodes. So this is brought to you from my new office in Farringdon. And this took ages to decide, right, about where should we move to, what's the right format for us? And if you're not getting an office for your own business, I can just talk you through why you've done what we have.

00:37
Amardeep Parmar:
So what we've done, we moved from a serviced office to one which we've had to furnish ourselves. But what it means is that it's way cheaper for the space versus how many people we have. So this office is way bigger. We've been able to build our own studio inside here as well. And what it means is we can have flexibility as the team grows, then we can add more desks, so we can take desks away, we can change the format, whereas when using a space such as WeWork or something like that, it's a lot harder to do that. So for us, it's been really good so far. And as I'm recording this right now, so we've got people watching me on the side over there.

01:10
Amardeep Parmar:
And as we record the podcast too, it means that the team can sit here, they can learn about it as well. And one of the challenges that's always been for us when we record the podcast is that it's just me going by myself. And as part of BAE HQ growing, we want the team to get involved, we want everybody to be able to meet the different podcast guests as well. So this new studio is a big thing for us and give us a feedback. Let us know if you like the new studio, let us know if they think the quality is better or worse or anything like that. We'd love to hear from you. So, new office is a big deal for us and we'll be expanding that as well. So we might do workshops from here as well.

01:45
Amardeep Parmar:
So another thing we've done, and if you've been paying attention, if you go back and watch some of the quarterly updates, it's interesting for you to see how much we've changed and pivoted along the way. So before we say we had four five pillars and we said we had four pillars and we're just mixing up as we're trying to understand the best route forwards now we make it a lot simpler. So we say we've got a CEO framework and we've got the content, events and opportunities and hopefully that's easy to remember and also for you to understand what we even do. So that's one great big feedback we'd love from you as well, is like, do you understand everything we do is. It's not clear, do you know how it can help you?

02:21
Amardeep Parmar:
And that's something we keep working on as we get better and as we get more refined about what we're doing. So if I go through what we've been doing, each of those pillars over time. So the C is the content and obviously content is we've got the podcast. We're over 200 episodes in now. And now that we have our own studio, we can really vary up and do lots of different things, Types of content too. So right now I'm recording this just from like one person sitting here. But in the future we have a round table. We can have other elements too. We can. People can rent this out as well. The news is just ticking along and that's covering fundraises and acquisitions. Then we have Baywatch, which is back again this year.

02:59
Amardeep Parmar:
So BAE Watch is my favourite part of everything we've done with BAE HQ. So the idea is it's look up and coming startups. So. So to come onto the main podcast, you have to have at least 1 million fundraised or 5 million in revenue. But we also want to help the people on that journey.

03:14
Amardeep Parmar:
Right.

03:15
Amardeep Parmar:
So people want to get it in the next three years or so. And BAE Watch is our feature to do that so you can get in front of our audience of all of these incredible investors, now the founders, to see if that can build your presence and hopefully get you customers too. So BAE Watch comes out every Wednesday. Make sure you check that out. And if you are the early stages of business, why don't you apply for it? Because that's completely free and it helps you to get the word out there about what you're doing. We also have the wiki, which has been growing and growing, so you can go onto a website and check all of that out.

03:45
Amardeep Parmar:
And a big thing this year actually too was a startup foundations course that we launched, I think just before the new year or in the first week of the year. And that's a three hour course which is completely free. And if you're thinking about starting a business someday or right at the beginning you don't know what you're doing. That's a perfect course for you. So I've distilled that from the hundreds of interviews I've done, all the millions of founders and different events I've been to and it's what do you need to know at each stage in a way that's hopefully quite engaging and simple to understand. And what I'm going to do now in studio is iterate on top of that, make it better.

04:20
Amardeep Parmar:
So again, if you watch that course, you think, oh, it didn't cover this bit that I think is really important, let me know because then we can make it better. So that's the content side at the moment and there will be new things launching soon and all of those different elements as well if I go to the event side. So on events, we've already had over 350 people attend our events in 2025. So it brings us up to over 2,500 and non student events. So we had the big panel event with HSBC in January, we had the Roger Wade, who's the founder of Box Park, Fireside Chat last week and then this week. So I'm recording this in the last week of February we've got a International Women's Day event with Female Founders Rise.

05:02
Amardeep Parmar:
Next week we have an event with the with Dubai and different foundations from there about if you want to scale to Dubai, how do you get there? And there's so many other events planned as well. But we can't rule too much too early, but we're ahead of our targets. We want to get to 3,000 people at our general events this year and we're hitting those targets and looking to exceed them as well. And then on the opportunity side, this has been a big focus for us this year and as I'm recording this, I've literally got two school students over there watching me and judging me about how we're doing this. But for them it's such a big opportunity.

05:36
Amardeep Parmar:
Right?

05:36
Amardeep Parmar:
Because I remember when I was at school I got work experience by working with my dad and that opened up different doors for me. But if you don't have that network then it's something which gives people a disadvantage right from the beginning. So what we're doing is getting founders on our network and if you'd love to do this, we'd really want the help on this too is to take on work experience students and help open the doors for them.

05:56
Amardeep Parmar:
Right.

05:56
Amardeep Parmar:
Because this can help them with their CV if they want to go into a job afterwards. It can help their personal statement if they want to go into university, but it just helps open their eyes up to what's your opportunities available. So that's a big thing for us this year, the work experience programme. Five pilot schools for that and 100 students from those five schools. So the first one is happening right now, there's another one happening in April and the other cohorts are in July and August and other times throughout the year. So if you want to take on a student, you've got to be. You've got to have employers, liability insurance, you've got to have a DBS check as well, but you're going to be giving somebody an opportunity which they wouldn't get otherwise, which makes such a difference to their lives.

06:38
Amardeep Parmar:
So make sure you sign up for that if you want to get back. The mentorship programmes have kicked off this year. So again, mentorship, the target is 100 mentorships this year and there's 40 that are happening literally right now. So we've got the founders cohort, which started in January, and there's 20 founders on that programme, they're getting workshops every week. Then we've got 20 students as well, and that started in February. And the idea behind this is completely free and it's going to be backed by different organisations, but how do we get people that access the mentors and the network and the education that they wouldn't get otherwise?

07:13
Amardeep Parmar:
So it's a big focus for us this year and I guess spoilers on this side too is that's going to grow into more of an accelerator and an incubator programme as we go further down the line. So having great feedback from the people in that programme and it's really good to see just those people who obviously as well, volunteering to be mentors, giving back and making that difference. This on the student talk side. So I've been to Woodford County High School earlier this year. I've talked at Warwick University, Bath University, Ravensbourne University, Imperial, there's LSE coming up. UCL we've collaborated with, so working with lots of different universities. And again, if you're a student listening to this, if you're a parent who's got a kid who's in either sixth form or if they're in university, get in touch.

07:58
Amardeep Parmar:
We'd love to do more work with you and to really pay it forward and make that difference and open up people to those non traditional paths.

08:05
Amardeep Parmar:
Right.

08:05
Amardeep Parmar:
Because we know when I went to school myself. You're very much. You see the powerful professional careers, but what about these other careers too? And what about if you wanted to work in the tech space or the startup space or build your own company someday? And that's what we're trying to show people, that there are other options open too. Not say you have to do it, but just to know that options are available which gives you that choice. Hello. Hello. Quick introduction to let you know about BAE HQ. We're the community for high growth British Asian entrepreneurs, operators and investors. And you can do a completely free at thebaehq.com/join. There, you get our CEO pillars. So that's content, events and opportunities direct to your inbox every week so you can get involved and it can help you to further your business and your career.

08:52
Amardeep Parmar:
We also have a free startup course called BAE Startup Foundations where if you think about starting a business someday or at the early stages, it gives you all that information to help you hit the ground running and to thrive in this new world. Back to the show. So lots of updates on the team side as well. So Aish has passed probation, our found associate. So big congratulations to her. Earlier this year then I have stepped down as CEO which is an interesting thing which I get a lot of funny questions about. So it's good for you to understand this is that the role of the CEO is mainly to do the meetings and some of the overall strategy, which is what Gurvir is really good at.

09:32
Amardeep Parmar:
Right.

09:32
Amardeep Parmar:
So Gurvir is managing the partnerships, he's managing all these different relationships and by being CEO it gives him that power to make the decisions quickly and push things forwards and obviously we're completely aligned. So we know that. I know he's going to make decisions I'm going to agree with and we talk about things whenever there's something that's a little bit of doubt. What it also does because I'm mainly the face of what we do, it allows me to focus on things like this and creating content and spreading the word without needing to all the meetings. Because if I'm doing both, it doesn't really work. So how it generally works, I can do the one to many stuff, I do things like this, I talk at events and all of that stuff and doing different things behind the scenes.

10:13
Amardeep Parmar:
But then Gurvir is the one who have the meetings to make sure that things go over the line. So strategic shift we've made which is really working out so far then we've had interns in this year as well. So we've got a couple of American interns right now. There's interns joining us from I believe, Warwick University and Bath University as well. And I'm sure there's more coming too. So we're getting these university interns again, giving that experience. They're going to get real life, hands on experience on the different projects we're doing. Imperial MBA, I believe we've got interns coming from there as well. Then we've also had Shreyaa just join us as well.

10:47
Amardeep Parmar:
So she's sitting right there so she can hear me, so I'm going to look at her reactions, but she's going to help us on the event side as well as a volunteer, which we're really grateful for and it makes a huge difference. Right, because we're doing so much with such a small team. When people are willing to volunteer like that and be consistent with our volunteering, it can really help us to expand the impact and make a bigger difference for you guys. We've also got additional members to our board. So Jay Gujral is continuing on the board and so is Dimple Patel and who also Bindi Karia. Join us, who's one of the OGs of the UK's data ecosystem. She was one of the people who helped set up the early banking at Silicon Valley Bank.

11:25
Amardeep Parmar:
She was also looking after Microsoft Accelerator and to direct with a huge network and done so many incredible things and she's one of those people who've really set up the whole ecosystem as the way we see it today. Also joining us is Asesh Sarkar. So he's got an incredible story and I love his story. So he grew up here inner city Leicester, went to comprehensive school. He then managed to get into consulting. He worked there for several years before starting his own company called Salary Finance. Now, if you haven't heard of Salary Finance is one of the greatest success stories in the UK tech ecosystem without yet being unicorn. So they've lent over a trillion dollars or pounds, I can't remember. But what that does is enables people who are low incomes but have a large employer to rent to loan against that salary.

12:14
Amardeep Parmar:
Right. So let's say you work for the nhs. If you had to go to loans, generally you might have to go to a payday shark or something like that, who's going to take advantage. Whereas through Salary Finance, because it's in collaboration with the employer, you get much cheaper rates, which makes such a difference in so many people's lives. So he's done this, he's grown this company. They've raised hundreds of millions for this. And he's also just released a book as well about the thought process behind this. How can you use capitalism in a way for good to help that social mobility? Because he came from that background himself and now is giving back through business. So it's a massive inspiration as well as Bindi as well, in terms of what they've been able to do for the ecosystem. Love hanging them on board.

12:54
Amardeep Parmar:
And it's going to make a real difference what we're going to be able to achieve this year. One other thing, just to be honest about the situation right now, is that last year we had a big headline partner and this year were meant to have another couple of big partners as well. And we made a lot of decisions based on that and those deals then fell through. It's a difficult financial situation, difficult economic situation. Many companies are making massive cuts and that makes life difficult for us.

13:19
Amardeep Parmar:
Right.

13:20
Amardeep Parmar:
And what we've had to do this year is become way more resilient as a business model, which put a lot of pressure on us and a lot of sleepless nights. You can see my eyes are probably quite red. And what we're now going to do is, okay, how do we make this business model sustainable? Because we can only continue to help you if we're still alive. So one way we've been able to do this in the short term is our patron programme. And we initially launched this with the idea of high net worth individuals who want to give back, who can then give us certain amount per year. It says different programmes, so there's a support patron, Bronze, Silver, Gold.

13:53
Amardeep Parmar:
Right.

13:53
Amardeep Parmar:
And as part of that they get exclusive access and they also get to support our impact work. What we've now done is enable people to pay on a monthly basis instead, which makes it a bit more accessible for those who want to give back and really want to help, but maybe can't do a lump sum at the beginning of the year. We've also opened up to companies. So how you got to think about us as a business is that we have a lot of value.

14:14
Amardeep Parmar:
Right?

14:14
Amardeep Parmar:
Clearly we've got hundreds of people in the podcast, thousands of people in the network that can benefit your business. So if you want to become a patron for us, we then advertise you depending on the tier, on our website, in our newsletter, on the podcast, and so many different ways. So by enabling people to use our brand and our reach to further their marketing in order to get in front of new people and also get in front of high value People as well.

14:41
Amardeep Parmar:
Right.

14:41
Amardeep Parmar:
Because our network is founders and investors. If that's a market you want to target, and especially in the Asian heritage background, then that could be a good thing for you too.

14:50
Amardeep Parmar:
Right.

14:51
Amardeep Parmar:
But that patron programme we've had some people take on board already, we have only launched a couple of weeks ago, which can then make a massive difference to us by making us more resilient. Because if we're getting a bit of money from lots of different people, it means that if somebody drops out, it's less of a financial impact for us and there'll be other things launching this year too. And again, being, like, straight with you is that we need to make sure this can last. We need to make sure that as it continues to go, we're two years in now, we can pay ourselves properly, we don't need to worry about paying rent or anything like that.

15:20
Amardeep Parmar:
So we're going to launch other new parts of the business too, that enable us to do that effectively while continuing to make the impact we want to make, but making sure that we're not ever going to be reliant on big shocks where if one person drops out, if one thing happens, then we're now worried and scared. So that's a big thing happening this year, which I hope you will get behind and even on the smaller basis. Right. If you want to support us, buy the merch. Right. It doesn't cost much, but that's one way to help us out and to continue to keep this ecosystem thriving and for us to continue to do the work we're doing. I think that's all the updates from me. I've probably forgotten something because there's so many things going on at once.

15:57
Amardeep Parmar:
As I said, this is our new studio. You're going to see future episodes and future content coming from this background and we're going to jazz up more. We're going to get a rug, we're going to get fancy stuff in the background, we're going to get a new bookshelf, all of those good things. And hopefully I continue to see you in the future and look forward to seeing you at our events. Make sure you apply to programmes too.

16:16
Amardeep Parmar:
Right.

16:16
Amardeep Parmar:
Those programmes exist to help you, so take everyone and see you soon. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time. 

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