Hiten Patel: Hi, this is Hiten Patel on the Innovators Exchange and I'm delighted to welcome today Charlie Kerr, who is the CEO of With Intelligence. Thank you for joining us, Charlie.
Charlie Kerr: Absolute pleasure.
Hiten: It'd be great Just to start with a brief intro to your role in the company that you're at now.
Charlie: So I've been at the same company for 25 years. It's called With Intelligence. Before that I hadn't lasted for more than a year in any business, so I was quite surprised that it's been 25 years. In those 25 years the role has been the same, which is lead the strategy of the business and to help it transform from what it was, a small B2B publisher into now data analytics business whose role in life really is to help LPs [Limited Partnerships] allocate capital better and GPs [General Partnerships] raise assets better.
Hiten: So let's go back and ponder through that story because a pretty awesome story from back in the day, and I guess as I see it, as an outsider, it felt like a specialist publishing media company. Describe to me at the start what it was like. And I'd love to know also, was it clear where it was heading to back in the days? What was it like when you kind of started out and what were your views on, where were you going?
Charlie: Well, I think the really lucky thing for us was that Seb, who was my best mate from school, and I, we started when we were 26, so we had nothing to lose, and we had a great opportunity to learn on the job. And when we started, we really didn't have a clue what we were doing. We just knew we wanted to run a business. I'd been in publishing since leaving school and we knew that the more offshore your customers were, the more financial work they were, the more they paid. So, we started off doing a magazine called Offshore World and we would go to places like the Isle of Man, Bermuda, The Bahamas and say we're doing a special report on you as a financial center and the government's supporting, et cetera, et cetera. And that was a great way to get the business going. So, you turn up in The Bahamas, walk away with 40 grand worth of cash, you write a few articles, do some ads, and then distribute the product.
Charlie: And then it was also probably two or three years into that we realized there wasn't such a thing as offshore finance. We thought there were various disciplines. So, let's try and get a brand that matches each of those disciplines. So, we went for hedge funds, went for something called captive insurance. We started a magazine called Captive Review, and I often say the only person that would launch captive Review would be an idiot and the only person that could keep it going and make it successful is a good, great entrepreneur. And we've done both of those things. So, 2020 odd years on captive and still going, but you are right. The real genesis of it was being a publishing business that wanted to be more subscription driven. We had no idea where it was all going in the first year. It was really about can we keep this thing going for a year? I often call it girlfriend replacement therapy, because my girlfriend at the time, who has since become my wife, broke up with me and it was the best way of getting through a breakup, starting a business. You could put all of your effort into that. I don't think we had a clue that it would work out as well as it has done.
Hiten: Amazing, amazing. There's a life lesson for young budding entrepreneurs if they want to kickstart their company development. I'm going to patronize some of my listeners who may not have even picked up a magazine, right? We're talking 1990s, you're talking, it's print. You've got to walk into shout out my old news agent that I used to work at or WH Smith. How is this getting distributed? Talk to us a little bit like in the nineties, who's picking it up? Where does it come out? This is probably a world for some of the listeners out there that is alien, so it'd be good just to paint the picture for them a bit.
Charlie: So it was all part of the kind of B2B publishing world, which was very much controlled circulation. So, you had an audience who needed to meet an end market and the way to do that was for somebody like us to create some content for the end market and get the advertisers to reach the end market by subsidizing that. So, it was about producing nice content. A typical controlled B2B controlled circulation mag would have maybe 25,000 copies. So quite intensive in terms of printing the stuff, in terms of sending it out. And it was very much an analog thing, and it did very well. So, recruitment advertising was an incredible engine. And you would be spending, this is back in the late eighties, early nineties, you'd be spending two and a half, three grand on a half-page advert in something like Computing or Accountancy Age.
Charlie: And that really was the content. There was other content in there, which was how to become a better accountant. But really what people wanted to do was think, how am I going to get a job? And so that's what they were consuming these things for, but very cost intensive content was, as I say, nice to have, but definitely not critical. And you'd choose an audience and then go off and create content for them and get it subsidized. So that's what we did with Offshore World. And then there were other businesses that were trying to have their cake and eat it. So, it was not only are we going to produce this content and get advertising to pay for it, but we’re also going to try and get the end market to pay for a subscription. And those were very strong businesses and Euromoney was one of those at the time. So, we were trying to morph that, but there was a huge amount of testing and learning, and also just kind of learning how to meet a payroll together, give our customers what we said we were going to give them, et cetera.
Hiten: Yeah. And when did things start to change? When did you start to realize the structure of the way that media is consumed, and it was going to start to evolve the business to what you've become now as a data and info services company? When did that inflection begin? What kind of piqued you to start to change the way things were done?
Charlie: Yeah, I think there were three or four phases for us. The first one was in 2003 when we got our first non-executive chairman, and he really helped us become a structured B2B publisher. We learned about databases and universes and that sort of stuff. 2008 happened and we thought, oh my goodness, this really is quite scary. We've now got to start really focusing on things. And at that time, we were able to get better quality people into the business and we were able to do things that other people had stopped doing. And then in the early two thousands, we started acquiring a lot of subscription-based stuff, primarily from Euromoney. And in 2016, 17, 2016, we took on a guy called Graham Melton who has just been phenomenal for this business. He and I think you know him well, he is an incredible man, very, very thoughtful, not an ounce of ego, very pragmatic.
Charlie: And he really taught us that you've got to create value in the things that you're doing. And in 2017 we bought two more businesses, one called Hedge Fund Intelligence and one called iiSearches. And when we bought those, we started getting into the data world, cyber things. And I think that's when the penny really dropped, that if you are trying to get to a customer on a subscription, on a news subscription product, you're probably going to end up, you're going to start off at 2K ish. If you've got a data product that is actually filling critical use cases, it's 10 K from the get-go and then you can build and build and build from that. So, I think that's what we've tried to do over the last five or six years and I think we've done it successfully, is really improve the quality of data that we collect, the way that we surface it. And I think there are going to be huge opportunities in the next little while to really make sure that you get better quality data and then you interpret that and you do different things with it that really help your customers make the connections that they need from that data, save them a lot of time given to their workflow, that sort of thing. So, a long-winded answer to your question is, I guess as soon as we started buying data businesses, we knew that was the future.
Hiten: Yeah, yeah. Hearing you talk, I mean it's interesting, right? What I hear is it's a multi-decade journey. It's a nonlinear path. And I guess if we bring to where we are now, the world's kind of mildly obsessed with put the words data, put the word alternatives or private markets and it's like honey with bees flying around it. I guess give me your take on why is the world so enamored by these things right now and what is the opportunity going forward around the data space, the alternatives, the private markets?
Charlie: So I think if you look at end markets or private markets, there's been a phenomenal amount of growth in those end markets, and I think that will continue. There are slightly bumpier times for private equity assets at the moment, but I think we're all agreed that private markets have got a great future. I think what data allows you to do is really, to be clear, the data that we're collecting is really around an investor relations use case. We're collecting data on competitors performance and we're also collecting data on what the investors are allocating to, often which funds that they're in. So, what we can do is not only tell you who the 10,000 people that could potentially invest in your fund are, we're beginning to be able to tell you actually these are the 150 that you really should talk to. And if you are on a desert island, take these 20 with you.
Charlie: And that's using data that is both above the line and below the line. And by what, I mean above the line is what is generally known about and below the line is what you'll tell us, not want us to publish but will help with matching. And when you're doing that, you're able to really help an IR focus on the people that they should be talking to and finding really meaningful relationships at the end of that. And if you look at the way a lot of asset raising has done at the moment, the placement agent industry does phenomenally well. And I don't think placement agencies are going anywhere, but there are lots of things that they do that data and tech should be doing and there's a huge profit pool to go after that.
Hiten: Yeah, yeah. Fast forward for me, three to five years, there's a lot rumbling on at the moment. Impact of AI, resurgence in written content, not just structured data. With your best forecasting specs on, what does it look like in three to five years this space?
Charlie: I think it's going to accelerate really quickly, and I think the end market is going to become more regulated. So, the data need from the end market is going to be more of a regulated quality as opposed to what I would call an info services quality. So, I think the data will get stronger. I also think that what you will be able to do with data, not only through AI but also by getting better data sets, using graph data, et cetera, I think you are going to be able to really save time from both an allocation perspective and also from a raising perspective. And it's really going to be those that have got not only the sort of organized, the best public set of data, but also have ways of enriching that data that other people don't. So, I think the world that we are going to be in hopefully in two or three years' time is we're going to own your desktop.
Charlie: So if you are an IR at a hedge fund or a private credit fund, the first thing you can do every day is turn on our interface and you're going to be in it all day and it's going to add a tremendous amount of value to you in terms of knowing which of the customers that you need to speak to. And then sort of building out from there to make sure we can create as much as we can an end-to-end solution for the allocating and the asset raising. I think it's going to be really exciting. In terms of the journey of this business, we should really have done what we've done in the last 25 years. We should have done it in eight or 10, the first 15 we were just sort of testing and learning in a sort of very amateur way. So, I think the partner that we've got now “Motive” are a brilliant partner for us because there is very much a kind of tunnel between their Old Street innovation office and our office in London Wall where we're getting a huge amount of talent. And in doing that, you can really start putting the building blocks of delivering those three to four years' time.
Hiten: Sounds exciting, sounds exciting, and a lot to play for. I guess you hit on something really interesting there for me, which was around as more and more things come dependent on this data, that requirement for it to be regulated or viewed as the criticality of the role it's playing, it's almost as critical as the infrastructure, whether you're an exchange group or whether the power grid, the dependency on these elements. And I think that's a real step change in the maturity of, I guess, how these things are brought on and delivered to the market. I think that's going to be a key change. We're starting to see elements of that, but I think you hit on a key point there. I'm going to change tact slightly, Charlie, and if you don't mind me doing so, I'd love you to just elaborate on a little bit of your story. Coming out of school you weren't a traditional profile developer, you've told me this story before, I'd love for you to share, if you're comfortable sharing. What's it like growing up through that period and what do you think from that period's enabled you to be so successful in terms of where you've got to today? I think it'll inspire a few of the listeners.
Charlie: Yeah, so I think I was at school before you diagnosed things like ADHD, et cetera. I'm not sure that, in fact, I'm sure I've got ADHD, I haven't been diagnosed with it, but when I was at school, I really wanted to be good at something. The one thing that I was brilliant at was annoying the teachers, and I did that really well. And so my education journey came to an end prematurely when I was 16. I left this really smarty-pant school Stowe, really enjoyed my time at Stowe, met some really nice people, met some of my best friends at Stowe, but I wasn't going to go on to have an extended academic career there. And so left and then went to work at British Telecom as a 192100 999 operator. So, I went from a school of enormous privilege into this room with 99 working-class middle-aged women and a 65-year-old called Reg.
Charlie: And it was the best way to finish my education. It's the best way to learn what it really is like to have to earn a living, have to get to where you should be on time and really kind of knuckle down and conform. And I think for me it was a lovely way of ending that kind of privileged world to getting into the workforce and sort of learning some lessons early. And I think it's, the thing for me was I think academic failure made me think right, I really want to nail this, and I really want to build something and be successful. I wasn't entirely sure what successful meant, but I was determined to be it. And for the first 10 years after leaving school, I was studying advertising in various different places to own more responsibility, but always learning, learning about things and always being curious.
Charlie: And I think that when you're building a business and you're an entrepreneur, you've always got to be curious. You've always got to be thinking, if we did that slightly differently, what would that mean? How are we going to, and I think the more neurodiverse you are, the more ways that you see things differently, the more opportunities you create. If you don't need to see things differently, why would you? So, I think that's the exciting part. And I think what we try and do it with is basically get as many people, create as much of a diverse team as possible and let it blend and let it thrive. And I think that experience of, and I think failure is an important thing. I think failure is a really important thing when you're young. The more you fail, the more you understand what failure is, the later you fail the harder it is. So, I think we're always encouraging people to make mistakes in our busyess and learn from them quickly and just test and learn.
Hiten: I love that story. There's so much in there that resonates. Just unpack a little bit what some of those lessons were that you learned in that first job posting as being the operator. Any standouts that you'd
Charlie: Well, yeah, I was a terrible operator and every time I got a customer on 1 9 2 that I didn't like, I'd give them a spurious phone number. I get lots of complaints. And then they would come to me, and I'd say, oh Brent, he's so naughty, iIsn't he? My 65-year-old colleague, the only other man. I think what I learned there was just, I don't know, you are in a world where it's very different to the world of privilege that I think you can get in an education setting. And I think you learn what it's like to be in that environment. And I think when you are in any business and when you're leading any business, the more you can empathize and communicate with people the better. And I think it was a really good place for me to learn lots of lessons and really understand what it's like across the spectrum. So, I think I was only there for eight months, and I was paid four grand a year for a long time. It was the most financially secure that I was, and it was the best eight months ever.
Hiten: I think it's a pretty powerful message. I think there's a lot of hullabaloo over some of these esteemed academic institutions. I had a very privileged academic upbringing myself, but when I think about what I do in my day job, some of the most valuable skills and lessons I've learned was growing up in a corner shop and actually just the basics. And it is kind of crazy that everyone's aspiring and out there chasing some of these illustrious names and institutions and yet we just overlook some of the basics. So, thank you for sharing. I think that's a really powerful story. Talk to me a little bit about what it's like going through some of the capital raises, investment rounds you guys have been through. I don’t know, I think you've been through at least a couple, lot of the listeners are kind of interested in that. So good to hear your view of what that's like and how it plays through.
Charlie: So we bootstrapped for the first 21, 22 years and we didn't take on, I think we took a loan on for the first time probably in 2019 for an acquisition. But by the time we got to 2020 when we did the deal with ICG [Intermediate Capital Group], all the shareholders were the original shareholders. And I think that was important because it meant that we hadn't diluted. And once you do that transaction, you can then sort of take the risks, the risk is taken off the table and you can start doing things with more confidence than you would've done before. I think a lot of these processes, and I'm very pleased, I've only done two, are a little bit like general elections for about six months before you do it, you start writing your policies, you start talking to DD providers, you create a story and it is a story. And all of that time you're not running the business.
Charlie: And then you go into the campaign and the campaign is when the process actually starts and then offer day is a bid, deadline is election day, and then you sort of go to the process of governing again. And I definitely feel that the whole process part is a real distraction from running a business and I'm hopeful that I won't be doing one of those for a while. But I think the partner, I think it's really important to try and get as much as you can from your partner. So motive, as I say, we've got this kind of secret tunnel of talent that's coming from them to us and you could think, well, do you really want them to be so involved, because they might be sort of trying to drive direction, et cetera. I think it's really important to collaborate. I think the most important thing that we can do as a business is make sure that whatever we do every day, we improve in doing it. And if you are the worst in the world but you improve every day, at some point you will overtake a person that is brilliant but doesn't improve. [And I think it's about taking the talent from places like Motive and other partners, Graham Elton, and just putting that into the product and having the confidence to be learning all the time.]And that's I think a critical thing that you are always learning, and you are always determined to make sure what you've done this year you do better next year.
Hiten: There's a thread here, Charlie, when you tell your stories, which I love, which is that continuous growth, continuous learning, right? From when you're mastering how to annoy those teachers when you're 16, through to all of those areas and elements of growing the company., What does it look like now on a personal level? How does it feel when you look back on what you've achieved? It's a pretty amazing story. The company's in an amazing place. The market for where it serves is red hot. What are your reflections when you look back down from the mountain, how do you feel?
Charlie: So I think we all suffer from imposter syndrome. And I think the interesting thing about imposter syndrome is that what you've got to realize is every other person is suffering from imposter syndrome at the same time. So don't worry about that. And then I think you get to a point where you think, actually I'm not an imposter anymore because I've done all these things and been through all these scrapes and these battles. Actually, I feel that there are not many situations that I can't read and understand as a result of all of those battles. So, I think it feels really good to have built something that on a very selfish level has been great for me financially, but on a much broader level has been something that has been a really good platform for lots of people that worked in the business. I love the fact there are lots of marriages and lots of relationships that have been created and lots of careers that have been launched within it.
Charlie: And I think it's great, but what you can never do is think, well how clever am I? Because then you're going to get bitten. You get to the top of the mountain, and you think, oh, I'm going to have five minutes to enjoy the view. And then you turn around and you see the next mountain, right? Better get up that mountain and I'll get up that mountain with more confidence than I did the last one because I've learned, but I'm still going to go up another mountain because I think the moment that you're at the top of the mountain and you get too hubristic, things are going to go wrong.
Hiten: Yeah, keep growing. It sounds like keep growing. I'm going to link a couple of threads that we've dropped on. You dropped upon the election and raising money, being running that election process. I guess you like it or not, you are very successful at creating a British company that succeeded and we're in a bit of an identity crisis here in the UK about how to do that and create new valuable companies. What's your lessons learned, advice to a policymaker, or if you were in government, what do we need to be doing? So there's more, Charlies, there's more With Intelligence. What is it? What is it that you think the world's not understanding in that when they're trying to solve that conundrum?
Charlie: I think that's a really interesting question because I think the government does a pretty good job at tax breaks. I don't fully understand, but around R&D [Research and Development] and that kind of stuff. I think unfortunately it's all going to come down to making sure that you've got a pipeline of talent. And I'm not sure that the education system, particularly the further education system is particularly geared up for delivering that pipeline of talent. And from a British perspective, you've got this massive hula baloo going on around immigration at the moment. And I think not enough people make a positive case for immigration. Not enough people say that actually, if you really want to grow your economy and you really want to upskill your economy, immigration is a great thing to do that. And so, I think I would be really thinking in government, how can I get a better pipeline of talent into businesses and how can I make a positive case for immigration rather than this sort of circular argument that we have at the moment, which is “we don't like it, we don't like immigration, immigration is not the great thing, but actually we're going to double or triple it and upset all our base support”. So, without wanting to be too controversial, I think people should be making a greater case for that. And then I think a lot of it is to sort of make sure that there are lots of ways that staff can share in equity.
Charlie: I think that capital gains thing is important because I think the more people that you get involved, when we did our last transaction, I think, well everybody benefited from the last transaction, but I think there were over 70 people that were in the management suite. And I think that's really important. I think it's really important that people in their twenties and thirties can think I'm a shareholder in this business and if I do well, they'll do well and vice versa.
Hiten: I think that's really powerful for me, that last bit. I think how can you create directly or synthetically that equity participation? So, one of the big things I observe and am passionate about is that there's like an inner entrepreneur and a founder inside of everyone, and if you could unlock it, that productivity and that drive is just completely different. If it's just, Hey, I'm exchange of labor for kind of a wage,
Charlie: It's the owners mentality. You're going back to the shop. It is that if you've got a direct benefit from what happens in that business, not in your particular job, but in the entire business, you're just going to be that much more committed and wedded to it. And I think you want people, that might not be true for everybody, but the people you want to hire are those people that are going to feel, yeah, I own this and I really enjoy winning. And a byproduct of that is financial success. But the real thing that I like doing is winning and succeeding. And if you get those people and you can create the right framework, you're in a really lovely place.
Hiten: Yeah, it's interesting just listening back, right? The answers are kind of out there when you look at all those successful small businesses where people are equity participants, but if I look at the talent pools of say we have in consulting or professional services business today, it seems like a lot of the kids face a binary choice. Either go and be an entrepreneur and start your own company, one end of the spectrum or be salaried and sit in big corporate. But it's harder for them to get that kind of middle ground, which is, okay, I'm going to work for a company, but I'm going to have equity participation. So, look, this could be our first policy.
Charlie: And how can you affect things?
Hiten: This could be our first policy, Charlie, we should change ourselves into a think tank.
Charlie: Yeah, I'm not sure that'd be as profitable as consulting or data to the alts industry.
Hiten: Before we wrap, I like to invite guests to talk or share something that they do outside the professional sphere an interest or a hobby, something that's kind of helped fuel what you've achieved in the day job. Is there any interests or activities that come to mind for you?
Charlie: I like winding my children up and I like taking them to exciting places and I sort of think that your duty as a parent really is to help make memories. And so I take children to Glastonbury every year. I take them to sporting occasions as often as I can. And I think my kids are never going to get a penny, but they are going to have brilliant experiences and the wherewithal to go off and be successful by themselves.
Hiten: Love it, love it. And any 2023 highlights that you'd call out on that little story?
Charlie: I went to the World Cup final in Sydney with my daughters
Hiten: For the women's football, right?
Charlie: For the women's football. And that was amazing. Having been at the Euro final, which was less amazing, that was amazing. Even though we lost, it was an amazing experience Master year was really good this year.
Hiten: Finally, finally, we invite guests to throw the spotlight. And is there an individual or a company preferably not your own, that's impressing you the most right now that you think is worth the attention of the audience who now listens?
Charlie: I think very far away from home. I think what's going on at Microsoft is absolutely fascinating. And I love the idea that this sort of once great business really sort of floundered for a while and then the new leadership is doing some really exciting things. And I really like the idea of a second coming and a reinvention in that business. I think in terms of businesses, there are lots of businesses in my space to admire and I think businesses I admire the most are people like Wood Mackenzie and Info Services and also Argus Media who have really made that transition from a more B2B world. And I think those companies that have done that I think are brilliant and I think you've got to have a special level of entrepreneurialism in order to do that. And they've done that. And then I guess wider than that, it is those sort of big names like Microsoft that I think are fascinating. I think we are going to be in for the most incredible decade. I think it's going to be, I'm just reading a book called The Coming Wave, which is written by a guy who founded Deep Mind. I think the last decade is going to look like an absolute sort of still calm day on a mill pond compared to the wave of stuff that's going to happen in the next one.
Hiten: Let's brace ourselves. Let's brace ourselves.
Charlie: Well, exciting.
Hiten: Indeed. Indeed. Well look, Charlie, thank you so much for taking the time. It's been wonderful to walk down the decades and hear from you winding up the teachers at Stowe to the decade of discovery and trialing and testing the company to kind of where you've got to now. And I think you've got an amazing story to tell. So, thank you for sharing it. It's one of the most inspiring ones. I've heard it a couple of times over the years and I am never tired of hearing it. I think more people need to hear and be inspired by people like you. So, thank you for coming on the show. Appreciate you making the time.
Charlie: Brilliant.
Hiten: Thank you, Charlie.
Charlie: See you later. Take care.
