Thinking Business > Video Interview: The fundamentals of a growing business in this digital age – Tristan Mehta, CEO of Harley Academy
Tristan Mehta, CEO, Harley Academy.

Video Interview: The fundamentals of a growing business in this digital age – Tristan Mehta, CEO of Harley Academy

Tristan Mehta, Founder and CEO of Harley Academy, provides advice and insight into the world of startup companies and the means to go about making that early growth period as smooth and efficient as possible.

Find out more about Harley Academy at: https://www.harleyacademy.com/

 

1. What is the main factor you consider when choosing a financial services provider?

 

Someone who is adaptable, that’s the number one. It’s gotta be someone that takes time to get to know your business, and then will customise the service according to what you need because in the early days you’ll have something sorted, but you need someone to help with annual returns, you might need someone to help with R&D tax credits, whatever it is. So it can’t be just kind of like a bronze, silver and gold tier member tier structure of services. It’s got to be custom to you because your needs will be different in each company. So it’s gonna be customisable. I want them to take the time to actually learn the company so I can add input, but the biggest added value is someone who can bring in new concepts into your business, or, kind of, change the way you think about your own business, rather than someone who looks at your numbers and produces reports. Someone who can look at your numbers, and then tell you areas that you can actually change to drive a business, or, to claim back revenues or to open up new revenue streams, for example. That’s what we found, when we find good financial service advisers, is they can add that extra piece and then they work as part of your business.

 

2. What has been more important to Harley Academy so far? Growth or Profitability?

 

We’re on a trajectory which plans to raise money. And so, right now, the priority is growth, and we want to show our revenues are growing and our team are growing and then we have the operations and processes in place to demonstrate to an investor that actually, this a secure company, with the caveat that I would need to make sure that we had at least three months of cash flow available to us in the bank. Apart from that, any profits would get back into the growth of the company, and the important bit there is getting all shareholders aligned onto that mission because if you’ve got some shareholders that want dividends and profits, then that’s you know, that’s a clutch, and so, the shareholders are aligned, and so, growth is the focus for us.

 

3. What is your attitude towards the early rush for profits faced by startup tech companies?

 

If we were purely tech, I think that’s what we would try and do. We had the opportunity to actually generate revenues from activities that weren’t tech under the same limited company, which allowed that entity to, erm, – it gave us an idea which was that we will raise money, and we will have a tech strategy as part of the business plan, that will ultimately become the majority of our revenue. But we wanted to raise money on our terms, when we were a company that wasn’t losing money or was pre-revenue, we wanted to be at a place which was a good investment, regardless of any ambitious tech plan.

 

4. Do you see any mistakes made by startup companies that you yourself may have faced?

 

Honest answer, I’m not that up-to-date with… I don’t know enough about other startups to actually be able to critique them on anything as I think that honestly every single business is so different in terms of their strategy, in terms of how mature their market, is in terms of what the competitors are doing, in terms of what tech can actually happen within that industry. But, I think the common mistakes that I would see is, it’s not finding the right people, and not finding the right reason to do it, and the right problem that you’re solving, and I see a lot of businesses that are so contrived, that they look good on an Instagram advert or whatever it is, but actually when you look, when you kind of peel it all back, there isn’t much value in that initial idea. And that, you shouldn’t base a business upon anything that isn’t a really valuable core mission.

 

5. Do you think that early implemented digital systems either help or inhibit the growth of a startup company?

 

I think the middle ground there, when you put young people that are interested in using interesting systems, project management software, things, choose a few things that are working well, like Slack works, Hubspot is a fantastic CRM and these are the kind of things that we use. And, I think the answer is when you need it, use them, when they can squeeze efficiency from using them, but in the very early days, an Excel spreadsheet is all we used for the first year of training and it was fine. We didn’t have Zero, we didn’t have CRM, we didn’t have an Instant Messaging solution. But these things become necessary at the right times and we’ve got loads of really cool tools available to us now, that are low cost and extremely, you know, well put together and I think it becomes obvious when a process is needed because you can see the obvious gains in efficiency from from having them.

 

6. What’s the biggest mistake that you think you’ve made?

 

Rushing into it. Trying to do too many business opportunities at once, and bringing on board shareholders without a investing schedule and share options agreement. And giving them the opportunity to purchase shares, or have shares and return for certain obligations or IP because you can’t go back from them. So the mistakes I made is moving too fast, to my own detriment, and distracting myself and secondly incentivising important shareholders in the wrong way.

 

7. What are the three things that you look for when recruiting new staff?

 

Well there’s a few things I look for. Number one is character, and it’s just are you a good person? Are you someone who’s you know, quite an empathetic person? I want people that feel human to me, and people that can buy into a mission because when you get them on that, in that place, then there was more to you than somebody sees in another job. So that’s the kind of one thing, number two is aptitude. Have they got brain power that can be used and applied? Number three, cultural fit. You could have the first two but someone who would absolutely not fit your company and I think that’s number three. Track record doesn’t doesn’t mean anything to me because we’re doing such new different things and relevant experience, again for the majority of the hires we make isn’t as important.

 

8. What role has the online world played from a marketing perspective?

 

It’s hugely important for our revenues because the majority of our, literally 90% of our revenue, comes in from Digital sales, comes in from SEO, comes in from social media adverts, comes in from PR and good advertisements, so we’re almost an entirely Digital company in terms of how we generate our revenues.

[Transcript]

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