Scaling Finder From Startup to $100M+ Revenue

Welcome to the Growth Banter podcast. My name is Blake McCollough, CEO and founder of GMS and Casper Group, one of Australia's leading digital marketing agencies. This podcast is for anyone looking to learn the insights and strategies of industry leaders and how to build a successful life. Today, I'm joined by my good friend Jeremy Cabral, co-founder of finder.com, and he's gonna share his insights and journey scaling Finder to 600 people and his most recent journey with helping scale other brands past $100 million. I hope you enjoy. Welcome, Jeremy.

Thanks for having me.

Pleasure to have you on, mate. Now, we've been talking about doing this for some time.

We have.

And we managed to get it right before the end of the year, before Christmas. So finish with a bang for the year.

That's it.

Mate, you've accomplished a fair bit in your career. You were the Uh, COO of finder.com, um, Australia's largest financial comparison site. Um, I've got a few accolades here of what you helped accomplish in that period that you're with Finder, including bootstrapped to $100 mil plus revenue before raising external capital, expanded into 23 plus countries, reaching millions of people, built and supported a crew of 600 across the globe over 17 years and secured $30 mil in funding at a $680 mil post-money valuation. So lots there.

It was a bit, mate.

Let's dive into that.

Let's do it.

Talk to us about the journey there.

Yeah, honestly, man, as one of the co-founders, I joined the business. Um, and just, yeah, in the beginning, I think we were doing like probably $1,500 a month in revenue or something like that. Fred and Frank had kicked it off and I joined because I think for me, uh, you know, I was academically very strong at, um, well, I felt I was academically pretty strong at, um, understanding the search algorithms and I really wanted to test myself in the biggest league possible that I felt like from a values perspective would be for me, something I'd be really proud of. And so financial education and comparison was key. I felt that, you know, no one really in Australia had cracked it. Uh, you had a couple of like kind of dinosaur brands that were trying to have a go. And, um, yeah, I think for me, I just felt like if we could scalably achieve, you know, this massive financial education platform and we ultimately did, it would have massive impact for Australians. And that was the goal.

Yeah. Good. And I understand that it was like a bit of a smorgasbord of ideas at the start.

Yeah.

And then Finder became this sort of financial comparison idea and juggernaut that it become. What was it like in that era of just having all these ideas and random pathways everywhere? Yeah.

So, um, there's about 27 experiments running, um, side by side, one of which was Credit Card Finder. And, um, when I joined, actually, um, the website was having a bit of trouble and, um, yeah, really my goal was to try and get unpenalized by Google. And, um, we did that within a couple of weeks and, um, Fred called me up. I was like, mate, unreal. Good job. Um, let's do something like in a longer-term capacity and ultimately joined as co-founder to get it all cranking. And, um, yeah, I think it was, it was really interesting because we ultimately, um, I think Fred discovered this business model around affiliate marketing and it wasn't massive in Australia yet. Um, but that's where the experiments were all centered around, like, how do you drive efficient acquisition for all of these brands? Um, so we had, you know, a whole bunch in play. Um, everything from like, I think 3G internet, um, dongles were taking off at the time. So that was one of the first websites, wirelessinternetaccess.net.au, not even .com.

Wow.

And, um, Um, yeah, we're just cranking it out and, um, and really learning how to, I guess, build out scalable systems around content production and, you know, really helping build brand awareness for the company as well. It was something that we, you know, we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how does the media work? How do you get like, you know, more attention towards what we're doing?

Hmm. Interesting. And for someone who has no idea about how you rank on Google at all, because Finder is technically a big search engine, you know, beast, um, to drive traffic to then lead into Um, owned other owned companies. How, how does it all work? Like how does Finder rank? How do you then, um, connect that traffic over to a potential financial provider or another business that you are looking to rank on? Talk us through the infrastructure of how you can manipulate Google's algorithm.

Yeah. Um, obviously playing within the rules is key and like we did, we didn't always do that. Um, but Ultimately, in the beginning, it starts with really, you know, identifying the customer problems and trying to find a way that through your website, you can solve those problems. It's about meeting intent and trying to find, you know, whether it be education, tools, things that send a clear signal to Google that you're ultimately driving better user engagement. That's a key part of the algorithm. Like, you know, you land on the website, you get what you expected to see, and you ultimately get to the outcome. And the outcome for our customers has been ultimately choosing a financial product or an insurance product and know, that's kind of what we solve for. And then they eventually apply for it on the, on the bank's website or insurance company's website. So for me, I think how I like to play the game in beating, you know, some of these companies on the internet and, you know, really trying to build an edge is like thinking about as a simulation, if I were inside my competitor, what would I naturally do? And kind of where would I stop? And like, you know, for me, it's like where they stop is where you start playing. And that's like, you know, whether initially it looks like out hustling them or just, you know, going way further on a, the guide, I'm being more comprehensive, more creative. Like, I think it's really a mind game initially. And it's really weird that I kind of approach growth in this way, but I think it's ultimately about psychology.

Mm.

And, you know, I think that for me, it's just looking where most humans would stop is where you start. And I think, you know, building that edge around each of the variables that go into the algorithm. So I think quality content matters. Quality is ultimately determined, like I said, by making sure you meet the intent. There's a part of, you know, the early algorithm for Google's centered around PageRank. So Larry Page, one of the co-founders of Google, he effectively solved the problem of votes for websites from other websites. And that patent really made search engines usable because prior to that, there were all these meta crawlers and crappy search engines. But I think, again, if you have websites voting for each other, how do you get on the most important websites on the internet? We literally built a spreadsheet. It was like a laddering technique. So We identified the top few hundred websites in Australia by traffic, and we just built a strategy and tactic one by one until we tried to get on literally all of them. Everything, everything from, you know, blogs and, you know, real estate websites to, you know, the top websites in the country, government websites. And, um, it's about building a campaign or a tactic for each of those. So yeah, pretty effective.

So to perform well on Google, there's a relationship between good copywriting, great content, and the optimization of that site. Um, how much effort goes into something like Finder in terms of being able to write content that gets picked up by Google, but also optimized in a technical way that also has that relationship together?

Yeah, man. Um, I've got to say it's a lot. At its peak, we had nearly 200 people behind the content machine. Wow. Um, and you know, what that was about for me was like identifying each of these variables, unitizing the work, and repeatedly doing them at scale. Um, And yeah, I think that for me is, it's often a simple game and I think being disciplined enough to stay at it. So yeah, it's huge. And the weird thing is that Finder is nobody had SEO in their job title for like the first, I think like 12 years or something. And that's quite purposeful. Like we really wanted to be stealth and make it difficult for, um, external people to go like, who do we hire out of Finder? And we just take out their SEO strategy. Um, and, uh, also I think it was like internal crew because like, I guess I was like masterminding this. whole thing, this blueprint, it was like you couldn't really just hire one individual person and kind of steal our IP or playbook. So, um, it was really a system of scalable execution and a culture behind it that made it extremely difficult to compete with us.

Yeah, it makes sense. How much do you think balance, or in terms of the skewing of attention, was it more on the technical side, more on the content side? Like where was most of the effort and resources injected into sustain it?

Yeah, I think firstly there's a data issue, right? You've got to like scalably identify what are people typing in to find your, I guess, page on the internet or your business. Um, and then I think honestly it's about obsession. Like I spent like for every keyword I would go to, you know, the first 100 results in Google, open them up, read them, find ways to do better than what they had done. And then when I was done with Australia, I'd go globally.

Yeah.

I remember reading German credit card comparison websites and, um, there was one website I was credit-card-comparison-online.com or something like that. Um, and just going, yep, that was a great little piece of content. We can take that idea and improve on it. So we effectively became like the Wikipedia of financial education. It was, um, yeah, pretty massive.

How good. So you've since moved on from Finder. You're now, uh, focusing on helping other brands scale to $100 million. Um, obviously you've got a huge amount of experience and skills to be able to inject into brands looking to scale to a similar level to what Finder has. Talk us through that. How's that journey been?

Yeah, man, it's been interesting. I think, you know, the best way to put it is like I was a copilot in the jumbo jet and now I'm in the hangar trying to tune a whole bunch of them. And, um, yeah, it's been, it's really interesting. I put out the kind of the note that I'm helping companies and I've had over 150 reach out in the space of a couple of weeks. And, um, so that's been really interesting for me. I've got this, you know, opportunity to really look at the data and start pattern matching and seeing who's succeeding, who's not, and What do they need? And, um, you know, really what it's about is, you know, being a copilot to these founders now and figuring out how they can achieve, you know, what we did at Finder, but also hopefully a bit more.

I like that, the copilot. Is that going to be the brand name?

Mate, I'm still working on that sort of stuff. Um, but yeah, I am obsessed with flywheels and, um, maybe there's some sort of branding around that. Who knows?

Yeah, very good. Well, um, yeah, I'm excited to see, you know, what your journey is going to lead you. And I know there's a lot of synergies with the way that, you know, we can work together and it's already sort of shaping that way. Um, What are some, like in terms of some of the brands you're speaking to at the moment, what seems to be some of the biggest challenges that brands are facing, not just from growth, but more from like, let's say getting from $10 to $100 million. Like what, what seems to be the biggest challenges today?

Yeah, well, I think to get to the first few million, really off the back of the founder, you can get there. But going beyond that, I think it's about systems. And for me, what I'm doing when I go into these companies is going, okay, cool. Where are you at? And how did you get here? But then I'm really trying to isolate the growth levers that will get them to the next level and then building a machine around those growth levers. And ideally, you know, trying to find a way to have AI and automation to remove the grunt work. So, um, yeah, I think it's really interesting. There's a whole bunch of companies that are kind of at that phase and are really looking for that guidance. For me, um, often there's a lot of opportunity and a lot of ideas and you've really got to isolate down to a few and execute on those. Um, And yeah, that's challenging because, you know, there's so much excitement when you kind of get, you've gotten to the beachhead of, you know, a few million dollars in revenue. Um, and yeah, I guess for me, I'm someone that's really about doing a simple game at scale. So that's, that's what I bring in as kind of my guidance and mentorship.

Okay, great. Yeah. So, so if a brand came to you tomorrow and like, hey, Jeremy, need your help. What would, what would be like a roadmap or pathway that you'd show them for a typical brand that's, you know, looking, got wins on the board, got their first few million. What would be the runway and roadmap for them that you'd sort of map out?

Yeah. So, um, at Finder, I was working on product growth, operations, and international expansion, a whole bunch of things. Um, I look at the intersect between product and growth because for me, I think there's a lot of opportunity if you can get your technology right. So starting like looking at the product, really start, you know, understanding their offer and their funnels, I think is critical. Um, and seeing which channels they've got in place and how they tapped it out or not is important. But ultimately for me, I think it's about installing another growth engine, another channel that they can unlock. And, um, progressively building a drumbeat around that. So it looks like a 90-day sprint where you just go, okay, cool, we're going to go at this. Um, often it looks like trying to improve the founder brand as well a little bit and, you know, trying to build a bit more attention around what they're doing. Um, but yeah, it's about repeatable systems for me that, um, they need to have in place and going, you know, I, you know, we ultimately scaled to nearly 600 employees, like you mentioned. And I think that's about, you know, replacing yourself in what you do each day across a whole bunch of areas of your business. I'd go into an area of the company. of our company, sorry, and build out, you know, literally the playbook through immersion. I'd go, okay, cool. I need to learn about data science. So what I'm going to do is a 12-week course at General Assembly or whatever it was, literally coding in R, doing the whole thing. By the end of it, I tried to hire the teacher. And he was like, man, I'm not, no, I'm not going to be hired. But, um, through that, met one of his mates. Um, you know, that became ultimately an introduction to our chief data officer who ultimately ran that function. Through immersion, I, you know, you speak to authors, you speak to speakers, consultants, agencies, clients, whoever it is, people that are world-class at that thing. And, um, I think, yeah, you just got to move from one area of the business to the next. And that's the way to get there.

Couldn't agree more. Like I, I've been doing a fair bit of one-on-one advisory over the past couple of years outside of our done-for-you service at JMS. And, um, yeah, I find that there's You take for granted being in this industry and yourself as well, um, how overwhelming it is to run a business online and not only to set that up, but what to do to then get customers and retain that and grow. Like even from an initial starting point, you know, like you need copywriting. And I think that's probably one of the most neglected things. People go in and they don't know their message. They don't know how to talk to the customer. Then they start building a website. They start filming and then all of a sudden it's like all these generic messages. It's like, it doesn't matter how good it looks. And you could agree with Finder, like one of the main things that I'm sure was really important was to get words right on a page.

100%.

Um, and if you miss that, the rest of it falls over. So it's just like little things like that can like be the difference of success in the first year or unwinding that after a year of heartache of spending all this money and getting it wrong, you know? So like the messaging is one of the first things I feel is, should be looked at for any business, no matter what size you are, because that message is going to change over time. Then it's, then it's the creative piece, obviously, you know, like that is the engine today online to promote. Um, and then yeah, systems, like fuck, without systems, you can hire good talent. And I think that's also a misperception. Great talent, yes, can, can scale a business, but not beyond 10, 20 people, you know, to 600 people. Like you need, you need robust systems. So when you're not there, people know what they're doing.

100%.

And I think one person can't manage more than 10 to 20 people max, you know?

Yeah, I agree. And I think, um, that is a key point on the talent front. I think as a founder, there's kind of things you have natural superpowers around and you get to this point where you really need to hire out a leadership team, people that can kind of bring outside experience in and help drive that area of the business better than you could, um, and get out of their way. You know, that's really what it's about. Um, I think, you know, Frank, uh, our CEO and my co-founder is honestly really good at this as well. He kind of just gives space to top talent to really build out their, their thing and do their special work.

Yeah, nice. I remember listening to Fred at one of, um, um, uh, a keynote and he was talking about, you know, um, in the early days of Finder, there was a small team that he got around. Um, I'm sure you were part of that. And then, um, and then from like when it started to scale, he's still sort of stuck with like only 5 to 10 people max, because he just likes, you know, dealing with a small tight-knit crew versus, you know, being, being in the office with hundreds of people. You know, it's funny how as a finder, as a founder, It doesn't necessarily mean that you can manage, you know, hundreds of people. So the difference between, I guess, like having key management in different departments, like how critical was that to scale?

100%. And as you mentioned, I think that kind of those pods that kind of driving innovation, I think are really critical inside a company. And as a founder, that might be where you need to stay and kind of really isolating something that's more of a leap for the business where the rest of it's running. And how do you kind of make that leap? Because, you know, sometimes you just need that founder level commitment towards achieving that. But yeah, in terms of getting it running, I think, um, it's interesting because in your company, as you scale, like you have a whole bunch of people that were with you from the beginning and you've either got to really upskill them to try and be better managers and leaders or try and create enough space for them to feel, you know, the level of autonomy and commitment to the business and loyalty they've always had working alongside these newer people. So that's a really tough juggling act.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and often quite an emotional one. So we, we brought in, you know, coaches, you know, We did a whole bunch of work on that front to really help our crew go through that journey. I think, um, probably one of the reasons why Finder was able to succeed is we really lost none of our talent to a competitor. I think in the first decade, first decade, we had one person, I think, leave to a competitor after about 11 or 12 years.

Wow.

Um, and so nobody had our playbook and it was pretty epic.

How, how, how is that possible?

Well, I can kind of share my playbook in that was like, Ultimately getting to know someone and what drives them and getting that perfect overlap between what they need and want in their lives and what the company needs and wants. And I think if you can achieve that, you ultimately are just, it's, it's the, it's a challenging thing to achieve, but ultimately I think you end up in this, end up in this space where, yeah, it's just total happiness for both, both parties. And I think, yeah, it's hard to do. Often it might be, you know, some late nights over dinner, like something, sometimes several hours of conversation.

Mm-hmm.

But it's about really caring for your crew. Yeah. And I think that's important.

Yeah. And I've found that to be the same as well. Like we've got, you know, we're only dealing with 25, 30 in the office at any one time. So nothing like 600 people whatsoever. Um, but yeah, you can't, even with that many people, you can't get around to everything. You can't micromanage, nor do people want to be micromanaged. I think it's the combination I've had. I've experienced it both ways, being too involved. And then you disrupt creativity and you actually are a block in creativity. And then you can be, um, too little involved and then people don't think you care.

Yeah.

So I've, I've, I've, I've done both and I've seen the consequences of both actions. Now I feel like I've hit a good balance of like showing up, being present, um, you know, being there when people need, but also allowing autonomy. And that's actually allowed a lot more growth for us this year. Um, and I feel it's, it's that balance, you know, you can't fully disconnect no matter how big you are, I feel. And I'm sure you guys probably experience that still, you still need to show up. You still need to be there, but you also don't want to be there so much that you are blocking creativity. The moment you can remove that bottleneck, whether it's sales or marketing, um, the moment that you can see other people shine in their roles.

Yeah, I think there's a bit of a system around this as well. I, um, so what I used to do is we'd have this big spreadsheet in the company, um, and companies often, like Silicon Valley language, we, you know, have these squads. So, you know, very clear, like totally, um, autonomous team that can deliver something. For me, I think it's really key to understand who can be responsible for driving something, but I think there's very few that can be accountable ultimately inside the company, people that are the exec sponsor on something that really understand the bridge between, say, commercial product and growth. So having a few of those on board is critical to be able to scale. But also there's a system, I think, in terms of, and almost an acceptance of knowing that some of these things are naturally going to have error rates. You know, so At some point in probably 6 weeks' time, you'll need to get back involved. And I think that's okay to kind of let it fail for a little while, knowing that you're going to get back in there and put it back on its course. So, um, that's probably one of the first things as a founder you really need to start mastering if you want to, you know, try and go beyond that kind of $5 to $10 mil to really get towards some big numbers.

Yeah, you got to take a step back sometimes to take 2 steps forward.

100%. Yeah.

And getting back in the weeds is interesting because it makes you uncover What's actually going on. It's the quickest way to get feedback is to jump back in that role. It was like the Undercover CEO, CEO, CEO, you know that show? Oh yeah. Yeah. They used to dress up and, you know, they'd be like the owner of Domino's and they'd go in and do a full day shift. Yeah. It's a fucking great show.

Yeah. Well, we just went through a version of this. So, um, Frank and I stepped back into the Aussie business about, uh, 18 months ago, uh, really rolled up our sleeves and the goal was transforming the company, looking at each part of the flywheel and really challenging what had been done. You know, for the, the years prior to that, we were really focused on international expansion and, and growing the business in a different way. But coming back to our core, we really started rebuilding functions one by one. And, um, I think it's been really effective in, in driving that growth that we're now seeing again as a, as a company.

Mm-hmm. So there's a difference between shiny objects and diversification. So diversifying within an ecosystem is great. Shiny object syndrome and diversifying outside of that ecosystem can cause chaos and disruption. With Finder, obviously having the ability to be able to go real broad, but then honing in on financial comparison. Yeah. What, what was it like having just know that that's it and we don't, we can't then market everything else, even though you could?

Yeah, honestly, that was often a breakfast conversation or dinner conversation between Fred, Frank, and myself. So we built a very powerful domain and we could really test the boundaries of that continuously. And I guess, you know, what it was about, and I think credit to Frank on this, is he, we were like, all right, let's go, let's add another category. And, um, that was important. And, you know, kind of making sure we really closed out a category before we went for the next one. And then put in place an operating team to drive it. We had these business managers that would, you know, drive whether it be personal loans or, you know, life insurance or whatever. Um, and they kind of owned that before we went on to the next thing. So that was important. Um, and I think You know, ultimately having the kind of ability to test and have that feedback loop very quickly is important before you go all in on something and say, this is our strategy for the next 12 months. I remember, you know, literally testing whether or not we could enter a new category page by page and looking at the data after a day, after a week and going, all right, this is awesome. We're literally just going to be able to turn this into a, you know, a few million bucks a year. Um, if we put a team on it and, um, we, Just did that over and over again. And I think that was part of our growth playbook for sure.

Yeah. What were some of the expansion categories that you went into?

Well, if you, you know, we started off in personal finance and then we, you know, bridged across into insurance. Um, and then we went into telco. We actually went through a phase where I hired some of the best tech journalists in Australia to build out that. And I was really trying to have, um, an established team that could bridge between, you know, kind of here's the plans and, you know, kind of one entry point to choosing a mobile plan is, you know, the pricing, but also it's about the device. And so you needed, you know, experts that were, you know, best in the country for reviewing products and, you know, could really play at a global scale and competing in Google News as well. So, um, that was, um, I remember, I remember my 2017 document was like, um, dominating through tech saturation. I think it was the name of the, of that confluence. It's a big, uh, it was, um, yeah, we, and we achieved a lot through that. And really, um, in the process through osmosis as well, by bringing, bringing those gun journos, we actually leveled up all of our content at Finder in the same time.

Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Um, If you were to, if you're giving someone's advice that were building a comparison site, or if you wanted to try give it a go from scratch again, all over again, how much capital and resource do you think you need to build a good comparison site today?

Yeah, well, look, I think the game's changing a little bit. Um, obviously there's players like, you know, ChatGPT, Gemini, and so on. So in my view, you've got to play with that in mind. And, you know, Finder is very fortunate. We've got a big brand. It's used by, you know, over 35 million people a year. And, you know, we're established in, you know, 4 or 5 countries in a serious way. I think that, um, you've got to find a way to really zig when others are zagging. Um, and if you're trying to go up against a big brand like Finder, I think that'd be very challenging.

Yeah.

So, um, I probably wouldn't go for that, to be honest. Um, but you know, often what you hear out there is like people find very specific niches and, um, and maybe that's something to explore, something you can really be from a place of passion and expertise, good at that one thing. And who knows, you might be able to grow into a much bigger player over time. But I think Um, you know, if you've got these kind of massive platforms like, you know, ChatGPT, Gemini, whatever, answering, you know, every question under the sun, I think that there's depth and expertise that it can't compete with. And building trust with an audience is really critical.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's move on to a good segue into AI and technology, because I know that that's such a talking point right now of what that means for future businesses in any industry, really. Um, something that you're probably, um, Focusing on a lot with your consulting to brands looking to scale. And I think every brand should have a consideration with it, whether they're using it or somewhat selling it. Um, what's your, what's your take on AI? Where are we going with it all?

Yeah, well, I think if you look at the last couple of years, AI was about party tricks and now it's more about plumbing. Yeah. You know, really, I think that there's some really established ways you can apply AI in your company to take away parts of a process. I think initially most people are like, yeah, I'm going to throw everything at it and expect it to do high quality. But I think what you need to do is something like most traditional processes would take is literally breaking down every single step in achieving an outcome and identifying steps that can be outsourced to AI effectively. And I think that's where you get the quality of results. You know, that looks like redesigning workflows, writing job descriptions, both for humans and AI agents. And I think that, yeah, it's progressively using AI for what it's good at today is important, but Building the, I guess, expectation that everything's going to have an AI-powered element to it inside your company is absolutely critical. And that takes a bit of a culture shift because I think there's a fear around people losing their jobs. But in my view, I think if you, you know, approach it early and you kind of really are augmenting your existing crew, there's a moment in time where you can really supercharge them to be better than what they could do on their own.

From a marketer, advertiser, um, by trade, my take on it is You know, we've had social media disrupt search engines, you know, search engine being one big ecosystem, social media being another big ecosystem. I feel now AI is just another ecosystem that we have to look at, whether that is, you know, using it. And then there will be probably mediums where we can actually advertise through AI, but it's, it's just a whole nother ecosystem that humans need to be, be, be able to, to manage in a business, you know? And I think, yeah, again, it's just like people, we're so slow to adopt things. Like I'm still talking to businesses today that, uh, haven't even adopted Instagram and Facebook or TikTok, you know, and it's been around for 15, 20 years. So it's like the, this, the adoption process is going to take a long time with AI. I think the buzzword of it and people using ChatGPT for personal, um, benefits is probably more, more, uh, um, well-known than it being used for business cases. Um, but yeah, I think we've got a long way to go for like most people using it day in, day out and even selling it.

You're 100% right. I was in a kind of roundtable the other day with heads of marketing with some of the top brands in the country, and some are only just getting approved to use ChatGPT in their organization. Yeah. Wow.

So they can't even, they're not even approved to use it internally. Wow.

Yeah. So, and we're talking a couple of years into, you know, GenAI being, you know, normal for everything. And, um, yeah, so that's pretty wild. And I think from, from my perspective, there is a moment in time where you can really create a step change in your organization. Um, at the start of this year, around January, um, I'd seen there was a player that was kind of emerging kind of from audience outwards, um, vibe coding ultimately some, some really interesting tools. And I wanted to, you know, work alongside them and understand how are you building what you're doing? Things that would normally take an engineering team weeks or months, they were achieving in days. And I think that's, um, it was pretty gnarly. So I, you know, kind of sat beside him coding for a few hours straight and then realized I had to go back to Finder and really it was like a moment in time, a call to arms. I was like, guys, like we're coding with AI from, from today onwards and break every norm that you've kind of got because we need to make it work. And we went from, you know, maybe single-digit percentage of codebase being written with AI to about 40-odd percent in a matter of weeks.

Wow.

And so it was a game changer for us. And so the output is incredible. Um, I still think the same opportunity exists, not only for, from an engineering perspective, but for every single function in your organization. And that might look like what, you know, historically has been called a hackathon. I didn't use that language around that moment in time. It was more really about a retooling and a reconfiguration and going, okay, you have permission during your day to install these products, trial them for whatever you need to do. And we're going to, you know, circle back at the end of each day and report back on our wins. And, um, yeah, from my perspective, creating that time during a workday is really important because you can't rely on people necessarily to go and spend their time, their spare time to upskill.

Mm-hmm.

So normalizing that in your workplace, you know, spend a couple of weeks, go for a hard sprint on AI, and I think the results will be pretty incredible for you.

So it's still allowing creativity as the input and then allowing then AI to extrapolate on that. Same as code, I presume, you know, if you're building base code and then using AI to then continue to manage and upkeep that.

100%. And so that's the other thing, right? I went really deep on content automation. You know, for me, I wanted to understand, you know, where is it at? Can you safely use it? I spoke to growth advisors, went to the, you know, New York in May, spoke to tool providers, clients, the whole thing. And I think what emerged was ultimately AI as it is, like if you're just copy pasting from it, you're going to cause real trouble for your company. So it's really about the context you give it and a process of relevance engineering or context engineering where you can make the uniqueness of your company available to AI. That's where you'll be able to use it more safely, but still identifying where do you have the human in the loop to ensure that what you're producing is reviewed and carefully crafted to make sure that you're not putting crap on the internet.

Yeah, absolutely. How are you using at the moment? What, what, what's some of the stuff you use day to day?

Yeah. I mean, I can talk about my health journey. That's probably the most recent one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We're going to bring that up.

We'll come back to it. Yeah. From a health front, I put everything in there. Um, but day to day, I'd say from a professional context, you know, the best workflow that I have is, you know, agreeing with somebody to transcribe a meeting, taking the transcription and having so many use cases for it. You can take that and turn it into a product requirement document. You can turn it into a series of LinkedIn posts or You know, a proposal, there's literally unlimited benefit from that. So building that muscle of always transcribing your meetings is critical. Even this podcast, you can cut up into a whole bunch of things off the back of what we spoke about today. So yeah, I think that's the first step. The second is, I think, getting comfortable in using tools which would otherwise be reserved for developers, whether it be Cursor, Claude Code, you know, it's going to take literally one night to upskill and learn how to use these tools. So for me, I'm using it to manipulate files locally, building Python scripts, or, you know, using it to build an application and pushing into production on Vercel to host that app. And so app building is actually not as hard as you think. And it might take just a few hours with someone that knows what they're doing to really get from that kind of having no idea to a live productionized app. And it's pretty wild.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so I think everyone, you know, they're obviously playing with AI agents and some of those things, but, you know, trying to roll up your sleeves and learning how to code or at least vibe code through those tools is key. And yeah, there's these agentic kind of workflows or partially agentic workflows that I think, you know, make it easy for you to tap in and try AI in your company. So normally it starts with some integrations where you plug in, whether it be Gmail, Office 365, your Google Docs, your CRM, and you can start using it for things like, you know, onboarding or research ahead of a sales call. And I think just finding those small wins and then stacking them each week and setting a goal of, literally a stack-ranked list of here are the ways I can use AI in my company and treating it as if it's a must. And like, I have to automate something else this week is the way to do it.

When you say that from like a coding point of view, you know, where everyone knows that to build an app, to build a, you know, custom website that has integration like a Finder is a very expensive exercise for the human labor that goes into that and also the upkeep of such a thing. Um, when you say that You know, coding is becoming easier. AI can automate a lot of it, or at least extrapolate a lot of it. Does that mean that the cost of building such websites and apps should naturally be more, more cost effective? Or what, what, what do, um, what, what's the market going to, yeah, going to sort of change and keep up to?

Well, I certainly think the cost of a prototype is much cheaper, but if you want to productionize something to the scale of Finder, I think you still need engineering quality. And that's, so it's about In my view, like, how can you articulate your idea in different ways? In the past, we might've used a whiteboard or written up some notes, but you could literally vibe code a prototype of what you're trying to achieve.

And what's the difference between coding and vibe coding?

So coding would be like, you learn a bunch of languages, whether it be JavaScript and whatever, and you go about developing an application line by line. Vibe coding is like using ChatGPT where you're describing with text what you want to achieve, and you can use your voice even to voice type. I use an app called WhisperFlow and it's unbelievable. I was voice typing at 234 words a minute with it.

Wow.

Um, and I've seen these coders and, and what they're doing is literally voice typing into their machine and running multiple agents in parallel to code out these applications. So you'd be surprised if you use something like a Lovable or a Replit, you could actually build an app in a night. Um, in a couple of hours, actually, probably in 20 minutes, you get a working prototype of something. Um, there'll be parts of it that are broken, but it's something you can pass on to an engineer, engineering team or a product team or a designer and say, here's what I was thinking, um, as a base. And it becomes like the new version of a I guess. Mm-hmm.

Okay.

It's really effective.

Interesting. Very good. Um, now I always like to bring up challenges because it's like, it's all good and well to talk about success and experience and all this sort of stuff. But with that, um, you know, there's always going to be adversity along the way in business. Um, what's, what do you think has been some of the biggest challenges with your experience in Finder?

Yeah, I mean, we are a company that moves fast and I think with growth there's like a speed challenge and sometimes there's speeding fines. So in the early days, there's the story which has been said a million times around how we had, you know, challenges with Google. Uh, and that was, yeah, it was really tough to get through. Like I remember being in that moment in time and honestly getting to a point where I tried everything you could to unpenalize the website, got to the point of giving up. I think it was around 6 in the morning, 7 in the morning, went to sleep and it was done. And I woke up at 2:30 PM that day and the site was actually recovered.

Hmm.

So pretty wild story in that. Um, and a lot of lesson in how you kind of together in a moment like that as an entire company, literally to make something, um, to get through a challenging time. Um, I think that again, like, you know, uh, on a personal front, I think it's extremely challenging raising money. Um, like it really takes everything you've got. I was in the US for about 6 months in 2021 when we raised and, you know, I was doing 120-hour weeks and that was absolutely brutal.

Um, you know, I was— 120-hour weeks?

Yeah. I was averaging about 3 hours of sleep at night and, um, my daughters were, uh, twin— How many hours are there In a week.

Yeah, sounds like it's not even 120.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, not much sleep, man. And, um, my twin daughter's 13 months old. We're over there, went on 23 flights in the space of 9 months. Um, it was pretty wild, and I think that really took its toll physically. Um, and it took a bit of time to recover on that front. But, you know, thankfully I had a great team around me, and kind of I pushed and, you know, got us through some moments there. But, uh, yeah, that was, that was tough, man. It took a bit of time to recover.

Yeah, fuck, I don't know how, I don't know how you can sustain 130-hour weeks.

But you can't really.

Yeah, what's the book called? The 4-Hour Workweek. So I think that's pretty, um, that's polar opposite of 130-hour workweek.

Yeah.

Um, very good. Culture would have been another key thing that you guys would have had to maintain, and clearly you've had some form of great playbook there with retention on your staff. What were some of the cool cultural things you guys did to keep the team motivated?

Yeah. Um, I think one of the first things was we hired people in kind of batches at a time. So we hired a whole bunch of uni grads actually initially. And so everybody was going through something at a similar stage of their life. And through that, we built awesome connection. We'd hang out, literally work 5 days a week, spend the nights together and sometimes weekends. And so we had this bond, which was almost Spartan-like and very difficult to compete with. And I often used to be in these roundtables with companies and say, look, you know, what's the special sauce of Finder? It's like, I just think we have this Spartan culture. I would hate to compete with us. And so that was critical because you imagine applying those, those kind of this force and this culture and energy towards variables that drove growth. People just do whatever it took to win.

And soldiers.

We have, it was like, honestly, just, um, remarkable people and some of which are still at the company today. Um, so I think that's important. And, you know, I think when it comes to culture, you know, company values matter. Um, Finders were never just stuck in a, you know, an employee contract or a poster on the wall. It was part of everyday, you know, conversation and the words we used and the way we made decisions. So we actually built our values from behaviors that existed and we kind of, you know, wrote up those characteristics. I ran a process and, and we built this spreadsheet and then we kind of synthesized it into initially 7, which is too many, then 5. Um, and, you know, we use it like instead of saying squad, we'll say one crew. And we encourage people to be straight up with each other and, you know, professional in that. Um, and go live is another really famous one around Finder. But, you know, also when you create your values once, like I said, we change them, you know, from 7 to 5 and then we're looking at them again. So it's like, for me, it's an always moving beast and they need to be, you know, what can help you today, but also what's going to, you know, ensure your company succeeds in the future.

Yeah, absolutely. Sustainability is key, right?

Yep.

Yeah. Any parties at the Crypto Castle?

I haven't been to many actually. I've been to a few kind of events and so on, but my favorite thing is just hanging out with Fred there. And yeah, it's a, it's a beautiful spot, man. A special place on the planet.

It's awesome that he allows so many people to go in and out of that. And I've seen it on TV shows. There's a lot of big companies that hire it out for their launches and team events. And I'm sure there's a lot of Christmas parties coming up. Um, does he live there full-time or does he just rent it out?

No, no, he does. And I think that, you know, um, Um, it is such a beautiful property. So as you said, I think it's really cool that he's got people hanging out and kind of able to represent their brands, um, in a cool way by sharing that property with everybody. So yeah, that's cool.

Yeah, it's awesome. Shout out Fred. Um, look, some, uh, different questions for you. If you, if you had a kitchen shelf and there was 5, 5 people there that you would put on that shelf to be your advisory or mentor team, dead or alive, who would they be?

Yeah, look, I'm actually going to refer to people that already do that for me today, um, pre and post Finder. So So the first is my coach, Craig Hall. He is remarkable. He's someone that really helps you be the best version of yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. So he's the person that I'd go to first. The second was my ex-chief of staff for strategic projects at Finder, Nicole Tang. She's my soundboard. I always call her up and it's like, is this the soundboard as a service? You know, kind of thing. If she was ever to do a business, I would love to pay for that. that particular thing. So she's great to be able to bounce ideas off and allow me to, I guess, get more clarity. Third, this guy I almost refer to as my Bill Campbell. So there's a famous Silicon Valley coach who coached the Google guys, Zuckerberg, everybody. And Tom Critchlow, he has been supporting me for over 9 years. He was like a Google SEO OG from back in the day. And the unique thing about him is Like he was a crazy mathematician, you know, like insane level, uh, creative and technical. So as a person that you can kind of bounce off and having that long sustained relationship, he's powerful. Uh, I think also, um, there's like a husband and wife combo actually, um, that I often go to kind of around life advice. So Dune Rasheen from Female Startup Club and, um, Pierre Antoine.

Okay.

So they are kind of like my hype team. They're kind of always in my corner, really pushing me. Um, and yeah, I'm just in constant contact with them around, you know, things I want to achieve. Uh, and yeah, I mean, there's a long list, but, um, yeah, I think, you know, one other that's kind of a bit of a, a sleeper that if you went and Googled him, you wouldn't find him. Um, this guy, Steve Butler. So he's one of my best mates. I've known him for about 7 or 8 years. And what he teaches me and kind of constantly is pushing me on is to back myself. And I think that's really critical that ultimately you have this group around you that are telling telling you, you can do it. Back yourself. Don't doubt yourself because you can achieve everything you want to and more.

How good. That's a pretty stable kitchen shelf.

Yeah. Very good.

Now, if you had a magic wand and you could solve one thing in the world, what would that be?

Oh man, it's hard. Like, I mean, ultimately with Finder, we are trying to better people's finances and that's, I think, you know, a mission that I've been very proud of and trying to get people to be better educated on that front. On a personal front, I think for me, um, I think that people often wrestle with their own minds and can get in the way of themselves. And so if there's a way to help people better emotionally regulate or, um, better understand themselves and kind of not have self-doubt, I think self-doubt's a really, um, limiting thing, obviously. And, uh, yeah, I would love to see people kind of push that aside and get to a position where they go, you know what, that seems impossible. But I can get it done. I'm going to make it happen.

Comparison is the thief of joy. And I think today with so much information that we're fed and the ability for us to tap into people's lives in a second and go, why aren't I doing that? I should be there. I should be driving that car. Why are they going on holidays? This person talking about making $1 million a day on Black Friday. It's just like, it's, it's crazy shit. How can you keep up with it? So I think it's like fair enough that people have self-doubt, but agreed, like there should be more awareness around limiting, um, I guess, like using social media as a positive tool, not a negative tool.

I agree 100%.

Yeah, great. Um, let's talk about your personal journey that you've had recently. Yeah, because you've just, you've just, uh, was it a marathon you ran?

Yeah, I ran a marathon, um, here in Sydney, August 31st.

Yeah, very good. So big health shift.

It was massive, man. And it kind of came from about a year ago, almost exactly. Um, random story, I was at this event, um, mutual friend of ours, Taryn Williams, um, called Season Opener. You know, that night I met a guy at like 10 past 10. He's like, mate, I gotta go. Um, Hugh Griffiths from Airwallex. And I was like, where are you going? He's like, oh, this punk concert. You wouldn't know them. I was like, test me. And it's this band called Less Than Jake. Anyway, we go to this punk concert literally together. I had just met him minutes before. And I, that night, really reconnected with myself in a way that I, I came to realize the power of energy when you're kind of in total self-awareness. And, and I think for me, I've been on a quest since that moment, realizing again how important that was as a part of my identity, uh, to really unlock that energy every day. So I set out this goal to run a marathon, and I couldn't, you know, run-walk 2Ks. And I was, you know, I still am overweight, and I'm still on this health quest now. But, you know, ultimately lost 20 kilos and went from run-walking 2Ks to running 42.

Wow.

Um, and use a lot of data, um, expert advice and support around me to get that to happen.

Yeah. Wow. And like, you've turned it around pretty quickly.

Yeah, yeah.

How challenging was it?

It was, I mean, I obsess on things and I, you know, I was able to lose the 20 kilos in 4 months and that took, you know, just endless, um, amounts of research. And, you know, I think I prompted ChatGPT 3,049 times during that period.

And, um, that's a playbook.

Yeah, it was actually a playbook. I wrote an article about it.

How good.

Um, and yeah, but it's, it's always gonna be a combination of, you know, that you're surrounding yourself with people that can get it done. I trained with the head coach of the Sydney Marathon. Which I bumped into by chance. Um, and then just selectively chose, uh, just chose people that were best in their game for each variable I was trying to optimize for. And, uh, kind of just de-risked the outcome, I guess, by, um, you know, ultimately I was still pretty busy running Finder. I, I, um, had the minimum viable preparation to run a marathon, but, um, I got it done.

So you've literally taken your Finder mentality into your own personal journey.

Literally, that was it, man. And I, um, I turned it into a bit of a quest and, um, and yeah, something really proud of that. But yeah, I'm still on that quest. I'm pushing hard. I turned 40 in Jan. So for me, I've got more weight to lose and I'm really trying to bring that down. And, um, yeah, it should be fun.

Well, congrats on it so far, mate.

Thank you.

Looking good. What's, um, the next 12 months look like for you, mate? Is 2026 going to be a big year? You're sort of gearing up for— obviously there's a lot of appetite already for people looking to get your help. What's the next 12 months look like?

Yeah, look, I, um, so as I mentioned, I had, you know, nearly 150 companies reach out off the back of this LinkedIn post I did. And that was initially very overwhelming. Then it became fun because for me, I was like, okay, I can learn a lot here about all these companies, seeing all the stages they're at and trying to identify ways to help ideally all of them, you know, and that's, that's a really weird thing to say, but, you know, my 3 values are connection, growth, and helping people. So, you know, I've connected with all these businesses one-on-one and, you know, some of them only over DMs, But I'm starting to look at the systemic problems that exist out there and going, well, how is this not solved for? And chatting to guys about how do I kind of resolve that? So that's kind of at a broader level. And then, you know, for me, as I said, I'm obsessed with flywheels.

Yeah.

I think that there's almost a universal growth flywheel for companies. Every single one I look at seems to kind of map to the exact same thing. And so for me, I'm trying to, I guess, productize that in some capacity and make it available to more companies and make it a repeatable playbook and blueprint that others can plug into the company and achieve some phenomenal outcomes with. So yeah. Yeah.

How good. Before we finish up, any other advice that you would share for people out there listening or looking to grow their business or even starting?

Start now.

No better time than now.

Yeah, exactly. Like, you know, I think talking about it, leaving it in your head is like the worst thing possible. Um, and I think that that's what's getting in the way of everybody is kind of overcomplicating it, striving for perfection, waiting for the perfect moment. It's not going to come. And I think that treat each day as, you know, an opportunity to incrementally unlock what you need to move towards the goal. Uh, it's important. And, um, you know, what you think is impossible is probably possible. And I think just backing yourself early and, and, you know, that's really what it's about. And if you don't back yourself, surround yourself with people that do. That's the most critical thing.

Yeah. Being able to put your hand up and go, cool, I don't know what I'm doing here. Let's get some help. 'Cause people have been there, done that.

100%.

Yeah.

Love it.

Well, Jeremy, thanks for coming on. It's been a pleasure sharing your journey and story. Um, very excited to see what the future holds for you. Congrats on your, your health journey. And, um, yeah, looking forward to catching up again and, and working together potentially.

100%, man. Keen. Thank you.

Cheers.