How to Bootstrap to $100M and Where Jeremy Cabral Sees Opportunity

All right. Hello and welcome back to Sweat Capital. Today we are very lucky to be joined by Jeremy Cabral. Thanks for joining us, Jeremy. Have I got the last name right? Is that—

Yeah, we're good. Yeah, cool.

I just wasn't 100% sure on the pronunciation, but Jeremy, thank you so much for joining us. Obviously former co-founder of Finder or still current co-founder of Finder, but shifted more into a board role. And yeah, thanks for taking the time.

Thanks for inviting me on.

You're such a legend. We love to kick off every episode by asking our guests the same question, which is What would 18-year-old Jeremy— what did he want to do with his life?

Oh wow, 18 years old. So I didn't do schoolies or anything like that, and I remember rolling in straight from school into my parents' company and just working, um, literally every single day since, sort of thing. I was like full-time uni, full-time working for my parents' business, so it was pretty crazy. Um, I'm not even sure if I took the time to pause and think like, what do I want to do? I just like At the time, I would say it was like, I never thought I'd leave my parents' company and I was going to run that and kind of global domination was the goal. And so, yeah, I really went for it then. And only really changed the idea of that because, yeah, I actually spoke to my parents effectively about the idea of taking over their company when I was like 20 or 21. And they were like, we're not leaving the business. And yeah, I was like, the idea of a succession plan to them was like foreign. Yeah, so it would be interesting to go back and have that conversation again and see how I could better frame it. But I was probably hostile takeover from a son. Yeah, it was a bit too intense. I think of that age.

So what was the business?

Merch. So like, hence I wear merch all the time and use merch for everything. But yeah, like company logos printed on stuff.

Are they still running it?

Yeah. Yeah. 25 years later.

So. And you still haven't— you haven't done the hostile takeover yet, Jeremy?

I am. I really want to get back involved.

Sounds very predatory.

Yeah, I really do. I think it's like at a point where I can either find a way to help my dad kind of pull back a little bit because like I just don't see him ever retiring. And yeah, more recently with this whole AI automation stuff, I actually, I'm fairly certain I can automate that business end to end, like zero human involvement. And so if I pull that off, I think I'll be having a conversation.

You're just sitting there like, what can I do with this? But is that where the door knocking was happening?

Yeah, I was like probably, uh, 15 or 16 or something like that, and my dad had started the company and would go to these industrial estates, and basically he would give me like a bag of catalogs and like flyers. I'm gonna have printed flyers and catalogs. So you'd put the flyers in every single mailbox, and then you like walk up to like these buildings and like walk up the stairs, like go to the front desk and like, hey, can I speak to someone about your marketing or whatever? And, um, yeah, sometimes you'd speak to the owner and they'll just come out the front. It's like, so what do you do? It's like, yeah, I sell merch, like here's all this stuff. And like, um, they were like, sure, I'm interested, give me a quote for 20 t-shirts or something. And yeah, like you just hustled and like just worked street by street, go back, create quotes, email them. Um, and that's what we did.

No wonder by 18 you were talking about succession plans. Good way to get your foot in the door.

Yeah, that and cold calling. I did a lot of cold calling. I literally like opened up the Yellow Pages and went for it.

Do you get hung up on a lot?

Yeah, absolutely.

It's the best experience you can have. So after you were doing all of this, you dove into uni and then what were you studying at the time?

Business marketing.

Right, right.

I thought I was going to do computer science, but I like genuinely thought I'd never leave my parents' company. So I chose most— I didn't make most life decisions around that, like chose to study at night and like kind of, you know, literally full-time uni.

Just a hustler.

Yeah, I used to sleep under the desk at my parents' office sometimes. But yeah, it was pretty intense.

Where do you reckon that level of obsession came from?

Like, I don't know, man. I've probably not paused enough ever in my life to figure it out. Seriously, like, I don't know. I think initially from necessity, like, it was like my parent— my dad had kind of a successful job. And when he, he stopped and decided to launch the company, I think I freaked out for the family. I was like, this is not good. Yeah. And so, yeah, I kind of just went for it. But also around that time, I remember like helping out my grandmother a lot with things. And so I don't really know. Like, I just have always been the sort of person that whenever there's like a fire, like, I run towards it sort of thing. So yeah, don't know where it comes from, but just ingrained in me.

So interesting. And so how did you end up running towards, uh, you know, the fire that, that was Finder?

Yeah, um, so there was a tweet— actually, there was a fire that was starting, uh, in the beginning. Like, we had a problem with Google, um, where basically creditcardfinder.com, which was our first domain, was penalised. And I'd met Fred online He had tweeted about, should I get the Nokia N95 or the iPhone? And I'd just bought the first iPhone in Australia, not the actual first handset, but like in the first few days I bought an iPhone and I was like, hands down, the iPhone's going to be a game changer. We caught up at this conference and he went from like chatting about, you know, helping him with his current business, which he had sold out of or was in the process of kind of transitioning out of and talking about launching Finder. And, you know, the first task was like unpenalized credit card finder. And a couple of weeks later I managed to do that. And yeah, you kind of had that chat afterwards. It was like, hey, why don't you help me properly set this up and I'll get sweat equity in the business essentially.

So when was this?

Was this— 2009, start of '09.

Yeah, right. And you were how old at the time?

I don't know, man. Probably, well, let's go back. I was born '86. So was that 23?

23.

So still pretty young. Yeah.

And what was that initial idea for Finder? Because it turned into so many things.

Yeah, I mean, it was like 27 ideas running at the same time as a venture studio started out at this thing called Freestyle E-Business. So they had Freestyle Web, Freestyle Media, and they sold Freestyle Web and Media and E-Business kept running. And Credit Card Finder happened to be one of the experiments that did well. So it was really just more like back in the day with SEO, you would register an exact match domain name. So if it was a keyword you wanted to rank for, you'd buy the domain name that matched the keyword.

Yeah.

And Credit Card Finder was one of the highest up on the list that wasn't yet registered. And so by registering it, it meant that we could rank for this keyword, Credit Card Finder, and it became the brand name. Like, and so we went and registered all the Finders. So Savings Account Finder, Personal Loan Finder, et cetera. But it's all SEO driven essentially.

What was it like building a business in 2009? 'Cause I feel like now it's, I feel like we're in a very lucky time and you are involved in Startmate and there's so many programs like that where entrepreneurship is like rampant on the streets. Did you feel like you were the only one kind of doing it then?

Well, I mean, it's interesting because I didn't even know about the idea of a startup when we started the company.

Right.

Like, like no one talked about it and like no one talked about like raising money. Like this stuff just didn't happen. I remember like, you know, companies like Atlassian and so on, like there's this little meetup in the Grace Hotel in the city called Silicon Beach. And so like you'd see people like Mike and Scott from Atlassian and other kind of tech OGs in Australia, like all hanging out in this little bar. But like, it was uncommon for other businesses to kind of be aware of like this whole thing that was happening, right? Tech companies, I think, were fairly nascent in terms of like the VC-driven—

Well, yeah, like Blackbird wasn't even around by then.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it was just early. And so we were all bootstrapped, you know, and I'm sure there was like, you know, plenty of ways that people funded their companies. It just wasn't so popularized. Yeah, so I'd say very different. But I was on Twitter pretty early and that kind of gave me a lot of international exposure to these concepts. And I used to travel a lot every year to conferences in the US. And I think that's more, I got a lot of my exposure to how I guess it all worked, the whole ecosystem. So yeah.

So as a 23-year-old at that point in time, were you overly motivated by necessarily immediate financial compensation or was it more this idea of running pretty hard at a a big problem and just knowing that solving that's going to be pretty good.

I mean, it was quite the opposite. Like, I took a lot of personal risk, you know, starting Finder. You know, took out, you know, personal loans and like it was just basically at one point, I think in the beginning I had like I was earning half of my— I wasn't able to cover my expenses each month. Basically, it was like I was like going into debt each month, like with the business essentially. And then it got to a point about like, I think like 6 months in or something like that, or 9 months in where I was able to kind of break even, but only really like, you know, probably 12 to 18 months later, like where I was like properly surviving. So definitely took on the risk in it, like in the greatest sense. And yeah, I think the goal was, it was interesting because in the beginning we didn't think about having the company long-term. It was very much about like, let's build this thing and sell it. Like, Within a couple of years. And then I think it was doing so well, it's like, why would you ever sell this thing? And it's like, it felt like a magic business. Like you had to sit there, like you just like look, it's almost like nowadays you have the Shopify kind of notifications coming through when you're making money. Like we'd sit there and you'd be making money, but like you didn't have stock. Like, because we didn't have to sell the, like the actual physical product, right?

Yeah.

So it was just a referral. And so we built this website that just, you know, sat there ticking away, making us money. And it definitely just was crazy.

So.

17 years later.

Yeah, pretty much. So it just— I think we just didn't expect where it was going to get to. But also at the same time, we just kept setting crazy goals and just like kept achieving them. So I don't know, we just never really looked back much.

I feel like something that really sticks out about the Finder journey and maybe why it possibly became addicting to say was because of the culture you built.

Yeah.

Is that something from the beginning you were very like You wanted to create a culture with like these young hustlers.

The Grace Hotel can do that for you.

Yeah, yeah. I'd say like in a lot of ways Fred was, is really quirky and it allowed us all to just really be on, you know, create unusual rhythms and, and ways of working that we would use to our advantage. Like, you know, say I remember in the beginning, like, you know, trying to get the bangs to kind of list on Finder. And we'd like rock up in our gym gear and like we wouldn't meet at the office. We'd go and have like beers or like, you know, have pizzas. And it was like, I remember this guy from Citibank. He kept on bringing different colleagues to the meetings. I think it was more like, you got to check this out. There's these crazy guys that have built this site. Yeah, these guys are insane. Come meet them kind of thing. Like, I just, I think it brought attention to us. And, you know, in terms of like internally, like, you know, we with a very cliché sort of thing, like, you know, not door desk, but like we had a crate with like some, I don't know, some piece of a table or something like that. It was like our first desk. The meeting room was like literally this, you know, dodgy thing. And, um, yeah, it was very low budget. And then eventually we just went, you know what, we're gonna have the best. Actually, our computers were the best you could possibly buy. Like everybody had gaming PCs, um, with like full like neon lights and stuff. It was crazy. And so yeah, our computers were amazing, but everything else— and our chairs were fantastic. We had Aeron chairs.

But, um, what are Aeron chairs?

It's like this fancy Herman Miller chair, but like, yeah, they're like a couple thousand dollars each or something. So yeah, for a startup, it's a bit random. If a table's flat and stable, that's all you need. But like, the chairs had to be amazing. The computers are awesome, awesome as well. Big monitors. Yeah, otherwise it was just, I don't know, like we, um, Everything from the interview process, which would take hours and go over many days, to yeah, just just the quirkiest things.

I don't know. We just because because how many people were you like bringing through the business?

Like was it well well that's an interesting question because we were bringing lots of people through the business as in like lots of interns, lots of grads, and and just random people that we'd kind of meet and like come hang out, like kind of do work with us kind of thing, and they'd kind of do like a week or two, and then eventually. A few people would stick and go on the whole journey. Um, but, you know, in the beginning it was like this coworking space on York Street, um, level 350 York Street. And, um, I actually went there the other day. There's an architecture firm like exactly where I had our office. And, um, yeah, that coworking space, we had like a 2-person membership and we ended up having like 9 or 12 people on a 2-person membership paying like $300 a month or something. And they included breakfast and lunch and like beer and coffee and it was madness. So like they, they didn't last very long.

I've just got pictures of Jeremy in the level 350 York the other day, just, hey guys, can we just take a few flicks?

Like, yeah, when I got there, I was like, I took some photos for sure. Um, yeah, it's crazy to think back. But, um, yeah, I don't know, we— yeah, I think the way we allowed people to express themselves and be like totally unique, like really shine out like cool and, and different things about people. Like everybody we hired, like I would say, had potential but never an opportunity. And would create this kind of space where they could really test their limits. And yeah, we didn't really hire for experience. We hired for like grit and people that like just wanted opportunity. And yeah, everybody used to hang out a lot, like, you know, socially as well. Not really leave the office. It was just kind of like we're there like Monday to Friday. And yeah, I think for me, I just was very obsessed with the idea of like camaraderie driving competitiveness where I felt like I would hate to compete with anybody at Finder because we were just so loyal and committed to each other. And yeah, just like it played a massive role, I think, in our success for sure.

It's so interesting. So there's some notable Finder characters. I'm a big Two Broke Chicks fan and it just seems like these, which is their 2 podcasters in Sydney, and it seems like environments like that then kind of create like the entrepreneur type. Did you find that like after now that people had been there for a while, they are going on to do like big and great things because of that culture.

I mean, yeah, definitely. And, you know, with Alex and Sal, it was interesting because I remember just spotting like their unique sense of humor.

They're so funny.

They're hilarious. And like, for me, I was like, wow, if I find them funny, I'm not even in their target market. So like, imagine the algorithm, like how that's going to work, right? It's going to be like just spread like wildfire. And yeah, I used to kind of create these innovation opportunities for people, like where they come up with an idea and like allow them, allow them to work on it. And not necessarily with any commercial goal. It was like, prove that you can figure out the social algorithms and come back to me when you've done that sort of thing. And I remember there was like this pressure in the business, which was like fairly perform— very performance-driven, um, to try and, you know, make money from these things. And I'm like, wait a sec, like, I don't care if you make money— don't make money for the first 12 months. Like, I want to see TikTok follower growth. I want to see, you know, us figure out how to get follower growth on Instagram and like, you know, things like that. So, um, Yeah, I was very obsessed on that kind of innovation piece to drive success.

No, that's, that's a really interesting point because I've, I've listened to a whole bunch of different experts on internal innovation within businesses and how often it just doesn't work because everyone has the expectation that, you know, you're driving X outcome because someone's responsible for that P&L. How did you sort of go about that discussion internally? Oh yeah, let's let these bright young people have a crack at this idea that You know, we're losing money on.

Yeah, I would just have a deal with Frank. It's like, hey man, I'm gonna go and do this thing. Um, and he would just be like, all right, I back you, off you go, sort of thing. And I just like cordon off some budget and, um, basically just go and hire against it without much, um, restriction, which was awesome. Like, it was just kind of following momentum and actually building ahead of momentum even existing. Um, And yeah, I was just, I don't know, a believer in that conceptually being so critical, like just how to create space. I think for me it was like always trying to solve for with crew, like how can they find growth every 12 to 18 months? And—

Wow.

I remember there's like 5 ways that I used to think about. I was like, they are either gonna upskill and like learn something new. Like, so say they worked as a writer and they wanted to figure out video, it was like, you know, give them an opportunity to, you know, work on video only, say. An opportunity is a leadership role. And I don't mean management, like leading something new. So it's like, okay, we want to figure out how to do branded content. So we created a position where that person would lead the initiative, but not necessarily manage people. Then management obviously was another option. It's like, okay, cool. You've been great as an individual contributor. Now we want to let you hire out a team and learn how to be a manager. Another was increasing somebody's scope. So if they were responsible, say, for, I don't know, say like, let's think about personal finance. Like they're responsible for like home loans, we'd say, okay, you could be now running savings accounts and investment as well. So you get like, have a group role, increase the scope of the role. And then lastly, a function change. So I think for me, some of the coolest things we did was, you know, when you kind of spot somebody like an office manager, have them come in and be like, hey, You know, why don't you try and learn to be a programmer? And like, we go and spend, you know, they were just— we did that multiple times over where we had 2 different office managers retrain into other roles. Like, yeah, one became a programmer, one went and worked and became one of my most successful marketers. And yeah, I just was always very big in kind of backing the person. And yeah, I think, yeah, one of them is still in the business today. Like, and so yeah, came in the door as an office manager, is now, you know, leading some of the most important parts of the business.

When you create an environment like that, it it would be so hard to go up and leave to another company when you're so used to all that autonomy going on. But in terms of now that you have stepped away from Finder, I know you're still on the board there.

Yeah.

Has this culture persisted and it's just still bubbling away?

I think there's, um, every culture evolves and the biggest mistake any founder or any kind of crew member would make is comparing it to the past.

Yeah.

Because I don't think it's about trying to make it what it was. And there's great memories and stories of Finder in the beginning, but there's great memories and stories of Finder today. And my thing is that if we constantly look back and kind of say, oh, you remember when? And, you know, I think it makes it uncomfortable for new people coming through, which are equally as talented, if not more talented, to have that same sense of belonging.

Yeah.

So yeah, I wasn't a fan of kind of throwing back. I was like, remember when? Remember when? Though we obviously did that. For me, it's about creating new memories, new culture, evolving in ways that I think are different. So I'd say there's elements that are very much the same, but so much of it is different today.

And you sort of touched on that advice, you know, you give to founders around not over-romanticising the past. One of the things you're doing a fair bit now is working with founders and management teams. Sort of how have you found that next step of your journey? You were saying earlier you sort of don't really pre-plan a lot. You just sort of find yourself getting, you know, tied up in things.

Yeah, yeah. Man, I'm loving it. Honestly, I think I was very committed to Finder for such a long time, but then I love being able to look under the hood of these businesses and seeing what's working, what's not, especially at the zero-to-one phase, figuring out how does a startup crack a channel and finally get going or figure out monetization or positioning or pricing these things. And I feel like most companies face the same problem no matter the scale. And it's just about finding those pockets inside an organisation and And the opportunity to really dig in and find that, that kind of, I don't know, missing piece. Like, you know, I have a really large enterprise client that I was hanging out at their office today and I was like seeing things that Finder has solved like many moons ago, like probably 10, 15 years ago, process-wise and systems-wise that this super large corporate just hasn't at all solved. And I was just, I was surprised by that, but then realized that it's probably the same problems repeating itself. It's the same patterns, the same playbooks needed over time. And I think the trick is like, how do you, I guess, build a culture that doesn't require you to be in the room every single time to kind of enforce that?

Yeah.

And it's like the values are what drive the systems and the way that people think versus a checklist. And so I think that's probably what's happened in this company is just they've hit a scale that they lost track of their own kind of DNA and their soul in that sense. And yeah, I don't know, I think that's what it's about mostly because it just, it blew me away just seeing how inefficient it was. But, um, it's certainly lots of opportunity for them.

And I imagine a lot of like that inefficiency and, you know, uh, you know, additional focus that's placed on, on, on process has been, you know, uh, since AI and those sorts of things have come around, it's sort of been amplified. Um, would you say like, uh, yeah, would you say Um, that them, or that trend has, has been something that you've really noticed?

Oh dude, like the craziest thing is like I'm helping teams where like the people there are so much smarter than me, way more talented in every single way. Like, you know, engineers, like super technical. And I don't know how, but I am contributing in ways that I wouldn't have expected. It's, um, I think what I put it down to is like these companies have this problem where The org chart is the enemy of AI adoption. It's like finance doesn't want to approve the thing to pay for it. Like, you know, they don't want to give you enough tokens. IT doesn't want to give you access because they're scared of security. Engineering thinks they should be doing it. Marketing doesn't want to run the gauntlet and try and convince all those other functions. So like in the end, nobody does it. And I think that the unique thing about my position is I come in normally at a founder or C-level kind of sponsoring me in and I get access to everything. And I don't really have any constraints. So I'm kind of going into the room where I'm not having to worry about the org chart and like all the internal politics, and I just kind of get stuff done really quickly. So yeah, it's very interesting seeing how a traditional org structure and hierarchy gets in the way of AI success.

It's so cool to see kind of where you've, what you've been doing for the past year and ever since kind of we've known each other. And what I really respect is you are surrounding yourself with all of these young people who are just so AI fluent.

Yes.

And it kind of follows your whole career journey where you are getting on the waves Much sooner than anyone else.

I hope you're not looping yourself into AI fluent level.

Oh my gosh, I'm terrified to talk about AI to the king of AI. But I'm like, why did you make this decision to hang out with all of these?

Yeah, I think for me, I realized like, if I want to remain relevant, I need to hang out with those that are building today with, I guess, what they consider being normal. Like for me, like people 20 years younger than me, I'm like 40 years old.

Oh my God, so old.

Yeah, it's like, you know, for me, I'm like, so if it's, you know, I'm an 18-year-old, 19-year-old, 20-year-old person, like, what do I consider to be normal? And like, how would I approach problem solving and an opportunity? And I think there's lots of things that this kind of young cohort coming through is solving in ways that I wouldn't have expected. There's also this bridge where I feel like bringing some of that experience to them is also useful too. So it's like this trade, and I think it's really cool. Um, but yeah, I think so many people get brand and like understand design. Like, I feel like everybody that's, you know, young and like kind of this crowd, like, seems to have high, um, appreciation of—

yeah, high taste.

Yeah, that's the way to put it.

That's a good word.

Wouldn't you say that? Like, I feel like it's, um, I mean, everyone uses in their lingo, it's like they talk about taste and the importance of taste and You know, it's like a cultural thing. So that's key. I think everybody's like pushing the boundaries in terms of like not waiting for permission, like really connected to the idea that they can kind of just set a big goal and go for it. They're not having to wait to raise capital.

Yep.

And they're just going for like big ambitious goals, like global success versus like, you know, I'll just have a crack and, you know, whatever. So I don't know, everyone's side hustling and I just think it's very cool.

Well, the side hustling point is really interesting. Like, We interviewed someone from HP, I think it was last year, and they did this big report on the amount of people under the age of— I don't know, I'm going to misquote it, but 30 or something that are doing a side hustle. And it was, you know, a material portion over, over 30%. Yeah. And I think a lot of it is because the barriers to setting up a business now, you sort of touched on it, they used to be a lot higher. Yeah. And whereas now Claude can write your website and you can sort of be selling a product within 24 hours. And I think that that is certainly an edge. But then obviously if everyone can do it, it's then a lot of those core characteristics of hustle, the sorts of things you used to hire for that are presumably setting the best apart from the rest. Have you, have you noticed like people being able to get things done quicker and then sort of getting to that critical inflection point in a shorter space of time?

I mean, absolutely. I think the interesting thing is on the hustle piece, like, what would I say? There's also equally a lot of people that aren't willing to go to all lengths to win.

Yeah.

But yeah, also way more than I would have expected that are like kind of pushing hard. But yeah, there's something about like, I don't know how to describe it. Like, Yeah, it's, it's this value on, um, I hate to say it, it was like almost identity seems like ex— like extreme, like for this generation coming through. Like, it sounds like— and there's some people that have a value on identity of almost like, it's like being so successful you don't have to work or something like that. It's like, you know, this whole unemployed, I'm unemployed movement or something. It's weird. It's—

and it's so— I felt like, I felt like that myself Because when— before I started working for Frank and Jack, I had a recruitment business.

Yeah.

And I knew that that opportunity to work there would change my life. But a part of me, it was an ego thing. I was like, I can't leave this recruitment business where I'm stagnant and not learning. And I do think it's like this generation does believe it's glamorized. 16-year-old millionaire. Yeah, you see it everywhere. And it's this— if you're not a founder, then you're doing something wrong, which I think is really scary.

It's actually weird, isn't it? Because like, yeah, even You look at some, some of the 80-year-olds that still run, or, you know, take your, take your, your dad as an example. I don't reckon he thinks it's that glamorous not working. Like, he's obsessed with it. And that, that meant— yeah. Interesting.

Yeah, I think the other thing that probably helped this whole side hustle movement was COVID. I think working from home, people had space to just kind of do whatever they wanted without much oversight. And I think it's kind of led to like, well, I don't really want to go back into the office all the time because I'm making this side hustle money. It's kind of handy to have like, yeah, A few hours where you're not watching my screen sort of thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, honestly, I think it's played into it for sure.

Yeah. Now people have time to, to do it. So are you saying that because of it, there's potentially some oversaturation?

Not really. I think if anything, it's— there's niches for things I would never have thought that are now having people focus on them. Yeah, it's like so niche. Like someone was talking to me today about like how this person Their husband was like 3D printing their own sneakers and had their own sneaker brand. I was like, what? Okay, that's awesome. There's a whole thing about 3D printed sneakers and like, I was like, that's amazing. But like, I would never have thought like to go and start that business, right?

So insane.

So they just create a design and then they can literally make one at a time and don't have to manufacture a sneaker. So you know what I mean? Like, this is crazy what technology is enabling.

Do you believe that to be like successful as an entrepreneur, um, you need to be all in on something? Like, we had, uh, Nick Palumbo on from Messina, um, the other week, and he had an answer for that, but I won't—

I think it serves you at times, but at times it can hold you back. Um, I would say like obsession— I normally go through waves of obsession, like where I genuinely like can't think about anything but that thing. And I did that like function by function, project by project inside Finder. But I do think there would've been opportunities in time where learning something externally to the business would've brought an extreme amount of value into the company. Like right now, being outside Finder day to day, I'm just exposed to so much that I can bring back into the company. Like things that I'm—

You can pull and remember.

Totally. Yeah. It's like, it's wild. Like I even just today coaching this startup, seeing their software and like what it's done. I used Finder as a case study to kind of test it and I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. Like I'm gonna, you know, feed that back to the team and There's entire kind of things that need to shift as a result of what I found out today. Right. And if I was inside Finder, I would have been in meetings back to back from like literally all day. Like at one point it was like from 6 in the morning through to like midnight every single night. And I have like maybe an hour free a day like that. When we were like 9 offices around the world, 600 employees, it was extreme. So yeah, I think you were just like in this meeting onslaught every single day.

Whereas now it's, oh, Jeremy's back with a new idea.

Yeah.

No kidding.

Well, I mean, I think that was like pretty much how the team thought about it all the time. I was like, he's back with a new idea again. But yeah, I liked kind of testing the boundaries of what was possible. Like, it was certainly creating these pockets of innovation where, you know, we could just prove out something and then hopefully build on that momentum and grow a new business line or a new kind of way of doing something.

Because Lulu and I were talking, we were sort of going, how has he spent or, you know, call it the best part of 17 or 15 years or whatever it was that you were day to day at Finder. Like, how do you not get, you know, distracted or bored? But you've sort of—

Yeah. Not a problem for me.

Sounds like you did get distracted, but on lots of different opportunities.

I'd say like, I wouldn't say I got distracted. I just didn't know. But it's a, it's a good way to put it. It was like I just didn't get fired up about certain things. Like once I'd get it up and running, I'd Hire an executive and they would kind of run it day to day.

Yeah.

And I'd run these simulations, like, knowing when I had to get back involved. I was like, I'm pretty sure in like 2 or 3 months I have to come back into the stage and I'll check this thing and I'll know that's where I'll add my value. But otherwise, if it's just like, you know, just running and it's kind of same, same every day, I'm just not that into it. So yeah, I used to find ways to try and isolate, I guess, the things I worked on to be very much about like trying to find a way to use lateral thinking to solve a problem, whether it be like a resource constraint issue or like a strategy kind of implementation problem. You know, those are the kind of things I typically spend a lot of my time on.

And is the ability to function that way with some of that, you know, longer-term mindset associated with some of these projects, do you think the ability to do that was sort of enhanced by the fact that it was a bootstrapped business and didn't have third-party money?

Definitely. Yeah, I think For me, I always love to build foundationally but incrementally release.

Yeah.

So like, for me, that was important, like culturally. Like, our engineering team initially didn't like it because for me, I was always finding a way to descope a whole bunch of stuff, like go live with something, prove it out, then we'd go back and fix things and kind of move to the next kind of evolution, um, versus like waiting until it's completely perfect then releasing. So my style is very Scrappy, I guess, proving out something's going to be a success before I just keep investing into it. And so that meant that the quality standards sometimes were not great on launch or even the next day. But we always have this commitment of kind of incrementally improving it, which, yeah, definitely needed to shut down a bunch of projects as well, but could have done that more.

What I'm so interested about is someone kind of as successful as you following these waves. How do you approach the learning process in general? Yeah, like if a new, if a new wave was to come tomorrow, what are you doing? Like, yeah, what is your strategy?

So, um, how I've always done it is like basically consume everything there is on the topic and from like multiple different sources. So read the book, speak to the author, go to the conference, speak to the speakers. The speakers run agencies. Speak to the agencies, speak to their best talent, speak to clients of the agencies. Past and present, like just like just triangulate around wherever the alpha is. Like yeah, like it just listens to the podcast, find out what podcast the host or the guest listens to. Like it just it just becomes this.

You don't want to know that.

Yeah, like you just I don't know. I just would go for it like in this way where you just got to be in the room. I think that's the key is like trying to get the information that's not published online is the most powerful thing. Um, it's the closed, you know, room phone call, the kind of the bit of information that they can only share because, you know, it's not on the stage, right? Um, so yeah, for me, I was always chasing that. Um, I don't watch TV, I don't watch movies. Um, I haven't had, uh, well, I bought a MacBook in 2008, I think it was, so that I could stop playing computer games. Um, Because I was like proper into computer games growing up. Um, and yeah, I just don't watch TV. Like, I remember when I met my wife and, um, she came over my apartment, was like, you don't have a couch, you don't have a TV. Like, I literally had just like this white desk and a water cooler and my bed.

How romantic.

Yeah, when the desk was there to just like let me, you know, work from home, and my apartment was like a block away from the office. Um, and yeah, I just haven't— I don't watch Netflix series or anything like that. So I just think for me, the way I enjoy myself is just trolling Twitter or X, whatever, Reddit, just trying to find kind of these kind of like sources for anything new and interesting.

Do you invest?

Yeah, I do. I think I've gone in and out of crypto, which has been interesting. Yeah, I'm actually more conservative than most. I try and get like a pre-IPO sort of discount, like on something that you make your 20% and you move on sort of thing. But yeah, I think for me to really go hard, like I'd love to get some sort of big exit from Finder at some point. And, you know, for me, for me, my biggest investments have been in myself, to be honest. Like, I feel like that's firmly where I've spent a lot of personal dollars to be, like I said, in the room, like, you know, really trying to understand what winning looks like from the best in the world. So yeah.

I love that you've mentioned, you know, spending I want to talk about investing in yourself because what really strikes me in your journey recently, well, in the past few years, is everything you have done to invest in your health, like doing marathons, Cocodrill Trail. I know you're Everlab, I see those ads come up. Doing everything, is this kind of obsession, where did that come from?

Yeah, look, good question. I think it comes from mostly when people think I can't do something.

Who told you you couldn't do a marathon?

Chile, actually. So I was like, I've done this question.

Doctor in Chile.

Yeah, mine hasn't said much to me lately.

Yeah, he, um, was like a coach for the national, um, soccer team. Another coach, sorry, the, um, the sports doctor or whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, and I did a VO2 max test with him. Um, you know, did this physical, whatever. He looked at my bloods and he's like, yeah, sorry dude, you can't run a marathon. Like, you know, A year and a bit ago. And I was like, I've seen those same textbooks and like everything's a bell curve and like there's always like this small percentage of people that can pull off stuff. And so I decided to go back to Sydney. I randomly bumped into the head coach of the Sydney Marathon. He became my coach. And yeah, I just went really hard at everything. Diagnostics, like I threw everything I had at AI, like DNA tests, DEXA scans, gut microbiome, lots of blood tests, VO2 max tests. And yeah, I would just tune everything I possibly could because I was still running Finder at the time. So it was quite intense. And I did the bare minimum prep for a marathon. But I thought that was bare minimum. I'd say that this second attempt is absolutely bare minimum. Like at the moment, like I got a ticket 12 weeks and 5 days out. I was like, okay. This is going to be hard. I kept up my cardio, but I had plantar fasciitis. What do you call it? The start of the year, and then injured my back, like literally rolling in bed, like after a sports massage a couple weekends ago, which sucked.

Yeah, sorry, I shouldn't laugh.

Well, I was like ten days without being able to run, and then like suddenly it just fixed itself, and I was like sweet. So I'm back running, did 12k yesterday.

I don't know.

Again, like Fable Five's telling me that there's no chance you're going to be able to run this marathon. I was like, I was like, I'm wrong.

And then I proved it. I proved it wrong. He's like.

I ran 12K yesterday. I was like, oh, Jeremy, you clearly have the engine. I doubted your ability to do this. And I was like, yeah, you did. That's awesome.

No, well, I assume you're talking about the Sydney Marathon. Yes.

Yeah. August 30th. And it's like, what, 3rd of August?

I'll be there watching a mate do it. So I'll keep my eye out for you.

432, be there, please.

Yeah, I will.

What I love about that story, because I already knew that story and how you met, of the Sydney Marathon, head of Sydney Marathon to train you. And it's kind of what you were saying before about the learning journey, like go surround to actually find out the thing.

The best person.

And yourself, like with the best person. I think that's such an underestimated art because we think all the information's available to us.

Yeah.

And I'm sure he was coaching you along the way saying you can do it when Dr. Chile is saying no, you can't. I think it's super valuable.

Well, yeah, I told myself as well, like weirdly I said to my wife and friends, I was like, I'm going to meet Ned Brockman and I don't know when, but I'm going to meet him on this journey. And then pretty much 2 weeks out prior to the marathon, I caught up with Ned and like I was going for a run and he was on his bike and it just, you know, for me I was like, I had to like dig really deep like mentally for this. And yeah, he was actually at kilometre 32 and he's like, go Jeremy. Like I was swearing, like it's like lots of swearing, but like just to see him there like egging me on, I was like, damn. Like he gave me like a bit of push towards the end of the race. So it was good.

Oh no, good one. And so like, look, thank you so much, Jeremy, for giving us You know, all your time today. Lulu and I were both pretty pumped when we— when you sort of got back to Lulu's DM last week. Appreciate it. I guess, you know, one of the things we try to round out these discussions with, if you think back to maybe go young Jeremy at 23, you're sort of just hopping on board or making the decision to hop on board this journey. What advice are you giving to that, that young man?

Yeah, I would say Sprint hard because like, yeah, you can't do that over a marathon. I was thinking people like talk about things like, you know, work-life balance and all this stuff. And like in the beginning, you know, you're so young, you just get so much out of just pushing really intensely. Um, but at the same time, I think don't lose the habits of good health. Like I feel like for me, definitely over the course of time in building my business, like I'd always put the business first and, you know, just had this roller coaster on the health front. And still haven't fully resolved that. So, but yeah, I think total immersion is the answer. Like, you know, just become like insanely obsessed. I think especially here in Australia, it's very easy to move up the ranks and make, you know, kind of a name for yourself, whether that be inside the business that you're working at or in building your own company. I think we're just in a great position where we've got a good economy so far, you know, so good at least.

And yeah.

And a lot of opportunity. And I think it doesn't take much to really crush it in Australia. So, Yeah, use that as a foundation to then give the US or another market a crack.

That's awesome.

So awesome. Thank you so much, Jeremy.

All right, thanks for having me on.

Appreciate it.