Ben White. 'Dark Decade' After $800M Exit: Addiction. Divorce & Financial Losses
Episode - 33
Ben White. 'Dark Decade' After $800M Exit: Addiction. Divorce & Financial Losses
Ben White. He's sold three businesses so far for $80M, $88M and $800M.
It was the last exit 16 years ago that hit him hard. What followed was a dark decade filled with divorce, addiction and significant financial losses. However, today Ben is the happiest he's ever been.
In this episode we discuss his hard-earned lessons on happiness, why he started his fourth business now and walked away from running his VC firm.
What We Discussed:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:01:33 - The impact of the 2008 exit and the dark decade
00:03:10 - Initial feelings and challenges post-exit
00:05:32 - Divorce and addiction struggles
00:07:51 - The sudden change in life without a business to run
00:09:55 - Coping mechanisms and poor investment decisions
00:11:57 - The importance of grounding oneself after a major life change
00:14:02 - Reflections on making poor decisions and facing addiction
00:16:10 - The importance of dealing with significant life events
00:18:08 - Advice to the younger self: taking time off and dealing with addictions
00:19:53 - The impact of personal struggles on family
00:21:54 - Strategies for being present and engaging with children
00:24:02 - The role of family in finding happiness
00:26:02 - Recognizing the importance of real friends and authentic relationships
00:28:20 - The danger of wealth changing social dynamics
00:30:25 - The importance of staying grounded and real
00:32:23 - Transition from VC firm back to entrepreneurship
00:34:20 - The creation of UP and its vision
00:36:19 - The importance of having a clear purpose and passion for work
00:38:21 - Changes in views on wealth and financial freedom
00:40:35 - The role of money in achieving happiness
00:42:22 - Learning to appreciate simple pleasures in life
00:44:12 - Finding happiness in nature and everyday moments
00:46:26 - Teaching kindness and empathy to children
00:48:29 - The role of nature in achieving a balanced and happy life
00:50:25 - The desire to leave a meaningful legacy
00:52:26 - The importance of helping others and making a positive impact
00:54:33 - Reflections on how to be remembered
00:56:29 - Parenting strategies and guiding children towards real values
00:58:28 - The importance of independence and real-world experiences for children
01:01:04 - Balancing drive and contentment in personal and professional life
01:03:26 - The journey to finding personal happiness
01:05:20 - Combining contentment with entrepreneurial drive
01:07:30 - Final thoughts on balancing life, work, and happiness
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Ben White: [00:00:00 - 00:00:27]
Don't go and buy lots of stupid things. As I said, do nothing includes buying. You can buy something, but don't change your life. Go and buy an enormous house, a fleet of cars, an airplane. If you've made enough money, that won't make you happy. The less moving parts you have, the simpler your life, generally, the happier you'll be and happier your family will be.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:27 - 00:00:41]
Ben White, he sold three businesses so far for 80 million, 88 million, and $800 million. It was the last exit 16 years ago that hit him hard.
Ben White: [00:00:41 - 00:01:03]
What people don't tell you is you have. When you build these businesses, you build your little world that makes sense to you, where you're respected, where you're developing people and watching them grow. It was a family, and so suddenly, your family's gone. And no one would prepare me for that. That day felt like the loneliest day of my life.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:03 - 00:01:33]
Probably what followed was a dark decade filled with divorce, addiction, and significant financial losses. However, today, Ben is the happiest he's ever been. In this episode, we discuss his hard earned lessons on happiness, why he started his fourth business now and walked away from running his VC firm. Hi, Ben.
Ben White: [00:01:33 - 00:01:35]
Hello. Good morning.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:35 - 00:01:49]
You are unique in so many ways. You had three super successful exits, but I know that it was the last one, which was in 2009, that hit you really hard.
Ben White: [00:01:49 - 00:01:54]
It was 2008, actually. We closed the day Lehman brothers went.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:54 - 00:02:39]
Oh, of course you did. Of course. It had to be 2008. Of course. So in 2008, which is long ago, which is great, because it means that you had a chance to process the lessons of that. But I also know that you refer to the following ten years of your life as the dark decade. I would love us to go straight into that because it would be very helpful for my audience to understand that experience before we start talking about your previous exits or the way you build businesses, because I know that experience changed you quite a bit and the way you look at the world. So could we go back to that day in 2008 and just tell me to start with how you felt when you sold message labs?
Ben White: [00:02:39 - 00:02:56]
So it didn't just change me, it changed my whole life. It changed everything. Or it was the start of the change, if you like, RBI networks with Rory, my school friend, in 95, 96. And then we grew star out of RBR networks, and we grew message labs out of star.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:02:56 - 00:02:57]
Yeah.
Ben White: [00:02:57 - 00:03:17]
So message Labs was the only one that I sold where I didn't have a nascent business that I'd been working on for a while that I could then spin out and start working on it was the first time since I was a teenager, really, that I didn't have a business that I was working on. So that had never happened to me before.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:03:17 - 00:03:24]
Yeah. Yeah. So that hit you hard, that suddenly you no longer had the business. Why do you think that happened?
Ben White: [00:03:24 - 00:04:21]
Well, first of all, I don't think anyone prepares you, right. You've done something, you've obsessed about it day in, day out, all hours, for years and decades, in my case. And then suddenly you sign something, and in my case, I'd already left the business. There was a professional CEO in the business, but I was pretty involved. I was speaking to him a lot. And suddenly you sold it. You got a huge amount of money in your bank account, and then that's it. There's nothing. I've got nothing to do at all. At the same time, I was getting my wife and I, probably a lot of it my fault. I'd already made a decision. We weren't going to work. So at the same time, we decided to go our separate ways. So I had no business that I was working on and, you know, and I was going through a messy divorce, so not a great combination.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:04:21 - 00:04:35]
Yeah, I can very much relate to it. As you know, I had exactly the same combination. It was my first exit, but also a divorce at the same time. These are two huge changes in life. So. Okay, and how did you handle that?
Ben White: [00:04:36 - 00:06:28]
Oh, just huge amounts of drugs and alcohol. Really? It worked brilliantly. No, it was just lonely and horrible. It was the. What people don't tell you is you have, when you build these businesses, you build your little world that makes sense to you, where you're respected, where you're developing people and watching them grow. And it was a family. And so suddenly your family's gone. And no one had prepared me for that. And it felt, to go back to your question, that day felt like the loneliest day of my life, probably. And I would say I filled it with lots of very poorly thought out business decisions or investment decisions that I thought, if I invest in this, I'll be able to live vicariously through it and I will get that same sense of purpose. And anyway, that same feeling would come back if I invested in these businesses. And I made a lot of poor decisions, partly because I'd never invested in other businesses other than my own. And also, no one prepares you for the fact that you've got, if you just exited, you're on everyone's list to call if they want to raise money for their new shiny thing. And really, you should spend a year doing nothing, thinking about what you want to do, grounding yourself again, and thinking about what you want to do with the rest of your life with this freedom that you've bought. Do you need to go on working? Do you need to go on making money? Is it making you happy? Am I happy? All the kind of logical questions I didn't ask myself. Or maybe I did ask myself, and I just thought, I'll do it again, and then I'll be happy. You know, I'll build a Google, and then I'll be happy, of course.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:06:28 - 00:06:39]
And then now you look back at it and you see a lot of waste, right? Waste of money, waste of energy, waste of health, in your case. And I wish I could talk to.
Ben White: [00:06:39 - 00:06:48]
Me in, what was it? In November 2008? I wish I could talk to myself then, knowing what I know now, and things would have turned out very differently.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:06:48 - 00:06:54]
Let's do that. You're talking to me and I'm you. Back then, what would you tell me?
Ben White: [00:06:54 - 00:08:16]
I would say, take a year, do absolutely nothing. I would say, ben, we can talk all day long about whether you're an alcoholic, a drug addict, or whatever. Actually, that doesn't matter. What matters is, is it materially affecting my life and my happiness? Yes or no? If the answer is yes, you need to do a lot less of it, or probably none of it and stop doing it. I can remember saying to myself, well, I'm not an alcoholic. I don't pick up a bottle of vodka at breakfast and have it with my frosties, so I'm fine. And I'm sure there are tons of people listening who fool themselves in exactly the same way, but whose life is and whose famous, not only their life, but anyone who comes into contact with them, particularly their wife and their children or whatever, whether they like it or not, are massively affected by this behavior. Even if you're doing a half decent job as a parent, you're miles away from being connected to the kids and being present, of course. And they can sense that and they can feel that, and it makes them uncomfortable, and it makes them feel insecure, and it makes it much less likely they're going to be happy kids.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:16 - 00:08:19]
So you would tell me, and now I'm you.
Ben White: [00:08:19 - 00:08:20]
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:20 - 00:08:26]
Back then, to deal with the addiction as the most urgent thing to do.
Ben White: [00:08:26 - 00:08:55]
No, I don't make too much of the addiction, although that's a massive part of it. You know, you need to deal with this amazing event that you found that has happened. You need to stop being naive about it. You will be treated differently by some people. Lots of it. In a good way. Right. But lots of it and not in a good way. People will take advantage of you, and especially if you don't have a next gig or anything to really pour yourself into, you'll probably be fairly gullible.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:08:55 - 00:09:11]
Many of us find it very hard to say no to people like that, and in particular to people who are close to us, family or close friends or I partners we feel we owe something to. How did you deal with that? With saying no?
Ben White: [00:09:12 - 00:10:03]
I never said no. That was the problem. One of the things that I've learned is if you do great things for someone, whether it's an act of kindness or whether it's helping them out massively financially, don't expect that necessarily to be grateful in the way that you might think they would be, because in a way, as time goes on, they resent it. You've done this thing for them. Perhaps they've even beaten. They've been successful themselves, and now it's an inconvenient truth how they got there. Perhaps because you helped them out in the way that you did. So they resent it. That's their problem, of course, but it's your problem in terms of how do you deal with that, because it doesn't make sense. Why are they not grateful?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:10:03 - 00:10:40]
Found, for example, that giving a loan to someone is always a bad idea in this situation, because a, if they actually wanted a loan, they would be able to get it somewhere else. So they're asking for a gift. But if you give them a loan when they actually need a gift, that destroys the relationships. And the formula I came up with years, years too late, was that you just decide whether I want to give that gift or not without any expectation, as you correctly say, to get the money back or to get appreciation and gratitude. But it's not easy.
Ben White: [00:10:40 - 00:10:44]
Yeah, I think you never give a loan. I mean, you may call it a loan, but never expect it back.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:10:44 - 00:11:03]
Yeah, but if they know it's a loan, I found that then they resent you even more because then it's very uncomfortable for them. They can't return it. They don't want to return it. You become a creditor instead of a friend or a family member. It changes who you are to them, and that damages the relationship unless you're.
Ben White: [00:11:03 - 00:11:21]
Very careful with how you position it. For sure. Yeah. For me, the most important thing is just don't expect it back. Put a red line through it right away. And if it's really close friends and family, don't expect them to be grateful for long.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:11:21 - 00:11:31]
Okay, fantastic. So we have quite a few lessons already. Do nothing for a year. Don't expect gratitude from people.
Ben White: [00:11:31 - 00:12:28]
Don't go and buy lots of stupid things. As I said, do nothing includes buying. You can buy something, but don't change your life. Go and buy an enormous house, a fleet of cars, an airplane. If you've made enough money, that won't make you happy. The less moving parts you have, the simpler your life, generally, the happier you'll be and happier your family will be. You know, where's home is a good example for people with multiple homes. That's unsettling for children if they don't even know where home is. So you've depriving them of the very thing that kids need, which is interaction with other children. But because you're so wealthy and you've got a security detail and this and that, your children are deprived of interactions with other children of the same age. Unless of course, it's in the confines of some weird security guy sitting in the corner. How strange is that?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:12:28 - 00:12:30]
How many children do you have?
Ben White: [00:12:30 - 00:12:30]
Two.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:12:31 - 00:12:39]
When you look back at that dark decade of yours, what would you do differently as a parent?
Ben White: [00:12:40 - 00:13:13]
That first year, I would have immersed myself in. You know, the one thing that I found as the kids are now 16 and 18, it's that they've just finished GCSE's and A levels. And I found when. When things are tough and when things aren't quite working out at any aspect of my life, immersing yourself in children is an amazing tonic because you have to be present. They don't care about your problems, and it's a wonderful antidote to problems. It's a wonderful way to make yourself feel peaceful.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:13:13 - 00:13:14]
Yeah.
Ben White: [00:13:14 - 00:13:53]
And complete, if you like. If only I'd known that then. Yeah, but I didn't. I didn't have the time. You know, I wasn't in the right headspace to do this. Anxiety. I had a lot of anxiety caused by drugs and alcohol, but I also had. Yeah. And therefore I wasn't present. And then the kids didn't. As a result, they wouldn't. They wouldn't really engage. There are lots of people who wonder, why weren't my kids engaged? They weren't engaged. You can't just pick one morning and go, right, I'm gonna be a great dad. It takes months for them to know you're there. You're consistent, you're always available. Little by little by little, they'll let you into their weird little world.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:13:53 - 00:13:57]
You need to build that trust for them to open to you emotionally.
Ben White: [00:13:57 - 00:14:58]
Yeah. I remember with my eldest, this is back just when I just stopped drinking. So five years ago. And he. I'm sure he won't mind me saying this. We had something happen in the kitchen. Threw a plate. It smashed. I didn't lose my temper. He went to his room and I went and sat. He's got. There's a baseball glove, you know, like a giant baseball glove, which is a seat. And I sat on that and I had a packet of peanuts. And he. I said, I'm not angry. I just wanted to understand what happened. Then nothing. And then I threw a peanut at him. And I said, I'm going to throw a peanut every 60 seconds until you give me something 45 minutes later and a bag of peanuts. And he goes, it was. I can't say the reason, but this was the reason. I go. And he said, that's all you're getting today. And then little by little by little, you. You get let in. And it's the same with friends, right? They've got to feel that you're in it with them. They've got to feel that you're supportive. They've got to feel that you care.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:14:58 - 00:15:01]
What triggered your decision to address you? Addiction.
Ben White: [00:15:02 - 00:15:55]
I think my fucking life was a car crash. It suddenly became obvious. I looked at my youngest son, who was very ill with anorexia and bulimia. At that time, he weighed 29 kilos. So, yeah, I looked at myself and the impact I was having on him and just thought, oh, God, I'm not happy. Right? I just. Whatever happened, whether it's rehab or whatever I do, I need to give someone the keys to my life for a couple of months, go away, switch off, think about what I want, and come back with a plan. How to be happy, actually, because if I'm happy, I'll probably be a decent dad and a decent mate. It was the first time I'd given someone the keys and said, right, and then you know what you're eating every day, you know what meetings you have to go to. Someone else is in charge. I loved it. No one can call you, text you, you're just left with your own thoughts.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:15:56 - 00:16:01]
So that one, stay. Dealt with it. Or was there more?
Ben White: [00:16:01 - 00:16:03]
No, that was it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:16:03 - 00:16:03]
That was it.
Ben White: [00:16:03 - 00:16:16]
For anything you're doing in your life, it's about a decision. And when you've made the decision, it's much easier. Whether it's smoking, drinking, whatever it might be, it's a lot easier.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:16:16 - 00:16:42]
What I've noticed is that sometimes people almost want someone else to make the decision for them. And I see it in relationships between, you know, these people and coaches, therapists, rehabs, doctors trying to delegate a difficult decision. So did you seek any professional help for other health, mental health issues like you mentioned, anxiety, for example.
Ben White: [00:16:42 - 00:17:58]
I was so caught up in and, you know, held by this addiction and constant, you know, you're constantly hungover or trying to feel better or you might, you know, in my case, I might not even drink for a week, a month. So I thought, I'm fine. But you don't realize, but then you do on a two or three day bender, and that takes a lot of time, especially as you go to get. To get out of your system. So you're permanently anxious, so you're trapped by. In this cycle. And so no amount of therapy would have helped me at that time unless that therapy got me to put my everything down and go and take two months to think, you know, to get. To get all of the crap out of my system, all of the alcohol, all of the drugs, all of the coffee, all of this, all of that. So your body has a chance to recover because your brain is a muscle, right? And if you're permanently pummeling it and abusing it, it'll stop playing tricks on you. There's a reason for that anxiety. They didn't just. Didn't just happen. And I think they'll treat it with a pill or whatever, but actually there's probably something there and very often something that they're doing or drinking or snorting, but they've thought, oh, I don't do it very much. That's not. It's fine, but it's not fine.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:17:58 - 00:18:14]
Yeah, I think sometimes it's not even about substances, but it's about not addressing something that's important. I think anxiety exists for a reason. Nature gave it to us for a reason. I'm sure, as everything else, we need.
Ben White: [00:18:14 - 00:18:19]
It because when we were animals, we need that anxiety. Otherwise we wouldn't get up and feed ourselves.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:18:19 - 00:18:51]
Exactly. When I look back at my life and I had periods of extreme anxiety, now looking back, I know that I had been delaying some decision or I delayed understanding something. So now I'm trying to be a bit better at respecting these moments of stress and anxiety, to try to follow it and see what it is. My body, my brain is trying to tell me that I need to address and I'm ignoring it. Or I'm not being honest with me about some circumstances, or maybe you accept.
Ben White: [00:18:51 - 00:19:00]
The anxiety at that time because you go actually, I've got that ABC, C and D. I'm bad. Feel a bit anxious right now. That's okay. That's all right.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:00 - 00:19:05]
Yeah. I guess if you come to the conclusion it's part of your personality, anyone gets anxious.
Ben White: [00:19:05 - 00:19:21]
Right? Depending on, I don't know, it could happen in any situation. Getting all the kids to school, they're all late, they've lost something, their cricket bat, whatever. You're anxious like, I'm not gonna make. One of them's got to get a train, the other one's getting driven. Of course you get anxious.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:21 - 00:19:31]
Yeah, I guess these are more like everyday stresses. Right? And anxiety is more, to me, something that wouldn't let you sleep at night or just makes you.
Ben White: [00:19:32 - 00:19:35]
But only everyday stresses feed into the anxiety.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:35 - 00:19:52]
Yeah, probably. So you said you would take a whole year to do nothing but figure out what this newly found freedom actually means to you. So you didn't do it back then. You were busy doing other things. But have you had a chance to do it later?
Ben White: [00:19:53 - 00:20:26]
Yes. I'm a late starter. I'm 56 years old. Just take me a while. I've never been happier than I am today. And it's just all the little things. Do you know what I mean? Actually, like I talked about, whether it's the children cooking something for yourself, you know, preparing stuff for yourself, picking strawberries, going to the butchers, picking the meat that you want to eat that night, or the fish or the whatever. I think it's all these little things that seemed so mundane to me at the time, actually are the richness of life, and they will balance you.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:20:26 - 00:20:38]
But I assume that it only became nourishing when you learned to appreciate them and stopped looking at them as annoying chores and actually welcomed them as experiences in your life.
Ben White: [00:20:39 - 00:21:26]
Yeah. Like coming out of the shower yesterday morning. This is. There's no shit. I know there was a towel where the kids have all come in, they've all had a show and just taken all the towels away. And of course, I get out of chair. No, no town. And I saw I have anyway, like, lucky old me. I've got to go naked to the cupboard, obviously. I've got a big house. I've got to go all the way to my big cupboard and come back. Oh, poor me. Right? And I'm feeling pissed off. Why are you pissed off? You know, because you've got a big house and the cupboards miles away with the towels in? Or because you've got kids that are all happy hanging out, showering in your bathroom and wanting to be part of your life. What exactly are you pissed off about? Oh, nothing, actually. Would you have it any other way? No, I wouldn't, actually. It's lovely. I'll laugh about this tomorrow. Which I am now.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:21:26 - 00:21:39]
Yeah. So you basically trained yourself to have a different mindset and reaction to situations like this, and you wish you would have done it in that year after the exit and would have saved a decade of your life.
Ben White: [00:21:39 - 00:21:47]
For whatever reason. It has got me to this point where I've never been happier, more grateful, just feeling fulfilled.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:21:47 - 00:21:54]
How did you get there? So, one thing, you learned to appreciate the mundane things in life. What else?
Ben White: [00:21:54 - 00:22:26]
You would say, go and spend time with your real friends, not your business friends that you've made, who have all become potentially, you know, who'll be very successful, like you or whatever, but the friends from school who will say, Ben, actually, you're being a bit of a dick. Can we just go to a normal restaurant with normal people and normal food, not some fancy place, you know, and have a normal conversation and just hang out?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:22:26 - 00:22:35]
Yeah. So you didn't realize that you were kind of avoiding something that would be very nourishing for your soul.
Ben White: [00:22:35 - 00:22:37]
Yeah, 100%. Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:22:37 - 00:22:40]
Because you thought you needed to do what instead?
Ben White: [00:22:40 - 00:22:59]
At that time, I was searching for that security that I'd had for those two decades of building those businesses. I was someone I had, you know, life made sense to me at that time, and I was trying to make life make sense to me again. So by investing in other silly businesses.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:22:59 - 00:23:10]
Can we talk a bit more about that? Why that was the case, how it felt for you after you lost those businesses, that you also lost that sense of security?
Ben White: [00:23:11 - 00:23:56]
Well, you don't know. You. You drive into work or you get the tube or whatever, and you go there and you're a sepsis. Morning, Ben. You've got that lovely sense of everything works. I'm known. I know them, they know me. I've worked with them for a very long time. I feel I belong. I feel I've got purpose. They're. I think they respect me. You know, you've got all of that and suddenly you just. It's gone. And that's. That's removed. And for anyone to think that that's not going to have a very profound effect on how you think and feel, you'll be. That's a bad error. You are. It's going to have a massive impact on you. And you will fill it with something.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:56 - 00:23:57]
Yeah.
Ben White: [00:23:57 - 00:23:58]
It's a question of what you fill it with.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:58 - 00:24:00]
Yeah. No, absolutely.
Ben White: [00:24:00 - 00:24:10]
And I bet you if you interviewed 100 founders who'd had successful exits, they would all tell a very similar story. If you liked, I.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:10 - 00:24:15]
So when you mentioned that you invested into all of those silly businesses.
Ben White: [00:24:15 - 00:24:23]
They weren't all silly businesses, you understand. There were some decent decisions, but there were an awful lot of bad decisions as well. Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:23 - 00:24:41]
The way I understood you is that what you regret is where these decisions came from, that they didn't necessarily come from the right place, because you actually were looking to restore that comfort zone, that security, that.
Ben White: [00:24:41 - 00:24:50]
Yeah, I wasn't doing it for a commercial return. I was doing it to make myself feel better, because I thought that I would belong again. I didn't even know that at the time, but that was what was behind that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:50 - 00:25:17]
This is exactly what happened to me. So I very much understand it. But it took me years to understand that, you know, I was looking for that belonging again. Another part of it was identity. I didn't want to admit to myself at the time that I really suffered from not having a clear identity, that I could kind of a label, even, that I could put on myself. I felt kicked out of the ecosystem.
Ben White: [00:25:17 - 00:25:18]
It is your identity if you do it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:25:18 - 00:25:28]
Yeah. So I would love to hear how you now, looking back, feel about the loss of identity. At the time, if I was talking.
Ben White: [00:25:28 - 00:25:58]
To myself, then I'd go, it's okay to feel. Feel weird. It's fine. You're finishing one book, but you're picking another up. And for anyone that reads regularly, you know that feeling at the end of the book, and you go, oh, I'm feeling a bit down a bit. Until you find another book. And you might find several other books before you find one you really like. Yeah, it's okay to feel a bit shit and a bit weird and a bit lost for a while, but take ownership of that vacuum and decide what to do with it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:25:58 - 00:26:05]
So how would you go about it differently? In addition to what you've mentioned before, I just want to make sure I extract all lessons from you.
Ben White: [00:26:05 - 00:27:05]
Well, the first thing, you can't pick your new book up unless you have. Unless you have something, unless you're centered. Yeah, and you can't be centered if you're. If you're doing too much of anything, whether it be sex, drugs, alcohol, whatever you to be said or mixing with, you know, a lot of people. I mean, people who get big exits, especially my business friends in America, if you're starting to hang out with billionaires, that's weird, right? If that's. If that's now your life that's a very weird, myopic. Not a good representation of people more generally. These people have nobody saying no to them. They start to believe their own bullshit. And generally, how many friends do they have that were friends when they were at school or university? Probably not many. Right? So that's probably not a healthy group for you to hang out in.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:27:06 - 00:27:31]
But talking about that, because you went back to having real friends quite a few times in our conversation, didn't you find that those old friends also changed the way they talked to you after they knew that your financial situation changed dramatically a bit?
Ben White: [00:27:31 - 00:28:16]
My real friends? No, they were still. They were. Ben, you're being a dick. Why? Why? You know, could be anything. They were still authentic. And I. But I should have. I should have seen these friends on their terms, not on my boat, on my plane. Do you see what I mean? I was starting to stack the cards in my favor so I could basically behave the way that I wanted because they had to, because they were in there, you know? So I'd have kept it much lower key if I'd paid for holiday for them. I would have paid for a half decent villa somewhere not in a fancy pants area where everyone felt more comfortable, where I'd have probably got more genuine response from them.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:16 - 00:28:22]
So how do you go about it now? In terms of when you think about your social circle, whom do you want to see there?
Ben White: [00:28:23 - 00:28:39]
In the five years since I stopped drinking, I've worked pretty hard. I've worked incredibly hard on my family and I've got a small number of very close friends and also we've had Covid and stuff. And it just hasn't been a very social time.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:39 - 00:28:46]
What is your criteria for what you want to keep in your life and what you want to remove from it?
Ben White: [00:28:46 - 00:29:30]
Keep just my dogs, really. But, you know, the less stuff you can have, the better, basically, because the kids fucking hate it, right? They come down, daddy's this. I mean, my children permanently taking a piss. Can you not do that yourself? But recently I was called a domestic weapon. Part from my cooking Scott to improve and my ironing shit. But the fact that they watch me struggling to do it, even if I fuck it up, is brilliant. You know how many friends I've got? Who, every half term and every holiday, the kids are off. They're off to another fancy place, but they're never allowed to be sat at home bored. So again, when I say simplifying your life that it means holidays, it means everything.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:29:30 - 00:29:35]
Yeah. I love that you mentioned boredom. Why do you think it's important.
Ben White: [00:29:35 - 00:30:01]
Kids get bored because that's where creativity comes from, right. You have to be bored from time to time. It's important. And all we do is fucking overstimulate them continually. You, I mean, for ourselves, right? We can't sit on our own, can we? I mean, I don't use social media really, because it's just, you can't help it, can you?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:30:01 - 00:30:02]
Mm hmm.
Ben White: [00:30:02 - 00:30:29]
It's like, I'll stop it. And then, of course, addiction. Yeah. And then of course, anything you do look at, you get fed more of. And that's happening to every one of us all over the world. And whatever views I opinions or how we feel, that's just getting reinforced. Reinforced, reinforced. Even if that's only the view of a very small minority, we think it's not. And I think we'll look back at it as the kind of cancer of our generation.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:30:29 - 00:31:15]
Because, again, I think nature created us in such a way that we copy other people's behavior because we are tribal animals. So lots of that copying happens very subconsciously. So we look at social networks, we see all these people, and we don't feel filter them in terms of whom we want to copy. And for children, it's even harder, but it's also extremely hard for the adults. So, for example, what I noticed in the post exit founder community is that lots of people keep copying each other's mistakes. So they look at what other exited founders do within the first few years. Pretty much everyone does the same thing. It's angel investing or starting a new business, and they just do the same thing because that's considered the right thing to do. And often it's not conscious.
Ben White: [00:31:15 - 00:31:24]
There's not much original thinking anymore. And that's the problem with AI as well. It's just reinforced. It's just, you know, anything we do is just reinforced.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:31:24 - 00:31:42]
Yeah. And the social media actually shows us more of what we like to see, so we end up not seeing the other side of the story. And, you know, you and I talked about it before. You actually need to go at great lengths to hear the other side of an argument because it will not come to you naturally.
Ben White: [00:31:43 - 00:31:55]
Even newspapers are clickbait now, aren't they? So, you know, journalism used to be a bastion of people would die trying to write the truth. They may be left leaning or right leaning, but they wanted to print. Is that true anymore?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:31:55 - 00:32:13]
No. Absolutely. So going back to your life, because that's what we are focusing on today. At some point, you and your brother together created a venture capital firm after your third exit. So tell me why and where it is today.
Ben White: [00:32:14 - 00:33:49]
So this is a great example of I should have taken the year off. I didn't really think about it. The guys wanted to do it, and the idea was that we could have much more of a work life balance as a venture. We could take August off, you know what, as they all do. But that's not criticism. It's fine, but that's what they do. And I thought that I could live vicariously through these investments and sit on lots of boards and help them, blah, blah, blah. None of that is true. Right? You can't help them. You're not in it. You're not in the tent. You can introduce them to some helpful contacts, you can nudge them so they don't come off at the faster bends, but that's it. They're going to do it with or without you. You're not going to be the reason they're successful or they fail. You know, the successful founders will find a way to be successful, and it won't be because they've been on some course run by some venture capital firm on relative successful SaaS metrics. You don't need to look at a firm to know whether it's successful or not. Do you have customers? Is the margin decent? Are the customers happy? Are they going to stay with you? And have you got a decent sized market? And are you able to build a pipeline with a relatively modest sum of money that you convert over a period of time, and if you pour money in the top of your machine, roughly what comes out the other end? It's no more complicated than that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:33:49 - 00:33:50]
It.
Ben White: [00:33:50 - 00:33:51]
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:33:51 - 00:33:54]
Common sense is the most important thing in business.
Ben White: [00:33:54 - 00:34:56]
Yeah, yeah. You know, you don't need to look at all the metrics. It's obvious. I was the founding money of the venture firm. 70% of it came from me or whatever. What I hadn't considered is I made a lot more money than my team who worked. I mean, they were all very wealthy in their own right, but nothing like as wealthy as I was. So I didn't need to work. They did. If they wanted to live in Nottingham and continue to, you know, do the whole thing, as it were. I also didn't. Hadn't expected what it would feel like not to be their boss. And I also hadn't thought about the sorts of behaviors that I might see coming from them. The greed. Once, you know, we sold the business for a little under a billion dollars, and I saw behaviors from some of them that I'd never seen before of greed and horrible. And I started to see that, and I'd never seen that from any of them a bit, but not quite that. And I started to become uncomfortable at that point.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:34:57 - 00:35:00]
Like what? Give me an example or illustration.
Ben White: [00:35:00 - 00:36:15]
We sold the company, and like all these exits, you probably got one or 2% of unallocated share options. Someone said to me, well, let's just split them between you and I, Ben. And I said, but what about people who were unfortunate with the last grant or whatever, let's go through the 700 people and work out who was unfortunate. Why do we need to do that? We don't need them anymore. Right. Okay, I see that kind of horribly egregious, you know, self indulgent behavior. When we started the venture business in 2009, we decided to concentrate on b two B and software as a service. And it's hard then, because the cloud hadn't really quite happened. And everyone, when we were raising money, people went, Ben, it's very niche, this b two B cloud thing. I was like, and what I should have done, which I wanted to do on several occasions, is bugger off for five years and say, I'll come back when it's a thing. Yeah. And so I went from, you know, in some ways, having to have this amazing sale to running around with my bucket, trying to raise money for my new thing and people, you know, so it's like I suddenly felt, this doesn't feel great.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:36:15 - 00:36:16]
Yeah.
Ben White: [00:36:18 - 00:36:29]
And we just didn't. At the early stages, we didn't find many interesting companies, to be honest. It was quite early for us, I think. It's not. Not just that people who do them are bad people or anything like that. Just wasn't me.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:36:29 - 00:36:48]
No, absolutely. Because you're probably much more of a builder and operator than an investor, but you have a brother, and that brother built message labs together with you, and then you guys both started the venture capital firm together. Why do you think it worked for him but it didn't work for you?
Ben White: [00:36:48 - 00:37:12]
He loves sitting down. He loves shows, meeting new people. And the only new people I wanted to meet were potential customers or potential employees. Anyone else, I'm not interested, or I'll spend the time with my family. And he likes that. He likes going to shows. He likes going around the world, meeting other members of the venture community.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:37:13 - 00:37:27]
Can you quickly tell my audience what up is and how you came to the decision to start a new company after trying to bvC? Because you're basically an entrepreneur who became an investor and then went back to become an entrepreneur?
Ben White: [00:37:28 - 00:40:40]
So one of the businesses I invested in. I met a 26 year old guy called Drew Smith. Ridiculously bright, slightly socially awkward, but a brilliant brain, and he's only got better at time. And I've now known him six years. And together we were, you know, I was selling the business that he was currently working for and he came to me and said, I've got an idea for a new thing. So when you sold it, maybe you could take the money you sell it for and put it into my new thing. So I got him to pitch it to me and I kind of knew, I knew what it was going to be. I'd already told him, I want to be in the intelligence business and data business. This is going back four or five years, so before AI and become the buzzword. And we quickly worked out that paid media. So in other words, so paid media would drive 80% of Google Meta being tick Tock's revenue. It's all paid media. If it's shopping, it's on Google, it's the carousel that you know when you're searching for a product. If it's a, a form fill, it's a. You need a form fill. If it's holidays, we've all done searches for holidays and you've been pointed, you know, they're one of 20 holiday firms that who advertise extensively. And paid media drives. About 20% of all e commerce sales is driven by paid media, sometimes up to 50%. So if you turn over 100 million as a retailer, you're probably spending 10 million between Google and meta every year. 10 million pounds. So they're in essentially your new landlord, if you like. That's quite complicated driving paid media because you essentially taking all of your 10,000 products and deciding which ones to spend most money on, that might sell. And they currently do that manually, basically. And because they do it manually, it's very hard to look at all the data they should look at when they're doing this. And so drew's idea that we evolved together was what if we were to automate paid drive paid media in an automated fashion? We could. By doing that, machines can look at far more data in real time than people ever can. Also, if you automated tons of disparate activities, once you've automated them, you can then have them all connected to one outcome. It might be, I'm prepared to spend 30 pounds for every new customer. I want to make a minimum of 20% contribution on every pound of sales that I do or whatever. But if all these activities are disparate, it's very hard to connect them all to one North Star. By automating something. You align all of these activities, connect them to a north star, and you drive an infinitely better result for whoever you're doing that for. And we're just at the beginning of that journey, basically.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:40 - 00:40:45]
How do you feel about the whole thing and being an operator again?
Ben White: [00:40:46 - 00:40:56]
Alive. Alive. I think it's, you know, sometimes alive and scared, sometimes alive and excited, but never alive and bored.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:56 - 00:40:58]
How much do you work?
Ben White: [00:40:58 - 00:41:00]
50, 60 hours a week.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:00 - 00:41:05]
So would it be comparable to how much you worked on your previous businesses?
Ben White: [00:41:05 - 00:41:06]
Harder.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:07 - 00:41:08]
You work harder now?
Ben White: [00:41:08 - 00:41:09]
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:09 - 00:41:09]
Interesting.
Ben White: [00:41:09 - 00:41:10]
Obviously those first.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:10 - 00:41:12]
But it doesn't bother you?
Ben White: [00:41:13 - 00:41:15]
No, no, I love it because most.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:15 - 00:41:38]
People, and you mentioned you were there as well. When we sell our businesses, the first idea is that, oh, my God, it was so hard. I want to do something that's easier, which is why so many people are pushed into more passive investment. We don't want to go through the pain again. But now you've embraced that pain. Why? Because you.
Ben White: [00:41:38 - 00:42:44]
I'm a man, so I've never had a child. That's not possible yet. And I'm sure if you asked a young mother one year in, or, sorry, six months into after the birth, and he said, rio, having another child, never again. But two years on, the little person is running around and it's lovely and they're getting joy out of it. And I think life's amazing. They go, should we have another one? Right? And of course, you get. You go on and have another child. And I think building businesses is a bit like that. You remember all the good stuff and that's why you. And when it works, it's just. It's the best. There's no better drug. You know, when you go and speak to a customer and they go, you know what, Ben? You know all of the machine learning and AI stuff, I've been reading about it all. I've bought lots of. Of it in the past. Almost none of it worked. I pay you whatever it is, 50 grand a year, and by the way, I get ten times that back in value. That's my dopamine.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:42:44 - 00:42:52]
Of course. I was just about to ask you about dopamine and adrenaline addiction, which you probably have but embrace.
Ben White: [00:42:52 - 00:43:10]
That's my dopamine. They go, you know, wow, we've got something. They're getting value from it, we're making money out of it. People who are building it and writing the software, I can see that people are using it, so that's great. And it's just. And it's a very special feeling.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:10 - 00:43:11]
Does it give you a sense of purpose?
Ben White: [00:43:12 - 00:43:29]
Yeah, yeah, I know. But I'm more balanced now. I have both. I have home and work, you know, so home's tick at the moment, touching wood and work. If I get the opportunity for up to be, it's got the potential to be the biggest business I've touched and I hope it'll be us.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:30 - 00:43:50]
Yeah. Sounds like you're in a good place also personally, because you know what you're doing in terms of the skills, but you also seem to be in a much better place in terms of quality of your decisions. We mentioned that earlier, right after you exit, your quality of decisions was very poor. But now it's different. Right. Because you're in a different place yourself.
Ben White: [00:43:50 - 00:44:04]
Yeah. It's also this time it's going to be interesting without, you know, you feel every speed bump, you're not drinking, not taking any drugs or whatever. You, everybody, every, every. You feel everything. Whether that is good or whether it's bad.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:44:04 - 00:44:05]
I guess you could psychologically escape.
Ben White: [00:44:06 - 00:44:32]
Yeah, I'm being a bit childish, but, yeah, you can't. Yeah. And I can't wait for that feeling as it starts to scale. Feeling all of it, if you don't mean and reading the room, whether it be a room full of customers, a room full of employees who are going, fuck, this is actually working. This is going to be a really big company. He's not mad. He said this would happen and it is happening.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:44:34 - 00:44:37]
So you're investing your own money in it.
Ben White: [00:44:37 - 00:44:42]
Yes, and some other people as well. We've got west coast investors.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:44:42 - 00:44:59]
So let's talk about how youre view on wealth changed over time. If we go back to the very first business you started, how important money or financial freedom was for you at the time.
Ben White: [00:44:59 - 00:45:40]
Not at all. I just wanted to find why. I actually just wanted a job. No one would employ me because I didn't have any a levels or a degree or anything. And in truth, I just wanted to make enough money to pay my golf club membership, buy a half decent bottle of wine on a Friday and take a girlfriend out for dinner and not embarrass myself. I think when you're young, dumb and full of cum, you think I'm gonna make. When I make tons of money, of course I will be happy because you only need to look at the pictures of people with money. They're all happy, right?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:45:40 - 00:45:40]
Mm hmm.
Ben White: [00:45:41 - 00:50:19]
Of course they're not. But when I started out, I didn't. It wasn't about money. It was just about having a purpose, having a business that made money, to be honest, and going, fuck. I found something I can do, actually. And it was only once I got into it, I thought, well, this is fun. I'm quite good at this. Wow. This. Hang on, this. This actually could be a properly grown up business. I hadn't even considered that that was possible. I remember there weren't loads of role models and loads of, you know, there hadn't been bugger waxes in software at that point. You know, in the mid to late nineties. It just wasn't a thing. And then you suddenly becomes, obviously, you suddenly cross the line of, I'm not just doing this to pay the bills and buy a half decent bottle of wine on Friday. I could. We could sell this for a lot of money. And so your psychology changes. You move from one person to another, or one mindset is probably better to another, and you get the copies of the, you know, country life and fast car magazines or whatever it is, because you start changing the. Because you suddenly know this might be possible. You're still loving the business, but your expectation is changing without you even knowing it. And you're suddenly going from, shit. I'm going to be, in all likelihood, I'm going to be someone worth many millions of pounds or many tens of millions of pounds. And then without knowing it, the people around you are changing there, how they talk to you, how they react to you. You're someone, you've got status and you don't even know. This is all happening around you. It's happening without you knowing it, and you're changing as a result. Even if you're not very careful, you change completely. Then in my case, you sell one business and then you double down and going to sell one for 80 million. I'm going to sell one for 800 million and you keep doing it. And then suddenly, without knowing it, in my case, you're on a right, well, I need to keep doing it because every time I do it, I have more money and I'll be happier. I sold the biggest one for a little over 800 million. That suddenly, that became. I realized, hang on, this isn't a true. Ben. You don't, every time you make more money, you don't get happier. That's not, it's not a binary outcome. And I don't think a lot of people ever go through that realization. Maybe they have a new wife or husband, they start mixing with new people, holidaying in all the inverted commas, right places, upgrading their friends, trying to go to all the. There's a circuit, isn't there? In London, in New York, starting with the Met gala, you know, and they're on that and getting invited to fundraisers and your whole life has completely changed and become. The one thing it doesn't have is authenticity. And it's not. It's not grounded in anything. It's not real with my children. I would argue that a lot of people don't spoil them. I think that misses the point, really, to spoil children is, are they real? Because we all spoil our children compared to someone in other countries and other parts of the world, we're all spoiling them to a greater or lesser extent. It's a question of are they real? Do they, do they get it? Do they understand where the UK sits in terms of fortunate to be just in this country compared to other countries? Are they fortunate to have the, you know, the chances that they have? Unless. And even if they do go on a fancy holiday or a fancy restaurant, they get it. They get. They're real. They go, I'm fortunate to be going here. And that's what I mean by real. And I hope mine are real. And that's as a result of doing full circle in the last ten or twelve years on going. Right. So all of this money is great, but I wasn't. I'd stopped being real for a while, I think. Yeah, and I think I've gone back to be Ben again and being real.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:50:19 - 00:50:27]
So what role does wealth play today in your life? How do you see it? Is it.
Ben White: [00:50:27 - 00:50:59]
It purely pays the bills? That's it. When up is successful, I hope it'll be the most successful one I've ever done. I want to use that money and do something interesting with it. I don't know what. Because there's no point in thinking about doing something when you haven't. You don't know how much money you've got and you don't know if you're going to have a big slug of money again. But I. Yeah, I would do something real with it, basically. I'm not sure what that is. Probably involved children.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:01 - 00:51:09]
Yeah, but I guess building a useful, valuable business is real because you're giving value to the world.
Ben White: [00:51:11 - 00:51:56]
Yes, but I would have done it four times and I'll be, whatever, close to 60 or beyond 69 probably. I wouldn't do it again. I think I've had a good run at that. I'd like to leave behind some. Something which is more of a legacy and also something that my children could maybe get involved in to a greater or lesser extent. Because the challenge for kids who have very wealthy parents is how do. You can't hide it, right? You can't. It's there. Even if they're never going to get their hands on the capital, they're still going to have some of the trappings. So they've got something to. Some sort of, whether it's a charity, a foundation thing, which is great, you know, then that's maybe something they could do.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:56 - 00:52:04]
So what do you do to help them move in that direction? If that's what you want?
Ben White: [00:52:04 - 00:53:40]
I think you're doing it all the time. It's not one thing, it's little things. You go into a garage and they'll see me, and I will always try and make the person working behind the till laugh. I'll do something stupid. And they've learned that, I said, because that person's probably not having much fun. You could be the bright spot of their day, and that will make you feel good and her or him feel good. Just interacting with the world around us at every possible, given every opportunity. An old lady walking across the road that need help, someone's dropped a bag in sainsbury's and needs it, picking up all these little things, these interactions that we all used to do 30, 40 years ago as a matter of course, but now we've become more and more disconnected. That's the irony, right? We're in a more disconnected world than ever. And therefore those soft, that lovely, all those lovely interactions that used to happen don't happen anymore. And so that's a massive part of our self which doesn't develop. Kindness, empathy in every aspect of what we do. And that kindness and that empathy makes you happy. And people miss the point. It's not just for who you're doing it for. It's for you, definitely. Yeah. You could argue kindness and empathy is quite selfish because it makes me feel good. You see what I mean?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:53:40 - 00:53:41]
Absolutely.
Ben White: [00:53:41 - 00:54:12]
And you don't have to. I think we missed the point with all the, the way that we're being told to and we're being forced to speak to each other in a certain way all this way. But what these minor, what these minority groups miss is if someone has a different opinion to them, they're not allowed to have that in today's world. Right. So I want you to be open to all of these things going on, but I'm not going to be open to you, because if you don't want to change and you're not interested, I hate you.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:54:12 - 00:54:16]
If you behave in a certain way, that's how you influence your children best, right?
Ben White: [00:54:17 - 00:54:22]
They watch you. They learn, right? Yeah, they just learn. They pick it up. If you keep doing it and keep doing it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:54:22 - 00:54:31]
When do you think you, you realize that kindness and compassion are the sources of happiness more than what you used to think?
Ben White: [00:54:31 - 00:54:35]
I wasn't unkind, but it wasn't. It wasn't as front and center.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:54:35 - 00:54:40]
You didn't connect kindness and happiness. Right. Because you. You said you connected money and happiness.
Ben White: [00:54:41 - 00:54:44]
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:54:44 - 00:54:46]
So when did you connect back?
Ben White: [00:54:46 - 00:54:47]
Connect? Reconnect?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:54:47 - 00:54:48]
Reconnect, yeah.
Ben White: [00:54:49 - 00:55:12]
Probably five years ago. I've never been as happy as I am today. And it's no coincidence. That's one of the things. And when your children watch the happy kind, empathy, they pick up on it. They become little people with that built in and programmed, and they become happy.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:55:13 - 00:55:17]
And that's what keeps them real, because they know the real source of happiness.
Ben White: [00:55:17 - 00:55:38]
Yeah, you put that well. Yeah. And I think that's what we miss as a society today. So when I went off on my rant, rather than trying to tell people the way to speak to each other, we're treating the symptom, not the cause. The symptom is we should be kind, thoughtful to everybody. We shouldn't be told to be to a specific group or minority, whatever. It should just be a default.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:55:39 - 00:55:39]
Right.
Ben White: [00:55:39 - 00:55:42]
And that's what we need to change.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:55:42 - 00:55:47]
Go back to, maybe. We'll see. We're just not going.
Ben White: [00:55:47 - 00:55:57]
But we are very resilient as a species, and we tend to pull back from the abyss, don't we? Just when it looks like there's way back, we pull back.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:55:57 - 00:55:58]
We've certainly done it before.
Ben White: [00:55:58 - 00:55:59]
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:55:59 - 00:56:14]
I keep digging into your wisdom. So you talked about how enjoying little mundane, simple things in life, appreciating them, makes you happy. Are we missing any other important source of. Sources of happiness?
Ben White: [00:56:14 - 00:56:15]
Nature.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:56:15 - 00:56:16]
Nature.
Ben White: [00:56:16 - 00:57:12]
Nature. You know, you can't. Well, look at. Isn't this the best time of year in the west, in the northern hemisphere? You know, it's just June, July, when everything's green and you look out, it's not as grim, particularly if you're in the countryside that, mate, you just. It's hard not to smile, you know what I mean? Especially if you've got a couple of dogs doing stupid things and. And you're watching other people enjoying it. It's amazing. It's just such a simple thing. The other thing I've done since I've stopped, since I've been a bit more available, I found people I used to work with coming back to me and saying, just lately, actually saying, ben, you've got me to do stuff. And I know that I did on reflection, and I've probably got a 100 letters that I've collected over the last 30 years, some very, some big, some small, but yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:13 - 00:57:22]
So having that impact on the people, helping them achieve more of who they can be.
Ben White: [00:57:22 - 00:57:34]
People have much. Have much more capability than they realize, they can go further than they think. It's often their own and anxiety around failing, maybe.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:34 - 00:57:38]
Did you achieve that by pushing them hard or by inspiring them or both?
Ben White: [00:57:39 - 00:57:42]
If you inspire them, you don't need to push them. They'll push themselves.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:42 - 00:57:47]
How did you do it and how it changed over time? Did you always have this?
Ben White: [00:57:47 - 00:57:48]
I think I've always had that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:48 - 00:57:48]
You always.
Ben White: [00:57:48 - 00:58:04]
I've always been very. I've been very lucky. I've always had that. People. I've always been able to sell a vision, a dream, an idea, get people excited about it and get people to rally behind that and become come, come play on my team.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:04 - 00:58:08]
You didn't need to be too pushy or nasty.
Ben White: [00:58:08 - 00:58:09]
No, I was never like that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:09 - 00:58:15]
You mentioned legacy before. How do you want to be remembered.
Ben White: [00:58:15 - 00:59:26]
As someone who was part of the first wave of software entrepreneurs in Europe and, you know, very successful in that area that paved the road for future generations. Someone who did it the right way, right, who wasn't a dick. They were kind and empathetic, inspirational, and, and got more out of people than they ever thought was possible. I want to be remembered for also for, you know, for making a lot of people a lot of money, which I have. That's, you know, I like, I like the fact that whether it's friends or investors, whatever, I've made a lot of people a lot of money or share options. I don't know, whatever. There are 30 or 40 people who've made several million quid because of me. I like that. And I want to be remembered as a good friend and a good dad, basically, I think, brilliant. How's that sound?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:59:26 - 00:59:41]
If you don't mind, I want to quickly go all the way back and ask you, what do you think your parents did right to help you get where you are today? And maybe what they did wrong.
Ben White: [00:59:42 - 01:01:07]
I think they provided a happy, loving home to nurture three children in. Dad gave me a lot of. Dad is very competitive. He's 86. He's still very competitive. He did. The other day he showed me his new LinkedIn profile. I said, right. Why do you. What? He said? Well, I'm thinking of starting again. I said, what, you're eight, right? Anyway, the profile's good, though. So he said to me once, we had an offer for the company for a couple hundred million, and I said, I'm going to take it. I've had enough. He said, you can't do that. I said, why is that? He said, because that's an insult to all the people who haven't been lucky enough to get to this pace that you've got to. And you owe it to them to make the most of the opportunity that you have now. Now, actually, the deal fell through. We ended up selling it for four to four times that. But that was his mindset. You're lucky to be in that position. There was no, because generationally he wasn't about being happy, fulfilled and content. He was about making the most of everything that you have and all the opportunities that come at the expense of whatever that was, because I think that's the way that generation were wired. It doesn't make him a bad person. That's just who he was.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:07 - 01:01:15]
You seem to combine contentment and drive, entrepreneurial drive, quite well. How do you reconcile them?
Ben White: [01:01:15 - 01:01:17]
Sometimes they're not good bed fellows.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:17 - 01:01:22]
Yeah. That's why I wonder how you reconcile them. How do you put them in bed together?
Ben White: [01:01:23 - 01:01:34]
I mix them up. It doesn't matter how much money I make, I'll never get. I won't get this time back. So I wrestle with that a bit, but I think I do an okay job balancing it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:34 - 01:01:47]
It's interesting because I expected a different answer. I thought you would say that you're content with what you have financially and materially, but your drive comes from.
Ben White: [01:01:48 - 01:01:53]
No, you'd be wrong. I lost a huge percentage of everything that I made.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:53 - 01:01:57]
Yeah. Which is you and I talked about it before.
Ben White: [01:01:59 - 01:02:01]
I'm not doing this particular one.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:01 - 01:02:04]
So you feel hungry now, financially?
Ben White: [01:02:04 - 01:02:05]
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:05 - 01:02:06]
Oh, interesting.
Ben White: [01:02:06 - 01:02:07]
Yeah, yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:07 - 01:02:32]
Because I wanted to ask you about that because just to continue our separate conversation, that my observation is that it's almost impossible to find a successful, exited founder who wouldn't go down financially before going up, if they ever go up or stabilize. And that is what happened to you. And you're saying now you're back to the situation when you're actually driven by money?
Ben White: [01:02:32 - 01:02:40]
Yeah, well, yeah. I mean, not entirely by money, but it would be nice if something worked. Otherwise my lifestyle probably can't continue as it is.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:40 - 01:02:41]
Yeah. Interesting.
Ben White: [01:02:41 - 01:02:53]
So, yeah, it's the first time that I've had a little bit of financial drive. It was before that was that was number two or three on the list of why I was doing things. This time, it's probably more front and.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:53 - 01:03:01]
Center, but that's fascinating. Why do you think that happened? Why did you lose so much of your exit wealth?
Ben White: [01:03:01 - 01:03:52]
The average founders lost 50% of their net worth five, seven years after. And there's a simple reason for that in their business. They know everything about it. There's nothing they don't know. It might appear to people they're shooting from the hip, they're not that. Ideas being synthesized, distilled to death. So the decision was quick, but it was quick because they've already thought about it. They've given it lots of thought, and they know more about their space than anybody on the planet, probably, so they can afford to make decisions really quickly. And they're probably largely right. They go, they sell that business and they carry on behaving in the same way. The only difference is these are areas where they know fuck all about and they have far less data yet they do. They continue to shoot from the hip and guess what? They miss.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:03:53 - 01:03:57]
So you think that happens in both investing and starting a new business?
Ben White: [01:03:57 - 01:03:58]
100%.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:03:58 - 01:04:11]
Were your mistakes, if you can call them, or wrong decisions financially more in investing or because you were too generous with your own business?
Ben White: [01:04:12 - 01:04:19]
Both. Both, both. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You need to give a business the right amount of money at the right time.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:04:19 - 01:04:21]
Yeah. So you didn't do that as much?
Ben White: [01:04:21 - 01:04:34]
No, I fell in love with the businesses that I thought that they would. I kept thinking, they're almost there. And the truth is I've never been as successful in anyone else's business as I have in my own.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:04:34 - 01:04:45]
It's extremely rare that a true entrepreneur, especially a creative type, becomes a successful investor. These are such different personalities.
Ben White: [01:04:45 - 01:04:49]
Completely different. Completely different. Yeah, I believe that 100%.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:04:50 - 01:04:56]
Did it affect your decision to go back to business after you've tried to invest in.
Ben White: [01:04:56 - 01:05:01]
Yes, I failed dismally and I thought, I better get back to doing what I do best.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:05:01 - 01:05:04]
How come you dropped out of school?
Ben White: [01:05:04 - 01:05:22]
I didn't drop out of school. They removed me. It was forced dropout? Yeah. Oh. I mean, I, you know, I. I'm sure today I would be dyslexic and wham. And in those days they didn't get it and so I'd rather be a fucking pain in the ass.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:05:23 - 01:05:25]
When did it happen? How old were you?
Ben White: [01:05:25 - 01:05:27]
1617. Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:05:27 - 01:05:28]
Before your GCC.
Ben White: [01:05:28 - 01:05:29]
Yeah.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:05:29 - 01:05:31]
So the age of your younger son?
Ben White: [01:05:31 - 01:05:58]
Yes, exactly that. Yeah. But I think probably because I didn't go down the academic route. I didn't have all that creativity rung out of me. Do you know what I mean? I was still like, you know, childlike. And I think you have to be quite childlike to start. You see the world through those wonderful, naive eyes, and if you lose that, you probably unlikely to be a founder anymore.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:05:58 - 01:06:01]
And do you think the education system gets it out of you?
Ben White: [01:06:02 - 01:06:06]
That's one philosophy I don't know. I never went through it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:06:06 - 01:06:13]
True. Would you support if your sons decided to drop out of school and not go to university?
Ben White: [01:06:14 - 01:07:29]
Only if they couldn't, because I think it's different today. I think also they've had Covid, so their friendship group's much smaller than it would normally be. I think with my kids live in a bubble within a bubble within a bubble. If they just. I said, what's your other plan then? If you're not going to, what's your plan b? In those days, it didn't matter if you didn't have a degree, really. People, not many people did. But now it's expected. And. But most importantly, I think it's a stepping stone to the outside world. You know, they've never had to share a loo, a shower. I mean, all this live. They've always lived life on their terms, so they go to uni and live in halls, and suddenly they've got to live. It's not on their terms. So it's a step towards independence, whereas they just leave home. Go fucking hell. That's a bit of a shock, isn't it? So I think he'll meet. I think they will meet lots of new friends. They will be friends for life. Very important. And they will build up a whole new level of confidence as a result of this completion of their character, because they've had to. Suddenly life's not on their terms. They have to share a loo, do the washing, pay the council tax, all that kind of crap. That will complete them as a little person.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:07:30 - 01:07:31]
Didn't happen to you, though.
Ben White: [01:07:31 - 01:07:32]
No.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:07:32 - 01:07:35]
You found a different way to complete yourself.
Ben White: [01:07:35 - 01:07:43]
Yeah, but at what cost? Just because I'm thinking maybe if I'd gone down a different route, I would have got happier quicker.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:07:43 - 01:07:44]
Ben, thank you so much.
Ben White: [01:07:44 - 01:07:45]
Okay.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:07:45 - 01:07:46]
I so much enjoy the conversation.
