In a short stretch of time, from the mid 90s to the early 2000s, a relatively small group of people started playing around with this thing called the World Wide Web. They had the audacity to think they just might change the world. This project introduces you to the big players from those hallowed days, and let them tell you what it was like and how you should have been there.
Episode Four today we're going to talk with Andy Hobsbawm. And him and wilmont from online magic fame and agency.com fame ritesh Good to see you sir. How are you?
Hi, Happy Friday. It's noon. It's Friday. So it must be you should have been there
It must be you should have been there and today we're going across the pond I'm going to be the ugly American the soul ugly American on the on the episode today. So
you know, let me know if you want me to translate anything today from you because
football is not the pointy thing right? It's not the ball
Exactly. This one let you kick with the ball. That's why it's called football
that you can't use your hands. I don't like it. But we'll get to that. Before we dive in here I've got a little bit of housekeeping so so if you're watching if you want to see previous episodes if you want to get links to the podcasts, if you want details about upcoming guests like our first pair of guests, the the the to kick off 2021 are going to be Craig and Jeff from Razorfish so you can see all that sort of stuff over it. You should have been there
we should have come You should come come along.
You should Oh sorry. You should have calm Yeah, what it says on screen there you go. And you know, please leave comments if you're watching the stream leave comments ritesh can see those and we can put them on screen we'll make you famous. And then the last thing and this is just this is because we're influencers now. You know, we're gonna ask you to subscribe, particularly go subscribe to the YouTube channel. We're up to 51 we need 100 before we can get our own URL.
So funny we get like two 300 views of the videos for Flip's sake.
With the subscribe button. That
is the love anyway,
well anyway, let let let's do this. Let's talk to the magician snowmen. Good day to you. Good day to you, sir. Good day.
Good Morrow.
Good afternoon for you guys. Right. Do you have a pint of alien hand? It's five in the evening, I think right. Well done some tea. Tea and tea cup of tea.
Time has moved on
the pub still closed?
Well, they are no
I think it depends on the tears. Right? I think Boris Johnson has come up with a whole bunch of tears. You have to be in something.
Yeah, then there's new tears. Yeah. new post lockdown pre Brexit tear.
I love it.
It's a case study in great communication.
Great to see you both. Amen. I gotta say you're to pay it looks amazing. Okay. If you have always had impressive hair, Sir, I've got what I'm calling the COVID mullet, which is
got the same thing but there's no politics just thing going on here. So
I dream of having
Yeah. Oh, you know? Yeah, at some point. Yeah, I would tease me then. It was darker when when I kind of feel like if we you guys send some pictures, which we might show later. I kind of feel like this is just you know, the boy did we have a lot of hair back then show.
I think I weighed about 3040 pounds less as well. I think
maybe the before and after show that. Yeah,
that would be excellent. So why
don't we kick it off? I was just gonna say the same thing. Because I feel like there are so many stories to tell here. Like I want to jump right into it. Where where I'd love to start is is you know, we know you from agency.com days but you had a whole life before then and and rock stardom and internet stardom and you started online magic so I'll leave it to you to figure out who's gonna go first. You know, you can you can sort of tussle it out like you always have. But I would just love to hear like, like, how did it all begin for you guys? Like where did it start? And and, you know what, what was all of that?
And if we go age before beauty would that be? Probably best.
So you're gonna go first and are you aiming
Thank you. Don't you feel free to pile on? So I was living in San Diego, but 1987
that's a little too early. Yeah, we don't want to hear all that. Now go ahead.
When my parents first,
I was born.
No one told me it's a bit such a tough crowd today. I published a magazine called supercomputer view. Notice I've moved into counter mode now urging from you that about 1990 went to a meeting somebody and they gave me a business card had a squiggle on it. I said, was that squiggle, it was a.edu. You said, I gave it a bunch of scientists and engineers, and it's called the internet. How many people on this thing he said 10 million. So this is a real a real sort of history lesson. So cut long story short, which obviously, I'll make I'm being asked to do here. We set out what was the world's first commercial internet service. It started off as an FTP File Transfer Protocol service, it then moved, wait for it. This is probably too much, Randy, Andy tranquilizes required it. It then became an interactive email server. Oh, wow. You got an email, and then you put the numbers of the stories you want, and they came back. And then some horrible commercial pastors decided to charge people for their stories to go out, which caused massive for Aurora.
The good news is all on 9600 baud modems, I'm a senior executive.
I still respond to that. So if you can do it for me. And so the good news about that story is that for the last 30 years, I've been dining out on the fact that I launched the world's first commercial internet service. However, no one's actually come back is of course, I'm still working
to be explained. The reason I'm still working. And that word is resources. Yeah. Randy, over to you, sir.
Yeah.
That's a bit of a
I know, right? Horse. We could say horses for courses there.
I will, I was sort of, in a in a sort of spectacularly unsuccessful 80s band. And then I ended up working for this publishing company publishing computer journals. And I didn't really know anything about computers. And actually,
this the band that you're speaking of,
no, this is, this band was one I started in New York.
New York, this is your band before, you know, that is the New York band. Ah, okay.
So this was
a, you had some, you had some decent fame, and you're in your 80s.
I failed in more than one band. So I ended up getting this job. And it was in a publishing company, and I learned about computers. And then I broke up with a girlfriend went to Thailand to kind of blow off fees and things like that, and came back and a man and his brother had sort of done a joint venture with the company publishing an email newsletter. So this is post aim and supercomputing review in San Diego and you came back. And we kind of got on well, and and then the, the web came along, well, the web was sort of had been invented, but mosaic was released. Yeah. And at the end of 93, the guy who was getting newsletter, the editor, just put up a website, just for the hell of it, because he knew some HTML. And that kind of blew my mind really just seeing this Unix box where you could you could watch people from all over the world interact with this content was just so clearly, I thought got world changing. And yet, you know, global, real time interaction with media and all that business. And
did you have did it? Did it hit you? Was it sort of like upon seeing it? You had that epiphany? Like, what was it that made you go this changes things?
Yeah, it was it was it just it felt like a real moment of epiphany, like it was so obviously, incredibly important that you could put up a piece of information, press a button, publish it, and people completely disparately all over the world, yeah, next together through a network interact with that content. It was, you know, groundbreaking, really, obviously, somebody who was going to, you know, shift all kind of industries and, you know, very
publishing it. Yeah, but you were both in the publishing business and you aim and you've done the magazine and then you saw this thing. And Andy, you came back from Thailand renewed and, and ready to rock and roll and you're still going back into that publishing world. So I'm certain you probably both sat there and thought, hang on a minute. This model of printing something putting out a new stands and, you know, all of that is going to shift if this kind of model starts to appear on the computer,
early on we because we were the people doing it, we ended up sort of meeting some sort of remarkable foundation clients, and one of them was the economist, arguably the greatest publication the world.
So even when, when when did so you went from you invented the internet, then Andy discovered it. And then when when did you actually create online magic?
We consummated the relationship in Soho square, which we're happy to reenact if
we've got time today. But maybe at the end, maybe it's
time for that, to let me know. So it was called internet publishing then. And just as a quick aside, because Chen told a story on this that made me laugh in his brilliant update. And I had a similar one with IBM, I went to see IBM at the South Bank in London here. And as we're getting into the lift, this guy said, I love what you guys have done with the internet, you know, absolutely fantastic. And what do you do? You like to tell the guy, which is, obviously a big opportunity. So so we ended up sort of meeting an amazing amount of people very, very quickly. Yeah. And there was a big moment in terms of our sort of evolution as a company where we went to see the economist with the most lovely people you've ever met, in the boardroom that make medicine, lunch and chatting away. And then Jonathan church is also the nicest man in the world. So Blender cost is in time, and we've got one question for you. Are you a publisher? Or are you a service provider? to this big man, and we were like, what would you like us to be? massively changed our lives and only because we had to kind of jump and we
went to see the economist together. And, and this is sort of the the, we were actually publishing power PC
news, we do some of the things that were actual publications. Yeah. It was one of the it was actually one of the easiest decisions to make.
So when was that? What year was the same one? And be nice for I think, Andy, but
your memory is because of your cold was one of our best hope? Well, I think because I gone to the New York by this time. So I think we did. I think the company, the publishing company, was opening an office in New York. So I think, to me, why don't I just I felt like getting out of the country. Why don't I go? So I had president North America on my business card that I could show my mom, and then I. And I think it was around that time where we were talking to the economist, but we hadn't consummated the deal yet. Yeah. And the guy who was advising them in New York, came in said to me, do you do you guys build websites? And we hadn't we were publishing company, then we were doing this easy. on a website, and I and I said, Yeah, of course, and then talk to a man and said, yeah, we can do that, can't we? And he introduced us to a company called gt interactive software, who became who did publish Doom and Quake and all of those aiming this kind of, you know, multi million client for us and a real anchor client. You know, I remember that was the time we then we transitioned out of the publishing sold our shares back to the publishing company, and then Ayman did a deal to form online magic with DDB in London. Carl, before we go any further, we just got to acknowledge that moment. Of course we can. Yes.
Our catchphrase for the
officer is, it's kind of like do you do this? Yeah,
sure. We can. Yeah. Hey,
hey, gentlemen.
Hang on. Hang on. One second. Kyle. So we are
Yeah, we Oh, we have someone who's challenging. Amen. Your your. Your your claims here. I don't know what you want to say to Mr.
Good run. I had 30 years to come to an end anyway. And if it was gonna come to an end for anyone, man, my brother chancer. I pass on that on to me as always, can I just pay 10 if you are listening, which hopefully you are Yes, yes. Listen for me. What your word was absolute gold, man. I never pushed back on it. You can both have invented the internet.
Yes.
co created it. invent the internet.
Andy says Tim luck. And remember, Tim. Hey, Tim. How are you? Amazing.
So Andy, question for you. The you moved to New York fairly early. I mean, did you have the Did you think that that this was going to grow big? Did you want to grow this big Did you have ambitions to for global domination?
before you're gonna just say he has paid off all those debts? I do actually remember I did. I did have a
totally random thing I remember anyway, no show. It's a it's completely it's too. So random is not really going to be interesting to anyone. But I was just rolling with it, I think because I, I've broken up this relationship. And I sort of wanted to just go to another country, and I wasn't really thinking of much other than just experiencing life in another country. And then it's suddenly you remember, as you describe, obviously, with agency far more so because you were based in New York, a Neo is kind of a satellite, but it was just a kind of rocket ship suddenly went up. Yeah. And from what? Next? You, you you kind of you could not have enough capacity to service people who wanted a website?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The first one, I don't know for us. You guys joined a bit later. But the first probably two years, it was literally just trying to keep up with it.
The pitch to gt interactive software, took a CRT monitor in the cab, I think you guys you said you did that for a pitch as well. So I took all this equipment there. And the pitch was literally about three minutes long, because we walked into the CEOs office, and he was really busy. And he went to the CMO. So we should do this. Right? Okay, fine. Yeah. We need a website, don't we? Yeah. Yeah.
Let's shift gears a bit. So so so when when our two companies came together, you know that that was kind of this momentous thing. It was, it was really exciting for us. And and we entered into a new phase where, you know, we had
we hang on, Kyle, I think maybe what I'd love to hear, because you went from GT. So DDB comes along, how did DDB come along to create online magic,
because that's invested 500,000 pounds into us, obviously, the greatest investment ever made in their lives. And it also enabled us to inherit companies like boots and others that they had. family had clients come in coming in there so that was obviously significant, because you know, we ended up all being part of that same family.
So then you're in there, you're working away and he's conquering New York, you're in London. I'm assuming a man right. How did the heck did you meet these two reprobates? What the heck happened there?
Well, I see there's a couple of things about that. Firstly, obviously it was a fantastic meeting of minds you fuse yours and passion direction genuinely sad. And that was I was in I've been testing and and I haven't maybe talked about this as much as we could have done over the years but I thought it was a really interesting dynamic between those Andy and Kyle and me and Chad. And there was that kind of we're like these two sets of twins and different things but doing them together and then plugging that together with this feeling of like wow, and the fact that you know without question online magic as it was then was miles the best company in Europe and I say that I'm sure someone will log on right now and say
actually, Ruth is logged on and she's not only says hi, you go challenge that I think because he was in
Razorfish guys. So we had awareness. Clearly the h.com were the best company in the in America. And so we coming together was really powerful. And I think personally, and I'll just not just saying this, because I know he's watching but but basically, the kinship with Chan was immediate, and has is completely undiminished. So we had last year, and within about point four milliseconds, it was just me on my channel way back, straight back to it. And that was from the very first time we met and has and I'm sure it will last forever. So we're very, very fortunate to have that liberal connection by now pass to Andy who can rebut well, partly because I do remember actually first meeting with you in chat and I didn't I couldn't actually work out chat It was like really obvious Kyle was you know, you were who you were and channel it took me a while to try and kind of tune into each sort of, I guess was just harder to read. So it was took me a while to to get to know this credit to the dinner story. And we went out for the first time with the common theme in New York. So we were not caught in going on with this call. But the courting was getting quite close to sort of a deal getting done. So myself and Andy went out with the top team at Angel calm and visited us Big steak and cigar restaurant and you know me with this kind of white bread, UK guys. And for some reason then being polite, very unlikely Americans, they are sort of first one. So there's I ordered it was like tuna or something. And he had sort of like, tackle Italian and it went steak steak steak on the way on the way out when it was pretty clear who was on the menu.
Well, man,
I mean, so that was a brilliant, classic first meeting.
That was great. And I you know, it's funny, you know, you're thinking you're like, you just, you know, these guys, you know, because you have accents, you know, we're like, Oh, this is so exotic these guys are. And it was clear that that you were very much the the players in Europe, I just remember being really excited. And I do remember and I just, you know, bonding and talking creative and hand waving and things like that. And that that seemed pretty immediate. So that that was some pretty exciting times.
It was so driven by was because obviously Omnicom did a bit of matchmaking, you know, a lot different stages, but I think it was driven by ba because you guys with one British Airways, and you needed to service it out of London. So then suddenly, you know, merging with or partnering, acquiring became part of a sort of a mandate you had to figure out. So I think that that was the backdrop to it. And, and obviously, for us, I remember in London, that was really exciting to get to work on British Airways was a, you know, huge part of why the whole deal made sense in your reinforcements because I remember feeling like surrounded by these giant skyscrapers. And it was initially that initially when I was on my own, I used to just like pull 56 hour stretches, working, keep up with everything and deal and all my resources came from London, until eventually I sort of kept tempting half the office over to work in New York and, and hire two brilliant people in New York. JOHN Caruso and Ian manyana. You may remember the team grew and it was brilliant. But it was great.
Wait, wait, wait, wait. We just said Ian. Miami was part of your team early on? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that whole crew.
Oh, so wait, magnanni caruso dutton.
People who then came over? Well, when we when we merged fully in 98,
I think. Yeah. So you know, it's fascinating to me. Oh, look at this. There you go. Can you remember who could tell us where this is?
Do you know what Tony said something on LinkedIn about exactly where it was some really street but I can't remember.
How many were you in? In New York by then when when the merger happened, Andy? I think we were about
maybe as much as 30 in New York, 60. In London, somehow. We did it two phases. We did it. You did it in like 97. We did a full consummation in 98. So yeah.
And the work must have changed a bit since that occurred, right. So now, but it's fascinating to me, like you said, the kinship, you know, you and Kyle. Amen. And Chan. How did the cultures come together? That that was the most interesting thing. I think, you know, putting those cultures together, because they have this, you know, very, we can get it done in this house. Like, even you guys are the same thing. You know, we'll figure it out. Let's go do it. Right. Yes, we can.
I wouldn't say that, I would say that the culture has never really came together, I think, agreed to have separate houses and visitation rights. Describe it and everyone made it work. You know what I even at the time, I had a sense, that was the right thing to do. And if I look back on it, now, I think it's the right thing to do. Because you can't really generalize that stuff without kind of ending up with the worst of both worlds. I think we actually did a pretty good job. And you know, with the European offices as well that were unbelievably different to London, never mind New York and the rest of the US having that sort of individual culture was it was a positive. It was different in so in New York when in 98, I then left to come back to the UK which I was feeling like doing anyway. And I we had our creative director in London who was a you know, my best friend and he had died and it just felt I really wanted to go back and the New York office then merged fully with agency. Gotcha. But the London office then became agent company, it was always somewhat separate because it had its own physical identity and it sort of operated as obviously as part of the group but it very much as as the basis The the HQ of Europe. So just so to say ritesh we had Scott Gosselin come over from I think the Colorado office. Yeah.
That that office with the ski lift. That's right.
Scott would be one of my favorite people on the planet. And he came over and engaged this sort of the UK team in an unbelievably good way. Again, keeping the brilliance of it, but bringing in a sort of another layer to it. So I think I think we did that quite well at the company. That'd be mine.
Yeah, I mean, it was the same, I think, you know, as we started growing here in the US, Boston, was a little different, because they were very technology was the old Eagle River, you know, and they were very big into the backend software, Woodbridge was very, very technical. So there are different I remember trying to put some creatives in there. Early on, Carl, remember people like where are you sending me? It's where New Jersey? That sort of thing. And then Chicago was completed from a CPG oriented, you know, so, yes, they had their own cultures. I think San Francisco was different as well. So your eyes, but that was the beauty of it. But you know, we were in New York. So we felt the core of it, I guess in London, it must have been about the same? because those were the two original hubs, if you wish, right. Yeah.
When the European integration, like you said, even that was I remember, you know, Tim Larkin was in visionary in Denmark, and they were a completely different, you know, interactive TV company. And it was, you know, it was different techniques, different sort of technology set as well. Different kind of culture different culturally because of the country culture, in case some miracle advocate to see this absolutely amazing people love.
Yeah, yeah.
If there is a story that we're gonna agree on, it's the fact that we were brought together on this journey by an amazing, you're just fantastic people from all over the world.
And meeting Tim Larkin for the first time, him and Dan tell us and they were showing me, that roller coaster thing that built, you know, with the remotes and say, Wow, that's amazing. And we're still struggling with it today, right? Tv companies are still struggling with how do we make that remote into some sort of keyboard? So it's fascinating. Sorry, Kyle, go on, carry on.
No, I was just gonna say I felt like every, every one of those companies that became part of the thing, you know, they all had great pride. And because we were all sort of creating things from the ground up. I think everyone had great pride. You know, Andy had great pride in what they put together on the creative side there. I did as well. And I think it was, it was how do we create bridges across those things, but still let all that stuff thrive? I remembered the we did. I've got right here. I don't know if you guys remember this. We didn't think the great manager program we brought in who was it Nielsen, analyze. I think it was the top 150 managers or top 146 managers that they they were supposed to get our numbers back. Like, you know, here's here's your strengths and weaknesses, basically. And we didn't get our numbers back. And then, you know, a week later, they came back to us and said we had to run the numbers a second time. Because they said it was statistically remarkable. How uniform the strengths and weaknesses were across your management team, when it basically said was where you were good. You were very, very good and where you were bad. It was abysmal. And then, we tried to bring in Eagle River, which was very project management heavy, but not creative, heavy. And, and yeah, the culture clashes were crazy. But we always worked actively to try to work on the culture things. But I think that that original sort of the pride of what each of those companies had created was always there.
That was, was it that company Gallup, who did that survey for us, Gallup?
Yeah, yeah. I thought Nielsen, but Gallup. I think it was Gallup. Yeah.
So let's go back to now you're back. Andy, you're in London, you're with a man. Things are starting to gel things are happening. What were some of the things you guys were working on? that were sort of wall? We can't i can't believe we did that. I guess some of the European expansion must be in that list. Right.
Yeah. I mean, I remember working with London, actually, before I came back, which was the general election site, which is something still very proud of to this day. And this was Michael Martin, who's the creative director, and he was super interested in politics and media and, and he was very interested in events as a kind of a interesting way of, you know, producing interactive content. So they have a kind of a time based linear kind of narrative, but then you you have this limitless depth that you can go to with the content. And we this was really probably the best general election site in the UK and it was remarked on it was better than what the BBC did. We partnered with the economist. And it was just a moment in time where I think it really made its mark. And he called it a watershed for the web. But it's been in museums and stuff. And so we worked on it. We
were putting in real time information in it as well, weren't you doing some some interesting technical things,
we partnered with a whole load of people. So we were putting in real time data as well as kind of just publishing stuff. So we had a whole load of different partners for content and feeds. And, you know, it was one of the first times you have these kind of interactive voting applications where you said, what policies you agreed with, and then it tells you who you In fact, supported. Yeah. Simple bits of interaction that made a big difference. And, you know, hugely informed people much more than they were before. So
and then that left hand now, it's amazing later on a different link. So just looking at that.
JOHN Dutton, we sort of designed it and we were in New York. And I remember we discussed he sort of thought, well, you may as well use convention of the time, which was Amazon, you know, don't do something crazy, just just do something where everybody's used to left hand navigation content in the, in the sort of right hand to columns. And, and yeah, it was amazing, incredibly well. And people were still there for like, a couple of years afterwards, we kept the site up, and people were still in the forums. Yeah, arguing about everything from sliced bread to whatever the issue of the day was so
amazing.
For you
what my favorite story probably goes back a bit further than that. It was really, really early days when I was in my sort of jail cell phone, my office, it was three foot by eight foot on the own, really early, early days, and I was on the football team at the company that was also hosting an office from I'm on the phone one day. And I hate to say this now siding battle, it's a bit of a Manchester United fan at the time.
So I've grown up, but don't worry. I'm proud of these days. ritesh as we know, but anyway,
I'm on the phone. And one of the guys that is watching this is Manchester United on the phone to me, and I didn't work for joining me for my company at all. So he went No, no really matches tonight on the phone. I just just caught that glimpse in his eye. I'll call you back, taking the call. And basically Manchester United hired some intern who'd done a little bit of research and found out we've done something. And we were honestly, we were kind of an embryo of a company at a time. And they weren't calling for us to give a quote, they were calling for us to build their website. Wow.
Yeah.
Train up to Manchester, we're going to record so we know that by the time we get there, we're sort of multinational in our heads and sort of spinning. And we had been working we're just starting to work for Sky Sports. And the amazing thing I was in this meeting with these guys really crunchy, horrible commercials if they're watching, sorry, guys, but they weren't commercial beasts. Right. And, and they didn't want to pay for the website. They wanted us to do it. And we could commercialize it. So of course, in jackpotcity, I'm like, Well, I think we can we can do that under circumstances. I'm like the happiest guy in the world. I've gone off and I've spent about 73 hours on the phone and we've got fortunes coming in, in sponsorship links, new business, just off the charts. So I then get a call from one of Murdoch's henchmen from sky who just started working with asked me to come for a meeting. I walked in there. We understand you're having some conversation Manchester United. I say yes. Fantastic. And actually, one of the things we put together is that they're happy to have a link to the Sky Sports site for you that we're building. So obviously great synergy there. Yeah, we wouldn't be supporting you building the site for Manchester United. At the moment, I'd like to I go forward, okay. Yeah. I had nothing in his eyes, man. He was like, okay, there was nothing going on with a gun. I was just about to sort of try and do a bit of a dance. And he said, you know, and then he went, we've been in touch with our solicitors and we feel strongly you would be breaching and he went through our agreement, your agreement, their agreement, so bad. It took it over, but I just want to I don't want to be negative. So we did finish up and that's what we did launch the site. We then go to Manchester night for the for the big sort of launch on TV. My favorite player at the time by million miles is Eric Cantona Canton hours there and it's the only time in my whole life I've ever seen a woman swoon over a sweater and they said it might be nice shirt, man. You're not sure He pops off his top or since you've been
wobble
amen come talk to him please purge on this I'm gonna completely embarrass myself. I was literally a fanboy. But there's a there's a there's a happy man united
Cantona there you go amazing. Absolutely. You know the Tim Larkin by the way says he remembers you visiting and the Copenhagen you know what how did that come around? Why did you think interactive TV and what was the rationale behind vision iQ?
Well we have this remember we have this kind of vision in London of something we rather sadly called one engine many channels, which are that video stood. And so whenever we tried to sell it, people just went Oh, right. You don't do websites and find the idea of kind of omni channel, you know, yeah, many years ago and the idea you'd have one set of systems that supported different contextual sort of experiences on and so interactive TV, Alex Wright, who was sort of creative director at the time, and he was really bought into the idea that TV was going to be an incredibly important channel. And so we look for who the best people were and vision it were like head and shoulders above anyone else. And there was like a big company that I think eventually acquired them. MDS, but which is part of sky as I recall. Yeah, I went to see them and they were saying they said they're just absolutely lovely people doing fantastic work. And, yeah, it I don't feel we ever made the most of them at all. And their technology, I think was we didn't really know how to integrate it with the rest of what we did. So
yeah, Tim just TV became Netflix. There you go. He also apparently still has confidence you AMD because he also asked, Can you do anything about Brexit there, buddy?
Yeah, I can
put slides or something, you know, in my head. So now you part of this whole thing agencies going? MTA.
I do want one of the things is from from a much earlier when one of the things that we did, which was we had the first real time credit card verification in Europe, because he had run into somebody at a conference from NatWest. And he'd sort of said, Yeah, I think we can do that. So we had some modem dial up connection to Nat West's real time, credit verification. And so when I was in New York, I sold this site to at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference for like, 95 or something. So the apple WWDC 95, we built the the e commerce for and so we were doing the e commerce for the tickets, and then it went down. And I was getting all these calls and ticket sales and stopped and it turned out that a cleaner had literally unplug the modem in the London office. Apple WWDC e commerce.
That's as good as the web server under somebody's desk and tape that right
now they are not involved in any way in any e commerce. So in it again. So I'm just saying around that we had this real time sort of fit real time mode, but it was actually it was processing payments, but same time of that NatWest head head office was denying they were involved in e commerce at any stage perfect son of madness of the early days
wow that's crazy. I want to I want to show one other thing Andy just if for no other reason than your hair
right look at that
this was you did the the Tyson hollyfield website like I want you to talk about that but also I just want to take in like the the sort of mid to late 90s computer setup there with a little you know, computers giant mouse and the CRT but but talk about that that site.
Yeah, we I remember I think it was john Caruso who sort of was a smoker and he met another smoker from Showtime outside this omnicon building we we had offices in and they just got chatting and they've got and next thing we know we were doing the Tyson Holyfield fight sites and so yeah, was great.
That's great. Well, so what I'd like to do I want to shift gears so so we collectively experienced you know, what, what on the outside seems, you know, super sexy and amazing and incredible. And to some degree it was, which, which is, you know, taking the company public. So, so So normally in this section of the show, we kind of talked about what have you done since agency.com. But I figured, you know, you guys were very much at the center of this. So, I would love to just kind of hear from you guys talking about leading up to going IPO, you're just, you know, growing like crazy. And then, you know, you have this moment that everyone you know, can point to, and then there's sort of life after. So I would love to just hear from you, you know, what your thoughts are on sort of pre and post?
And let me frame that a little bit. Because in New York at that time, the the craziness of the market was amazing, you know. So Kyle comes up with wacky idea week after week and would run into people and say, we should do this. And we do that. And one of those was we should hire 30 people in 30 days, how hard could it be? Right? So you know, did any of that kind of stuff happened in London, because I'd love to hear about it, because we thought we were the only one suffering under Kyle's faschist in
London. By then they kicked me up the chairman to come and do the welcome. Seven new employees on a Monday morning, and I remember thinking, this is going to be tough to integrate. And they were all fresh faced and love. Only thought Wow. It was kind of like fresh blood going into like a band of brothers. Brilliant TV says when the new. Yeah, she's thinking, the problem we've got is that we're like seven people down. Sorry to say this on the BA team. Right?
He just ain't getting trained. You know? I mean, yeah, exactly. Welcome.
And you can be billable, you know, I mean, so it was that that was kind of madness. But to your question, kind of at the IPO, I have a very, very powerful memory of when the road show completed. And we had to get to that 40th floor. And there was a ridiculous board table and they were all there, all the horrible kind of analysts were there to try and dissect it. And it's the only time in my career that I've ever gone through a lift and got off. So we got there, and we was it was gonna be the big pitch. And I've gotten to lift enough. I'm not ready to get off... to a bit of a Come on, sir. Because the moment you gotta get in there, right? So we go out there. And it literally was a bad movie, it was just the Madison, it must have been like 30 am. And it's all sitting there the glass. And if you remember what we've done, we don't really want and at the last minute, we decided that I would introduce Kevin Rome, of America, and he would introduce me to Europe. So Fine, it was kind of off script, but we're gonna do it. So I start off and I'm introducing him. And he's got two degrees, one of which is in jet propulsion, right? So it's a room so actually, this guy is a rocket scientist. But he called just politely rooms. Not a not absolute word right. Now he's been introduced me next. And this is where you might need to do some translating retest because I left school at 15. I got five o levels. So if you could explain maybe to our American colleagues, yeah. So how that fits in. At that is you'll have to translate it.
Yeah. So I would suggest that that would be the high school dropout making it big. By the way, a when I left high school and 15 as well, but I only got one level and that was a music.
Perfect.
Yeah. So the high school dropout is now introducing the guy with two degrees one of which is in jet propulsion.
Exactly. So that is right, which is over there. And Kevin's up next so he firstly makes a joke about my hair. So let's just do a quick picture DeKalb he just picked up the blame why this would have been just to mention the culture shock of these horrible bastard analysts from Goldman Sachs has Fishbein it all with their kind of $300 today's meet, okay.
He's just out of West Point. But then, but then he has to introduce me right? So it says on the screen, I've got my five levels. That was all we could come up with. I'd spend The last two years of my 15th 15th year playing poker and Poker Dice. So there's a magic moment, one of those moments you dream up, where Kevin completely unscripted goes, wow, you know, I thought I was well educated. But this guy's got 50 levels of education. Miss read it in a moment of utter genius, but the room in this room will not miss. Because we're both standing to do the right thing. I thought, What am I doing instead of really just wasted the room. So the thing that we were on, it was one of the most magnificent presentations I've ever been part of. We absolutely blew the room away on script. Nailed it. And one of the final questions with this horrible little bastard I remember, he's like three down, and he said, Yeah, you'd like to ask him. And then about a year, it sounds like you're doing different roll up in Europe. You know, you're doing all these lab last minute acquisitions. And so I'll take that. And I've started to give him a kind of impromptu 18 chat. And I remember looking across a Chan, and chance like he's going off script. But basically, what I said was, it was like, it was the best of the best, we had the best, the best. And we integrated doubled up in every position. And that magic of coming together was really me when I look at the IPO. And if we were doing a movie, we should just end there. Yeah. And then on the bottom of the screen, it says, four days later, Chen su decided to pull the IPO at $11. Next, two days later, Jen Sue decided we'd go out at $22 next screen, opening price $70 Yeah, 90, we're
close at 98 done. That
my mind is not keeping that number. Reason being retests too fucking painful. So final scene is Scott Gosling walking into the London pub on crinan Street. And as you walked in that night of the IPO, the whole pub was going, Scott, Scott moment you don't mean so amazing. That was probably, you know, that would be the kind of high watermark, but I'll let you guys add your own version. Well, Andy, Andy,
what was it? What was it like the the sort of that growth period leading up to that are, you know, what are your memories from that time?
Yeah, I remember it being absolutely manic, you know, and you would just be having all of these meetings because everybody wanted to meet, and you you'd be pitching and winning pitches, just by virtue of the fact you could credibly put together a proposal for doing what they thought they wanted to do. And so we had too much business or enough people, there was kind of churn started happening. And then we had all of these new demands to try and structure ourselves differently, you know, in the lead up to and post IPO. It definitely became less fun, didn't it? You know, because suddenly, this freewheeling spirit became as much of a curse, it's a blessing in the early days, it was like, part of the juice that made it all run. And post IPO it was suddenly not really quite good enough. So we were constantly thinking, how do we tighten up and, and at the same time, this growth story and and then I remember that I was insulated from it slightly by by my brother, Raymond here, but I remember the story coming down, and an aim and that actually analysts now they want growth, now they want retention, and now they want, you know, all these different metrics. So we were slightly adapting and pivoting to try and you know, foreground the thing that the analyst wanted to value us on.
Yeah, that was, for me, the biggest thing, and that was where the post IPO thing. The real lesson I got there was we essentially had two weeks out of every quarter where we could run the business, right? Because for a month, you're preparing for the next call. And then for two weeks, you're sort of licking your wounds after it, then you kind of have, you know, a couple of weeks in there where you can actually run things. But yeah, the analysts I remember, we a number of quarters in a row, if our performance was good, our stock price went down. And if our performance was bad, our stock price went up. Well, we were just part of this large see where our individual performance didn't matter. But it was very distracting. And yeah, that post IPO thing it was it definitely changed the it just changed everything right. You know, amen. What was your experience in that time?
Well, before anyone goes there, I think one of the things we we should hear about is what changed. just asked to maybe re recollect from Andy's Marxist father apparently that he had to repay a loan is that when you did you did you own some pocket money or something is that, like I,
I still have the napkin, I did a deal with the head of this publishing company where I met a man. And when I saw the website go up, and I had that moment of epiphany. Evan and I were getting on and we agreed to be partners. So I bought into the company. And I bought 10% of internet publishing for 10,000 pounds, which I borrowed off my dad using his credit card. And
it did he know that you borrowed it. Yo, yeah, no.
clarification. Yeah. I know, you know, I know. Yeah. Obviously, ended up being able to sort of repay him. Amazing, hugely multifold with the IPO and everything, and I was very proud of that. So. Yeah, and I suppose he What did he do that he probably gave it all away? I guess, being lost? Maybe I can't remember.
Love it Love it. So I derailed you a little bit on the IPO and the you know, so aymond swatting away with the highfalutin brokers and bankers in New York and your slide.
I think Kevin row even said something about when you were preparing for the IPO and sort of Chan was asking Kevin and Ayman and all these people to sort of get these materials together. And Kevin was beavering away and sort of having it sort of giving us consulting a game. And Ayman was kind of emailing me and Arianna and a couple of other people just saying, I need this. I need this. I need this. So we had a whole work team in London, flying out documents to a man. I think Kevin said to you at one point, he was like, how are you doing this? Because I'm sitting there drinking coffee at work. It was important there and is that absolutely sums up my career. It's probably the one of the major things I learned from working with Ayman is the art of delegation. Yeah, that's a superpower to acquire.
Guys, about five or eight minutes, maybe each of you, you know, what, where are you now? I mean, what an amazing journey, creating something exciting selling it going public, seeing the stock go to three and then you know, whatever. Amen. What are you up to now? What's going on? What are you still drinking coffee and delegating things to Andy,
for myself and Andy have been working together quite a lot in the last few years, which has been absolutely brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Really enjoyed that. He came and did some work. For the UK tote. We raised 100 million pounds bought bought the UK to remember that. Yeah. And Andy came in and did a rebranding that was pretty breathtaking. I mean, staggering. Considering the Andy obviously knows nothing about sport. I mean, he supports. And genuinely over the 20 years, we've sort of been best pals. I've had to pay him not to bet on any selection I make. And yet, we've only those two disabilities, he pulled out some miracle absolute miracle worker. Again, we should give a shout out to john Dunn, who was part of that team really helps is there. So that's been fantastic. Right now Chairman Assange called total performance data Tpd, which Andy again, is a shareholder in along with Dave Eastman and number x h.com.
All right, yeah, Eastman.
Absolutely total legend. And that company is a world leader, he says, and this time is actually true. In GPS tracking of resources, providing sectional timing, we just completed a fundraise on that, which as we all know how much fun that is. This is absolutely booming, got a good presence in North America. And then lastly, I'm working with another guy called john de and an ND I was born again. It's a small world, but come back around.
Yeah, these guys just seem to be coming at you. Every time, right? I think
called Green bridge and green bridges is an Ico project will make us absolutely no money whatsoever, but hopefully will make the world a little bit better. So with that, I'll pass on to Andy, I still want to answer your question about the IPO. Well, I would just like to point out, I stayed with agency.com through the highs and the lows till about 2008. So it's like a 15 year journey in total.
How do you realize you stayed
didn't want to somehow leave when it was down and I felt like having 15 different jobs on the way I co founded this thing called do the green thing which is still going which is like a environmental nonprofit about creativity and inspiring behavior change. I co founded our Internet of Things, Cloud Platform data platform. Everything that's still going and and the thing tote with aim and I've just working with a startup chairman of cooling loops that is kind of like a design feedback tool that's kind of pretty interesting. And doing some mentoring of different tech companies and doing some music to scratch an itch that none of the other stuff does.
Yeah, you've gotten back to the music. That's great. It's actually getting to see. Yeah.
So sorry, go on it, keep going.
No, I was just gonna say two things about john Dutton. And David's but one, john doesn't have very little to do with the top branding. I just like to point that out. And secondly, David Eastman, it was one of my finest interview moments, we talked about, like hiring all these people. I interviewed David Eastman, and the chair I was on literally collapse, it just exploded disintegrated. interview. And he was the most surreal thing. And Dave just kept a completely straight face. And somehow, I got another chair Saturday, and we carried on
I've ever had in my life, but I think I hired just out of, you know, partly, the way he handled that situation was so fantastic. I thought this guy's gonna be good in a tight spot. And you make you stop the interview and came into my office and said, You can't meet this guy's umbilicus. Okay. And he said, Well, he's been an actor. No, that's pretty much it. Any other commercials? None. And I was like, which one would you do? She just couldn't meet the guy. And now we would be, you know, brothers. And as we speak to him every week, and you know, he was about a year after leaving, he was running 1000 person team for JW. At that time, came to us as the guy that had no career. And I remember again, you know, combat drafting people in we drafted him into a meeting with ba way too early. And like some horrible senior Big Rig came down. And he asked Eastman, this question.
And he still just sort of paused. And he made this right on the edge joke. I remember thinking, and the guy burst out laughing, absolutely loved it a spin nailed. And I think this guy's got genuine talent. But I think that's a sort of an interesting sort of metaphor, description for the whole of our journeys, online magic, and h.com, finding unusual talent. blossom, I think, If I had to describe the business in any way, that for me would be the best description, you think of the amazing talent that came on in and often for the most bizarre?
Yeah, how do they get going? Now? How does that work? Now, you know, you, you know, everyone's got a degree, everyone's gonna have blah, blah, blah, you know?
Yeah. nodding away there.
I remember someone saying once, it's a slightly cheesy expression, but I always really liked it, which is, so if anyone could be Superman, if you give him the right telephone books, and I just thought that was kind of what we did. We just created these environments, people came in and, you know, they still talk about it to this day, a lot of people that was the, you know, Scott, the other day, you know, it's one of the one of the best work experiences of their professional lives. And it just, I think that was the most creative thing about that, you know, helping start the company really providing some space where all these people came in, and then went off to do amazing things. And that's privileged to be able to do that. Yeah, I
think it's evidenced by the sort of longevity of the relationship. So it was funny when you guys both popped on before we started the show today, it felt like, you know, in fact, Eamonn, you said, Hey, next time we do this, you know, we need to do it in person. just felt like oh, yeah, there's those guys. Like, I don't know, the relationship is very much still there. So just
one to one I've just had, Kyle is we should do one where we have maybe 10 or 12. wall in the boxes in the family? Because it is, and I think you've both nailed it. I think that culture, that curiosity, you know, even to this day, I would submit to you that any of your current, you know, compadres in Eastern and whatever, they've not lost their curiosity, you guys obviously have an either. So I think that was one of the genuine things if you were curious, and were willing to, to take that step. You were in, right, there was come all over. Right.
I remember one thing because a lot of times you I've talked about in the past interviews I've seen on on the show about you know, there being no rules and stuff. And I remember some of it being feeling like common sense applied.
Yeah. Yeah.
The Apple ticketing thing. I just did a couple of things that were on the web and thought, Well, it seems to make sense if you do it like that. And obviously that's really confused. So people are not going to know how to do the transaction. And somehow I think there was some people who felt like they understood the medium enough to just be able to work it out using gut instinct. Yeah. And other people to whom it was just completely impenetrable. And yeah, yeah, it was, it was kind of interesting time, wasn't it? You could actually figure out the answer just by Yeah. Common sense to new set of problems?
Well, I think you had to write you couldn't get a degree in it. Right. So there was the problem. And maybe it attracted people that had that curiosity, and that, and that skill to be able to sort of, you know, figure out what sucks and don't do it.
At 50 levels.
Yeah. 50 levels, notwithstanding, we did in London as a guy who's our first CTO, Jeremy Roy, who then went on to do amazing things at Google and ran YouTube engineering, and was just an absolute Rockstar. And he'd come with a bunch of other people from the multimedia Corporation, which was a BBC outfit doing CD ROMs, and things. So early doors, we did some good interface, UI skills from who to who done CD, ROMs, and design. And I remember, I learned a lot from just their basic rules of like, what made good interaction. It's just obviously on the web that changed things a bit.
But again, we could go on for another two hours. Chan is typing away. So I know he's highly engaged. So john, thank you so much for bringing these amazing individuals together. And I'm glad that you were able to listen to him and and and, and even Andy here today, Kyle, anything to end with?
No, just it's great to see you both. And thank you for sharing yourself. we'll have you back. Yeah, I think we'll do a big party version. I
think we should. I think we should. But uh,
it's great to see you both. And thank you for sharing and being here. Really appreciate
your track magnanni and Caruso as well, while we're at it. Have a great afternoon. Thank you so much. And thank you for tuning in. Welcome. Thank you for tuning in. Great to see your name and Kyle. I'll see you on Friday. If
not would be back with ben jones next week from
Yes. All right to
the end of the show. You need to have something like let's do it to them before they do to us just
Yeah, we got we got a button up the ending. We got the early days Andy sir.
