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The AR Show: Faisal Galaria (Blippar) on Overcoming the Risks of Market Timing | Otter.ai

The AR Show: Faisal Galaria (Blippar) on Overcoming the Risks of Market Timing

Jason McDowall52min

Jason McDowall

00:03

Welcome to the AR show where I dive deep into augmented reality with a focus on the technology, the use cases and the people behind them. I'm your host Jason McDowall. Today's conversation is with Faisal Galaria. Faisal is the CEO at Blippar, a company creating the tools to enable everyone to create compelling AR experiences. During the course of his career, Faisal has gained over 25 years of experience leading and growing teams and some of the world's most disruptive consumer technology companies, including Spotify, kayak, Skype and now Blippar. Just prior to Blippar. He was the chief strategy and investments Officer at gocompare, which he helped digitally transform an IPO on the London Stock Exchange in 2016. Previously, Faisal was one of the youngest ever senior partners of Alvarez and Marsal, the world's largest turnaround and restructuring company, where he founded and led the European Digital Media practice. Faisal was previously a senior vice president at Spotify, where he launched Spotify in seven countries, including its biggest market in the USA. He was also an early member of the Skype team initially as Head of Global Business Development and became the European director after Skypes acquisition by eBay in 2005. Pfizer took over at Blippar, about two and a half years ago after the company went from being an early AR, pioneer and tech darling in the UK, to a company fighting its way through insolvency. Under Pfizer's leadership, the company is releasing new products and has regained its stature as a key enabler of a broad range of AR experiences. In this conversation, we talk through the challenges of managing the downs and ups of tech startups, and the recent product releases by the company, we discuss some of the challenges and working through a turnaround and how they're similar to a fresh new startup. We also talk about the intrinsic and extrinsic factors that are common to the successful companies of which he's been a part. As a reminder, you can find the show notes for this and other episodes at our website, the AR show.com. That's th e AR s h o w.com. Let's dive in.

Jason McDowall

01:51

So after high school, you were intent on joining the military, but your parents disagreed. What was the source of that conflict?

Faisal Galaria

01:58

The reason for wanting to join the military was, I had spent probably previous four or five years at high school as an athlete running 400 meters. And so my reasoning for going into the military was really about continuing to focus on making athletics my career. And for my parents, who were immigrants from Pakistan, and India, who left everything behind, to come to the United Kingdom and build a life here different from different opportunities than they had where they came from. It was ironic for them that rather than taking the opportunity of going to university and availing myself of all the opportunities that go into university, which was something that wasn't available to them, they thought that athletics and running wasn't the type of career that they never aspired to, or even thought about. And so they were dead set against me joining the Marines, as I was planning on doing.

Jason McDowall

02:55

And how did you resolve that conflict? What was the outcome,

Faisal Galaria

02:58

I'm a good Pakistani boy. I listened to my mother and I went to university and continued to run at university and represented my city, my county, my university, the north of England, and eventually I ran for the United Kingdom to, but never quite made it into the seniors team, I was a UK junior, and ran against some of the Great's of Ford meters at the time in the late 90s, early 2000s. But never grew quite tall enough to actually challenge somebody like Roger Black, who was running on two meters at about 45 seconds. So maybe they were right, at the

Jason McDowall

03:33

passion was there the commitment was there. As you kind of think about that level of passion, enthusiasm you had for that sport and sort of competition. mindset, I guess there's there how do you apply those sorts of lessons to your life now, as a, as a business executive and leader,

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