Ari Last is the founder and CEO of Bubble, a childcare platform connecting nannies and babysitters with families.
In this week’s Founder in Five Q&A, Last discusses hiring exceptional talent over blindly growing headcounts, the concerning impact of social media on kids and starting at his career as a football commentator for UEFA.
What one thing do you wish you’d done differently when launching your company?
I wish I’d spent more time pre-launch thinking really practically about how we’d win our first thousand customers. Every founder has different skills and passions and I was definitely product-leaning; so when I think back, I didn’t get the ratio right between time spent on product design versus go-to-market strategy.
Winning customers is without doubt the hardest thing about starting a business. But in my personal experience, and from what I see elsewhere, founders often tend to obsess over other elements of the business far more. This is probably because designing new products tend to be fun, whilst acquiring customers from scratch is really hard, and as humans we tend to put the hardest tasks off till last.
What’s a common mistake that you see founders make?
Hiring more people because we believe it’s the natural next step in growing a successful business. Externally, and internally too, headcount is often seen as a metric of a businesses success, which is wrong. Of course, hiring exceptional talent is absolutely critical, but hiring badly can kill you. Hiring too quickly also brings all kinds of challenges and can be a key reason why a startup fails. The relationship between headcount and revenue growth is far from linear.
What’s a fact about yourself that people might find surprising?
I started my career as a football commentator for UEFA, working on Champions the League and other great events. I’ve always been a bit of a football anorak so it was a great experience but I quickly realised I didn’t have the absolute passion for journalism that everyone else I was surrounded by did, and that ultimately I’d be better off doing something else.
Do you have a productivity hack?
I tell this one to anyone who’ll listen – but keep your phone out of your bedroom at night. Turning it off and having it in the room isn’t enough, rather I put it somewhere else completely. The reason for this isn’t to keep me off it at night, but to keep me off it in the morning. Most of us reach for our phone first thing and if something’s coming in overnight, it’s not normally good news. What we all do then is start our day immediately with something negative or stressful and it impacts us adversely from the get go. Instead, I don’t touch my phone until I’m up and downstairs. I’ve been doing it for two years and it’s made my mornings happier and more productive.
Is there a technology that the world would be better without?
It’s not a perfect fit for the question but social media for kids is something the world would unquestionably be better off without. I’ve got three little kids and my eldest has just started secondary school so we’re right in the throes of what is a massive debate and issue for kids and parents.
Smartphones for kids are bad enough. My eldest now has one but I’d absolutely support a ban. But smartphones and social media are actually two individual issues that should be separated out. I can’t for the life of me see how allowing kids to be on social media adds any value whatsoever to them, society or the world. And the dangers in return are massive.
Founder in Five – a UKTN Q&A series with the entrepreneurs behind the UK’s innovative tech startups, scaleups and unicorns – is published every Friday.
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