Dave Thompson: The talent loses, you're losing. The only one who's winning is the agency. So we wanted to flip that around. I didn't want to have a business that we walked into and we were chained to that desk. It was like, well, if we can actually, you know, invest into a business culture that can work anywhere, like, that's awesome. Yeah. No real secret sauce. Just a lot of like, perseverance, a lot of hitting your head against the wall and every so often a little lightning strike of luck and eventually the stars all align.
Nathan Bush: Hey, it's Nathan Bush or Bushy joining you from the land of the terrible people here in Brit Brisbane, Australia. I think if there was ever any industry that people think that freedom lives, it's in E commerce. The idea of creating a brand, having some products, setting it all up on a Shopify site and then stepping away, maybe going on holidays and having the whole thing run for itself is the idyllic dream for many founders starting an e commerce business. But for those who have been in it for a while, we know that is often not the case. My guest today is Dave Thompson, the founder of Freedom Ventures and Run Remote and previously the co founder of Hometime. Hometime was Dave's first entrepreneurial journey and is an Airbnb property management startup that scaled to 90 team members across five countries and became Airbnb's first official partner in Australia after successfully exiting Hometime. Tim Dave didn't just take time off, although he did play a lot of golf. He systemized everything that he learned and built a new venture that's now helping e commerce founders scale smarter. It's called Run Remote and it's part of his Freedom Ventures portfolio. And Run Remote is all about rethinking how e commerce brands can hire top tier offshore talent without bloat, without middleman, without compromising on quality and making that talent part of the team. In this episode we unpack Dave's entrepreneurial journey, which is quite remarkable and successful for someone who is so young. We talk about how brands like Bally Nelson are building high performing offshoring teams for a team of about 30 people and discuss how AI and no code tools are reshaping how Dave builds businesses today. Jam packed so much in here. One of the smartest people in Australia when it comes to entrepreneurship. We were very lucky to have him on the show. A big shout out to our partners Shopify and Klaviyo who keep ADD to cart running. We are incredibly lucky to be partnering with them and we appreciate all their support. Let's get into. Into today's episode. Joining me today is Dave Thompson, founder of Freedom Ventures and Run Remote Dave, welcome to add to Cart.
Dave Thompson: Nath, thank you very much for having me. Great to be here.
Nathan Bush: Brilliant to have you here. We were introduced by a mutual friend, Mr. Andrew Ford from Croc'd.
Dave Thompson: Mr. Andrew Ford, the past guest of the show. Really? Absolutely. Yep. The legend that he is, Mr. Clayman.
Nathan Bush: Your mission today is to be better than Mr. Clayman.
Dave Thompson: I, you know, live to serve. We'll see how we go.
Nathan Bush: He set a low bar. Don't worry about it. I love your story and when we had a conversation offline, I was like, can we please tell your story to our audience? And we're going to unpack it today because you come from not an E commerce background, which are always the stories that really appeal to me and now you're helping E Commerce brands and we will get to that. But I want to start off, what really appealed to me around what you're doing is that it's all grounded in freedom. Where does your value for freedom come from?
Dave Thompson: That is a great question, Nath. I think it probably comes down to like my origins, you know, I am Zimbabwean, born and grew up in a very kind of entrepreneurial society. So interestingly, there's no real jobs per se in Zimbabwe. So grew up always exposed to entrepreneurship from, you know, the local guy selling oranges to obviously, you know, people within the network that have all had businesses, etc. And probably just saw like different lifestyles, you know, that people are leading and yeah, all of it kind of, you know, unlocks freedom with, I guess, success and different business ventures. So that is potentially the origin. I'm not entirely sure, but it'll be good. My dad was an entrepreneur. Yeah, so he had a successful safari business actually. So definitely a long way from E commerce and I guess, you know, kind of status quo business building in Australia. But yeah, he had a really awesome safari business and yeah, probably got a little bit of exposure through entrepreneurship that way and obviously had the ambitions, you know, seeing what, what he did, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, who knows, to be honest?
Nathan Bush: Well, you've been incredibly good at it and had amazing success at, and I'll give you a compliment here at a young age.
Dave Thompson: Thanks, man.
Nathan Bush: It's either that or a very good filter.
Dave Thompson: Very good filter, mate. This Riverside Labs has got excellent filters.
Nathan Bush: Tell me about home time because that's obviously the big exit for you so far and I've got a feeling there's a few more to come. But I think that's such an incredible story. Tell me around the problem that Hometime was solving and why you thought you were the right one to solve it.
Dave Thompson: Awesome. Yeah, cool. So Hometime essentially started all the way back in 2015. It was an interesting time and I mean, it felt like the whole startup ecosystem was like super nascent back then. So I actually started that with a good kind of uni mate, a guy called Billy Crock. Shout out to Billy if he's listening. Yeah, him and I were good uni mates and I guess we always used to catch up and we always used to talk about, you know, trying to start a business of some sorts. And we. We definitely had the entrepreneurial itch and, you know, there would be many beers and ideas thrown against the wall, et cetera, et cetera. And then I think home time was us, you know, in an industry or segment that really kind of resonated between the both of us. So I bought a property. Yeah. About 2014 in Bondi was like, ah, short term, that would be an interesting concept. Go get the holidays paid for. And I guess that came down to the concept of like, freedom as well. Right. Which is like, hey, getting paid to go on holiday. That sounds like a really nice kind of concept. So, yeah, Airbnb was a relatively unknown kind of category name. Certainly not what it is today. Right.
Nathan Bush: When did Airbnb actually launch? Like, when I'm trying to think. Peak Airbnb.
Dave Thompson: Yeah. So Airbnb officially launched in 2012. That was obviously the early days. Good old Brian Chesky and co launching from San Francisco, et cetera. And then Australia was definitely like one of the highest, you know, adopting countries, but it only really started to get meaningful traction probably in like, yeah, 2015, 2016. So that was obviously the time we started. So you're right.
Nathan Bush: Riding the wave early.
Dave Thompson: We were just riding the wave. We were like, hey, look, this is a big kind of tell when we could see the opportunity for what it was a lot of. Yeah. As mentioned, the kind of concepts resonated with us in terms of the ability of obviously airbnb being your property and then the opportunities that that would present. So it's like, hey, you know, you can quit your job and you can get passive income and the, you know, potential downside or the risks associated with just like taking the leap of faith are not really as daunting as they might seem. Right. Because you are perceived to have a backup option. So I think that was. That was it really. It was just like, well, this is really cool. This is fascinating. And I put my property on Airbnb and it was just like, couldn't believe, obviously, the booking velocity and, you know, the numbers that were coming through. I was like, wow, yeah, I'll quit my job. This is fantastic. I'll just do this full time. And then went on my honeymoon. Actually, I guess I was a little bit apprehensive because we had just bought this property and I had no one really on the ground managing it, and it was like, oh, geez, what about the guests? And, you know, what about the turnovers and all that kind of good stuff? So, yeah, I was kind of did a bit of Googling on the honeymoon and you romantic. Oh, there you go, mate. My wife was like, hey, let's, you know, enjoy our time. I was like, hey, I'm just thinking about business ideas. But, yeah, interestingly, actually, so, you know, rewind back a little bit. So we just got married actually, in Zimbabwe in a place called Victoria Falls. And Billy, my business partner, he obviously came to the wedding, and it was really interesting in that he obviously first time for him coming to Africa, and again, he was, like, amazed by the fact that every single person that he interacted with was essentially like an entrepreneur of some sort. Right. So he didn't really come across too many people at the kind of wedding ceremony that all had, like, traditional, you know, normal jobs. So it was interesting kind of timing whereby, you know, I'm on honeymoon, researching the category, and Billy comes back from Africa, arrives back into Australia, and then he just completely goes and quits his job. So he's like, I've had enough of. He was. He was an engineer, so a mechanical engineer and, you know, some engineering stuff. Some big, big, big corporate. He obviously wasn't that excited by. Yeah, he came back and he just put in his notice. So that was really interesting. And then we. We caught up when I got back, and I was obviously telling him about, you know, the Airbnb income that I'd earned whilst on holiday, which was fantastic. And he then proceeded to tell me that, like, he had just quit his job because he was so inspired by his African journey. And that was essentially the making of it. It was like, oh, my gosh, okay, you're free. And, you know, I could probably quit my job, so maybe we should give this a crack.
Nathan Bush: And had you put any of those ideas that you'd throw around before this into action, or is this your first true entrepreneurial crack?
Dave Thompson: First true entrepreneurial crack. So I definitely had lots of, like, other potential ideas, but I didn't really have any frameworks around entrepreneurship, et cetera. I knew that I certainly wanted to start something of my own, but it was really like, you know, I guess a bit of research, a bit of like, waiting for the kind of right spark, right time, right place. So yeah, that, that to me seemed like the, the spark that was needed. And we all decided to just, yeah, throw in the towels at the corporate gigs and, and dive in headfirst. And we thought it was going to be a lot easier and a lot more streamlined and time efficient. Cool. We'll start this and in three years, I'm sure we would have got an exit and then, you know, happy days. We can move on to the next thing or we could just, you know, sell into the sunset and retire. Retire young.
Nathan Bush: I saw a great post by Jason Andrew the other day around the best time to be an entrepreneur is either pre kids or post kids, having them in the middle. So it sounds like you found a great spot there.
Dave Thompson: I saw that exact post. I'm good friends with Jason Andrew and he was right on the money. I think it's definitely a young person's game, certainly at the beginning or I guess the point that he was making is very much, it's like you need to be all in and you need to be 100% focused. And it's like kind of like takes over your life in a good way. It feels super exciting, but you don't really have too much headspace to kind of think about too much else and you just get immersed in that world. So, yeah, I think it's definitely some wise counsel. It's. It's harder when you've obviously got little ones running around, as we both know, and they take up a lot of your time and attention. Obviously you want to, you know, give them everything, but then if you've got other things and ideas floating around, it's like quite hard to kind of, you know, compartmentalize, basically.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And I think you're right. It's like his conversation was entrepreneurship, to do it well is all consuming. So whether you've got kids, whether you've got elderly parents, whether you're trying to get to the Olympics, you probably can't do all at 100%.
Dave Thompson: 100%.
Nathan Bush: So tell me, when you've got all of these ideas floating around, what made you go all in on this one? What was the problem and what was the data that told you that this is the one?
Dave Thompson: Yeah, no, that is a good question. I think it came down back to the essence of like, what it was unlocking. So the concept of freedom then, I guess, was like, wow, this is actually like an opportunity whereby people don't need to be so reliant on, you know, their 9 to 5 and they can actually make supplementary income. So, to be honest, like, that, I think, spoke loud volumes to both of us, which was like, this is an incredible kind of, you know, addition to society in that people can do this and there's a bit of a, you know, additional income stream that can be created so as alignment your values pretty much straight away, I think. So, like, if I kind of, like, look inward, it's like, there was probably a little bit of that. And of course, you know, I've always loved to travel. I, you know, saw that there would be huge opportunity within this category. You know, the kind of concept was that Airbnb would continue to grow. There was an obvious problem that needed solving, which I could relate to because I'd kind of lived through that, you know, exact problem, which obviously is not really revolutionary. But, yeah, having experienced the problem firsthand, you're like, cool. Well, if only you could do this and if only you could do that, and if only, you know, you could deliver on these kind of initiatives and you could improve the experience so much more, et cetera, et cetera. So it was, like, cool. You know, genuine problem, huge opportunity, big addressable market. You know, awesome category. It was like, right, I guess we're going all in.
Nathan Bush: And was it purely focused on Airbnb at that point, or was it any short term?
Dave Thompson: I think it was really just around Airbnb, to be honest. It was interesting. So, basically, yeah, I quit my job. I was working as a. Yeah, equity analyst, so more in the finance game. And I then had three months of gardening leave, which I was getting paid for. So I was like, wow, this is fantastic. This is our seed capital. Like, that's all we need. Like, we don't need any more than this, and we'll be off to the. Off to the races, basically. But basically, you know, whilst I was working, Billy was obviously doing some. Some tinkering around and, you know, figuring out different ways and her in terms of how we would obviously actually execute the strategy and, you know, the operations attached to, you know, what turns out to be a very operationally complex business. And then I was doing a lot of research in terms of, like, what was happening overseas. So there was a lot of activity that was actually bubbling up in terms of the US as well as Europe, which was like, oh, wow, this is cool. And if Anything. It was almost like validation, which was like, hey, it exists elsewhere. Like there's companies that are raising capital to kind of seize the trend. So I was like, well, that's a kind of no brainer. Like, you know, Australia is a bit of a laggard, so we'll just. It's almost like a de risked opportunity, really. Little did we know, looking back on
Nathan Bush: that, is that almost a cheat code in entrepreneurial ventures is to not try and create something from scratch, but to follow some sort of playbook?
Dave Thompson: I think so it's certainly my style. I think it's really just like, cool. You don't need to reinvent the wheel. You know, I find myself doing a lot of research, different companies and I really go quite deep in terms of trying to unpick them and understand exactly, you know, the back end and how does this make money and what are the kind of components that then obviously deliver the service and, you know, what's the secret sauce? And trying to uncover all the little nuggets, which is kind of, you know, exactly what we did with hometime in the early days. So I actually flew over to Europe. I was like, cool, I'm just going to go tee up conversations with all the comparables overseas and just pretend like, you know, hey, how's it going? I'm keen to like, you know, maybe be your city manager and extract the golden insight. Yeah, there was a bit of that and that was a bit of espionage. Bit of espionage, you know, a bit of, what is it? Plagiarism is the biggest form of flattery. And actually, funny story. Meanwhile, Billy, you know, he was tasked with serving our first and only customer. And yeah, that's a story for another day, but basically, was he literally like
Nathan Bush: cleaning the room and everything?
Dave Thompson: He was supposed to clean the room, but I think he got really excited by the fact that we would scope out like shared workspaces and like, you know, he could play ping pong with the new CTO that we found. So he was supposed to clean the room, but he failed to clean the room and our one and only customer arrived back to a very unclean room and a very unhappy wife.
Nathan Bush: True entrepreneur. I should have just outsourced it from the start.
Dave Thompson: Absolutely.
Nathan Bush: So fast forward a fair few years and I could imagine a lot of blood and sweat and tears. You scaled home time, you acquired several competitors, had a team of 90 across five countries. When you talk about secret sauce to scale a business like that, what do you put your secret sauce down to?
Dave Thompson: I don't think there's like a secret sauce, per se. I think where we had success was really digging deep in terms of, like, having a very good understanding of the market and obviously the different comparables and, like, how other businesses were doing things and really trying to kind of cherry pick different ideas and different permutations of the ways that you can approach business and, you know, deliver on the kind of customer value proposition and try to package it up such that we kind of taking the best of both worlds and then, you know, implementing all the kind of, you know, little nuggets for ourselves. But I think it really comes down to having a clear understanding as to where you're going, what you're building, and really having the best team and getting those team rallied around, you know, kind of the goals and the execution. But I think it also comes down to, you know, a lot of luck as well. Like, we were very lucky to have, you know, as, as an example, our first kind of institutional investors that came on board like they were, you know, an absolute slam dunk in terms of investment party or, like, you know, partner that then came and. And joined us for the ride. Without them, I think, you know, we would have been thrashing around and we would have probably made a lot more mistakes, et cetera. So y. No real secret sauce. Just a lot of, like, perseverance, a lot of hitting your head against the wall, and every so often, a little lightning strike of luck, and eventually the stars all align.
Nathan Bush: That's very humble. And I wanted to explore timing with you, too, because I think it was really interesting that you jumped on Airbnb and saw that opportunity pretty early. We're also seeing that at the moment, especially in E commerce, around aligning to AI and AI models and either picking one or being neutral to taking them all on. How important do you think it was that you got on board the Airbnb train early? Because there comes risk with that, doesn't there, in terms of you are tied
Dave Thompson: to Airbnb success 100%. So our first initiative was to basically make best friends with the country head of Australia of Airbnb. So we're like, okay, cool. Well, you know, we don't have that many technical capabilities in terms of, like, software development. We did find a, you know, a bunch of. Of developers that obviously helped us build the infrastructure and the tech to kind of run everything, but we're like, hey, I think we're pretty likable. And, you know, we. We can make friends pretty easily. So let's just, like, make it our biggest priority, become, like, best friends. With Airbnb and then, you know, they'll look after us and maybe they'll acquire us, who knows? But, yeah, essentially became best friends with the Airbnb group of Sydney. And they were a fantastic kind of small and nimble team, all, you know, young and hustling and, you know, doing what we were doing, but just set up a significantly greater scale. And, yeah, I think we. We got in there pretty early and we were actually like, Airbnb's first official partner in Australia, which was obviously a pretty cool achievement. And I think that was just testament to, like, cool. I guess we'll just, you know, have as many beers as possible with. With Airbnb and. And coffees and breakfasts and try and just, yeah, form the best relationships, basically. But I think, yeah, very important, getting
Nathan Bush: all your secrets is like, go for beers with influential people and pretty much go pretend to be an employee for your competitors.
Dave Thompson: Mate, let's not cast this out too widely. We wouldn't want anyone to uncover all the secret nuggets.
Nathan Bush: So home time is the genesis for what's to come. But what was the moment? Because, like I said, you're still pretty young, growing business. There's still probably a lot of fuel in that tank. What was the moment where you said, actually, it's time to sell out, move on. Tell me how that came about.
Dave Thompson: Yeah, so I think for me, like, the whole entry into entrepreneurship through home time was a fascinating experience. I was kind of instantly hooked. And really, the concept of obviously, like, formulating amazing team and, you know, getting people in different areas of, like, core expertise was, like, fascinating. And then basically kind of taking a step back and then watching the engine kind of in motion. And obviously, you know, the business, it's really just a factor of the people that you have within it, and you see that take shape and you're like, oh, wow, that's really fascinating and very cool. So I think I was kind of hooked from the start. Not to say that there wasn't some tough times and, you know, we had to dig deep in a number of occasions. But for me, it was all about, like, designing the framework and the kind of infrastructure or the people to basically enable business building. And it probably was. Was never just, like, about home time per se. Like, obviously I was passionate about the space, but I was probably more passionate just about entrepreneurship and business building. So what I was really amazed by, like, probably at, like, year three, was the kind of understanding of, wow, you can get, like, a whole bunch of smart people in the room and they can all Run towards a problem that we're hopefully passionate about and you can actually make amazing progress. And it certainly wasn't me, like, moving the mountains. It was really just. Just a function of smart people kind of executing in a. In a solid direction, obviously having the support of investors and all the rest. So I was, like, quite hooked on the concept of not, I guess, multipreneurship, but it was more like I kind of always had the ambition to create other businesses. So it was never just like, hey, this is going to be my one and only baby. And that's it. It was like, well, this is fantastic. Like, this is firsthand insight into business building and entrepreneurship. And for me, it was like, there's a formula approach to this, right, which is like, like, cool. Like, you know, get the core team people execute, tell the story well, have a clear kind of goal and understanding of what you're solving, and then, you know, away it goes. So I was always, I know you put it like that, but this is
Nathan Bush: your first entrepreneurial journey, and we know that entrepreneurs aren't always comfortable with taking other people on the journey. When it comes to teamwork, it's not often natural. So I think that's really interesting that that's an area that. That you've actually enjoyed and found yourself good at. What do you think made you different from other entrepreneurs who are very much solo? Like, I've got a mission. Get out of my way.
Dave Thompson: Yeah, I'm sure they can be successful as well, but I think, like, the realization is if you want to make meaningful progress and actually build something of significant value, as well as size and scale, it's certainly a team effort. Right. So it's just a matter of getting the right people in the room and. And, yeah, everyone executing accordingly. Because if it was just me doing that, then I don't think the business would have gone very far at all.
Nathan Bush: So what was the moment where you went, yeah, I think I've done my time. We've got this to a point where I'm happy and I'm happy to go
Dave Thompson: do something else 100%. So I think for me it was all about, like, cool. What is the infrastructure? What does the team need to look like? I was never of the opinion that, hey, I just wanted to run this forever. I wanted to basically design the framework and the engine room such that that the business could run without me. Right. So I think I achieved that probably at the, like, the year six mark, maybe. And it was like, cool. Like, you know, everyone's playing to their strengths. The Business is, look, it wasn't always going up into the right. Most of the time it wasn't actually like, obviously Covid was like a massive event for us and we basically had to rebuild the entire business from scratch. So I'm talking like this was, you know, easy and everything just worked. It certainly, it certainly wasn't like that. But. But I guess I always had the goal of, yeah, not being the business and always trying to work on the business. And it got to a point where we had fantastic investors, we had like an exceptional management team, you know, great leaders across kind of all the key competencies there was, you know, I guess I leaned in a lot of the time to like capital raising and best relations, trying to find the right team members to then fill, you know, crucial spots. And there was a stage where we had just competed like a pretty material capital raise. We just got like one of the all time greats from Airbnb who joined as like a coo and it was like, cool. Well, I think, you know, the foundations here are laid. I think I'm done. So it certainly was the opportunity to at least explore what alternative things might look like. But certainly like you've got to bring people along the journey. And I had to kind of obviously make sure that our investors were supportive of that and they understood because I guess it's probably less traditional path. Right? It's like normally, you know, the person who starts it, finishes it, but. But I would probably say that that's not really that good either because like, just because you start the business, are you the right person to be running like, you know, at its peak, it was a 200 person team. Yeah. I'm not the right person to be in all those management meetings, et cetera, et cetera, which I certainly learned about myself. Right. And it's kind of the evolution in terms of like what's next. But I got the most passion and energy probably in that 0 to 1, like early hustle phase where we're trying to figure things out and we're not quite sure and there's no real proven path path. And then obviously it evolved into more of a cool. Let's, you know, we've got ongoing monthly or weekly management meetings and we're just executing to the plan. And that's probably where I.
Nathan Bush: That doesn't align to a freedom goal, does it?
Dave Thompson: Maybe not, maybe not. But yeah, essentially that was the kind of catalyst and obviously, you know, I was very thankful that the board and investor group as well as team, you know, including Billy, who obviously, you Know, he was acting in the CEO role anyway quite a little bit ahead of, like, me officially leaving the kind of management seat. But, yeah, it was, you know, very thankful to the team for essentially allowing me to kind of be able to pursue other interests and passions.
Nathan Bush: So what was the first thing you do when you go, okay, walk out that door. You're an entrepreneurial person. I can imagine that you've got ideas stored in the back of your head. Do you dive straight into them?
Dave Thompson: That's a good question. So, for me, I did take a little bit of time out, which was actually nice, and I am appreciative of the opportunity to be able to do that. So we had just had a GCP newborn son, but he was about 11 years old at that stage. And my wife's also Zimbabwean, so we were. We're like, well, you know what, We've been on the. The journey for a long time. Let's at least give ourselves the opportunity to take a little bit of time out. So we went back to Zimbabwe, actually, and I spent my days. We bought a little golf cart. My son was, like, golf obsessed. So I probably spent a good three to six months driving him around and upskilling his golf capabilities, which is probably. He surpassed his dad's skill levels. So that was a really good. Was his first word a swear word
Nathan Bush: if he's following you around the golf course all day?
Dave Thompson: Look, I'm trying to be, you know, politically correct on this podcast. It may have been, but I'm not entirely sure. Love it.
Nathan Bush: All right, so that is the genesis. And I promise to everyone, this does tie back to E Commerce, but I just think your entrepreneurial journey. We've got a lot of founders who listen to our podcast and. And some of what you were talking about there. I want to dive into the systems that you're creating because you said that you're a zero to one founder, and I think we can all take a lot from that, especially when you come at it from a systemized approach rather than, I've got an idea. Let's hope it works. So where did that lead you to then, in terms of what's next?
Dave Thompson: Great. So basically, yeah, a little bit of time on the golf course and a little bit of, like, you know, really being quite deliberate as to, like, how I want to allocate my time. Right. So it's like, cool. I'm in a privileged position now where I actually get to pursue those. Those other interests. So basically, about six months ago, launched what is called Freedom Ventures, and the Concept behind Freedom Ventures is that it's a venture studio slash holding company, Holdco, with the goal of basically, you know, building up a portfolio of ownership across, you know, portfolio of businesses, basically. And the businesses are essentially designed to be. Yeah, there's a framework in terms of like, business building, design, et cetera. So more of like a formulaic approach to spinning up a new company and instead of kind of chasing, you know, the unicorn, blitzscaling dreams and obviously, you know, raising copious amounts of capital, et cetera, et cetera. Not that that wasn't obviously helpful for the path that we were at home time, but this is more around the concept of actually business building these days looks quite a lot different to what it did, you know, 10 years ago back in 2015. So leveraging all the new tools and the no codes and the AI, you know, acceleration and all that kind of stuff to then basically try and, you know, build a portfolio of businesses that are more capital light, high kind of pathway to cash flow. So instead of going on the fundraising treadmill and burning, you know, money for months and years on end, it's like, well, can we design businesses such that there's an accelerated pathway to cash flow and they can be less capital intensive, such that you can preserve more ownership across the business and you can actually get paid along the way in terms of extracting dividends out of the business as opposed to kind of waiting for that, you know, glorious liquidity event which, you know, gets pushed out more and more. So, right. Ten years is the average kind of tenure. So that's the concept.
Nathan Bush: And they're making cash along the way.
Dave Thompson: Yep.
Nathan Bush: And they've got a system. You can systemize them. What are the key categories that you're looking at? Or could it be across any category?
Dave Thompson: It's. It's quite versatile, actually. It can be across any category. At the moment, I actually have two kind of components, which is there's build and then there's also buy. The build is very much targeted at, yeah, capital Light, more like productized services, businesses and delivering outcomes, really. So, you know, Run Remote is an example of a business that I founded, which is not a revolutionary product, but it is delivering on a clear problem that needs to be solved. And you're delivering, like, good outcomes that are kind of binary, such that it's like, you deliver this outcome, very happy customer, you deliver a bad outcome, unhappy customer, rightfully so, do it again type thing. So that's the kind of. Of framework that I have at least for now, been kind of exploring, obviously, things Change. But yeah, that's the methodology and the approach so far.
Nathan Bush: What happens when 87 stores, one Shopify site and a whole lot of disconnected data walk into a CRM? There's unfortunately no funny punchline here. For Intersport, it meant missed sales, slow reports and a lot of guesswork. Each store had its own own data, none of it talked. And to Klaviyo, they helped unify it all online and in store so that Intersport could finally track behavior, personalize offers, and hit the right customer at the right time. The result was one that any cranky sports coach would be proud of. CRM driven online sales were up nearly five times and there was a 350% increase in returning customer rate. To learn how Klaviyo helps multi store brands like Intersport grow smarter, visit klaviyo.com au and I want to dive into Run remote in a moment. But before we do, I just wanted to unpack this approach and this framework a little bit more because I think there's so much to be learned there. We obviously talked around operationally light, talked about cash flow, talked about clear outcomes, good, bad. When it comes to tools, tech team, are there any non negotiables for you in those businesses that fit that framework?
Dave Thompson: I mean, I think as an example, like, having distributed teams is something that I'm passionate about. So even back at home time, I was like, let's not have like a huge HQ and like have 100 people arrive at the front office. Right? The concept was all about like, how do you leverage all the tools and technology to maximize productivity as well as capital efficiency. So distributed teams is something that I've been very passionate about for a long time in terms of like, how do you find the best remote talent across the world? Obviously, you know, you're solving for cost arbitrage, but more importantly, if you can kind of narrow the gap in terms of quality threshold and get as close a comparison to like an onshore equivalent, that's really, really quite interesting. Right. So I think remote and distributed teams and also like empowering the best teams is one. Then it's obviously like leveraging, yeah, all the kind of awesome tools that are made available to us these days. Right. So like, I think, I think we're just in an awesome time in terms of entrepreneurship where there's so many great SaaS tools as well as no code tools, as well as you can hire someone from anywhere in the world and there's platforms that facilitate how they get paid and you can do that compliantly. So it's certainly. I guess if you cast your mind back to how entrepreneurship might have been back in the day, I think we're in a pretty envious position. And then it's really just like trying to capitalize on those trends, right. And then use them to your advantage in terms of like modern business building and doing certain so in an accelerated way, but like more importantly, capital efficient and I guess productive way from a
Nathan Bush: tech perspective, are you a builder? Do you ever build your custom tech or are you just whatever's off the shelf we take and we use?
Dave Thompson: You know, I've been having lots of Great conversations with Mr. Andrew Ford about vibe coding on the weekends. You know, we do that. He's such a nerd. He's complete nerd. He's actually quite a clever nerd. I will get. Oh, he's an incredibly clever nerd.
Nathan Bush: I love.
Dave Thompson: We always talk about how much he
Nathan Bush: fiddles and plays and I'm like, how do you have time for of a lot this?
Dave Thompson: He's just endlessly curious, I think. I wish I was probably better at it. I could definitely be more advanced. But yeah, certainly very fascinated by that world and forever listening to kind of all the latest and greatest nuke podcasts and AI deep dives and all that kind of stuff. And I think experimentation is key. I think we're obviously in this really fast paced world where AI is moving every single day. There seems to be a new announcement and a new kind of model, et cetera. And I don't believe that anyone's a pro at it. Obviously there might be some people that claim to be, but it's actually a bit of a level playing field where it's just like a fascinating new technology and everyone's kind of at the starting point and it's really about like, how do you allocate your time to then, yeah, experiment and learn and upskill as much as possible. And I think it's super important for everyone to be kind of investing their time into that because, yeah, it just makes things way more efficient and you can obviously get way more leverage. Like that's actually a concept I think about a lot, which is leverage. It's just like, okay, how do you get things happening without like over investing your time? Is there ways that you can like set up systems and processes and design such that things can happen in the background with maximum leverage and yeah, and
Nathan Bush: a lot of it is a mindset shift, isn't it? And we talked a lot with James Johnson from Shopify around this and he was like, there's One simple principle. Every time you do something, just ask could AI do this better? And yes, it may take you five times longer this time but if you crack it, and most of the times you will crack it, it will revolutionize and create a moat around your business.
Dave Thompson: Business most definitely, 100%. I think something that I think about at like the venture studio level is definitely back to like having those really core competency, like talent experts within the, the core team to be able to then like build you know, multiple prototypes or multiple products. So you always want to have. Well I think in this day and age you definitely want to have product people, but product people or like technical people probably look different to what they might have back in the day. So back in the day it's obviously having like the best software engineer can actually, you know, add leverage and like, you know, increase productivity. Whereas now it's like okay, well we need like absolute like AI expert, someone who's going to be, you know, vibe coding over the weekend and is just really just going to throw themselves all of that in terms of how to get maximum output from all the tools that we have at our disposal. Right.
Nathan Bush: It was only less than five years ago we were telling kids to go actually go to university or go study coding because that is the future because we were looking at robotics like well actually you don't need to actually study coding anymore. It's all out there for you.
Dave Thompson: It is pretty wild in terms of how quickly things can be disrupted. I mean, yeah, software engineers obviously they, they will be expedited and that the ones that will be leveraging AI, of which I'm sure most of them will be, you can be a 10x developer from what you were before and you could probably build products. You know, the whole rise of this whole like solo or single person unicorn, all that kind of stuff obviously a little bit far fetched, but the kind of philosophy is correct.
Nathan Bush: So let's talk about run remote because I think you played it down before saying that it's a model that's been before. But what, what I really like about it, especially as someone who ran a recruitment business in a previous life, was the approach of outsourcing talent and having a remote team, but focusing on finding the top talent in that region and having them as part of your team, not having a middleman, that was the thing that stood out for me. Was that the genesis of the idea?
Dave Thompson: Yeah, I think the genesis was probably again like living through that experience and then building an example prototype at home time. Right. So at home time like One of our biggest components in terms of how we evolved and had our team structure was that we had a really large and significant kind of overseas team. So we had people in the Philippines, we had a really good team in Latin America, Buenos Aires, as well as South Africa. Right. So it was like, cool. I know the kind of South African market really well. There's some really good marketing talent, so let's do that. And we actually also had a guy working out of Lisbon, so it was very much a global team. So got firsthand insight in terms of like the efficiencies and the benefits. Benefits. And for us it was very much like, you know, we just were focused 100 on quality. And we certainly had some overseas team members that were probably running circles around some of our onshore team members. Right. So got to experience that firsthand. And then it was really like, well, you know, in terms of, in thinking about Freedom Ventures and like, what's a potential business to start? It was like, all right, I guess, you know, this is quasi recruitment. I'm going from like Airbnb sheets to recruitment. So I don't know if I'm picking the most glamorous kind of fields. But it was really just like, hey, this is a massive. Every single business under the sun needs this. Like, it's certainly not a strategy just to have a hundred percent of your team onshore sitting in an office. So it's solving a clear problem is a genuine need. And there was. There's really strong economics actually attached to the business. So I mean, our model is very much like this whole age old kind of industry of business process outsourcing. Right. Bpo. I think that's a model that's existed for a long time. Probably got a bit of a bad rap because maybe quality is a little bit questionable and there's a genuine like, lack of transparency in that market whereby it's like, hey, Nath, I'll find you a whole bunch of people, but I'm not going to give you true insight in terms of what they're getting paid. You're just going to pay me. I'm going to sort everything out. Happy days. You know, there's always a pretty significant gap between what you're paying and what they're getting paid. And that's like, leads to obviously inferior quality and it's obviously not really a good, you know, outcome across any party. Right. The talent loses, you're losing. The only one who's winning is the agency. So we wanted to flip that around. And yeah, very much like I wanted to build a business that I would be a customer of. So I guess within the concept of Freedom Ventures, it's like, all right, well, well, we want to try and build multiple businesses, right? And obviously every single business is that we spoke about with Hometime. The success of that business is a function of the team. So it's like, well, this would be a cheat code if we could actually have a business that finds exceptional people which we could then use obviously to be able to like fuel and like turbocharged the additional businesses that we'll hopefully build or buy within the portfolio. So it was, yeah, an interesting one where I was sitting at the golf course in Zimbabwe and I was like, I can actually do this from anywhere. You know, let's, let's just put my head down and spin up a website and see if there's demand for the product. So that was that.
Nathan Bush: The market is shifting, costs are climbing and the pressure to do more with less is very real. But when resources are tight, you can rely on Shopify, the platform that's consistently first with new capabilities. Shopify invests significantly in R and D and drops more than 150 updates every year. Evolving with you and absorbing complexity so that you can focus on what moves your business forward from AI powered insights to the world's best converting checkout. Shopify is designed for the next era of commerce, helping you sell more, scale faster and future proof your brand build for what is next with Shopify. Visit Shopify for Enterprise to learn more. Pretty incredible start because you've got businesses such as Bailey Nelson now relying on run remote to build their teams. Was that a big shift for them?
Dave Thompson: It was actually. I think they had, you know, it was interesting to me that I think like, in terms of like again frameworks of like businesses that you want to start or be a part of. I've read a lot which is like, you know, play to your unfair advantage and your, your kind of true insights and all that kind of stuff. Do things that otherwise people might not have the same capacity, et cetera. So, you know, a large part of say Freedom Ventures is like serv founders as an example. It's like, well, I understand that I was a founder. I know the pain points across different verticals of value, right? So obviously this is just hiring, so it's just one component. But yeah, like, you know, if you're the ICP and you wear it, you can basically, you know, deliver a good product or service to, you know, the profile that you really intricately understand. So as an example, I guess being part of the kind of founder startup ecosystem for circa 10 years. Like you obviously make a big network. One of them was Bailey Nelson. I was really good friends with one of the founders. Founders. He, you know, was experiencing pretty high cash burn and I think having a bit of a hard time with, yeah, investors, maybe just kind of different stage of business, etc. And obviously for him it was going to be a worthwhile and interesting experiment to obviously try and realize some cost benefits. But of course, they just needed to maintain quality thresholds. Right. So they couldn't have that start to slip because then it's a little bit like counterintuitive, like one step forward, three steps back, basically. So, yeah, he was the first client and we basically experimented just in terms of like helping him find talent. That kind of, you know, was great for me because I could then run the process and, you know, back to the drawing board where I now had no team and it was just me. I was like, okay, this is interesting. Where's all my team members? Back to zero. I was like, I guess I can't delegate this to anyone. That's. That's highly unfortunate.
Nathan Bush: Even though you own a remote team,
Dave Thompson: I very quickly found team members and, you know, create an incentive structure such that they were motivated to find awesome other team members. So that was actually really fun and interesting. But yeah, we, we have essentially, I think, helped them with about 30 team members.
Nathan Bush: Wow.
Dave Thompson: And I think the cost savings have been pretty significant. They've definitely switched very much into like EBITDA positive mode of like pretty decent quantum. And I think it's been a really positive shift in terms of their investor sentiments and obviously ability to kind of continue to execute, raise more capital, et cetera. So, yeah, I think it's, it's, it's an awesome kind of case study. Right. And then it's really just about okay, applying the same methodology across all the other businesses that we're serving. So that was the first kind of client base. And yeah, we found ourselves, interestingly, actually serving just a multitude of E Commerce clients, maybe because that was like a case study. And then the next E Commerce client came and then there's obviously referrals from other businesses where you deliver good value and they're like, oh man, I'd love to introduce you to my friends and more friends, et cetera, et cetera. So that's kind of how it's all evolved and obviously the relevancy in terms of like how we've met and, and hopefully your audience in terms of the listeners. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: When it Comes to E commerce roles and skills, where do you normally find yourself starting to get those efficiencies? Are there any particular areas or skills that you start with before moving out?
Dave Thompson: I think we are probably finding ourselves providing more value across the technical hard to fill roles. So I think a typical E commerce business will come and say, hey, well you know, we need support across meta in terms of like paid marketing. You know, that's obviously where a significant portion of our spend is being allocated. We need to, you know, basically continue to grow that team. But we need people that are super smart and understand exactly how to leverage that universe to its highest potential. So a lot of those types of roles, also a lot of like technical roles in terms of like you know, shopify developers or webflow developers in terms of, you know, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, really kind of broad based set of roles. But I think the underarching theme is more technical versus general. So we certainly are not like doing data entry roles by any means. It's like, hey, we need like an exceptional HubSpot manager or like a gun developer, full stack across this, this and that. So they are, you know, everyone's a new challenge. But it's interesting actually the kind of scale benefits because you have then done multiple of the same role, then you can cross sell and it actually becomes a lot easier at scale.
Nathan Bush: And one of the promises that you go out with is finding the top 2% of talent.
Dave Thompson: Top 1%, come on, top 1%, wow. You got to double down on quality.
Nathan Bush: How do you, how do you guarantee that? Especially when you're talking to those technical skills which even finding any talent, like when you start getting very specific around platforms or languages, for example, how do you not only just find people who can do the job but find the top 1%?
Dave Thompson: Good question. And obviously it's been, you know, an ongoing iterative process. I think for us again it comes down to like understanding exactly what problem you're solving and then what your ICP needs and what like kind of obsessing around like customer value. So it's like okay, well how good would it be if you could actually just double down on the best and like find someone, an absolute rock star and do so without them having to lift a finger. Like that's a, that's a pretty damn good offering and all the whilst they can save, you know, I don't know, 60, 70% on payroll costs next month and you know, that investment is like a one month payback period. You're like, well that's an absolute Slam dunk, no brainer. But again, how do you actually deliver, deliver on that promise? So there's been a lot of investment into that in terms of like really doubling down into the talent threshold and making sure that we can like continue to find the gems. We have a pretty extensive, you know, process which obviously involves a number of like hoop jumping and lots of assessments, lots of scoring, lots of interviews. We also work with the companies in terms of like just getting a lot of like technical assessments that are, you know, very particular to their business. So we might put our talent through general kind of interviews and general assessments, but then we'll work with the particular business which is like, okay, well let's mimic like a day in the life of X and let's like get them to do like a typical example of like what, you know, your, your business might, might need or like what a day to day kind of job is required. And then yeah, we'll work with them to kind of put them through that assessment and then yeah, the top 1%, you know, out of a thousand we get, what is it? 100? Is that, is that the math?
Nathan Bush: 10.
Dave Thompson: 10, 10. Terrible, terrible. Never, never do on the fly math.
Nathan Bush: You better make sure you get a cfo.
Dave Thompson: I need a cfo. I'm missing my old CF cfo. Absolutely. The numbers probably look a bit wonky.
Nathan Bush: Well, speaking of cfo. So in your model the talent becomes part of the team. So business say Bailey Nelson actually hires the talent as part of the team just like you would talent here. How do you make money as run remote in that process?
Dave Thompson: We just do it for the love of the game, you know, a love of entrepreneurship. We charge a one time fee. So unlike the other kind of agencies that will obviously, you know, markup every month, we just basically keep it really simple. We charge, yeah, a one time placement fee which is obviously only payable when the talent joins. Typical kind of recruitment, I guess, business model in that we have a replacement guarantee of 90 days if in the, in the very unlikely event that it doesn't work out. Basically.
Nathan Bush: Yeah.
Dave Thompson: Great.
Nathan Bush: Last question on that. If we've got founders listening to this saying, I love the idea of reducing cost costs, finding the gaps in our team in terms of skill sets, especially those technical areas and having a team that can run independently. What do you say are the traits that know that that founder is set up for success to take on this model? Like is there anything that you like actually don't go down this path yet until you get this sorted internally.
Dave Thompson: I think interestingly, like Covid was a massive accelerant within this category. So I think, think, you know, back in the day, like we were absolute like remote advocates and I was like studying all the different principles of like, how best to set up a remote team. Went to like a lot of like remote working conferences as an example. And it was really interesting back then actually, which was like this was in 2018, I think it was. There was a conference in Bali and there was about 200 people that attended there. And it was all like the big names, Shopify was there, zapier. But like, I guess the first move is in terms of like fully distributed remote teams. Which sounds like, you know, ridiculous then. But like back then it was like we were making predictions as to I wonder what percentage of the workforce will be like embracing remote working. And it was always like, I guess, you know, I'm sure it'll be a big take up and people will see the benefits. And I mean that again as well. Sorry to digress, but that came back to the concept of freedom, which was like, I didn't want to have a business that we walked into and we were chained to that desk. It was like, well, if we can actually, you know, invest into a business culture that can work any, anywhere, like that's awesome. And obviously there's going to be so much engagement from the team because that is a privilege that doesn't really exist elsewhere. Right. So yeah, I was a big advocate from day one and then obviously Covid happened and then suddenly that big novelty became everyone's access. Exactly. So we, we were fortunate in that we had a bit of a head start to really understand exactly how that all works and that world. But I guess to answer your question, you do need to have the philosophy as to like, how best to set up a remote team. Do you need to have, have like the best working practices and principles around? How do you engage someone that lives on the other side of the world? How do you make sure that they have clear, you know, goals and guardrails in terms of, you know, what is, what does a successful outcome look like? What is a deliverable, like what does success look like by the end of the week, et cetera. So those types of rituals. I feel like most businesses are pretty well versed now with respect to, you know, remote working practices. So again, coming down to like the accelerant of COVID which is like, well, most businesses appreciate that. Like, of course you're going to have people working in other jurisdictions. So I think it's been a really kind of interesting realm for distributed businesses or businesses that help build distributed teams, there's been a huge trajectory in terms of ramp up which is again playing to like all right, frameworks, instruction and principles. Like I don't see that trend kind of slowing down anytime soon. If anything it'll only continue to increase and accelerate. The market size is massive. You can get a small percentage of that and that's an awesome kind of of business to be a part of.
Nathan Bush: It feels like it is snapping back in some parts in that there's the callback to the office. For some companies, yeah, you've either got to be deliberately distributed or deliberately combined, you know what I mean? So it's, it's now back to a choice, isn't it?
Dave Thompson: And then go to distributed.
Nathan Bush: You've got to set those rituals and those processes up to involve everyone 100%.
Dave Thompson: I think like the happy medium is probably like a hybrid setup because I think like if you are too strict in your mandate in that like everyone must return to that their, you know, corporate chain desks then you're just going to get no talent whatsoever.
Nathan Bush: I think we found your nightmare hit there.
Dave Thompson: I think, I think you've uncovered it, Dave.
Nathan Bush: You've just had the most incredible journey so far and I've learned a lot about entrepreneurship from you today, especially how to systemize it and how important it is to take team on that journey rather than just to kind of buckle down with your idea and charge through. So thank you for that. If people are keen to continue the conversation conversation especially around run remote and what that might look like for their team, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
Dave Thompson: Thanks Nath, appreciate the kind words. But yeah, best way to get in touch with me is definitely on LinkedIn. So search me. Dave Thompson. It's a bit of a common name. Hopefully I'll come up. We should be connected through mutual parties in the startup ecosystem. Otherwise runremote IO is our website.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful. Dave, thank you for joining us on Add to cart.
Dave Thompson: Thanks Nate. It's really great to be here and appreciate it. The invite.
Nathan Bush: I speak with a lot of founders and what struck me about Dave was his calmness and his focus and I feel like he's got there because he has a systemized approach now to entrepreneurship that he has seen to be successful and he acknowledges that, that there is an essence of luck in that. But he knows the levers and the non negotiables that he's looking looking for when starting businesses. By starting there he's got clear guardrails on what he will get into and how he will operate those businesses. And that to me was a key takeout. Here are three lessons that I think anyone in E commerce can take from that conversation with Dave. Remote work. Whether you are hiring other people or you are the one doing the remote work, it just doesn't work without clear expectations. There is nothing that annoys me more than bosses who complain that their work from home or their remote teams are lazy or distracted. It's not their responsibility. It's your role to make sure that everyone has clear expectations, that they're held to those expectations. There are clear processes and rituals to support distributed collaboration and working together. It is so important that you are set up for success, not just as a remote worker, but as someone who makes manages remote working teams. There is not one party at fault when it goes bad. So that was a key thing. Remote work comes with clear expectations and both parties have to be ready to be held to account for those. The second piece there was starting with technical roles that drive growth. A lot of the times when we think about employing remote teams, it's to take the repetitive tasks or the low skill tasks and ask another team to do it. But as Dave mentioned, there, there is actually incredible talent, skilled talent, very specialized talent offshore ready to be employed by your business. It's talent that we probably wouldn't find here in Australia. So I think that's really important that we flip our thinking when we think about a remote team, that it's not just picking up the easy work that we're doing, but actually adding to our skill skills in our team by finding those unicorns or those specialists that we wouldn't be able to find here in Australia. And of course being able to bring them into the team without paying overs. And the third thing, and I think this is important for both founders and operators, is that systemisation beats hustle for sustainable growth. If there's anything that annoys the hell out of me, it's hustle culture. And sometimes it's because I don't know if I'm not built that way. I've got a great lifestyle business here and I enjoy what I do, but there are people who love the hustle, but it is not sustainable if you are hustling for years and years on end. I love Dave's approach. He knows exactly on the types of businesses that work for him. Productized services, fast paths to cash flow, capital efficiency. It's all about deliberate rejection of scale at all cost. Thinking key for him is knowing that he is creating businesses that have positive cash flow and can pay you along the way that you're not waiting for some distant, hopeful payout in the future. By taking that approach, he's got his destiny in his own hands. Sure, you might not scale as fast, but it is sustainable growth. So if you feel like you're spinning, it might be time to take a step back and look at systemization for your business or what you're working on to understand whether you can take some of that hustle out and think smarter. Whether that is AI, whether that's offshore teams, whether that's cutting out some of the processes. How can we do things smarter, not just hustling that's it for this week. Bit of a different episode, but I hope you enjoyed it and took some lessons back into your business. If you want to discuss this further, please come and join us in the Add to Cart community. We have over 500 e commerce professionals in there who are sharing tips, ideas, questions all day, every day about E commerce. I'm sure if you've got questions around how people are setting up their teams, both locally and distributed teams, that would be a great place to kickstart that conversation. Head on over to add to cart.com and apply to join the Add to Cart community. Also, if you haven't already and you enjoyed that episode, please hit subscribe wherever you are listening, whether that be YouTube, Spotify or Apple, and we'll keep bringing you more great e commerce content content. Until next time.
