Not having enough work. Climate change in mind is a sign of just freshwater energy transition.
Large scale social disorder. Antibiotic resistant diseases.
Education. Quantum computing.
Thanks for coming, everybody. This is fantastic. Parents, students.
Just a quick poll of the students who's listen to the podcast I took starts this year.
That's like 98%. So that's pretty much it. We we've had a success and and what we're doing today is we're doing a live podcast.
So it doesn't mean that this is live filmed and being streamed.
What it means is that we're going to record everything and this is going to be our final episode of the season.
We're going to put it out online on iTunes.
But before we get into what today's podcast is going to be, I thought I'd kind of share a bit of a story of how we got this to be this year,
the Oxford Future of Business podcast and in the spirit of reflection, like everyone has been this morning, share that story.
So we're here in launch and for the students, you all know what launch requires.
For parents, it's this really intense two weeks.
If they were calling you where you're meeting all these people, they're all really impressive getting your LinkedIn profiles.
You're thinking that you really don't deserve to be here. But there's all these really interesting conversations and everyone's so impressive.
And then you have the dean come on stage and say, You know, Oxford is world class people and they're here to solve world scale problems.
So every conversation you have seems lofty. It seems like you're full of this optimism.
And we're sitting in a pub, Emily Brody and I, and reflecting on some of these conversations and everyone we're meeting and definitely
fuelled by a few good English ales which I have frequented since I've got here.
And, and we're saying we started talking about a bunch of things and one about how impressive
everyone is and to about how much we love podcasts and sitting there and like or how,
how would it be to build a podcast? What would that be like? What do you need? It should be easy to record off your cell phone and off you go.
Put it on iTunes like we can do this. So Brody grabbed a napkin and he's like, Yeah, we're making a podcast.
Here we go. And that was a year ago today.
And now we have launched a podcast and we do have six episodes online and it's real and it was just an amazing journey,
was so much fun midway through the year to kind of really help us bring it along.
My client in Paris joined the group, so I just get the podcast team to stand up here quickly.
We've got 30. And in the back, you've got Michael and in Paris.
Here you go. So it's been an absolute blast.
And we're we're really excited that you can be part of the last episode of the season here.
So what we're going to do is going to bring Emily up on stage. She's going to interview to Sabine and our own U2.
And I will do that for about 30 or 40 minutes. Then we'll do some Q&A.
So think about some good questions and you might just make your get your voice on the podcast.
So I'll figure and I'll bring you guys up now. Thank you.
Thank you all so much for being here. And thank you to everyone who has listened and commented and given us feedback so far.
And this is something I've wanted to do sort of since we started the podcast.
And so it's kind of bringing another group of people rather than just me and Brady sitting in a room somewhere over there and doing this on our own.
So it's fantastic to have you all here. And the conversation today, building on the theme of the future of business,
is a conversation that we're going to start off then to talk about what it means to have integrity in business.
How do you build a business with an integrity and what choices you have to make to do that?
What it means to have authentic entertainment in a in an era of Netflix and Spotify,
where we don't have to make any choices, how do we really choose how we're entertained and how we engage with each other?
And then building on that theme, how do we use digital to connect the place and what a place mean to us?
And I think, you know, we've had this morning so much about what Oxford means to us.
And so and he would see people who've already thought very deeply about what do you would what has placed mean to communities.
So I'm going to do some introductions and then we'll see a little bit of what these two have created and then we'll dive into the conversation.
So next being as the co-founder of resident advisor and electronic music community
with 300 million visitors every year bootstrapped with no VC investment,
R has built a reputation as the broadsheet of electronic music.
You can see why I liked wants to bring that up and rather than advertising in quick form content focusing on a few cities around the world,
Resident Advisor publishes several thousand water articles on underground scenes in places like Cairo and Tokyo and other cities around the world.
And when the rest of the media is trending towards zero decision making consuming only what Netflix
and Spotify suggest to us are is startling and building a passionate following for rigorous,
factual and artistic criticism.
Nick is also an entrepreneurship expert and mentor here at the Business School and Choice and chose to join this community
to provide a different vision of how to build businesses without investment that can support oneself one's team,
rather than to band to external investors. It's a way of building businesses, both very modern and very old fashioned.
You join me? So my other guest will be slightly more familiar to many of you in the audience yet who is a writer,
a filmmaker, a data expert and a very good friend.
I'm not content with finishing everyone else's assignments for them this time.
She also took a 360 degree immersive art film and dance experience to the Sundance Festival this year during the MPAA and in South Africa.
She's a contributing editor of the website of Friends,
which tells amazing stories about Africa's millennials in design, photography, music and fashion.
She's one of the most feature thinking of our class, and I'm so excited to have her here on the podcast.
She's someone I've been wanting to get on the show for a fertile time, so that's awesome.
Okay, so to start off,
we just want to show you a short film about resident advisor to kind of set the scene for those of you who have not explored electronic dance music.
So if we can play that now. Okay, perfect.
Here we go. From the beginning, our aim was simple.
To showcase and support independent electronic music across the globe.
We go beyond the clubs to discover the scenes, the people and the stories that make electronic music one of the most vital art forms of all time.
We combine world class journalism with a friend, discovery tools and award winning content to create an ecosystem of over 30 million readers a year.
Already reports on cultural events around the clock, breaking global news stories and exploring the wider influence electronic music has on society.
Our in-depth features and films document powerful subjects that champion the values of acceptance which underpin our culture.
Aura helps kickstart artists careers, showcasing and supporting the headliners of Tomorrow.
The ORA ecosystem has over 1 million artists,
events and venues listed across the globe with unique tools that help promoters keep their local scene thriving.
In 2008, we launched the largest electronic music ticketing platform in the world, connecting fans to music events in over 50 countries.
As electronic music's global impact increases, so does our audience.
More than 3.5 million people read write every month.
This year, it gives you an idea of what it's like to try and think about the future.
And a 900 year old university with an unknown teacher of 25.
So I think we may really start off with as asking one of my favourite questions to ask on the podcast,
which is if if you're going to describe a visit to a ten year old, how do you how would you describe it?
I would describe it as I would say, you know, how you have textbooks for history, geography, maths, chemistry, etc.
We're essentially the textbook of electronic music and hopefully something that showcases and
spotlights a phenomenal international community that one day they might be lucky enough to be part of.
But a textbook is something that's very kind of definitive and fixed.
And the interesting thing about music is it's kind of evolving and changing all the time in response to how people engage with it.
Yeah, I mean, it's been a while since I picked up a textbook. I imagine they're a little more multimedia than than when I was in pre-school.
But yeah, it's more I'm using that as a, as a frame of reference for a just in terms of, you know,
one of our core values as a company is we care about the past, present and future of electronic music.
You know, we're not just interested in the here and now. We're also interested in ensuring there's an ongoing legacy and an understanding
of where this culture came from and how we've arrived at the point we are today.
We're as interested in that as we are in, you know, who the big artists will be in the next year or the next five years,
or what the sounds are that will inspire people from across the world.
Mm hmm. And so take us through a little that how resident visa came to be and the kind of story of how you built it.
Sure. So I'm originally from Sydney, as my accent indicate, and essentially we were just kids that just love going out.
I cared about two things as a kid and not much else,
and that was cricket and electronic music and I pretty quickly realised I was going to play cricket for Australia.
So I packed that and I was like electronic music, that's my thing. And.
And so, you know, we were just going out a lot and you know, music was, you know, just the huge focal point of my life.
And so we wanted to, by virtue of going out, we wanted to contribute to the scene, you know, in our way.
And we weren't we weren't deejays. But, you know, we were super passionate about music.
And music was the thing that inspired us beyond anything else. And so we were like, Hey, what's, what's our thing here?
And we, we realised that there wasn't really somewhere in, in Australia at least, which kind of pointed people to the most interesting events.
And also we wanted a platform to talk about the music that was inspiring us, that was really moving us both emotionally and physically.
And back then, in 2001, it was kind of pre blog, so you had to build a website.
And fortunately a friend of mine, Paul, my co-founder, he knew how to do that and I didn't.
And so just pretty quickly, we hatched an idea and we said, you know,
why don't we create a little home on the Internet to essentially just write about music that we liked?
And we said, Cool, you know, what do we need for that?
And we realised that the barriers to entry for a digital publication in 2001 were fairly low.
So we both put in 400 AUD and that's all we've ever put in and we've never borrowed a cent since then.
We've never wanted to. We've always had a fairly strong ideology in terms of how we wanted to approach building this business
around integrity and around honesty and not allowing for external influence in what we write.
And so that's kind of been, I guess, our write off to get us to this point.
And as a result, we've grown the business organically over that time from yeah,
from 2001 when a small number of people read it to now in a few more did.
Yeah.
So I do definitely want to come back to the building without, without investment because for people who've just struggled to learn what beta is for,
yeah, it's a really interesting concept to come back to that.
But before I do that, I want to just ask you to, to talk a little bit about two of the things that brought you to the stage today.
So one is the film Evolve Revolve. And I think given the Wi-Fi, we might skip sharing that,
but we will send out a link afterwards those of you who won't see it, because it's really extraordinary.
But tell us a little bit about the film and then also about our friends as well. Okay.
So I'm really excited to be here today. I think it's like quite surreal that I'm here in front of all my incredible classmates graduating tomorrow.
And, you know, I'm here with one of my media heroes and I've got like family from South Africa visiting so that they can see me on stage today.
So you guys know me as one of your classmates. You know me as a techie and a social impact person.
But I also have a very creative side. So back in 2011,
my brother Deji Dada and I started a magazine and in its form back then it documented Pretoria in Johannesburg's electronic music scene.
The most current version that's still running now is called Our Friends, and it's a publication that features,
as Emily mentioned, like African design, music, photography and fashion.
And what we're trying to do is actually create a space where we can say, how do we use those elements to drive social change?
So that's actually what was like a pivotal changing point in the direction that the website was moving.
And I'm also on stage because as of this year, I'm the Sundance New Frontier Lab fellow with my partner Sharif Ali.
And we're working on a virtual reality film called Evolve Revolt, which focuses on a Kenyan myth.
So in the in Kenya, there is a Kikuyu tribe that believe that if you walk over Muhammad Ali seven times and become a tree is like a wild fig tree,
you can actually change sex. So it's a very interesting, very, very old myth and it tells a very different picture of what Kenya was.
Because if you look at Kenya in terms of social climate, now you find a version of Kenya that there are like 17 laws against the LGBTQ community,
and it also has one of the highest rates of gender based violence.
So we're actually trying to use this film as a way to actually comment on the different changes and why those evolved as part of the film.
So yeah, I'm very excited to be here. Was there a decision early on that you were never going to take investment,
or was it something which you found it difficult to raise investments or that became something
over time that that that became the ideology of the company or the philosophy of the company.
How did you make those decisions? Well, for the first four and a four and a half years, almost five actually.
We essentially just did resident advisor on the site.
So it was we never started it to make money.
That's a good starting place in terms of like it changes your frame of reference for wanting investment or whatever,
but we're not starting this thing for commercial benefit,
so that takes that off the table, at least also not with the expectation that it would be this big thing,
but just something that we wanted to do as a passion project, basically.
And so for the first four, four and a half, five years, we we were just doing this on the side.
So, you know, we'd I was working for an ad agency. My co-founder Paul was working for a design agency.
And, you know, we would work in the mornings and then, you know,
probably a little bit too much during work then, you know, at lunchtimes and then, you know,
late into the evening until 12 or one and then, you know, then you start again the next day and wake up at six and,
you know, essentially doing two full time jobs for the space of five years.
That was kind of like our alternative to investment, I guess. Right. And so I think, you know, for us, it wasn't we never really, you know,
the costs of running an online business at that point were maybe $50 a month or something.
You know, everybody we will contributing all our time for free. And, you know, essentially, it was just friends who were, you know,
as interested and as keen to share their knowledge and their appreciation and their passion for electronic music as we were.
And so, you know, I was writing a lot of the content and the quality of the journalism has got a lot better since then.
But, you know, we were essentially there was just a lot of us who were, you know,
contributing a lot of man hours to something that we believed in that wasn't being shaped for commercial benefit.
It was just being shaped because we felt, you know,
that we were doing something unique in terms of how we were critiquing the art form that we were most passionate about.
And we never wanted to have that compromised by external decision making, basically, and external considerations.
And in the publishing space, you know, commercial influence is, is rife.
And, and we wanted to go down a different path. And for us, it wasn't by virtue of the fact that we weren't doing it to make money.
It didn't really matter to us if 100 people read it or a thousand people read it or 100,000 people read it.
It was more about we were just commenting on the things, the music that excited us, the stuff that we were most excited about and,
you know, essentially exists to connect the electronic music community and support local scenes.
And, you know, we felt that we could do that without necessarily needing to raise a ton of money,
obviously would allow us to do certain things faster.
And you could hire more people and you've got more of a buffer if you make some bad decisions and stuff like that.
But, you know, we felt that we can do it our way and you know, and that's brought us to this point where, you know,
we write about what we want to write about without anybody else deciding what we should or shouldn't write about.
And is there ever been a point where it was a little bit about, you know, you can do things faster if you raise investment?
That was kind of eased to having that that buffer.
Has there ever been a point where you've not been able to do something you desperately
wanted to be able to do because you didn't have that kind of additional buffer?
I mean, because we've grown it. So we also existed in a different time, I think, you know, we started in 2001.
You know, now, you know, it's a very different world.
So now if you've got an idea and it's not successful in the first six months, it's a failure or somebody else will do it with more money or whatever.
You know,
we had eight years of building a brand around an approach before anyone really cared what we were doing outside of like a very small community.
And, and that, you know, that was significantly advantageous for us because as people discovered who we were,
we'd had this long legacy of doing things a certain way.
But it wasn't so much about, you know, there was a specific project that we couldn't do or something like that.
I think it was less about the the financial aspect and maybe the skills aspect,
because obviously we've had to learn a lot just as we go, you know, made a ton of mistakes along the way and learnt from those things.
And you know, obviously you investors provide money, of course they do, but they also provide expertise and experience.
And by virtue of not engaging with those people in that way, then you're kind of cutting yourself off from that.
And, you know, we felt, you know, we've obviously we've done okay with it.
And but there's certainly things that we, you know, might have done differently had we known what we know now.
But I think it's no there's nothing, you know, majorly telling you that we might have got to stay.
We certainly would have got to places faster. You know, like I could hire 50 developers tomorrow and they'd all be full time busy start away.
So there's a ton of stuff that we want to do. We're really ambitious company.
You know, our roadmap for the next two, three years, you know, is really exciting and it would be great to do those things faster.
But equally, I'd rather kind of do them at our pace, do them in our way, and kind of retain the independence of of what we want to do.
Because some of the the best things are a lot of the best things that happen in our community, in our industry, from a place of independence.
And and that's something that we that we want to support. Yeah.
So I'm going to, I'm kind of focussed on that for a second, so I'm picking up that last comment.
In terms of coming at things from a place of independence. What what drove you to tell this particular story that's in evolving?
Evolve. Why was it important to you to tell that story and kind of how did you talk us through the business side of things?
How did you find it? How did you kind of create it, etc.?
So for me, I think I'm always there are a lot of things which it maybe goes back to a comment
that I heard that when you come across like different stories that break your heart,
you should perhaps be the person that does something about it because you might be the only one that cares about the problem in the way that you do.
And you might you might have there any set of skills that can fix it the way that you could.
And for me, I kept hearing there are a lot of stories in South Africa about how women are attacked.
And the same applies to Kenya, where my partner is from Shreveport.
And we were like, well, we see this big problem and we see this interesting myth as well,
because Sharifa came across it in a play when she was in New York, while she's been in New York.
And we were like, Well, how about we actually try to create a social movement around this piece in order to get some change in that in that space?
We've been working on the project for the last year and a half, and we're now at the stage where there was like an initial prototype.
But now we're moving on to storyboarding the final, the final, the final production piece.
We were actually supposed to be doing it in two weeks, but I think they're moving that exercise out.
And we're going to be premiering like actually like Sundance Film Festival in 2020, which is going to be really exciting.
Congratulations. Well, we'll get there for funding.
You know, Evolve or Evolve has been an interesting experience.
We're lucky to be partnered with Atlas five, which is probably like the world's biggest or best VR production studio in the world.
We have Anton Carroll, who is like we call him Goddard, who manages like everything, and he's our producer in terms of getting money.
One of my biggest lessons for this year has been how to actually consider financing for films I did not know.
I mean, like Sharif and I are co-creators on this piece. We know nothing about the film industry here at least requires like a theatre background.
I'm a techie, but it's been a learning experience.
Just, you know, the film industry kind of works the same as the VC industry does.
People come, you come up with your own pitch deck and you walk up and they decide, Well, we've looked at your pitch deck, but we just like your team.
So we're just going to give you money however, however much we feel like we're going to give you.
And I have issues with the industry for that reason, but what I realised is that we can actually structure the film with an impact investing focus.
That was actually something that I've now learnt in the business program that you could perhaps have impact returns.
We can actually set metrics that we're trying to create because it's a social impact film in order to generate revenue like that.
So we're actually looking at alternative means to do that because we're looking for slower capital.
We have a distribution plan that is actually quite interesting for the film because
VR is actually virtual reality is actually quite exclusionary when you look at it.
I mean, like, is the film just going to be shown at film festivals and you guys don't get to see it if we try to take it to Kenya or to South Africa,
how does that look like? So with in mind of creating art for a broader audience, we obviously need a lot more financing to do that.
So we're still in the fundraising process. We have managed to raise quite a bit now to get the initial storyboard and concept out and then
we'll be continuing on to carry on fundraising during while we are making the rest of the piece.
And why was it important to you to make it in VR? So there's many different ways of telling the story.
We do consider, you know, so how we think of virtual reality is how do we tell the story using the best tool?
You don't use the technology to guide your choice for virtual reality.
But when we discovered that there's something amazing about being the tree,
when you see this character go on this like journey in it as a very powerful piece, we thought that there was something very special there.
So originally it was a 360 degree piece,
but now there's going to be kind of like CGI live action elements which are trying to engage you as the viewer in there.
It's important for us because we're trying to create an experience where you are
fundamentally changed by what you've seen and what you've experienced in that piece,
and then you consider other different perspectives in it.
So that's why virtual reality was then the option we decided to explore in this many different ways.
Obviously, while being part of the program, we've had technology for Impact,
the self-driven course that we decided to, you know, get the business school to create for us.
And listening to Mel Slater, one of our guest speakers, come in and he talks about embodiment for art,
where you get to put yourself in other genders or other races to experience things.
Virtuality is a very powerful tool to get us to convert perspectives.
Obviously, we have to work around the limitations of it because, you know, 2D, a YouTube video is much easier.
But we think that we can create a more powerful experience using virtual reality.
So there's a couple of things you've you've drawn out that which I think are really interesting to kind of compare and contrast with resident advisor.
And one is the conversation we were having earlier about what is the right content for the right story to tell.
And some of your articles are, you know, 10,000 words long.
And then you have this reputation of being very kind of critical, very fact based.
And certainly when I think about music and my music experiences, I don't necessarily think of them as super base based.
And a lot of the content I now think about when it comes to music of kind of short form Instagram stories.
And it may be that in the moment, but it's, it's very subjective.
It's it's kind of what's going on. So why did you choose to have this very journalistic attitude to something which where the rest of
the world is going towards a more of a kind of content creation way of approaching the subject?
Yeah, good question. I mean, first and foremost, like we're deeply passionate about great journalism and longform journalism,
especially so from the very beginning of something that we wanted to support and and we'll always continue to do so.
But I think the the context and how you use technology to tell stories is something that will become increasingly important over the next few years.
And it's I think it's you know, it's easy to think our technology allows for,
you know, easier distribution and better storytelling and all of this stuff.
But it's important to remember that your readers expectations will change at the same time and often ahead of the pace that you can move.
So it's it's kind of trying to balance those things and really ensure that you're set up in a
way that allows you to utilise the latest technology to tell stories in the most compelling way.
But the way that you present the stories now needs to be as compelling as the story themselves.
So it's to be successful and in and out.
And so some of those features that you reference, you know, where they are 10,000 words, you know, oral histories of various things over the years is,
you know, we just felt that by virtue of the fact that they're legacy pieces and they will hopefully exist forever.
We kind of wanted them to be exhaustive and for them to, you know,
for us to interview 50 or 100 people to get different perspectives on that particular subject matter was really important to us
to arguably present the most compelling piece on something that is fundamental to our industry and our community and will be,
you know, 50 years down the line. So we didn't it's not about like the here and now.
It's about creating something that is factually based, that is exhaustive, that is super deep.
On the flip side of that, you know, we'll also put together like a best new releases playlist on Spotify, right?
So someone that wants to discover music in a different way.
And, you know,
one of the things that one of our big focuses as a as a media company over the next few years is is kind of modernising music discovery.
And but that doesn't mean just all of a sudden just move everything to, you know, just being able to one sentence, you know, this is a bang.
I listen to it. It's you know, it's also, you know, combining that stuff.
So, you know, a young kid from, you know, China or Norway or Argentina or whatever can come to our and they know they like electronic music,
but they're not quite sure what they like. But we can kind of lead them down the rabbit hole a little bit.
You know, you like house music, read like this and and do that in a way that's in keeping with the way they're used to listening to music,
which is literally, you know, on a streaming platform, bang from this to this to this.
Right. And we need to evolve the platform to help them on their musical their journey of musical discovery, but equally like longform journalism.
And, you know, the deeper the better, in my opinion, has a place and always will have a place in the media.
And so and maybe they'll only come to that like a few years later, but once they've worked out,
they like house music and they like different artists, then maybe they want to find out where house music comes from.
So, well, we can tell you and we can tell you in a piece that we may have written seven years ago that's was as relevant today as it was then.
Right. One thing that's interesting about your journey and can you touch on a couple of times
in that is you started off in Sydney writing about what was happening in your place.
You then kind of went global and now through kind of the listings and the ticketing platform,
you'll bring people back down into that place and you have teams kind of around the world connecting people to face.
And this also kind of relates to to your website and in particular in Johannesburg.
And one thing I find really interesting in your you have these great values which you shared with me.
And the final one is we're always. Front left and always share our water which is something which MBAs this week.
It's kind of the talk to me a bit about what it means to be always front left.
Yeah, sure. So front left is in reference to the dance floor and being front left in front of one of the main speaker stacks.
And essentially that's riffing off the fact that our community is is very level.
And by that I mean, it's not uncommon to be at a festival or be an event and see the biggest artist that's performing at that event,
being on the dance floor with some kid that's just going on his first night out
with the people that just clocked off the bar with the sound engineer or whatever.
It's, you know, it's a community of like minded people, which is there isn't this kind of like elite hierarchy.
And so it's kind of just a reminder for that for us, like by virtue of what we do,
you know, obviously we could be anywhere at a festival or in a club.
You know, we could be backstage or we could be in the green room or we could be just like sitting by the bar, having a drink.
But we're like, no, like, you know, we're, we're part of this as it's like on as passionate about electronic music now as I was in 2001.
And, you know, I want us to always consider that and I want us to always remember to be on the dance floor as part of the community.
I think the moment you you know, it's one thing to kind of to build an online community,
but you need to be you need to be part of that community specifically.
You can't be critiquing it or trying to support it from afar.
You need to be buried into it and you need to be adding value to it and supporting it.
Not, you know, not seeing it as an opportunity for commercial benefit and extracting value from it.
You need to kind of look at it the other way. Right? And that's kind of a reminder to do that.
So when when we go out into the world and and start thinking about how we build our businesses,
and there are sort of two things which you seem to really embody, which we've been learning about this year.
One is this kind of idea of purpose and integrity in business. And that seems to be something which your community,
where he responds to in your authenticity and and your integrity and in what you write and the way you act.
And the other is the idea that, you know, we've just been discussing a lot of what does the future of work look like,
how how do we build companies when everything is complete, decentralised?
That owner of says there are no physical places anymore and you seem to be building a business that is
not quite antithetical to both those things but is definitely not kind of fully going in that direction.
Do you think that that that what you're doing is the future or is kind of the last vestige of what was possible before?
Well, hopefully it's the future of where we want to keep it going from.
Okay. Well, essentially, we've hopefully it's the future in terms of the way that we're evolving our business,
the way that we allow people to engage with our content.
But we're essentially running an old school business model.
You know, at the end of the year, we need to earn a pound or a year or a dollar more than we spend.
Otherwise we don't have a business. And and that's not necessarily the norm nowadays in especially in the kind of the digital and the tech era.
So but it's the way that we wanted to do it. And I think so hopefully in a business sense, yeah, maybe we are old school in that regard,
but you know, that retains our independence and that's something that is really important to us.
So but from a kind of platform evolution point of view, you know, if, if we stay old school or even,
you know, begin to settle for like any any business now in any industry at the moment,
I think, you know, we've got this and, you know, we're at the top of our game or whatever, like the decline starts there.
And and that's something that I'm always instilling in in our staff and in our companies.
You know, we're fortunate that for many people, we're consider the leader in our field, and that's a great position to be in.
But we're only in that position because, you know,
we're accountable to ourselves to constantly keep challenging ourselves, constantly keep pushing ourselves,
and constantly keep evolving and making sure that the business is utilising the advancement
in technology to our benefit and to the benefit of our audience in the most meaningful way,
because there's 150 different options and ideas in terms of what you could do.
It's actually really important to know that, you know, 140 that you shouldn't do,
but the ten that'll make the most meaningful difference for you and your vision as a business point in that one.
So I get to have the last laugh with my parents because Resident Advisor was actually one of the founding value of
honesty and integrity in journalism was actually one of the founding principles for our website when we started.
So like I'm having a fangirl moment here as well and, and to my dad up there, we were working when we went out.
But I think in terms of building integrity and honesty into your work and stuff,
my brother and I had to make some very important decisions about which companies we received money from, which companies we decided to work on.
And it was based on like if. Eccleston says that we felt that they did.
And, you know, in some ways you do actually. Well, sometimes we lose out.
But for us, it was more important to have an ethical stand on what we reported.
I think that actually why the blog converted in 2013 to become more socially
focussed because we felt that that was in line with where we were moving together.
But, you know, I think it's just important to realise that as business leaders, honesty and integrity,
when you build those core values into your business, it might cost you certain opportunities.
But for you, you need to decide with what you're going to live with and what you will not.
So, yeah, thank you so much. Okay, so I'm just looking at the time and conscious that we are the last event of the day.
So I'm going to open up to the audience now for questions, and I hope that there are meant to be some mikes around.
Yeah, fantastic. So do you raise your hand? The questions will take questions for about 15 minutes and then I'll I'll finish this off.
So anyone in the audience.
Okay, I'm going to start down here.
The lady down here, it's not quite an MBA buzzword, but one of the recurring conversations we've had this year about the media echo chamber.
So I'd love to hear how you think about your work through the lens of that conversation,
including how you balance your mission and your business decisions,
which you've both spoken to in part, and then also how you think about reaching out to audiences that aren't your obvious target audience,
whether that's something that you specifically create content towards,
whether you're really trying to engage them or you're ignoring them in pursuit of
staying true to the people who really connect with your mission more naturally later.
Thank you. I can maybe try that one because we had three or four and I have been like an on a journey
with our like Sundance mentors and we had a very pivotal moment because we realised
we were trying to create a social impact film for Kenyan and South African people
and we hadn't consulted any South African and Kenyan people in the design process.
Yeah, and you know, I consider myself a design thinker really.
So that for me was very pivotal because you think that you have this, you know, idea,
this image of what you're trying to do and what change you're trying to create and you never think to engage other people.
That's way about echoing chamber comes up because we were just like passing ideas in between us and we're like, This is amazing, this is amazing.
And ever really saying, actually, I need to step outside and just ask if anyone would be interested in this.
So I think when you're considering that even though you know, you have a mission and for us it's to create change in the space,
you have to obviously engage the audiences that you're going to be working with.
It's a simple it's like it's common sense design, but we so often forget it when we have all these cool ideas.
I mean, it even made us at one point question virtuality as a medium,
but now we're trying to work around the challenges of it because we still consider it's a very impactful experience for you.
But yeah, I think that for us was the biggest lesson is that, you know, to stop the echoing chamber,
go and listen to other perspectives, go and read articles that make you uncomfortable.
Go and listen to other people's opinions that you definitely don't agree with in order to understand the problem
so much greater and to understand them because they're the ones that have to receive the message in the end.
And I mean, if you have three and a half million visitors a month, they are still often described as a niche.
How do you kind of speak to people outside of that? Yeah, I think it's a really good question.
And I think a simple solution is hire the people that you want to engage.
So don't just like it's easy. And we've been guilty of it at times, certainly as well.
You're making a lot of assumptions about what, you know,
a certain demographic wants or a certain region wants or a certain set of people or a scene however you like,
you know, and you make these assumptions.
But, you know, there's a famous saying about assumptions and it's right, you know, and so you need to you know, you need to make sure that,
you know, if you want a more diverse audience or if you want a younger audience or whatever, then you need to hire younger people.
You need to hire people from diverse backgrounds and to make sure that those those
people in those scenes and those points of view of being represented internally,
and then you're making those decisions from a very genuine place rather than
just assuming what people want based on your certain set of experiences also.
Okay, so there are a couple of others. It will go up that and then buy them.
And then the next question for you, you describe your community as being on a level and you're from left.
And so the sort of the rising deejay superstar can be dancing with the young kid or the guy who handles tickets or whatever it is you also described,
do you have an old school business model? So how does the loss of the equality in your community translate into your your business?
So it's very much a community driven business.
What kind of hierarchical structure is and does it does it sort of look similar or feel similar to the community, which is all on the level?
I hope. I mean, I'll speak on behalf of my staff. I hope.
Hopefully, yes. You know, we you know, the term kind of family gets a bit overused in business, but I like to think of us that way.
You know, we have you know, we have a prerequisite to work at resident advisor, which is you have to be passionate about electronic music.
So it doesn't matter if you're the CFO or the office junior or whatever, you need that single passion point and that makes it harder for that college.
How do you interview for that? Do you kind of go through this process like let's.
Well, I don't give away all the things. Right.
But it's, you know, and certainly for developers and things like that,
it it makes it harder to hire them because there's less developers than there are jobs for that.
So, you know, we take an already tight kind of talent pool and we shrink it down even more so.
But it means once you get these people in the building, they they can pass the what I call like the long flight haul the long haul flight test,
which is, you know, that you can sit next to anyone in the company at any level for a flight from London to Australia.
And and, you know, you'd have at least one thing to talk about.
And, and that single kind of passion point is a really powerful thing for, for a business.
And so it means that you're on a level to your point, like with someone who's just started at whatever level they are.
You can talk about music, you can talk about festivals, you like whatever it may be.
And and it's one of the things I think that's really kind of given us a strong internal culture is that single passion point.
And we've never been a particularly hierarchical organisation or or anything like that.
So I'd like to think that the business reflects the dance floor. It's a great phrase.
So we're going to go back there. So this is been an amazing juxtaposition of two really passionate people who are both artists,
both creating and influencing communities, but doing it with two totally different tools.
And we've spent a lot of time this year reinforcing thinking fast and slow.
And this notion of, you know, there's there's one part of our brains that is influenced by ration and facts and information.
So you've definitely got that position represented here,
creating these 10,000 word exposes from which people can excerpt facts to use to to support their arguments.
And then you have the other part of your brain in the way that it makes decisions, which is that you have a visceral,
emotional response to something, and then you just find the information that backs that up.
So it's really fascinating to have both of you on the stage, and I'd kind of like to hear about why you chose to use the particular tool that you use.
And I'd like to hear you ask each other a question that doesn't start a whole second podcast going to get us.
I Why did you choose to use long form? Can I build on that?
I know I'm not meant to be asking questions now, but hey, it's my podcast, so I wanted to say that all season long.
If only it was the first time I said that the you spoken a couple of times about your passion for journalism specifically,
so I'm really interested to understand where that comes from. Yeah, I mean, I don't know where it comes from per se, but I, you know,
I just I really admire great writing, you know, especially in the non-fiction space.
But, you know, I'm an avid subscriber to The New Yorker and, you know, I but because mainly because of the journalism, like,
I know that it doesn't matter if the article's about lemonade, it'll be the best article that's ever been written about lemonade.
And and I will as much appreciate the, the fascinating story of which there are as well as the quality of the writing.
And so I wanted to create a platform that could support the best journalists in electronic music who I believe write for us,
but they write for us because we've got the best distribution platform for them.
And, you know, we've got incredible editors that can make their work, you know, really shine.
And so hopefully, as it's a it's the most viable platform for the best journalists within the art form to showcase their work.
And that's something that we always wanted to provide basically, and hopefully always will.
Yeah. So I guess I can maybe speak to tier two parts with our friends.
We focussed heavily on written pieces and specifically with photojournalism.
So within the team, like all of us are all trained photographers now shooting different like concert photography.
But most importantly, when we were doing social documentary, we were all very good at that.
I think for us it was important because we saw it was member who we're creating content for and that, you know,
the times that we've seen like our friends evolve, we've also seen kind of like our audience evolve with the times.
So we were focussed heavily on the written pieces and photojournalism because that's what our audience wanted.
But you know, the way that our friends is moving now, we're creating a lot more of.
Video short form content because people are consuming a lot more of that.
It's been an interesting change for us because for us it's more important that the message gets across.
But I mean, like in terms of like, you know, bootstrapping and hiring your way through things and and trying to raise funds that way.
Learning how to do video journalism, which was never one of our core strength until we got team members that could do that was was a bit of a mission.
I think I did speak a bit about the choice for VR for for Evolve Revolve, which is more to create a very personal and connected experience.
I guess.
Additionally, on top of that, there are certain things you can do in virtual reality to engage the user, but you could never do in any other art form.
And one of the things that we're exploring for a film festival set up would be a mixed reality experience, where you're touched in the experience,
like maybe someone will give you a hug in the experience while you see someone reaching for you,
which could create a very different emotional take on the piece and think, okay, I think we probably have time for one more question.
So, I mean, in the audience. Yeah.
Oh, here. Go. Okay.
I don't know the worms, but there is a debate ongoing at the moment about whether it is the place for a platform to influence people.
So Facebook, for example, Google.
Same. Same. Same issue as the founder of the platform and clearly an opinionated one.
What's your view? I think you've got to look at the motives.
We we want to influence people. Of course we do. But we want to influence them positively.
And we want to you know, we essentially write about stuff that interests us and stuff that we believe in,
artists that we think are worth supporting and showcasing.
So, yes, we hope to influence our audience by introducing them to music and scenes and events that they might otherwise have discovered on their own,
but to enhance their life, to positively impact their existence on this planet.
Facebook, not so much. And so I think, you know, like, yes, platforms will you know, they will have a purpose to influence.
But you have to look at the motives of that purpose. And and that can obviously exist on a fairly wide scale.
Fantastic. Thank you both so much.
And I'd like to invite the audience just to join me in a round of applause, because I've really this.
So just to just to finish off this episode, we've been talking all morning about this place and what this place means to us.
And during during this conversation, we've also talked about place and what it means.
And when I arrived in Oxford, my dad gave me a book which is actually written about 100 years ago, is based in Oxford.
And it's about a girl who comes to Oxford and has adventures. And there's a wonderful description of this place, which I'd like to read.
Oxford That lotus land saps the willpower, the power of action.
But in doing so, it clarifies the mind, makes larger.
The vision gives above all that playful and caressing, suave ity of manner, which comes of a conviction that nothing matters except ideas.
If the colleges could be transferred to the dry embracing top of somehow, doubtless they would be more evident and useful to the nation.
But let us be glad there is no engineer or enchanter to compass that task.
I would like to have the rest of England subside into the sea, then have Oxford set on a salubrious level,
for there is nothing in England to be match with what lurks in the vapours of
these matters and in the shadows of these spires that mysterious and evil spirits.
The spirit of Oxford. Thanks wearing on.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Feature Business Podcast brought to you by Savvy Business School.
This is the last episode in the current series of the podcast.
We started it this year to pursue and share some of the incredible conversations.
We were privileged enough to have during our year as MBAs in Oxford.
Sadly, a year is on the mend, but the podcast will continue.
A brand new team from the 2018 19 cohort will be taking over, and we're really looking forward to listening to what they do next in season two.
Please do subscribe in iTunes so you get the new episodes when they arrive.
A huge thank you to all our listeners from this season for your feedback and support.
It's been an absolute pleasure being your host for this inaugural season of the show.
So for the final time, the Future of Business podcast was created by Patrick Brady, Emily Michaelson and Paris.
Thank you for listening and goodbye. Although.