S5 Ep57: E57: Flexa Co-Founders - Molly Johnson-Jones and Maurice O'Brien

03/09/22 • 52 min

Success Is In The Mind - Hosted by Oliver Bruce and Hugo Tilmouth

After being diagnosed at 18 with an autoimmune disease, Molly Johnson-Jones was fired from her job in investment banking after requesting to work from home one day a week. Molly then met Maurice O’Brien on the dating app Hinge, and after five dates they decided to start a business together which would provide a platform for people like them who wanted more flexibility in their jobs. From this idea, Flexa was born. Flexa is a website which only allows companies with flexible working environments to advertise jobs on its jobs platform. Flexa has introduced a benchmarking index of hundreds of companies to measure their flexibility, and the most flexible of these get put on the ‘Flexa100’ list. Since its founding in 2019, over 1200 businesses have advertised jobs on the platform and the company manages 10 million transactions and $3bn of business a year. In this episode of Success Is In The Mind, Oliver Bruce asks, should you give away shares of the company in the early days when you don’t have the cash? How do you start a business with someone you’ve just started dating? And has the traditional working week been replaced completely by a new world of remote working? Watch the best bits here - https://bit.ly/3sQBUwa
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S5 Ep56: E56: HYBR Founder - Hannah Chappatte - Student housing, winning funding, and the hustle culture

From an early age, Hannah Chappatte was surrounded by successful family members, but her initial confidence took a knock when her teachers told her she had dyslexia. Despite this, she went on the secure As and A*s across the board in her A-Levels, before spending a globe-hopping year working in intern roles in various companies around the world. While studying English Literature and Language in Bristol, Hannah spotted a huge gap in the market for a platform that would provide reputable student accommodation, as well as help and support to students renting from private landlords in the tricky and often murky world of student housing. Thus in 2019 HYBR was born, and Hannah quickly won several competitions which gave her the initial seed funding she needed to get HYBR off the ground. Fast forward to 2022, and HYBR has hundreds of properties listed in 8 cities across the UK, and with a fresh round of funding that garnered £600k, it’s only up from here for HYBR. In this episode of Success Is In The Mind, Oliver Bruce asks - how do you go it alone as a founder of a company fresh out of university? How do you build a middle ground between students and landlords who mistrust one another? And who can you turn to for support when you’re in the lonely position of founder?
For more exclusive content visit Oliver's YouTube - https://bit.ly/32eboTi Sponsor - Capsule Insurance Produced by: PinPoint Media

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S5 Ep58: E58: Hicks & Brown Co-Founders - Alice Leet-Cook and Rosie Turner

Growing up on a farm in rural Suffolk, sisters Alice and Rosie never pictured a career in the fashion industry. After they both headed off to uni, they both started working the corporate life in London, and when a jacket made by their mother got a hugely positive response at a wedding, they decided to start Hicks & Brown together. Whilst originally focused on selling jackets at events, the sisters soon realised that although the jackets weren’t selling out, the hats were a huge hit, selling out every time. This spurred them to pivot to focusing on the hats, and when Kate Middleton was pictured wearing a Hicks & Brown Suffolk fedora in 2020, the brand shot to fame overnight, taking orders from royal fans across the globe. In less than two weeks, sales from the ‘Kate hat’ meant that they had already surpassed their turnover for the previous year. In this week’s episode of Success Is In The Mind, Oliver Bruce asks, how do you get a fashion brand off the ground with little to no money? How important are big events to brands like Hicks & Brown? Just how powerful is the ‘Kate Effect’, and how did the sisters capitalise on the unexpected opportunity? Watch the best bits here - LINK Listen to the full podcast – https://link.chtbl.com/lsgRUCSI For more exclusive content visit Oliver's YouTube - https://bit.ly/32eboTi Sponsor - Capsule Insurance Produced by: PinPoint Media