Taking Big Risks: How David Jones Built a Billion-Dollar Brand Against All Odds

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So let's dive in. Your career will disappoint you at some point.
Pretty much everybody will have a failure, will get fired. It's going to happen.
So if you make that the defining point of your life, you're not going to have a great time. When you make the leap to go set your own thing up,

it's like, if it doesn't work out,

you've learned a ton.

And you can always go back to that old world

and find a job in it if you want to.

If you're given two choices in life,

always pick the one that's a better story.

If it doesn't work out,

it's still gonna be so much more fun. This story today, when I first came and read it, I was actually blown away.
David Jones here is the founder of Brandtech, a Gen AI marketing platform, which will blow your mind. They just raised $115 million on a valuation of $4 billion.
And by the way, back in 2015, when he just started, he raised $300 million to do various acquisitions and investments to do marketing better, faster, cheaper. Isn't that what we all want? He's also a founder of One Young World.
You have a lot of amazing stories. But David, were you always fascinated by marketing? How did this all start? No, I was not.
If you'd asked me age 18, I could do anything or be anything in the world. It would either have been a professional rugby player or a professional tennis player.
My life was sport back there. Marketing I got into by accident.
Oh my goodness. Tell me more.
So from sport, what got you into the corporations world? Because again, you got to CEO of a marketing company pretty early age. But how did that all happen? Literally, my life was sport.
I'd go and play tennis tournaments around the world, play a lot of rugby, and decided I should probably have some kind of academic qualification. So I signed up for what was the European Union's, EU's first EU-sponsored business degree, which sent me off to Germany to business school, was in business school there, learned fluent German, had to do my exams in German for three years, which was, again, a kind of a big wake-up call.
But as part of that, we had people who would come in and talk at business school. And one of them came along and talked about advertising agencies and planning.
And it was super interesting. And I decided I should probably go and do an internship in an ad agency.
I had to do like a six-month internship, and I'd planned it all so that I could leave for a tennis tournament, spend six months playing tennis in the US, and get back and start on that date. And I get my six months in, and in fact, the internship that I'd lined up fell through.
And the professor, the dean of the business school, was not too happy. Got a very stroppy letter from him saying he couldn't believe I was leaving for a tennis tournament without having secured a fine year internship.
And back then, email wasn't the thing. So I just picked up the phone, called a whole bunch of ad agencies, pretended to several of them that I was the marketing director of Coca-Cola and asked to speak to their CEO as I was running a pitch.
And everyone put me through. And then 50% of the

people I spoke to were like, you're a complete time waste. You'll never get a job in this industry.
And 50% were like, that's quite smart. I'm obviously not going to see you, but I'll put you in touch with the person who runs our internship program.
And long story short, landed on an internship in advertising and kind of never looked back. So take me back to that moment.

What made you have the courage or the idea? Advertising is a lot about rising above the noise, right? There's a lot of noise in the system. And you could see that a few decades ago to understand that you need to get through.
And the biggest thing is, how do I open the door? How did you even get the idea? And how did you have the courage? I think there's a thread all about understanding people. And actually, that was what fascinated me about the person who came.
He was a head of planning from an agency called BMP in the UK, who'd kind of invented strategic planning and just talking about people and what motivated people and how you change people's behavior. That was the first piece, which I just thought, this is really interesting because I'm fascinated by people and what makes them tick and really into creativity.
And it was a golden era. UK advertising back then was pretty amazing.
TV advertising back then, you know, it was a very different world. It was sort of what's going on in the world of tech and Gen AI today is exactly what was going on in TV back then.
Then I was like, hey, I want to go on this tennis tournament. I don't really have time to wait for lots of replies.
What's the fastest way of doing it? We just call people, but are they really going to listen to someone saying, hey, I'm a student. I'd like an internship.
No, but if you pretend that you're a big client and you're going to do a pitch, you'll get through to anyone. And then, you know, from then on, it's just, it's a bit of a lottery as to what happens.
John Maxwell said it beautifully. He talks about the people pile.
And I think, you know, a lot of it is understanding people and how do you rise above the noise.

That is incredible to hear. You find this internship.
How from that, in 2005, you became a really, really young CEO of a global company, Havas. Again, how did that happen? Also, how do you adapt to such a big, big role? I mean, that's hard.
There's another thread, which is just about learning from different countries and cultures. And also many of the things I did early on in my career were potentially stupid moves because you're stepping out of something that is what you should be doing.
And the fast version ended up because I spoke German getting a crazy amount of responsibility on a pitch because at the time, no one in the UK really cared about pan-European advertising. And I thought international and global was the future.
So I pitched with the CEO and the MD. I presented to Henkel's worldwide board when I was 21 and we ended up winning the business.
So they asked me to stay on. But firstly, the fact that I'd lived and worked in Germany, that I understood German culture, that I spoke German, gave me a level of responsibility that I would never have had if I'd just been the English intern speaking English.
And then that led to me wanting my next move. And I moved out to Paris to work at J.
Walsh Thompson. And I didn't speak French.
And I had a really tough time for a year or so, but then I learned fluent French and French culture. And all of those things just add to your learning and knowledge and understanding, both in terms of cultures and in terms of doing business in different ways, in terms of particularly if you come from the US or the UK, where you're usually used to sitting at the center thinking, you know how the world is.
And actually, no, you don't. So it's good to be on that.
And then the language piece. I mean, I ended up CEO of a French publicly listed company.
In fact, the only British CEO of a French publicly listed company at the time.

I'd never been able to do that without speaking French, forget any of the other things. So there

was that sort of journey that led me down an international path. But also my wife and I,

we met and we were super interested about not just being in London or Paris. And we decided

we would either go and live in. We identified three places that had great ad industries and that were really good places to go and live, which were Buenos Aires, Cape Town, and Sydney.
We started off going down to Sydney. Both of us got jobs down there.
I arrived down there in 1998. And the piece about taking, you know, when I moved to Paris, I took a salary cut and moved to a more junior role than I'd been doing in the UK.
And many people go, that's really dumb. But actually, it was the thing that caused the big leapfrog later on.
I was kind of heir apparent to be the next MD president at Abbot Mead Vickers BBO in the UK. I was the youngest board director there.
I was running British Telecom, which at the time was the biggest account in Britain. And I left all of that to go and work at an ad agency in Sydney called URSCG.
But it was that that allowed me to launch Australia's first ever digital agency. We were booking at 1.40% of all online media in Australia.
We were four years in a row digital agency of the year. I became the inaugural chairman of the Australian Digital Advertising Association.
And that really put me on the map because I got tech and digital in the global company. And so all of these things sort of at the time, you don't necessarily do them because you think it's going to lead somewhere.
But as you connect the dots back, many of the things that at the time seem like, why would you leave Britain's biggest and best ad agency where you're in the pole position to go and work at some kind of small agency in Australia that didn't have the best reputation at the time? And it's like, well, actually, if I hadn't done that, I'd never have ended up. So from then,

I ended up being asked to do in New York what I'd done in Sydney. So moved to New York age sort of 36, 37.
We turned the business around in 12 months. And a year later, an activist investor took over Havas and said, would you like to be the global CEO of the main ad agency? So I think I was like 37, global CEO.

I went from CEO of Australia in 2002 to global CEO in 2005. I'm hearing that you're just not afraid, or maybe you're afraid, but you do it anyway, right? Because different cultures, different countries, different people, that takes a lot.
But then you're also, you're not afraid of going back in order to leapfrog forward. What do you think went in your head? Did you know that you're taking a risk? Did you just see the future? Because again, marketing and tech is exactly where you are now.
This is your secret sauce. But back then, what made you do this move? One is about the different roles and what you do.
And I think a healthy philosophy is just to go, well, what's the worst possible thing that can happen? Ironically, I sort of made up how good my French was when I got offered the job in Paris, because I thought they were going to send me to Germany. And when they said, I'm like, they're going to tell me they want me to go to Frankfurt, and I'm going to say, I don't want to live in Germany.
And when they said, we'd like to send you to Paris, I'm like, amazing. And then I go, shit, it says my French is fluent.
And it isn't. But you just kind of go, look, I'm going to get there.
And either three months in, I'm going to get fired because my French isn't good enough. Or I'll kind of bundle through and it will work out and it's fine.
And I think with all these things, you just go like, well, what, what's the worst case scenario? I mean, even when I set the company up today, but what's the worst case scenario? I set it up. It's a failure.
I can go back and get another big job in advertising. It's fine.
And I think often people are too concerned about what could go wrong. Now, clearly you don't want to get into having a CV where you've done 14 jobs in 14 years.
But I think if you've been on a career path where you've clearly demonstrated that you're pretty good at something and not just held down a job but being promoted, you can afford to make mistakes. And so each time it was, A, what's the worst case that can happen, but also B, the fact that life is bigger than work.
My wife and I had the four years we spent in Australia with four of the greatest years of our life. They're amazing.
I wouldn't give that up for anything. And even if it hadn't worked out from a career perspective, the same with my time in Germany, my time in Paris, they were amazing.
So I think don't just think career as well, because often your career will disappoint you at some point. Pretty much everybody will have a failure, will get fired.
It's going to happen. So if you make that the defining point of your life, you're not going to have a great time.
And then when it comes to the tech side, I just think I'm fascinated going back to human behavior. We kind of always make the same mistakes.
A new technology comes along and everyone goes, well, that'll never be a thing, will it? You know, that's crap. And we've always done this.
And I literally remember, we launched Australia's first internet agency. And it's hard to imagine this now, but people are like, why are you doing this? You're not a tech company.
Now, back in 98, a tech company wasn't cool. Like a tech company was, you know, Xerox, IBM, photocopier sales.
And back then, it took forever to download a photo if you were lucky enough to be able to connect your computer to a line in the wall.

And none of us thought that you would ever watch a video, not forget a laptop on a desktop.

And now you fast forward to today.

And if you can't live stream your favorite Netflix series at 40,000 feet over the Atlantic,

you're really pissed off on your mobile phone.

But I think we always make that mistake is we think how it is now is how it's always

been.

Thank you. thousand feet over the Atlantic, you're really pissed off on your mobile phone.
But I think we always make that mistake, is we think how it is now is how it's always been, and how it is now is how it always will be. So we cannot comprehend anymore a world without our mobile phones.
We cannot remember, even those who actually were in that world, there was ever a time when our entire lives couldn't function. But we also can't comprehend a time where we may not have those anymore because there may be something way better that replaces them.
And I think we're doing it again. So one of the other parts, when I was at Havas, I thought the creator economy was going to be very big.
So back in about 2010, 11, I thought, what's one of the best ways of disrupting Havas and making it super fit for the future? I'll acquire the world's first and number one creator economy company. It's a company called Vixen Spoils, founded by a genius called John Windsor.
And it's actually one of Harvard's best-selling case studies. But the reason it's been such a successful case study at Harvard is because we were so unsuccessful.
So it's not a successful case study telling the story of how successful we are. It basically tells how unsuccessful we were.
And the reason we were unsuccessful, and it's fairly incomprehensible now, is that despite the fact that my shareholder investor thought that buying a creator economy company was a great idea, and my clients adored it, they thought this was fantastic, most people in the organization were like, well, you're mad. We make our money.
We have a small creative department of highly expensive, talented people. And that's how we make all of our money.
And how can we possibly say that anyone can come up with an idea? And how can we possibly say that anyone can create? And so the body kind of rejected the implant and some great lessons through that. And obviously, the creator economy has gone on to be what it is.
There's 60 million people who make a living in it. But we are doing exactly the same thing with AI and machine-generated content.
Machines can't create good content. They're terrible.
Look at this. And he's like, no, we've been through this movie once before, many, many times.
I mean, when the Palm Pilot and the Newton came out, they were terrible and a bit of a waste of time. And we all unpacked them, played with them, put them back on the shelf.
And then somebody invented the iPhone. That's been quite good.
And I've always, without ever trying to be naive about what's going to be big and successful, I've always gone, A, if this improves at the rate with which it probably can, do I believe that most human beings will find this a great, interesting, and cool thing to do? And if they do, then it's probably worth being really interested. And that's why we started investing in AI back in 2015.
I think one of the favorite quotes that I heard you say at some point is that I think something along the line is the mobile phone, which is so true, right? Made every person into a content creator, but generative AI made every person into an advertising agency or something along these lines, right, David? When I heard you say that, I was just like, it's just an incredible way to see this. And now it all so aligned with brand tech and what you guys are creating, which I want to go into.
But one thing I just want to ask you, because you shared this incredible story, if you will, the difference between being at the top, like a CEO and number two, three, four, whatever it is, to me feels light years away. What does it take to adapt to such a big role? I think one of the really important things and one of the great things you learn about playing team sports and particularly a team sport like rugby is the importance of team and the importance of different skill sets.
And in fact, one of my partners, Emma, early on said, it's amazing you have such different people. And I said, well, yeah, because I know I'm good at, and I don't need someone else who can do that.
And I know what I'm not good at, and I need people who are good at that. So I think, I'm not sure it's light years away.
I think there are some people who would like to be the CEO, the leader. There are other people who would like to be the right hand to the CEO, the leader.
There are other people. And I think if you want to be the CEO and you want to be the leader, be careful what you wish for.
Might sound great, but suddenly your neck is on the block, which if you've got a certain type of personality is fine. And if you have another, you might not enjoy that.
But I also, I think people just kind of say to themselves, what do you want to be the founder, the leader, the CEO? And then honestly, I think if you do, if you get your head down and just work really hard, you'll get noticed or you'll get noticed by the right companies. I mean, I think over the years you heard more and more people, you know, I think Lindsay Owen Jones was one of them, the sort of very famous L'Oreal CEO back in the day when he was asked why he was so successful.
He just said, I kept showing up. I kept saying yes.
And I kept working hard. And it's actually not that much more complicated than that.
I mean, honestly, if I sort of look back on the last 20, 30 years, I have worked like crazy. There's a great video.
Kobe Bryant tells the story of how we would get up way earlier than everyone else. We could go to the gym twice every day so that if everyone else was doing two hours in the gym, he was doing four after 10 years, he'd like done twice as much.
I think it's quite true around business. If you work twice as hard as everyone else, you'll get on faster, you'll learn more, you'll do better.
From then on, I think, trust your own judgment and your own gut, because by the time you become the global CEO, there are way too many people around you who want to tell you what they think you want to hear. And what becomes really, really valuable, and Kate Robertson, my co-founder of One Young World, has been this to me for my entire career, is when you've said a dumb thing or got off stage and it actually hasn't been one of your vintage moments, instead of going, that was amazing, they go, you know, that was shit, and I'd never say that again.
That's way more valuable than the 80% of the people telling you, you're just incredible. And so I think surrounding yourself with people who will be honest, but at the end of the day, you've got to trust your own judgment.
I think if I take the entire journey of the Brandtech group, everybody who I knew who was smart and senior in finance told me it was impossible to raise $300 million with a PowerPoint. Impossible.
And these are really, really talented senior people in big organizations. Fortunately, I didn't listen.
So take me on that journey, David, because I would also assume that it's impossible. Tell me a little bit.
you're on this journey, you see this need,

but between that and raising 300 million, there's a big gap. So take me on this journey for a second.
Where are we? 2015, roughly? 2014, yeah. So I was in my gardening leave year and I started raising in 2015.
I was running a big, successful holding company, but I could see the frustration from my clients in that they wanted a new model. So I could see a huge need for it.
And I could also see just from that case study I told you about that it's really hard and really complex to change

big legacy businesses.

They're very good at what they do.

But if you look back in history, you can't find a single example of where the big incumbent

is the market leader post the revolution.

It just never happens.

Because all of the things that made them very successful in that world are all of the things

that make it really complicated to lead in the next world.

I think I just had an absolute belief that not only did clients want a new model, but I knew how to build that. But the problem was, if you were solving the issue for the world's global clients, there's no point in being three of us in a loft in Soho, New York, because adding another company to the 10,000 they're already working with, you're part of the problem, not part of the solution.
So the reason for raising the money is I wanted to acquire businesses that solved our clients' biggest pain points, that were tech or tech-enabled. So the start point was, say, we'll never buy ad agencies or traditional ad agencies.
We'll buy tech or tech-enabled companies that solve our clients' biggest pain points and put them together at global scale. We'll have technology and what we called machine-generated content and AI as a founding vertical.
And we launched saying, look, we think you can do all marketing better, faster, and cheaper using technology. And back then, no one understood what it meant.
But the good news was no one else was trying to do it. Today, everybody understands what it means, but everyone else is trying to do it too.
But I think it really just came from a passionate belief that this business needed to exist. But the only way that I can deliver it is to raise the money to scale it fast.
Because what we wanted to do was solve the problem for the world's biggest global brands. And look, I think if you trace back every entrepreneur, the way we like to think about it is that we look at every entrepreneurial story and someone had a really obvious idea, it was really easy to execute, It worked brilliantly and everybody always knew it would all the time.
The truth is 99% of people, probably even more like 99.5, will tell you either your idea is shit or terrible and will give you all the reasons it won't work. Then no one will give you money for it.
We can talk about the 300 million we raised. We can also talk about all the meetings we had where people thought we were totally stupid and almost threw us out of the room.
And I think that's something you don't need 100% of people to think your idea is good. We had like six investors who thought, this is really interesting.
And I think we tell the stories as if it was easy. It's really hard.
And probably the hardest thing, it's not the hard work. It's just that you're constantly in the face of people basically telling you, you can't imagine how many times I heard there wasn't a need for the business we were building.
You know, there's all these big global holding companies. Why would a client? And then within a few years, we worked with the world's top 10 global advertisers, 49 in the top 100 billion dollars in revenue, grown over 20% organically every year since launch.
So, oh, actually, there was a need for it after all. And suddenly, you know, we're sort of, fortunately, quite a long way ahead in the Gen AI space because, again, we were doing that back when people were like, well, why would you buy a Gen AI company? And then obviously, thank God we did.
Everybody understands now. Hey, I'm pausing here for a second.
I hope you're enjoying this amazing conversation. Don't forget to subscribe and download.
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Now back to the show. Do you think the reason you had the courage, because again, the rejections is what kills more dreams than anything, right? I mean, it's the rejection, it's the fear, it's the, you heard too many no's and now you're starting to wobble yourself.
Is it because you've been, I mean, you've been in marketing and advertisement, you knew the world so well. Is it that knowledge of the problem that just made you so, that level of conviction of I going to find, it's basically who is going to be on board versus if I going to find it.
I just sat there and thought, I know there's a huge opportunity for this because basically all of my clients are saying, this is what they want. I mean, they would say, look, we don't want 300 ad agencies around making TV commercials for us.
I was sitting there going, actually, I don't want the future of my career to be recommending to my clients what I wouldn't do if I were them. Because when they go, actually, can we just do this with 10 out of agencies? Yeah, you could.
Yeah. But then suddenly your revenue goes.
So I'd much rather be on the end of solving their problem rather than trying to convince them they're wrong when you know they're right. And so I was absolutely confident

about what they were looking for and what they needed. And I was pretty confident in my ability to build it.
But I was probably even more worried that someone else was going to do it. I'd always wanted to have my own business.
I had a fabulous 15 years at Havas. I loved it.
Great place to be. Great people.
But every time I was getting a bit restless, you know

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I'm to have my own business. I had a fabulous 15 years at Havas.
I loved it. Great place to be.

Great people. But every time I was getting a bit restless, I went, oh, I've been four years CEO of Osh, oh, go run Global, oh, go run New York, oh, run this.
So every time I got a bit restless, there was a new thing to do. And then obviously I ended up at the top gig, so there wasn't a new thing to do.
But I kind of was sitting there going, someone's going to do this. I'll be so pissed off if I'm sitting there five years from now going, could it be me?

And then at the end of the day, going back to it, if it doesn't work, it's not the end of the world, you know, you'll have learned a ton.

You leave a big job.

And often people would say to me, I know, because I'd fly like crazy.

So I was a Brit running a French business from New York. So I basically commuted to Paris from New York, which sounds glamorous, but it isn't because you spend your life in planes.
I was in Paris at least every two weeks, often once a week, add side trips to Asia, Latin America, go to the West Coast. People would often say, guard your life.
I was like, no, I've got a choice. You know, like most people can't choose to be the global CEO of a big company.
I can choose not to be. So if ever I feel sorry for myself, it's easy to step away from it.
But likewise, when you make the leap to go set your own thing up, it's like if it doesn't work out, you've learned a ton. You've learned so much.
And you can always go back to that old world and find a job in it if you want to. Tell us a little bit about Brandtech.
You've had some acquisition, you invest in a lot of companies, and now you put in place a really interesting platform that combines branding and tech. So tell us a little bit about that, because I do want to also go into some of the impact things that you're doing, because again, you're all over.
So it's just incredible. But talk to us a little bit about brand tech.
Launched coming in 2015. And I'd always, I talked about the Australian piece.
I was a founder member of the Facebook client council and I sort of sat in meetings when they were tiny and no one thought they'd ever make any money. And so just watched the speed and scale of technology evolving.
And I just was convinced that you could create a better model where you use much more technology to help brands do their marketing better, faster and cheaper using tech. I was Googling one weekend and realized that no one was using the term brand tech.
So I thought we'll have that. So trademark brand tech.
And basically set off on a journey, which has really exploded in the last 18 months or so. But just to say, let's build that group that helps brands with their marketing better, faster, cheaper using tech.
And we started investing in AI back in 2015. We did AI chatbots.
We actually did the world's first AI influencer chatbot with Kalani Hilliker for CoverGirl. We were doing AI media planning with Elsie, doing AI data with Crossing Minds.
I went on the board in 2018 of a company called AI Foundation who were building AI twins of humans. And you can Google a great episode of Jimmy Kimmel where Deepak Chopra takes digital Deepak onto Jimmy Kimmel and takes everyone through a guided meditation.
And honestly, the technology has moved on so much since then. I mean, that demo looks really good.
But once you were outside of the safe environment of a demo, things were a bit wilder back then. And all of that led me to look for a company that was making ads end to end using Gen.
AI. And there was only one, a company called Pencil, built in 2018 on GPT-2 back then.
And Will and Samuk, the founders, brilliant talents. And particularly with Will early on, we had a meeting of the minds around how big we thought AI and Gen AI was going to be.
Now, obviously, everyone will tell you now that, of course, they knew this. But back then, no one did.
So we hit it off. And I said, why don't we get together and we can turbocharge what you're doing.
He'd built a great platform for SMB. So the brilliant thing about it was, if you've got an SMB SaaS platform, it has to work because there are no people to hold people's hands.
But our core clients are enterprise. And I said, look, if you join,

what we need to do is build the enterprise product. So we built Pencil Pro and launched that about 18 months ago.
And it's being rolled out by many of the world's biggest advertisers. And very simply, what it does is it's a SaaS tech platform that aggregates all of the best models.
So from Chagi 54T4 to Gemini to Stability to Dali, Adobe Firefly, et cetera, et cetera. And it connects straight through to the ad account.
So you can publish directly to TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, you name it. And in the center, you basically can decide what it is you're looking to do.
So are you looking for a strategic insight? Are you looking for just an image? Do you want to finish YouTube video or a TikTok video or Instagram video? And you can literally in minutes put together content that historically would have taken weeks. And what we have seen, I think the really unique thing about pencil, and by the way, it was calledcil through a belief that it would enhance human creativity, not replace it, that it should be as easy to use as a pencil and as good for creativity as a pencil.
But we've made over a million ads using Gen.ai across 5,000 brands, spent more than a billion dollars through the platform since 2018. And typically we can deliver 2x the performance 10 times faster and at least 50% cheaper.
We're spending a lot of money on ads. So hey, I like the idea of making it easy.
But on top of everything that you're doing, you decided to also be pretty big on the world of impact. So first of all, you are the co-founder of a global youth form, right? One young world that I think was recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative, if I'm not mistaken.
Why is this close to your heart? I wrote a book back in 2010, before it was fashionable, where I basically said, I don't think that doing good and making money need to live in separate worlds. And in fact, the kind of core point behind the book was how social media was going to empower people to hold businesses and leaders responsible, which I think it has.
But I think if you're born lucky, and I clearly was born lucky, you've still got three choices. There's nothing that stopped me from being born into a refugee camp in Sudan other than luck.
And I think if you're born lucky, you've sort of got three choices. You either have a really crap life because you spend every day feeling guilty and why me, or you're a really bad person because you basically, well, of course I'm special.
I couldn't possibly have been born into a refugee camp. I can't do anything about the fact that I've been born lucky and given a lot of opportunities, but what I can do is try and give back and help people who are less fortunate.
So that's sort of been a constant theme throughout back in Australia, doing a lot of work for the Children's Cancer Institute. And I met Kofi Annan, which was a really defining moment of my life, and did his climate campaign.
And he had a huge impact on me, probably the person beyond my parents who, you know, had more impact than anyone, and just such an incredible, wise human being. And we miss people like him today.
And it just got really re-energized and reinvigorated this, well, hang on how can we do more about doing good in the world? And Kay Robertson, who is my co-founder and was my partner on the work front back in Havas days, we were always talking about how can we do more? And she came to me and said, at the time I was young, we were the youngest at AgencyNet. We said, we should do something with young people.
We can help empower young people. And so we put this whole idea together about how can we give a platform to brilliant young leaders around the world? And so I trotted off to Google Zeitgeist 2008.
I think this video is still on the internet. And I actually watched it the other day.
And it aged quite well. And I had a video from Kofi and a video from Bob Geldof and a video from Desmond Tutu all saying they thought this was important.
And I think, sorry, just to set the context, this was a time when the iPhone had just been launched. So the iPhone was just coming out and social media was in its infancy.
But we sort of sensed that there's a really interesting moment happening where for the first time in human history, the youngest adults in the world, they're not just the most responsible or the most knowledgeable, but they're also the most powerful because they understand how to use these platforms better than anyone. And so the idea was, how do we give them a bigger platform? So Credit One Young World, and today it's the world's largest forum for young leaders.
We write the largest checks every year to young leaders' initiatives around the global goals. And they're exceptional young leaders.
We have the summit in two and a half weeks in Montreal, but we bring together 2,000 incredible young leaders from 195 countries. So one of the things that makes it really unique is you have the world in a room, all of whom are who are driving massive change and impact.
In fact, it's statistically five times harder to get a scholarship to come to One Young World than it is to get into Harvard. But these are Time 100 members.
They're Nobel Peace Prize nominees. They're extraordinary young people.
And they're not people who will lead tomorrow. They're people who are already leading.
And then what I did is I gave equity in the company to One Young World. And hopefully one day that's going to be worth a lot of money and we'll be able to get a lot more done.
But it's a registered UK charity and 501c3. And it's the impact and the work that the young leaders do is quite remarkable.
We publish an impact report every year. And we've now impacted the lives or our One Young World ambassadors have impacted the lives of over 50 million people.
So it's, I think it's one of the things we say at One Young World every year. It's amazing where some of these little ideas can end up.
I kind of think back to going to Google site guys, saying, hey, we've got this idea. We want to create this platform for young leaders.
And I remember we were on stage with like Kofi Annan and Desmond Tutu and Bill Clinton. Oh my God, what are all these people? This year, we've got everyone from Jane Goodall to Sylvia.
We've got incredible people coming. And it's amazing where these little acorns lead.
It sounds amazing what you're saying. And I think it's also the execution.
I think in your book, Who Cares Wins, you actually have a beautiful quote, and I may be butchering it a little bit, but you talk about different corporate social responsibility. And one of the quotes that I loved.
I think it was from Lee Scott, the CEO of Walmart at the time. And it said something like, we will not be measured by aspiration, we will be measured by our actions.
It's basically what you live for, which is really interesting because you're also taking action. You're not just thinking about it, which is probably the difference with a lot of people.
Well, the other quote I love is the, I think it's the Henry Ford one, you know,

no one ever built a reputation based on what they said they were going to do.

I think it's, it's also very true. I mean, I'm not sure how many of your audience

are budding or current entrepreneurs, but the number of people who have a business idea,

they never do. Ideas are really easy.
And honestly, whatever your idea is, there's someone else in the world who's had it too execution is hard and i think being obsessively focused on when you've had an idea just be ruthlessly focused on on everything you need to do to make the idea successful that to me is a big one and i think there's a little bit of a myth today because it looks easy. We talked a little bit about it, right? You see it on Instagram, you see it at TechCrunch, you see the successes.
What you don't necessarily see is the rejections, the how long it takes, the overnight success that took 10 years in the making. So I think you don't see those.
So there's like a little bit of this freedom myth. I can have it all.
You could, just not at the same time. So let's stack it up.
We like to have a simple summary, you know, the narrative. Oh, it was brilliant.
There was one over the weekend, a little video on one of the entrepreneur things I'm obviously following on Instagram, the time that Bill Gates and Microsoft saved Apple by putting 150 million in, you know, and you're, oh my God, I never know. I love the Amazon story on every level.
One of my favorite headlines is the front cover of the New York Times about 20 years ago. And it says, Barnes and Noble sue Amazon over their false claims that they're the world's number one online retailer of books.
And you're like, remember that was a credible thing that people might dispute that they were the number one in books rather than the number one in everything. But also you listen to the stories and the day that Amazon lost 90% of their market cap.
No one thinks that Amazon could ever have lost 90% of their market cap in a day. And I think that's the thing.
There's that great other quote, which is when it's good, and I think it's really relevant to entrepreneurs for all of us in life, but when it's good, it's never as good as you think it is. And when it's bad, it's never as bad as it feels.
And a tragic example of that is, look at Mike Lynch, who is one of the great tech entrepreneurs from Britain. I mean, he must have spent the last five, six years of his life thinking he was in a terrible place, extradited to the US, could potentially end up in prison.
He obviously died in the tragic yacht sinking. If you could speak to him now and say, would you rather come back and do 10 years in prison? He'd say, yes, immediately.
You can think that something is really bad. Actually, no, it isn't.
There's a lot worse. Likewise, when it's good, it's probably not any near as good as you think it is.
But my other fun one was a great guy called Ian Rogers, who ran beats at Apple and now is at Ledger. We were chatting once and I was going to do a talk to entrepreneurs and was asking for different people to give me their advice.
And he said, which I love, he said, someone said to me, if you're given two choices in life, always pick the one that's the better story. And he said, they were joking.
And I've lived my life like that. And I'm like, it's so true.
It is so true. Just like pick the better story.
Because if it doesn't work out, it's still going to be so much more fun. I love that.
But I will ask, I mean, you met, and I think mentors is also a big thing. If you can be surrounded by really smart people, it's kind of what you're giving one young world, right? But if you can be surrounded by really smart leaders, mentors, people that inspire you, that opens your mind to possibilities way beyond the school and the regular grind.
How did you get into situations where you meet Kofi Annan and people like this? How did you create your own luck, basically, to find yourself in those situations? At a basic career level, you want to be working for the person or people in the company who are clearly the rising stars, because as they rise, so will you. So if you're not, try and get yourself into a position where you are.
I met Kofi Annan because I was passionate about using creativity to be a force for change. I'd done a speech at Advertising Week in New York, just saying, look, if we really want to celebrate the power of creativity, we should use it to change people's behavior around a subject that really counts, rather than saying, oh, look, we invented Ronald McDonald.
And a couple of people heard this, and Kofi was looking for someone to do his climate campaign. And so I flew to Geneva to meet him.
And he was just so wise. I mean, literally, we'd never met him before.
We became really, really close. And one of the greatest things I ever got to do is I'd co-host his Google Hangouts with him.
And I'd fly to Geneva once a month, and we'd have lunch. And I'd just sit listening to the wisest person.
But back then, I'd never met him. And he said two things.
He said, David, number one, make sure you give me your best people. And number two, I don't want this to be the last time I see you.
Because he obviously knew that I'd turn up photo opportunity and then probably move up. But so that was really, I mean, I think a lot of good things that have ended up happening to me and great people I've got to meet.
Actually, the start point has been not, how can I meet a really interesting person, but trying to help someone or trying to solve something, which is sort of then indirectly little silly example. One of our brilliant One Young World ambassadors was doing something very smart in the business world.
And I was helping him, just advising. And he ended up launching a business with Biz Stone, the Twitter medium, Jelly Founder.
And through that, I got to know Biz. And then one day we were chatting and he had the opportunity to invest 20 million in Pinterest.
And we said, well, hey, can we invest that? We invested the 20 million in Pinterest and did really, really well. Not bad.
But all of that happened because my start point was mentoring and helping someone. At no point did I think, if I give some of my time up to help this person, it's going to lead to a good place.
It just did. And I think often that karma will happen.
And then the more you just get into those, so like the more, you know, when you're seen to be helping someone like Kofi with his climate campaign, someone else is doing really interesting stuff. So, hey, can you, you know, so we got involved in helping Richard Branson with the B team.
And so a lot of these things can lead and so many incredible people I've met through One Young World, all united by a belief that brilliant young leaders are going to create a better future than we've been able to, and let's help them. And therefore you have a common bond and a common platform.
You know, one of our amazing counsellors who's been a counsellor every year, Bob Geldof is one of them, who's just one of the world's great humans who created Live Aid and Band Aid. But Mohamed Yunus, who's now the acting prime minister of Bangladesh, founder of Microfinance, has been a counsellor every single year, just an incredible human being.
It's a real privilege to get to know these people. But it's all come about because we're united by a belief that we can create a better future if we empower young leaders.
And what I'm hearing, you know your mission. We can see your passion.
And I think a lot of what you're talking about is this hidden market, which we talk a lot about it because the best opportunities are not

coming in the job boards or whatever. It's basically based on the story you tell and then who knows you and who's going to open the doors for you.
And the more you're intentional and strategic about making sure that you are in this hidden market and people can open the doors for you and you are there to help others and bring value and good things will happen that's basically how you rise above the noise so that is how you get out of the people's pile and you get better better opportunities am i hearing this correct david yeah i think so but i think also you know i mean there's an amazing organization called the Marketing Academy and I do mentoring for them. But honestly, I get every bit as much out of it as I give, I'm sure.
And I think it's things like that. I think often, you know, helping other people ends up helping you.
Just again, the year of gardening leave, I went several times and lectured at Harvard with Mike Tushman, who's the guy who'd done the Havas case. And again, it was nice to say going to Harvard to lecture, but I learned so much in those sessions.
It was some of the questions and was really interesting and helpful in sort of perfecting the business plan and deck for the business. So I think sometimes it's not like, oh my God, I've got to go and help this person.
In doing that, it's going to help you. But then I also think, and I think one of the things that I've been very focused on throughout my career is promoting senior women, putting women into CEO roles.
And I think one of the things I would say, we're still in a world where senior men get a much easier ride than senior women. It's so much easier.
I was asked to do a talk on behalf of, because I do a lot of things around women in tech, and I was asked to do a talk, and a question I asked to the room was, how many people in the room think that their gender or race has ever held them back? And obviously, not a single white man in the room put their hand up.

And pretty much every woman did. And there's a great mug in a shop down the street, which says, behind every great woman is a great woman.
And I think that should be more true. I don't think it necessarily is as true as it should be.
But I'm kind of proud of having a great network of very senior female execs who some have mentored me, some I've mentored. But then I think also you end up being in circles where you just meet and get introduced to really interesting people.
So things that start by you thinking, you know, okay, this is the right thing to do. It's a good thing to do.
End up actually coming back and being a good thing. And to me, that's so important because although I'm the person that always says, we have our own gifts, we can figure it out, we can break the glass ceiling, but the truth is it is harder.
And there are a lot of situations that we're just not invited to the table. And we actually need ambassadors like you that open these doors.
So to me, that's really, really important. I love that you're doing that.
Even honestly, one of my observations, I have never promoted, and I'm maybe pushing this slightly, but this is directionally 100% true. I have never promoted a senior man into a role and they've said, I'm not sure I'm ready.
Do you think I'm good enough? It's much more about time. I'm really good.
And it's taking you this long to recognize that. But honestly, the number of times where I talked to senior women about promoting them or promoting them, and they had asked, are you sure I'm ready? Do you think I'm ready? In fact, one time, one of our most successful executives in the company today turned me down the first time I asked her to be the CEO of one of the companies.
And then after a couple of years later, when someone had done a not very good job, she accepted the fact that she could probably do better than that. That was several jobs ago.
And I think that's the other thing, though, as well, is it's not just about capability because there is the capability piece. But if someone is constantly asking and asking and pushing and someone else isn't wrongly, the former might end up getting the gig.
I agree. So we do need to ask and we need to ask with a lot more courage without being apologetic about it.
So I agree with that too. So I agree.
But again, I am talking as an Air Force gal. So I also got a little bit of that growing up at age 18.
So I think that prepared me a little better. I think we're just guarding the women a little bit more as children and that makes a difference.
David, what would help you with One Young World or with your incredible brand tech company? For One Young World, it's three things. We are a charity.
It's funny. I have a life where in my day job, people want my money.
So they'd like us to invest or buy their company.

And in my night job, I want their money. So no, with One Young World, we are always looking.
We have about 300 of the world's biggest companies, businesses who are sponsors and involved, but we never have enough. So anyone who's organized, it's an exceptional accelerator for brilliant young talent and and young leaders and can give really, really kind of concrete help with purpose and doing good in the world.
So number one, anybody whose organization company is looking to get involved in an organization that is accelerating brilliant young leaders. Number two, we have amazing counselors, but there are people we've never had who we'd love, Michelle Obama.
So if Michelle Obama happens to be your aunt or your sister, then we would love her. But no, seriously, I mean, the world's moral authorities, we like to have amazing...
I talked about Sylvia Earle and Jane Goodall and people like that and Muhammad Yunus. And we've got incredible people who are the world's moral authorities, and we want more of them and all of them.
So anyone who happens to have a connection into one of those people who we've not had at One Young World, once people come to One Young World, they tend to be lifers. They tend to come every year.
Once we get them there once, we just got to get them there once. And then finally, just exceptional young leaders with exceptional stories doing exceptional things in the world.
We're always on the lookout for that. When you meet someone who has just done something incredible, we'd love to know about them.
Amazing, David. And young, what are the ages for you? Basically 30 and under.
The sweet spot is sort of 20 to 30 because, you know, typically sort of sub 20, this isn't always true, but usually under 20, most people haven't really had a big impact in the world yet. And we're really about real impact.
It's not with all due respect, Hey, someone raised some money in a bake sale at school. You know, it's not yet genital mutilation abolished in the gambia or they you know had a rape law passed in 37 states in the u.s it's that kind of level and we are a mix of the world of business the world of charities and and ngos the world of politics the world of we have a journalist of the year award every year we have a politician the Year Award every year.
I mean, I think without commenting on the election this year, I mean, the fact that up until recently, we were looking at two old white male candidates, neither of whom particularly inspirational, you know, says, shouldn't we get like more young people into politics? Yeah, that's a good idea. Yeah.
And I think it is still one of the ways of driving the most change, you know, the quickest, but it's not necessarily a career that young people are drawn towards. But no, it's kind of all encompassing from the world of business, the world of charity, the world of entrepreneurs.
So David, from everything that you've doing with brand tech and raising so much money and disrupting marketing and the impact that you're creating, the book, can't even catch up with everything, David. What would be an advice that you would give your younger self? One of the things that I think all young people should have in their mind is that you're going to probably go on to do amazing things that today you're completely intimidated or in awe of someone.
And actually you'll end up doing something that's a hundred times bigger than that. I mean, I still remember the day that I got to meet the then global CEO of Havers.
I was like, oh my God, I ended up being that person and now look back on it as a bit of a small job. And so I think it's really hard to understand when you're just starting out just how far you can go.
So I think the second piece of advice would be believe in yourself and do, yeah, absolutely listen to people and particularly listen to smart people. And, but at the end of the day, trust your own judgment and believe in yourself because, and this is particularly true of entrepreneurs, but pretty much everything any entrepreneur has done, most people have told them is a bad idea.
I've told my story, everyone telling me you can never raise money with a PowerPoint, I would have stopped and I wouldn't have the company. When we were looking at buying AI businesses, lots of people saying, why are you doing that? So I think just don't not listen to people, but believe and back yourself.
And the worst possible thing is you're wrong. And actually, you learn way, way more when you get it wrong than when you get it right.
Because when you get it right, you actually don't really stop to analyze what you did. You just, oh, of course.
And when you get it wrong, you go, wow. And I know it's true that you will learn way more through the things you get wrong than what you get right.
And then I think the final encompassing one, I have a big, there's a great cartoonist called Gaping Void who has a sort of cynically funny take on all things business and marketing. One of them, which isn't a cynically funny one, is something that I think is a great mantra.
And in fact, I was asked by a journalist, like, what advice would you give your kids? I'm like, ooh, that's an interesting one. Anyway, this cartoon, it just says, did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? The thing I said to the journalist is I say to my kids, when you look back on your life, can you answer yes to did I live, did I love, did I matter? And as you're starting out in your careers, it's going to go really fast.
But did you live? Don't forget, as Maywest said, you're only here once if you do it right. Once is enough.
Did I love, obviously? And did I matter? I mean, did the things that you've done, have they really mattered?

And I think that there's probably three sort of,

three good barometers to lead a life by.

Wow, that is a powerful one.

I totally wrote that down.

Thank you for all the inspiration and thank you for sharing.

No, it's fun.

And hey, you know, what's the worst case scenario?

That's the question to always ask. What happens? It goes wrong.
What happens? It doesn't really matter, you know. Only a job.
Just do it. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did.

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