 Morning guys I'm actually glad to see anybody at 10 a.m. Here Good morning. Very cool Okay, David. Good to see you right good to see everybody here. Thank you for making it So my name is Frederick court and I am a founder of Felix capital venture capital firm one of the Privileges and the pretty the best part of our job is to work with entrepreneurs We have if they are individual journeys, so today we're here to talk about David's journey founder of high somebody which started Almost 18 years ago so 17 years while ago. Yeah, so you are clearly a Tiny kid then so can you tell us about high somebody? So maybe we start how many of you follow I somebody on Instagram and all of China's okay good great Maybe we can win a few more today Yeah, I mean as you said we or I started in 2005 I was I Was studying business at the time was always really passionate about about fashion and the lifestyle space and Was almost a little worried that I wouldn't manage to make my way into my passion in many ways and At the time I started discovering blogging. It was kind of the early days especially in Europe in regards to blogging and eventually got so hooked that I thought okay, I'll give it a shot myself and Essentially this new world opened up itself to me at the time and you know it was a space that I guess we would call today Street wear, you know a sneaker culture street fashion largely informed by by America and Japan and I was just fascinated by the creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit of the founders and the creatives that were Active in that space that were essentially reinventing fashion at the time and I guess in retrospect you can say those were the the people the brands the products that were really ahead of culture Was 2005 was actually street wear a term at the time or it's you know It's funny that the term street wear was I think always by the people within the space was always seen You know as a bit of a negative, you know because they never wanted to be restrained by that definition But yeah, it was it was certainly one way of describing it You know and it was I mean again, we're talking about the early days of brands like supreme the early days of Sneaker collecting the early days of man's fashion, you know, so a lot of things that I think are today Normal are multi-billion dollar businesses our phenomenons. I mean you're wearing sneakers I'm wearing sneakers my parents grandparents everybody, you know, I mean, I think it's Hard to comprehend how niche the topic was when I started in 2005, you know I was and and and the world was also different world, right? I mean if you look back we started three months before YouTube right, so It was you know, and we unfortunately didn't didn't become nearly as successful, but But still, you know, it was a completely different time, you know, like there was no Instagram There was no Twitter Facebook was just kicking off, you know, so also, you know, how to build an audience was very different back then So that coupled with the fact that I was also operating in a in a really big niche at that In a niche setting back then was was quite interesting. So what was the operating model because you were you were students? I mean I literally I just started blogging right and and surprisingly in the matter of Six to twelve months. I was getting inbound requests for advertising and so So that's really how how things kicked off, you know, and I don't know the first Advertiser paid $50 a month and the second advertiser paid $200 a month And so step by step the business, you know drew a little bit it the beauty is and you know I always like to point that out There was no pressure or expectation that it would ever become anything, right? It was Me blogging and nobody believed in blogging nobody believed in man's fashion Nobody believed in sneaker culture or streetwear. So there was it was a complete blank page And so you you created your own job never got a job Absolutely, I created my own job. I created my own business model, you know So the business model, you know was Primarily advertising in the in the first few years And then over time with the growth of social media it quickly evolved into branded content So that was kind of the big the big next wave then we went from Focusing on branded content to you know advising the brands and supporting them on actually creating the content right because we told them Yeah, your product is right for the audience, but your content is not right for the channel So why don't you let us produce that content? And so suddenly we started building this creative agency structure behind our publishing in after a few years and You know and then it really became a business that constantly transformed, you know it went from You know doing production and creative work to then adding talent to the mix as well to then adding Experiences because clients wanted now to not only do things digitally with us But they also wanted to bring it into the real world And so step-by-step we really started working with these brands very much 360 and on the Content side, you know our focus became very much that intersection of Street culture and luxury right that that kind of became the one thing that you could really Find on our channels from the early days and and again something that was very unique at the time Right luxury brands didn't really want anything to do with sneakers or street wear until they realized many years later That they're completely missing to market to a very important consumer So was there a plan for you or did you come build it as the apologies? I mean the truth is there wasn't So you know you kind of build it build it along the way I think you know the very simple principle of you know promising our audience that we will always keep them ahead of the curve and by definition always Covering and interacting with what's next in culture really allowed us to constantly evolve Our brand our business and what we were doing and yeah So we'll talk about no culture later But no you talk about your audience so you had to follow your audience across multiple channels That because initially they were coming to the blog and then in what order did you do things? And maybe also for the audience would be good to have a few numbers on the scale of the audience and the type of models Yeah, I mean it's I mean again I mean the funny I remember in 2005 I met my wife as well And I had to explain to her what I was doing with this blog and I was insanely proud to report to her that 2000 people a day were coming to this blog, right? So that was But quite funny in retrospect. So today when we look at you know, I somebody being on obviously still on calm We have our own app with tick tock with Instagram. We've got Facebook and Twitter And you know, so we're reaching about a hundred million people a month, right? So it you know, which shows I think on one hand. I think shows two interesting things one How big a niche can be because I would still in a positive sense describe our audience as a niche but a gigantic niche and I think it also shows you that you can be Really focused on a niche and still build a quite sizable business, right? You don't need to address the whole world You don't you know, you can be you can be very specific and who you are as a brand and in who you target and You know and be the one place to go for that specific audience and in a day like today in the world like today where? You know you reach the whole world through, you know social media and and a variety of channels That's actually completely fine. And so you started with content, but then you you went into commerce. I mean you're wearing a cap Yes So tell us about that that journey from content to commerce to the that's been a major trend I mean essentially if you if you look at the business today There's there's the editorial and the storytelling which is still very much at the heart of everything that we do and Then we have the client services business Which is the one that we started building earlier and then much more recently Which is one of the big reasons why I think the two of us started working together as well We started going into into commerce and I think Ultimately, we saw the opportunity because you know we're speaking to millions of people that come to us for a fashion discovery and fashion advice and A lot of it had to do also with curating Products for that audience, you know what what what type of product they should be shopping where they should be shopping? And and so we thought okay, why don't we kill the bridge? you know and just bring it all over to our own platform and Bring content and commerce the opportunity that we that we saw in the market was bringing content and commerce Significantly closer together and really embedding Product in amazing storytelling like nobody had ever done before and that's sort of the the mission that we Walked into the commerce space with right and then so we started in 2019 with with commerce So so we launched a drop platform so we you know dropped really exclusive products that we worked on with brands or that Brands gave us exclusively we built storytelling environments around these products to you know Build a certain energy and heat around the product And and really once again first of all transformed our business in an interesting way But it also built our own way of doing e-commerce, right because I think we were also aware at the time Nobody needs just another retailer and we felt like we had a quite unique take on the subject matter Because you are not only creating all the people's products Just like you are creating stories, but you're also creating your own products But that's the journey. That's now the e-commerce journey of the last three years right where we went from dropping other brands products To collaborating with other brands on products so where we become our own designer our own curator and even designing our own product Right, so you're wearing one of our sweaters today and wearing one of our hats So it's of course amazing Also for me, you know as an entrepreneur to see that you know We can now express ourselves in so many different ways and the dream quite frankly And I almost only realized that a few years ago, but the dream from the beginning was to create a place where you can discover and shop what's next in culture in many ways and that dream is now slowly coming together in a 360 way and And ultimately heismity exists because of our obsession with brands and products And so how amazing is it for us now to be able to create our own right? So how has it changed your way to work with brands by adding that other layer on top of the media? So I mean if you look at the journey on on our client services business essentially You know I sort of mentioned you know It was a media business that media business then transformed into a creative business so we would essentially You know bring together content creation for our clients and the distribution of that content And then maybe can you give us one or two examples of brands we work with to make it more concrete? I mean I think you I mean you see quite a few things here also on on the slide So it's it's kind of a mixture of our own Content for our own product line, but you also see content that we create You know here you see for example the Gucci Adidas campaign or we worked on the Gucci the North Face campaign as well Here you see one of our most recent NFT projects where we where we dropped our first digital product, so we so we essentially you know do For brands everything from you know more simple digital content to full global campaign work And I think what makes it unique of course is that we are not just another creative agency But we're essentially a publisher that speaks to this audience 365 days a year right so we we have a quite unique Understanding of what the audience reacts to what the audience is into what? Tastemakers and talent the audience is following that we can build into our campaigns So you know the insights that we can generate from the audience are rather unique and allow us to to be a much more You know hands-on partner than your than your usual agency then what happened a few years ago You know much like other publishers you tend to Pitch all the time your ideas to to brands or to media agencies and we realize that It's it's not the most efficient way for us to work Because you cannot you know live and die by your ideas right sometimes you have the best ideas sometimes you don't and And so so often we were giving away our ideas for free And so we actually embarked on this really interesting insights and data journey about five six years ago And you know really started building an insights team To generate true consumer insights from our audience that we could then apply to the solutions for our for our clients And we built a strategy team That would enter the conversation with the client much earlier than your usual media partner, right? So we would actually support brands and building their brand strategy Their collaboration strategy the rejuvenation strategy depending on what what they were working on and that Actually completely changed the way how we work with brands and it's a it's a service that we call cultural consulting because we're essentially Supporting brands and becoming culturally credible for their audiences And you you also talked about connecting to the cultural pioneers There will be a subset of your audience down particularly how to reach but that will have will be more valuable for the brands Yes, so essentially to go back to that insights journey So we started five six years about by defining our world and we called that world new luxury because we what we could see is that a Young audience understands luxury very differently from how it was perceived in the past, right? So usually luxury is about craftsmanship and about price and about heritage and Suddenly you had this new young audience that was also very much into luxury But they were more thinking about knowledge about access, you know an audience that would value a Limited-edition Air Jordan sneaker as much as a Louis Vuitton bag, you know And I think that's you know our first white paper in that space around the world of new luxury I think really opened everybody's eyes that okay wait a moment There is a young consumer that can afford luxury products But that understands luxury differently and we're not speaking to that consumer. What's however, right? So that was sort of the big learning with new luxury and then in the next phase We wanted to define the consumer of this new luxury space, which you know You just mentioned which we then called the cultural pioneer So the culture pioneers kind of your coolest friend cool friend, you know like the an early adopters somebody that You know brings crucial heat to brands and products in the early phase when they enter the market And it's it's people that have you know a significant social following. It's people that disproportionately recommend brands and products to their surrounding and And therefore they have a lot of impact and it's somebody that you really want to reach as a brand and quite frankly as a brand No matter what brand you are your usual brand be people in the audience starting companies are running a smaller emerging brand so any no tips or advice to To to reach that audience that to be more culturally relevant because that's very much a lever on the business Absolutely, and and again the beauty is because you have to imagine that for a long time We were of course always like I had this cool Magazine it's this cool agency, but like who really knows how impactful it is You know and so the beauty with our research became that we could really prove black and white that the brands that understand The cultural pioneer the brands that market to that person the brands that understand how to be culturally credible are actually growing two to three times as fast as the ones that don't right so that was Black and white findings that we could you know present now to to our brand partners and so I guess After figuring out the person and how that person ticks we then in the next step wanted to figure out okay How can we now create a roadmap that brands can follow to trigger that person right and that's where we kind of came to Determinology of cultural credibility right so what does it mean to be culturally credible? What does it mean for a brand to you know? To mean something and to align with the values of your consumer in the end of the day right and so And essentially we came up with this with this three part With these three cornerstones so to speak of cultural credibility which are made of World-building right so you need to create a world around your brand that Allows the culture pioneer to embed themselves in your world right so so that they can access Your brand through many different avenues you know that that access can come through specific events It can come through specific product collaborations. It can come through Content that can come through talent partnerships many different many different ways But you need as a brand you need to understand that you are not just a brand You're not just a company or a business, but you are a universe and you need to curate that universe the second thing that we that we found was that You need to in order to be culturally credible you need to become an expert curator Right so you need to understand that you're not the only brand that lives in the world of your consumer, right? I don't know if you're botega veneta and everything that you do is about quality and craftsmanship Then you probably speak to a client that also cares about the car. They drive They also care about the food that they eat they also care about the travel that they do So how can you curate a world around your brand where the values of these different spaces align? that's the second thing that That we that we really zoomed in on because as a curator You're essentially contributing to culture and you're not just taking in the sense and that's something that's you know Really really important to everything and then last but not least is entertainment Which is of course all about inspiration because the culture pioneer is all about Constantly being inspired the main reason being that they actually make they make their purchase choice While being inspired right if you look at the purchase journey of of any consumer, you know, there's There's the inspiration phase. There's the research phase the purchase and then the post purchase So the culture pioneer actually decides to buy something when they're being inspired It's a general trend that you also see across generations as as generations get younger So it's a it's more present with Gen Z. It's more present with generation alpha and so as a brand you need to Constantly inspire your consumer and so the ideas, you know the example I always love to give is you know if a culture pioneer Goes out and wants to buy a belt, right? You know then it ends up in the department store with 25 different luxury brands offering a belt The decision to buy the Gucci belt is not made in that moment But the decision was built over many many months when Gucci hosted a special fashion show on the Sunset Boulevard and Gucci Launched a collaboration with Palace when the Gucci curated young up-and-coming film festival You know so all these all that knowledge is sucked up by the consumer And in the back of their minds the choice to commit to that brand is being made and when they then stand in front of the Belt the choice becomes very clear and you choose the Gucci belt in the sense, right? And so in the end of the day what what you're trying to do by being culturally credible is You want to do exciting things as a brand and you also want to do things that maybe live out live outside of your Mainfield of focus so what you need to do is you need to give a clear narrative to To your consumers so that when you do things that are maybe not exactly what you usually do They still see that it's you I'm taking mental notes because it was an entrepreneur building a business and building a brand as an investor There are many things we could do could do different so I'll go back and think more about it talking about Venture capital and your journey you you started with no bootstrapping your business for over a decade What made you decide at some point to work with investors raise money and then maybe you can tell us But what happened after on the rest of the journey to yeah, I mean I think in that sense We probably had a bit of a unique journey to your point, right? I mean I think especially in an environment like here at slush, you know, it's very the usual path is you know You have an idea and either you raise money you try to raise money directly or a year or two into your you raise money So I somebody had been around for 13 years When you approached me or 12 years when you approached me 13 years when we started working together cold link LinkedIn Exactly exactly and so You know, I have to be honest I mean I personally very enjoyed that I got to see both sides, you know in the sense because the the first 10 12 years of the business where Just a normal business, you know, like you make money and you spend money in a sense, you know, it's it's it's not that it was that order Yes, in that you in that order. It's critical. That's that order, but you know, it's not like I was sitting there and thinking Thinking about raising or thinking about, you know, or thinking about bootstrapping. It was just a you know It's just I was just running this business in a sense and I think You know six seven years into the business. I started realizing that There is actually no ceiling to the business, right? So it took me a little bit of time to realize that this doesn't have to be a blog It doesn't have to be just a magazine, but it can be something that is actually significantly bigger and you know, that's also when we started growing the team much more substantially and then, you know, in 2017-18 when we also started talking, I think you know, we were kind of arriving at at this Ceiling in regards to we had grown the business almost a hundred percent year-over-year for three four years in a row and We just couldn't keep up with that growth and yet at the same time We were still seeing so much opportunity and then at the same time We of course started thinking about okay, do we want to go into e-commerce? You know, doesn't that make sense as part of our offering as well and that required capital and then of course, you know Required a completely different capital needs. It required different tech needs as well You know, we we needed to build a global e-commerce platform on high snobiety so you know our tech team became significantly bigger and so so raising money at the time made sense and it was a retrospect, you know different but also equally amazing experience because you know, I You know got to meet you and many other great people and and people that were constantly pushing us to think bigger you know and and never you know to To allow us to think that you know the growth that we were seeing right now was you know The end of it all and so I think that that's what venture capital did to us there at the same time I think because we had been a bootstrap business for so long It also gave us maybe a bit more balance than you may see in other businesses, right? So we we could appreciate the push from the outside But we were also still valuing a certain stability in the business overall, right? And and we just have you know a few less than a minute to finish So you know if you were the next thing for high snobiety So now I'm part of the Zalando group but running independently. Well, I think the exciting thing is two things one We get to we continue to operate completely independently So, you know, we continue to build the division that we had for our business six months ago is still the same today and you know, we're moving into Increasingly women's because 50% of our audience today is women's with that. We're moving into beauty into into new fields So that's really exciting and then on the Zalando side What's what's of course also very exciting is we have a seat at the table now at the biggest fashion retailer E-commerce fashion retailer in Europe and suddenly we get to apply all the learnings all the things that I was just speaking about You know, we get to apply new luxury the cultural pioneer of cultural credibility our consulting and creative muscle To this gigantic business and we get to do it long term, right? So we really get to be you know, one of the people that support the transformation now of Zalando, which is Of course super exciting. Well, thank you David and I love to hear your long-term vision And I can't wait to see what you do next. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks guys