My guest today is Rik Lomas who is the founder of Super which turns your Notion pages into websites. In this episode, we discuss the following: - How Rik Lomas discovered the world of design - How Rik Lomas got his first design job at an agency - Rik Lomas's journey of becoming a freelance designer - Why Rik Lomas decided to join General Assembly as an instructor - Why Rik Lomas left General Assembly to start his own education startup - Importance of finding your target audience/niche as a startup - Why Rik Lomas started SuperHi - How Rik Lomas bootstrapped his startup SuperHi in the early years - Why Rik Lomas bet on pre recorded courses over cohort based courses - Being involved in the product as a founder/CEO of the startup - Why Rik Lomas decided to raise capital for his startup SuperHi - Embedding customer support into the product design itself - Overcoming hustle porn addiction - How to get in touch with Rik Lomas For show notes, guest bio, and more, please visit: www.designmba.show Level Up Your Design Career (Free Email Course): https://levelup.designmba.show/
Rik Lomas is the founder and CEO of SuperHi, a company that helps creative people all over the world learn the skills they want to learn. Their mission is to provide the highest quality education as accessibly as possible. Over the last four years, SuperHi has taught tens of thousands of creative industry professionals in 90+ countries learn skills such as digital coding and design, and has grown to be a team spanning seven countries. He wrote the book Learn To Code Now and you may have watched one of his tutorials on the internet. He also recently featured as a Sour Patch Kid in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and is way too old to be posting memes.
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Namaste and welcome. This is Jayneil Dalal and you are listening to the design MBA. This podcast is a real-life MBA program for designers where we interview design hustlers and learn the skills, mindset necessary for a designer to launch a business venture. You can learn more. Find past episodes and stay updated at designMBA.show.
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Jayneil Dalal: So, today, I’ve got a phenomenal guest with me, Rik Lomas. Rik is the founder and CEO of Super High, a company that helps creative people all over the world learn the skills they want to learn. Their mission is to provide the highest quality education as successfully as possible. Over the last four years, Super High has taught tens of thousands of creative industry professionals in 90 plus countries learn skills such as digital coding and design. Super High has grown to be a team spanning seven countries. Rik wrote the book Learn to Code Now and you may have watched one of his tutorials on the internet. He also recently featured as a Sour Patch kid in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade and is way too old to be posting memes. It's a real talk. If you want to learn how to code, how to design at your own pace, as I call it, you need to head out over to SuperHigh.com and check out some of the amazing courses they've got there.
So, without further ado, Rik, welcome to the show, my friend.
Rik Lomas: Thanks for having me on the show. It's been great to be on here.
Jayneil: Hell yeah, man. So, tell me about what was … you grew up in the UK, right?
Rik: Yeah, originally from Manchester in the UK. I spent a lot of time in London. So, straight after college, I moved to London, went straight into the creative industry, really kind of didn't really know what I was doing in the creative industry. I did a Math degree.
Jayneil: So, real quick, are you a football fan?
Rik: I am. I am indeed, yes.
Jayneil: I’m an Arsenal fan. I got to tell you that upfront.
Rik: I’m a Manchester United fan. So, it's going to be a bit of a clash today, unfortunately, but yeah … So, I lived in London for 10 years. I lived pretty near the Arsenal stadium actually as well. So, I was living in hybrid for a little bit. So, I lived in London for 10 years, worked in the creative industry for a long time and then moved to New York a few years ago.
Jayneil: Wow! So, you got right into the creative industry. So, what was your … So, you have a math degree, right? So, a person with a math degree, how does a person like that end up in the creative industry?
Rik: Good question. Accidentally. So, kind of what happened is I grew up in a poor background and I didn't have a computer until a lot later than a lot of people I went to college with. So, I didn't have a computer until I was like 16. So, when I got a computer at 16, I was like very, very excited about what you could do with it. And rather than actually going outside and hanging out with friends, I was actually just on the computer all the time because I was so excited for this new thing. And over time, I kind of realized how powerful you can make things on a computer. You can make very, very creative things very, very quickly. So, when I went to college, I’d already kind of picked to do a Math degree and there wasn't really kind of scope to change that. And even at the time as well, back when I was applying for college, there wasn't things like design degrees in the way that digital was around then. It was kind of like …
Jayneil: What year was that?
Rik: … very early stages. That would have been 2000. I’m 36. Back in 2002, there wasn't really web design degrees. I mean, there was a few but it was very low level at that time. So, for me, it was kind of like “Okay, this is a sensible subject that I’m relatively good at.” So, I went to do it. And over the time of my college degree, I didn't really care for the topics. I was kind of bored by it and I find it very unpractical, very obviously academic.
Jayneil: I’m very bad at Math.
Rik: I’d like to say that I’m good at it because, obviously, I have a degree in it but at the same time, it's like I found it very unpractical and very kind of like “Why am I learning this? What is the point of me learning number theory or differential systems or all these kinds of topics?” I’m like “Why am I even here doing this?” So, whilst I was there, I was just making things on the side and not really paying too much attention to my work.
Jayneil: So, what were you making?
Rik: Websites for friends. I made a little kind of like community site, this was before Facebook, for the people at college and just little things like that. And you're basically building up an accidental portfolio of different websites. And these are all kind of like early stage, 2000s, websites, all very, very old-fashioned.
Jayneil: And you self-taught yourself, coding and all this stuff.
Rik: Yeah. And the other thing that I kind of found is I got stuck a lot and what would have taken someone else a few days to do would take me months because I was like “I don't know how to do this. Where do I even find …?”
Jayneil: I don't think they had stack overflow back in the day.
Rik: No, exactly, and that was the kind of thing. It was like you would literally have to read all the documentation and kind of do it yourself and there was no one else to really help you out. And as someone who wasn't in a degree program or someone else who was in the boot camp, there wasn't really a place to kind of like ask for that help. So, for me, it was kind of like what I wanted to do in my head versus how long it would actually take were completely different. So, for me, it was kind of like a bit of a learning experience of “Oh, I get stuck a lot and I don't know how to fix this and this is kind of what coding must be like, you get stuck all the time and there's no way to get help. And if I have this idea in my head, how do I explain that and who do I explain it to?” So, for me, it was kind of like most of my college degree was really spent making an accidental portfolio and getting stuck with coding, not really doing Math.
Jayneil: Wow! And then, if I’m not mistaken, Harry Potter was shot at your college, right?
Rik: Some of it, yeah. I went to Durham University which is in kind of like north England in Newcastle in England. And it's famous for its castle and cathedral. So, there's this area in Durham. Durham is quite a posh university, you would call it, and I was kind of brought in there on a scholarship. So, I was kind of like …
Jayneil: Damn! Good for you, man.
Rik: … with an accent and people are like “Where are you from?” and yeah, it was an interesting experience and made a lot of good friends there as well and it was really fun time.
Jayneil: So, you graduated from Hogwarts, if I may.
Rik: You could say that.
Jayneil: And then you got the Math degree and you got this portfolio on the side of freelance projects. So, what happened after that? Did you end up joining an agency or a full-time job?
Rik: So, I started applying to places like banks. And the reason for that is because that's what people do who have Math degrees. They go into accountancy or basically corporate lifestyle. And I wasn't really getting very far with that because it was like I wasn't really doing that well in my degree and I had this portfolio and they didn't really care about that. So, basically, a lot of my peers went into these kinds of careers. And, for me, it was kind of like I was hanging out on this website called News Today which was, back in the day, kind of a design forum in the UK. And I noticed there was a job posting from an agency and I applied to it and I was kind of like “I’m going to get the job. I’m going to get a job.” And I applied in like March for starting in maybe July. And they were like “It's too early.” And, basically, every single job I applied to were like “This is too early. We need someone now. We don't need someone in July.” So, I was just getting no's and I was thinking like “Okay, I’m getting no’s from the banks and the corporate world. I’m getting no’s from the creative agency world. What do I do? Do I have a job?” And the answer was kind of like no. And then, basically, the very last one I applied to, which was like a week before, maybe two weeks before college was kind of finishing, they were like “Oh yeah, come down for an interview in London.” And Newcastle to London, it's about three hours on the train. And they were kind of like “Oh yeah, you sound good. Do you want to come in for a trial, maybe five-day trial?” And I was like “When?” and they were like “Monday” and I was like “I live in like three hours away on train. Yes, I’ll do it” and I’ve worked it out. And this was like the last week of college. And, obviously, the last week of college for everyone is usually party time. And, for me, I was like “I could have a party for five days or I can do this trial and fingers crossed, hope for the best they like me.” And I did the trial and I basically went down to London, stayed in the kind of middle of nowhere kind of really outside London and basically was kind of like brought in on the first day to be like “Cool. Here’s a project. Make it.” And I was like “Cool. I get to make things at work. And I’m not getting paid very much but I’m doing it.” And the thing that I was actually making was this current pop stars website. And I assumed that it was kind of like a fake project like they designed it for me and it was a test. And about a day into this trial, they were like “Oh no, this is the real site …
Jayneil: Oh my gosh!
Rik: … on Friday. So, if this doesn't go live, then this doesn't go live.” AND I was a bit like “Oh shit, the pressure is all of sudden on me.” So, this goes from just being like a test to be like “Oh no, this is a real site that needs to be live and there's a pop star launching an album that needs to go live on Friday.” So, yeah, really kind of thrown into it. It was interesting. It was kind of like this is kind of what the real world was meant to look like in agency world. So, I was kind of like “Oh, I’m glad that they've given me this opportunity that I was kind of lucky to get.”
Jayneil: And then you got the job. And from that point to you joining General Assembly, how did that happen like your interest in teaching?
Rik: Yeah. I mean, I was kind of working in agencies for a while. So, I worked in agencies for about three years and basically kind of hopped around between a few and then basically kind of joined a startup in London. This was back in 2008. And this really wasn't a startup scene in London at all. So, I joined a startup which was basically trying to do kind of like Yelp for the UK, so business reviews, that kind of thing. And I basically kind of came on board and they were like “We don't have a tech person. We need a tech site. How do we do this?” And from my background, it was kind of like “This is cool” because I don't know the scope of the work. Usually, when you do client work, it's like you're given a project and you do the projects and then you pop it out at the end. And this was kind of like “We don't know what we're doing. We don't know when this is going to end. We don't know the features. We need to work it out.” And, for me, that was kind of really exciting because all of a sudden, you're kind of like thrown into it as “What am I doing? Ah, this is up to me” to some degree. So, that was really exciting from that point of view. And, basically, grew that site quickly, was part of that team, first coded there and that actually sold to a radio media group in the end and they were like “Cool. Right. Hand that over to the media group. We have this team. What do we do next?” And the next site was actually a completely different idea, using a lot of the same kind of principles. So, this was kind of like a voucher site similar to like RetailMeNot, all those kinds of things. And, again, still early in the UK in the startup scene yeah and they were kind of pretty much like “Oh, we'll do what RetailMeNot are kind of doing in the US in the UK.” So, we basically started this site called VoucherCodes.co.uk and that grew like really, really quick like incredibly quick like we were like holding on all the time to like “Holy shit! We've got so many people dying to do this stuff.” We had like 8 million people in the UK on the newsletter list and it's like there's only 60-odd million in the UK. So, all of a sudden, this site which was just like 18 months old was getting like millions of views every day and we were just like “Ah, we need to scale up really, really quickly.” And, for me, what happened was they scaled up quickly and I was still 25 at the time, not really knowing what I was doing. And as that kind of team grew really, really quickly, I was getting put more and more into a box and it was kind of like “You are doing this very defined task now.” So, what I joined to do was very wide ranging and over time, it kind of got more and more narrow. And, for me, that was kind of a sign that's like “I actually like that wider thing.” So, I actually quit to go freelance and basically do this stuff.
Jayneil: But what about equities?
Rik: Didn't have any. It did sell though. It sold for like 43 million to RetailMeNot in the end and still grinding, still really big. So, no equity. I got paid well. So, I was like “This is great.” I mean that's the kind of thing. It's like equity wasn't really a thing in London at the time in startup world. And I think that was something that, looking back, maybe should have changed but I was kind of like “Happy with the pay. Everything's cool. I’m getting paid well to make cool stuff. So, not complaining.” And, for me, that was kind of like really … it was still enjoyable and I think as we kind of grew, it just got more narrow. So, I was like “This is me. This isn't the company you know.” No problems with the company. I liked everyone there but it was time to kind of change and that was kind of like the real move into freelance and basically doing freelance for early stage startups. So, people who had no idea what they were doing, basically, who are like “I’ve got this great idea. How do I do it?” So, I joined those kinds of early stages to basically frame how those kinds of startups worked and basically get them live and to the point where they could actually grow a team and hand it over. So, that was kind of like what I was doing. And then, obviously, as I was kind of doing that, I kind of got an email from General Assembly like “Hey, we're starting up here in the UK, in London. We're looking for teachers” and basically got interviewed to teach there. And it felt very similar to what I was doing on the freelance side of things, basically helping these people have this vision of what they want in mind and being able to do it.
Jayneil: And what year was that, do you remember?
Rik: That would have been 2012 or 2011 actually.
Jayneil: So, 2011-2012, you're teaching at General Assembly. What gave you the itch that “Maybe I need to branch off and start my own design education company.”
Rik: So, I started at General Assembly as one of the first teachers there doing the front-end course and also the Ruby on Rails course as well. I was also teaching a lot of the kind of like weekend courses too. So, I did a course in UX and a few design courses as well. And what I kind of felt was like I joined this General Assembly in London, they just started there, to the point where they had no tables and chairs in the room, that's how new they were. So, we were like getting chairs from other offices nearby to basically just sit people around and basically kind of was like “This is a scrappy start. I really like this kind of feel.” And as I kind of like did the longer form courses, I was given the syllabus and it was kind of like “You're teaching this.” And for me, I was kind of like “Well, this syllabus is okay.” It works on a general level where if you're teaching lots of different types of people, this is the kind of like consensus syllabus.” And when I was teaching students, there was a total range of people in there from people who are like artists who want to make exhibition type websites on the web to people who were like “Oh, I’m a gambler and I want to automate all this stuff” and you're trying to teach the same thing to all these different types of people. And what I kind of noticed was the people who got the furthest in these courses were the people who were the most creative people who were probably doing this as part of their job, they made things every single day. So, when they were making things in design, it was very easy to get them to actually convert that design to code because they were very used to making things. So, for me, it was kind of like seeing who got the best outcomes and really kind of saying “Maybe I should try and change the syllabus somewhat.” So, I told General Assembly like “Hey, can we change the syllabus and make it so it's a little bit more focused towards these people?” and they were like “No.”
Jayneil: Like a franchisee model.
Rik: Yeah. And I see why. And the reason why I see why is because those kinds of models where you're doing brick and mortar kind of places where you're getting a teacher in to teach things, sometimes you don't know if that teacher is any good. And if you're having that syllabus which is like “We're keeping this as it is,” you're keeping that quality in the middle because if there's bad teachers, they have to teach this thing too. So, I totally understand why they did that because I could have been a terrible teacher and there's all of a sudden me messing around the syllabus and they're like “No one's getting any good outcomes from this.” So, I totally understand why they did that but for me, it was kind of frustrating from that point of view of like we're not getting the best outcomes. I know the way that I would actually teach this and it's not the same way. So, for me, it was kind of the moment of like “How do we do this?” And my background at the time was like I was teaching, I was working with early stage startups and it was like “Maybe we'll put the two things together” like “Maybe I’ll do the teaching but I also know how to start things up for somebody here as well.” So, that was kind of like the logical moment for me in terms of how do we combine these two things together and make something new.
Jayneil: Wow! And that led to your first startup that you started?
Rik: Yeah. So, from the first startup, my first startup was called Steer. It’s basically a coding school in London, basically, again, a brick and mortar kind of business, had a classroom that we were teaching, did things very, very, very scrappily in the same way as kind of like General Assembly got tables and chairs from other offices. We did the same. It was kind of like how do we do this in the kind of like most natural way.
Jayneil: Why these guys every day on Monday asking for chairs?
Rik: I’m just like the chair collector. I’m just bringing chairs in from everywhere. And from my point of view, it's kind of like you have this fresh start where you can basically make it your own and kind of go “What does a startup even look like? Who are we aiming it for? How much should these courses cost?” Obviously, you kind of have things like how much rent is and how much salaries are but you're kind of like having a bit of choice on who you're aiming at as well. So, for me, it was kind of like going from this very wide range where we were trying to teach artists, gamblers, fintech people into kind of narrowing that a little bit further down into “How do we teach people who are very creative the skills they actually need to do?” And that's kind of where it first came from like Steer was trying to be like “How do we bring these people in who are very creative in this classroom environment and learn the things they want to learn and try to do as quickly as possible as well?” So, the courses that we did were somewhere between like three and five days. People would come into the office at know 10:00 a.m., leave at 5:00 p.m. and get this kind of like intensive quick way of learning.
Jayneil: Why did you narrow down on focusing creative people and not try to focus on everybody like the gamblers, the footballers, everybody?
Rik: I mean, for me, I think it's really hard to kind of teach everyone the same thing. And I think there's this almost like breakdown in how people learn. And people have very different ways of learning. And also, people have very different outcomes of what they want as well. So, for me, it was kind of like seeing … I was trying to teach the same topic to different types of people with different outcomes. It wasn't really for anyone. And that for me is a bit of a kind of like “Who is this for? Who is the audience? Who's going back to the use the research?” When I was doing that with daily startups, it was kind of like “Who is this for?” It can't be for everyone. And that was something that I would drill into these early stage startups like “You're not trying to be something for everyone. Have some kind of like persona in mind.” And, for me, it was kind of like the persona was people who were creative, people who … I know that's kind of like you know “Who isn't creative?” but it's the people who are like in the creative industry who are making things, who want to get into that field as well. I think most people have some creativity, of course, but I think the people who get the most from it are the ones that are doing it all day, at the moment.
Jayneil: Got it. And then you have Steer that's going on that's basically an in-person boot camp that's teaching creative people how to code. Why did you pivot from that or go from Steer to Super High?
Rik: So, basically, as we started to scale up Steer, me and my co-founder had a lot of disagreements about on how we do that. And, for me, it was kind of like we were seeing people come in from a long distance to come to these classes. We were getting people from flying in from Denmark and France and Scotland just to come to these courses for like three days. That's a great compliment in terms of like people willing to travel and stay in London to do these courses. And we were getting a bit of a real kind of like people asking for “Is there a Steer in this city? Is there a Steer in France? Is there a Steer in … these other locations?” And me and my co-founder were like “Cool. That's great. We could scale this up but how do we do that?” She wants to go very brick and mortar in terms of like “Okay, we're getting people from Denmark come in. Let's do it in Denmark and France and all these other places.” And, for me, it was kind of like these people are learning these skills on the internet and then basically they're traveling to London and it's a long way to come to learn these skills and it feels a bit like they're forced into coming that distance rather than it be that like “How do we make this really, really accessible?” We obviously have rents to pay. We have to be in the sea. We have to be in London or in New York to do this stuff. You have to spend time as part of the day to come along to these courses …
Jayneil: Collect the chairs.
Rik: … you have to collect the chairs, there has to be a teacher doing the stuff in front of you. I was teaching every single day pretty much. I’d get to the point where I was like repeating myself because I’m doing the same course every week. So, it turned into a bit of like a stand-up set because I was doing the same jokes at the same point.
Jayneil: Oh my God!
Rik: I had a teaching assistant who would roll their eyes at the same joke because they'd heard it 14 times but the students hadn't. So, for me, it was like “I’m feeling like I’m repeating myself. Doing these things in other places is repeating itself as well. It's not that scalable but it's also not that accessible as well.” So, for me, it was kind of like “Why don't you do this online? It makes more sense to actually try and do this in an online way.” And I get the kind of reasoning for like wanting to be in a classroom with people because it's social and you have someone to talk to and you don't need to just feel like a bunch of YouTube videos. And I see the kind of reasoning for online learning, a lot of the time feeling like that. And that was something that when I started Super High, it was like “How do we take this kind of in-person classroom environment and really translate it online so that it's not cold but it's still accessible, it's still high-quality teaching, you get access to teachers who are smart and intelligent?” And I think that was something that was really kind of a driver for styling this. It was like looking at the environment out there and saying “That really isn't a place that I’d send someone online.” That would actually be really high-quality creative education.
Jayneil: So, I’m assuming you left Steer and split ways with the co-founder but then what year was it when you started Super High?
Rik: So, split with Steer was in 2014 and basically did freelance for a few years just to kind of like top up the bank balance a little bit after doing a lot of startups for a while. I moved to the US in 2016. My wife got a job at NYU. So, I got dragged along as I could do and started Super High in October 2016, it would have been. So, that was just when the company was registered, took a bit of time to actually kind of do the first online courses and scale it up but, yeah, bootstrapped it to begin with, got to a point where I was doing freelance work and Super High at the same time and then eventually, got to enough sales that I could actually do it full time.
Jayneil: Wow! Now, the first couple of courses Super High, it was just you. You were just the sole person that was making all the courses and selling it, right?
Rik: So, to begin with, we had other people on board like I was actually doing freelance work to bring other people on the team so that they actually make courses with me. So, I was basically doing freelance work to pay other people to help with the courses. I was also doing some in-person and it was kind of the way to pay the bills really and I kind of felt like “What is the best way to do this?” and it's like I can't just quit my job and just start doing this on my own. I’m like “I will have no money and it's a bit of a risk.” The way to de-risk that was really … there's two ways to de-risk that. One is you raise some investment. Two, you have an income source that's different to that. So, for me, it was like being a developer at the time, being fairly senior, it was kind of like “This is an easier income source than it would be to raise tons of VC and kind of fingers crossed and hope for the best.”
Jayneil: Now, your approach to make this scalable and accessible was to record these videos in a course format so anybody can watch it. Another way is to just do it live like a live cohort where every class is live and you teach live, there's no pre-recorded video. So, how did you between the two options decide that “Okay, I think a better idea is just to pre-record the video content and then offer it to the students.”
Rik: It really came back to, again, scalability. What we kind of saw is, I think, there's a bit of a need, there's a bit of time involved in terms of like having to do the Zoom kind of approach where people are like watching a live instructor like you have to carve out time to actually be able to do that. And I was teaching at General Assembly in the evenings. I was doing like 7 till 9 classes. So, when I was kind of like doing these classes, there'd be people who'd have been working from 8 till 6, going to do 7 till 9. It's a 13-hour day. And watching these people kind of like … I’ve had people fall asleep in my classes and it's probably not just me teaching but mainly just from exhaustion. It's a long day. And I think having that time to carve out is kind of up to that person and it makes it more accessible if they can watch it whenever they need to or whenever they want to rather than be like “You need to be in this class at a certain time between this and this time.” It's less accessible. And, for me, it was kind of like the ability to let people re-watch things or come back at a certain point and really kind of being able to take this idea of … doing these classes is … everyone learns in a different way. Some people want to do like an hour a night. Some people want to binge four hours at the weekend. We wanted to kind of like make it fit them rather than like them fitting us. And I think that's kind of why I really tried to want to do recorded.
Jayneil: You are a CEO of the company Super High. At the same time, you're also involved in making courses. There's a lot of videos of you in the courses. So, I guess, I have two questions. I’ll start with the first one is why not separate yourself from the teaching aspect where you just become the operator running the business and growing it and you just hire a bunch of other people to kind of like make the courses versus you also being involved in the course planning and designing and actually making the course?
Rik: That is happening. I mean, we do have teachers on board and we've just had some more teachers to come on board pretty soon. So, one thing that … I like teaching. I like the product side of things and I think there's still … I think as companies grow … I think there's two types of companies, one where the founders still stay really involved with the product and the ones where it's like they separate themselves out. And I think the companies that do the best, from my perspective, are the ones that are still involved in the products. It doesn't mean that they're like literally making the products but I like doing that still. And I think that's … I’m not trying to be arrogant and be like “I’m the best teacher in the world” but I think having seen the experience of being through lots of different kind of ways of teaching, I think my experience is still very valuable even for the people making these courses that we work with. So, I think it’s a bit of a mix of reasons like I like doing a bit of everything as well and I think that comes back from that early stage startup mentality of like you get your hands dirty on everything and it's not just like you do just one thing. When I was put into that narrow box, it was kind of like “I don't really like being in that narrow box.” So, I think it's like having that … I never try and be like a micromanager and be like “You're doing it wrong, you're doing it wrong” but it's more kind of like “How do we make things better in all these different places?”
Jayneil: Wow! The funny thing is I’ve had Mills on the show last week and ustwo Adventure also invested in Super High. So, I’m curious like how did that investment happen? Did you reach out to Mills or he reached out to you? How did that all happen?
Rik: So, we've actually taken like two small rounds of investment in the past. So, the first one that we did was back in 2017. We got to a point of being bootstrapped but we’d kind of seen the potential of doing more things. And with the time, it was me and then three part-time people and I was kind of like “These part-time people are like working really, really hard. We want to bring them on full-time.” So, we actually went through Expert Accelerator Program which was in New York. And at the time, the team was remote. So, I was actually the only person in the New York office. And it was like a really good experience. We had really hands-on support from these amazing product people like Naveen who started Foursquare …
Jayneil: Oh, my God!
Rik: He was like the first designer at Twitter, all these kind of great product people who could like bounce ideas off. And it's like that was … I know that the money definitely helps but having that help on terms of products as well to basically be like “What do you think of this idea?” and then having grown really, really big companies to be like “This sucks” or “This makes sense.” I want people to tell me if things suck. And I think those people would definitely say that. So, was kind of like … I was always like 20:80 on taking any investment and the reason I took it was mainly that support from those people and they were kind of very open to giving that support. So, we kind of said to them like “Hey, we don't really need the cash. We’re growing. We're bootstrapped to begin with. We don't technically need this but we want this.” I think it's always a good position to be when you want to take on that investment rather than you need to. And the reason we kind of did a round with ustwo Adventure was the same kind of thing. It was like we got to a point where we were doing mainly code courses and we were seeing so much demand for other courses in design, project management, that kind of thing and we were like “We can't do it just on our own. It'll take a little bit longer. So, we'll reach out to some people that we like.” We know the ustwo gang quite well.” So, we said to them “Hey, we're thinking of doing this. What do you think?” And they kind of came from that really. So, I mean, we've been mainly working with Mills and Justin in ustwo as well and Neith who've been really, really hands-on, again, tons of help and tons of like strategic help as well. So, they've been really, really handy and really kind of like great people to work with.
Jayneil: That's amazing. So, it's like if you ask for advice, you'll get the investment money. If you ask for investment money, you'll get advice.
Rik: A little. I mean, it was not … we kind of said like “Yeah, this is what we kind of wanted to do and this is how much money we need.” So, we were very much kind of thinking around how do we do this in the best possible way. We could have done it in a kind of way of like we’d just take longer and it naturally scales up and that's kind of what we want to do. So, we could have done that and I felt like … we're not one of these companies that have raised like millions and millions of investments. There's definitely companies out there that have and we see the kind of downfalls of raising too much too quickly. And it puts people in the trap. And I think that's something that we were very aware of is like education just takes a naturally long time to do and that's partly because people learn over a longer period than them buying a product in the same way. So, for us, it was kind of like “Yeah, we want this to be sustainable for the long term and we're not going to do something that puts us in a box where we have to scale for scale’s sake.” So, I think it came from that really.
Jayneil: Now, I’m just thinking about this … and I absolutely agree with you that taking VC money comes with a whole set of other responsibilities that you got to grow at a certain amount. If you don't grow them, there's all these people you got to answer to. One of the things I like about a core principle, if you may, that I’ve seen from just researching on Super High is you have this concept of ASAP Support, as soon as possible support. So, how do you, first of all, actually implement that. It sounds good on paper like “Oh, if you have a question, you can just get support immediately.” So, how do you make that support sustainable over the long term and not just something you do in the initial years of the startup like handwritten notes and stuff and then it disappears? So, how do you actually manage that?
Rik: So, one thing that, this is kind of going back to my early teaching days, but one thing that we saw that didn't really work when I was teaching was there wasn't really great tools for beginners. And the reason you're thinking like that is almost like when you're learning to code, the tools you get when you learn to code are generally aimed at people who are intermediate and advanced level. So, rather than this kind of being a fix from a kind of like we're trying to get people to learn these new tools, wouldn't it be great if there was this kind of like tool that was kind of dangerous in terms of like it's not trying to be a Squarespace or a Webflow but, instead it's kind of like having these augmented layers on top from a product point of view of teaching and making people realize where they're going wrong. So, for our code courses and the beginner code courses especially, we built our code editor from scratch and that basically tells people when they're going wrong, it helps them fix their own mistakes. So, the questions that we generally get going forward are not the kind of questions of like “My code's broken.” When I’m teaching in person, if someone's code's broken, the way you fix that is you go over and stop the class and then fix that person's error and then you start the class again and then you fix someone else's error and you start the class again. So, these two-hour classes I used to teach could easily have been like 40, 50-minute classes just from the interruptions. And it's like if you have that fixed with products, then you can learn a lot quicker because you're fixing your own mistakes. So, the questions that we generally get now are more bigger conceptual things around like “How do I do this thing on this website? How do I do this effect in my head?” So, kind of going back to what we were saying with the early stage startups, it's like “I have the thing in my head that I want to make. How do I do that?” So, it's not the kind of things around like “My code is broken. I’ve missed a semicolon.” Now, it's the things of like “I want to learn how to make this thing.” And those are the things we can actually help support with because those things can't be automated and that's the thing that we actually do more support on. The things that can be automated, we try to automate as much as possible. It's never over. There's always things we can do in terms of making that better but I think from a kind of like education point of view, there really isn't many products out there that think of these things from a product standpoint. They think of it from an education standpoint and a content standpoint but there really isn't anything that's kind of like “How do we fix learning to code from a product standpoint?” I can't really think of many other places that do that. So, from our point of view, it's like we want to get people as quickly as possible learning these skills. It doesn't necessarily have to be VSCode or Atom. They want to be dangerous. They want to make things really, really quickly. We can build it with products. We have a dev team that actually make products and really kind of like help people get to the goal of what they want to do, which is building that thing in their head.
Jayneil: I love this, man. Baking automation into the product itself will reduce all the support tickets and support requests but now for the other questions that's not about “Oh, it's a code issue but more about I have this background. How do I present myself in the interview?”, things that can't be automated because they vary from case to case basis. So, for that, they might just hit you up by a direct message on Slack or any of those communication tools. So, in this case, you're probably hit up with so many DMs, man, from all these people. So, how do you …
Rik: Yeah, I love it. It's great. I mean, I want to help people get better at their careers and that's the whole point of doing Super High is like “How do we get those people to do the things that they want to do?” And if that's something that can help with in an interview or if it's like résumé reviews or feedback on their portfolio or whatever it is, that's the kind of the point of us doing the things we want to do. So, for us, it is part of the mission and it's not just buying videos or buying a course. It's like having that holistic help that is going to that next stage. We don't promise people like “You will get a job after this course” because I think those places kind of bullshit that through. And you've seen a lot of places lie about it, even places that get fined for kind of making up stats. And it's like we don't promise people those jobs because in the end, it's really about the work that someone puts. We're willing to kind of work with those people to get to that point but really, it's kind of like it's kind of up to you in the end to kind of like to get to that point and we want to help as much as possible with that. So, we want to get people to the point that they can apply for these jobs at the places they want to apply to and get those jobs as well.
Jayneil: Let's say you have six DMs that say “How do you create a résumé for a developer?”, for example, and you've seen it six to 10 times. Do you think that “Oh, you know what, maybe I should automate this by just creating a video that people can watch so you don't have to repeat yourself again?”
Rik: I think not everything can be fixed with content only because I think it's very specific to those people. And what people have in mind is very context driven on where they are in their careers, location, even just kind of … I don't know, it's just very kind of dependent on that person. And I think what help we give is very kind of context driven as well. We want it to be very helpful for them, obviously, but at the same time, we want to make sure that what we give is really, really high-quality advice. And something that we think about a lot is like we don't want to give this kind of like Simon Cowell level brutal British advice. I know that I’m British, so kind of leaning into that. At the same time, we don't want it to be like this surface-level niceness where it's kind of like “Looks great. Off you go into the world” and it's actually things they could fix. So, we always think about this kind of like honest feedback system where it's kind of like we're not trying to be brutal, we're not trying to be overly nice. We're actually giving people these points to actually get better at their careers and things that they can fix as well. So, that's something that we're really kind of like keen on doing is like we're not trying to like knock people down but at the same time, we're not trying to like just say nice things to them. Everyone wants that feedback and everyone kind of craves that feedback, especially when they're early in their careers or especially trying to do something new and we want to give them that help and we want to feel like there's a place that they can ask that help.
Jayneil: One thing I really admire about you, man, is, in looking for your background, what I mean by that is the background in your screen, and what you talked about is you are not addicted to that hustle porn or hustle mania. And for people who are wondering what is hustle porn, it's this kind of perpetuated by Gary Vee and this thing where you have like posters like “Hustle till your eyes bleed,” “hustle till your hands are numb,” “hustle till you crash down on your sofa.” So, did you overcome that addiction to hustle?
Rik: I don't know actually. From my background, I think the hustle thing is very kind of like tied into things like capitalism and very kind of like driven by like growing and making money and just kind of being better than other people. And I think what we kind of really think about is like how we help people and that doesn't really tie very closely with that kind of like capitalist thing. We don't really think ourselves as like individuals in the community even though everyone's trying to like do similar goals. What we see in the community right now is very kind of like people helping each other out. I think at other places, people don't help each other out as much because it's competition. And, for us, we don't see it as competition in the creative space because I think it's almost like we want other people to be doing the best that they can be doing. If it's not with us and there's a better place for them to learn, that's totally okay with me. I don't think of it as kind of like one thing will kind of like take over everything else in the world and be like the one-size-fits-all place and I think that's true of any education. There's someone going to Oxford versus RISD. They're very, very different. They're both great but they're for different people. And I think that's something that we think about a lot is like … I think this hustle porn comes from this idea of like we're going to take over everything else and be the best and be the only thing that people go to. And, for me, it's a bit unrealistic as well. There's definitely places … I’d give shout outs to other companies doing good things and I’m very kind of happy to do that. So, people are doing good stuff in other companies that might be competing for the stuff that we're doing. I have to give them shout outs rather than like trying to take them down.
Jayneil: So, as a CEO, you don't embody the hustle porn where you're just like working, working until you like just fall down and your wife is like “What is going on, Rik?”
Rik: I mean, that's the thing. It's like I used to be in this kind of like … especially in the early days just kind of like work all the time like every single hour. What I would have is my laptop open when I was watching TV and when I was doing things on intercom, on a help chat, like I would be answering every single support in the evenings. And this would be up to like midnight every day. I’d get up at 8:00 a.m., do the same thing again.
Jayneil: Did you get burned out?
Rik: Yeah, a little bit. And I think it was getting to the point where I was kind of like I had the intercom app on my phone but then also on my Apple watch. So, if I was at a bar, I’d be getting my phone out and answering customer support questions while I was having like dinner with my wife. It was kind of like “Okay, this probably isn't too healthy in the long term and it's not scalable. I won't be doing this forever, I hope.” And we basically hired some really good customer support people, put some rules in place around support as well so that people weren't just like expecting answers instantly but we try and do it as soon as possible but not like instant. I think it books the base camp or the crew have kind of written, which kind of summarize that up pretty well. There is that kind of point where it's like you need that time to think, you need that time to actually relax and do things that aren't just work all the time. I think, over time, I’ve actually kind of reduced the amount of hours I’ve worked and that's part of like the business growing up, I suppose, and me growing up to some degree. And I think it's just more thinking around how do we do this in a sensible way that isn't going to encourage burnout as well.
Jayneil: Wow! I mean, it's really hard. It's not that easy because it's your baby, you want to pour every effort into it but I also believe that when I unplug away … so, I’ve now recorded all my interviews for all of 2021 and I was on this like binge like I got to record, record and I was having three, four interviews a week. And I think most people don't realize that when you're interviewing someone, it's actually really taxing on you because you got to like really be there. I got to listen to you to follow up with interesting comments or steer the conversation. It's not like “Here's a list of questions. Let's run it down.” I don't think people are going to like to listen to that. So, I had this burnout point, I think, a couple of weeks ago where I said “You know what? I think this is enough. Now, let me just like take some time away, do some other things, recharge and then I can come back to it mid next year to start recording season three for the podcast.”
Rik: I mean, you'd see it on things like YouTube as well like YouTube creators have this kind of like mindset of like “We need to keep creating. We'll lose the audience if we don't create new things and it has to be daily and it has to be there.” And I think, when people actually kind of like take a step back and go “Actually, maybe it doesn't need to be this,” then what they generally kind of find is things stay the same. And I think that's something that now that I’m even doing less hours, still a lot of hours for most people and I’m still thinking about it outside of work and when I’m sleeping and that kind of thing, but I think, at the same time, it's more helpful because I’m actually kind of like, as Mills was saying, marinate on it on those things rather than it be something that's like “I need to do this right away.” And it gives you that time and space to actually think about things and that's, I think, is the most useful thing really is like time and space to actually make things better and think about different ways of making that better rather than the first thing that comes to hand.
Jayneil: Hell yeah, man. Couldn't agree more. How can people follow you or contact you?
Rik: So, obviously, I’m on all of the Super High channels. I do a lot of the social media stuff still. So, if you see any of the social medias on Super High, Twitter, Instagram, I’m still fairly involved with those. I’m also @RikLomas on most channels. And email as well, Rik@SuperHi.com, would love to talk to you.
Jayneil: Awesome. Thank you so much, Rik, for coming on the show, man. It's been a blast.
Rik: Thanks for having me. It's been great.
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