S8E03: Entrepreneurial surprises, with Julian Dixon (CEO, Napier)

Richard Medcalf
Julian, Hello and welcome to the show.

Julian Dixon
Hi, How are you? Pleased to meet you?

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I'm really good. Thank you and I'm really pleased that you're here because Napier seems a really interesting company. You founded it back five or six years ago, and you've had really great growth. So before we go any further and dive into your learning curve as CEO over the last few years, perhaps just give us a quick intro of why did you start this business and what is the business that you've built?

Julian Dixon
Sure and I sing Richard, you call it nappy? Because you live in Paris, because that's the French way of saying if you'll be out here, Napier, to you, Napier to us, but,

Richard Medcalf
Napier. Okay,

Julian Dixon
We're very happy for it to be called Napier So.

Richard Medcalf
Okay.

Julian Dixon
Yeah. That's a Napier. It's an interesting story was founded in 2015. As you say, Napier is a software solution for anti money laundering, which is actually, you see quite a lot of anti money laundering stories or money laundering stories, in the press in the news, scandalous things, and actually, it's a it's a subject that we should all be concerned about and if we're not concerned about it, we should be because it affects every single person on the planet and that is the idea that the the proceeds of criminal intent and actions are siphoned off from, from, you know, whatever illegal activity is put in to the legal system. So this is low level crime, or high level crime, like, you know, gun running drug trafficking, people trafficking, and ultimately, terrorism. So all of the terrible stories we've heard, you know, around the world of terrorist organizations doing their awful things, they have to get their money through channels somewhere and that's all done through money laundering. So what Napier does, it's, it's installed in financial institutions and it is there to detect and help find money laundering within this system. Yeah, so that's what it's for.

Richard Medcalf
Got it. Okay, well, I'm gonna do my best to be properly British and call it Napier and not Napier.

Julian Dixon
Lighten up here, actually. That myself.

Richard Medcalf
Well, I tell you what, actually interesting. Yeah. I have a, you know, the software, the software called Zapier or Zapier, and because they have things called zaps, apparently, Zapier. So there we go, that's why I was getting confused today. What are the differences? It sounds totally different. So okay, so, yeah, so you, you, you're performing a important role here, right? Because as you said, it is a social, social impact to money laundering, and you're there to kind of stop it and so what got you interested? I mean, it's, in some ways, it's a little bit exotic, right? A little bit arcane, for somebody to wake up one morning and say, you know, what, I'm going to build a anti money laundering system for the world's top banks. So what made you get out of bed one morning with that as your your goal in life?

Julian Dixon
Well, it's the stars aligning? Actually, I my background is, as a banker, I've got 20 plus years, in the banking world. And, you know, I I, in my career, I've done I've done many things all the way from front office to back office, or vice versa, I should say, and, and really, I find myself in, you know, 2013 2014, working on projects with companies in the money laundering space. And, you know, I'd always been a consumer of money laundering software, or policies and procedures within banks. And actually to be on the sharp end of a software provider, looking at the analytics, looking at the details of what was going on under the covers, was a bit of a revelation. And actually, what I could see was that the software systems that were available in 2013, really were failing everybody, they were failing the banks, they were failing the public, and the only people that were really serving with the criminals. And the reason being is that, you know, software, such as anti money laundering software, was seen at that time very much as a cost burden on the organization, as opposed to a mandatory defense. And I think that's changed a lot. And the levels of compliance regulation go up year on year.

Richard Medcalf
Every time my bank contacts me, it's because I've compliant, if they ever asked me anything, they can help me to fill in, and it can be burdensome, right?

Julian Dixon
But I mean, it goes up year on year and the software systems that they have, were a little bit archaic, not adaptable, and certainly not good for future looking the way the world was changing. So I saw an opportunity Unity there to do something, and decided to set up a company that that could actually help that by using really smart modern technology. Obviously, incorporating what we now know is AI and machine learning, and have a really forward looking company that has adaptable software that can scale from near near zero to infinity. I mean, the idea being there, Richard, that, you know that the big big banks in the world can basically demand bespoke systems. But the very small companies are kind of left and left to deal with a lot of this, this these problems themselves, or by getting software packages that are too expensive. And it was really to give the middle guys access to top quality product as well as the big guys having access to it. So it's democratizing the use of top quality technology. Because, you know, in the world of money laundering, you know, if a big bank safe and a little bank isn't the money launderers still win, right? We've got to get we we've got to get the good guys winning a lot more often. And, and just for everybody listening, that the statistics on money laundering are pretty horrific, actually, it's estimated more than two to $2 trillion of illicit money goes into the system every year. That is enormous. And the amount of prosecutions that occur are and and the, you know, repatriating of the money is somewhat under 2%. So, it's something that a lot of work needs to go into. It's something that, you know, we're part of that story. We're not the only part of that story. But it's something that everybody should be aware of. And actually, it's the responsibility of everybody. It's the banks, it's the software vendors, it's the regulators, it's the enforcement agencies, it's the politicians, everybody needs to get behind this, because it's, it's a pretty horrific and endemic problem.

Richard Medcalf
Got it? Got it. So so you, you saw this as a as a need, and you jumped in and started to build an API. And where are you now, right? Six years later, what just give us a little bit of sense of, you know, the progress that you've, you've made?

Julian Dixon
Sure, so six years ago, we sat in an attic, in, in an attic room in in Smithfield market, actually, if anyone knows that, in central London, it's above the meat market. So it's very much, four guys sitting in a room, coming up with ideas. And you know, you fast forward Six years later, where we're somewhat around 200 people globally, we have offices in the US, Australia, and in between that we've got Singapore, Malaysia, obviously, the UK, we're in Dubai, and Taiwan as well. So we've got a global footprint and a global presence, we've got a lot of staff to support that effort. And that really is as a result of the explosive growth we've seen, particularly over the last two years, you know, when you when you run a startup, or a FinTech, or what we call reg tech, in this particular case, you know, it tends to be the first few years are very, very slow, often somewhat depressing, if you're staking everything on doing it. But as you get success, success begets more success, when you build a reputation. And, and things can proceed quite quickly after that. And, you know, the industry we're in, which is a trust industry, you know, we are dealing from the very biggest banks in the world, to some of the very smallest financial institutions. And our clients, quite rightly, have to trust us, because the software we are using is, you know, it's serious software for a serious purpose. And actually, if they get it wrong, the consequences for them as an organization can be pretty bad, you know, they can get to get reputational damage. And even, you know, the people responsible can end up with custodial sentences if they get it that badly wrong. So it's pretty serious stuff. So as an organization, you know, we have to have that trust of our customers. And, you know, thankfully we do and we try not to let them down or abuse that. And we've tried very, very hard to maintain that amazing relationship we have with them.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, yeah. So, as you said, success begets success. And once you get that flywheel going, it can take a while, right, but then that starts to create all sorts of opportunities.

Julian Dixon
Yes, it also gives us as a company, the opportunity to invest even more into the technology and get more involved in actually helping the root causes of the problem. So I think it's it's a win win for everybody really, you know, as we become bigger and more recognized and more successful, because, you know, we're not out there, coming up with ideas of how we should stop money laundering, because we're just the guys who built the software. We need to have that dialogue with the regulators. We need. To have that dialogue with our customers, to ensure that you know what they're seeing these the guys on the front line, what they're seeing, we're able to respond within our, you know, in our product to come up with solutions to actually help them. They're the guys on the front line. So it's about them and what they're doing and how we can help them. Obviously, as I said, with the regulators, they have to follow a regulatory regime. So we have to ensure that they are compliance, but you know, just being compliant doesn't catch the bad guys. Right? So you got to be compliant. And you've got to catch the bad guys.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, got it. So obviously, in the business, you wear two hats, right? You, you were the founder hat. And you also were the CEO hat. Yes. And let's just focus in on the CEO part, although in some sense, I know they're going to be intertwined, derived from your position. But in a sense, I think it was your first CEO, role writer to then you had a number of senior roles in other, you know, in banks and other institutions, as you said, looking back, what were some of the biggest surprises that you've discovered about being CEO?

Julian Dixon
Well, that's, that's quite a big question. And there's been in the six year journey, there's been many, many surprises. But I guess, you know, I think I think perhaps the biggest surprise is, how difficult it is to set a company up from nothing and Garner success. I didn't, I didn't think it would be quite that difficult. And I think if you talk to any CEO that set up a new tech company, we all have the same wounds and scars and more stories. But in reality, I think, you know, you can say that, if, if you'd have known how very difficult it would be at the beginning, you might not start so it's not that you don't know that.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, it's like, it's like, parenthood or marriage, or a lot of these things, right? 

Julian Dixon
No, no, it is. But you know, it's, it's definitely a worthwhile journey, and having the tenacity to carry on sometimes when, you know, you're in the depths of despair. But there's also these huge high points and these huge, you know, elation, when you are successful when you know, your ideas are proven in the real world commercially, because that's the best way that people can verify and ratify, what you're doing is what we want. And we see, the way you look at the world as Napier is the way that we think the world should be looked at, in this case, and, and therefore we, you know, we are going to subscribe and buy your products and that, that gives you huge satisfaction, you know, so, and everything in between, you know, you obviously, when you're growing, you have to, you have to have the problems of raising finance for the company, which can be troublesome and tricky. And I have to just tip my cap to our, to our backers, which is my board who've been amazing to me, they've let me get on with things and run them, you know, mostly how I see correctly, and they've always been there for guidance for me. So having amazing backers is one of the lessons that I didn't have to learn because I had that from the beginning. And I'm very, very lucky. And then you know, all that journey with hiring large amounts of people, you know, you we've got an amazing team at Napier. But you know, not everyone's everyone can fit in the company, and then you've got all those those people journeys, as well, and then setting up the culture of the company, and the way that you think it should represent itself internally. And the way that reflects externally, you know, and it's all, there's so many different things to think about. As a CEO, when I was in banking, you know, my discipline was, you know, one or two things, but as a CEO of a small company, you have to be involved in marketing, designing of products, you know, selling, HR, finance, everything. So you wear many, many hats, and I know, that's not unique, but those are the some of the surprises that you get when you start a company like that for me.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. And as you look back over that, obviously, you've had building a successful business. And you what have you. Yeah, what have you found you've done really well, like, Where did you as the CEO, you know, looking back, do you? That's the thing that, you know, that really made a difference in the company's growth, you know, my decision to do this, or the way that I do that was actually a real strength of business.

Julian Dixon
So So, I mean, I would say the things that I've done really well is get lucky at the right time. You know, if that makes sense, but you have to be there to get lucky So, you know, the decisions around, you know, the team that we started the company with the first day periods or in your language, nap periods, I suppose. They're amazing bunch of people. They're all with us. Today in the company. They're doing different roles do different things, but everyone is Still there. So having that culture, that that, that you start with doing that, that was an amazing thing to be able to work with those people. And then, you know, getting particular clients at the right time has obviously been great for us. And, you know, you can look back on that and go luck, hard work, you know, I think it's probably a little bit of both. Because, you know, going back, you know, in this in this industry, it's all about provenance. So you have to have provenance to sell to the next client. But of course, when you start on day one, you don't, you don't have a single client. So you have to get people to believe in you. And the people that backed us in the early days, you know, you can say, that's a great decision by me, but luck, really, it's luck that they that they bought into our story. And we were able to get them to come on that that journey with us. 

Richard Medcalf
Well, it's the same data, but it's not. It's not really luck, right? Because they thought they saw you and how you turned up and whatever it was your commitment, your vision. Yeah, your character, whoever, whatever it is, right? I mean, it wasn't they didn't just roll the dice. 

Julian Dixon
No, no, no, no, it's not look, you know, it's, I'm perhaps conflating luck and opportunity. And a lot. I like to think that, you know, they always say, don't they rather be rather be a lucky general and a good general. So, you know, and I think I think luck, luck does play a part in it. But I do think that, you know, you do put yourself in a position to get lucky. So know, that first big client, is it lucky? Is it hard work? It's a great opportunity. And I think there's elements of both, but you have to be on the pitch, ready to score the goal in order to get the lucky pass

Richard Medcalf
To put it in? Yeah and you're gonna have to, you know, you often have to ask before you will receive, right, I mean, if you don't ask, they're probably not going to receive.

Julian Dixon
Yeah, and actually, you know, to counter that, the thing I would say is, you've got to be in that position 50 times before the one gets there, and everybody's lucky. While there were 49 failed times. Right. So, yes, you're right. It's being in the right place, doing the right things consistently and then you get the opportunities

Richard Medcalf
So tell about this, so you know, how did you do that? I mean, I totally agree but I think I see a lot in people, you know, that is hard, right? Taking 50, you know, 49, inverted commas, failures, inverted, commas, rejections, whatever you want to call them but can take it back to knock it out of people, right? So how did we know what was your perspective on that as you were going through and having the meetings, the meetings and meeting people and it wasn't getting traction? How did you it really?

Julian Dixon
It's really, really tough but, you know, just going back an amazing team, a belief in what we were doing a strategy that we thought that would win the day and in the 49 meetings, we went to, you know, we might have had one where they go, you guys are completely off your rocker but 48 was saying, look, we can see what you're doing. We think it's amazing, you know, come back to us in six months, 12 months, when you're a little bit further down the line. So we knew that we were on the right track, and you just have to have that huge self belief, you have the tenacity to keep going and you've really got to want it right, you've really got to want that success and just going back to what I said at the beginning that, you know, where we were at the very beginning is we were competing in a market where it was dominated by software providers that we thought were giving what society needed and you've got to have that belief that you're doing something really cool and innovative. That's going to help everybody in order to carry on at least it's not for me.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think the thing that gets us out of the comfort zone and the defensive nosode, and everything is service. I think it's you know, when you believe you're actually gonna do something that makes a difference. Yeah. Yes. And then you can kind of take some of the knocks that have been more.

Julian Dixon
Yes, yeah. And don't get me wrong. Richard, there's, there's many, many, many times where you lie awake at night thinking, Oh, my God, you know, how am I going to face tomorrow? Or how am I going to face next week, but, you know, those are the knocks that you take, and you get up and you brush yourself down and you get on with it right? And, and then you get to a point where it's not just about you and your ambitions, you've got a team behind you. And you're carrying, you know, the goals and aspirations of a whole team. And you know, you've got to, as a team, solve those problems and break those barriers down one by one. And actually, that hasn't changed from a small company to a big company. If you want to be successful. You have to get the whole team believing and driving in the same direction. And actually, that becomes harder as you get bigger, right? Because you've got a bigger team to manage and, you know, get everyone thinking the same way. So it's something that we're constantly doing, we're constantly evolving. You know, I don't I'm not sure we've got it. 100% right, but we are constantly working at it to get everybody pulling together in the same direction.

Richard Medcalf
If I was to ask somebody on your team, what your greatest gift is, as a CEO, what would they say?

Julian Dixon
Wow, I don't know, you'd have to ask them, I think, Richard, I can tell you what would you like them to say, what I'd like them to say is very tall and thin, which is completely the opposite of what I am. I'd like I'd like, I'd like to hear stuff around that. I empower them to do the job that they were hired for. You know, so we think that we hire really good people, experts in their field, or people who are moving into that range, you know, I, they're learning to become experts in their field. And I think my job really is to break down the blockers and barriers that every single one of our staff members have, so that they can perform at their maximum. And, you know, everyone says, Oh, that's great, because it, you know, that's really good. But that's good for me, and it's good for the company, right? If everyone can do their job, to the maximum, you know, we've got a pretty awesome company, right? And yeah, and that's what I spend, all my days doing really is ensuring that everyone else can do their job as well as they possibly can.

Richard Medcalf
And like, what, what have you learned about that? Julian, what have you learned about empowering people in this journey? You know, what, if that's your How has your style changed? Perhaps, you know, from even two or three years ago,

Julian Dixon
on I think, Well, I think actually, you know, in my banking career, you know, like I said, our 20 year banking career, the back end of that career, I had, you know, management roles. And really, it was, again, it was all about empowering people to do their job. So the facilitator, you know, I think, being a CEO, you have much more responsibility of many more areas. But essentially, it's the same thing. And I think a good manager, CEO, or just a manager, whatever it is about, you know, empowering the staff being the best ads in them, enabling them to do the job. But you've got to contain that within the vision and the goal of the company, right? So it's no good me, making the guy who's supposed to be, you know, building the products, making really good at, you know, selling, right, oh, he needs to be good at building the product. So they can't go off pace, but it's keeping everyone containerized within that vision and that goal, and everyone, you know, pulling in the same direction, but enabling them to perform as best as they can. And I think, you know, you ask What's changed? Or what's got different? I think that's what I've always tried to do. I think, as you get bigger, as I said, it gets more complex. But actually, as, as the CEO, I'm the ultimate person responsible for that. I'm the arbiter of that. So, you know, I can, I can enforce it, although I don't obviously don't enforce it. But you know, you can make it, you can make it a reflection of yourself. And I hope that's what I try and do. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does.

Richard Medcalf
And I guess I'm kind of wondering what the the flip side is, in the sense of like, with it being a trap, or a trap or pitfall along the way, about how you've, you know, about the CEO role, something where looking back, you go, actually, you know, when I started off, I was trying to do it like this, and I realized that didn't work and I change course, better. Is this something that comes to mind, like a course correction that you might have made in your own style of CEO?

Julian Dixon
So I think, you know, I think there are many points in which you pivot during that that journey. Whether it be you know, the way that you're marketing, or selling, or the product, or there's many pivots, there's nothing, there's no huge pivot, where we've gone we've had an epiphany moment, we've gone Oh, my God, we've been looking at all of this completely incorrectly, and we're gonna change direction and go another way, it's more been correction of the steering as it

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, I'm not talking so much about the business strategy, or the product market fit or any of these things, right. But more most, like how have you how you've kind of seen the CEO role, right, or the way that you know, the focus that you've been putting on things, or the way that you've made decisions, or any of these kind of things, or how you've actually operated with a CEO hat?

Julian Dixon
Yeah, I mean, I think I think that actually changes with the scale of the company as well. So when there's four of us sitting in an attic, it's all very collegiate and, you know, beers at the end of the evening and arms around the shoulder and when you're 200 people, you know, on a globally spread business, in a pandemic, pandemic, then the way that you manage and talk and, and, you know, lead people is is very, very different and you have to adjust your style for that, but I think I'm quite lucky in that my career in I've worked all the way from very junior positions to quite senior positions. And I've had the exposure to both small and big teams to global and local teams to everything in between. So I always felt that I was reasonably equipped to have, you know, going from very small to very big because I've had that experience and where I where I have, you know, faltered in my own mind, I've always had really good mentors and advisors around me, which have sat on the board. And that's been invaluable to me. And yeah, no, I would, I would say that, that if anyone were is sitting and thinking of setting their own company, you do need that beat though, that people around you call it your family if you want, who that you can trust to and get advice. And they will tell you when you're being a bit of an idiot. And they will also tell you when you're right. So you definitely need that sounding board. And that's something that I've always relied on.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, lovely. So where do you go from here as a business? Like if we were having this conversation a couple of years? What would you love to be telling me?

Julian Dixon
Well, I'd love to be, I'd love to be telling you that we are the number one software provider of anti money laundering systems in the world, I would love to tell you that we're in the top 50 biggest banks in the world. And I'd love to be able to tell you that we're working hand in hand with the regulator, to ensure that the software that we build in conjunction with you know, deploying it to banks is making a huge difference to the fight in financial crime, I would love I would love all of those things to happen, you know, I'd love to success. And I'd love the fact that, you know, success for me isn't just commercial on behalf of Napier, it's actually just going back to what we're trying to do. We're trying to find money laundering within the system, and therefore prosecute it and shut it down. So I think it would be great if we could take that. No, I talked about 2% repatriation of monies, it'd be great, it'd be great if we can even take it to 3%, wouldn't it because that would be a 50% increase. But you know, getting to 10% would be a great goal, you know, over the next five years. But again, that's not solely down to neighbor and what it does, or its clients, it's all to do with the regulator's working hand in hand with the with the prosecution services and the policing services. So it's, it's a job for everybody. But I would love to be able to tell you those things.

Richard Medcalf
So how, how might you need to step up your own personal game? As part of that journey, right? Because you said you were on a bit of a mission to change an ecosystem, right? You're building a business, but there's a bigger picture here, which is the business has, especially your business, it can't just operate by itself, right? There's this whole ecosystem of regulators and banks and all these other agencies, I'm sure. You know, what comes to mind, as you think about that kind of stretch for you, as a leader over the next couple of years is perhaps you weren't ready.

Julian Dixon
So the things are an impact, the things that I need to improve that is that

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, or embrace Yeah, just, you know, the shifts you're gonna need to make, because it's, as you said, as the company grows, you need to make shifts, right, and you've done some of those. And so there'll be future shifts, yeah, open to you, grows, and as your ambition grows,

Julian Dixon
I think, I think on the immediate horizon, you know, is looking at a post pandemic world, because we've all been working in isolation, and I definitely need to be able to go out and meet all my clients, you know, we've got a lot of clients, whilst we've been down, you know, in pandemic lockdown, and not able to travel. So it'd be great to go and have more face to face conversations with them and, and really get to the nitty gritty of, you know, what their problems are, what problems we caused them, you know, and what problems that we're supposed to be solving that perhaps we're not doing so well that be great to get all of that feedback. And it would be great. Also, to go and speak to the regulators and try to tie up those loose ends so that we can bring the regulators and the and the financial institutions and the software closer together. So we're all working more harmoniously. And then as as a manager within the team, you know, I'd like to be able to build out, you know, we are a growing company, you know, we're 200 people today, I, I expect us to grow more. So, you know, internally, you know, we talk about growing pains, and we have had growing pains, right and growing pains are things that when you start you think that you can you know, you've learned the lessons in previous lives, but you appear to get new growing pains. So it's it's removing those growing pains, which you know, we are, which we're doing and becoming a better company or round for ourselves, more importantly for our customers and that manifests itself in you know, better products, easier deployment, easier upgrades, and most importantly, easier to consume for the end user because I think a lot of problems But not just software in our industry, but every bit of software has, you know, is being able to be consumed by the people who are supposed to be using it. And that goes for me when I'm even using, you know, my Telly at home or whatever it is. It's like, ah, how does this work? It's, you know, things can get a bit complicated. And I think, you know, it's very, very difficult to make something that's complicated, easy. Yeah, I think reciprocally, it's very easy to make something that should be easy, complicated. But you know that the secret sauce for me, is being able to use this word democratize quite a lot. So one of the most complex things we have within what we do is AI and machine learning, because it's highly mathematical. And it's about how can you get non mathematical people to be able to consume and understand that and if we can democratize that, then that is a game changer. And that's something that we are constantly looking at and constantly working on.

Richard Medcalf
Yeah, fascinating. Well, Julian, it's been great to, to explore these topics with you to get a bit of a deeper dive into the industry and into you know, how you're building a business. If people want to find out about a bit more about Napier or get in touch with you, how should they do that?

Julian Dixon
Well, they can come onto our website www.napier.ai and, or they can contact me directly, actually, you go through the website, you can contact me directly on the website anyway but the website's a great place to start. It's got loads of articles and blogs, and you know, interesting industry insights and it gives you a really good view of who we are and what we do.

Richard Medcalf
Perfect. Well, that's the place to go. I'll put that into the show notes and Julian, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much, and all the best in your fight to get that 2% number up to 92.

Julian Dixon
Yeah, bigger than two. Yeah, that thank you very much, Richard. It's been a total pleasure. Amazing. Thank you.

Richard Medcalf
Take care. Bye bye.