EP 207: [Interview] Teenage Innovators - Hugo Pickford-Wardle on teenage innovation programs and startups run by teenagers

Hugo Pickford-Wardle is a social entrepreneur on a mission to help the next generation start their careers with the skills to bring their ideas to life and financial freedom to pursue those ideas.

He is the founding Sherpa of Startup Sherpas where he teaches teenagers innovation so they can bring their ideas to life.

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EP 204: [Interview] Teenage Innovators - Hugo Pickford-Wardle on teenage innovation programs and startups run by teenagers

Hugo Pickford-Wardle is a social entrepreneur on a mission to help the next generation start their careers with the skills to bring their ideas to life and financial freedom to pursue those ideas.

He is the founding Sherpa of Startup Sherpas where he teaches teenagers innovation so they can bring their ideas to life.

Guest Links: 

Hugo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hugopickfordwardle/

Startup Sherpas: https://startupsherpas.org/

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Transcript:

(This Transcript is AI generated)

Hugo Pickford-Wardle

[00:00:00] Hello innovators and welcome back to another conversation about human innovation. Today's guest is Hugo Pickford Waddle Hugo, a social entrepreneur on a mission to help the next generation start their careers with the skills to bring their ideas to life and financial freedom to pursue those ideas.

[00:00:23] He's the founding sharper of startup sherpas where he's teaching teenagers product and innovation so they can 

[00:00:31] bring their ideas to life. In our wide ranging conversation, he mentioned how the whole startup sherpa system works. How teenagers are learning to build startups, we talk about the teenagers personal development journeys, and he tells a lot of successful stories. Please welcome to the show, Hugo Pickford-Wardle.

[00:00:52] Hello Hugo. Welcome to the show. How are you doing? 

[00:00:55] I'm good. How are you? 

[00:00:57] I'm very good. Thank you very much. Yeah. Looking forward to you to learning a lot about teenagers today. 

[00:01:06] Absolutely. There is a lot that teenagers can teach us.

[00:01:09] So yes, we've got plenty of stories to share. 

[00:01:12] Before we go into teenagers it feels like you are a digital native , a born digital native almost. When I looked you up in the details of your history, but tell us a little bit of how did you get from working at the times, via matter AI to the startup shoppers?

[00:01:31] Well, of what you're doing today, just give us a little bit of understanding how you grew up, what you are doing and how did you get to where you are today? 

[00:01:40] Yeah, so, sure. So I mean, the simple story is just a lot of failure, really and probably just one failure after another. I think that I was really lucky that I ended up at the Times just when iPads were coming out.

[00:01:52] And so I got the the opportunity to create the Times iPad edition, which was, you know, when the wild west of iOS and the Apple kind of store deciding whether or not you were able to publish was all new ground and not a process that was easy to navigate. And so, from there, I actually ended up being at News International when the news of the world collapsed.

[00:02:19] So suddenly I had contacts everywhere. That wasn't the place I was working at which point I created an innovation consultancy matter ai. And there we worked with a whole host of different companies across industries doing innovation projects that. Ended focused more on AI than anything else. And it was kind of right at that nascent point when IBM Watson had just released their video of Watson playing Jeopardy.

[00:02:47] And we'd done a partnership with IBM to be the first agency in London to have a partnership with them. Of course, everyone wanted just chat bots, and so we found that our business started being a chatbot business. And the problem was that you go to a company, you'd create a chat bot prototype and they'd say, well, the answers are all wrong.

[00:03:09] And then you'd say, but that's what you're telling your customers today. That's just your data. That's just what your call center agents are being trained to say. And they'd go away and have to do a whole, you know, content project before we got back to doing any ai. . And so I decided to close that consultancy down and put all of the money that I had from that into doing an AI project for real, you know, where I could really take it to its limits.

[00:03:36] And decided that I'd replaced conveying lawyers within artificial intelligence before realizing there was no intelligence in the UK conveying process to arize. So that failed. And unfortunately no one had said, Hugo, you have a cash machine. You know, you've got this business that is you know, successful consultancy, so maybe don't just close the cash machine and pump all of your cash into a failed startup, because that's a surefire way to end in some distinct pain.

[00:04:06] And so I started getting grumpy at that point when people came to me for startup advice, I was saying, look, if I can't do it, you definitely can't do it. So don't even start. Just, it's a bad idea. And so Dan, my co-founder at Startup, she's suggested that rather than me just telling people where to go every time they asked for help, that we could codify what we'd learned over our careers.

[00:04:30] Cuz I mean, my career had started, not actually at the Times, but way back when I was six years old, telling Ri to golfers just outside Worcester mainly, you know, that was, that was driven really by not having any money, right? That was kind of fundamentally, I didn't get pocket money. I grew up in a single parent household and, you know, I had to make money if I wanted stuff.

[00:04:52] So I managed to make about two pounds, I think selling pot to golfers. And it's just, yeah, it's been a string of failure as one failure to the next really. So I, I do say that I've got a PhD in failure, unless I'm talking to academics who take that very seriously and get upset. 

[00:05:08] But I think that's, that's one of the beauties when you work in entrepreneurship and building businesses and specifically with your business, with your startup shepa, it's good to have done a lot of failures because you know what is working, what is not working, and what are the major mistakes you should not repeat again.

[00:05:29] Yeah, I mean, at starts sheers, we are teaching teenagers how to bring their ideas to life, how to do startups, you know, how to innovate. And the only cred I have to do that is the fact that I've got PhD in failure, right? It's like I can tell you, and our name is about being a Sherpa, you know, up the mountain.

[00:05:47] We are saying that, you know, we've already fallen off all the cliffs. We can tell you how dangerous they are. We already know that there's a pathway through that might be a safer route for you. And so that was very much the premise that we started the whole thing on was, you know, actually we see amazing tools in the innovation space.

[00:06:05] Business model Canvas is an amazing tool. The value proposition canvas is an amazing tool, but you need someone who has either that PhD in innovation or you need someone who's an innovation consultant to be able to go and tell you which one to use and when. And so we kind of stripped it right back and said, what about if we create a step-by-step method?

[00:06:27] Say that someone who is a novice can actually go through this step-by-step journey and it may not be the best journey, right? They, they could get 20% better by engaging an innovation consultant. But what it does, it makes it accessible to everybody. And so when we started testing that out, we were actually testing it with, with mid-career changes, the people who you know, were going and taking their redundancy money and doing a startup.

[00:06:54] And very quickly we had great results, but we realized we were getting them way too late, that they would've gone on a different path if we'd engaged 'em when they were teenagers. . So we're like, well, if we engage teenagers, you know, what could we do if we engage teenagers? Well, why don't we try and get them earning 16 grand by the time they're 16?

[00:07:14] Right? Because we are like, if we can do that, we solve the pensions problem, we solve the talent problem, we give them something that's like a good goal. That's the alternative to the VC model to go and explore as kind of what good looks like. And we also give them something that's actually really achievable.

[00:07:33] And so, so we're like, okay, we can give them this smart goal of, of 16 grand by the time they're 16. And we kind of developed this idea of 16 by 16, and that just resonated with people. So obviously once I heard it resonating and people going, oh, you should really focus on teenagers, probably took us about another six months to go, Hmm, we should focus on some teenager.

[00:07:55] Yeah, but that's true startup way of working as well, where you start something into one direction, which you believe in, and then you find out through the engagement with your customers that there's another opportunity, which is even bigger than the one you started out with. 

[00:08:12] A hundred percent.

[00:08:13] And, you know, we see that, so we were talking about how much we've pivoted this year because we started the year focused on schools as our main kind of client our channel through to teenagers. It was really obvious, right? Schools have loads of teenagers, so let's partner with schools. Hmm. And it's, it's kind of almost a defacto way to roll out a program aimed at teenagers.

[00:08:35] And so we're like, right, we're gonna create great content for the teachers. And we even had a teacher on our team. So it's like, right, it's gotta be in this way. So it fits with the lessons. We created, and we have created an innovation curriculum for year seven three to year 11. We've created dropdown days so they can make it easy for them.

[00:08:53] We've created assembly packs, you know, we've, we've created a whole product there. And then what we realized is we're actually just part of the problem that the school system in the UK is so broken and so overloaded that we've made an amazing thing, but with just another thing, and actually we're just adding extra pressure to teachers who quite frankly don't need that extra pressure, you know, adding innovation and squeezing it into their classroom time is, is just one, it doesn't work for the students. So we went, actually, how much impact are we having? Because we realize that, you know, there's 30 students in a classroom and we could get a half an hour every two weeks into the curriculum if we do it in curriculum time. And so that teacher will deliver that.

[00:09:40] But they're going, another thing to do in P S H E. Mm-hmm. Even when they're engaged with us, you know, there's that kind of underlying piece. The students are going, P S H E lost time. Right? There's no exam, so they're kind of sucking it off. And this, these are broad generalizations. They're obviously amazing teachers and amazing students in those spaces, but generally we're going, actually, how many teenagers lives are being changed by this and we realize they're not.

[00:10:08] And, and on top of that, that's being pressurized just in this whole system. That's a pressure cooker in itself. So that the relationship that we develop with the teenagers in that system, if we do it, is not as good as our direct to teen programs. Because actually we get to be in our programs where we direct with teenagers, not school, not home.

[00:10:30] And so we're not a teacher or a parent, we're a colleague because we actually pay them for work experience. and that gives us an entirely different relationship. And it opens up a relationship with the teenagers where we see their best. We have awesome time with our teenagers. They are brilliant, fantastic minds.

[00:10:50] And the results of what they produce speak for themselves because we are seeing, you know, large corporate partners like Aviva picking up their ideas and, and running with them because there are ideas from minds at their create creative peak, really. Yeah. 

[00:11:06] Let's go deeper and back to how do you engage with the teenagers as a starting point?

[00:11:13] So, I'm a teenager, I'm interested in doing something else. How, how is the engagement process starting from, how do you find a teenager that fits to the program? Does the teenager find you? How does that work? 

[00:11:25] Yeah, great question. So, to start with teenagers, either find out from other teenagers about us or they find out from careers leaders in schools or parent networks or other community networks.

[00:11:43] Our biggest network is through careers leaders. So, and that's been an amazing journey. We, we met a guy called Jamie who was a careers leader who had done his own startup creating advice for careers leaders. And as he got to know what we did, he's got very excited about it and we started partnering to be able to develop that network because when we spoke to careers leaders, they ignored us and they ignored us because of that overload piece.

[00:12:15] So we kind of were going, we're gonna pay your teenagers for work experience. That's unique. That's amazing. Like, look, they're gonna get to work with what if, and it's amazing. They're gonna get a reference, just nothing. And we're like, how on earth can this be the case? We are offering money, we're offering references with like one of Accenture's companies like we are offering just like gold in our mind.

[00:12:39] And it's just cuz they're so overloaded that when Jamie Gay and says, Hey guys, star Sherpa's are offering exactly the same thing, we get a great response. And, and the network has opened up because as a careers leader, he's been able to break through that barrier and show what good looks like and that we are part of the, the good set of offerings.

[00:12:59] And it just kind of goes to that overload question. But then when they've signed up, they actually apply for the paid work experience program. So we designed something we call the super squad a hundred teenagers working on your innovation challenge beside you. And the idea with that is that we can drive diversity and inclusion directly into innovation projects.

[00:13:21] And by doing that we give those teenagers their first taste of. The startup world, the innovation world, and I use those interchangeably because our process fundamentally is the same, just different building blocks depending on the program. And something magical happened when we started paying these teenagers to take part in these innovation projects because we'd started previously with startup programs where teenagers were self-identifying as entrepreneurs.

[00:13:51] And we found two things with that. The first was there was a distinct lack of diversity in that community. And I, I mean diversity, mostly socioeconomic diversity is actually what I'm talking about in that kind of community. But also there's a term that Kathy, my co-founder, is coined of Raise Your Hand Diversity.

[00:14:11] And this is a really fascinating one because we see that on a lot of the schools program. , the same teenagers are targeted and the same teenagers raise their hands, right? So you'll have Tech Giant one Tech, giant two Tech, giant three, all running some STEM programs. Then you'll have supermarket one, supermarket two, supermarket three running some STEM and and maybe solve women into leadership programs.

[00:14:37] And they all go into those same slots. They all go to the same students and they're all hitting the students who already are into stem, who will already raise their hand. And so as soon as we switched over to doing paid work experience, we found the pool of teenagers who want money is huge. Who knew teenagers want money.

[00:15:01] Quite a simple insight once you have it. And actually that's driven diversity in the recruitment into both those super squads. But then what we saw was a five x increase in the those who participated in the work experience. Then going on to explore the startup programs. And so we realized it was actually the flywheel for driving diversity into the startup community as well.

[00:15:26] So how much, 

[00:15:27] how much do you pay the startups? So 

[00:15:30] the, the teenagers. Teenagers, sorry. Yeah, so the teenagers, we pay them based on the missions they complete and they get paid the minimum wage for apprentices in the uk. So there's no minimum wage for under 16 year olds. Yeah. So we decided that we would benchmark with what it is for 16 year olds and, and then we kind of keep in line if they're older than 16.

[00:15:53] So when we're working with college students and we're able to pay them based on the work they do, because we've designed a platform and developed a platform where we are tracking all of that work and collecting all of the work, we've actually got a way where we have been able to break down those work packages into 25 minute missions.

[00:16:13] So at the core of our. Methodology. The step-by-step method is an idea that we break it down into 25 minute Pomodoros, so you can do one podo a date. And so when they, when they work on a project, they get paid about 110 pounds which we see students using that money to buy presents for their mom. Mother's Day, we see them buying themselves the kit that they want for their hobbies.

[00:16:39] We see them saying they're saving it, which I find surprising and I don't really believe fully . And obviously we get a certain response when we ask that question, which, you know, we'll hide some of the, the purchases that I kind of imagine they're making of massive amounts of sugar, for example. Yeah,

[00:16:57] But I mean, it's our belief that we talk about feeding this money into the teenage economy and we started developing something we call trickle up economos. Trickle up economics, I should say. And it's because we've realized that when we are working with students from some of the most deprived postcodes in the UK and we are paying money directly to them, two things are happening is one that's going directly into communities where that money is really powerful in relative terms.

[00:17:29] And the second is that it's then circulating really quickly because teenagers don't keep money in their pockets. That's why I'm like, question the savings piece. Right? It's like a lot of them. Yeah. I saved half of it and I'm like, did you really? I don't believe,

[00:17:48] but is the main intention for the teenagers to earn money, or is it more about. They are being part of something bigger. They're learning additional skills. They are not learning in school. If I just look back, I mean, I was not that entrepreneurial thinking at that time, but today I would, I would say if you would have approached me at that time, it's like I would have loved to join in and the money is just a side thing.

[00:18:18] So the money is a side thing for us. Yeah. What we found is it's the hook. Hmm. So that, that interest that we see in them of going onto startup programs and a five x increase in their desire to do those programs in our pre and post survey demonstrates that what happens is they come on for the money and then they say, what are we doing?

[00:18:43] And they're, they're almost blind. Right? It doesn't matter what project it is, it doesn't really matter about anything. They've just got a part-time job where they're gonna be able to earn some money essentially from their phone. and then they experience the work. And what we're seeing is that is leading them both into entrepreneurship but into career exploration, into real interest in developing their ideas further.

[00:19:06] So we worked over the summer with a squad working on insurance ideas, and Aviva sponsored that. And we saw amazing results. Like we saw a TEDx increase in Aviva's brand awareness with those teenagers who did that, that project, right? Because insurers have a really hard time kind of driving any brand awareness in that crowd, because they don't have a high street presence normally.

[00:19:30] And it's not that interesting to teenagers. We also saw a doubling of their interesting careers in insurance and then kind of associating that with Aviva. And so that talent element. is, again, for insurers. They're facing a, a real issue in talent in the insurance industry. So it's really important. But what we saw was that a teenager, once you engage them and engage them in deep and meaningful ways, as opposed to engaging them for your ends, and I think this is where most programs fall down, right, is they're designed for the company's aims.

[00:20:09] Really? Yeah. Yeah. So and, and they're so savvy. They kind of see through that. Whereas we're trying to go, we're just trying to show you the world and kind of our goal is to train you up so you can solve the world's problems. So like, we need you to get really good at this because those massive challenges the world faces are yours to solve, not mine, which gives us this ability to say, look, I don't really care which of these things you're interested in.

[00:20:35] You need to find your own way. And that seems to be translating in this. Really interesting view that they established quite quickly, like within two weeks they're getting interested in that matter. They're getting interested in the way of working. So we do things in our programs like a Wanda Ponder, which is go and walk and think and spend 25 minutes doing it.

[00:21:02] And so they're like, you are gonna pay me to go for a walk, . We totally are. Yeah. I've just got a tick here that I went on my wand ponder. Yeah, but you gotta go on the wand ponder, right? If you don't go on the wand ponder, what's gonna happen is we're gonna see that your ideas just aren't actually as diverse.

[00:21:21] They're not gonna be as wide because that's part of the process. And so, they start going, well, these crazy people are running this work experience thing and they're not, they're not asking me to make tea. They're not asking me to kind of man the kind of like desk on the front desk. They're kind of.

[00:21:36] Getting me to engage in a question that's really meaningful. Like what should we protect as a society? Or how might financial institutions ensure that their E S G activities aren't just greenwashing? Right? Big, bold questions. How might our smartphones protect our mental health? And they start on this journey where they're going, why are you a minus?

[00:22:02] I don't get it. And then their questions are, why are you paying us? Where's the money coming from? Is this a scam? Like, what's going on? And they're like super, sort of, kind of not sure really what this is all about. And then they start to realize that they have these things called ideas in their heads that are really valuable and that they can go and develop these ideas into things that they get excited about themselves.

[00:22:33] And then, , you know, it, so much of what we're doing has emerged and been discovered as opposed to being designed, which is kind of a really interesting place for me. Cause I design things and I'm kind of like, I'd love to have like started out going, right, we're gonna make sure we design something that's like super inclusive, designed for, you know, being able to build their confidence whilst giving them some economic benefit.

[00:22:57] But actually it's, it is really just emerged from us working with teenagers and kind of trying to work out what, what works and what fits. But you know, we see the confidence that they, they gain over six weeks. They do 24 hours of work experience over six weeks on a super squad and over those 24 hours, it's amazing.

[00:23:17] And then when you start to layer that up, like for example, our squad leaders now, like Raba has done four super squads and three startups with. She's 16 years old, so she some of the clients are under nda, so I can't name them, but I'll say a national children's charity, a very large multimedia company.

[00:23:38] A hospitality company and working with what if her, one of our partners working with Aviva and then she's done startups ranging from a sneaker brand of her own where she's gonna put droplets of blood into the base of the sneaker random a writing wedding invitation service. And then she's landed on Nigerian fusion cookies.

[00:24:01] So when you get her CV for your Yeah, that's first the apprenticeship you're going to go right, soba? Well, yeah. We should probably be interviewing her pretty damn quickly because how has she managed to achieve that in such a short space of time? . And you know, then you, when you interview her, what you're gonna find is she is so confident her last pitch video started playing with the pitch video format, where the first 10 seconds you're like has she missed the, oh no.

[00:24:34] Right. She's actually just now playing with pitch videos and then it's a brilliant pitch video because she's like, drawn you into this kind of like, what's going on and then kind of hits you with her pitch after you, she, you've realized that she's just got you to understand the problem, like in a really visceral way.

[00:24:50] And you're going, if I compare this to her first application video, , like you can see just distinctly the kind of chalk and cheese development of, of her confidence. And she's now leading a squad of a hundred teenagers. So, you know, in terms of management experience at the age of 16, that in itself is also going to be like, Hmm.

[00:25:11] You're saying that you managed more people than I did for this job? . Tell me, tell me more about this . Yeah, 

[00:25:19] so she, she's most probably one of the most thought after teenagers when they start. I don't know if she's still willing to study or if she's just starting, starting a startup. I would do it if I would be hurt.

[00:25:35] Yeah. No, she's, she's still going down the, the studying route because I mean, there's so. Influences on a teenager's life. Yeah. Right. True. There's like the, all of the school influences, there's the family influences there's the kind of societal influences and you know, we see that a lot of the teenagers who are going, guys like you are planning to go to university, but actually you don't need to go to university.

[00:26:00] But we don't wanna overstep the mark and, you know, like we are part of their journey. Their journey has more elements than us. And, and actually what we see is that whether they go to university or whether they do an apprenticeship or do a startup, really what we're gonna try and do is get them to the point where they can make changes quickly as possible.

[00:26:23] I'm just thinking about the scale opportunity guys. One of the challenges is, let's talk about corporates right now. People are complaining that. Students that are starting after university in their jobs have zero experience. Correct. They have correct no knowledge, and I'm just paraphrasing what I've heard over the last couple of weeks.

[00:26:44] They don't want to work. They're lazy, they're don't want to come to the office. Yep. That's what I hear from a lot of people right now. So your program is basically helping them to be a completely different person already when they come into university, which they will then 10 x inside of the university if they still do things on the side and they will start in a working environment where they're 10 years ahead of people that are already 10 years in the company.

[00:27:14] At least that's how it feels like. 

[00:27:16] Yeah. So we see from businesses, you know, we've got a talent issue there, there's no talent available and then all of the points you make about the talent that they do have. , I've heard all that. We speak to young people and they say there are no opportunities. Yeah.

[00:27:33] And we're like, well, both of these cannot be true. And what we are seeing is a massive missed expectations between businesses and young people. And so what we found we are doing is meeting young people where they are, and we actually inadvertently designed a way of working that works for them. Again, it kind of like emerged rather than necessarily we're like, haha, we see this trend and we are going to design something for it.

[00:28:02] Although I'm sure all of that was happening in my brain, I just, you know, wasn't aware of it. So what we see is, , they can do their work on their mobile with us between nine and 11:00 PM at night. And part of what we teach them is deadlines. Right? There's a deadline at the weekend and they have to, if they wanna get paid, complete their work to the deadline.

[00:28:24] Hmm. And we can measure that. And we have an agreement that if they don't do it, they don't get paid for it. And we're also kind of got a hundred teenagers, so if some of them don't do some of the pieces, then we kind of built that into the design. And so 40% of them do it just on their mobile. And about 80% do it between 9:11 PM at night.

[00:28:44] Cause that's when they're at their creative peak. And you compare that to what businesses are trying to do of, so some businesses are location based and time based. Right? So when you think about retail, like there's a different challenge there, which is like, you do need to be here at this time in this place.

[00:29:02] Yeah. , but what we're actually seeing is that what you can say, actually, we can tell you which students will engage and listen to deadlines and kind of meet deadlines that are lightly to be the same people who will kind of accept those parameters versus we've got other students who are brilliant, but they need an invention every week.

[00:29:20] Right? So we kind of like have this extension period, but we're starting as we start to scale, we can say, do you want the biggest lateral thinkers who may need more management on timelines? Or do you want people who are like really timeline focused? Yeah. Do you want people who will socially reach out first, or do you mind if they actually will just take part in conversations that are going on?

[00:29:43] Because we're starting to, you know, when we're looking at this kind of scale piece and the data we collect through the platform, we start to kind of be able to develop a really clear picture of some of those behavioral pieces that we think can really drive diversity into the talent space. because some of the stats around diversity and inclusion around early careers pathways are, are still quite shocking when it's such a big issue for organizations.

[00:30:09] You know, we see things like 12% of apprenticeships being taken up by people from diverse backgrounds. And what we see is that is because n we've, we've not seen lots of companies digging into the actual foundational designs of work and career pathways. It's been kind of a series of plasters that have been applied over time.

[00:30:34] Hmm. And so you end up with something that is kind of, there are elements have been added, but there's certain elements that are still kind of at the core, right? It's like the grad scheme is above the apprenticeships. Right. Because going to uni is still seed as, as the pathway through to management. . But if we can find a few ways to get a couple of our apprentices into that sort of pathway as well, that's great.

[00:31:04] Cuz we can tell a story and we see businesses going, yeah, we're doing great stuff in this space. We had five apprentices. We're like, cool. How many people do you employ? And how many young people are in the uk? Yeah. And how much revenue do you make from the country? And if you put those three numbers on a page, are you actually really making headway in this space?

[00:31:30] Or is there a danger that if you are audited by future generations, it might be considered that you are crad. Washing. Washing. And you know, we've got delicate conversations to have with businesses where we don't want to say you're CRI washing, but we need to say, You're c crib washing because we've also got to think about our reputation and our reputation with the teenagers who are the most brutal audience.

[00:31:59] Yeah, I can imagine. Make sure that we're on the right side of that, right? Yeah. So we we're I say we, this is me. I have not yet convinced Dan and Kathy that this path is kind of one that we're gonna take, but the more I publicize it, the more it like just happens . We're, we're developing this idea of a teen tick.

[00:32:16] So actually getting the teenagers interested in audit and getting a hundred teenagers to go and audit your e s G activities. So they swarm over your e ESG activities and then they will work together to decide whether or not you get the team tick or not, and you'd get one tick for just letting them do it.

[00:32:37] So that in itself is great cause we are kind of expecting they'll come back with things that is kind of like an action plan. But the fact that you're engaging with them on that level is in itself a marker of looking at things from a really progressive point of view. And then obviously a second tick is that they think what you're doing is really good, which would be, we think a really interesting way to deal with some of the E S G credentials that the financial markets and the insurance markets are, are trying to achieve.

[00:33:04] And we chose audit a bit for the same reason we did insurance last year, which is we want to show that we can kind of go to the hard places as well as like the cool stuff, right? So like doing sneaker school and kind of creating something that's really meeting teenagers where they're gonna be super excited is really important for us to.

[00:33:25] our relationship with teenagers fresh and kind of in the right place. But we wanna also show organizations that hey, they, they aren't just there to kind of do the social campaigns and to kind of do the kind of like what's, what's cool in fashion? Like we're gonna go into audit and insurance and produce amazing results.

[00:33:42] Yeah. And if we can do that, then we can pretty much go anywhere. Right. If we can make audit sexy with teenagers, I think that I think we're doing pretty well. 

[00:33:52] Yeah. and another angle, which I like very much d on different parts. And if we think now globally, the, there's also the challenge that kids are underprivileged.

[00:34:05] They ha have no chance to go to university because of missing the foundational either know-how knowledge due to school or the parents are not able to finance the whole thing. So they need to work to be able to survive. And. put food on the table depending on where you are in the world. I'm just thinking bigger.

[00:34:25] Yep. For me, this, this program should be applied everywhere. Say that enabling teenagers to grow into this and enable everyone to do that from a young 

[00:34:37] age. I mean, our mission is to create a generation of trained innovators, and that word generation was purposeful and it implied the global nature of our plan.

[00:34:53] So we spent the first two years building a delivery mechanism to do this at scale. Because what we saw and what we still hear from people is they kind of expect there to be lots of one-on-one mentoring and going into schools and kind of rallying people from businesses to go into schools. But I come from a media background.

[00:35:12] I put the times onto the iPad. I created Vogues first Business to business publication that was a global publication. And so, , I think of education as media. Hmm. And I think, right, how do we create this as evergreen content that we can then get out to people in a way that they can easily consume to then do their work?

[00:35:35] And then how do we collect all of that work and draw insights from it to feedback to those partners in a way that can be seen as a, a scalable solution. And that's what we've built underneath the hood, is that we've built the infrastructure so that we can go and enter any country. And we really need three things, access to the teenagers, through networks, through schools, through advertising partnerships.

[00:36:03] So those opportunities that we see drive. . And then we need the kind of people on the ground who can be able to actually mobilize that that kind of specific countries coming together around those, those students and the problems that they're trying to solve. And actually, you know, the, the reason why we need to create this, what I call a ninja army of teenagers who are really, really skilled innovators is because what I've seen, actually Kathy and I were working in insurance.

[00:36:35] We were trying to make vaccine insurable in Africa. And so it was a project with NGOs, government departments, insurers across continents, across countries. And it's the ecosystem. Innovation is what's needed to, to solve the big systemic changes, the big actual challenges like climate change. . Climate change is a broad term for lots of different things, but if we take, you know, the, the decarbonization of the atmosphere, for example mm-hmm.

[00:37:05] you know, if we're trying to solve those sorts of problems, we need people who can do e ecosystem innovation. And that requires us to, to have people who know how to innovate, they need to know how the world works as well. So we kind of think of it as, yes, we're gonna give this ninja army the kind of core skills, but then we're gonna give them superpowers and we're gonna give them the cheat codes to the game.

[00:37:28] And, you know, the superpowers is like, how do you manage risk? That's insurance and, and law really. Those are the kind of two industries that face off into that. And then how does money work? Because if you can't finance something, you're trying to do an ecosystem and change, you're screwed from the start.

[00:37:43] So actually all of the financial services sit behind that. And then how do you actually make things and get them to people, because that is a huge part of the, the kind of carbon economy. and we are gonna use the lenses of both fashion and food as things that are really relatable. Cause there, there's so much in that space that we're trying to get it to be understandable for teenagers.

[00:38:07] And then how do you amplify your voice? How do you build your audience because that's gonna give you the extra power. And so, you know, that's the media companies, that's social media. And then how do you do institutional partnerships? So that's both government and actually kind of coalition programs. And so we are building coalition for Good around those pillars to bring those companies together to go, right, okay, actually we fit these spaces and we believe that we do need teenagers with superpowers.

[00:38:37] And if we do that, then we've actually got a whole generation globally, like you say, of people who have been trained how to bring their ideas to life. 

[00:38:48] They've been trained how the world works. and they've been told your idea's valid. Like you can go and pursue your idea. Mm-hmm. and on our startup programs, they start by actually having to understand themselves.

[00:39:01] So we see startups as a, as a career exploration vehicle, but also a personal development vehicle. So we put a lot of startup program into them actually pursuing a startup that actually matters to them. And what we find is the things that matter to them are big problems to solve from whatever kind of position they're in.

[00:39:21] We have not yet found someone who wants to try and take more oil out of the ground as a teenager. We haven't found anyone who's into coal, you know? But we have found people who have big ideas, right? So it's not about that kind of scale of idea. We've found a 13 year old who said, I need help developing my new computer chip.

[00:39:40] I think it might be able to save the world. , I mean, when you get that sort of, and you know, this student had brought along a full working prototype of a field kitchen for families that had been in displaced from their homes. So you've got a student who has kind of built this kind of paper prototype, three-dimensional kind of oven, showing how it all works.

[00:40:04] And then they're kind of coming up to you with their computer chip idea and you're kind of like, we don't invest in these kids apart, apart from the odd, the odd one where we're just gonna maybe bring you over here to a special unit. We didn't do that. We are trying to kind of keep to our principles, but you know, they've got big ideas and we just power them up.

[00:40:22] And then the cheat codes are really simple, right? They're the mental models, like things like the power of network. exponentially amplify the rest of your powers. So building your network early. And we think that if we can actually get that ninja army like really skilled up, which we've been proven to do, if we can give them those superpowers, which we've been doing, and we can give 'em the cheat codes, then we can get them, whether they go to uni or not, into those positions of making decisions quicker, whether that's their startup, whether that's in a corporate, doesn't matter what, where it is, it can actually be just they can do whatever they want at that point.

[00:41:03] Cause we've already had the influence of making sure they understand the problems in the world, how the world works and how to solve those problems. Yeah, we could have enough confidence when we see them that that's a great start in 

[00:41:15] incredible. So I can imagine there are a lot of companies interested in that and even countries.

[00:41:22] If we, if we think about countries, What, what other things you believe that need to change in countries and legislations to be able to scale this even into a bigger scale than you are right now? 

[00:41:36] So I think it's probably the same issue that we see in talent, right? Which is that I think things have been kind of designed in a way where there are being opportunities missed and some mismatches, I mean, take the apprenticeship levy, so the apprenticeship levy was introduced so that businesses are essentially paying for those apprenticeship route to be developed, which is a really sensible idea, right?

[00:42:03] If you think about social mobility and you think about diversity and inclusion, that's a really good idea, right? Okay. We know that you maybe have too much focus on like super academic students and we can essentially tax you to kind of take another route. , but the way that legislation has been designed excludes things like this because this is seen as outside the very strict requirements for what can be used to finance in, in the apprenticeship levy world.

[00:42:37] So, you know, I'm gonna start doing some work to understand how I can influence the UK government, for example, to accept that if we want true diversity in the apprenticeship space, we need to start way earlier and that we can really amplify the number of high quality, like we've been talking about high quality applicants into apprenticeships, where companies will bite our handoff for those apprentices because they already know how to meet deadlines.

[00:43:10] They're already highly skilled, they're actually going in for the next level. And we can then actually, finance this, right? Because the things we need to do are essentially pay the teenagers. And if I go to a company and say, this can all be funded by apprenticeship levy, I can almost give unlimited opportunities to teenagers.

[00:43:32] Mm-hmm. . And we know that the government's starting to look at putting innovation into the curriculum as India have just done. But we've seen that schools are overloaded. And I really worry that there will be a, a focus on trying to put another thing into schools without enough change to rebalance that for schools.

[00:44:00] And so I think it's much better to look at other mechanisms. We can create those unlimited opportunities. I'm just developing a new tagline for us, which is kind of opportunities everywhere I think I might have. Might have got it right with that one . I'm still reflecting on it, but I, I'm kind of feeling like that's where we need to be and, and I think that when we look at kind of the countries that we see this, this impacting some countries, we can kind of see that given their kind of economics are gonna be in a really great place to go.

[00:44:36] Should we pay our teenagers to start getting upskilled really quickly? You know, what's gonna drive growth better than that? Turns out the UK is one of those countries right now, we are right at a point where because of the cost of living crisis, because of the talent crisis, because of all of the crises that we are facing, we're going, actually, we've got something here where.

[00:45:01] I talk to people and they head saying, hang on, this could reduce the number of gang members because actually you give them an alternate path. Hang on, this could actually help people, you know, not need the state support so much and support. So the welfare system kind of realigning, hey, this could actually help.

[00:45:18] Like schools being able to kind of re, re-baseline we're like, it could, that's not our job to do. We have to be very specific in what our remit is. But what we see is that there is absolutely some, some really easy changes to make. Cause I believe that policy innovation is the cheapest form of innovation, right?

[00:45:41] I mean it's, it's, you can just change your mind. Like yes, there's more to it to get people to change their mind, but essentially you're going, we were doing that now we're doing this. And in the very simplest terms, I think actually one of the things that Donald Trump showed the world is it really is cheap.

[00:45:57] and maybe dangerously cheap at times because if you've got enough power to make that decision, you can just make things change. So policy innovation is somewhere where we're going actually, what could we change so that we can really move the needle quickly on being able to give more teenagers those opportunities.

[00:46:16] I think as well that the pressure that careers leaders are given for the Gatsby benchmarks, which is the government's way of exploring how well careers teachers are, are doing their careers work. You know, there's a real case for them to be reviewed post covid. They have no sort of space for kind of the hybrid working and the remote working world.

[00:46:39] And reality is in the covid world, getting teenagers into physical office spaces is nightmarish for those careers leaders. And so we need to really kind of think about actually. Could some of that apprenticeship levy money be used to support career services in schools? Because again, that's the pipeline through to these students being able to choose the right apprenticeship.

[00:47:05] One of the things we, we heard from this amazing guy, professor Gerra, who is an educationalist, he was director of education for Zania. He is, I mean, his, his career is amazing. And he said kids can only aspire to what they've seen. True. Yeah. And when we look at the careers system in the uk, which apprenticeship are you gonna do?

[00:47:31] I have no idea because you haven't shown me anything. You've just gone straight into this point without giving me this opportunity to explore. And when you think back to Akiba and. the opportunity she's had to explore hospitality and she's been able to explore charity. She's been able to explore media.

[00:47:50] She's been able to explore retail. Actually, what do you wanna do? She's got an answer of what she wants to do. Hmm. Because she's been able to see those career opportunities and that gets amplified when you go to people in those disadvantaged communities, the marginalized communities. And Professor Gu Grouse told us that what he saw was that those career decisions were being made at the ages of six or seven.

[00:48:20] He was seeing in the girls from disadvantaged communities were going to be cleaners, whereas the boys were going to be astronauts who were seeing that kind of, actually, there were big footballers versus mechanics based on what they'd seen in, in their own lives and what they were told was possible.

[00:48:39] And so, . I think that that, that route of apprenticeships is important to me. Not just because it allows people to have less academic paths, but it allows 'em to start their career without a massive debt around their neck. Because you know, the other part of that is that we've ended up in a situation where public services have been removed to the point where we now accept that kind of educational payment, which obviously in Europe, like that's not necessarily the same, right?

[00:49:12] There's still kind of space for kind of different funding for, for education and is interesting cause I kind of almost come across as anti university. It's anti getting yourself into massive amounts of debt for what you're getting from university. In this day and age, I think the concept of university is fantastic.

[00:49:33] and I think, you know, those are institutions that we should be fighting to protect because if we go down the commercialization route, I don't think they have a place past a few years time. Hmm. Because this doesn't add up. 

[00:49:49] And huge e evolving opportunity as well for change and innovation. Like you, like you said, I would like us to get into the last part of the podcast 

[00:50:01] So asking you a couple of questions that I asked to every guest. If you could work with a project that is impacting every human being on earth, what project would you work with and why? 

[00:50:16] So I'd work to teach every human on earth meditation. So I actually developed a moonshot curriculum. I called it.

[00:50:26] and at the start of every day was meditation. And that's because I think first of all, my own kind of battles with mental health, it's been really critical for me to understand myself. Mm-hmm. . And I think that once you actually understand yourself doing things like finding what you need to do with your life is an easier job.

[00:50:45] I think making decisions is an easier job. I think you make better decisions. I think everyone becomes happier. And I'm a big proponent of us measuring our societal progress by happiness, not G D P. Yeah. And so I think if I was able to, to help people on that journey, that would be really powerful. 

[00:51:07] Love that.

[00:51:08] Very important one. What advice could you, would you like to give to a young innovator that's just getting started? That's, that's a true question. I ask every guest maybe for use a specific one.

[00:51:23] I mean, there's the flippant, join our program, we'll give you a really good time. And you can't be wrong. I think that's probably the most fundamental thing that I think is important for them to, to realize is that yeah, like there is no right and wrong. You can just have all sorts of crazy ideas and those ideas may end up not working.

[00:51:47] They may kind of be going off piece, but actually from an innovation point of view, if you think I cannot be wrong, I think it's really freeing. Yeah. 

[00:51:57] Great. Hugo, where can people find you? Where can people read, understand more about startup Sharpers and how can people connect to you? . 

[00:52:10] So I'm most active on LinkedIn where you can search my name or search Startup Sheers.

[00:52:16] So Hugo Pickford Ward, luckily is quite a unique name, which makes it easy to search for via me. And startup sheers.org is our website, which is almost always behind the curve from where we actually are. But gives you a good starting point and has all of our contact details on there. That is also where teenagers can sign up on the website as well.

[00:52:37] So if you have teenagers in your life that you think would like to do this, you can point them in the direction of it. I would give one caveat to parents that the one person that a teenager is least likely to take advice from is their parents. So as much as you might want your own teenagers to do it my most common question I get asked by parents is, how do I get my teenager to sign up and I advise to get one of their friends to tell them to do it?

[00:53:02] that's, that's a good advice. Now I will of course, put all of the links. Into the show notes so that people can straight away click through to you and find what, what you guys are doing. I believe it's a super, super duper project or business opportunity enablement movement, however you want to call that.

[00:53:22] And I'm definitely following you guys and looking behind the scenes how I can help you going forward. Thank you very much, Hugo, for joining me on the podcast. Was a pleasure to have you. 

[00:53:35] It was a pleasure being here. Thank you very much for having me. Thank you.