SEASON 1 EPISODE 10 with

EPISODE TRANSCRIPT +

People First, Creativity Second, Technology Third. A Conversation with WeTransfer’s Damian Bradfield Season 1, Episode 10

Guest: Damian Bradfield, President and CMO of WeTransfer

AARON KWITTKEN Broadcasting from the 10 Hudson Square Building, home of WNYC Radio here in Soho, New York, welcome to Brand on Purpose, the podcast dedicated to uncovering the untold stories behind the most impactful purpose-driven companies.

My guest today is Damian Bradfield. Damian is President and Chief Marketing Office of the file transfer service, WeTransfer. Damian joined WeTransfer a year after they were born in 2009, so he joined in 2010. He initially joined as Chief Strategy Officer, now he’s Chief Marketing Officer. And in that capacity, he’s responsible for lots of things, including establishing the company culture.

And, I think what’s striking to me and anybody who’s been on WeTransfer, and I’ve been using WeTransfer almost from the start, is that they have a very purpose-driven stance on a lot of issues that are very serious issues, everything from gun control to climate change, net neutrality and several others.

Damian is behind a lot of the thinking, a lot of the narrative and a lot of the actions behind what WeTransfer does. WeTransfer makes most of its money, I believe, and Damian can correct me if I’m wrong about this, from advertising, but they also give away about 30% of advertising to aspiring artists and musicians and designers to be able to show their work.

And they also give away a lot of this advertising to take a stance on a lot of the social issues that I mentioned earlier. So since it’s inception, WeTransfer has transformed from really a small file sharing service in Amsterdam to a worldwide business that can really fulfill a spectrum of creative needs.

The motto is: People first, Creativity second, Technology third, however Damian has reaffirmed WeTransfer’s commitment to being more than just an online platform. And just last month, and I’m gonna ask Damian about this a little bit more, they launched a very controversial, kind of an anti-technology campaign called Please Leave, where they encourage artists to take a break from their screens, which includes WeTransfer, to find inspiration from meaningful, real world experiences.

Damian Bradfield, welcome to Brand on Purpose.

DAMIAN BRADFIELD Thanks, thanks very much for having me.

AK: It’s a pleasure to have you. So, I mentioned a little earlier. You guys are not tackling easy issues, right? These are issues that companies of all sizes would probably consider taboo or stray away from or have some varied nuanced verbiage and it’d have to be only under duress when talking about these issues.

So, you are leaning heavily into not just cultural zeitgeist things but heavy issues like gun control and climate change and net neutrality. You’ve launched so many initiatives, this podcast would be an hour long if we talked about every one of them, but, talk a little bit about the idea behind being purpose driven and whether or not that was from the start in 2009, how that came to be such an important part of the business.

DB: So, I think it’s always been part of the DNA of the company because we launched at a time when the internet was really booming. And it’s not to say that it isn’t booming today, but there was unprecedented growth, unbelievable interest in experimenting with new things.

Now if you can think back to the early days of the apps tool, people were just land grabbing, producing apps, downloading apps, putting anything and everything on their phones to try to get as much access to new stuff as they possibly could.

We had this very simple site that had a massive full screen image in the background. And, it was a format that it was developed really to look great, it was aesthetics first. And the idea that we’d be able to monetize it by selling it to different brands or media companies, whatever.

But it was a completely different format. The market was moving into programmatic advertising and we had a format that really required manual labor to produce something and put it up.

So, as a result, we had a lot of inventory that we couldn’t sell. We all came from that sort of creative field, we had a design studio and, previously, and advertising and so we were surrounded by creative friends. It was just so easy to give away that media space to support projects from friends that, if you’re a budding writer or illustrator, we all know how hard it is to get your work seen.

And we had this gift of being able to do something with this media space, give it to somebody who would be eternally grateful for it, and in return you know I use this just for something that was a fantastic, fantastically beautiful experience.

Fast forward to a few years down the line and we’re a bigger team, we’re a bit more strategic about what we could do with that space, and, I guess as we matured, we were bumping into different campaigns and projects and issues and causes, and one of the exciting things is that you could be in, uh, a meeting in London and someone would be talking about an advertising campaign or whatever.

And they’d say, you know, but on the side I’m working on this project that’s about plastics in the ocean and we could turn around and say, “You know what? We could help you with that. Why don’t you just give us a wallpaper ad, and we’ll run a few million impressions and we’ll help you with that project.”

And that was always the thing that everyone got excited about. Where it’s like everybody that I think is creative has a side project. Every major entrepreneur invests in something that is outside of their day to day business.

AK: This is my side project. This is an example.

DB: Right, yeah. Everyone’s got one, right? And then we were able to help them fulfill that, get visibility on that side project that they didn’t necessarily have the money to go out and buy.

AK: But you guys did this, correct me if I’m wrong, you gave away space but you did this before you were profitable, didn’t you?

DB: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

AK: That’s incredible. That’s real to me. Cause so many companies are like, “OK, now that we’re actually making money,” and I’m not disparaging those, “now we can start giving it away.” But this was part and parcel to who you are in your DNA. You didn’t wait to be profitable, so this is who we are and eventually, we’ll get a yield out of it, right? As our business grows, at least we’re able to give back as it grows.

DB: Well, I don’t think we even looked at it as eventually we’ll get a yield out of it. I think it was that we had, if you’ve got x amount of money in the bank, at a certain point, you only need so much, right? And the rest you could do something decent with.

And I think, a big part of this is, the company started in Amsterdam. And this is a market that is heavily driven by Calvinism, and it’s heavily, well it’s historically a very social market so its very much about helping others and understanding when you have enough and understanding and appreciating what you have.

And I have I think that’s a very different market than the US. It is nowhere near as much founded and grounded in consumption and capitalism. So if you grow up, if you’re building this company in that market, at a certain point it’s like, why would you not do that? It would almost be frowned upon if you weren’t to do something like that.

And I think, you know, one of the major reasons that people join WeTransfer is not because we’re a software business or we’re creating new products around creativity, but because we do a lot to support the place that we came from and the market that we all aspire to. You know, play some sort of role in, and we’re able to do something fantastic off the back of it.

And we now have 50 million users pretty much in every country in the world. So when we do something today, that’s real impact. I mean it can really make a difference.

AK: How do you choose the actual causes and the campaigns themselves? I mean, there’s so many things to choose from and, I’m sure, you’re being pitched constantly. So, is there a process, is there a committee, I mean what process do you go through internally to determine what issue and what cause to promote or to source next?

DB: We are pitched a lot. The majority is sort of inbound, pitched as we receive from creatives, so people pitching a festival idea or people pitching an art installation or something that they need some part financial backing or media backing. And that’s a combination.

And in that selection process, we have an editorial team, they manage the site called WePresent. WePresent is the place where we feature all the long-form storytelling and projects that we commission or are a result of that inbound request that we might have. With regards to cause related stuff, it’s very personal.

So I think, you know, there’s a few of us that care, particularly around certain topics and have always supported certain topics. As we grow, undoubtedly we’ll have to be more rigorous, or perhaps more, perhaps form a committee to make sure that we’re doing that and respecting everybody’s wishes and intentions within the company.

Because it is very clear that a lot of people join WeTransfer because they are passionate about that stuff and want to play an active role. So we’ll have to get into this place where we’ll have to get into a more commission approach.

But, today when we moved out here and opened up the US office, we opened up in LA, I have two kids that were, at the time, 8 and 11, and suddenly we were being confronted with the Parkland shootings. And my kids had to go through lockdown drills and metal detectors and having their bags searched for weapons.

Coming from the Netherlands that had never ever crossed our minds for one second that any kid of 8 would have to be concerned about their safety at school. And we had a few projects that were all sort of coming together at the same time. One was around a story of somebody that had survived the shooting. Another was a photography project on victims of shootings.

And then a friend of mine who was also Dutch said, “Why don’t we make a film? Make a film about veterans and talk about their, their feelings towards assault weapons and try to put some education back into the market around the ridiculous nature of guns?” We just did it, to be honest, it wasn’t necessarily that we thought we were going to be able to do a particularly big project around gun reform, it just sort of came about like that. At that same time, and then with the Parkland shootings, it felt almost essential that we did it.

And then we had a role to play in using our platform to bring some of this to life. And the film we actually made end up going to the March for our Lives in Washington and Immigrants Artists played it for millions of people, all across the states, which was quite phenomenal and you know, but it’s one of those projects that we just cared about. You can’t ignore it, right, I mean everybody, a lot of people care.

AK: Especially with that issue. Did you get a lot of hate mail or backlash or anything that was kind of scary, negative thrown back at you, that you were aware of? And I ask only because I have commented on and written about it, even in my own, as a contributor for Forbes, around issues with the NRA and Enough is Enough and gun violence and stuff like that. I’ve gotten some really, really, crazy, wacko, crazy, scary emails. I’m just wondering if you guys are seeing that as well or saw any of that?

DB: Yeah, of course. But I think we see it in general anyway. With the number of users that we have, at a certain point you’ve got to just grow a couple of extra layers of skin and look at it from a bigger perspective.

In all of the products that we have across the Paste and Paper, WePresent and WeTransfer nearly 55 maybe 60 million users, something like that, if 100 people are pissed about something that we say or do or don’t particularly like in stocks that we’ve taken, in the bigger scheme of things, it’s not that big a deal. So we get a fair bit of that and that’s not that uncommon anyway.

With regards to this, no I wouldn’t say that we got a ton of it, we also sought out a lot of advice before we did it. I have a very good friend who runs a project called Liberty United. He buys up guns and melts them down and repurposes them into pens and jewelry and stuff like that and he’s basically trying to take guns out of circulation in Africa and America.

And we got a lot of advice from, his name’s Peter Toome, a lot of advice from Peter on how to communicate this, what sort of language we should use, how we can ensure that we get our point across without offending those people who are particularly extreme. So we tread quite carefully around it, I think, and are fortunate that we know a lot of people around this space that helped us doing it carefully.

AK: Yeah, that’s smart. So onto somewhat lighter issues, although not very light, I suppose. You guys as well, offered almost 175 SoundCloud employees when they are laid off in 2017 each $10k to remain unemployed and to create something new. I love the idea, did I get that right or am I overstating that?

DB: It wasn’t for them to not take a job, but to start a business. It wasn’t that they should stay unemployed but they should just not fall into that trap of having to feel like they had to go out and get a job. And to realize perhaps what SoundCloud had given them.

That was what I was particularly keen on was that SoundCloud was one of the most influential platforms that existed in and around music. It was a platform that if you were a budding aspiring musician, you’d start your career on SoundCloud, that was almost a given. And what seemed to be happening was that in this, you know, world of tech and investment, they were being forced into having to sort of try and play against (inaudible), look like they weren’t going to be able to do.

So what I was desperately hoping for was that we’d be able to start a conversation around, hey, just think about it a second, take what you know and apply that to something new. That really does help those young musicians that need it, that really rely on a space like SoundCloud, today, right, it plays a, I think it still plays a fundamental role in the lives of an early musician. But, I was worried that they were going to lose that.

AK: And what happened? Did anybody take you up on it?

DB: So the whole project was basically, you know, don’t get a job, start a business. And it’s not that we were offering millions of dollars to go away and create something, right? I mean, it was a really small investment for these people, individuals, to do something.

But the feeling was that we started WeTransfer with a very limited amount of cash. I managed to bootstrap it and, to some degree, you don’t need a lot of money to get an idea to a place where you could pitch it or make a proposal to somebody with a bit more money. So, we just basically gifted $10k. It wasn’t a loan, it wasn’t an investment, it was a gift. And what people had to do was basically just tell us that they were going to do something with this money that would be, in some way, towards starting a company or starting a festival or whatever it might be.

AK: Just not the Fyre Festival.

DB: Yeah, exactly. So they applied. So we wrote to 175 ex-employees, whatever it was. We tried, I think we got a list from Medium of all the email contacts of the people who got laid off. And we had, I can’t remember how many applications we had, but, at the end of the day, we only really got 9 or 10 decent applications that came through. And that’s who we gifted the money to. So, it was a mixture of people that were starting something similar to SoundCloud, something in the female music space, female music festival, that sort of initiative.

AK: Have you kept in touch with any of those folks?

DB: We’ve kept in touch but I cannot tell you that any of them have been particularly successful or that they’ve gone on to great things. The only thing I can tell you is that, you know, I think people at that time were very grateful for the offer at least and I know a couple of them have gone on to manage to raise additional money and to begin to build a business but at this moment in time I wouldn’t say that it was an amazingly successful campaign or project or gift that really kickstarted something fantastic. That’s not like we’ve seen a new SoundCloud, unfortunately, come out.

AK: Yeah. Yeah. But, still, you gave away what $90-$100 thousand dollars and even if it didn’t help to create the next SoundCloud or what have you, what it did is help reinforce among those individuals the need to pay it forward, right? And hopefully, they’ll be in a position to do something similar either in small ways or large ways based on the example that you set for them And that’s I think the win, to be honest with you. Everything else is just gravy.

DB: Yeah, so I appreciate you saying that because not everybody, there was some criticism at the time, right? That it was just a PR stunt. That it was a company that’s not giving away much at the end of the day, $10 thousand dollars isn’t a lot of money. And I really beg to differ. I think it isn’t about the money.

At it’s best, it would have been somebody reaching out and saying, “I’ve got a great idea. Thanks very much for that gift, this is what I’ve done, and then can you help me promote it and take it forwards and as a company?”

That’s something I stood behind. There is nothing that the team loves more than getting involved in a project, be it ours or somebody else’s, and seeing it’s success. Seeing it land. Seeing it take life form in another market, where it started in Paris, maybe this exhibition or whatever it is that we’re supporting ends up touring the world and finishes in Morocco, or something or other. That concept I think is really cool. That’s something, I think, that everybody gets up every morning excited about trying to help.

AK: I call it positive contagion you just want to spread in a good way.

DB: A far more intelligent phrase than I’ve ever thought of.

AK: I don’t know. I’m trying to reinvigorate the word contagion. I guess make it more positive. And then your most recent campaign, the Please Leave campaign, you want to talk a little bit about that? I just think it’s interesting when a tech company’s basically saying, and I know I’m taking this too literally, kind of get off your technology and why don’t you go find yourself and find inspiration in the analogue design or art or music world and then come back to us. Talk a little bit about that. That’s pretty cool.

DB: So we made a report called The Ideas Report. Again, since 2019, we’ve always been looking at trying to get feedback from our user base and trying to understand, you know, what they do and who they are and as much in the real world as we possibly can so combination of interviews and combination of (inaudible).

And what came back from the last Ideas Report that we did was a huge chunk of our user base didn’t get inspiration from being behind the screen. And this may sound obvious and I’m sure, for a lot of people, it’s like, yeah of course, duh, it’s just not where you get energy. And it is very obvious, but I think for a lot of us, we get trapped into spending an obscene amount of time behind a screen and thinking that so long as we’re going through our routine of catching up on the New York Times, and reading Twitter, and whatever on the blog and stuff that we’ve done that we’ve got our daily dose of updates and news and stuff and then we’re inspired.

And what was really obvious is people are not inspired from sitting behind the screen for hours on end. Our audience, in particular, loved getting away from the screen, getting outdoors and get inspiration from the people and things happening in the environment around them.

And that’s just something that resonated with us too. We’re like, this makes sense. In order for me to come back in and be able to write something, I need to have a break and talk to somebody, meet somebody, see something, do something and then come back in and then I’ve got the energy to put another 45 minutes, an hour and half, or whatever it is, into writing something or finishing something. And once that’s done I need to get up and go away and do something else again.

What’s happening today is that were increasingly becoming remote, a lot more people are working from home, and that’s great because it gives them independence. It’s great because it gives them the flexibility, but it also means a lot of time you get up, you don’t even get dressed. You sit behind your laptop. You get stuck into the morning emails or Slack or whatever else. You barely come up to breathe to get a cup of coffee before you go to jump on a Skype call or a Google hangout or something else.

And before you know it, it’s 4 o’clock and you’re still in your pajamas, and you haven’t actually spoken to anybody in the real world or seen anything. And I think for society in general, you know we need to reflect on our posture, look at how we’re sitting hunched over our screens, living off caffeine and soda and get outside, get some inspiration. Then come back in and put some time into stuff that can make a phenomenal difference, right?

We’re not saying don’t use WeTransfer and don’t use the internet or anything else. It’s just that anything in life use it in moderation. Be sensible. Don’t eat 10 hamburgers a day. Just one hamburger a week is not going to kill you. It’s all good. Just think about it.

AK: At our agency, we have something called Inspiration Days and we actually mandate that people take at least 2 days off a year, fully paid days where they can go do anything where they can kind of reinvigorate themselves. It shouldn’t relate to work only in that they’re going to come back and talk about it but it’s like, read a book, go to a museum, go to a festival, go to a concert, go to a show, but just we’re basically paying you to refind inspiration that’s not digital, right? It’s a little bit more analogue.

And I think it works. I think it’s important and I think it really does provide people less path dependency, ‘cause that’s really what we’re all really getting involved in day in and day out, and I think that technology can help, unfortunately, reinforces that.

DB: I think it’s good. It’s complicated in the world of tech, right? And probably also in advertising and media where there’s a traditional pace at which you’re expected to work at and traditional hours that you’re supposed to put in. And especially in the service industry, you’re also somewhat beholden to a client who may not be that respectful of your time because their focus is on their own.

We started the company in Holland and work/life balance is super important. Happiness is an index that’s really far more important to anybody than wealth. I’ve got kids, so when you’re talking to parents, there’s a very visible difference between the Netherlands and the US, where in the Netherlands the conversation would be, hey, how’s Benji, is he happy? And in the US it might well be, hey, how’s Benji, is he learning French yet?

AK: Or Mandarin or something or seven languages, right?

DB: Yeah, exactly. Those are two vastly different worlds, right? So it’s harder to sort of set up those parameters for people to sort of go away and be able to get work/life balance and actually come into work fresh and energized and willing to put that time in. In the US, and in the service industry, where it’s not always respected. We talk a big game, but it’s not always really respected.

AK: Well, we have to force it. I just sent my daughter off to her seventh year of sleepaway camp and it’s seven weeks long. And whenever I speak to anybody outside the US, they’re like, “Wait, you send your daughter away for seven weeks for every summer?” And I’m like, “Yeah, she has no social media, she is living in a bunk, a cabin, in the middle of the woods with like nine or ten other girls and actually those friendships that she’s formed with those other girls are lifelong friendships. They have never been tighter.”

And I think it’s really healthy, even though I miss her, and in aggregate, it’s almost a year of her life, of her 15 years, that I haven’t seen her. But I think it’s making her a healthier, better person. I really do. And I didn’t have that advantage or that privilege when I was young so it’s still a little foreign to me. But I can see the benefit.

DB: I mean it’s horses for courses. It’s whatever works for you and your family and your set up and I think the most important think you’ve got to have within your family set up, within your company set up, is transparency and an honest dialogue between what works for you and not judging trying to set up parameters because other people tell you what you should do in this context. If seven weeks works for you and your family than that’s what you should do, and if she’s happy right, then who am I to judge it, or anybody else.

AK: It’s a nice break for the parents, too. I’m not going to lie.

DB: I’m sure. Seven weeks without my kids, amazing.

AK: Exactly. So, the majority of your use base is and, correct me if I’m wrong, is probably more on the design and art side. There’s a lot of business users, there’s me as well. But I’m gong take a guess that you’ve got a lot of artists and designers and musicians and what not, right?

DB: I think we’ve got every Tom, Dick and Harry on WeTransfer. Let’s rephrase that. I think in a new market, the prime is, the people that first instigate the use of WeTransfer, are generally in that space. But as the market matures, it becomes for everybody.

There are many lawyers using WeTransfer as there are musicians. And then in a market like the US, we’ve got, it would have started, I mean the market in the US would generally always start with somebody who’s in media. They’re a designer working in a media agency or a creative agency, working in film production or something.

But, over time they’re using the tools more and more, it just broadens out and becomes super inclusive. And not forgetting, right, that WeTransfer is no longer just a file sharing service. So, we have 3 million readers that we present. They’re from every walk of life. The people that use Paper, the drawing app for iOS, again, are obviously creative. It’s a real mix of people who just enjoy, I think, the products that we push out that are really just about enabling or about facilitating something or other.

AK: It feels like you’re a little bit like a digital media company in many ways.

DB: Well, you said earlier on that our money comes from advertising. Our money comes half from advertising and half from subscriptions. So we’re very much a media company.

When you visit WeTransfer.com on a desktop, you will see ads that rotate every 40 seconds. And they’ll be interspersed with a story about FK Twiggs and a new album that she’s produced or about Roxanne Gay and her creative writing process or maybe even the Spice Girls.

And then WePresent is 100% a media platform, we don’t yet monetize that. It’s really just about long-form storytelling, but in the future, the likelihood is that that will be a space that brands might be able to play a role in or that we would look to monetize. But at the moment, we’re trying to build basically an ecosystem that hopefully fits into every aspect of a creative thinker’s life.

So, WePresent is about sparking ideas. Collect is an iOS app for basically creating digital rich media mood boards. You can aggregate anything from Spotify playlists to YouTube videos, photos and everything in the playlist. That, for us, is really about that sort of collection or collation of ideas.

And Paper and Paste and WeTransfer are about the actual creation of something and the exportation of that idea. So in the spectrum of the creative process, we’re trying to play a role in multiple touch points across a creative’s journey or throughout the production of something and hopefully in the future beyond that. But more and more so we’re a media company that I think is very much involved in the ideas business.

AK: How did you meet the founders? Was it more serendipity? How did that happen? You came to the company in 2010, it was formed in 2009, I mean very early days.

DB: Yeah, so it launched December 1, 2009. And, it was launched by a small group. So it was really two guys that really founded it. A guy called Bas Beerens and a guy called Nalden.

But Bas had a creative agency, basically was looking to build something that would help him push files, push assets that he was creating to his clients. And Nalden had a blog, he had this blog called Nalden.net. And in the background, he had these full screen images.

And basically, those two guys together shed knowledge and Nalden contributed for aesthetics to Bas’s idea for his file transferring business and that was December 2009, and I joined in like, June 2010. I was working at an agency and WeTransfer didn’t really have a fixed location.

Nalden was working from somewhere else and Bas was working from his office. And I had this massive building that was part empty in Amsterdam. So I gave, someone introduced me to Nalden, and I gave him an office space. And we got to talking and working together.

WeTransfer was bootstrapped so we had to find income from other places. So everybody sort of had a side job. Nalden had his blog and Bas had an agency. And Nalden and, later, founded another agency called Present Plus.

And through just overlapping interests, we were all coming from the very same place and we were all very excited about what WeTransfer could represent. What I brought to the table was basically the brand partnership, relationship stuff that Nalden and Bas we’re necessarily focused on or necessarily spending their time doing. That’s really what I brought to the table early on. And at that point, literally it was just sort of six people, in a room, so it was very young.

AK: So what advice would you give someone who was once in your position in those early days where you are, it’s kind of a side hustle, it’s very interesting, but you still need to make the rent, you still have bills to pay, you have financial obligations, you have realities. That moment where you make the decision to go full-time and to just go for it and the opportunities are sometimes what you can’t see in front of you, right? What advice would you give to someone in your position today? There’s a lot of people like that, and we talked about that earlier.

DB: Yes, I think a lot of people would say you’ve got to go all in. Just do it. Just go all in and take the risk. That’s easy to say but it depends on which market you’re in. At the time that we were trying to set up WeTransfer, it was highly likely that we’d raise $200k for 20% equity in the business. $200k is going to get you nowhere when you’re trying to build out a team. And you’re going to give up 20% stake.

AK: That’s Shark Tank money, right, when you’re trying to put together a new hairdryer, right?

DB: You’re not really going to go anywhere with it. If anything it’s going to hold you back.

AK: Right.

DB: So, I would really question whether you can bootstrap it and have you got the energy to do it, because, it does require a lot of time. But everybody has to have the ability to be able to focus on multiple things at the same time.

I think somehow if you come from the agency world, you’re used to doing 5-6-7 different clients or seven different projects at any one time. So you can multitask quite well, but we all know, right, if you’re in the agency world it’s not the most effective way of spending your time. So you’ve got to put a dot on the horizon when you’re going to do this until that time. And from that moment onwards, if it’s not working, we’re going to kill it.

And in the agency that we have Present Plus which was running at the same time as WeTransfer, we killed a lot of stuff that just didn’t make the cut. We invested a lot of money in other projects and products and none of them we’re going anywhere compared to WeTransfer. WeTransfer just kept on growing, kept on proving that it was something that people loved.

So only in that moment, once we had the feeling that we should experiment with other things and this was the thing that we go, ok we’re all in. Maybe I’m cautious around this sort of thing, but I would say I think you should tread lightly. If you look at the statistics of success and failure around start ups and new companies it errs on the side of failure and today I think there’s, the world is a much harder place to differentiate and create product that people really need.

Again, back in 2009, people were playing all sorts of fields and people didn’t know what they needed. We were trying to assess what worked for us and what we wanted in our lives and in our digital lives. Today, I think people know a little bit more about what they way. And they’re a lot pickier. And they’re gonna see through the sign up forms or the rest of it that you’re going to throw down their throats in order to capture a new audience. So, it’s tough today. No question. Tougher.

AK: And even tougher, just to remind our listeners, in 2009 we were just entering into one of the worst recessions. Some people would even say a depression following the 2008 crash. So you have to be a little crazy, maybe, or incredibly resilient to say, hey, I have an idea. Let’s launch a new company. Now’s a perfect time! I don’t think you guys are giving yourselves enough credit for either being crazy or crazy focused or we’re onto something. But I think that’s impressive.

DB: So it’s certainly tougher today but there’s also a lot more money in the market today. So, the financials have changed so that you can, and I just read that there’s a billionaire per 11,000 inhabitants in San Francisco. I can remember as a kid there were no billionaires maybe that existed. Maybe John Paul Getty. Very few billionaires on earth. And today, we’re talking about in a city in San Francisco, 1 billionaire per 11,000 inhabitants is just insane.

So there is also a lot of money out there and I think you got to be careful. And this is probably one of the biggest lessons that we’ve learned, and it’s not that we had our fingers badly burned but just something I’ve learned in the process of doing WeTransfer, is be careful who you take money from and what their expectations are and really do your homework and it’s the way I think you got to treat investment. Or starting a company or partners or anything. Do these people represent the same values that you have? And are they motivated to do the things that you are setting out to achieve? And if it’s just about money, you should really question whether or not you want to have those people on board.

AK: Agreed. I think that was well said. Damian, it was great to have you on Brand on Purpose. What’s the best way for our listeners to follow you and WeTransfer, as well as WePresent, of course.

DB: So, WePresent is just wepresent.com, for me it’s Twitter, I only use Twitter I’m trying to get off everything else, and for WeTransfer it’s probably Instagram. I would say it’s where you’ll find the richest content and the best stories around what we’re doing in terms of creativity and the cause-related stuff we’re doing. So, it’s probably Instagram.

AK: And, of course, use the service. That’s my public service announcement. Thanks, Damian.

DB: All right, thanks for your time.