Welcome to the Jazz Shapers Podcast from Mishcon de Reya. What you are about to hear was originally broadcast on Jazz FM however the music has been cut due to rights issues.
Elliot Moss
Welcome to Jazz Shapers with me Elliot Moss, bringing the shapers of the business world together with the musicians shaping jazz, soul and blues. My guest today is serial and super serial, to be honest with you, entrepreneur Lex Deak, founder of amongst other things, QVentures, a venture capital firm and most recently, co-founder and CEO of Basket, the ecommerce start-up aiming to revolutionise the online shopping experience and boy, does it need it. Fascinated by business and inspired by his mum’s women’s only taxi company, which she grew to a million pounds of turnover, Lex spent his university student loan buying two properties – cheeky – doubling his money in three years and using that to launch a company importing guilt-framed mirrors and furniture from China and selling them through auction houses. It’s going to get crazier, just bear with me. Having launched, grown, then exited the UK’s first eBay drop-off shop, a long weekend in Morocco to clear his head, as he said, turned into a year-long business trip – of course it did – with Lex building a boutique hotel in Marrakech, as you do. He successfully pitched on Dragons’ Den, he’s created an investment platform facilitating over £250 million in funding for more than 200 companies and – I’ve missed plenty out but we’ll get to that later – his most recent venture is Basket, launched in 2021. Acting as a universal wish list for online shopping, Basket brings all your desired products into one place, letting you know of price drops and discounts and with 250,000 users already in the UK, they’re planning international expansion this year. We’ll be talking to Lex very shortly, I don’t know how we’re going to cram it all in, in the next hour. And the music in today’s Jazz Shapers comes from Poncho Sanchez – I saw him in Madrid in 1991 – Taj Mahal, Jacob Collier and here’s Etta James with Good Rockin’ Daddy.
How good was that? A bit of blues, I think, you can call that blues, sort of. Etta James, Good Rockin’ Daddy. Lex Deak is my Business Shaper today and often I say founder of x but in this this case it’s founder of x, y, z, a, b, c, d, e, f and g. It’s actually Deák isn’t it’?
Lex Deak
It is Deák, Elliot, yes, it’s of Hungarian origin, my dad was a Hungarian man so, I don’t impose the proper pronunciation upon people.
Elliot Moss
And where would the accent be? Which word? Which letter?
Lex Deak
It would be on the ‘a’.
Elliot Moss
On the ‘a’.
Lex Deak
Sort of an acute accent on the ‘a’ but I’d spend my life just saying “oh no, no, sorry” so I’d be Hyacinth Bucket basically, I’ll be that guy.
Elliot Moss
Yeah, you could be that, that would be good. Well Hyacinth Bucket is an honourable person.
Lex Deak
Indeed.
Elliot Moss
And when did dad come to the UK because I know your father died many, many, many years ago when you were 9 or, 8 or 9? Is that right?
Lex Deak
Yeah, he, that’s right when I was 8 yeah, he came to the UK, so he was born in ’28, it was after the War.
Elliot Moss
Okay.
Lex Deak
As part of a, a scheme that was run in Wales where they were taking in people to work in the, in the mines and he did that for a little bit, he was orphaned at a very young age and was on his own, he was an only child, found himself working in Wales in the mines and then a Hungarian man had started a furniture business in Wales, in the Valley, and my dad got to know him through doing a delivery for him and one delivery took him to London to the Finchley Road where there was…
Elliot Moss
A fantastic place.
Lex Deak
Back in the day there used to be lots of clubs there.
Elliot Moss
Oh really.
Lex Deak
And this guy, I mean this Hungarian guy owned a bunch of nightclubs on the Finchley Road and my dad got pally with him and ended up running a bunch of his clubs and that’s where he met my mother, who was working there and the rest as they say is history.
Elliot Moss
And obviously, incredibly young age, I’ve got kids; I think you’ve got kids too, incredibly young age to lose a parent. You’re now how old?
Lex Deak
42.
Elliot Moss
42. Are there, is it, and just, you can be as honest or dishonest as you like, do you still think about this a lot? Do you think it’s defined a lot of what you are about, Lex?
Lex Deak
Inevitably, yes. I think I’m thinking about it more recently because my son is around the age that I was, so that’s quite poignant. Reflecting on just seeing him and thinking wow, if he lost, you know if I disappeared now that would, that would be devastating, but you know when it happens to you, it’s your story, right, you don’t really know any different and when you’re young enough at that age for it to be massively formative and to have a huge impact but you’ve not formed yet so it becomes part of who you are and I think, this is a bit of a sweeping statement but when something like that happens to you, you can either become a victim, you can either feel like the world’s there against you and kind of crouch down and shrink as a result or you think you know what, I’m going to, and this is not a conscious thing actually, but you become, I became man of the house, I’m going an only child, it’s just me and my mum and so very independent, very much kind of the man of the home, if there’s a problem I will try and fix it, I will do it and I think of course that has informed, only a recent realisation but that’s informed a big part of who I am today. I feel sad that he didn’t get to see his son grow up more than I feel sad that I didn’t enjoy his company for longer.
Elliot Moss
We talked about your dad briefly and you get a sense of you know I’m always, I’m always intrigued by people that come from another country, as my ancestors did as well, and they just made life work and it’s sort of needs must stuff and you go there but for the grace of God and how did all this happen. Your mum, your dad dies, your mum’s like okay, I’ve got to bring in some money, sets up a business, I mean extraordinary really.
Lex Deak
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
This is like early ‘90s and probably hadn’t ever set up a taxi business before.
Lex Deak
No, she’d been in catering for most of her career. Savoy Hotel through to other types of catering and I think once she’d picked herself up off the floor, which is understandable if you’re widowed at a young age and you know your world just collapses, she picked herself up and incredibly found the strength to, with a neighbour who, they’re basically like family, the kind of the family that lives across the road, two kids that are like brother and sister to me in many ways now, my mum and neighbour Babs set up a ladies only cab company.
Elliot Moss
Which was called?
Lex Deak
Which was called Lady Fare. It was the, there was one other but it was very early, pretty much the first ladies only taxi company, so only lady drivers, only lady passengers, based in South Harrow initially or North Harrow was it, I think.
Elliot Moss
Near the bowls.
Lex Deak
That’s right.
Elliot Moss
I used to go to the bowls as a kid. It was a, as my children would say, “sketchy”, it’s a little sketchy.
Lex Deak
Yes. It was, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Elliot Moss
And not far from the Harrow Leisure Centre, another quite sketchy place where I got hit, that was my story about Harrow, only the first time and hopefully not the last but yeah, “you nicked my bike”, someone said and then punched me. It was great.
Lex Deak
The good old days.
Elliot Moss
I mean this is what the ‘80s were about.
Lex Deak
Yeah. Yeah there was no real threat to life, it was just you may not come back with your trainers or your bike or…
Elliot Moss
Yeah, but you may come back with a black eye.
Lex Deak
Yeah.
Elliot Moss
You’re right, it wasn’t at that point, you’ve absolutely right, it wasn’t a threat to life, it just wasn’t very nice. So that was the area that they plied their trade.
Lex Deak
Yeah and then they grew that, they had some contracts with the local authorities and did a lot of schools transport. And it was great for me I mean it was 24 hours, 7 days a week, which I don’t think my mum had fully appreciated at the outset, but that meant I was often taken into the cab office and would sleep there or would spend at least one or two nights a week it felt like, sleeping over at neighbours’ houses or friends’ houses and I had a great time.
Elliot Moss
I was going to say, what does that do you to because on the one hand that could be very destabilising and on the other hand it makes you incredibly adaptable and it’s fun.
Lex Deak
I think it was that, I think it was the latter, I got to spend time with different families, eating different types of food with different routines and, and got comfortable with life just being dynamic and you know and free flowing and I loved it, I loved it at the time and I think my mum was, you know she did her best of course she was there as much as she could be but she built this business into a million pound turnover business, which provided us with a good quality of life and some nice holidays and never, never felt like we wanted for anything. We weren’t mega well off but it was, we were comfortable and we had everything we needed and I’m eternally grateful to her for that.
Elliot Moss
And do you think that has, that sense of as you said the dynamic nature of life and the change and the fun, is that, is that the thing you search for do you think? Is that the buzz? Is that’s what’s underpinned so many different ventures because again, I meet lots of people and there’s, there’s often two or three stories but they’re sequential and they’re often in the same area. Yours is a hotel in Marrakesh, it’s an import business in China, it’s a funding thing over here, it’s a technology play over there. I mean, huge variety Lex, it’s literally like “ooh, that looks interesting, I’ll have a go”.
Lex Deak
Does it come across as flighty?
Elliot Moss
No. It comes across as incredibly, I mean on the one side yeah, zero focus in terms of one area if you look at it, but in the other one it’s like wow, this is a person who, who’s not scared of anything.
Lex Deak
Yeah, I think that’s, so that’s certainly true, I’d never, it’s’ never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to do something, that I shouldn’t have a swing at fixing even the biggest problems, you know and I’ve been increasingly ambitious over the years in thinking oh there’s, there’s a big problem with e-commerce and the way that people shop, this is you know a multi, multi billion into the trillion dollar industry, let’s, let’s try and fix that or do big things so, yeah I think that probably comes from being raised in a certain way and going to a good school, that certainly helped.
Elliot Moss
With a scholarship to one of the best schools in the country.
Lex Deak
Yeah, very grateful for that, obviously not at the time, when you’re there you can’t wait to get out, you can’t wait to get out into the big bad world and make your mark and you think oh I’ll be in my early twenties and I’ll be driving Lamborghinis off cliffs for fun, it’s going to be amazing.
Elliot Moss
And of course Lex Deak sneaking off and if you saw Lex Deak, you should go and have a look, you would see that he’s obviously the bloke that went off and had a fag, a cigarette behind the bike shed, that’s obviously you.
Lex Deak
Yeah, you know we were part of a big group of friends who are actually all still really close which I think is really special, there’s probably about twenty of us from school and I went there at 11, who are still almost daily on a WhatsApp group talking, which I think is…
Elliot Moss
Are you allowed to say the name of the WhatsApp group or is it inappropriate?
Lex Deak
Err, well there’s a couple, there’s Cheeky Rave Group because we’re a bunch of us that like to go to drum and bass raves on about a quarterly basis and then The Potters is the kind of bigger group. I’ll leave that one open to interpretation.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more from one of the members of the Potters, his name is Lex Deak, he’s my Business Shaper today, he’s back in a couple of minutes. Right now, let’s hear a taster from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions. They can be found on all the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Suman Kaur and Geoff Dragon talk about how start-ups can best prepare for success.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again with Lex if you pop Jazz Shapers into your favourite podcast platform, and I won’t judge you if it’s not mine. My guest today is serial entrepreneur, Lex Deak, formerly Deák, I’m going to keep saying, it’s for your mum, founder of amongst others QVentures, a venture capital firm and most recently, co-founder and CEO of Basket, the e-commerce start-up aiming to revolutionise – big word – the online shopping experience. This thing, I’m intrigued by all these different entities that you’ve created and that you’ve envisaged and as you said, I really like the phrase about you know just let’s have a swing at that, why not, I can do it. Very, very different worlds and I imagine growing up your world that you grew up in was quite a different world to this relatively well to do school with a different group of people in there. Do you think you’ve been searching for your people all your life and is that why you kind of go I wonder if it's in the family office investment space, I wonder if it’s in a hotel over here, is there this sense that you haven’t quite found that yet?
Lex Deak
Wowzer. I think so, I think so and I’m quite happy to not find it. I think it’s okay to just be on, it’s not a search that is coloured by a need to find the answer, it’s more of just an endless exploration, I don’t know if any of us ever really find you know our total comfort zone and I think that’s fine.
Elliot Moss
But some people, you know most people are sort of satisfied/not satisfied with what happens to them, whereas you’ve actively gone I’m going now look at this, I’m now going to look at that, most people haven’t got the energy or the imagination or the confidence, Lex, to do that and you have had.
Lex Deak
It’s interesting. I think, yeah, it’s I like, I just like being part of lots of different tribes, you know, I think that’s, that’s why I’m still really good friends so from primary school and the boys that I would hang around with up to kind of mid-teens and we’d cause trouble in the local are and, it was a very different you know what we would for fun would be very different to what friends from my school would do for fun but we’re still really good pals, we’ll still go, again once a quarter we go out for a curry and a few beers and catch up, there’s four or five us that will do that, very different to school, the same, really close, university was culturally different again, they’re you’re getting kind of more exposure to other parts of the country and really good bunch of friends from there as well. I’m always fairly comfortable in my own company and in fact need that from time to time just to find your centre again and you know, dalliances with very wealthy people, I’ve met my fair share of billionaires through the family office network and very privileged people. Typically, I find those who have had lots of privilege and taken it for granted to be you know less inspiring, less interesting people, it’s always, there’s and I think if there’s been an element of struggle or adversity, it tends to shape more interesting people.
Elliot Moss
And of all the things your, you know whether you call your childhood, it doesn’t sound like a struggle, it sounds like a lot of fun but it was definitely bouncy, there was stuff and there was a lot of movement, of all the things you’ve created which one excites you and interests you the most?
Lex Deak
Oh Basket without a doubt. I’ve wanted to build Basket for a decade or more.
Elliot Moss
And why?
Lex Deak
It’s a big play. If we can nail this, this is a decacorn play ultimately, this could be huge. It’s so multifaceted, it’s kept my attention. So in previous ventures you may run something for a couple of years and then you sort of out the corner of your eye there’s something glinting that ah, there’s a new space over here, it’s a kind of AI thing, I’ve got to look into that, ooh wow, this could revolutionise it and suddenly you’ve lost a bit of the passion for what you were doing but Basket is so multifaceted, I just get more and more, I fall more and more in love with it actually every week that goes by.
Elliot Moss
Things haven’t always gone right for you in the business world and that’s normal and obviously if we were in the States we’d be celebrating the failures as much as the successes. Integrity strikes me as important to you, what is it like to be let down? What does it feel like when you’ve got someone who, and this has happened in the past to you where someone said they would do something or they would invest and they haven’t, how have you dealt with that personally? How do you move on from that?
Lex Deak
Yeah, so I’ve always been really, I’ve really valued the importance of candour and the value of time, right, we all do and I think if I feel like anybody is just not being honest or transparent with me and essentially it’s tantamount to wasting your time, that’s, that’s really bad, it’s kind of unforgiveable and a no is fine, right, a no is fine as long as it’s a quick no and then we can get on with our life, a bit like a relationship you know do you let a relationship that you know isn’t right continue, is it fair to either of you, no, what should you do, call it a day at an early state of course. So, yeah, there’s been a few times when, it happens a lot with investment right, people make promises, you know, you look them in the eye and they say yeah, definitely, I’m just super excited, I’m going to be there for this, I’m all in, and then it comes to the crunch and low and behold they’re nowhere to be seen and you know there is a lot of moving parts when you’re raising money, you know the other parties when you’re book building you’ve got to spin a lot of plates and juggle other people and keep that momentum going and then if somebody kind of pulls out after they’ve made you, you know a commitment.
Elliot Moss
But you can move on, you move on.
Lex Deak
I’ll move on.
Elliot Moss
You just let it go, you accept that that’s going to happen.
Lex Deak
The older that I’ve, the older I’ve got and the more experience that I have under my belt, you know the less I let that weigh me down, you know you just accept it and you move on quickly, there’s no point in ruing over it, it’s just a, it’s just a part of it but yeah, you can tell those kinds of people I think, you get to develop quite a keen eye for those people.
Elliot Moss
And is the same true, I mean again you strike me as a very independent kind of person, you can’t do all these different things if you didn’t have a core belief and a sense that also you can make it happen. Have there been people along the way that have been phenomenally supportive and helpful, people that are stand out in your life or has it been a journey where lots of different people at lots of different times happen to have given you some kind of help?
Lex Deak
I think there’s been you know probably half a dozen people that have been really helpful. My mum, of course, we’ve spoken about that, that was…
Elliot Moss
But do you still, is your mum still involved with you in that way?
Lex Deak
I mean emotionally supportive but she has been financially supportive in the past and…
Elliot Moss
But advice as well I mean, Lex, in that sense.
Lex Deak
Yeah, advice, I mean I’ve, because I think and I’m only starting to realise this in recent years, because I lost my father, inevitably you’re always seeking a father figure and I have placed faith in false idols over the years. You think somebody is great, it’s like you know never meet, you should never meet your heroes, right, you read about this person, you think they’re great, they’ve got loads of money, they back people that they think are going to build the future, they have achieved so much, it’s going to be so inspiring, you meet them and you’re like uh, oh, okay, never mind. And so I’ve invested, I don’t do it anymore but I used to invest quite a lot of time in building that hope that this person was going to be really inspiring. I’ve just taken lots of little snippets from everywhere, right, yeah some friends have been super supportive, have given lots of advice, been there for me, the journey is you know it’s really up and down at times, the rollercoaster emotionally, you can wake up some mornings and think you know this it, I’m on a path to really cracking this and others when you’re like what am I doing, I literally don’t think I should be doing this, I’m fooling myself at times and then people that have really helped me out, like my wife is incredible, super supportive, I mean she’s, she’s been with me through much of this, we’ve been together since our mid-twenties really and yeah, she’s been incredibly supportive throughout and understands the journey deeply, so she’s been incredible and otherwise it’s just bits and bobs, it might be something that you read, it might be a film that you watch, I mean I chew through biographies like they’re going out of fashion, like we were just talking about before, it’s the early bits that are really interesting, it’s the genesis of, I mean like you pick up little bits from all over the place, events that you might go to, talks that you listen to, podcasts, radio interviews…
Elliot Moss
Jazz Shapers.
Lex Deak
Jazz Shapers is a great source.
Elliot Moss
I’ve got a family who say that I have a radio voice, I don’t think it’s true. They do. It’s like “it’s me”, I sound exactly the same in the kitchen as I do here talking to Lex Deak, my Business Shaper and our final chat will be coming up very shortly. We’ve also got some music from Jacob Collier, that’s all in just a moment here on Jazz FM, don’t go anywhere.
Lex Deak is my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes. You mentioned that Basket has your attention.
Lex Deak
Yes.
Elliot Moss
That you have not had your head turned. What does the future look like? What’s going to be going on in the world of Basket over the next iteration of it?
Lex Deak
So we are building, we were building it before it was kind of cool to be building an AI agent, but now of course this is a hot, hot buzzword in the AI space and the vision for Basket is to be this, this shopping companion for everybody. First of all, it let’s you bookmark what you’re thinking of buying from anywhere whether it’s a holiday, a handbag, a television, a teapot. It’s the place you store stuff so, no more screenshots, notes apps, all that kind of stuff, it stays in Basket but then everything that’s involved in the purchase journey, researching the best price, finding the best retailer, looking for coupon voucher codes, is there a cashback opportunity, all that heavy lifting, sharing it with friends, potentially great for gift lists and things like that, all of that kind of stuff will be happening behind the scenes for you so, Basket will become the one true AI shopping agent, not just in the UK but a US launch is imminent and we want to take over there and become just really useful to people, like help people to manage their relationship with consumerism, this is not about buying more, it’s about buying better, feeling in control, like cutting out the noise and I think that’s really worthwhile and there’s so many things we can do with it. Lots of conversations we’re having with top retailers, we’re getting approached on a regular basis by investors, which is great, it’s nice to be in that position.
Elliot Moss
Mm, makes a change.
Lex Deak
Yeah, I’m working with the best people I’ve ever worked with, really amazing team that I would die on a hill for and you know there’s just so much we could do with it.
Elliot Moss
Without sounding like this is the movie which culminates in the end scene and everyone’s holding the trophy, it does feel like a lot of the things you’ve done have led to this moment.
Lex Deak
Yeah, for sure. But there’s a thread that’s gone through and it’s about aggregation, it’s around a big play, it’s about building something that’s useful to people, it’s kind of building a layer almost and that’s, I mean over the years I’ve done things like I bought weddinglist.com as a domain, randomly from Martha Stewart, would you believe.
Elliot Moss
Really?
Lex Deak
Yeah. That’s after we got married, thought wedding gifting could be done a bit better so I bought this domain, never had the time to do anything with that. And then before Basket, my wife and I, Leigh, launched a platform called KinderList which was a kids’ gifting platform so parents could create wish lists for their children and avoid, you know there’s a lot of waste and duplicate purchases and faff in that kids gifting space, so we built that and that was the genesis of Basket. So, yeah, the thread, the thread is quite strong, in fact it actually goes back to when I was on Dragons’ Den and pitching Family Fridge, the most popular part of Family Fridge, which was like Facebook for your family group, was the gift list and it was very crude in those days but you’re just pasting a link for something that you wanted and share that with friends and family. And the conversion rates on those links, the purchase conversion rates were astronomical, about twenty times the industry average.
Elliot Moss
I can suddenly see you, not that this is you, with all these little Post-it notes and you kind of traced it back like some kind of private investigator going yeah hold on there’s that bit, that’s that and you go hold on a sec, 2008 that’s what that idea’s from, I got that.
Lex Deak
Yeah, the amount of times I’ve been close to buying red string and getting a cork board and just being like I need to visualise it.
Elliot Moss
Slightly worrying. It’s A Beautiful Mind come to life, it’s kind of Russel Crowe gone a bit nuts.
Lex Deak
Yeah, no, I love it, I absolutely love it.
Elliot Moss
It’s been great to talk to you, Lex, great to piece together all the different elements of this jigsaw.
Lex Deak
Thank you for having me.
Elliot Moss
No, absolute pleasure. Just before I let you disappear to go and make some more trouble and good things, what’s your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Lex Deak
La Vie en Rose by Edith Piaf is for a couple of reasons. One it’s, it’s just a story about falling in love and I used to play it quite a lot or hear it quite a lot when I was growing up. She also and I think this is a lovely part of the story, she didn’t think it was a good track and most of her contemporaries in music didn’t think it was going to be a flyer either so they canned it for about a year and it kind of seeped out a year later and it became I think her best known song and also in Wally, the animated film if you’ve seen that, there’s just this little scene where Wally is looking at the VHS playing and it’s this song, La Vie en Rose, in a dance sequence, I’m not sure of the film but I just think that’s just the most beautiful sort of juxtaposition of the future and how humanity has been lost and that always gives me goosebumps.
Elliot Moss
La Vie on Rose from Edith Piaf, the song choice of my Business Shaper today, Lex Deak. A serial entrepreneur who said, “I like being a part of lots of different tribes” and boy has he done a lot of different things with those tribes. “I value the importance of candour” he said because he doesn’t want people to waste his precious time as he goes on and builds the next thing. And finally, and I absolutely love this, “It never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be able to do something”, that sense that actually it’s worth having a go, that sense of confidence and as he said in his own words, “Let’s have a swing.” Great stuff. That’s it from Jazz Shapers, have a lovely weekend.
We hope you enjoyed that edition of Jazz Shapers. You’ll find hundreds more guests available for you to listen to in our archive, to find out more just search Jazz Shapers in iTunes or your favourite podcast platform or head over to mishcon.com/jazzshapers.