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 guests today, I’ve got two for the price of one; Tony Pepper and Neil Larkins – co-founders of Egress, the British data security company. Working together at data security company, Reflex Magnetics in the early noughties when they took over the management from the original founders, Tony and Neil successfully lead the business to a 28 million dollar sale in 2006. Facing a pivotal what next moment and recognising their entrepreneurial spirit and self-confessed inability to work for someone else, they collaborated with colleague John Goodyear, CSO and established Egress in 2007 dedicating three years to product development before launching their first solution, Egress Switch – an email encryption software now known as Egress Protect. Recognising that people are the biggest risk to organisation security and are most vulnerable when using email, Egress use adaptive security architecture and we’ll find out what that is when it is at home to defend companies against advanced phishing attacks inbound and outbound, email threats and data breaches. It’s great to have you both here, welcome. Your first radio interview apparently.
Tony Pepper & Neil Larkins
It sure is.
It is indeed.
Elliot Moss
They are like going, yes, what does that means going to happen. I want to just check something with you, Tony, I, I understand you have only ever worked with the man sitting to your left?
Tony Pepper
That is true Elliot yeah for my sins.
Elliot Moss
Voluntarily.
Tony Pepper
Voluntarily, mine and his sins yeah.
Elliot Moss
And am I right in saying Neil you interviewed Tony?
Neil Larkins
Yeah I don’t think we can cover some of that in today’s interview.
Elliot Moss
I mean what was that like? Here is however many years later.
Neil Larkins
The most enthusiastic person you’ve ever seen in your entire life at that point.
Elliot Moss
Really like proper bouncy?
Neil Larkins
And yeah, it was, it was a slam dunk but I have to say there’s a bit of a story to, to that particular part, we only had budget for one role and, and we sort of had a bit of a debate as to whether it was one or the other and we ended up hiring both and finding additional money to do that and I guess 24 years later, we’re still here.
Elliot Moss
So the art of a good interview and finding the right person Neil, what is it because you found this one and here he is and you haven’t looked back.
Neil Larkins
Well I, I think in this occasion there was not too much of the interview that was the thing I think, I think Tony was just, it was very clear his enthusiasm and want to get into, well I don’t think he even knew what we did back then to be brutally honest but he definitely wanted a job so I think that’s how we ended up here.
Elliot Moss
And today as you, as you look at each other in the eyes, what is it that you think if I go to Tony, what is it that you think characterises the nature of working relationship?
Tony Pepper
It’s um, we often refer to each other as brothers right, which sounds a little bit corny but we come at problems from literally the opposite direction. Our instincts and our if you like, moral compass, our guide on what the right thing to do is absolutely aligned, we’ve never disagreed in 20 plus years on what’s the right thing to do. But when solving a complex problem we’ve often come at it from absolutely the opposite directions and that, that kind of creates a really healthy debate, almost left brain, right brain kind of mind-sets really.
Elliot Moss
Whose is who. Who’s right, who’s left?
Tony Pepper
Well I think depending on your view of left brain, right brain right so I come of, often I come at a problem just from a very different place to Neil, Neil’s very logical, very pragmatic um I come at it from just thinking of it in different ways but I think you get a nice blend there. Lots of conflict you know, certainly people in the office often say, oh look mum and dad are fighting again and before you ask who’s mum and who’s dad…
Elliot Moss
I’m not going to ask that, that is your secret, you two, you keep your powder dry on that one but in terms of the conflict because obviously that’s the key thing with co-founders, how do you manage that in a constructive way or is it such, is it quite hard to unpack that now because it’s sort of second nature but if you can unpack it, what is it Neil?
Neil Larkins
So I think we always come to an agreement and I think one of us will back down when we believe the other one really vehemently thinks that this is the way forward in a particular thing but…
Elliot Moss
And you just sense that do you because you know when we know someone well enough we look in their eyes and if Tony really means it then he really means it, is that what it is?
Neil Larkins
Yeah, absolutely right.
Elliot Moss
…you just go fine.
Neil Larkins
And I’ll know right you know what, I haven’t won this battle but I think it’s the you know, it will be the right outcome.
Elliot Moss
And do you let it go emotionally?
Neil Larkins
Absolutely.
Elliot Moss
Because, because you know it’s okay?
Neil Larkins
Absolutely. I mean, we, as I say, we’ve never, we’ve never fallen out in 24 years of working together um and I think that’s a pretty big testament but we’ve had hundreds of disagreements and, and different views on the way forward and different ways of tackling certain situations and I think that’s probably one of the reasons that we’ve, we’ve got to where we have it you know, it hasn’t been easy for sure but it’s um, it’s been a great outcome to end up there and, and to be able to say we’ve never fallen out is, hopefully we can say that in another 20 years’ time.
Elliot Moss
Who’s the best person to describe what Egress does in a few easy to understand word; I think it’s going to be Tony apparently.
Tony Pepper
Yeah, apparently I get that gig. So the story has changed over many years but we’re in the cloudy mail security space so our technology helps detect and prevent what in our industry in cyber security they call behavioural based threats. So this is a cyber criminal trying to send you a phishing email and trying to pretend someone they’re not which they are really tough to spot now or actually maybe you are in business and you are communicating something sensitive but you maybe send it to the wrong person accidentally. So these are the type of behavioural based challenges that traditional technology can’t solve unless you are using machine learning or artificial intelligence that does it in a super clever way, in a super-fast way that enable to understand relationships, understand really sophisticated threats and then protect you as a person from those threats by email.
Elliot Moss
And when you were growing up Tony, did you think this is what you’d end up doing and talking about.
Tony Pepper
Absolutely not, are you kidding me.
Elliot Moss
I mean how, how did it come and I think Neil I am right as well, you’re, maybe you’re more of a, more of an engineering background but how did it come to be that the both of you fell into this cyber security-esq software space?
Tony Pepper
Well I think certainly for me it was pure luck. My brother was in technology and like every younger brother they see their older brother doing quite well and just kind of want to follow the crowd at chow time. I had a, my numerous degrees…
Elliot Moss
You’ve just conjured up an image, as you said chow time, I am like yeah that is exactly what happens, it’s true, it’s absolutely true.
Tony Pepper
…yeah and it was as simple as that right and I thought he’s doing this, it looks interesting um so I was, I had a history background, politics background and ultimately just thought that’ll get me into a role but there was nothing conscious about it, there was nothing thoughtful about it um and eventually my first interview in London moving from Liverpool was with Neil.
Elliot Moss
And Neil for you as well, was it always going to be tech, was it that or was it again just happenstance?
Neil Larkins
I think it was always going to be tech, my dad was in IT from a very young age and did quite a lot of things in terms of he actually ran his own business for while and I guess I got a glimmer of what some of that should look like. However, due to doing incredibly badly at my A levels which was a bit of a thing that I do still think back to, I managed to land a not very popular course at Manchester University which was electrical and electronic engineering. I got through that reasonably well actually and quite unscathed given how badly I done in my A levels but it was very clear that I had no strong aptitude in that area so I was as keen as anything to get out of electrical and electronic engineering as possible and IT seemed like the natural side door that someone might let me into so I applied for many graduate roles, I am quite passionately into cars and things like so there was some in that industry and, and I guess a bit like Tony, one of the first ones that I went to was Reflex who you mentioned in your intro and they I guess gave me a chance. I’m not sure how that worked out but I joined that business and I guess the rest is somewhat history.
Elliot Moss
Do you remember those books and maybe this is in the pre-instance age called How Things Work? Right, it’s a person of a certain age, I am a little older than you two but I remember How Things Work too and I had a friend who is exceptionally bright, did Maths at Oxford and consumed this stuff like it was easy. I struggled but there are people and I am looking at both of you going you may or may not be the most relatively scientific but you obviously both want to know how stuff works because I think if I am right Tony, the technology side, the really geeky stuff, the proper nature of the code is not going to be your bag but you are interested in what’s under the bonnet?
Tony Pepper
Yeah that’s exactly it and I, to some extent, I am, post my undergrad degrees, I went back into University at Liverpool University to study a Masters in software engineering just to prove the point that if you really want something that bad and you’re curious then really you can achieve anything you want really so exactly that. It was how can I enter into another universe, I’m curious of how things work and to some extent started my life out really just with a huge chip on my shoulder just to prove a point really. Before you start to embrace the things that probably come on naturally to you which is probably more on the go to market side for me, so when we started Egress we certainly made a very conscious decision, look Neil how about you look after technology and everything engineering and I’ll look after everything, go to market, sales and everything else really and that became the only way we delineated between what we did really.
Elliot Moss
And on the chip on your shoulder thing Neil, for you, you mentioned you’re A levels in passing there. I didn’t do very well in one of my A levels.
Neil Larkins
Well done.
Elliot Moss
Yeah thank you, it’s a badge of, of chipness that I hold very, very heavily on my left and right shoulders but it kind of spurred me on. It feels like it spurred you on as well?
Neil Larkins
100%, it was one of the biggest turning points, I mean I wasn’t expected to be a straight A student but I certainly wasn’t expected to be what I got which I will not be repeating on radio now.
Elliot Moss
No me neither don’t worry.
Neil Larkins
But needless to say it was not impressive um and a big disappointment and I think.
Elliot Moss
Do you remember the feeling when you got those results?
Neil Larkins
Yeah absolutely.
Elliot Moss
What was it like?
Neil Larkins
Um, I just felt I’d let a lot of people down, parents and things like that but actually it was more myself I think, that was the thing that was and you know, I, I still look for those kind of things in people when I hire today. If I look at some of the most incredible people we’ve hired over the last 15/16 years or so, some of those you can generally pin point something that has made them incredibly determined and, and want to change something about what they didn’t do so well at or whatever so I, I am a strong believer that a bit of failure actually in people’s upbringing and even careers is a pretty important part of personal development.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more from my Business Shapers, Neil Larkins, Tony Pepper, co-founders of Egress and they both like to know how things work which is lucky because they are doing quite well aren’t they so there must be something in that. Much more coming up from them shortly. Right now though, we’re going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions which can be found on your podcast platform of choice. MDRx’s CEO, Tom Grogan and COO Sian Rodway talk about Web 3.0, the next iteration of the internet perhaps and what businesses and individuals need to be thinking about when formulating their Web 3.0 strategies and pursuing valuable and impactful projects.
You can enjoy all our former Business Shapers on the Jazz Shapers podcast and you can hear this very programme again if you pop ‘Jazz Shapers’ into your podcast platform of choice. My guests today are Tony Pepper and Neil Larkins, co-founders of Egress the British data security company. Now I didn’t mention at the beginning that you have successfully sold this business very recently, it’s public so congratulations. Did you think you’d get here, either of you, was there going to be a, this is where we’re targeting or has the sale just happened because things conspired? Because it’s part of the plan I guess.
Tony Pepper
It was always part of the plan although if you spoke to my wife I remember when we started the business we said, after 5 years we’ll sell the business and after 5 years we said, no, no 5 more years and I think we can sell this business and when we got to the 10 year we were looking again for the fifth year, I said, no and she said, I don’t want to hear it, let me guess. I said, no I really do believe so the challenge a little bit about fixating on selling the business is it’s a little bit like pigeons in Trafalgar Square, you never get there, it always moves around and I think while directionally it was always part of the plan, I think actually if you fixate on it too much you actually lose sight of the ability to achieve it because ultimately you have to on one hand, which is quite ironic, you need to think super, super long-term so that the acquirer is buying a business and acquiring a team that is merely the beginning of a journey rather than just at the end of the journey so it’s a really difficult and hard balance between motivating your teams and yourself about the journey you’re on um but also being super open and making it conscious to be able to then deliver on exit that makes everybody happy.
Elliot Moss
Is it a mind-set thing Neil because you know sometimes when you’re, you’ve got a plan in the evening and you’re going out and you really don’t want to go out because you’re tired and the last thing you want to do is speak to 30 people that you don’t know – we’ve all been there often on the weekend – and yet if you go, do you know what I need to stop this is negative, I need to change my view and change my expectations, was it along the lines of what Tony said around you just recalibrating your expectations about what the future looked like, is that how you got through this or was it much less romantic than that?
Neil Larkins
I think as Tony said right at the beginning we were always fixated on, on the exit but I think we did very much change our mind-set and it was about how do we build this into something you know really incredible and actually take a lot of people on that journey, I mean there were hundreds of employees that were part of Egress and are still part of Egress today and actually the future is probably even more buoyant for them as part of the new business. This is about solving complex problems and as Tony mentioned earlier on, we, we reinvented ourselves three or four times during this journey and that is super exciting you know, we are using the latest tech to deliver and solve incredibly complex problems and have we got it right, no there’s so many more things that we could and will be doing over the coming years to do even more in this space and the thing that I found hardest though is, it’s always about growth, in the industry you’re in you can’t stop, you’ve got to be growing at 20 plus percent every year without fail. We pretty much succeeded through the entire duration of the business managing that but that’s… well apart from the early days that we don’t talk about but, but that is a very hard ask, you can’t run a successful business and just turn over the same thing every year, it’s about growth, it’s about mind-set and it’s very different.
Elliot Moss
That to me is quite a big emotional pressure. How did you deal with that over the years and not lose your whatevers?
Neil Larkins
I think we’ve learnt a lot on this journey and the context of a growth mind-set is something you hear bandied around quite a bit and that really is something you have to understand and get your head around and I think we’ve had a lot of, they won’t thank me for calling them veterans of the cyber space or, or the broader IT industry that have helped us on this journey and I think that understanding what the expectations are for investors, for your shareholders and all of those things but it’s, if you want to be solving super complex problems you are going to be growing and if you want to do it in a way that’s going to see an outcome of the business at the end you’ve got to be growing at a decent percentage.
Elliot Moss
But there’s stress in there Neil, is there stress?
Neil Larkins
Oh absolutely.
Elliot Moss
And then how do you deal with that stress?
Neil Larkins
Well I wouldn’t say I’m the best at dealing with stress.
Elliot Moss
What happens to you at your worst?
Neil Larkins
I’ve got better at dealing with it.
Elliot Moss
But at your worst, what does it look like?
Neil Larkins
Um I guess I’m just probably quite a short-tempered and all the things that are there but you know, I’ve learnt to cope with, with stress because actually life’s too short to let it really drag you down and there’s a lot of things that I look back and think, well I probably would have done that a bit differently or whatever else but yeah, I mean interests outside of work is hugely important, my family is a massive importantly part of everything that I do and you know, having fairly young kids is a great distraction I have to say from, from the business and try not to miss out on those key moments with the family is, is, it’s been a hard thing but something I would say I’ve done pretty well at.
Elliot Moss
And the nature of being a co-founder Tony, is there a bit of sharing of that because the two of you can shut the door, not let anyone see you and basically say, this is really getting to me.
Tony Pepper
Ah you know what, um the mo… we both agree with this, the most admiration I have is for those single founders that start a company on their own, build a team around them. I see these sole founders growing businesses and my admiration is just off the chart because you are absolutely right, we felt in the last 17 years for this business every bit of pain together, we felt every bit of joy together. When Neil was up I was down, when I was down he was… it was just, there was just this ability to kind of like almost just drag yourself to a herculean effort of get through the other side and I think you know, I think of those that start businesses on their own, I’m not sure, and I say that really the answer is, I know I would not have been able to get this over the line…
Neil Larkins
Me neither.
Tony Pepper
…as a sole founder, there’s no question about that.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for my final chat with my guests, that’s Tony and Neil and we’ve got some Michael Kiwanuka as well, that’s all coming up in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
I am just for a few more minutes with Tony Pepper and Neil Larkins and they’ve been talking to me about all sorts of stuff around the nature of partnership, keeping things together, holding the line and still smiling, they are both still smiling and look at each other saying, no it’s alright we like each other. The world of cyber security has gone from I guess a very specialised area of business into it affects all of us and we all, it’s a bit like the environment, 30 years ago friends of mine who were interested were kind on the fringes and now it’s front page news. I feel like the same is true of cyber security whether it’s the geo political uncertainty, whether it’s just working for a big business as I do where we have to have huge amounts of security in place. What’s the biggest challenge, I’ll start with Neil, do you think for the industry? What are the kinds of things that you’re thinking about as you look towards the next 5 dare I say it Tony, 5 years or 10 years or 15 years of developing in this business?
Neil Larkins
Well I think as I said earlier, I somewhat stumbled into this industry and it of course wasn’t called cyber when we started this business really, that was not something people understood but it is the industry that for sure has probably got the most you know, ability to, to continue growing and, and essentially you’re dealing with the bad guys, you are, you are trying to defend against those threats which are continually emerging, continually adapting um and a lot of the things that we’re doing is obviously just trying to understand the landscape of what is the next big threat out there and of course you know we largely play in email at the moment but there are many other areas that are hugely under attack and under threat and technology out there to solve these problems so you know, anyone that wants to get into this industry I would say, just see how you can get involved because it’s just incredibly exciting and, and changes all the time.
Elliot Moss
Well I think Tony it reminds me of what people used to talk about with War and first the asymmetrical nature of War but also you have weapons that are fighting the current situation, the current technology but in reality the next War is fought with new technology. How do you even manage that because surely there’s a lot of gamification here, there’s a lot scenario planning, there’s a lot of future gazing. How have you managed to do that and then bring it down to and so the next product is X?
Tony Pepper
It’s quite scary now having to think about solving problems in today’s world because it’s moving so fast and I think, I think back and think we were very lucky that we sort of stumbled on an idea, maybe it was okay at the time and then iterated and changed and evolved with the market with those attacks and found ourselves in quite a relevant space but I think if I had to think about today’s challenges…
Elliot Moss
I mean Gen AI means literally anyone could pretend to be anybody.
Tony Pepper
It’s huge. Well that’s right and I think actually a lot of founders and I’d be really frightened of coming in as a start-up into cyber security because they would be scared about in 12 months will I be relevant in the world anymore because of AI. I think genuinely it’s, it’s a really challenging problem and yet from a threat perspective the reason it gets so much investment, not just from VCs and PE but also from customers that need to solve the problem, is because you can launch a text now from any remote location in the world at very, very low cost and I think that brings a huge attack surface on a one to many basis now that is really difficult to defend against so my only saving grace, both for any start up and for any business that has reached a super neat idea is that I think start-ups still have one quality that surpasses all of those larger tech business which is the ability to be super agile and not having to support hundreds or in case thousands of customers on legacy products that you have to upgrade or, or take along with the journey and I think the ability to iterate super, super fast and start incredibly niche, don’t think big, big, big picture, but think what problem is a very relevant problem that we can solve in the world today. Solve it in a different way, in a better way that’s been solved and then just iterate from there. To some extent, don’t over complicate it. I think we all get so over complicated now. I can even think of myself over complicating the thought process around that next idea you might want to take to market. It, it doesn’t need to be that way but it does need to evolve over time and that’s the journey really of a growth company.
Elliot Moss
It’s right, don’t complicate. You can have that one, I just… you’re welcome. It’s been lovely to talk to you both, brilliant, I really appreciate your honesty and insight too and very nice to see two people who are still very much in love with each other. There they are.
Tony Pepper
Cut that bit.
Elliot Moss
No, no, no that’s staying. Just before I let you both go, what’s your song choice? Have you chosen one between you?
Tony Pepper and Neil Larkins
We have.
Elliot Moss
And why have you chosen it?
Tony Pepper
We have, we’ve chosen Shake Your Tail Feather. It is the version that’s sang by Ray Charles and it reminds me of a kid growing up watching the Blues Brothers, seeing Ray make that organ sing and the, the beat of that music made me want to learn the piano after that so I hope people enjoy it today.
Elliot Moss
The Blues Brothers and Ray Charles with the brilliant Shake A Tail Feather, the song choice of my Business Shapers, plural today, Neil Larkins and Tony Pepper. They talked about finding people who are determined, who maybe have made a mess of something that want to fix that for them and that have got that grit in the oyster and that those are the people that will make a difference. They talked about the importance of reinvention and how many times they have reinvented their business over the years and that long-term view rather than the short-term view. They talked about the benefit of a start-up being around super agility – I love that phrase – you really can do stuff quickly and that’s critical in such a competitive and fast moving market and finally, really great advice, don’t over complicate things. That’s it from me and 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.