It’s not everytime you hear a story of someone who paid off their parent’s mortage through saving and investing money from their EMA, anyways I dont want to give too much away.

Today I interview Andrew Jude Rajanathan, Andrew currently works with James Miles & Justin Gibbs at Liv-ex: The Fine Wine Exchange.

Hi Andrew, Its great to finally have you on YHP, how are you doing today?

I’m doing great thank you for the interview invite.

Before we move on, could you quickly give us some background information about yourself so that the YHP audience can get to know you better?

24 y/o LSE graduate, currently ‘learning to build a business’ with James Miles & Justin Gibbs at Liv-ex: The Fine Wine Exchange. Previous experience in financial services, internet start-ups and of course the media. In my spare time I write a lot, cook a lot and try to be a good son. I’m really passionate about internet start-ups, venture capital, good food and travel.

Thank you, So tell us how did you get into entrepreneurship, what was your motivation?

I haven’t really gotten into entrepreneurship per se but I do consider the New Entrepreneurs Foundation an apprenticeship in business. In short, I have always been a disruptive pupil at school, always getting told off for being a distraction and a bit of a nuisance. I also had a bit of a big mouth but then its unsurprising I ended up working for the BBC where I was fortunate enough to be paid to use it.

What was your first business; tell us about your experience running that?

While at University I got involved with running a bunch of societies and also the biggest Model United Nations conference in the U.K – London International Model United Nations (LIMUN). Funnily enough, this was one way I learnt how to hustle and fundraise. I was invited to a gala dinner at Clifford Chance, where we received a keynote speech from one of the partners – Stuart Popham. I knew I’d only have one opportunity to talk to him so I bided my time till the Q&A session began.

When it began my hand shot up straight away and I asked ‘How can students engage with the legal profession and legal issues’ to which he responded ‘You should think about inviting legal professionals to come speak at Universities and Societies.’

At that point, I knew I had him and announced I was a committee member for LIMUN. The crowd laughed; I’d put him on the spot. He invited me up at the end of the Q&A session and gave me his card. I gave him a short 30 second pitch about LIMUN and what it was and a few weeks later he confirmed that Clifford Chance would pledge £1,500 to the conference and any other support we’d need. This was a real coup for LIMUN as the sponsorship represented over half the previous year’s sponsorship budget.

Running small-ish initiatives like LIMUN taught me several lessons in working in teams, unearthing opportunities from scratch and making things happen.

And while I haven’t started a company, I do also manage one property on my own.

You were at Queens Mary University? What was the experience like, a lot more people are deciding to go into entrepreneurship straight after school rather going to university, what made you realize that this was the right choice for you?

Queen Mary was an interesting experience, I learnt a lot at this place met some of my best friends and ended up spending more time doing journalism than actually studying for that degree. I must’ve done something right because I got a scholarship to the London School of Economics after graduating. I didn’t consider entrepreneurship at 18 and to be quite frank there was barely anything mentioned about it while I was at school. I genuinely wanted to go to University because I wanted to study but I ended up spending far more time on other activities than study during those four years.

Were you involved in anything entrepreneurial there?

No, not at all. Mainly media related activities but I did spend a lot of time networking and developing relationships with very successful professionals and entrepreneurs. I ended up doing the UpRising Leadership Programme in my final year at Queen Mary and was mentored and still continue to be by a successful entrepreneur.

What would you say was some of the key things you learnt from that experience?

Being aggressive, gung-ho, a big risk taker or a maverick and somewhat nefarious makes you more interesting.

Going back to writing, apart from the BBC, you ended up writing for the likes of the Financial Times and City Financial. How did that come about and how was the experience?

Most people who end up in the media tell you they ‘fell into’ the industry. The same applies to me; someone in my class (who I owe the start of my career trajectory to) introduced me to an editor at the BBC. I did a few guest talks on their student panel, managed to impress them and they offered me work experience and a subsequent job. I still have a contract at the BBC so I wouldn’t rule out another stint.

The Financial Times was a result of lots of networking. I met a very kind editor who took me for coffee and I managed to convince that the media was what I wanted to do. He managed to squeeze me in an internship. I worked for the UK Companies desk and managed to get several articles published during my stint at the pink pages. I learnt a lot here, it’s an intellectually stimulating career and the people I met and worked with were some of the smartest I’ve come across. Also, meeting Lionel Barber (the main editor) was something that has stuck with me.

After graduating from the London School of Economics I ran straight into the City and I ended up at a boutique investment management company – City Financial. Much of what I did here was actually M&A/Corporate Development so buying up asset management companies in the UK and Europe. I learnt a lot here in a very short space of time but ultimately I believe working in M&A is not the best way for a smart graduate to spend their early years with the view of these ‘magical exit opportunities’ people talk about after you’ve paid your dues as an analyst. The problem here is many people from the LSE get sucked into this whirlpool and churned out of the City after 2-3 years. I didn’t want to end up that way and for most of my peers; a lot of them realize this isn’t right for them. I actually met a CEO of a very prestigious stockbroker during my time at the FT who even told me himself ‘The City isn’t the real road to glory.’

I didn’t stay for very long and left soon after with a blackbelt in PowerPoint and Excel, realizing that would be all I’d spend my working hours doing if I remained in the City. It was at this point I really got super interested in venture capital and internet start-ups something that had been building up for me over the past 12 months.

So after that, you decided to go and work at Groupon, why Groupon? Why didn’t you just start a company, I’m sure you probably had a lot of ideas running through your head for businesses at the time?

I’d followed Groupon since after its first year (they grossed $200m by that time I believe) so they’d received a lot of press and it was also an interesting business model. I was also interviewed for a position in the Strategic Planning team – these are the guys who broker the deals, set the price point, capacity limits, what cities a deal will/can run in etc and essentially run the company. Plus every single person I met in that team was incredibly bright, so it was a no brainer really.

As for starting my own thing, I’m in no rush to do it and I believe in doing something once and then doing it well. I don’t want to run lots of little experimental companies in the hope one hits it big. So right now I’m focused on learning.

How was the whole experience working for Groupon? What would you say you learnt from that experience?

My role here involved a lot of research and analysis. I built an e-learning platform compiling the best deals over the past 18 months and broke down into minutiae detail how a given deal should be structured which was used by our sales team as a reference point. I also did a lot of presentation material work for the infamous Samwer brothers (respect to anyone who can flip a company after 5 months for $250m+) which was sent out to all the international directors for Groupon International. A few of the processes I managed to put in place are still being used by the team at Groupon. I also learnt a lot about how most of the consumer products we purchase every day are priced and structured which was pretty illuminating to see.

I also managed to source a deal that generated $1m+ in revenue for the firm but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a cut of the commission as I left shortly before the deal went live on Groupon (Painful lesson from 2011).

Before we get into the NEF, I learnt that you paid off your parent’s mortgage – in full? That’s really cool, they must be so proud of you, how did you manage to do that at such a young age?

At 16 I really found it difficult, actually scratch that, impossible to find a job and we in the middle of a BOOM in the UK economy. So I took a long-term view and just started getting into investing and learning how it all worked. Once I got to sixth form I was actually lucky enough to be eligible for EMA something I didn’t bother spending any of it and saved instead. I spent a lot of time reading about investing and stock picking and decided this was more important than spending money on useless consumer goods like my peers.

I did well enough at investing by locking up my capital in an ISA stockbroker which at the time was giving me 3% per month – remember we were in the middle of a boom I even saw some ISAs were giving up to 7% per annum.

I’m not going to lie, I lost A LOT of money doing this as well through naivety and not enough research and possibly not being emotionally mature enough to know when to hold or sell. I managed to amass enough capital over 5 years to pay off my parent’s mortgage.

Tell us about NEF, how did you get into this, what was the process?

I received an email from FreshMinds in Feb 2011 about the scheme and decided to apply. It was a VERY lengthy process involving:

An application form
A telephone interview with FreshMinds
A first round interview with FreshMinds
An Assessment Centre

THEN, I needed to interview at a firm to get a place on the scheme confirmed

2 interviews per firm, I interviewed at 3 firms

All in all I must’ve done around 10 different interviews

What company are you currently working with and how’s the experience been so far for you?

I’m currently placed at Liv-ex where I’m working on mainly all the core operationally focused areas of the business: operations, finance, logistics, product development, data and research.

So far, so good. I’m learning a lot here and I get a lot of contact with all the senior people in the firm and the training has been pretty good so far. The best bit of the whole programme really is the level of responsibility I’ve been given and the number of things I get to work on.

What are some of the key things that you’ve learnt so far from working for Liv-ex?

From what I’ve observed and this is generally about what determines the success of a firm. The founders matter so much as well as their ability to focus on the right things and do them. You also have to be very ruthless about priorities and its mind blowing the amount of decisions the founders have to make without really having an idea which one is going to lead to your success or give you the best trajectory.

What has it been like working with James Miles & Justin Gibbs at Liv-ex?

I work a lot with James to be honest who is really helpful and brings me to a lot of high level meetings, sits with me for a good half hour every so often (which is like watching a book being compressed in a short space of time) and pretty much gives me a lot of autonomy and freedom to actually do interesting things in the firm. I also get to work across most functions in the firm so by the end of the programme I’ll have a very strong idea about how marketplaces and electronic exchanges work and of course, fine wine.

Justin is hilarious as well and he does a really good job from what I’ve observed running the sales and trading desk at Liv-ex.

Is this something that you would recommend to other aspiring entrepreneurs? What’s the value in it?

Yes completely but realize that its apprenticeship where you’ll still come in as an ‘entry level’ person but get to work directly with the senior people actually running the firm.

The real value I believe comes in several forms:

a) A peer group of 30 intelligent and interesting young professionals
b) Training from top draw companies on several key aspects of business
c) Working directly with the entrepreneurs running the firm
d) A brilliant speaker series with top draw entrepreneurs
e) Behind the scenes privileges, I can’t disclose these, but most people would love these opportunities

What would you say has been some of the key things that you’ve learnt along the way?

Key things that matter:

A) Access to capital, either your own or someone else’s
B) A BIG market problem that is widely accepted
C) A clear solution to this problem [could you explain it in 140 characters]
D) Most great businesses are ‘hunches’
E) Great people – the best founders/management will pull their product out of the market
F) Great mentors are hard to find. This is really important

What would you say has been some of your most memorable moment so far?

I wouldn’t say I’ve had one but the learning curve is very sharp, the responsibility plentiful and the autonomy wonderful. I don’t think I’m the type to accept micro management at all and I’m glad Liv-ex offers me an environment that gives me plenty of space to and room to tackle lots of different projects.

What advices would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs looking to start their own business?

I’m pretty reluctant about this and I don’t want to try sell everyone on being an entrepreneur. For most people it’s not the answer.

I don’t think I’m qualified to give advice but I’ve found the following useful:

1) Figure out if it’s time to earn or time to learn (Mark Suster wrote extensively on this Google it)
2) Figure out if you have life’s ability to try i.e no major responsibilities, no dependents, no real need to earn a minimum salary per month
3) Is a genuine demand for a product – it’s not a business until someone sells something
4) Find good mentors, especially those with 10-20 year track records who will advise you, take you under their wing, kick your ass when you deserve it, support you when you need it and listen to you
5) Build a network and do it early as possible. One coffee meeting a week is 50 meetings per year, think how much you could achieve if you did that?
6) Read a lot and travel widely
7) If, you have conviction – Go do it!

So now – what’s next for Andrew?

I would be happy to stick around at Liv-ex after the programme and either do my own thing or join an early stage venture capital firm in a few years after I’ve got some strong experience under my belt. In the mean time, I’m focusing on developing a lot of strong skills, continuing to learn about internet companies, investing and developing a robust network of contacts for the future. Instead of setting a New Year’s Resolution for 2012 I’ve decided to focus on building better habits.

Junior ogunyemi got a taste of being an entrepreneur during college, after being named social secretary, he was assigned to put together a yearbook with a budget of £0 and 2 weeks deadline, and 2 weeks later and £50, coming up with the concept of a DVD yearbook, he made £300 in his first two hours, selling the DVD to his peers for £3.

Catch up with what he has been up to after that.

Hello junior, how are you doing? Great to have you on YHP today

Well it’s great to be here, thanks for the opportunity.

Can you give us some background information about yourself?

I’m a 20 year old social entrepreneur, currently studying BSc Economics at Queen Mary University of London. My family came from Nigeria when I was only 2 years old so I guess I’m more British than I ought to be. (Laugh). I grew up with my 3 older siblings in Islington, north London.

We didn’t have the most privileged background; however I not going to sit here and complain about things I was exposed to growing up on a council estate. I can’t moan because I was surrounded by a loving family that helped instil key values, and discipline from very young. To me that’s been worth more than having £100 of pocket money a week.

At what age did you start to get involved/interested in business?

Looking back now I think I showed glimpse way back in nursery because I was fascinated by inventors. I always said to my play workers I wanted to invent something when I grew up.

The first time I started to flex my entrepreneurial muscles was at 17 when I was appointed social secretary of my college. I was given the task of putting together a yearbook with a budget of £0 and 2 weeks deadline. Instantly I had to find ways of being resourceful or risk disappointing over 1000 of my peers.

I came up with an idea of creating a video yearbook instead. So for 10 days I walked around college with my family camcorder capturing goodbye messages from students. I had a friend who was an expert at editing videos and paid him £50. I remember my brother had an old CD duplicating machine which I used to make many copies of the DVD yearbook.

At our graduation party I set up a stall and sold the DVD yearbook to students for £3. They were selling like hotcakes. In the space of 2 hours it dawned on me, not only have I made these students happy but I also manage to turn £50 into £300 in the space of just 2 hours. After that, I couldn’t stop exploring the world of business and innovation.

At what age did you start your first business, what business was it?

I was 18 when I started my first major business venture, Show Me Amazing Football. We are a coaching academy that works to motivate and develop leadership and excellence in young people. We work with children in schools and communities to create an active environment where children can express themselves and trained coached can address issues such as childhood obesity, low self-esteem and juvenile delinquency.

You got quite a few things going on at the moment? Let’s talk about show me amazing football, what inspired you to start it, what is the story behind it?

Well I was a gifted footballer when I was younger. To me football wasn’t just a hobby, it was a discipline. I never smoked certain things because I had dreams of playing premiership level. I never hung around street corners because I knew I needed to go home and rest for that cup final on the weekend.

I realised football can really be used as a vehicle to transform lives. I started coaching football from 15 years old and wanted to use my position of influence to keep the kids away from certain dangers and give them key life skills. I could spend all day training my pupils to bend a ball like Beckham, but realistically less than 5% are ever going to make it pro. I wanted to develop a style of coaching that equipped the players with more than just sporting skills, but leadership skills that they can use in any career.

How did you raise money to start the business?

I started from very humble beginnings. I knew absolutely nothing about business and literately just walked into a bank in my tracksuit and hoody. Surprisingly, I still managed to get an appointment with the business manager of the bank. I bopped in, sat down at his desk and told him to give me a loan. He laughed and explained to me it was a great idea but money doesn’t come that easy. I had to go back to being resourceful.

Thankfully I was given a car load of old equipment to use for free. I chose to employ some of my close friends, Micah Simpson and Naaman Gordon, who believed in the vision, and were willing to work for free. This was enough for us to start earning sum profit, for months we continued to work without pay as the profit was either saved or re-invested to generate even more profits.

Before long we were getting so many children joining us that we were able to pay ourselves well and still make savings and re-investments when needed. To this date we still haven’t spent a penny on marketing, everything has grown through word of mouth.

What would you say has been the most challenging part of starting a business?

Learning to turn failure into feedback is key. Taking our work into schools was surprisingly difficult at first. However, every rejection gave us a chance to go back to the drawing board and refine our product. There was a time we offered free coaching sessions to 35 local primary schools, but still did not even get one single reply.

Constantly we worked on improving the content of our sessions and our more importantly our approach. For months we worked on sharpening the sword until it was strong enough to pierce into the market and even cut any completion. Now we have a service that schools can’t resist.

You recently started a magazine called spotlight22, what is it about?

Spotlight22 is a new monthly print magazine aimed at university students. I launch it to help publish the work of up and coming writers or blogers. Readers have the opportunity to gain free publicity for their blog sites, or just freely express themselves by sending in their written work to spotlight22@london.com. Every month our team of editors pick their favourite entries to feature in the next issue. So it’s like a month writing competition.

So what is your plan for the magazine?

The idea is to create a platform for top London writers to be noticed. This has already gone off to a great start. The beauty of the magazine is that the topics people write about are all so random. It’s funny to hear some of the things people come out with when you give them a chance to express themselves.

You currently studying at Queens Mary University, how have you been able to balance school work and business? It must be so challenging?

Oh boy! Yh it requires loads of self-discipline. Naturally we won’t have enough time in life to do everything, but God does give us enough time to do the important things. It’s about prioritising what you want to achieve. There are periods where I needed to focus so I just hibernated for months.

My brother always told me, “Champions are willing to do what they hate in order to get what they love”. So I made many sacrifices. I’ve had to put my social life on hold many times because I was locked away grafting and birthing ideas. Seriously I haven’t been on a date for years (laughs).

What else interests you apart from starting a business, what do you do for fun?

If I’m not working mine, I’m giving free business consultancy to my friends. I think I’m obsessed. I do a bit of acting and get involved in drama workshops with my church. When I need to unwind I spend time with family or close friends. I love restaurants, working out in the gym, comedy shows, cinema… It doesn’t really matter what we do as long as I’m with those that make me happy and keep me down to earth. Church is something that I always get involved in.

What has been your most memorable moment so far?

2010 has been a great year, I’ve rubbed shoulders with some amazing people and been given special invitation to place like the mayor of London’s office and houses of parliament. I remember May 5th, that day was quite extraordinary. At 12pm I had an interview for a £10,000 award, and then rushed across town in my suit to write my final exams in Economics by 2pm. immediately after that, I whizzed back across town because I had to be on stage by 5pm to pitch for another £10,000.

This time it was front of a panel of multimillionaires, celebrities and entrepreneurs. It was like being on dragons den but with an audience of 200 people at the British library. I never forget the feeling and the rush of day, it was a great buzz. From that day onwards it seemed my business and I got launched into the limelight. Receiving these awards has opened many doors.

What tips can you give to university entrepreneurs out there starting up or struggling with their start-ups?

If you don’t believe in your work, then why should anyone else? Make sure your passionate about your cause or business, because your passion will be tested. Yes, of course there will be obstacles and brick walls in your way. Those walls are there to separate people that would like to succeed, from those that really desperately want to succeed. MAKE YOUR PASSION AN OBBSESSION.

And finally, what should we be expecting from you in the future?

Ok I don’t want to reveal too much yet, but after the magazine takes off I think the next big project will be to write my first book. I’m working on a business and personal development book. Similar to the classic, “who moved my cheese”. Over the next 2 years I want to also make time to do more public speaking.

Great speaking to you junior, hope to catch up with you soon

Thanks you, keep in touch, www.twitter.com/juniorogunyemi

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