Welcome to our series, ‘Meet the Entrepreneur’, where we meet entrepreneurs and start-ups from the Channel Islands. We find out what they are doing, what ‘drives’ them and what advice they would give anyone starting out in business.
Today, we meet Jersey-based entrepreneur Rachel Amos, founder of the Senate.
Tell us about your business
My business will be four years old in January, having started as an idea based on my working experience as a lawyer (mostly working inside financial services businesses). We are still very much a start up with a small team and an endless quest to find product market fit!
Tell us about your ‘journey’ and how you got to this point
I started with the idea of creating a consulting business based on problems that I had dealt with in my career of taking professional (in my case legal) advice and often having to synthesis it for the business to make it more digestible and easy to understand quickly. I knew that there were some issues with the way that the advice I received (in my previous life) was delivered and I wanted to focus on three problems:
- The mouldy cheese problem – advice goes out of date quickly but has no sell-by date. Image a world where cheese stays in date and you can consume it risk free!
- The Elmer the Elephant problem – being a multi-coloured elephant in a pack of grey elephants makes you stand out. It’s fine if you know you stand out, but don’t do it by accident. It is critical to understand if you are in the middle of the pack, or an outlier and you should be able to take more than one opinion on that to help you get reassurance. Another name for this is the “Delphic model”, or in tech terms – ‘Planning Poker’.
- The White Rabbit Problem – the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland is obsessed with time but always running late. Advice needs to be on-time and ‘the best can be the enemy of the good’. Advisors often prioritize gold plating an answer instead of delivering it on time.
So I designed a technology platform that set out to solve these problems and many more!
Along the way I discovered the following things:
- Building tech is quite like being a lawyer – you need to get the fundamentals right and you need to keep tweaking it! It is never finished. Also you need to understand the client and what they want to do with it.
- Running a start up is quite like being a parent in many ways – there are times when you have to let it take you where it wants to go.
- Trust is key in the early stages of your business. When trust is broken it can hurt you badly (and all founders have these stories – they just don’t tell them – the culture of unicorns is very tricky) but when you have success it is amazing as you can directly attribute it to your efforts and those of your team.
Can you talk us through a typical working day?
I don’t have a typical day but I do a lot of on-line meetings, a lot of writing, quite a lot of managing various senates for clients and a lot of business development! I try to add in a mix of attending events where I will learn things and meet people face to face if I can as it is very good for my mental health.
I am an extrovert and I know that interacting with others gives me a boost, so as someone who works on their own at home I try to give myself that.
Have you had support from Jersey Business or Digital Jersey?
Yes, Digital Jersey were very helpful when I applied for my licence this year, holding my hand through the process which was very much needed as I am new the island and have no family or connections here.
As a consequence, I have set up a version of my (Senate) platform called Entrepreneurs.je to help people who are in the position I was in earlier this year to find their feet as an entrepreneur in Jersey.
Can you share your experience with banks?
My business already had banking in the UK and a UK entity set up, so this was not a struggle for me and as a lawyer by training I was fairly confident about how to fill out forms etc! If I had to bank On-Island it would be much harder, however.
Has Covid affected your business?
Yes and No. We were too little to take advantage of such a big wave of change, and also too little to obtain any financial support, which meant we had to batten down the hatches, trim all costs, we nearly but did not quite raise money just before the Covid wave hit us which was pretty disappointing, but probably good in retrospect. It has made us tougher and leaner and more focused as we come out the other side and even more resilient (if that was possible).
We were lucky that we already operated as a virtual, distributed team. It also made us innovate and produce a new product called Senate Talk – a hybrid tool which enables you to flow your Q&A from a webinar into our Q&A platform to follow up on all the zoom / teams questions properly and in a more measured way.
What’s been your biggest challenge as an entrepreneur?
Finding the right partners and learning how to sell! Being a lawyer is predominantly about logging hours and delivering legal advice. Over a legal career it is hard to learn about marketing & selling (and many lawyers actively avoid it) and managing finances or a financial model. It’s why it is so rare to see lawyers who pivot to be an entrepreneur (unless it is early in their career).
Can you share any experiences as an entrepreneur?
I am still surprised by the number of people who say they will do something and then they don’t (or do it badly). It’s not really in my DNA. The “Californian no” is still a surprise.
What advice would you give to someone who has a start-up idea?
It would depend on what they are planning to do. But much like not giving people parenting advice, refraining from telling people not to do it is best! More seriously – understand how long you might need to commit to it / that it WILL cost you money and leaving your own start up is super hard.
Which business leader do you admire?
Honestly I admire anyone who manages to build a business, create jobs and then sell their company!
What do you do in your downtime?
I make things with my hands, I play sport and I cycle around with my dog!
What music do you listen to?
A real mix but I love country and bluegrass.
Are you listening to any podcasts at the moment?
Yes – I listen to a lot of podcasts. At the moment I am listening to “the Dropout” about the Theranos fraud and Elizabeth Holmes and I am a big fan of the “Bunker” podcast.
What book are you reading?
I am reading Neurotribes by Steve Silberman which is about autism and the roles it has played in shaping human history. I am also reading a book from a second hand shop by Chris Waring called “I used to Know that: Maths”. Revisiting some basic maths concepts….see answer above about the biggest challenge!
What is your favourite gadget and why?
I have two: My robotic vacuum cleaner called Odysseys – he goes where others don’t dare… and my amazing electric Cargo bike – once you spot me cycling round Jersey you wont miss me again!
For more information:
Are you a Channel Islands entrepreneur/startup who would like to be featured in Channel Eye? If so, please drop us an email to [email protected]
