Kathy Harvey:
A warm welcome to season two of The Application, the podcast series from Saïd Business School, featuring some of the extraordinary personalities who've been offered a place on the Executive MBA here at Oxford University. I'm Kathy Harvey. As Associate Dean, I've been involved with the people who've embarked on this journey for over half the 20 years since the programme was established. So this is my chance to reconnect with them and hear more about their struggles and their achievements, personal and professional, and to learn the leadership lessons we can all take from these inspiring alumni.

Christer Holloman:
I thought as an eight-year-old that I could sell Lego, as a 13-year-old that I could sell Santa Claus. So why couldn't I as 35-year-old sell financial services?

Kathy Harvey:
I'm delighted to say that joining me for this episode is Christer Holloman, the co-founder of the FinTech platform, Divido. Divido is a non-branded or white-label tech platform, which allows partners and retailers to offer a buy now pay later option to their customers. Christer started the business while he was studying for his Executive MBA, and along the way in his career, he's authored several books on business as well. Now he's exited Divido after eight years at the helm and begun a new phase of his career in the United States.
Thank you very much, Christer for joining us. So entrepreneurs are constantly scanning the future and looking for future opportunities, but I wonder if we could just start by looking back into the past a bit and thinking about how you started out in your career, before then even, and whether there was something in your family background or something in your early life as a student that made you think that running your own show would be the best way to go.

Christer Holloman:
I think the main reason I got into entrepreneurship was because of my passion for Lego, you know, the kids' toy. I couldn't get my hands on enough of these products. And I thought by setting up my own Lego shop as an eight-year-old, I could buy Lego and sell it to my friends. And in that way also get my hands on more of it for myself. I actually even wrote them a letter, Lego in Sweden asking about this. They did reply, which I guess was fortunate, but unfortunately for me, they said that I was a bit too young to run a Lego store, but they welcomed me back when I was older.
And I think it was this sort of quest to achieve something for myself kind of inspired me to start new things. When I was 13, I started a rent-a-Santa Claus business in Sweden. You get to meet Santa Claus on Christmas Eve as he hands out the gifts. And I had so much demand for this, I had to hire a friend the following year. I've been doing smaller entrepreneurial things like that throughout my teenage years, I guess, with the goal of making some money or getting more toys or whatever. So I can't tell you exactly where the inspiration came from. It was just the obvious solution to my problem. If it's not going to happen by itself, you just have to do it on your own.

Kathy Harvey:
Tell me, are you still a Lego fan?

Christer Holloman:
I am, yeah. I don't have kids yet, but I can't wait to have kids and start hopefully to pass on this cool toy for them to be inspired by as well.

Kathy Harvey:
I wonder if you could say something about the period when you decided to study for the Executive MBA at Oxford, because at the time I think you were working for Glassdoor and that was a very high-impact job as an employee. And looking back, I remember one moment you were sitting in the clubroom doing some reading and preparing for an exam, and the next moment you had started this new company. How on earth did you decide to do that in the midst of studying for the Executive MBA? What happened to trigger that?

Christer Holloman:
I was working for Glassdoor and they had recently just introduced an unlimited paid-for-holiday employee benefit. And a few weeks after that I called my boss and said, "Hey, good news, I've been accepted to Oxford. Can I please take 18 weeks off the next two years?" And they said, "Sure, that's fine." A few, maybe two months into the programme, they actually made the role redundant. So I didn't have a job all of a sudden. And around the same time, one of the first modules that we were discussing was the entrepreneurial project. So we were asked to think about a business that we wanted to start and collaborate with your colleagues in the group. And as I was thinking about what I wanted to do next career-wise, I kind of realised that actually this could be a really good excuse to finally launch my own full-time business. So I used the entrepreneurship programme as my building the actual business plan of the company that I ended up founding later.

Kathy Harvey:
How did the idea come about, why the FinTech platform that you started?

Christer Holloman:
Well, I think there's a couple of things happening. So for one, the concept of FinTech was kind of new in 2013, '14. So it was sort of getting more and more attention. It was almost like a hot cake, a popular kind of trend. At the same time being Swedish, I'd been watching Klarna, the Swedish buy now pay later company, for some time, and they were doing tremendously well in Sweden. At this point, they hadn't really expanded that much into the UK. So I thought, "That's interesting. Maybe we could emulate that proposition." So that's sort of the foundation of the entrepreneurship project, started thinking about co-founders, have an old childhood friend which is a very well rounded CTO. So him and I had been discussing over the last decade about doing something, hadn't really found the right proposition or the timing hadn't been right or the financial wouldn't allow us to take time out from work. And then we realised we need someone with a more banking or financial services background, and that's how we found the third co-founder.

Kathy Harvey:
Okay. So you found your chief technology officer first, and then you brought the banking expert on board. Seems to me you were the real opportunist. You didn't have a finance background, you just had the idea. Do you think that all successful entrepreneurs are essentially opportunists?

Christer Holloman:
Yeah, I don't know what the stats are because I can imagine that if you are working in an industry, you might be able to identify gaps and opportunities and you would have a very good, potentially a good relevant network to launch something and be successful in that space. I think there's definitely a chunk of entrepreneurs that have that kind of entry way, if you will. And then I think there's another half, which is definitely the bucket where I sit in where I'm so naive or stupid or crazy that I think I can do anything if I put my mind to it. I thought as an eight-year-old that I could sell Lego, as a thirteen-year-old that I could sell Santa Claus. So why couldn't I as a 35-year-old sell financial services? It's all the same to me kind of thing. So yeah, I think that's also a valid kind of starting point to explore, because you enter the space with fresh pair of eyes, you don't have any preconceived ideas.

Kathy Harvey:
So an optimist, if not just an opportunist. I think that's really nice. So give me a sense of what it was like in the early days. I think eventually by the time you left Divido, I think I'm right in saying that at the time Divido had raised around $50 million at the time that you left. But what was it like in the early days with the three of you? How did you develop the idea? And most importantly, how on earth did you go about getting the money?

Christer Holloman:
Yeah, I mean, I could talk for an hour about our fundraising journey. And entrepreneurs, they say it's been a roller coaster and it truly was a roller coaster. You have some high highs and you have some low lows and everything in between over a very long period of time. It was very close that we didn't actually even get the business off the ground. So the plan was to raise a half a million pounds on a 2 million pound valuation. And in the first quarter, I probably had 50 meetings with investors and everyone said no. I mean, the only thing we had was the business plan that I've been developing part of the EMBA, and we had an animated video. And we were basically selling a dream of what we were trying to do.

Kathy Harvey:
There was no minimum viable product, there was no MVP?

Christer Holloman:
No, we were not live. The only thing we had, I guess in addition to that was we had three, four signed contracts with clients that said, "Yeah, when you're live, we would be happy to try this." So a little bit of validation I guess from a demand side. But it became very apparent that we didn't know how to raise capital to lend ourselves. So we had to kind of pivot to this idea of partnering with existing lenders and become kind of a middleman or a broker, if you will. And eventually, this is how the white label proposition came about. So we would give the retailers a front end, a proposition they can broadcast and market to their customers to apply for finance to cover the cost of the purchase, and then we would take that application and pass that on to the lenders.
So anyways, that's all we had when we started and lenders said, "Well, this is to easy. Anyone can replicate this. PayPal can copy you tomorrow. Why would a lender work with you? They can work directly with these retailers." And I was running out of money at this point, like personal savings. I hadn't really worked for nine months or so. And I thought if I can only afford this so another three or four months, then I have to actually get a normal job again. I had a secondhand car, a BMW, and I sold it and I think I got another 10, 15,000 pounds for it so I could sustain myself for a few more months.
And in April of that year, 2014, one investor said, "Okay, we'll give you half of the money, 250,000." And we kept speaking to investors and literally from that point on, everyone started saying yes. So we went from three months of 50 nos to two, three weeks of getting 3, 4, 5, 6 people saying yes, yes, yes. To the point where we actually had a million pounds being offered to us, and we were able to negotiate an even higher valuation than the one we initially set out. And on the back of that, we closed a million pound race in the summer of 2014, and that was really the starting point.

Kathy Harvey:
So that's the exciting phase of a startup where even though you're working every hour of the day, you are also sensing that you're really getting somewhere and getting good feedback finally from the potential investors. So when and how did you realise that you would have to tweak the business model and pivot, as it were, to going from being a branded tech platform to being unbranded or white label, if you like, in order to be more successful?

Christer Holloman:
I think it was a combination of factors. I think the main one was the fact that, as I mentioned, we were kind of early in this space, but a few years in the market was heating up and there was a lot more competitors, and that made it harder for us to stand out. And kind of opportunistically, we realised that instead of trying to compete head to head with all of these other buy now pay later companies, we could actually build on the fact that there was so much interest in entering this space so that we could licence our platform to companies that wanted to get in on the action. So that's when we started speaking to lenders to use our tech to offer their services to their customers. And that's how the whole white labelling came about.

Kathy Harvey:
I think you also discovered some of the downsides of having your own brand and your own label. Do you want to say something about that?

Christer Holloman:
Yeah, so as I mentioned, we were never the ones lending the money. We were simply a broker, if you will. We sat between the retailers' websites or however interface they used to offer customers finance. Could be in store. We captured the customer's application and then we would just refer that to a panel of lenders. So if a customer got declined for finance, it would be because one of those lenders declined them.
But because we used to use the Divido branding on all the application forms, they thought it was Divido that was underwriting them, it was Divido that was declining them. So people took to social media and review website and sort of slagged us off for declining them. They had crystal clear credit score and very good credit score and still Divido declined them. And our hearts were sinking. We obviously knew that wasn't us declining, and it was sort of a futile exercise to try to explain that it was actually not us, it was actually a lender. So yeah, so that was another pro with going the white label route that no longer was it our brand that was on display and sort of took the brunt of negative credit decisionings.

Kathy Harvey:
So you made the traditional pivot and then you moved to the next stage.

Christer Holloman:
Yes.

Kathy Harvey:
And I think you launched in 10 countries. It was very exciting. Things were going well, the investors were showing interest. Then COVID hit. What was it like during the pandemic? Did the business increase its sales or was it a hiatus for you?

Christer Holloman:
Yeah, it was probably one of the most challenging times for us as a business. Because we had been very much focused on selling to large enterprise type clients like the retail banks, but also some multinational retailers, when Covid happened, they paused every kind of fringe project that they had been working on, and they just doubled down on kind of core services, "How do we sell our products and services when our stores are closed? How do we service our customers when our bank branches are closed?" Et cetera. So everything got put on hold. So our revenue very quickly started to flatline, and that was probably the biggest shock to the system. And as a result, the board started questioning my suitability as the CEO and whether I still had what it took to run this company. And that was obviously very difficult conversation to have and to take on, I suppose.

Kathy Harvey:
What was that like for you when the board started questioning your leadership?

Christer Holloman:
Well, to be honest, I always thought of Divido as my company. It was my idea, brought along the co-founders and I was the spokesperson, the face or whatever. And when the board, the chairman kind of took me to the side and started having this conversation, it kind of hit me that actually I'm not running my own company. I'm an employee of these investors and they can fire me at will if they so see fit. And it was difficult, I must confess. I had a lot of sleepless nights. And it's a little bit embarrassing to confess as a grown up man, but I cried a lot for several days when this really sunk in because I realised that everything that I worked for relentlessly for all these years could be taken away from me in a flash. I was thinking about my reputation, I was thinking about the financial consequences. I was thinking about, "Will anyone hire me again? Will everyone back me again i if I'm not successful in pulling through?"
So it was a lot going on. But after a few days of feeling sorry for myself, I was like, "You know what? There literally isn't anyone better on this planet to run this business than me. No one's more passionate, no one's more knowledgeable, no one can deal with clients, with suppliers, speak with authority and confidence to media, whatever. Obviously I need to remain the CEO here." So a little bit like the phoenix out of the fire, I was like, "God damn it, I'm going to show them." So it kind of became a real kick and a real motivating for me to turn things around. So yeah, so I kind of won the board's trust. The trust was renewed over a period of months that followed that kind of period. But yeah, it was really rocky for sure.

Kathy Harvey:
It's talked about a lot, this relationship between the founders and the investors and the creeping realisation that entrepreneurs have that in fact they may have given away too much of the company or the board is more powerful than them. So did you feel that you could or would be sacked by the board?

Christer Holloman:
Yeah, 100%. I now realise, this was my first proper business with employees and investors and so on, but I realised that yeah, the second you take on money from external investors, that's kind of what you expose yourself to. But now I know, now that I have more experience and know more founders, have been able to discuss this with them, it's not a good look for investors to be firing CEOs because it'll make CEOs, founders think twice about bringing investors on board. So what I now know is that it's also in the investors' interest to do this in the most amicable way possible. And I must say, we turned the corner with Divido. We raised a mega series B a year or so after this difficult COVID period that I just described, and we ended up parting on very good terms. But yeah, it was definitely news to me at the time that I could be fired.

Kathy Harvey:
It's also difficult for the founding group, isn't it? Because the relationships that you forge in those early days starting a business are very close and very important. But of necessity, they don't always stay that close. And I think you also had an experience where you had to part a company with one of your co-founders. Can you say a little bit about that?

Christer Holloman:
Yeah, it was kind of on the back of this sort of questioning of my position as the CEO. I don't know if it's human or whatever, if it's just me, but pointing the fingers and you're trying to think of reasons or excuses to justify why things are going the way it is. And one of my reactions was to look at my co-founders like, "Well, if the board thinks I'm not doing a good job, how good of a job are they doing?" And we talked briefly earlier about the configuration that there was a CTO, and it was hard to fault him for anything. He'd built the platform that did what it was supposed to. So for me, it was very natural then to look at my other co-founder because he had a more vague role, kind of a chief operating officer. And I was like, "Well, I'm doing all of this work and here I am getting all of the blame when actually everyone isn't pulling equally or contributing. If anyone should go, it should be this person."
So we kind of had a conversation about that, and it became apparent that that third person wasn't as needed in the business as myself and the CTO. So the natural consequences of that was that my chairman asked me to initiate the process to ask my co-founder to step down. And after having worked together six days a week for seven, eight years straight and becoming good friends, it was a very difficult conversation to have. And the first thing he said is like, "Chris, I think you should be the one leaving," which wasn't fun to hear either. But I understand, I guess he must've felt cornered. And long story short, we came to a good agreement. He stepped down. But unfortunately he has not wanted to speak to me ever since, and I lost a friend in the process.

Kathy Harvey:
How do you feel about that now?

Christer Holloman:
I can understand where he's coming from, but I think hopefully one day maybe he can accept that I didn't do what I did because I wanted to. But that was the situation we found ourselves in at the time, and that he can have it in his heart to forgive me and realise this is just business in the end of the day. And it's on him now to reach out because I've made it clear to people that we know that I'm very willing and able to meet and do what I can to kind of smooth things over. But if he's hurt, I can't undo that.

Kathy Harvey:
Do you consider yourself a ruthless person?

Christer Holloman:
No, I think that's probably my problem. I'm too kind I think. I remember even firing one of our first employees. We were five, six people. I almost started crying having to tell this person that we couldn't keep them on anymore, even though they hadn't been delivering, even though they were on YouTube half the day, whatever. But I think I've gotten better over the time, and I think I've hardened up a little bit over time. And the same thing goes, I told you about my role being questioned. I think that was very hard. I think I've grown a thicker skin now, having had the experience with almost being fired, having to fire other people, having to part ways with a good friend. I think like they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. So I think I'm getting better. I wouldn't say I'm ruthless, but I think I'm getting more balanced about it or realistic about it.

Kathy Harvey:
Thank you for that very self-reflective answer. And I know that now you are putting your experience to good use with other founders. You've invested in companies, you're advising startups. You work with Saïd Business School as an advisor to startups, which we are very grateful for. It's fantastic when alumni come back and do that. You move to the States. You said you always wanted to move to the States. So what are you going to do now, Christer? What's the next step?

Christer Holloman:
Well, so the first thing is I started investing as an angel investing in startups. I've invested in over 40 companies now, not just in FinTech. And that's been good for several reasons. It's given me an opportunity to continue to expand my network, to learn about new and up and coming trends, and to see what people are working on and then how they're addressing problems. Because ultimately, I want to go back at it again. As I kind of alluded to in the beginning, I've been thinking about business ideas and taking steps to start things since I was a teenager. So I think that's my diagnosis. I'm never going to stop that. So I'm taking my time now to figure out what I want to do next.

Kathy Harvey:
I think persistence is a very underrated and under-reported attribute that entrepreneurs really have in spades, as well as boundless enthusiasm. And I think that comes across. But I'm just wondering what for you counts as impact in your life?

Christer Holloman:
That's a big question. I don't know. I guess something about leaving a legacy. How can I have more impact? How can I make change more people's lives? How can I make something with more longevity than just a company? And that's sort of why we started narrowing down on the transition to sustainable energy and what role we can play in there. Because it's happening. We can debate how soon or which technology will be prevailing, et cetera. But to play a role in that I think will be pretty cool. I came across a company in the UK when we were working with Divido called Close Brothers, and I remember them telling us that they financed the American railroads 100 years ago. And I was thinking, "Wow, that's so cool. That's infrastructure that's still around today that's sort of the backbone of a country." In a way, the transition to the green technology and green energy, it's going to be around in 100 years from now. And so that really excites me if we can make an impact in that space.

Kathy Harvey:
That's really, really interesting. And I know in your personal life as well, you have tried to give back in several ways to communities that matter to you. You've started a network in Oxford University, the Oxford Pride Alumni Network. Do you want to say a few words about that?

Christer Holloman:
Yeah, so when I moved to New York, I knew some people, but I didn't know that many people. So I decided to get involved in the OBA, which is the Business School's Alumni Network open to anyone at university that's interested in business. And that was really my first engagement with the wider alumni community. So I got to know different subgroups that people gather under as alumni, but it occurred to me that there wasn't an alumni group representing the LGBTQ+ community. So I reached out to the university and I said, "Hey, is there a reason that there isn't a pride community?" And they said, "No, we're just waiting for someone to take the initiative." And you know me, if I spot an opportunity, I got time on my hands, I said, "Well, let me do it then."
So I pitched to them the idea of setting up the first ever LGBT alumni group for the university. And today we're a team of 15 people. We have four or five local chapters. Statistically, there should be approximately 35,000 people, Oxford graduates that would identify as LGBTQ+. And the Student Society has 3,000 members. So it's the largest student society in Oxford today, as I've been told. So I think there's a huge community of my peers that haven't been represented today. So I'm really excited about the potential of giving us a voice, giving us a platform, and bringing us together and creating networking events and helping us continue our professional development and learning over time.

Kathy Harvey:
I can hear the entrepreneurial enthusiasm in your voice as you talk about it. So look forward to hearing more about that. And finally, I just wonder if you can think back a bit as well as looking forward. When you filled in your application form, we asked you through those essays you had to write to paint a picture of your future self and your future ambitions. What kind of picture do you want to paint now?

Christer Holloman:
I can't remember that question. I thought you were going to tell me what I wrote and see if it held true.

Kathy Harvey:
We never reveal to the wider world what anyone has written in the application.

Christer Holloman:
Fine, fine. No, but I think it kind of goes back to my previous point. Divido was my great first opportunity to build a business. I learned so much. We touched on some of those learnings already. But I feel more mature, more ready, more excited than ever to kind of go and do it again, but this time bigger and better. So I guess in 10 years, 20 years from now, depending on which new venture that we settle on, that I can have had more impact on more people's lives and that I can continue to give back to society. I'm incredibly grateful to life and everything that life gives us. And if I can somehow give back to the universe, I think that would be really cool. So yeah, bigger and better, I guess, is my goal.

Kathy Harvey:
And if you had one piece of advice for anyone listening to this, what would it be?

Christer Holloman:
If you think you want to start a business, stop thinking about it. Just do it.

Kathy Harvey:
Christer, thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure talking to you.

Christer Holloman:
Thank you. Likewise. Thanks for having me.

Kathy Harvey:
I will be back with another episode of The Application. So do look out for it wherever you usually get your podcasts. If you'd like to know more about Saïd Business School, take a look at the Oxford Answers section on our website or check out the programme pages for more inspiring stories about our Executive MBA alumni. The Application is produced by Philippa Goodrich and Oxford Digital Media. I'm Kathy Harvey, Associate Dean at Saïd Business School. Thank you for listening.
Oh, it's just a pity it's not in person and I can't give you a hug.

Christer Holloman:
Ah.