Gabriel Isserlis of Tutti: Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Start-up
An Interview With Doug Noll
Resilience: Many people give up too quickly. Unless you’re one in a million, this is not a fast journey. It takes time for your concept to evolve into a truly fantastic, useful tool. And I’d guess that not a single successful company wins with the original idea that popped into the founders’ head on day one. Evolution from concept to world-changing service takes an incredible amount of time. The original concept that kicked off ideas for Tutti was IMDb for music, back in 2015… a bit different to what we are today.
Start-ups have such a glamorous reputation. Companies like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Uber, and Airbnb once started as scrappy start-ups with huge dreams and huge obstacles. Yet we of course know that most start-ups don’t end up as success stories. What does a founder or a founding team need to know to create a highly successful start-up?
In this series, called “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Start-up” we are talking to experienced and successful founders and business leaders who can share stories from their experience about what it takes to create a highly successful start-up.
Gabriel is the Founder and CEO of Tutti, a technology company designed to revolutionise the creative industries by giving creators more time to create. He grew up in London, in a family of classical musicians, studied Film & Programming at the Rochester Institute of Technology (in upstate NY), and has worked in events, theatre, and photography. All of these experiences led to him building Tutti and becoming an expert at the intersection of technology and the creative industries.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started? Also, what was the “Aha Moment” that led to the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?
I can’t honestly say there has been one single Aha moment. All of our progress and future potential has been the compounding effect of many different ‘Aha moments’ over time, as we learn more about our customer, and technology in the world continues to evolve, unlocking more potential opportunities for us to apply it to this sector.
Even back when I had the original concept that led down this path, I don’t know exactly what it was that triggered it. It felt like I had unlocked a door in my brain and the ideas were just flooding out. It was during my time at university, Rochester Institute of Technology (in upstate NY). I had finished my degree in Film & Animation, and I was in the middle of my programming degree, dabbling in the entrepreneur centre, and getting very involved with my job (Tech Crew), where we helped organise on campus events: everything from club meetups to shows by major stars like Macklemore and Maroon 5.
I attribute (not sure if correctly) that door unlock to the combination of all those different inputs, showing me very different patterns and being able to join dots that not many people see. Something changed in my head, and I kept seeing two things in the world, and wondering why nobody had combined them in certain ways.
After presenting some of these ideas to friends, I realised that not everyone was seeing these concepts, so thought I should maybe dig into them a bit. The first combination idea I built with a friend was for house parties. I had LED lights around my house and wanted the lights to change with the mood of the party.
How to do that? Well, what if I gave everyone at the party control of the lights? My friend Jaime and I spent an afternoon setting up Tasker and IFTTT. When someone texted my phone a certain code (#122) and a colour name or hex code (numerical value for colour), my phone would recognise that as a command and send the colour to the lights. It was a great bit of fun at the party, even if it only half worked. The lights would receive colours in batches every two minutes, so there was a lot of strobing…
My guests loved this bizarre invention, and I think that moment gave me the inventing bug. I kept noticing patterns in my head and started keeping notes on them. A few of them were little gimmicky things like the lights, but a lot of them were ideas to apply interesting technology that either currently existed, or had strong potential to exist in the future if applied to problems in the creative industries.
A pattern started to emerge — I was best at inventing ideas at the intersection of creativity and technology. I built out this massive plan of a super app that would help creatives with every aspect of their career. But then a problem would halt my progress for two years. Where to start? I tried to start with everything, all at once… it didn’t work.
Was there somebody in your life who inspired or helped you to start your journey with your business? Can you share a story with us?
Less a single person, more a collective of people — the founder institute (FI). They are a start-up incubator, started in Silicon Valley by Adeo Ressi, but they have chapters all around the world. After trying to start my super app for two years and getting absolutely nowhere, I almost gave up, but was convinced by my girlfriend and an advisor to apply for FI. I got in, and was told very few applicants get in. Even fewer graduate.
I was determined to graduate. But it was tough. If you don’t move fast enough, or through collective voting, and they don’t think you’re moving in the right direction, you’re asked to leave. They pushed some tough decisions on me — you can’t start with everything. Start with one thing and choose that one thing next week. I narrowed it down to three things: Airbnb for music rehearsal space, some fintech offering for creatives, and I honestly can’t remember the third! After a boatload of customer interviews (required by FI), I settled on Airbnb for music rehearsal space.
They forced me to push myself and accelerate my decisions. In three months, I made more progress than I had made in the past two years. And most importantly, they re-kindled my burning passion to invent, which I had rather lost after a couple of years of nothing. I can’t attest it to any one person. At FI, there are directors, mentors, and your classmates. All of them played a part in propelling me forward.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I have no intention of doing things the same way as everyone else. People say you can have only one primary brand colour. We have five, each very carefully chosen by me. Yes, I realise this may change in the future, but for now, it serves its purpose to catch people’s eyes. The logo quite literally stands out.
At the same time, there’s several “standard” ways of doing things in both the creative industries and online marketplaces, that just don’t make sense to me. So, we’re trying to find ways around them, in ways that enable us to retain revenue, but are in the end, more helpful to our customers. That’s a tricky balance and I’m being intentionally vague because we haven’t quite figured this one out yet.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
In case you hadn’t realised by now, I’m immensely passionate about the creative industries. I believe that creativity is integral to human existence (and there’s a fair amount of scientific research and history to support that belief). So, all my focus on benefitting the world is on this industry.
We’ve started by standing up for “the little ones” in creative venues. One problem I’ve always had with Google and many online platforms, is that you could buy your way to the top. We don’t and will never allow people to purchase ranking in Tutti. People get to the top by being the most relevant result for the query, and being a good host: responding quickly, filling out their profile and using Tutti’s booking solution to its fullest potential. All things that are free, and don’t take much time. It just takes that little extra bit of effort, to press reject/cancel and give a reason, rather than ghosting someone.
As our revenues grow, you’ll see us investing not only back into our own technology, but also into the wider industry.
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
Self belief: I have been on this journey for years now. There have been many times I have wanted to give up. But then I’ve thought about what I believe I can bring to the world if I manage to grow Tutti into the company I dream of, and it helps me get back on my feet. This was particularly relevant in my recent crowdraise in November 2022. It was exhausting, putting so much energy out into the world, with minimal response. But thinking about where I wanted to get Tutti to definitely helped.
Listening to others: It’s not all me helping pick me back up. There have been some seriously low points, and in those times I haven’t been able to do it alone. My partner has been my main cheerleader and supporter, and has been brilliant at helping me with decisions, direction, and excitement. But beyond her, I have some wildly intelligent and driven friends around me, all of whom I lean on for support, advice, and sometimes, just energy.
Sector knowledge: In start-ups, it’s often a game of evolution. You have to adapt to survive. If something’s not working, evolve. The best way to evolve, but stay true to yourself and your company, is by having an intimate understanding of the sector you’re building for. We’ve evolved a few times over the years. At first, when we started as “Airbnb for music rehearsal space” it became clear in very little time that was not a big enough market. We evolved into “Airbnb for creative space.” There were a number of competitors who started at creative space and have evolved into ‘any space’ — they accept parties, weddings, corporate events. We asked ourselves what we truly wanted to be, and talked to our users, and they told us to not expand into parties and weddings. They’re good money but a pain to deal with. With our knowledge of the sector, we knew we could build on what we had and still have a great business on our hands. So, we avoided that shiny object, and focused on the creative industries exclusively, and it’s working.
Often leaders are asked to share the best advice they received. But let’s reverse the question. Can you share a story about advice you’ve received that you now wish you never followed?
I had a friendly lawyer at the start who was very helpful with a lot of things, but he wanted me to do everything by the book. He got me to incorporate the company the moment I had my ideas in 2016. But we didn’t manage to figure out how to start for two years, so a lot of people see our incorporation date and ask questions.
When asking other lawyers later whether we should whip up another company, I’ve also been advised not to. So, it’s stuck. But if you’re wondering, you don’t need an incorporated company if your start-up is nothing more than an idea.
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?
As mentioned, it took me two years to go from idea to MVP. The biggest problem was that I didn’t know how to start a start-up, so I spent a lot of time asking people “in business” what to do. The problem there is that anyone who has joined a business once it’s up and running, or started a more traditional business, also has no idea how to get a tech company off the ground.
This is of course not a problem I will ever have for the rest of my life. But if I was told to re-do my life, I would try and tell myself in this alternate timeline, to go out and seek help from people a little further ahead on the same journey (tech founders), and actually listen to that advice.
I spent a lot of time feeling highly inadequate as I saw my friends from university out there at all the big tech companies, getting promotion after promotion and doing all this cool stuff. Now, those same people have expressed how excited and amazed they are by Tutti. So that’s motivating.
Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard? What strategies or techniques did you use to help overcome those challenges?
I can’t quite place a finger on the source of my drive. I am passionate about helping people in the creative industries, and I believe that I’m uniquely qualified to do so, with my deep understanding of both creative industries and technology. I sometimes ask myself: if I don’t do it, who else is going to do it the way that I want to see?
One thing that did help me when I was starting, was a brief conversation with my dad. I see my dad as this wildly successful musician and always assumed it was like that, as I’d known he’d given concerts at the age of 12. But he told me one day when I was struggling, that he had practically no career until his 30s. But had just been striving for it for years, and then all of a sudden, the stars aligned. I was 28 at the time and it helped me realise I had a lot of work ahead of me, but also plenty of time for my stars to align.
The journey of an entrepreneur is never easy, and is filled with challenges, failures, setbacks, as well as joys, thrills, and celebrations. Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder?
I’ve applied advice that Nick Telson, founder of Design My Night & Trumpet, shared at one point, which is maybe not the best advice for everyone, but it works for us. The reason the lows feel so painful is because the highs are so great. And the further you fall, the more the lows hurt. So, if you can somewhat resist the highs, you’ll be able to lead a more balanced life.
Of course, this only works for you as an individual. In order for your team to buy into your story and follow you every step of the way, you need to celebrate with and for them. So, it’s a very tricky skill to master — keeping your internal emotions muted enough that you don’t have massive peaks and troughs, but equally celebrating in your highs with your team, in an honest, exciting way.
I haven’t quite gotten to the point of celebrating with team members effectively yet. I am still working on that. But I’ve gotten quite good at seeing excellent wins as just another useful rung in the ladder towards the target goal in my mind, which has indeed made my lows not quite so painful.
Let’s imagine that a young founder comes to you and asks for your advice about whether venture capital or bootstrapping is best for them? What would you advise them? Can you kindly share a few things a founder should look at to determine if fundraising or bootstrapping is the right choice?
VC is a train it’s very hard to get off of. If you’re trying to build a company just to learn how to build a company (some people do this), you can try and learn fast with some VC capital. As a part of their portfolio, the risk you’re presenting to their investors is diversified across their full portfolio. It will be a quick way to learn IF you’re able to raise the capital, but very few are.
If you’re like me and start with the company you can see yourself dedicating decades of your life to, then start bootstrapped, and only accept external investment when you are certain you’re ready for it. Not only will you retain more ownership yourself, but also raising money and spending other people’s money takes a mental toll if you’re not a psychopath. When you do raise, you do not have to accept VC money (which is a train as they will want you to keep raising and growing fast, to reach their massive exit). You can stick with angels, even into the Series rounds. Mathilde Collin (founder of Front) raised her Series C almost entirely from angels (mostly other founders).
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Many start-ups are not successful, and some are very successful. From your experience or perspective, what are the main factors that distinguish successful start-ups from unsuccessful ones? What are your “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Start-up”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.
Resilience: Many people give up too quickly. Unless you’re one in a million, this is not a fast journey. It takes time for your concept to evolve into a truly fantastic, useful tool. And I’d guess that not a single successful company wins with the original idea that popped into the founders’ head on day one. Evolution from concept to world-changing service takes an incredible amount of time. The original concept that kicked off ideas for Tutti was IMDb for music, back in 2015… a bit different to what we are today.
Focus: It is so easy to chase shiny new problems in start-up life, especially if you keep on learning more and more about your users. But if my first two years are anything to learn from, trying to do too much at once is debilitating.
A good support system: Building a powerful, resilient company is not a one-person task. You never know when you’ll need support, whether it’s feedback on ideas, a friendly exchange of energy when you’re feeling low, someone to celebrate with when you’re feeling high, or introductions to people you don’t know, the list goes on. You won’t know what you need until you need it, and at that point, very few strangers will help you. It is best to start building a network of friends, supporters, advisors, and mentors as soon as possible. Also, make sure that network is diverse. Yes, some other founders and people in business, but also people outside of that world, so you can snap out of that world occasionally.
I started a series of networking events for friendly founders in London, in 2022, and the positive energy I’ve received from that has been amazing. I made new lifelong friends who have introduced me to more friends, countless investors who backed me in my crowdraise, key introductions when I need them, and a community of people going through similar journeys, who I can talk to about lows and highs.
The right team: These people of course fall under support system, but they are important enough to mention a second time. You can’t do everything yourself. Go out there and meet other people that are keen to explore their own entrepreneurial journey. If you meet enough people, most likely you’ll find someone who believes in similar things to you and will be able to support you in your journey. No matter how much self-confidence you have, you are not brilliant at everything. Mostly because if you lack focus, you will still be bad at the things you’re good at, because you don’t have enough time for them. So, get teammates and delegate tasks to them. And importantly, build a trust with them to let them do things on their own. It’ll do wonders for you.
In the past 18 months, I knew what I needed to do to improve our SEO, but I never had the time to create all the content, design the technical improvements, manage copywriters, and drive everything forward. Then my colleague Ed came on board and focused on that, so I didn’t have to. He’s taken our SEO strategy from a pipe dream, to 95% of our ever-growing traffic. It’s been game changing.
Luck: Yes, this one is a bit frustrating, but every successful (and self-aware) founder knows it’s true. Just listen to the stories on How I Built This by Guy Raz. You have to be lucky enough to come up with the right idea, at the right time, in the right place, with the right people around you, and a lot of different things have to come together in order for you to succeed. However, there is a facet of skill to this trait. You can make your own luck, to a point, simply by doing the above things. Being resilient and continuing to show up. Focusing enough and not letting yourself be attracted by too many shiny objects. Building an amazing support system who can get you intros to all sorts of people. And putting yourself out there, constantly. So many opportunities have opened up to me simply because I have pushed forward, and have made incremental improvements every day, for years. It compounds.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start a business? What can be done to avoid those errors?
Not getting users fast enough. And not talking to those users.
My experience is of course not life altering things (health tech, transportation, etc), so my advice does not apply there. But if you’re building something as “simple” as technology that does not require regulation, then just go and talk to your users, and build it in no-code to start. If you’re building a marketplace, use Sharetribe Go. If you’re selling products, use Shopify. If you’re selling your own services, use Squarespace. If you don’t fit into those camps, maybe use Bubble, or try any number of other services out there.
Put your tech out there in online communities. If you’re offering something to people based on location, there’s probably a Facebook group for that location. Or, if you’re offering a service anyone in the world can use, try and find an audience on Reddit. There are a lot more community apps now, but these are the ones I used when I started Tutti. Ask for feedback, see what people think, see if anyone is willing to give it a try, and ask them how they liked it. Ask them what they liked and what they didn’t. Don’t change anything based on one person’s advice, but if multiple people mention something, maybe it’s worth listening to.
Start talking to users as quickly as possible and give them something to use as quickly as possible. It doesn’t need to be pretty or even fully functional (you might be able to run things in a spreadsheet on the back end for a bit).
Start-up founders often work extremely long hours and it’s easy to burn the candle at both ends. What would you recommend to founders about how to best take care of their physical and mental wellness when starting a company?
There are three things that your body truly needs: Sleep, Nutrition, Exercise. If nothing else, prioritize sleep & water! I make sure I get 8–9 hrs a night and drink lots of water throughout the day, and it helps my brain keep working at peak performance every day, even if I don’t always get the exercise I know my body also needs.
I do eat three times a day, (and actual food, not Huel/Soylent yet…). Nothing fancy, but enough variety to be somewhat enjoyable and to feed my brain, which is what matters. The only other thing I need for the trifecta is more exercise. I am working on that, but that habit is hard to build, especially during winter.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
As I said before, the creative industries are massively important, and that isn’t changing anytime soon. They inspire us. I would love to see more people and companies supporting grassroot organisations in the arts. In comparison to the profits of large companies and influential people, they need so little money to survive. However, they are of such monumental importance to the success of the industries, and governments, in their infinite wisdom, are constantly focused on cutting funding to the organisations that need support the most.
We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Kevin Feige! I’m a big marvel cinematic universe fan, and I’ve always been amazed by Kevin’s extraordinary producing skills. He has this big picture idea that is constantly evolving. (I know not all big concepts in the MCU were his idea, but he’s guided it.) He manages to give the exceptionally talented people who come in for each project the space to bring their own creativity to the project, while still keeping them bound by the rules/plans of the bigger universe. It’s a pretty incredible balancing act.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gmisserlis/ — I try my best to share honest recounts of my experiences as I have them, to maybe help others earlier on their paths.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!
About the Interviewer: Douglas E. Noll, JD, MA was born nearly blind, crippled with club feet, partially deaf, and left-handed. He overcame all of these obstacles to become a successful civil trial lawyer. In 2000, he abandoned his law practice to become a peacemaker. His calling is to serve humanity, and he executes his calling at many levels. He is an award-winning author, teacher, and trainer. He is a highly experienced mediator. Doug’s work carries him from international work to helping people resolve deep interpersonal and ideological conflicts. Doug teaches his innovative de-escalation skill that calms any angry person in 90 seconds or less. With Laurel Kaufer, Doug founded Prison of Peace in 2009. The Prison of Peace project trains life and long terms incarcerated people to be powerful peacemakers and mediators. He has been deeply moved by inmates who have learned and applied deep, empathic listening skills, leadership skills, and problem-solving skills to reduce violence in their prison communities. Their dedication to learning, improving, and serving their communities motivates him to expand the principles of Prison of Peace so that every human wanting to learn the skills of peace may do so. Doug’s awards include California Lawyer Magazine Lawyer of the Year, Best Lawyers in America Lawyer of the Year, Purpose Prize Fellow, International Academy of Mediators Syd Leezak Award of Excellence, National Academy of Distinguished Neutrals Neutral of the Year. His four books have won a number of awards and commendations. Doug’s podcast, Listen With Leaders, is now accepting guests. Click on this link to learn more and apply.
