Four and a half years ago, Jack Zambakides came on the pod running LS Personal Shopper: designer clothes for footballers and about £1 million of PlayStations a month in lockdown. He said he'd never take investment and that he'd sell within two years.Almost none of it went the way he predicted. Robberies helped end that business. He walked away, went all in on D.Louise, the jewellery brand he built with his wife, and moved to Dubai.This is two founders comparing what they believed then with what actually happened: focus, hiring, investors, founder mode, retail vs DTC, AI, and the biggest lesson from scaling that nobody tells you.Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/ltBAVubWL7IJack's first episode (March 2022): https://youtu.be/zS7hUIJP65Q✅ All my links are here - https://www.midnight.co00:00 Four and a half years later02:39 Leaving LS Personal Shopper05:21 Building D.Louise17:29 The bootstrapped grind21:54 Blagging into Gymshark's world29:30 Founder mode and hiring40:34 What's driving growth43:58 Retail, ads and trends52:25 Trust and the customer57:45 UK vs US59:34 Money, ambition and being CEO1:06:29 Could you do it again, bigger?1:14:56 Dubai and the modern team1:21:16 Pay yourself more1:23:39 Quickfire1:27:46 Advice to his 18-year-old self
