Moonpig Founder: How I Built A $150 Million Business WITHOUT Sacrifice: Nick Jenkins

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

FlightStory

Society & Culture, Business, Education

4.6 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2021

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Nick Jenkins is the founder and former CEO of Moonpig.com, a company which revolutionised gift cards and is now worth over one and a half billion pounds. Nick knows what it takes to build a business from nothing to change an industry, and today he’s sharing his wisdom with us on what he’s learnt along the way. You’ll also know Nick from Dragons Den, on which he was a dragon for two years. Since leaving the den he’s become a leading investor in e-commerce and green energy, tutoring and giving a leg up to businesses which help to bring the future a little bit closer every day. Nick is an incredible guy and an astute and proven businessman, but more importantly he’s a grounded and inspirational individual. Nick doesn’t lead a flashy lifestyle or found businesses just to get rich, but instead sees his businesses as attractive solutions to real problems we all face. Before Moonpig, Nick used to tipex out greetings on cards and write his own because no one was offering a personalised service. He doesn’t have to do that anymore, he has a billion pound company to do it for him. Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So you do something with greeting cards? Is that something you do from your spare room?
0:03.5	Nick Jenkins, former CEO and founder of Moon Pig, a company now worth 1.6 billion dollars.
0:11.5	My first proper business was Moon Big, which although it's been a success, of course it went through various ups and I was like all overnight successes it took 11 years. I got to confess I probably slightly stumbled on it. I look at it now and think, wow, that accidentally was a really good business model.
0:26.0	Unfortunately, we too often we measure the things that are easiest to measure. And the easiest thing to measure is how wealthy someone is.
0:32.8	I'm reluctant to create this illusion that if you work incredibly hard, you can make a lot of money and that will make you successful.
0:38.8	You have to be a successful human being.
0:40.8	The most exciting times they ever had in my business were when my back was
0:44.1	absolutely against the one thing, this is going down. Bizarrely I found that quite
0:48.2	invigorating. By my shell's all said, look Nick, this is never going to work.
0:52.4	It's never going to make money.
0:53.2	By the time I'd got to the end of it, I was pretty much down to zero.
0:56.7	Nick Jenkins, former CEO and founder of Moon Pig, a company now worth 1.6 billion dollars.
1:12.3	Nick's achievements are miraculous. He's incredibly
1:15.7	inspiring and he created a business that's touched many of our lives. But the thing
1:20.5	that I found even more intriguing about Nick
1:22.8	was he bucks most of the typical entrepreneurship
1:26.3	and success narratives.
1:28.1	I think we're all sold the belief and the story
1:31.3	that in order to be successful in business or any discipline in life you have to undergo tremendous sacrifice.
1:37.0	You have to work yourself into the ground.
1:40.0	Nick and his story and his philosophy disprove all of that.
1:44.7	He's got another way of doing it.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from FlightStory, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of FlightStory and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.