Lots of people now recognise the company, the Octopus Group, but most of them associate it with Octopus

Energy, the start-up energy company which now serves over 5 million customers. However,

the origin story of the Octopus Group goes back to the turn of the millennium,

and it was started by two investment managers, Chris and Simon, who both struck out on their own

in their early 20s. Start-up life can seem glamorous, but it can be quite stressful.

It was really hard. We had a little bit of savings to fall back on, not very much.

I think all of us had to get our girlfriends to help pair our rent through that first

difficult year. We had no income at all for 10 or 11 months, and there just was some

mean for stretcher back then. In today's repost episode, I guess is Chris Hula, co-founder of the Octopus

Group. Two decades ago, Chris made the decision to leave a stable job and establish his own

fund management company alongside Simon. It was definitely difficult and it certainly made us

realise that starting a business is not an easy thing to do in the end. You need immense determination,

you need real passion for it, and you really got to believe in yourself because you're

fundamentally trying to persuade people. Today they have almost 13 billion under management,

on behalf of over 63,000 investors, and have over 750 employees, and the Octopus Energy

was actually a corporate spin-up. Alongside those lofty ambitions, they were also the first company

to ever partner with Jimmy's jobs in the future. Back when that biggest outlay was a 50-pound

Amazon mic, and a few cushions around my laptop for soundproofing.

Welcome to today's show, Chris. We start by asking everyone what was the work experience

that you undertook, and also what was your first paid job?

Hi, Jimmy. Well, great to be here. Let me take you back 30 years, so it was just after my

GCSEs and the bit of work experience I did that summer was spending six weeks at one of the

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