Chris Hulatt was a graduate fund manager trainee at Mercury Asset Management (now Merrill) when he met Simon Rogerson and Guy Miles. At the turn of the millennium, the trio founded the Octopus Group, the parent company of six financial and energy companies.
Looking back, it’s hard to believe that three twentysomethings created a hugely successful business on a whim. But that’s exactly what happened – with some help from what is now called the “Terminator gene.”
“Everyone thought we were crazy,” Hulatt recalls of the moment he and his co-founders left graduate school to launch Octopus Investments (the first of six divisions of the Octopus Group, which includes British energy giant Octopus Energy).
They didn’t have a grand business plan or attracted investors.
“We thought: why don’t we try starting our own fund management business? You know, this is one of those reckless things that people sometimes decide to do.
At 23, Yulat had only worked for two and a half years. But just a brief introduction to the corporate world was enough to convince him to pour everything he had (both physically and every penny of his $25,000 savings) into the success of Octopus Investments.
“We didn’t want to get a traditional job again.”
Hulat never had to return to a 9-5 job for another employer. He remains co-manager of the Octopus Group, which now employs more than 2,500 people and serves 2.5 million customers.
Today, Octopus Investments, where it all began, manages more than $16.7 billion on behalf of its clients, according to the company.
More than 70% of these funds are dedicated to investments aimed at combating climate change, improving people’s quality of life and fighting inequality.
Pick up the phone and start dialing
With no paycheck to fall back on, Octopus’ Hulattu and his co-founders had to quickly find investors for the business or face returning to their old jobs with their tails between their legs.
They set up camp in the living room of Hulatta’s London flat with a trusty copy of the Yellow Pages, one landline between them and “one ancient laptop about an inch thick”.
“We spent most of 2000 calling thousands of people, trying to convince them to invest in a startup fund management company they had never heard of, run by three very young people who didn’t have much experience in the financial industry,” says Hulatt. “It was very difficult.”
“One man picked up the phone and said, ‘Listen, this is the noise of my shredder destroying your business plan – don’t ever call me again.’
“It would have been too easy, after we spent a month or two trying to convince people to invest in us, to just give up and assume we weren’t going to go anywhere,” he adds, “but they didn’t.”
As The Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort might say, they picked up the phone and kept dialing.
“It took a really long time (the best part was just 2000), but we really wanted to try and get the business going.”
By the end of the year, after many rejections, the young founders had convinced 85 people to invest about $2 million in Octopus Investments.
It’s a lesson in the power of small victories: it wasn’t a first-of-its-kind idea, an impressive presentation that caught the attention of a major venture capital firm, or even a stroke of luck that got Octopus Investment off the ground and up and running. the success that we have today.
“We just kept going like that. It’s this stubborn refusal to give up—we call it the “Terminator gene”—that’s so important to us,” Hulatt advises aspiring entrepreneurs.
“You just have to be absolutely persistent, have complete faith in yourself and never give up.”