What does it take to move from the structured world of management consulting to the front lines of a fast-scaling startup, navigate a global pandemic with revenue going to zero overnight, and emerge with one of the UK’s most iconic event rosters as your client list? In this Igniting the Spark interview, Yousif Oghanna, Chief of Staff at Togather, talks about why the Chief of Staff role is as much about uncelebrated work as strategy, how COVID tested – and ultimately proved – the conviction behind Togather’s thesis, and what it really means to say yes to the uncomfortable opportunities.
Your What & Why?
Q1. Briefly, what does your business do, and what is the purpose?
Togather is the UK’s leading food and drink experience partner for live events. We’re essentially an operating system that works with clients to deliver better experiences to their event-goers. We are a two-sided marketplace as well as having software capabilities depending on the kind of user – but really the reason that we exist is to ensure that the food, drink and venue experience side of any event is as great as it can be.
We began life as a street food marketplace back in 2017 and have since become more of a 360 intelligence platform, working with a whole spectrum of different organisers and event users ranging from festivals, corporate parties, sporting venues and stadia. It’s a real who’s who of the UK’s most iconic event organisers, events and venues. Our client list runs from Live Nation, who do Wireless Festival, through to Amazon, BBC and JP Morgan. Across all of those, we try and do the same thing, which is make their events better for everyone.
Your Spark
Q2. What originally sparked the idea to join the business?
I joined the business about a year into its infancy. The spark, the idea, came from the co-founders Hugo and Digby. I had worked with them and knew them in a previous capacity. They essentially spent their lives in the festival, music and live events industry, and as organisers they understood the same problem kept arising that they weren’t responsible for solving – which was: how do I find incredible suppliers to curate lineups of food and drinks? They just realised that organisers didn’t really have a great place to go to find amazing operators and amazing independent businesses. That’s what originally spawned the idea for Togather.
My own spark was personal. I spent five years in management consulting prior, working with FTSE boards on large strategic projects, organisational design and benchmarking. It was interesting work, but I was always keen to get stuck in at ground level – we were one step removed from the actual doing, and I really wanted to get to do that. When I learned what Hugo and Digby were doing, I could see the impact of it. I knew a little bit more about numbers than they did, we were raising the first angel investment round, I helped them, and a role became available. I joined as a sort of generalist, wearing an FD and operations director hat. At the time we were a small handful of people, so everyone was wearing a number of hats. But as we’ve scaled, my role has evolved upward into Chief of Staff – sitting at that crossroads between finance, investor relations, strategy and working alongside the founders. It’s been a great journey over the last eight years.
Hardest Challenge?
Q3. What’s been the toughest challenge you’ve faced so far?
This is probably the same answer for anyone in the events industry, but without a doubt, COVID was the biggest challenge, and then rescaling. When we built the business, there was a specific thesis in mind and certain goals that we were building towards, and we’d seen really good traction and success off the back of those. But as an events business, overnight in that period our revenue effectively went to zero – festivals were cancelled, weddings cancelled and postponed, everything kind of evaporated. The question stopped being how do we grow, and became: how do we handhold the users and everyone on our marketplace as much as we can? What does this business look like on the other side?
That was a pretty tricky period. We were rolling with the punches as much as any other business had to, but we’ve got a really great team and really great investors. We were really transparent with them, and they held to the conviction that we had about the future being in live events and not a big transition to digital. Our investors backed us and we were able to come out really, really strongly and quickly on the other side of that.
But that also meant we had the second chapter of the challenge, which in some ways was harder – rescaling, refinding our thesis and why in a slightly changing events world, re-energising our supply base, reacquiring users. It was challenging to do that without overextending ourselves. What got us through again was a really strong team, strong investors, and it was a great learning curve for how to run a business.
Q4. What advice would you give to others in your role?
For my role specifically, I think you have to understand that your role is not to be the focal point or the hero. Your role is to interrogate and sometimes do the uncelebrated work. The best Chief of Staff figures I’ve worked with are the ones that make everyone else – founders in particular – look really good.
Similarly, in my role you’re both blessed and burdened with information. You need to turn that into a blessing. You have a view of the business that nobody else has, a wealth of information at your fingertips. My advice would be to think about how you can use that and circulate it around the business as effectively as you can. It’s not about telling people what to do necessarily, but ensuring that everyone’s got the right data to be making the right decisions in the business at any one time.
The Highlight
Q5. What achievement are you most proud of? Why?
Being part of a fast-scaling startup means you get to do a lot of firsts and learn a lot. I’m proud of a lot of those firsts – the types of fundraising rounds we did, the first corporate activity and M&A that transformed the business. Our investors have always been really supportive and we don’t take that for granted – we’ve got such a great cap table.
But the proudest thing is probably just the scale of the events that we’re working with at the moment. Those festivals I named earlier – we’ll be delivering the full food and drinks lineup for those, and my friends have heard of those. It’s really easy to draw that link and say, yeah, that’s a real pinch-me moment.
One Piece of Wisdom
Q6. What one piece of advice would you share with your younger self if you were doing it all again?
I would tell my younger self to take more risks and say yes more often. In my own journey, I was in a stable corporate job that had taught me loads and I was very happy. But the opportunities that feel the most uncomfortable – such as me subsequently moving to a teeny tiny startup and taking on a different role from the one I’d been trained in, which was consulting – are the ones that turn out to change your path and trajectory. Life’s a bit too short, really. You’ve got to take some risks and say yes.
Ignition Journey
Q7. What led you to work with Ignition Law?
It was through my network, really. I’m in a lot of startup CFO and operator networks, and Ignition is a name that comes really highly recommended by a lot of peers, founders and operators that I trust. When I had the first chat with Alex, I felt straight away that he understood what we were trying to do and understood the challenges that a business like ours actually faces, but also how we want to work, which is in a more flexible way. I really see that from everyone at Ignition, and that’s what led us to work with them.
Legal Support
Q8. How did Ignition support you through this, and what difference did they make?
We’ve worked with Ignition on a range of matters now, which I think is a sign of a good relationship. At the heavier end, Ignition supported us with our first acquisition. It’s not something we’d done before – we needed a lot of hand-holding on the mechanics around it, and there were a lot of complications and complexities that we weren’t previously familiar with. That was really, really great.
On wider matters it’s turned into more of a regular cadence – things like a recent funding round and investor approvals, day-to-day commercial agreements, that kind of thing. When you’re a growth business, you have to run multiple things at the same time, and having a legal partner that can keep up with that rhythm is really helpful.
The Experience
Q9. What do you value most about working with Team Ignition?
Ignition really understands what we’re trying to do as a business. I know that sounds quite simple, but it can be quite rare. Ignition thinks commercially, not just legally, and so we’ve been able to take a commercial view on various decisions about how to do things. They often understand the tensions that we’re seeking to work through quite quickly and easily. That’s something I think is really valuable.
Keeping Motivated Beyond Work
Q10. What keeps your spark alive, inside or outside of work?
Inside work, it’s the team and the journey that we’re all on. We’ve got a really talented group and I learn so much every single day from everyone around me – it’s really energising. The intensity of what we do is also quite energising. One of the great things about being part of a scale-up is that you do such a diversity of things. I’ve been to lots of weird and wacky events that I never thought I would, but then there’s also a really steady diet of great outdoor live experiences that we go to as a team over Christmas and over the summer period. Every day, that really keeps the spark alive.
Outside of Togather, it’s the classics. I love music – I love live music, I love playing music and drumming. I like taking my bike out at weekends and going exploring, seeing friends and family. I also like giving back to causes, and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with the 93% Club, who are focused on levelling the playing field and opening opportunities to state school-educated students and supporting them into their work lives. That’s something I find very stimulating.
Sharing Knowledge
Q11. What book, video, Ted Talk, quote or single piece of advice can you share with our SME Community?
One book that somebody suggested to me and that really resonated is Hire With Your Head by Lou Adler. It’s always my go-to when I’m sharing advice. It’s a really good practical guide to hiring – and when you’re in a fast-paced startup, you move with a lot of speed, which means nobody necessarily teaches you how to do these things. It’s a really, really hard skill, it’s really difficult to get right, but if you do, it’s the most impactful thing you can do to achieve your goals as a business.
The core idea is that you should define the role by what somebody needs to deliver in their first year, interview really intensely against evidence of having done that, and try to cut through the bias – it takes an evidence-based approach. Given how transformative teams are, it’s a really good read for everyone. I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone.
