Meet Mat Hunter and Paul Rostas, co-founders of Plus X
We are Mat Hunter and Paul Rostas, co-founders and co-CEOs of Plus X.
(Mat) Design and innovation have been central to my entire career. I studied interaction design at the Royal College of Art in the early nineties and went on to begin my career in Silicon Valley working with innovation firm IDEO, designing pioneering consumer digital and physical products and services. I then went on to become the Chief Design Officer at the Design Council, leading on large scale innovation programmes and working with Central Government and foundations to tackle pressing policy issues in health, employment, and crime. Most recently, I have been working as the Managing Director at the Central Research Laboratory in Hayes, where I met Paul and the idea to launch Plus X came to be.
(Paul) I’ve worked for some of the biggest businesses and investment banks in the world throughout my career. I began my career in brand management at Unilever and Johnson & Johnson, before moving into Investment Banking in the mid-90s. One of my biggest passions throughout my career has been the start-ups and innovation sector, so in 2013 I embarked on my own entrepreneurial journey, initially as an angel investor and start up advisor and then co-founding a tech company. This journey has now culminated in the launch of Plus X.
What inspired you to launch your business and what is the end goal?
A few years ago, we were both asked by developer U+I to help lead the Central Research Laboratory (CRL) in Hayes. CRL is a co-working space and accelerator programme that offers a home for manufactured-product based start-ups. Its purpose is to accelerate the regeneration of this once-influential and now left-behind area of west London by attracting and supporting high growth, high productivity businesses.
Exciting and interesting as the project was, we realised that it was not a scalable business at the time. But what we identified was that offering a specialist space for people to come together to collaborate and grow their business was very relevant to people’s needs in many countries, especially in the UK.
We worked closely together during our time at CRL and by seeing situations and opportunities through our different lenses we were able to come to collective conclusions about the business. We agreed that with some strategic changes, CRL could evolve into a scalable and sustainable business. The process was a great example of the power of partnerships.
Ultimately, the end goal for Plus X is the same as many of the start-up businesses that we support: to grow to scale. We want to develop a national network of innovation hubs and maybe eventually work on an international scale. By harnessing the power of innovation, we want to crack the conundrum of business productivity, helping businesses to innovate and grow and thereby helping localities to thrive.
Economists will tell you that mega cities have an ‘agglomeration effect’, that these metropolises are the places you need to be if you want to get ahead because they attract the most knowledge and talent. We see this in London, Berlin, Paris, Silicon Valley and now the question is how can this happen in Manchester, Birmingham and other regional locations? How can we drive innovation in towns and cities that are not mega locations? Talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. It is by supporting talent where we find it, that we spread the economic wealth more evenly across the UK.
What’s the most common problem your customers approach you with?
This is a complex question to answer as we have multiple customers. The first set are new start-ups who come to us with the question: ‘I’ve got this idea for a business, but I don’t know how to move forward’.
Second are the scaling businesses with some market success who are now managing growth. They ask ‘how can I find the infrastructure, from offices to IT, that is reliable and flexible? How can I recruit successfully and grow a strong organisational culture? How can I not run out of cash?’
Thirdly, we have more established businesses, medium sized or large. Their problem is often ‘how do I innovate, how do I become more digital? I’ve worked with consultants but don’t think I’m changing the company culture. Can you help me to make my whole team be more agile and innovative?’
Lastly, we work with city leaders. They will come to us and ask ‘how do I make my local economy thrive? I want to retain talent and I want to attract inward investment.’
The key to our solution is in realising that these diverse customers have some similarity in their needs and, perhaps more importantly, can help each other.
With all the success stories around entrepreneurship and how innovative people have to be to take the leap. How do you think you’ve innovated your sector and why?
Innovation often happens outside of ‘sectors’ and has major knock-on impacts, so we’ve tried to understand all the component parts of the business in order to innovate. Understanding real estate, understanding the use of office space, understanding startup incubation and acceleration as well as all the customers and stakeholders we are trying to satisfy – that is what it takes to innovate. We have tried to learn from best practice in each of these areas to build something world class.
Importantly, Plus X is multi-sector. We exist in the flexible office sector as well as the business support sector and we aim to integrate these. Innovators NEED support from all these sectors. We need it to be easier. We’re bringing it together because our customers are stressed and stretched. The easier we can make it the more success these young businesses can have. But it all starts with one fundamental question: ‘what do you need to grow your business?’.
How do you set yourself apart from other businesses in your industry?
The last thing we want to do is take a cookie-cutter approach and replicate identical innovation hubs, so we always invest a lot of time on the ground understanding local needs, building strong collaborations, and forging community networks to make sure our offer is based on real needs. A good example of this is that we offer 24-hour access to workshops 365 days a year. This is what innovators need and asked for, so this is what we provide.
When you really want to set yourself apart you must acknowledge that you are part of a system and actively connect with it. We’ve spent years connecting with universities and innovation support networks and it really pays off.
Our approach is also one of creative collaboration. By this we mean that we strive to bring together companies of different sizes under one roof who have actively chosen to be in the space as they see a benefit from that. We aim to have multi-disciplinary skills under one roof, which is really valuable when creating products because you can combine expertise in hardware development, commercial business, and engineering.
Importantly, Plus X differentiates itself by the nature of our support. This is seen in our new BRITE programme, a £10.5m innovation programme that offers applicants a three-year intensive programme of support and specialist facilities. We would love to attract more companies to the areas we operate in, so please get in touch!
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?
How much we underestimated the cost of legal fees… The cost of getting things right from a legal viewpoint is high!
Seriously though, surrounding yourself with the right people is probably the biggest lesson we’ve learnt. It might be a cliché but it’s so true. Surrounding yourself with people of different backgrounds, ages and ambitions is really important. It’s about building a team that is dedicated to the cause. We have learnt that the hard way through previous mistakes when we didn’t have the right mix, and so now we always try to be self-aware. If we don’t know something we need to, we recruit people who do.
Personally, we have learnt about the weight of responsibility that entrepreneurs feel. There is an incredible sense of pressure when building a business. The fact we are co-CEOs and look out for each other is a good way to share that responsibility.
What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?
Seek support. Starting a business is incredibly hard. It takes a whole network to raise a start-up. See seeking support as a strength not a weakness. Starting a business is a really rewarding thing to do but you can’t do it alone. Ask yourself, who is your core team and who are your trusted advisors? No matter how hard it is, you have to lean on somebody to help get you through.
Secondly, identify what you need to grow and find the right environment. Of the varied businesses, large and small that we welcome at Plus X, many are developing ideas that may become the ‘must have’ product of the future or may change industries or manufacturing forever. For these innovators, working out of a kitchen or bedroom is simply impossible.
What plans do you have for Plus X over the next two years?
Having just launched our first innovation hub last month, we want to embed Plus X Brighton as a leader in the national innovation support system and welcome more building members to join our community.
We also want to continue to build on the years of work with the amazing designers and businesses that call CRL home by launching Plus X Powerhouse next year, a converted Victorian power station that used to generate electricity for EMI Records’ factories.
Finally, we want to focus on growing our national network of innovation hubs, finding new sites and partners to collaborate with across the UK.
What’s the most important question entrepreneurs should be asking themselves?
Are you really solving a problem that needs to be solved? Too often we fall in love with the solutions that we create, when instead we should remain in love with the problem that we are solving and treat our solutions with a bit more circumspection.
And right now we have to ask ‘Have needs changed?’ The consequences of Covid-19 requires everyone to reflect on their products and business model.
Are you ready for a roller-coaster? You must be ready to commit a huge amount of hard work to making it a success and ride through the downs as well as the ups.
How do you believe the evolution of tech will affect your industry over the next 10 years?
The Zoom world we now live in will allow regional towns and cities ever better to connect and thrive. We’ve seen now that you can build a world class business wherever you are. But the nature of innovation will evolve because people’s needs are changing.
A lot of activity is happening in bio-technology, as well as towards zero carbon solutions. We are just seeing this start. Through the CRL we’ve supported bio-sensing packaging that reduces food waste, low carbon bioplastic from potato waste and now one of our Plus X residents, Lucy Hughes is developing a new alternative to single use plastic using fish waster and algae with her company MarinaTex. The question is how will those practices grow to become more widespread?
In the past 20 years we’ve seen digital and communications technology being ever more democratised which has led to huge digital innovations. But in the next 10 years, especially with an increased focus on individual and planetary wellbeing, we need to see different bio-technology, that allows more people to manipulate and grow new materials based on a shifting landscape.
Does your company help the community that you’re located in?
So glad you asked the question… Yes! It’s the heart of our mission and what we’re trying to do – we are a purpose driven business. We aim to create a positive local impact and actively go to places that have been left behind in a lot of ways, such as Hayes, which is now improving month on month.
We want to be a magnet of economic activity and reach out to communities to become part of our spaces. If we are successful, we are creating exciting, meaningful and well paid jobs in these locations. Also, work placements and apprenticeships will allow people who might feel at a disadvantage, because they don’t have the tools or the support, to have the confidence to engage with this kind of world, a world that often seems intimidating from the outside.
