Matt Kelly | The Midnight Pod

Matthew Kelly

The Midnight Pod is where Matt Kelly, founder of Spacegoods, sits down with real founders and operators building ambitious companies. No polished founder mythology and no surface-level business chat. We go deep into what actually drives companies: product, creative, acquisition, retention, brand, hiring, money, fundraising, mistakes, ambition and the reality behind the numbers. Expect authentic founder conversations, tactical operator episodes and occasional solo updates from inside the journey of building businesses. Watch the full video episodes on YouTube and find everything else at midnight.co. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. Oct 26

    How a 25-Year-Old Built a $50M Brand With Ugly Ads | Javi Zavala

    Javi Zavala is the creative director and co-founder of HiStrips. He runs seven creative agencies on commission, cuts the worst one every month, and makes ugly ads on purpose because they print. This is his full playbook for static ads. Watch the video version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrZ1q6yTqXc Javi Zavala: https://www.javizavala.com HiStrips: https://histrips.com JPEGS Mafia: https://jpegsmafia.com ✅ All my links are here - https://www.midnight.co 00:00 From crypto to SaaS to HiStrips 07:29 Tribe: the platform that scaled them 09:58 Is a winning ad art or science? 13:22 The ugly ads that print in every account 15:00 The 6am ChatGPT report 19:11 Seven agencies, all on commission 21:52 What they pay their agencies 24:10 Judging ads on spend, not just ROAS 28:20 Hiring editors with one tweet 33:08 Brand vs performance: ugly only in the ads 38:52 Starting from $10k and a laptop 41:06 The Twitter like-chain hack 45:50 Quickfire 51:15 Final wisdom: attention, not time Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  2. Oct 12

    He Sold a Million-Dollar Brand to Bet on a Nasal Strip | Sam Posthuma

    Sam Posthuma started at 16, selling electric lighters at school in Holland. A dozen brands later, he built Old Money into a fashion brand with half a million followers, sold it after two years, and went all in on HiStrips: the pink nasal strip that started as a party brand on a boat in Valencia. Now world-class athletes wear the strips, 4,000 creators make content for the brand, and the factory in China says it gets a request to copy them almost every week. This is a conversation about why the story now matters more than the product: building with three co-founders, how a small e-commerce exit really works, growing through creators, funding stock without investors, and how Sam would start a brand today on a small budget. Sam Posthuma: https://www.samposthuma.com HiStrips: https://histrips.com ✅ All my links are here - https://www.midnight.co 00:00 Why e-commerce is now all about the story 03:14 The factory that said "you're number 14" 06:29 Selling lighters at school at 16 09:51 Song Shirts and the copyright claim 12:37 Years of trial and error 15:49 Building Old Money 19:21 Why fashion is brutal 22:56 Why he sold 25:26 How a small exit actually works 31:59 The buyer, and keeping 20% 35:47 Joining HiStrips as co-founder number four 40:39 Four co-founders, four jobs 44:28 18 months of compounding 46:03 World-class athletes in pink strips 48:03 4,000 creators: the growth engine 50:03 Why he still runs the ad account 52:08 Funding growth without investors 56:09 Electrolytes and the email-list test 58:52 Can HiStrips sell more than strips? 1:00:22 Making the best product possible 1:04:08 Hiring from the DMs 1:08:46 Retail, global and getting 10x bigger 1:11:49 Why they won't sell 1:13:43 The hardest part 1:16:58 Money, freedom and how much is enough 1:19:31 How he'd start a brand today 1:24:37 Quickfire 1:26:56 Advice to his 18-year-old self Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  3. Oct 5

    Investigating The Billion-Dollar Peptide Industry

    Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  4. Sep 16

    He walked away from a £1m per month business to build D.Louise even bigger | Jack Zambakides

    Four and a half years ago, Jack Zambakides came on the pod running LS Personal Shopper: designer clothes for footballers and about £1 million of PlayStations a month in lockdown. He said he'd never take investment and that he'd sell within two years. Almost none of it went the way he predicted. Robberies helped end that business. He walked away, went all in on D.Louise, the jewellery brand he built with his wife, and moved to Dubai. This is two founders comparing what they believed then with what actually happened: focus, hiring, investors, founder mode, retail vs DTC, AI, and the biggest lesson from scaling that nobody tells you. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/ltBAVubWL7I Jack's first episode (March 2022): https://youtu.be/zS7hUIJP65Q ✅ All my links are here - https://www.midnight.co 00:00 Four and a half years later 02:39 Leaving LS Personal Shopper 05:21 Building D.Louise 17:29 The bootstrapped grind 21:54 Blagging into Gymshark's world 29:30 Founder mode and hiring 40:34 What's driving growth 43:58 Retail, ads and trends 52:25 Trust and the customer 57:45 UK vs US 59:34 Money, ambition and being CEO 1:06:29 Could you do it again, bigger? 1:14:56 Dubai and the modern team 1:21:16 Pay yourself more 1:23:39 Quickfire 1:27:46 Advice to his 18-year-old self Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  5. Aug 24

    You can sell your company for £ multi-millions and still get nothing - consumer brand deep dive...

    ✅ All my links are here - https://www.midnight.co Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  6. Jul 27

    Quitting millionaire investment banking career to start a £ 9-figure cat food brand | Marco Pacifici

    ✅ Join the group here - https://www.skool.com/midnight-lab Find everything else here - https://www.midnight.co/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  7. Jul 12

    The real dichotomy of founder freedom

    ✅ Join the group here - https://www.skool.com/midnight-lab Find everything else here - https://www.midnight.co/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  8. Jun 28

    Cernucci founder reveals everything about the journey from zero to £100m+ | Fred Buckley

    🔮 Thanks for watching - all my links are here: https://linktr.ee/matthucius Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

The Midnight Pod is where Matt Kelly, founder of Spacegoods, sits down with real founders and operators building ambitious companies. No polished founder mythology and no surface-level business chat. We go deep into what actually drives companies: product, creative, acquisition, retention, brand, hiring, money, fundraising, mistakes, ambition and the reality behind the numbers. Expect authentic founder conversations, tactical operator episodes and occasional solo updates from inside the journey of building businesses. Watch the full video episodes on YouTube and find everything else at midnight.co. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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