It’s all about looking for and at the GAP in the market. Jacob and his cofounder, Anthony, built a travel tech start-up that connects travelers looking to store luggage with shops and hotels providing storage space. Jacob and Anthony, friends from their time studying economics at Oxford together, cofounded the business in 2015. None of this was easy. It is somewhat like the Airbnb model, except for bags. The market was there, and they went about gathering “hosts” – hotels, retail shops, etc. — to join their platform and then started marketing it to travelers. In fact, they are now a partner with Airbnb.

It takes a GGT to figure out how to raise money. Believe it or not, “cold-call emails” work. They sent a cold email to the CEO of Big Yellow Storage, James Gibson – he loved the vision and joined as their first investor. They turned their prototype into a fully functioning business. The venture capital world took notice and added Howzat Partners and others as investors. Stasher now has a presence in 250 cities. Jacob is yet another GGT that shares the truth and is super transparent. This is one of those chats where you learn a ton about how a business was formed. Sure, there are some potholes that twist an ankle, but you recover. People, culture, hosts (suppliers), community, investors all matter. Above all, trust and transparency become the currency.

“I kind of thought, oh cool, we’ll build this thing, you know; in a few years we’ll sell it and fly off to an Island or whatever. [The reality is], obviously, it’s a long process, and at the same time is very much true of investment. Rule number one is keeping your cash flow healthy.”

There are a lot of bigger companies that could learn from the cultural foundation that Jacob and Anthony have cultivated. To quote Jacob, “People are quite happy and motivated, and I think a lot of that comes from the sort of autonomy that we strive to create, which is just that your thing is your thing. You have full responsibility for it, and we’re not going to tell you how to run it, but we’re going to sort of work together.”

Click through and listen to a savvy leader that has built a company that has staying power.