Founded & Grounded

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Mezze: A Client Worried He Looked Too "Free-Spirited." His Software Now Handles £10M of Orders a Month.

S6 E13 • Aug 24, 2026 • 86 mins

The introvert who was told he looked too free-spirited, and whose software now runs ordering for the UK's biggest food brands. Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/founded. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. "This poor lady had to say to me, 'There are concerns that you look a bit free-spirited.' They were worried I was suddenly gonna disappear and become a yoga teacher in Goa or something." Simon Bos has spent more than 25 years building other people's startups at Gravitywell, his Bristol venture studio, watching entrepreneurs' hearts break over cheap builds that couldn't be rescued, and learning exactly what separates the products that work from the ones that die. Then he found his own gap: one of the UK's largest food-to-go manufacturers taking thousands of daily sandwich orders through a call centre. "Three BLTs, two chicken and bacon... no, three chicken and bacon." On the phone. Every day

Key Points

Cheap builds break hearts. Simon has had to tell founders "there's no way of fixing this, it's gone." Under-investing in your foundation doesn't save money; a bad build is often unrescuable, and rebuilding costs more than doing it properly once.
Introversion is a design constraint, not a defect. Simon went months without networking and felt guilty. The fix wasn't forcing himself into rooms; it was one-to-many: content, talks, a strong product. Build the version of visibility that suits your wiring.
Perspective is a tool you have to schedule. From regular stakeholder mapping to three months in Laos, Simon's pattern is to step back deliberately. When the day-to-day consumes you, you can't see the business; distance is what shows you where you actually sit in the ecosystem.

Speakers

Simon Bos

Guest • 49%

Becky Sage

Host • 29%

Ollie Collard

Host • 22%

Chapters

0:00	Episode and guest introduction; Simon Bos’s early tech journey
4:13	Turning ideas into businesses and handling diverse clients
7:53	Customer discovery and market feedback
9:32	Evolving approach to tech, prototyping, and MVP challenges
11:50	Founding Meze and solving supply chain problems
16:00	Transitioning to custom platforms and maintaining curiosity
20:13	Red flags for founders and importance of open-mindedness
23:35	Overcoming introversion and building relationships
25:35	Team dynamics, company culture, and fundraising challenges
26:50	Sponsor: Ethos
27:38	Business acumen, vulnerability, and stakeholder mapping
33:26	Impact of introversion on business
40:25	Favorite failure and key lessons
43:07	Balancing energy and time between two businesses
46:42	Industries ready for innovation and sacrifices made
49:06	Securing funding: advice and support networks
52:41	Changing environments and business perception
57:09	Benefits of being in charge and external support for introverts
1:03:21	Using failure as material for future success
1:07:00	Embracing flexibility over perfect time management
1:10:02	Future plans for Meze and GravityWell
1:11:27	Food manufacturing: challenges and opportunities
1:12:29	Cyclic nature of startup investment
1:12:44	Advice for early-stage founders
1:13:30	Listener question: introversion in entrepreneurship
1:14:18	Where to find more about GravityWell and Meze
1:14:42	ADHD Love project story
1:17:20	Open-mindedness in entrepreneurship
1:20:01	Balancing external advice with intuition
1:23:47	Personalized systems and routines for founder success
1:24:20	Responses to listener question on introversion
1:25:01	Te

Transcript

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