Solly Solomou, Founder & CEO @ LADbible Group: From Penniless Shop Offices to Public Company | E1259

Summary

• The LADbible arc is a compounding lesson in bootstrapped media: Solly Solomou bought the original Facebook page from Alex Partridge in 2012 for “low thousands” — transferred from his mother’s bank account, burning 60-70% of his savings — and built it into a public company with 500 people, over 500 million followers and “over 3,000 views every second”, profitable from day one because “all I knew was I had to make more money than I spent.”
• His biggest failure, stated flatly: not starting in the US — he cites a “$400 million” US market versus a “£70 billion” UK market, and separately compares 300m versus 70m populations. His honest first answer on whether he’d have won there: “I can win Europe. I don’t know if I can win the US” — before reversing to “I believe that we could,” crediting New York’s “straight to the hustle” culture versus a UK that’s “very conservative.”
• His platform book: buy TikTok and Meta, short nothing — he talked himself out of shorting X because “it’d be hard not to back” Elon on AI. The structural call is TikTok Shop: social commerce is expected to be a one trillion market within five years or less, sold to consumers via creators and affiliates — “they want to be the next Amazon,” with a friend at Snap saying “those guys are two steps ahead.”
• Legacy media’s collapse is treated as finished fact: traditional TV/newspapers/magazines have gone “from 70-80% of the market down to 20%,” connected TV (YouTube, Netflix, Prime) is the future, and magazines end up serving “the Boomers… the waiting rooms.”
• On AI he’s an optimist against Harry’s concern that infinite content supply might reduce prices and make discovery more challenging: Sam Altman’s video-generation demo was “mind-blowing,” he imagines movies “25-30% AI generated or assisted,” and an AI Hindi dub of LADbible’s cricket show did 200,000+ views in a day. Meta’s ~$30bn AI investment is discussed alongside its metaverse bet; Harry calls the pivot “quite a smart idea actually.”
• The durable business model is consultancy on youth culture alongside core-channel advertising: Nike, Vodafone, Unilever, P&G and Uber pay for authentic access to Millennials and Gen Z. Against the creator-economy threat, his counter is that 11% of the US population call themselves content creators and many fail — LADbible partners with the MrBeasts and gives content creators careers.
• The culture disagreement is worth the listen: Harry’s tweet — “we all just chat s about culture…* I’ve never met a really successful company with a s* culture” (Revolut as exhibit) — against Solly’s mountain framing (Disney, Nike, Red Bull, Apple at the pinnacle) and his admitted repeated mistake of hiring fast on skill while ignoring cultural fit.
• The London IPO raised “around 120 million” nearly three years ago — bell rung on his sofa over Zoom mid-pandemic — to fund the US push and the Betches acquisition; with over 100m US audience members already, “a dual listing might be the way to go” as the US business grows, and he backs LSE CEO Julia Hoggett’s plans to revitalize UK investment, including money in ISAs and low-return pension funds.

Deep dive

1. Profitable from day one — and a “low thousands” acquisition that became the company

• Solomou was the kid selling sweets and clothes at school — “I didn’t even know what the word entrepreneur was” — and at Leeds his enterprise professor (likely Nigel Lockett) offered a year-in-industry to start his own business: “would you be my guinea pig?” The result was an online student community rating bars, clubs and cafés, run from an office above a printer shop, ~£1,000 a year in rent.
• The whole finance model: “All I knew was I had to make more money than I spent… I didn’t really understand the concept of taking on investment. So from day one we were profitable.” Outlay was £3-4,000 of savings plus university funding; marketing was printed takeaway bags and flyers from the shop downstairs.
• In 2012 — Facebook still pre-IPO, no real mobile app — email, TV and magazine marketing were all too expensive, but a page called The Lad Bible had half a million followers. He bought it from Alex Partridge for “low thousands,” transferred via his mother’s bank account, then lay on his bed thinking “what the hell have I just done” — 60-70% of everything he’d saved, gone.

2. Do-or-die pressure, and a business that could vanish overnight

• Harry’s probe — would he have taken the risk without the university’s guard rails? — draws a stronger claim cutting the other way: “entrepreneurs are creatives at heart… if you have no constraint, that creative process is ruined.” Solomou believes founders operate better do-or-die than downside-protected.
• The proof came a year in: the Facebook page — effectively the business — disappeared one morning with no email, no explanation. He LinkedIn-messaged his way to Facebook’s CTO, and account verification ran through his dad’s linked profile: multiple-choice photo ID of school friends from 40 years ago. “The future of the business hinged on this moment.”
• Early operations were equally improvised: he harvested accidentally bulk-sent business-school emails to staff five work-experience students at a time on rotation above the printer shop, plus student developers to survive the traffic spikes.

3. Consultancy on young adults, alongside core-channel ads

• First revenue was growing other companies’ Facebook pages for fees — the era of “is a Facebook like worth a pound? Is it worth 50p?” — on annual deals. Harry’s pushback: isn’t that sacrificing the core channel? Solomou’s answer: consultancy never left the model — Nike, Vodafone, Unilever, P&G today, Uber sponsoring the Snack Wars format — the business offers authentic access to Millennials and Gen Z.
• Unilever and Activision, the first blue chips, wanted to put TV commercials on the accounts; LADbible pushed back (“that will feel really odd”), got a broad brief and the keys — “make this pop” — and blew the campaign up across Twitter and Facebook.
• The moment he knew: ~25 staff, a Manchester hotel room, Ice Cube governing a rap battle between Kevin Hart and a pre-fame Stormzy, ~10m views. (Also now on record: if this episode hits 10m views, Harry promises to buy Solly the new Jaguar — “I’d have it in matt black.”)

4. Hire social natives before the world calls it a career

• The early creatives were found by DM — “we were all in groups together” on Twitter — while working call centers and nightclubs. His timeline for why: Facebook launched 2004, YouTube 2005, Facebook only listed 2012, Snapchat 2014, TikTok 2016 — nobody was yet making a living from this. LADbible gave them careers; many are still there.
• Harry’s challenge: anyone great at content can now go direct — why work for you? The counter: “11% of the US population classify themselves as content creators” and for many it isn’t a career — many fail. LADbible sits in between, partnering with the Sidemen and MrBeast while giving content creators careers.
• The structural edge is fusing creative and data — the tech team was roughly the fifth hire, and the company encouraged people to embrace creativity and data as one, not pit them against each other. “A good thumbnail can be the difference between a million views and a thousand views.”

5. Verticals, Betches, and what brand love looks like at 500m followers

• SPORTbible and GAMINGbible worked because they rode “a massive wave” — audiences shifting from magazines, newspapers and traditional dotcoms to feeds — but took time and investment: people living the passion point, empowered with data tools. Harry’s aside stands: the biggest content mistake is quitting two months in.
• Betches diligence was qualitative: US Millennial and Gen Z women didn’t say “I’ve heard of it,” they said “I love Betches” — and its comedy events sell out in ten minutes. Solomou says plainly he’s learning from its three founder-celebrities and their podcast business.
• Today’s scale: 500 people across UK, Ireland and the US; over 500 million followers; “over 3,000 views every second”; over half of UK adults and two-thirds of 18-34s monthly. The mission framing: “we make tens of millions of people smile and laugh every day.”
• On failures Solomou claims amnesia — “I forget the failures, that’s it for me” — while Solly names his own biggest failure: “we waited eight years to do YouTube and that is criminal.”

6. “I can win Europe. I don’t know if I can win the US.”

• The biggest failure, named without prompting: not going to the US sooner. “If I was to rewrite the script I definitely would have started the business in the US” — he cites a “$400 million” US market versus a “£70 billion” UK market, and later compares a 300m-population country with 70m here. The move was corrected only a couple of years ago via an organic US office and IPO firepower.
• His honest first answer on whether LADbible would have won there — “I can win Europe. I don’t know if I can win the US” — before catching himself: “well, now I really regret it. I believe that we could.” The contrast he draws: the UK is “very conservative… a nice chat before we talk business”; New York is “straight to the hustle, and they celebrate success.”
• The operating surprise: America is “a lot of countries in one massive country” with views extreme in both directions, and “a niche is not a niche over there — it’s huge” — his brother’s old-school camera, never spotted in the UK, seen five times in a week in New York. Copy-pasting the UK playbook “is not going to fly.”

7. Culture fight: momentum vs the mountain

• Solomou’s admitted repeated mistake: hiring too fast on vision and technical skill with “no emphasis on culture” — the hire who under-indexes on fit “is going to create chaos.” The stress tests: a pandemic spree adding a couple hundred people when fit was unmeasurable, and the UNILAD acquisition — bolting together two 200-person businesses.
• Harry reads out his own tweet: “we all just chat s* about culture… I’ve never met a really successful company with a s* culture” — Revolut as exhibit: “not a fluffy culture but the company is humming, the IPO is in sight.”
• Solomou’s version is the mountain: LADbible is a quarter of the way up, and higher means less oxygen — Disney, Nike, Red Bull, Apple at the pinnacle. What he screens for is trust (“when you pass the ball… they’re going to deliver”) and appetite for a job that changes every year, as his has: private to public, UK to US, 100 to 500 people.
• Harry’s sharper claim — most values are worthless because no one can disagree with them; his own are “direct is never rude” and “longer hours leads to more success.” Solomou’s closest confession comes in the quickfire: decision paralysis is the real weight — “the moments I regret is not listening to that intuition” — and fatherhood changed his habit of “rolling the dice on every decision.”

8. AI: the optimist vs the infinite-supply problem

• On democratized content Solomou refuses a single answer: a quick-fire Tesco clip of Father Christmas collecting his meal deal “has absolutely flown” on zero production value, while LADbible also makes Google’s TV ads and broadcast-quality YouTube formats — “different requirements need different things.”
• He’s an optimist: Sam Altman’s UK video-generation demo was “mind-blowing,” he imagines movies “25-30% AI generated or assisted,” and an AI Hindi dub of their cricket show did 200,000+ views in a day. Meta’s ~$30bn AI investment is discussed alongside its metaverse bet; Harry calls the pivot “quite a smart idea.”
• Harry’s worry is that infinite content supply could reduce prices and make discovery more challenging. Solomou: “I’m an optimist, so I’m excited.” Harry: “you are not British.” His adjacent prediction: phones become “this clunky item… why did we hold that thing” as wearables mature over 10-20 years — today’s car-phone equivalent.
• On deepfakes both agree regulation must catch up — “it’s going to come down to the governments… the OpenAIs… the Metas” — but Harry criticizes trusting the government (“someone who thinks an economist is someone who works at Halifax”). Solomou stays diplomatic: “too early doors to say… we need to see the proof in the pudding.”

9. The London listing: a bell rung on the sofa, and a possible US dual listing

• The IPO, nearly three years ago, happened over Zoom on his sofa in pandemic madness, wife and two-year-old alongside. It raised “in total around 120 million”; the logic was firepower, paper and PLC status for the US (over 100m audience members already there) plus UK share — the Betches acquisition being the visible payoff.
• Why not list in the US? “A dual listing might be the way to go” as the US business grows — but only once the US business is bigger. London itself was “a big learning curve” in managing public stakeholders, and one he doesn’t regret.
• On UK capital markets he cites LSE CEO Julia Hoggett’s reform plans — mobilizing investment held in ISAs and low-return pension funds — and his advice to Starmer is to study why businesses leave for the US. Harry is more bearish: the Monzo/Revolut fintech era aside, “I do not think the developers or great founders want to build businesses in London.” Solomou’s rebuttal leans on Dyson — worth “20… 30… 40 billion — I don’t want to quote an incorrect figure, but it’s huge.”

10. Platform scorecard: buy TikTok and Meta, short nothing

• TV: a connected-TV believer — YouTube, Netflix, Amazon Prime — while traditional TV, newspapers and magazines have gone “from 70-80% of the market down to 20%.” Even live viewing is dual-screened now; magazines end up as “the Boomers… the waiting rooms.”
• TikTok Shop is his biggest structural call: social commerce is “expected to be a one trillion market” within five years or less, already massive in China, and sold to consumers via creators as well as directly — creators can monetize through affiliates — “they want to be the next Amazon,” with a friend at Snap saying “those guys are two steps ahead.” He expects TikTok Shop inside LADbible’s own ecosystem. Should TikTok be banned? Dodged elegantly: as a product, no — on the data question, “it’s way above my head, I don’t know.”
• Snap: “the number one platform for ephemeral photo messaging” for the young demographic — ephemerality, the maps, “brilliant innovators” — an interesting place over the next five to ten years, though “whether it can compete with the TikToks and the Metas… these players are huge” is left open.
• The book: “I would buy TikTok… Meta I would buy, on their big bets.” Short nothing — he talked himself out of shorting X (“it’d be hard not to back him” on Elon’s AI product, though the platform “needs to evolve”) — “I’d back the space… I’d probably short some of those traditional players, but you’ve not let me include those.”