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Charlie Melcher:

Hi, I'm Charlie Melcher, Founder and Director of the Future of StoryTelling, and I'd like to welcome you back to the FoST podcast. If you're listening to this podcast, it's very likely that you work in media, technology, or in the arts. And if that's the case, then it's also highly likely that at some point in your career, you've shared files online using WeTransfer. Though we may not always think about it in this way, file sharing is just as crucial an element of the modern workplace as is email, and especially in this new world of working remotely, many companies just couldn't function without it.

My guest today is Damian Bradfield, cofounder and Chief Creative Officer of WeTransfer. Damian believes in and represents an alternative vision of the internet we've come to know today: one that treats people as people rather than exploitable resources, serves their needs, and earns their trust. Through his work and the recent publication of his book, The Trust Manifesto, Damien is attempting to make this alternative vision of the web a reality. Please join me in welcoming Damian Bradfield to the Future of StoryTelling podcast. Damian Bradfield, I am so excited and honored to have you on the Future of StoryTelling podcast. Welcome.

Damian Bradfield:

Thank you very much for having me, Charlie. It's a real pleasure to be here.

Charlie Melcher:

It's so great. So I have to start by saying that this podcast would not be possible if it were not for the incredible tool that you've created. WeTransfer, of which you are the Chief Creative Officer and cofounder, is literally the thing that enables us to make this beautiful podcast virtually, as the whole team is working in different cities in different locations. And we are able to so simply transfer these big files back and forth. Thank you for enabling this whole podcast to happen.

Damian Bradfield:

I wish I could say it was all down to me and it's my great pleasure, but it is a pleasure that you use it, at least. Now everyone's going to think that we're paying, we're sponsoring this episode or something, but that's not the case.

Charlie Melcher:

No, before you even knew it you were a creative collaborator, and we are very honored to have you here. Would you mind telling, for the few people who don't know, the quick backstory of WeTransfer?

Damian Bradfield:

So 2009, December, two people, a guy called Bas Beerens and another guy called Nalden were basically in the same space as I was. So we were all in marketing, media, design, that sort of thing. The tool really came out of a need. It was designed not for anybody's use other than actually, their own, our own. The reason that it had no sign-ups, that it looked beautiful, that there was very little data being collected, that it was really accessible and sort of fun, was because actually, it was built for us. Because it was well designed, because the navigation was really simple, and because it looked really really gorgeous, it took off. And for a long time, I mean, so between 2010 and 2015, really, we made a living from two areas. One being selling advertising space—so there was wallpapers, we called them, these big images that rotated in the background on the site, and we would sell some of that space. We would give a lot of it away to artists and friends and creators. And then another part of it was subscription. So half of the revenue came from subscriptions.

Charlie Melcher:

So in a way, I think I've heard you say that WeTransfer is a storytelling company, almost more than a tech company, but maybe it's more of a... facilitating creative process in general.

Damian Bradfield:

Yeah, we would love to be seen as that. The blessing and the curse that we have is that WeTransfer is known for being that file-sharing business. To be honest, the thing that really gets us excited and gets us up in the morning is that ability to help the creative process, to help that storytelling thing. We used to joke that we weren't, in the beginning, much of a tech business. We were much more in the design business. Our job was basically to simply create really easy tracks, and everyone else's trains would run on our tracks. But it was our job to be that conduit. If we could make that experience really simple and beautiful, and along the way, use the media that we had to enable other people's projects to come to life, then long-term, they would come back to us and they'd recognize that we played a role in it. They'd tell friends about the service, and organically, it would grow. That's the way that we've built the business today. That's the way it continues to grow.

Charlie Melcher:

So that's a natural segue into the state of the technology industry. When things started, it seemed very utopian. And right now, it seems more of a dystopia. Talk to me a little bit about your feelings, about things like data privacy and all this information that we seem to share about ourselves, particularly when we're dealing with things that are free? Where's your take on that? I mean, you have a free service, are you exploiting and selling all this data about people?

Damian Bradfield:

No. So, my personal view is that the internet that we're currently living through and the world that we're currently living in, if you consider how many hours that we spend behind a screen today, we are spending vastly more time on the internet than we do in the real world. My personal feeling is that for the time that we spend in the offline world, there are so few regulations and controls and checks and measures to make sure that it's healthy, to make sure that it's safe, that it's completely out of balance. So my personal belief is that there are a few monopolies or oligopolies that have got so much power and control, it's unhealthy and it needs to change. There needs to be far more regulation, tomorrow, or yesterday, even.

When we turn on our computer screens, we as consumers rush through everything. How fast can I get online? When your password doesn't load properly and you have to go into your password manager to find that password again, it's a major irritation. It's cost me 30 seconds. That same rush happens through every single website that we enter into a relationship with. We don't consider anything, really. If somebody recommends something and it comes through social media, we would just click on it. If they ask you for your details, you'll fill them in. If there's something offered to you for free, you'll accept it.

If someone was to walk up to you immediately with a pair of sneakers in their hand and say, “Would you like to buy these?” You'd be like, “No, I'm okay. Thank you, no.” And you'd leave the store, probably. And if he was to follow you out of the store down the high street with that same pair of sneakers, I would imagine that a few people would lose their temper, potentially worse things would happen. The idea that you would be badgered and bothered and harassed in the offline world would be absolutely despicable. But online, we find that totally acceptable.

We don't really track that much data that comes through from our users. As I said earlier on, we see our advertising more as billboards. So our customers are people that spend branding dollars on the platform and again, not many companies have that. So optimistically, I think two or three years out from now, we're going to see a lot of companies that were ad driven, disappear. I hope that we're going to see companies shift from having to track and re-target you all around the web to actually having to think about behaving in a bit more of a confident manner and acting a bit more as a sort of offline retail experience. And I hope that would mean that ultimately the web that we have and we experience today goes a little bit back towards where we were 20 years ago, or 15 years ago. But even, it doesn't have to be that far back. It's changed so much in the last 10 years that it's barely recognizable, I think.

Charlie Melcher:

I really enjoyed reading your recent book, The Trust Manifesto, and this idea that you put forth, that we should have the same integrity, the same sort of value system when we deal with people in the real world, it should be the same one that we deal with when we're in the virtual world, when we're on the web. And yet clearly we have different things that are acceptable, and such unbelievable negative interactions that can happen, or ways in which people misuse information, etcetera. So what do you think the real solution to that is to sort of regain trust for the world that happens online?

Damian Bradfield:

Well for us, I think for a few of the big organizations, I'm not sure there really is a way for them to regain trust. A few of them have gone so far that it's pretty much irreparable. So, in my opinion, we should look somewhere else for the solutions. And there are plenty of other solutions. It's not that you have to use Google to do all your searches or Amazon to buy all of your shopping and groceries and books and everything else. There are plenty of alternatives. It comes down to convenience. There is a notion that not having people driving to the shopping market, supermarkets and driving to all these separate shops, well, is better for the environment because all of these goods come into one centralized warehouse and they're distributed just from one place. I don't know about you, Charlie, but the number of boxes that we have, the amount of recycling that we do, and the amount of plastic that comes from all the individual things that are so badly boxed, I can't believe that that's better than a massive pallet coming into a supermarket. I'm not sure that it can be.

We simply need to slow down. We need to stop buying stuff, consuming endlessly, just throwing stuff away. I think we need to go back to a place that is about ensuring that we buy better quality products that we can pass on to another generation. And right now through the race that we're in, driven by the pace of the internet, we don't think like that at all. We talk a really good game. Everyone would probably nod their head and say, this is true, but we're not really being critical about it, because it's just not tangible.

Charlie Melcher:

So ironically, the pandemic and the quarantine that many of us, all of us, have been living through, is a kind of forced consideration in slowing down. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how the nature of work is evolving.

Damian Bradfield:

I don't know how your day goes, but my day, it's pretty much as soon as I get up to as soon as I go to bed, I'm attached to a screen. For me, I've found it really very difficult recently. It just means that your whole... there's no serendipity. There is very few moments where there's spontaneity in the day. It's all regimented and regulated and it dawned on me as much as it has done recently, how much I need to have some chaos, some moments of unstructured mayhem in my day. And that's sadly lacking.

To be able to come home recharged, to face the next sprint of whatever project you were working on... that's gone. Honestly, I don't know the solution to it. I'm not sure how we can replicate that sort of creative energy that's only really possible through physical space. The small glimmers of hope that I have are actually when I get random phone calls, and the random phone call is a sort of gift that occasionally pops up. But a friend will just call you out of the blue, and that's the moment of spontaneity, you think, “Oh, that's so nice you called. That's lovely. Great. Yeah. How are you?” It doesn't have to be long, but those are the rare glimpses that we get at the moment.

Charlie Melcher:

I will say the one major difference, and this is an obvious statement, is, for many people, they have shifted where they're working from, right? People aren't going into the office. We don't need to have everyone in the same office to be productive. And frankly, the truth is part of that's possible because of tools like WeTransfer and other sort of essential tools that enable professional work to happen from afar now, and teams to be able to continue to collaborate. There are challenges, but there's been a lot of positive that's come from this that I think we can all fold in and will be part of the new normal.

Damian Bradfield:

That's what somebody said to me the other day. I asked them how they were, and they said, “You know, the new normal.” I said, “Okay. I understand exactly what you mean.” So it is a constant struggle. With having an office, it obviously is a responsibility. It also means that as you grow, you have to ask that people will travel to this space every day. This situation eradicated an awful lot of that decision-making. I think if we go back to an office space, it will basically be a series of hubs where we have enough space for a few people to get together and do meetings—to meet in real life. And ideally, there are no phones or laptops present, and then we'll disappear back to their workspaces at home or wherever, to go and work on their own, to do the work.

Charlie Melcher:

I heard you refer to your process as being kind of analogous to the slow food movement. Can you tell me a little more what you meant by that?

Damian Bradfield:

Partly, in being a Dutch business, that we're not in Silicon Valley and that we're not in the sort of rat race of New York and the pressure of having raised tons of money and having to repay a lot of people, the company was bootstrapped. The company was profitable in 2014. We only raised money in 2015. And because I guess we saw ourselves as the audience, we were super critical about any small change we would make. So yeah, I joked that we were the sort of slow tech movement in terms of the pace that we were operating at. I'd like to think that's changed today, that we are a bigger team and we have a broader skillset than we had originally. So many companies came and went in the 10 years that we've been around. And a lot of them, I think, because they made some very basic mistakes: they tried to become something they weren't, they fell into the trap of adding features.

Adding features is one of the simplest things you can possibly do. Removing them, stripping things back, trying to get it down to the lowest common denominator, is the reason that the iPod was such a beautiful creation when it first came out. Everything else was so complex. Every other device had 20 buttons and knobs, and you needed to read a user manual and suddenly this piece of technology hardware came out that really had just, well, what was it? Three buttons. A slider on the side, a wheel, and a button in the middle, and beautifully intuitive. And for us, that was really the benchmark. If people compare us in any shape or form to Apple in the way that we consider the things that we do, I think it's one of the greatest compliments we could ever get.

Charlie Melcher:

I always thought that you meant it in terms of your priorities. I mean, in the same way that the slow food movement was really prioritizing people's health, the ability for food to bring people together and connect in a way that's meaningful, you have a really great set of priorities. What are they?

Damian Bradfield:

It's people first, creativity second, and technology third. It's not that technology isn't important, it's that there needs to be a thorough understanding that everything starts with having great people. And those people need to be given the best working conditions, the most freedom, the most room, the most inspiration you could possibly gift them. It all starts there. It doesn't start with a line of code that somebody says this is going to be the foundation of the business. It may well do in another organization, but I also think if you look at those organizations that lead with that technology-first mandate, I think the way that they treat their users and the way that they treat or look at growth and the way that they look at value, is very different than the way that we would consider it.

Charlie Melcher:

I know that you guys also recently, or I don't know if it was recently, but you're a B Corp, is that right?

Damian Bradfield:

Yeah, it's pretty recent. So we, I think it was around about April or May, that we became a B Corporation, but the journey started a lot longer, obviously, before then. And it is a bit of a process, because you, as a company, you have to make certain commitments and certain goals and targets, and only a few then achieve them, with regards to recycling and sustainability and your supplier list and stuff. Depending on how fast you can realize all of that will determine how easy or long it would take you to become a B Corp. And we've been on that path for a long time. Always try to look at being a good business, just think really about companies like Ben and Jerry's and how you can exist, just being good, being decent, earning a decent living.

Charlie Melcher:

Are there examples that you're seeing of creativity, that's original, that's happening now? Different types of storytelling or communications that are new?

Damian Bradfield:

Well, COVID has helped sort of surface our artists. So what has been really exciting is to see, who's an artist? Who can do these things on their own? Who's able to actually make the most of the situation? And we've seen some phenomenal people come out of the woodwork in the last six months that will be coming onto the platform over the course of the next six months. We've just finished a project with the Royal Academy, so the museum in London, that for the last 150 odd years, I think, has had this summer exhibition where they have thousands of submissions. Literally I think 8,000 submissions, something like that. And so we worked with them and produced a randomized experience at WeTransfer, where you could go through and see all of the submissions that were made at the Royal Academy and bring them to life somehow and still put them out there.

I'm pretty certain that the Royal Academy, two years ago, would not have thought for a second that they would want that work to be digitized, that there would ever be a space for it to be put online like it has been today. I really hope that going forward, they look back and say, wasn't that fantastic that we could bring it to so many more people. And that probably the same people we so often talk to that come into the museum aren't the only ones that get to see it, but that actually we open it up to a much bigger audience. That's pretty cool, having to force some of those institutions that are sitting on some phenomenal bodies of work to have to rethink how they're going to give access to people that would potentially, never will or may never have the opportunity to ever see it.

Charlie Melcher:

I'm very excited by the flowers that are coming out of the cracks in the concrete. That the opportunities for people to find new ways to be creative while they're struggling with some very serious limitations of this time... or someone like The Moth, Catherine Burns, who was on. And The Moth is always about live storytelling and being, having an audience. And they're having many, many more people tuning in live for storytelling that has storytellers sharing their stories from their homes. So all of a sudden, people who would have never been able to come to New York City for that story slam are listening from around the world. There are real creative leaps and bounds and opportunities that come from a different kind of set of constraints. So Damian, the quarantine and the pandemic has certainly been positive for WeTransfer in the sense that more people are using your tools. I'm wondering where you're thinking about the future of WeTransfer ,and where the business is headed?

Damian Bradfield:

We would love to be involved in every part of the creative process. So we believe that we've created a brand that's trusted enough by our user base, if we were to say that we were going to move into hard drive development, they would find it logical, that if we were going to move into video editing tools, that they wouldn't find it completely absurd. For us, really, the excitement and the energy comes through being involved in the creative process. And we have a few tools now that are sort of involved in helping offer some inspiration, some tools to organize and to sketch and iterate and develop. I mean, in that creative process, it's so broad, and it can go in so many different directions.

There are a ton of different things that we could get involved with. In the long run, it would be really exciting if we could really play to the strengths of our audience, which are artists, designers, filmmakers, photographers, musicians. And if we think about the tools they need and look at it from through this sort of, WeTransfer lens of which are the most complicated, and which could we simplify, which have got too many buttons that we could reduce down to a single button or to a single functionality, I think that would be really exciting.

Charlie Melcher:

Well, I look forward to WeCollaborating and WeCreating together. In this case, I mean, us. But thank you so much for being on the podcast today, and it's such a pleasure to chat with you. And again, our sincere thanks for helping to make our show possible with the great work that you guys do. So thanks for joining me.

Damian Bradfield:

It's a pleasure. Thank you. It's a real honor to be a part of what you're doing too. So thank you again.

Charlie Melcher:

I hope that you found this conversation with Damian as fascinating as I did. If you'd like to learn more about how WeTransfer is supporting creativity online or purchase a copy of Damian's book, The Trust Manifesto, you can do so by visiting this episode's page on our website at www.fost.org, or by following the link in this episode's description. All proceeds from the sale of his book go to the charity United for Global Mental Health. Thank you for listening to the Future of StoryTelling Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe to the podcast, give us a review, and share it with a friend. My sincere thanks to Damian Bradfield and to our talented production partner, Charts & Leisure. I hope you join us next week for another conversation. Until then, please be safe, be strong, and story on.