An interview with: John Ostler of Eight Bit Studios & Unicorn Road
A visionary creator, builder, and the founder and CEO of multiple tech businesses. In 2008, John co-founded Eight Bit Studios - a boutique agency based in Chicago. This year, John made the move from Chicago to Lancashire to begin his expansion into the UK’s tech scene.
We caught up with John to chat all about his experience building startups and making the move to Lancashire.
To kick things off, please can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
John: I was really interested in web development, design and video media back in the mid-90s, right before the first bubble really got going. At that time, if you had any interest in development, there weren't a whole lot of curricula.
So, I started doing web development quite early as a teenager. Doing that meant I could put myself through school to start working professionally as a web designer and developer — and I got some great experiences that way.
After school, I moved from Michigan to Chicago where I got to work at some large digital agencies. At the time, the digital agency space was generally 20 and 30-something year olds because this technology and these capabilities hadn’t been around that long. So, it meant you had a bunch of young people staying up all night, working all weekend, building huge sites and platforms. It was amazing. We got some really hands-on experience with large American and International brands and huge executive team stakeholders.
The group I was working with all went on to be the CEOs of large firms to lead strategy.
Myself, I took a slightly different path. I actually started my first real agency — nearly 15 years ago now.
Having spent time doing design, UX, and web development as a practitioner, it was quite natural to say, “Let’s create a craftsman based agency. Let’s start with the people first and great work. And we’ll work backwards towards all the business and financial aspects of it.”
So, we started doing websites and got into building native mobile apps, which were super new as the iPhone had just come out around the time Eight Bit Studios started. We were working with some really big brands as well as start-ups, helping them bring their digital products to life.
As the agency expanded and we pivoted to working with more big companies, and so much bigger and harder to solve problems. Our team grew and our team leadership with it. Once we operationalised the majority of the business I became introspective and realised , I really missed working with owner-operators of start-ups. So, I started another company called Unicorn Road that focuses on digital products and marketing for early-stage startups and entrepreneurs.
“Having done the research, Lancashire was the obvious choice.”
While your agency hails from Chicago, you have recently expanded into Lancashire. What made you choose Lancashire as your UK home?
John: My Wife grew up around here then moved to the US at a young age. Her family is in this area. When COVID hit, we went from having a large office in downtown Chicago where everyone came in every day, collaborated, and had meetings in-person to being totally distributed across the United States. We realised how vulnerable we were as a family not being close to our extended family. So, we decided, “let’s move to the UK”.
Having done the research, Lancashire was the obvious choice. There is a great community and lots happening with investment in digital. It’s a great opportunity to get into a totally new environment. It’s been the perfect place to expand and our relocation in January came together like a jigsaw.
How does Lancashire compare to Chicago? Are there any learnings from Chicago’s tech scene that you can apply here?
John: A lot of what you see in Chicago very much mirrors the North West of the UK. Chicago itself was a built up metropolis. But if you step outside of it, it’s farming and manufacturing — much like Lancashire and other areas of the north west.
Even though there’s a number of HQs in downtown Chicago, you also have a lot of owner-operators who have been building their businesses for 20 to 30 years and have done really well and expanded throughout the US. But they are still making decisions and, for them, digital transformation was a totally new idea. So, I’ve been on the frontline of that, helping businesses both who have been doing digital for decades as well as those who are just planning their modernisation.
The similarities between Chicago and the North West is amazing. From the large cities like Manchester, Liverpool to Lancaster, and then you’re surrounded by owner-operators, manufacturing, farming, and aerospace. It’s a very exciting time to expand. The North West is brilliant and beautiful and I love it here.
Between 2011-2013, Chicago didn’t have much of a heart in terms of digital. There wasn’t a central place. There were a few meetups happening but it was very scattered. Trying to pull people together was really hard but everyone was willing to help. It feels like digital in Lancashire is in a similar space.
My first impression is that Manchester and Liverpool have their own microcosm going on, where there’s not much sharing happening outside of their central hubs. This is similar throughout the boroughs in Lancashire, each doing their part. With all that segmentation of groups, villages, cities, you need a platform or space for education, collaboration and sharing to go into hyper growth mode.
That’s exactly where Chicago was in 2011 with Silicon Valley and New York. Once the connections and knowledge sharing happened, things took off. I can see that happening now in Lancashire.
One thing I’ve seen in Lancashire that I haven’t seen anywhere else yet is that it seems to have the right ingredients in terms of the university as a feeder, Fraser House as a hub, and some great breakthrough start-ups. I think people in places like Manchester or London will realise there’s a big opportunity in this area that’s underserved. And that’s exactly what happened in Chicago with investment and companies moving in Chicago.
You’ve built quite a few tech businesses during your time. What advice would you give for someone wanting to start a tech business?
John: Between my agencies, we’ve worked with close to 500 start-ups, maybe more, in the past 15 years. Some start-ups began from nothing. They hadn’t even done the napkin exercise yet. Every time, and this hasn’t changed over the years, I see the same thing which is there’s often artificial barriers to getting started.
Someone will have this great app or website idea that they want to go to or there's a niche they want to fill and they’ll go down a route of “I need to develop a brand, I need to set up marketing, I’ve got to meet with someone to do all this and that”. And the reality is, the best start-ups we’ve ever worked with didn’t care about any of that. They just go and talk to the future customer.
If you’re building an education platform, go meet with teachers. If you’re building a parking solution, go to parking garages. These things can happen freely. You learn so much in those early days and you realise that the tech actually gets in the way of you solving the problem.
“Forget about the oak tree. Start small. Start with the sapling then grow from there over time.”
The teams that we found did it best were the ones who fell in love with the problem itself. And you realise you don’t need a darn thing to do that.
There’s two pieces of advice in one: When you fall in love with the problem, you don’t wait to start. As an investor, you see someone who isn’t waiting to start or who doesn’t need your money to find the answers, and those types of people are more valuable. Their train is moving and you want to get on that train.
It has this double effect where you’re not stopping yourself and you’re not stopping investors either.
I used to have a podcast [bytesoverbagels.com] where I interviewed a bunch of CEOs and, in their stories, they repeat the same advice. They focus on not overdoing the tech. They have the mentality of “What can we do today?”
Forget about the oak tree. Start small. Start with the sapling then grow from there over time.
Anything exciting you are working on that you can share with us?
John: In the UK right now, I’m getting involved in aerospace. We’ve done a fair bit of Aerospace before in Chicago, where there’s a lot of large aerospace firms. So, I’m excited about those opportunities.
I’m also excited to get more involved in digital transformation on the manufacturing side through Eight Bit Studios. That’s something we can really sink our teeth into.
There’s also a few companies in the logistics space that we’ve done quite a bit with.
On the startup side, I’m very, very excited about helping spread the information I have about how startups can get from Point A and B to C. I’m hoping to get more involved with Fraser House in Lancaster and other digital hubs.
I’m also planning to move to Whalley where I have the intention of creating a startup entrepreneur ecosystem. I think there’s some real power in that, especially from a talent perspective — bridging the divide between people who have already created the companies and startups to bring the two together. There’s a lot of people who know how to hire, delegate, reinvest, expand, and they have all this technical knowledge but they’re not connected to the people who are interested in the digital space.
Industry disruption has to be led by the people with the experience in the industry and them being empowered by tech rather than being the other way round where the tech is looking for a problem. You need someone from the industry-side to want to solve the problem and find the tech talent to build it. I think connecting the two through an entrepreneur ecosystem will make a huge difference.
Finally, any words of wisdom you can share with digital enthusiasts wanting to start and scale tech start-ups?
John: My overarching philosophy stems from taking care of yourself first.
I think a lot of people who are early in their technology career, or thinking about starting a company in tech, forget that they also need to remain motivated. And that’s critical these days. You need to make sure you are set up to do this.
That might mean starting something with friends who can keep you going or doing the things you find fun, rather than delegating them to someone else. Because those are the things that motivate you and keep you excited.
The largest thing that kills a startup the fastest is a lack of momentum. Make sure there are wins every week. If, for instance, you hired an agency to build something and it’s going to take six-months, perhaps your eyes are too wide. Six months is a long time to hold out for something — and sometimes that six months goes on even longer. So, you need to break the problem down into smaller parts so you can maintain momentum and move forward every day.
“The largest thing that kills a startup the fastest is a lack of momentum. Make sure there are wins every week.”
I’m conscious that tech is like a foreign object to a lot of people. You almost need to treat it like a personal fitness plan — you need to get a schedule or get an accountability buddy to do it well because it’s so easy to get tired and return to the native state of “I’ve got to get a job”.
With Eight Bit Studios, we’re all about doing a proper research plan and product strategy and showing progress through analytics. We have bigger timelines but it's fast for larger teams. Whereas with Unicorn Road, which is a lot more startup-focused, everything we do is in the name of speed. It’s about seeing how much and what we can build as fast as possible to keep the momentum moving. We break problems down into smaller sprints or user stories.
It all boils down to making sure you’re taking care of yourself first so that you have the energy to do it. It’s energy-taxing but when you realise you are doing the thing you love, and it’s the most counter-intuitive thing but, you will actually have more energy the next morning. Even if you have worked 10 times harder than you did at your last job.
I have personally gone through this in terms of projects or ideas lagging on. When you have little funds or long timelines, it is so easy to kill your favourite idea. It takes the fun out of it and it stops feeling rewarding. So, you need to move at speed with momentum, and you need to take care of yourself.
Move at speed and find your unicorn
John’s story from moving to Chicago to Lancashire and being on the precipice of the tech scene in both areas is fascinating. There is no doubt that he has a lot of learnings from Chicago that he’s brought with him to Lancashire.
You can find John on LinkedIn here, where you can keep up to date with his journey building Unicorn Road and Eight Bit Studios as he lays down roots in Lancashire.
John is also speaking atnext month’s Digital Tech Talks event. Get your ticket and come over to Skelmersdale on 17th May to hear more about John’s stories, experiences, and insights into building successful startups.