Sean: Joseph, one of the first things that I usually ask my guests is the startup journey because that is one of the things that I find people super interested in, I am super interested in and I find that my guests are super delighted to tell us the story. So we'll start with that. How did you get the idea of Humble?

Josef: The story of Humble is an interesting one because. It's not like there was one clear moment and then suddenly humble was here. Right. It was really kind of a series of events I would say. And it really started when I met my co-founder, which was three and a half years ago, Nina and we were both working for a different company and we met and we really realized that our values are extremely aligned.

And we really want to create something that was meaningful with genuine impact, but we just didn't know where to start. And we felt that our impact was almost insignificant because we were just a couple of people. So that sort of stalled the practicality of coming up with an idea, even though we knew we had to create something. Even sustainability back then really wasn't necessarily at the very front of our minds.

It was just creating impact in general. So then the years kind of went by a little bit and we got to the end of 2019. And Nina and I went on a trip to the UK to visit my family actually, went to see my family. I tried to go back once every year. See it has been more difficult recently, but I still have family back in the UK.

My mother happens to be a very active environmentalist. She's actually a member of this group called extinction rebellion. Non-violent protest groups really encourage governments to take action on our climate emergency.

And I think she was probably the first real catalyst to show us, okay, sustainability is really, not just a problem, but it's an opportunity. And we saw that so many wonderful organizations out there trying to address this problem, you know. Greenpeace, extinction - so many, but not many of them were actually coming at it from a kind of solutions-driven, tech startup, positive points of view for consumers.

And it's essentially a numbers game. The more people who take small steps towards living sustainably, the greater impact we have and the greater chance that we have of actually achieving sustainability. So all of this sort of spiraled into one and, you know, we were thinking of what kind of idea can we come up with?

How can we do something towards sustainability startup? and Nina and she first came up with the idea of clothing, and kids' clothing. And I'm sure you can probably identify with this, but kids' clothes are very short in lifespan, right? And very quickly you buy and you spend on something new, and then you realize - okay, if I have a younger brother or a younger sister to hang this down too fantastic, then you get one use.

If you have 2, 3, 4 children and fantastic, even more use. But at some stage, that stuff is just going to go to waste. So she came up with this concept of really circular kids' clothing and making sure that you know, how can we give one child's clothes to another, once they're finished using it and create this kind of circular ecosystem.

I heard this idea and just thought, why don't we think a bit bigger, right? It's not just children's clothing that we're not using properly and actually enjoying the rest of our lifetime, but it's everything. We looked around. All of the clutter in our place looked at the plastic in the corner, the furniture that was kind of over here, but a bit dated, the clothes, the electronics, and realized what if we actually gave this service, which makes it extremely easy for someone to be able to declutter their home or office even, and give it a meaningful outcome, free of charge and will turn up when they want us to?

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