Jonny Plein

Jonny PleinSep 10, 2026

I saw that I crossed 15,000 followers on LinkedIn the other day. Given how many people are starting their careers this month, I thought I would put together a timeline of my journey to date. It is never a straight line, so please share this with someone who may need a little inspiration this week! 1 - I started my career at EY in Corporate Finance. It was work hard, play hard. And while I did well there, I knew it wasn't for me long-term. So I took the brave decision to leave my safe corporate job and pursue my startup dreams. 2 - I started Pouch with a friend from school Ben Corrigan and an amazing developer Vikram Simha that we'd been introduced to. We got into an accelerator program, which really pushed the business forward. 3 - We did things that didn't scale at first, like trade shows. Anything to just get the business out there. 4, 5 - Pouch got a lot of press, both in the startup publications and mainstream media. This eventually led us to going on Dragon's Den. We got five offers, the third time in the show's 15-year history. 6 - Building the business was fun but a grind. I don't have any photos from this time because it was incredibly stressful, but we had an investment opportunity with News UK that collapsed on the day of signing. We thought the business was going to fail, but three months later, we'd had an offer from a company in Germany to buy the whole business. And of course, we accepted. 7 - I loved working for Atolls. It was one of the happiest times of my life. I learned so much, earned well, and got to travel for work for the first time. 8 - Then COVID happened. Fortunately, as I worked in e-commerce, my job wasn't affected. In fact, we were doing better than ever, and I was lucky that I could work remotely. 9 - After three years, I knew it was time for me to have another go. I had all the confidence that I could make a success of myself again, and I just needed to find the right opportunity. 10 - I reconnected with Adam Knight and James Campbell 甘吉, whom I had met at a conference years earlier. We conceptualized YASO to help Western brands scale in China on the new social commerce channels. 11 - In 2022, I quit my job and started fundraising for YASO. It was one of the hardest years of my life. Fundraising was really difficult, with loads of ups and downs. It was a real struggle. 12 - Eventually everything clicked, and in late 2022, we raised £2m from Playfair and others. 13, 14, 15 - From there, we continued to grow over multiple trips to China, expanding the team and the business. 16 - In 2025, we started raising for a Series A round. It was difficult, but with a fast-growing business & all the experience I gained over the last 10 years, we managed to raise over $11 million in venture funding led by Puma Growth Partners 17, 18 - Now, in 2026, I am working harder than ever! But grateful for the work I get to do every day and the people I do it with!

Jonny PleinSep 8, 2026

What do AI and spicy noodles have in common? Nothing, but I wanted you to read this post! In all seriousness, posting anything about AI on LinkedIn tends to get engagement. I think this is because there is so much fear of "falling behind". The internet (LinkedIn included) makes you feel like if you aren't using an Agent Swam to run your whole business, you are doing something wrong! You aren't; you are just overwhelmed by learning a new skill set like everyone else. Whilst I do use a lot of AI tools, here are 3 simple ways I have used AI as a co-founder focused on finance and growth. Hopefully these show you that you can start small and don't need to be an expert in agent swarms to be more productive: 1. Management accounts and investor reporting - I have built a Claude CoWork prompt that gets my management accounts into the format I need for investor reporting on Ilevel. It has taken a 4-hour task down to about 10 minutes. 2. LinkedIn outreach - I have built a Claude prompt to fetch the list of profiles of LinkedIn prospects I want to connect with by going through the relevant connections tab. I have found this to be more targeted than building lists in Apollo. It can even auto-connect for me if I want. 3. Live translation on Calls - My Chinese isn't good enough to discuss finance topics in Mandarin. I use DeepL for live translation on any call I am on, which then summarises the notes that I can circulate to my team in both languages. This helps me work on complex topics cross-border seamlessly — An obvious one, but so effective for my needs. 4. CRM management - I have the Apollo.io and Notion connectors for Claude, allowing me to update my CRM notes automatically if any outreach or calls have occurred. These are all simple things, but combined, they make me 5%-10% more efficient every day, which of course compounds over time. When thinking about your AI use, just start small and build from there!

Jonny PleinSep 7, 2026

Amazing work from our China GM Emma Simeng Zhou 周思蒙, talking about how we used YASO's platform and data to rebuild a brand's pricing plan before we went after a single sale! Subtitles included for those that don't speak chinese!