Silicon Real: Recent Episodes
Silicon Real
It’s a place where you can learn about the people behind the business. Whether it’s a multi-million dollar success, or new idea raising money, the people that drive these ideas we can all learn from.
As the Founder and CEO of Eventbrite, Kevin Hartz has quite an impressive C.V. Not only does he run the world's leading self-service ticketing platform with $200 million of investment that has processed over 200 million tickets worth over $2.5 billion, he has also personally invested early in PayPal, AirBnB and Pinterest among others.
Alex Stephany is the CEO of a startup called JustPark. They're a small team (28 people by February 2015) and have managed to attract some of the foremost talent in the London tech scene as well as investors like BMW and Index Ventures. They are laser-focused on fixing parking: one of the most dysfunctional aspects of city life.
Sarah Drinkwater is the head of Campus London, Google's first physical hub for startups, providing work and event space, mentorship and education programs, as well as access to a vibrant startup community.
Daniel Murray Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of Grabble which provides “instant, shoppable fashion content that can be bought on the go, by users, in just a couple of swipes.” also known as “Tinder for fashion”
Stephen Rapoport, Founder of Pact Coffee which delivers freshly-roasted, speciality coffee to customers across the UK.
Alicia Navarro, the CEO & Co-founder of Skimlinks which helps publishers earn revenues and gain insights from their commerce-related content.
Nic Brisbourne who is the Founder of Forward Partners, an investment business which works with e-commerce companies from raw idea through to Series A, offering a package of investment, proven methodologies & office space.
ALEX TORRES, who recently joined public transit app company Moovit as its vice president of global product marketing.
Daniel Glazer who leads the Technology practice at the global law firm Fried Frank Since 2012 he's split his time 50/50 between London & NYC advising companies from early-stage start-ups to the Fortune 100
Philippe Botteri from Accel Partners, a leading venture capital and growth equity firm with $2 Billion under management in Europe and Israel and $6 Billion Globally.
The Trampery started life in 2009 when it opened the first shared workspace in Shoreditch, the heart of London’s “Tech City”. Their founder is the sociologist and entrepreneur Charles Armstrong.
Suranga Chandratillake founded blinkx, the intelligent search engine for video and audio content in San Francisco and Cambridge in 2004.
Anastasia Emmanuel Leads Indiegogo's Hardware, Design & Technology for the UK encouraging Crowdfunding growth for the largest global crowdfunding platform.
Matt Barrie is the Chief Executive of Freelancer.com, the world's largest freelancing marketplace Primarily connecting small businesses and individuals from the western world with freelancers in the developing world.
Nicolas Brusson is the co-founder and the COO of BlablaCar, a company which connects drivers with empty seats to people looking for a ride.
Tom Valentine, Managing Director & Co-Founder at Secret Escapes which curates exclusive, members-only offers for 4 and 5 STAR hotels and holidays
Sam Shank is the Co- Founder & CEO of HotelTonight, the world's leading hotel booking app.
Jo Bertram is the General Manager for Uber in London, a ridesharing app which connects drivers of private hire vehicles with passengers directly.
Laurent Sellier is the VP of Products at Eventbrite, the world's leading self-service ticketing platform with over $1BB in gross ticket sales and 1 million events last year.
Julie Meyer is the Founder of EntrepreneurCountry which connects the world’s enterprises with leading digital enablers.
Ben Holmes is a Partner at Index Ventures, a multi-stage international venture capital firm based in London, San Francisco and Geneva.
Harry Blain is an English art dealer, gallery owner and founder of Sedition Art, an online resource where editioned digital artworks can be bought and traded.
Mike Butcher is the "Editor-At-Large" for TechCrunch writing about Startups, Venture Capital, and Technology trends.
Claire Cockerton is the co-founder & CEO of Innovate Finance, a City of London backed movement for a more balanced, resilient, & accessible financial services sector.
Sandy Carter is the Global General Manager at IBM in charge of Ecosystem Development and Social Business Evangelism
Diane Perlman is the Microsoft Ventures UK Start-up Lead helping start-ups to grow, partner and prosper.
Nick Hungerford is the Founder & CEO of Nutmeg, the company on a mission to democratise saving and investing.
Russ Shaw is the Founder of Tech London Advocates, a group of leaders promoting London's technology sector and addressing the issues on the horizon.
Bernadine Bröcker is the Founder & CEO of Vastari, an online service that allows art collectors to connect with curators without dealing with a middle man.
For the August Summer Break we bring you some of the Greatest Hits of Silicon Real with an interview published over one year ago on July 8, 2013 with John Collison, the co-founder of Stripe.
BLAST FROM THE PAST
For the August summer break we bring you some of the Greatest Hits of Silicon Real starting with an interview published one year ago on August 12, 2013 with Taavet Hinrikus, Co-Founder of Transferwise.
Andrew Tarver is the Founder of Bold Rocket, a start-up focused on enabling the PEOPLE REVOLUTION
Christian Faes is the Founder of LendInvest, a P2P lending platform focused on the property industry in the UK
Damian Kimmelman is the Founder & CEO of DueDil, which organises private company information into a real-time decision intelligence tool.
Giles Palmer is the Founder & CEO of Brandwatch, a company devised to help organisations find and engage with online conversations that matter.
Ian Foddering is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) & Technical Director for Cisco UK & Ireland
James Layfield is the punchy CEO behind Central Working which strives to provides the ideal environment for growing businesses in Bloomsbury, Shoreditch, Campus (Google) & Whitechapel.
E-commerce Big Data specialist and Bitcoin fanatic Ivan Mazour of Ometria and Hugh Halford-Thompson the Founder of QuickBitcoin
Emily Brooke often gets called Emily Blaze by mistake...and it's no wonder. When this woman goes on a mission there is fire on her trail and anyone in her path best get out of the way.
Clare Sutcliffe co-founded Code Club when she was still working for the digital advertising agency Albion in 2012 and it has since grown to 2,297 clubs (as of this publish) in the UK alone that teach children aged 9-11 how to program computers.
With a £120,000 investment from Google this year Code Club Pro will also help teachers in schools transition to a new coding curriculum in the UK.
With over 250 Code Clubs now outside the UK, expect to see Clare and her organisation to soon be a household name around the world.
Andy McLoughlin has been a fixture of the Silicon Roundabout since the early days of Co-Founding Huddle in 2006
Yonatan Raz-Fridman is one cool dude. Armed with a warm Mediterranean smile he strikes you as a the perfect guy to party with but the wrong dude to cross.
Benjamin Southworth is the former Deputy CEO of Tech City, 3 Beards Founder & Host of Chew the Fat, and Founder of Ada Lovelace Academy.
Sherry Coutu serves on the boards of The London Stock Exchange, Cambridge University, Raspberry Pi Foundation, Founders4Schools and the Advisory Board of LinkedIn.
Eze Vidra is the Head of Google for Entrepreneurs Europe and Google Campus London. He is the Founder of TechBikers and writes at vccafe.com
Monty Munford is a Technology Writer for The Economist, Wired, Telegraph & Mashable and Founder of Agency Mob76.
Anil Stocker is the Founder & CEO at MarketInvoice which offers a fast and flexible online method for SMEs to access the capital locked in their long-dated invoices that would otherwise be tied up for 90-120 days.
Jenny Griffiths is the Founder and CEO of Snap Fashion, a visual search engine that allows consumers to search for fashion items using images instead of words using a unique algorithm to find similar items from over 110 UK retailers online.
Matt Clifford is the Chief Executive and Co-Founder of Entrepreneur First which identifies and invests in Europe's top technical students.
Matt Heiman is the Founder and CEO of Diagonal View which produces over 2 million hours of short-form videos for YouTube that have been watched over 2 Billion times.
Bernhard Niesner is the Founder & CEO of Busuu, the world's largest social network for language learning with more than 40 million users.
Divinia Knowles is the COO & CFO of Mind Candy, the British entertainment company that created Moshi Monsters.
Robyn Exton is the Founder and CEO of Dattch, the Lesbian Dating App for women to date who they want, when they want, where they want.
Rytis Vitkauskas is the Founder and CEO of YPlan which enables users to buy tickets directly from their smartphone with just a few taps.
Jason Goodman is the Founder & CEO of Albion, a creative partner for clients who want to build challenger brands, products and communications.
Gareth Davies is the Co-Founder & CEO at Adbrain, the world’s first real-time, multi-screen advertising platform. He prevoiusly worked for Google and Doubleclick.
Lauren Sherman is the London Head of Community for TaskRabbit, an online marketplace that allows users to outsource small jobs and tasks to others in their neighbourhood.
Kirk Wylie is the Executive Chairman and Co-Founder of Open Gamma, a London based Financial Technology startup that provides open-source risk and trading analytics software for the Capital Markets industry.
Alastair Paterson is the Founder of Digital Shadows which offers a cyber-monitoring service that secures companies’ “digital footprints” and protects companies and individuals from cyber-attacks.
Gary Jackson is one of the Founders of Hailo, a smartphone app which puts people just two taps away from a licensed taxi. Launched in November 2011, Hailo is available in 14 cities worldwide and has carried eight and a half million passengers with $100M in annualised sales.
Jon Bradford is a Managing Director at TechStars, the #1 Startup Accelerator in the World. They provide companies with $18,000 of funding and a 13 week "Boot Camp" in exchange for a 6% equity stake in 7 cities worldwide. Over 300 companies have completed their program.
Ivan Mazour is a Russian-born, London-based serial entrepreneur, investor and author. He is the CEO and Founder of Ometria, an e-commerce analytics software company, and is a Founding Partner of Innova Kapital, an early stage VC firm investing in UK-based technology startups.
Brian Taylor is the CEO and Founder of PixelPin which uses personal pictures to replace passwords.
Federico Pirzio-Biroli is the Founder & Director of Playfair Capital, an early stage investment fund started in 2011 specialising in web based technology and digital media startups that are capable of disrupting a market and scaling globally.
Fernando Ripolles is the CEO & co-founder of Wayra Accelerator company Hiyalife.com, a place to recall and organise personal life stories privately or together with friends and family. He formerly worked in finance for Bloomberg, UBS and Nomura.
Carlos Eduardo Espinal is a Partner at Seedcamp, Europe's leading micro-seed investment and mentoring programme with over 100 of Europe's most promising startups.
Roxanne Varza is a "Startup Lover" for Microsoft in Paris in the Bizspark division which provides free software, support, and visibility to help startups succeed.
Andrew McDonough is the CTO and Co-founder of Tribesports, a social network for sportspeople connecting active people everywhere in the world to revolutionise the sportswear industry.
Max Niederhoffer is a venture capitalist with Sunstone Capital, a $1BB fund based in Copenhagen.
Alex Hoye is the Co-founder and CEO of The Faction Collective and former CEO of Latitude Digital Marketing.
Simon Devonshire is the Director of New Business Ventures for Wayra, a startup accelerator (owned by communications giant Telefonica) launched in 2011 with 14 academies in 12 countries in Europe and Latin America.
Stef Lewandowski AKA Stef the Hacker is a Founder of Makeshift, a startup studio building digital products that give a leg up to the little guy.
Hussein Kanji is a partner at Hoxton Ventures, a Venture Capital company that helps entrepreneurs disrupt existing industries and invent new ones.
Samad Masood is the Programme Director of the FinTech Innovation Lab London, an annual mentorship programme to help entrepreneurs and early-stage companies that are developing cutting-edge technologies for the financial services sector.
Simon Cook is the CEO of DFJ Esprit, the European arm of Draper Fisher Jurvetson of Silicon Valley, the largest venture capital network in the world with 140 investment professionals and 600 portfolio companies including SpaceX, Tesla, and Skype.
Jeff Lynn is the co-founder and CEO of Seedrs, an equity "crowd funding" platform for discovering and investing in seed-stage startups which allows you to invest as little as £10 to raise up to £150,000 from friends, family, and independent investors.
Taavet Hinrikus is the co-founder of Transferwise, a peer-to-peer international money transfer business. He was the very first employee of Skype and their Director of Strategy until 2008.
Bindi Karia is the Vice President of the Accelerator program at Silicon Valley Bank in London which offers a variety of financial services to companies in Technology, Life Sciences, and Wine.
Raj Ramanandi is the CEO of #1seed, Silicon Roundabout's only dedicated seed investors in early stage technology.
Tomi Davies is the CEO of TechnoVision Communications which runs TVCLabs, a technology business incubation company based in Lagos, Nigeria.
Courtney Boyd Myers began her career writing for Forbes Magazine and the Huffington Post and is now a member of the Number 10 Downing Street and Tech City's Advisory board
John Collison is the co-founder of Stripe, a company that "makes it easy to start accepting credit cards on the web today."
Deputy CEO of Tech City UK Benjamin Southworth gives his first interview since announcing his departure and explains the startling differences between working for the government and the private sector, his plans for future philanthropic technology startups, the advice he would give to the 20 year old Benjamin, and how if you help others then all will be glorious.