UKTN | The Podcast: Recent Episodes
UKTN
Mark McDonagh sits down with some of the UK's most influential business founders. Take a journey through their experiences in seeking funding, facing marketing and sales challenges in an evolving digital world, and what failures became motivation to grow and succeed in an unpredictable climate.
Paul Scully, Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy, addresses criticism of the UK’s semiconductor strategy and explains why the government is avoiding a “subsidy race” with the likes of the US. The MP for Sutton and Cheam outlines the goals of the Digital Markets Bill, and explains how existing regulators will create a “baseline” while building up an understanding of AI risks. Elsewhere, he discusses the Online Safety Bill, investment zones and Tech Nation.
Scully was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy) at the newly created Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) in February. He held the corresponding role at DSIT’s precursor, DCMS, from October 2022 and has been an elected MP since 2015. He is also Minister for London and was appointed to that role on 13 February 2020.
Claire Lewis, CEO and co-founder of Baltic Ventures, discusses Liverpool’s rapidly growing tech scene, how there's now an understanding that tech investment must be spread across the whole UK, and some of the common mistakes that founders make.
Baltic Ventures is a not-for-profit accelerator located in Liverpool.Based in the city’s Baltic Triangle, the accelerator is aiming to address the funding imbalance for early-stage startups outside of London, with a focus on the North West. Lewis, who began her career as a chartered accountant, previously founded a sustainable ecommerce company. After it was acquired, she worked for an investment bank supporting tech for good startups, before launching Tech North, which went on to become part of Tech Nation.
Carolyn Dawson, CEO of Founders Forum Group, discusses rebuilding Tech Nation after acquiring the shuttered entrepreneur network, explains why the UK is well-positioned to be a leader in generative AI, and the impact that pension fund reforms will have on the UK tech sector.
Launched in 2005, Founders Forum Group is an entrepreneur community that hosts networking events and provides advice to startups. As chief executive, Dawson oversees all of Founders Forum’s events and businesses. In 2022, she was awarded an OBE for her services to London Tech Week, which she has led for seven years. Prior to Founders Forum, Dawson was president at Informa Tech.
Dr Mandana Ahmadi, the founder and CEO of mental health app Alena, discusses how technology can be a tool to support mental health, her journey as an Iranian immigrant to a UK-based startup founder and how artificial intelligence has yet to replicate real human emotion.
Ahmadi moved to the UK from Iran with a joint passion for technology and psychology. London-headquartered Alena is harnessing computational neuroscience to decode the mental patterns that drive social anxiety. It has raised $3.6m in funding since it was co-founded by Ahmadi in 2019. Before Alena, she co-founded and served as CTO for TAINA Technology, a regulatory technology company that helped financial institutions comply with requirements.
Richard Arundel, the co-founder of Currencycloud, talks about maintaining a good business culture whilst growing rapidly, how developments in cross-border payments have made a real impact in people’s lives, the current state of challenger banks and being acquired by Visa.
Arundel helped build the payments infrastructure company Currencycloud in 2012 from a background of 15 years working in foreign exchange markets. Currencycloud is used by major fintechs including Revolut, Starling and Monese and was acquired by Visa in 2021 for £700m.
Ilyas Khan, of Quantinuum, explains why quantum computers have the potential to radically change everything about how computing works, how the top prize in quantum has generated a geopolitical race, and what it’s like quietly building a deep tech multi-corn.
Khan is the co-founder of Cambridge Quantum, which in 2021 merged with US-based Honeywell to create Quantinuum, a deep tech company developing scalable quantum computers.
Dr Simon Thomas, co-founder and CEO of Paragraf, explains why the UK’s semiconductor strategy doesn’t do enough to support the country’s microchip industry, how wonder material graphene could revolutionise electronics, and how semiconductors have become less of a focus for the Silicon Fen area.
Cambridge-based Paragraf specialises in graphene-based electronics, a material with highly promising capabilities that could prove to be the perfect alternative to silicon in electronic devices due to its conductivity and power efficiency. It has raised more than $85m in funding. In this episode, Thomas – who has a background in physics, engineering and material science – explains how graphene could produce chips that "operate 1,000 times faster than today's computers". Elsewhere, he delves into the “interesting process” of Paragraf acquiring US chip firm Cardea Bio, which closed in May 2023, and takes aim at the government’s lack of clarity when it comes to a long-term semiconductor vision.
Harry Keen, CEO and co-founder of Hazy, explains how synthetic could address bias issues for AI training data, why we should prioritise the near-term issues with AI instead of doomsday predictions, and shares his experience spinning out from UCL.
Founded in 2017, Hazy creates artificial data that replicates the quality of real-world data without including personal information. Companies can then use this synthetic data to train AI models without the associated privacy risks. The company has raised nearly $15m and has been backed by Microsoft. Keen was previously engineering design lead at Opendesk.
Dr Ali El Kaafarani, founder and CEO of PQShield, explains how quantum computers will one day crack today’s encryption to expose our data, discusses the race to create cryptography that can fend off quantum attacks, and why “strengthening the startup position in the UK should be a top priority for the UK government to excel at quantum computing”.
Oxford-headquartered PQShield is a cybersecurity spinout founded by researchers to develop post-quantum cryptography tools. The company, which has raised nearly $27m in funding, has contributed to developing the first cryptography standards designed to block cyberattacks powered by quantum machines. Its software and hardware products are already being adopted by companies such as Bosch and Collins Aerospace. Kaafarani is also a researcher at the Mathematical Institute at the University of Oxford and has previous experience at HP Labs.
Antony Walker, deputy CEO of techUK, discusses some of the key policy areas affecting the UK’s tech companies, from AI to the online safety bill. He also reflects on how the economic shocks of Brexit and the pandemic have impacted UK tech, and the role the UK should play in influencing new technologies on the global stage.
The trade association represents nearly 1,000 members and its goal is to “ensure the UK is the best place for technology companies to locate and thrive”. Its member includes smaller startups and SMEs, along with larger corporates such as Amazon Web Services UK. In addition to engaging with the government on behalf of its members, techUK holds events, workshops and creates reports.
Eccie Newton, co-founder and CEO of Karma Kitchen, addresses some of the misconceptions surrounding dark kitchens, explains how the sites are “closer to a co-working space” and shares ways to minimise courier traffic in local areas.
Newton co-founded Karma Kitchen with her sister Gini in 2018 after struggling to find kitchen space for their corporate catering delivery company. The London-based firm buys industrial real estate in “underutilised areas” and converts them into multi-use kitchen spaces for food businesses. In 2020, the startup raised £252m from investors and today it has four operational dark kitchens – also known as ghost kitchens - with six more under construction.
Immigram CEO Anastasia Mirolyubova opens up for the first time about Slush’s controversial decision to award - then revoke - a €1m startup prize to her talent relocation company, following the outcry over Mirolyubova and her co-founder's Russian roots.
Mirolyubova co-founded Immigram in 2020 to assist IT and tech professionals with relocation across the world. The company is headquartered in London, where Mirolyubova has lived since 2016. In November 2022, Immigram scooped the top prize at the Slush 100 Pitching Competition. However, Slush faced fierce backlash for awarding the prize to a company founded by two Russian passport holders amid the country’s brutal invasion of Ukraine. Mirolyubova talks about the physical and emotional toll the situation had on her, which resulted in her receiving death threats, losing 7kg in weight, and avoiding social media. Away from Slush, Mirolyubova reveals which tech roles are in-demand, the staggering gender divide in visa applications, and Immigram’s plans for 2023.
Lucy Jung, CEO and co-founder of Charco Neurotech, discusses spinning out a medical device startup from academia, the science behind treating Parkinson’s disease with vibrations, balancing regulation with innovation and how devices like Elon Musk’s Neuralink could “maximise our brain”.
Jung, who has a background in design, co-founded Charco Neurotech in 2019, launching out of Imperial College London. It has secured more than $10m in investment for its non-invasive, pebble-shaped device that delivers vibrotactile stimulation to the chest to improve motor performance and alleviate gait freezing for people with Parkinson’s. It can be linked with an accompanying smartphone app to track symptoms and customise treatment. The device is currently used by 900 people, with a further 12,000 on its waiting list.
Tessa Clarke, CEO and co-founder of Olio, talks about the business model behind the food sharing app, the company’s plan to be the be the “Mailchimp of food redistribution”, organic international expansion and the plan to take on Facebook Marketplace by moving into second-hand items.
Clarke launched Olio, which lets people list surplus food and second-hand goods, in 2015. It has since attracted over 6.9 million users who have given away over 95 million portions of food. Listings on the circular economy app grew fivefold during the pandemic and the company has expanded beyond the UK to 63 countries. Olio, which has raised more than $50m in funding, has entered partnerships with businesses including Tesco and Pret. It has plans to rebrand later this year.
Mikela Druckman, CEO and co-founder of Greyparrot, explains how her company uses AI to identify and sort through “mountains” of waste, why legislation is key to reducing the volume of rubbish, and discusses the crackdown on greenwashing in the packaging supply chain.
London-headquartered Greyparrot was co-founded by Druckman in 2019. The company uses computer vision technology to analyse and sort rubbish into the right categories at waste facilities. It has raised more than $17m in funding and counts waste management companies such as Suez and Biffa among its customers. Druckman is a Global Future Council member at the World Economic Forum and was previously chief commercial officer at Blippar, where she worked on computer vision and augmented reality products.
Toby Mather, CEO of Lingumi, shares his first-hand account as a startup founder who scrambled to withdraw company funds from Silicon Valley Bank UK as the crisis unfolded.
The edtech startup held most of its funds with SVB UK. Like thousands of other startups, Lingumi worried whether it would be able to pay staff and invoices. Mather recounts his rollercoaster experience of the weekend that rocked UK tech, and his amazement at the "Dunkirk-style effort" in government to save the country’s tech startups. Elsewhere on the show, Mather talks about the impact of ChatGPT in education and the “healthy” discipline the tech downturn is creating for startups.
Lingumi is a smart tutoring platform that uses AI to create interactive courses for young learners. It has more than two million users, mostly in Asia, using the platform to learn how to read and speak languages. Prior to founding Lingumi, Mather studied modern languages at the University of Oxford, and worked as an EFL teacher, during which time he began developing the idea for Lingumi.
Iggy Bassi, founder and CEO of Cervest, talks about launching a startup to provide climate intelligence for the world’s assets, how smart industrial policy can work hand in hand with the private sector to reach net zero, the power and limits of data in combatting global warming, and why climate tech investors need to be in for the long haul.
Bassi, a serial entrepreneur, founded London-based Cervest in 2016 after his sustainable farm in West Africa was flattened by strong winds, causing millions of dollars in damage. Cervest’s platform uses AI to bring together disparate climate data and provide businesses and governments with insights about the climate risk to their physical assets. It has secured more than £32m in VC funding and went to market last year. Bassi has advised Fortune 500 companies and has been a featured speaker at Harvard University, COP26, World Bank and Tech Nation.
William Sachiti, the CEO and founder of the Academy of Robotics, explains whether ChatGPT will be integrated into companion robots, why mass-market autonomous cars won’t be on the road any time soon and how his company is disrupting package delivery with AI.
Sachiti is a serial entrepreneur and inventor who moved to the UK from Zimbabwe in the early 2000s. By his mid 30s he had set up and successfully exited three companies. He founded the Academy of Robotics in 2017, which has gone on to develop Europe’s first autonomous delivery vehicle for the road, Kar-go. The Academy of Robotics has also created self-driving technology used by the RAF and indoor helper robots for hospitals, currently being trialled at the NHS. Sachiti was named Disruptor of the Year by the Great British Entrepreneur Awards in 2021.
Volodymyr Levykin, the CEO and founder of Skyrora, talks about building a satellite “taxi service”, how space tech has become an asset in defending Ukraine, the potential of space tourism and the challenges surrounding commercial space travel.
Levykin, a Ukrainian-born tech entrepreneur, spent time working in IT in Silicon Valley before moving to Edinburgh to found rocket company Skyrora. Levykin used private funds to launch the company in 2017, which is building launch services for small satellites. Skyrora became the first company to complete a successful integrated rocket stage test in the UK since the 1970s, and has completed four suborbital rocket launches.
Dr Giorgia Longobardi, the co-founder and CEO of Cambridge GaN Devices, shares her experience spinning out a startup from the University of Cambridge, being a woman in STEM, developing energy-efficient microchips and why the UK government urgently needs to develop a semiconductor strategy.
Longobardi co-founded CGD, a fabless semiconductor company, in 2016. It is developing transistors that use gallium nitride (GaN) instead of silicon to power electronics, with the goal of making devices such as data centres more energy efficient. The Cambridge-headquartered company has raised more than $28m in funding.
Anne Boden, CEO and founder of digital bank Starling, talks about her journey taking on the big banks, being the “odd one out” in the world of finance, why VCs are overlooking female founders and why crypto is “lacking sufficient practical and moral purpose”.
Boden founded Starling Bank in 2014 after decades of working for some of the world’s biggest banks. Starling, which is an online-only bank, provides both business and current accounts. The unicorn fintech company has been profitable since 2021 and has 500,000 small business accounts. In 2018, Boden was awarded an MBE for services to financial technology.
Barney Wragg, CEO and founder of robotic kitchen automation startup Karakuri, talks about his time at chip giant Arm, the danger of semiconductor trade barriers, finding product-market fit, and how AI is creating more – not less – jobs.
Wragg founded Karakuri, a London-based robotics startup, in 2018. Its two main products are a robotic arm that serves personalised sushi dishes, and an automated fryer for chips. The London-based company has raised more than £13.5m in funding. Wragg spent time at Arm during the 1990s and has a background in physics and music, working at studios such as Universal and EMI.
Immersive Labs CEO and founder James Hadley discusses the dangers of generative AI like ChatGPT in cybersecurity, the lessons learned from laying off 10% of staff, and cracking the cyber skills shortage.
Hadley founded Immersive Labs, a Bristol-based cybersecurity training platform, in 2017. The company’s platform creates cyberattack simulations to teach organisations practical IT security skills. The company has raised $189m in funding. Prior to founding Immersive Labs, Hadley worked as an analyst and security consultant for British intelligence agency GCHQ.
Zilch co-founder and CEO, Philip Belamant, gets candid on disrupting the fintech sector, catapulting Zilch to double unicorn status and being the fastest growing company out of Europe and the UK. He gets into their American takeover, with a preregistration of over 150,000 customers ahead of their stateside launch based out of Miami. Belamant delves on the astounding growth of their customer base, going from 20,000 to 2.2 million customers in just 18 months. He gets honest on the difficult decisions they faced when deciding between the rapid onboarding of new customers versus quality of service of existing - something they now use AI for as they have expanded. Having lost out on funding at the beginning of the pandemic, Belamant talks in depth on what impact this had on the company and how they came back from that loss to now stand at a total of $339.3M in funding and a company value of more than $2bn.
Belamant is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO and Co-founder of the double unicorn fintech Zilch, recently valued at over $2bn. Before Zilch, Belamant founded, developed, and sold two other successful fintech ventures. The first provided value-added mobile payment services that grew to over 20 million users in 15 different countries across India, Africa, and Europe, which led Belamant to conceive and launch South Africa’s first cash-to-Mastercard system for Uber that became a top 40 fintech company. Belamant was named Entrepreneur of the Year for 2021 by the Great British Entrepreneur Awards for leading Zilch to the forefront of the changing payments landscape.
Brad Goodall is no stranger to the fintech industry, having worked for scale ups and start-ups for years before starting his own founder journey. He talks at length on the concept of Banked and how this is more than a new technology to combat fraud but will be a major shift in consumer behaviour. Goodall shares how they got the backing of Bank of America and what this will mean for their expansion into the American market. He talks about the importance of catering to your audience and educating your customer as a form of marketing. Goodall opens up about the price of talent in the current climate and how he’s navigated investing and growing the team on a global scale. He talks funding rounds and pitching and raising a total of £18.9m so far.
Goodall has worked with some of the biggest brands and names in technology and finance across Europe, the US, Australia and Asia. His previous business was 10x Future Technologies which he cofounded with ex Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins. His latest venture Banked burst onto the scene in 2020 to build a payments network to rival Visa and MasterCard. Goodall leads the company as CEO. Goodall lives in London with his wife and two small kids spending as much time outdoors and as close to the beach as they can.
Sho Sugihara recounts his experiences that inspired and led him to start Pave. He talks on the importance of passion in addition to having a great product and audience. Sugihara emphasises the necessity of listening to your customers and how he went one step further by living their experiences. This commitment to understanding his audience allowed Sugihara to grow his business to over half a million monthly customers. He opens up on what it means to have a team as passionate as yourself and how their combined ideas helped in the use of Tiktok that led to explosive growth for their brand.
Sugihara is Pave’s co-founder and CEO. Born in Kyoto he studied politics, psychology and sociology at the University of Cambridge. He received a BA from King’s College, where he focussed on informal economies and economic exclusion. Sugihara began his career working with NGOs across Latin America, implementing socially responsible economic solutions to reduce poverty. He then joined McKinsey & Company where he consulted global clients across the financial and healthcare service sectors on strategy and business. His experience in consulting and reading on economic exclusion led him to leave McKinsey in 2017 and co-found fintech firm Pave.
Gerald Chappell and Dr. Michelle He launched Fintern at the start of the pandemic, they get into how they had to take down advertising a few months before launch as too many people were signing up. With the intention to disrupt the consumer lending market, Chappell and He explain why their concept puts the customer at the heart of the company by catering loans to individual spending and not just based off a generic credit score. They talk about timing the launch of Fintern and their experiences in securing a licence and what they did to scale and secure funds during the pandemic and thereafter.
Chappell, CEO and Co-founder: Previously Partner at McKinsey & EY; Led McKinsey’s Digital Lending and Credit Analytics solutions globally. Led 200+ quants developing Artificial Intelligence models
He, COO and Co-founder: Previously Director at EY. Global delivery lead for C-suite at top European banks (team size up to 1500); FinTech advisor; Ph.D in machine leaning
Mathew Prior gets candid on the concept of TrustedHouseSitters and why they’re different in more than one way to Airbnb. Making sure they weren’t just another travel app, Prior talks about how they actively built a likeminded community passionate about pets, travel and being environmentally conscious. He gets into the bones of the business and how they ended up with an immensely large American user base. Prior highlights what it means to engage your community and how that, for them, massively contributed to the success of their business. Recently closing a $10m Series A round, Prior shares future plans for TrustedHouseSitters and what a US expansion will look like.
Prior is a successful and highly respected global travel and leisure leader with significant experience across multiple industry sectors, business models and geographies. He has led and grown some of the most iconic experiential leisure brands across the globe, ranging from Crystal Ski, the UK’s largest ski tour operator, Le Boat, the European leader in self-drive boating vacations and Sunsail & The Moorings, the worldwide leader in yacht charter vacations based in the USA. As a portfolio Managing Director at Travelopia, Prior also co-led the buyout of TUI Group’s niche leisure businesses.
Prior balances clear strategic thinking and decision-making with a robust approach to strategy execution in international organisations. He has led both high growth businesses and those requiring the strong leadership of a performance turnaround, harnessing the power of digital technology to deliver new and innovative customer experiences to drive growth.
His focus now is on scaling TrustedHousesitters globally to fulfil its potential to disrupt the vacation pet care market.
Yorick Naeff delves on taking over as CEO of BUX from co-founder, Nick Bortot, to how he’s implementing expansion and bringing Bortot’s vision to life. As a neobroker that operates across Europe, Naeff gets into how culture and regulation have shaped their strategies in other countries and found having people on the ground helped immensely with getting to know their audience. He talks about education and support being at the foundation of their company, especially with more people turning to trading as a second means of income, and how that has helped build community groups within their user base. Naeff speaks on the value of acquiring Blockport to build out their crypto offering as well as venturing into NFTs. He shares his perspective of coming into a market early versus late and what the value of competition is in regard to market share.
Naeff also discusses where they have spent funding after closing their recent round at £80m bringing Bux to a grand total of £115.8 in funding.
Naeff is the CEO and co-founder of BUX, Europe’s fastest growing neobroker. After starting his career in investment banking, he made his way to neobrokerage as one of the first hires at BUX. From day one, Naeff was responsible for the mobile broker’s operations and during this time he designed a business made to scale.
Naeff believes that to shape the future of investing, fintechs need to understand the motivations of future generations. As a millennial, he personally understands the changing relationship that younger generations have with money and is applying this next gen mindset to tailor BUX products and services to a generation that is looking for better ways to build future wealth. His vision for BUX is to not only build the tools that people need to start investing, but to ensure that customers are also empowered with the knowledge to build up wealth for later.
Having successfully contributed to growing BUX from pre-live start-up to an insanely growing scale-up, Naeff is very connected to the start-up community. Naeff is also an angel investor and has helped multiple early-stage companies.
As many start-ups grow at a rapid pace so do their teams - Asha Haji highlights the vast differences of a company of ten to a company of 30 and the missing parts that usually end up in a disconnect in relationships. She puts importance on implementing learning and development elements, and providing support and training for employees growing with the business. Giving insight into the advice and learnings from mentors of Framework, she explains how they help shape the curriculum and why it is important for users to have founders from different size companies as well as from all around the world.
Talking funding, Haji explains why crowdfunding is not for them and after closing a seed round of £2m, she shares on her experience on the way investors view women versus their counterparts.
Haji is a WashU computer scientist turned Harvard MBA who has spent her career developing transformative experiences at the intersection of people, technology and education. After her first chapter as a developer, she spent nearly seven years in a variety of leadership roles at EF Education First, the world's leading international education company, before joining start-ups in 2017. Haji loves fostering cultures that are inclusive and highly collaborative, where everyone is empowered to do their very best work. In her spare time, you can find her sneaking in early morning HIIT workouts and listening to NPR podcasts.
Ricky Knox gives a behind the scenes look into what it took to launch a challenger bank during a time where people laughed at the idea of trying to disrupt the banking sector and the giant banks that dominated it. He gets honest on the difficulties of raising money and the challenges faced in getting past the gatekeepers in acquiring a banking license. As a serial entrepreneur and investor, Knox takes from his wealth of experience and knowledge to give a brutally honest perspective on what founders should and shouldn’t be doing, from knowing when to sell to accepting defeat and letting go of a failing business. Life after Tandem bank, Knox talks investment and the two industries he has his eye on outside of fintech that are sure to bring about what he calls, the internet 2.0.
Ricky Knox is a serial entrepreneur and investor. Ricky is Chairman of ForMore, an ethical wealth management platform. Ricky is the Founder of Tandem Bank (and CEO from inception to July 2021), an app-based bank that aims to revolutionise banking to save people and planet. App-operated bank Tandem was conceived after Ricky and his co-founder Matt Cooper saw the opportunity for a purpose driven bank. Tandem is currently focused on helping the UK reach Net Zero 2050 by leveraging customers savings to help customers to finance environmental improvements to their home, transport and lives.
Ricky has helped to create a series of technology disruptors in Fintech and telecoms before founding Tandem Bank. He co-founded GSM Systems (a global mobile telephony network services provider) in 2003 to recycle mobile networks into the developing world and is a founder of Small World Financial Services Group, a global money transfer business with over £5bn of transfers and one of the world’s largest international money transfer operators. In 2012, he co-founded Azimo, a social digital payments platform that enables simple, fast and secure remittances to 198 countries around the world and remained as Non-Executive Director until 2018.
Ricky has been investing in Fintech businesses since 2003, and has backed other notable Fintech businesses such as Curve, Comply Advantage, Vitesse, Liberis and Modulr. He holds an MBA from INSEAD and a first class honors in Economics from Bristol University.
Matthew Hodgson and Amandine Le Pape detail the thought process of creating a product that isn’t just another blueprint of messaging services like Slack and WhatsApp. With a clear goal and audience in mind, it took them by surprise the sudden pivot they made before even launching Element and how this has defined their niche in the messaging matrix market. Hodgson and Le Pape talk about the importance of funding when you don’t need money, as they found out the hard way when they became very near to calling bankruptcy on their business. On the flip side, Hodgson and Le Pape open up on the expansion of Element and why they chose to hire talent across 23 different countries, doubling the team from 60 to 120. They also explain how they came to acquire Gitter, a messaging service, through their associations with GitLab’s founder and how Element has gone on to raise over $48m in funding.
Hodgson is also technical co-founder (and a Guardian) of The Matrix.org Foundation. Hodgson has been building communication solutions for well over a decade and has a BA in Computer Science and Physics from the University of Cambridge. He came up with the idea of Matrix with Le Pape in 2013 while they were running Amdocs’ Unified Communication unit. Together they created a new secure ecosystem that makes real-time-communication as universal and interoperable as email.
Le Pape is also co-founder (and a Guardian) of The Matrix.org Foundation, the open source project that publishes the Matrix open standard for secure, decentralised, real-time communication.
Le Pape leads operations across the entire company. With over 10 years’ experience in mobile services and telecommunications, Le Pape is an engineer that previously set up and led product management for the Unified Communications line of business within global communications company Amdocs. She has a degree in telecommunications engineering from Ecole Supérieure de Chimie, Physique et Electronique de Lyon as well as an EMBA from ESC Rennes.
Emilie Vanpoperinghe speaks candidly on marketing and branding as well as the growth of Oddbox pre Covid and during Covid. From a point of not seeing the desired growth she wanted, to having a surge of subscriptions that resulted in Vanpoperinghe having to take down the company website for two months during the pandemic. Oddbox has become a staple name in a climate where sustainability is at the forefront and Vanpoperinghe talks about how their learnings in marketing, branding and growth led them to where they are.
Vanpoperinghe has over 15 years' project and team management experience in Fortune 500 companies (3M and BT) across the globe. She was previously Director of Finance & Operations for an international NGO set up by the Nike Foundation and working in developing countries to empower adolescent girls to reach their potential. Before that, she worked close to 10 years in finance in the corporate sector in France, India and the UK.
Vanpoperinghe is originally from northern France and has been in the UK for the past 10 years. Her grandparents were potato farmers and so she knows what it takes to grow fresh produce.
Richard Mabey gives an honest account of learning through the process of pitching for funding and how his bullish take on competition has led Juro to recently close a series B round of £23m. Detailing his own experience, Mabey talks at length on the importance of choosing the right VCs and explains how it was his own customers that introduced investors in the United States to Juro.
Mabey is a former corporate lawyer with Freshfields and spent time with LegalZoom before founding Juro in 2016. He holds an MBA from INSEAD and is a fellow of the RSA, and adviser to The Entrepreneurs' Network and an alum of the Georgetown Leadership Seminar. As co-founder and CEO of Juro, Mabey has expanded the business to over 85 countries and grown its customer base to well over 6,000 users.
Alex Latham talks about the amazing growth Chip has experienced, especially during lockdown and through 2021. From raising an extraordinary £30m from crowdfunding alone, to how engaging with their investors and complete transparency on strategy and risks has led them to having the second largest fintech shareholders community in the UK and one of the largest in Europe. Chip’s investment into marketing has allowed them to utilise their investment community as a second channel of awareness as well us seeing considerable growth in their users from their referral program.
Before Chip, Latham held Head of Marketing roles within tech and the music industry. He specialises in the art of viral, and outside of work he can be found covered in paint, decorating, or sitting on a rowing machine.
Radha Vyas shares how she was able to grow her business in just three years to have a turnover of over £20m. She had four offers on the table with a £10m Series A round going into lockdown - Covid hit and the offers were pulled, she lost 95% of her business overnight. Five months later the company went into administration. Vyas remortgaged her house and bought back the assets to relaunch the business in 2021. She's recently closed a multimillion-pound funding round and is on target to hit £20m turnover once again in year one.
Vyas has both travel and entrepreneurship running through her veins – so much so it was almost inevitable that she’d end up founding Flash Pack, an adventure travel platform that connects like-minded solo travellers. Bootstrapping the company from back bedroom startup to a £20m turnover in four years with no external investment, Flash Pack has transformed the tired and outdated image of group tours with an aspirational travel and lifestyle brand.