Kyle is the Co-Founder of pb+j , an award-winning eCommerce growth agency, named after a sandwich. Over the past decade, he alongside his Co-Founder Tom, and a crew of Jammers, have helped 100's of mid-market, founder-led DTC brands pour gasoline on the fire of their first $1mil+ to reach new heights of $10mil, $20mil, $30mil+, all on Shopify (Plus). Kyle is also a very proud dad of two, partner to an incredibly talented classical soprano, and a Canadian currently based in the British countrysid...
Nov 06, 2023•55 min
Kota is building a platform to help companies manage employee benefits and insurance. Issuing benefits to employees involves a magnitude of tools that are often offline and manual, making it difficult for both HR teams and new employees! Kota can offer cover across 30 countries in Europe to streamline their employees’ experience. Traditionally employees would have to fill in forms and HR teams would engage in back and forth with brokers, meaning insurance policies and pensions would take days or...
Oct 30, 2023•42 min
About Adrian Fagerlund As Chief Revenue Officer and Co-Founder of Linkby, Adrian oversees global business development, sales, and revenue growth across its key markets of Australia, US, UK, Canada and SEA. He leads Linkby’s global sales team and is passionate about building and fostering high-performance teams that drive scalable business growth with customer experience at the heart. Adrian has extensive digital media and publisher sales experience. Prior to Linkby, he held various sales leaders...
Oct 24, 2023•50 min
Ben's journey began at NatWest, in treasury & capital management. He then ventured into the fast-paced realm of RBS' investment bank, focusing on the intricate world of interest & FX risk management and became a corporate bank director, where he led the banking relationships with enterprise and SME customers. A change of scenery brought him to Barclays, where he lent his expertise to their SME Remediation programs. In 2013, Ben decided to pivot, launching his own FCA-regulated advisory c...
Oct 16, 2023•42 min
David Cava is an AI engineering manager and a musician and song writer. Even though he studied a Master in Aerospace Engineering (Imperial College), music is his guilty pleasure. Right after his master's he started travelling to Miami while working as an engineer in London, to write with some of the best songwriters in the Latin music scene. Now, he is pursuing his musical career as a songwriter and solo artist with millions of plays in his songs and collaborating with some of the biggest names ...
Oct 09, 2023•1 hr
About AbbeyCross AbbeyCross is developing a wholesale marketplace to improve transparency, compliance, pricing, and service levels for payments to Emerging Market (EM) countries. Historically, a lack of relevant market data and a fragmented and inefficient wholesale market has meant that margins for payments to EM countries can be over 5%. AbbeyCross’ product roadmap has been developed through a process of co-creation with banks and EM payment providers, with a focus on benefiting the whole ecos...
Oct 02, 2023•59 min
Harjas and Lucas discuss the story behind Shares, a social investment app. Shares aims to connect users with their existing network and bridge the education gap in investing, by allowing them to communicate and share insights about their investment decisions within the app. Harjas discusses how Shares was founded, the infrastructure that sits behind it and its European expansion plans. About Harjas Singh Harjas Singh has been building digital financial products and services used by millions of u...
Sep 26, 2023•31 min
Tom and Lucas discuss the importance of leadership hires to help start-ups and scale-ups win. Startups often struggle with slow or inaccurate executive search campaigns that can take 120 days to close plus on average in Europe another 90 days to get the person in a seat, at times with the wrong profile and with a sizeable fee (around 30% of a competitive package) being paid out to external recruiters. Introed helps solve this problem by providing start-up founders with a self-serve toolkit that ...
Sep 18, 2023•58 min
Nicola and Lucas discuss the importance of startups building a strong legal foundation, a team which complements each other and what investors look for from startups from a governance perspective. About Nicola McConville Nicola is a Partner in Mishcon de Reya’s Corporate Department with particular experience in advising companies and investors on funding rounds from seed through to exit. Nicola advises startups on how to structure investments effectively, particularly in sectors like health tech...
Sep 11, 2023•48 min
Ken and Lucas discuss Ken’s experience working in commercial roles at fintechs and banks, his current focus of building a VC for SaaStock and the intersection between VC, sales and partnerships. About Ken Thomas Ken is a New Yorker building a venture capital fund here in London. He also helps companies exit and build commercial partnerships. Before coming to London, he worked in traditional banking with banks like HSBC. Since moving to London in 2020 during the pandemic, he worked for two fintec...
Sep 04, 2023•31 min
About Adheeb Rifdi Adheeb is a sales and revenue operations leader, having worked at multiple scale-ups including Flock and Mulesoft. At Flock, Adheeb initially led sales before aligning all revenue-generating functions towards company OKRs, while at Mulesoft in a revenue operations role. At Mulesoft, Adheeb helped organisations change and innovate faster by making it easy to connect the world’s applications, data, and devices through the use of APIs as an account executive. About Flock Flock is...
Aug 28, 2023•31 min
About Sarah Hiraki As Smartly.io’s Head of Creative for EMEA & APAC, Sarah collaborates with the world’s biggest advertisers to drive creative innovation and #worksmartly to reach audiences with more agile, meaningful and effective ads. At Smartly, she is known for her work with clients on short form video, dynamic creative workflows, and elevating brands in emerging channels. A distinctly digital creative, Sarah is a specialist in an ultra-nimble creative approach pioneered with clients lik...
Aug 22, 2023•45 min
Ben Stocken Ben is the founder and Managing Director of West Peak. His work over the last 20 years has enabled teams and businesses to achieve far more than they believed was possible before they met him. His background as an adventurer, performance coach for England Rugby and subsequent people and organisational development roles across industries have given him an unrivalled skillset when it comes to rapidly enabling groups to become high performing teams. Today he leads the fastest growing te...
Aug 14, 2023•45 min
Eva Piskadlo is a lifestyle Influencer and Blogger based in London. Eva has worked with an array of luxury hotels and restaurants worldwide, including the Edition Hotel group, The Mandarin Oriental, Belmond Hotel Group, The Four Seasons, The Royal Mansour and MGM Hotels. She has also partnered with exciting brands and tourism boards such as Lavazza for their iconic Wimbledon and Royal Ascot sponsorships, Go Turkiye, Visit Malta, San Pellegrino for their BAFTA partnership, and BMW for their ‘Livi...
Aug 07, 2023•29 min
About Superscript Superscript provides tech insurance for the bold, brave and ambitious. Based in London's square mile, Superscript has rebuilt insurance - driven by transparent, digital processes, with an expert human touch when you need it - so startups, scaleups and grown ups can go all in on growth. As a venture-backed Lloyd's broker with specialists across key tech verticals like digital assets, fintech, medtech and AI, they know what it takes. About Mark Robinson Mark Robinson is UK and Eu...
Jul 31, 2023•37 min
Stephanie and Lucas discuss Recurly, the world of subscriptions and enterprise marketing, focusing on customer retention, streamlining user experience and taking a multi-channel approach towards marketing. About Recurly Recurly offers a comprehensive suite of services that covers the entire spectrum of subscription management, from acquisition to retention to scaling. With Recurly, businesses can optimise their subscription growth strategy, achieve industry-leading revenue recovery, and signific...
Jul 24, 2023•30 min
Joe and Lucas discuss how to scale recruitment companies while prioritising customer experience, collaboration and maintaining the right values. Joe discusses the importance of recruitment companies proving their worth during difficult economic cycles, the challenges the hospitality industry has faced post-Brexit and the importance of businesses focusing on profit (or revenue if they've just raised). Joe Curtis is a co-founder of 11 Investments and Recruiter Labs. 11 Investments is a seed-stage ...
Jul 17, 2023•41 min
Eva and Lucas discuss the challenges faced by early-stage founders, the importance of building out a personal brand and the Block Dojo incubator program. About Eva Dobrzanska Eva Dobrzanska helps early-stage founders grow their businesses and raise capital better with strategic advice on equity fundraising strategies, investor outreach & targeting, scaling a business and expanding internationally, and accessing the right funding. Eva is also a top LinkedIn voice and frequently publishes usef...
Jul 11, 2023•28 min
Ammar and Lucas discuss Finalrentals, which enables small and medium car hire companies to transform their operations and distribute via online channels across the world. The car rental market is fragmented, with local SMEs representing more than 50% of the market. Finalrentals and its franchisees now serve more than 32 countries, bringing low-cost car rental solutions to consumers from Wales, to the UAE and USA and many more. Franchisees receive access to a CRM system that is specifically desig...
Jul 03, 2023•38 min
Stuart and Lucas discuss how RiskTalk collects conversational data to help build safer and more efficient workspaces. Conversational data has many advantages relative to paper checklists such as the ability to measure vocal data points such as tone, confidence and glottal movements. The casual manner in which data is collected allows management to identify risks that are discussed amongst team members before paperwork is submitted, and also to provide proactive support for team members that migh...
Jun 26, 2023•41 min
Ray and Lucas discuss how Ufurnish.com aims to solve the problem of finding furniture online by aggregating retailers into one platform and providing valuable consumer insights. Inspired by the likes of Rightmove and Auto Trader, ufurnish.com operates as a marketplace, working with leading brands to serve consumers across the UK. ufurnish.com is the UK's leading search and comparison website for home furniture and furnishings. Used by over 8m UK consumers, ufurnish.com brings 100+ furniture reta...
Jun 19, 2023•53 min
Firat and Lucas discuss Large Language Models (LLM), which powers ChatGPT and Bard. They discuss trends in the space, notably the emergence of industry specific LLMs that can dive into deep levels of detail within their particular vertical e.g. a radiology specific LLM that assists with diagnosis, and the fact that LLMs will lead to higher expectations from the workforce e.g. one analyst may be able to complete the work of three analysts by instructing LLMs to build and maintain financial models...
Jun 12, 2023•39 min
James and Lucas discuss strategic communications and the importance of understanding people's motivations and addressing their challenges, both in the business and political spaces. They discuss the importance of the consistent repetition of simple messages in order to build trust, a multi-channel approach to address different audiences and how to ensure firms don't get pigeonholed, that is just being recognised for one business line or aspect of their service. About James Horrax James is a stra...
Jun 06, 2023•1 hr 4 min
Enis and Lucas discuss 500 Emerging Europe and their work investing in local entrepreneurs to build global businesses. 500 invest in entrepreneurs who think globally and are willing to move to the US to build businesses for the higher tech markets in the west. Enis explains how 500 actively source and build up their funnel to have an advantage when it comes to deal flow, how ChatGPT is increasing the quality of work and the attractiveness of B2B startups when tackling the US market. Enis Hulli i...
May 29, 2023•36 min
Pablo and Lucas discuss the importance of accepting local payment methods when expanding into new markets in Latin America, particularly Brazil, whilst managing currency risk and maximising sales. Pablo shares valuable insights for businesses entering the Brazilian market, emphasizing the importance of strategic partnerships and leveraging influencers for marketing success. Pablo Klein founded Primefy, a cross-border payment solution supported by the Department for Business & Trade of the UK...
May 22, 2023•41 min
Alia and Lucas discuss how RegTech companies and AI have helped fintechs and the banking industry to scale whilst mitigating risks. Alia explains the fundamentals behind the types of due diligence financial institutions are required to complete, what types of responsibilities institutions and compliance individuals face and the importance of ensuring that RegTech promotes financial inclusion. Alia is a qualified risk and compliance professional with over a decades' experience working with global...
May 17, 2023•46 min
Alex discusses his latest project Appeggio, and how it was inspired by previous banking and IT experiences gained whilst building multiple neobanks and growing multiple traditional banks and corporations. Appeggio aims to democratise enterprise grade development for everyone, through its no-code platform, unlocking code reuse, multi-platform deployment and server-less infrastructure. Alex Twigg is a fintech pioneer, who we think holds the record for helping to launch the most neobanks in the wor...
May 09, 2023•1 hr
Jake and James discuss how they founded Epigroup and grew it to become a leading professional services firm. They discuss the importance of focusing on the how during project delivery, investing in the right employees and culture, as well as how they provide risk management and assurance services to help to improve health and safety in businesses in Australia. Epigroup was founded in 2012 by two friends, Jake Cole and James Teakle, with a vision to simplify workplace health and safety (WHS) and ...
Apr 24, 2023•59 min
David Foreman is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Praetura Ventures, the award-winning, Manchester-based VC which has raised £140m since 2019 and invested in 50 businesses to date. Outside of capital, Praetura Ventures is known for providing More Than Money to exceptional early-stage founders across tech and life sciences, including Northern success stories like Peak, Culture Shift, XR Games and BankiFi. An active and outspoken voice, David regularly provides comment and opinion on VC and ...
Apr 18, 2023•59 min
Cam Sinclair founded Ammo, a fast-paced growth marketing team geared towards working with tech startups, after an extensive career in the political sphere. Cam and Lucas discuss the similarities between marketing and political campaigning, diving into a number of different strategies that are used across both.
Mar 28, 2023•36 min
