Scaling, Failing and Prevailing

Lockdown Update by Adelina Chalmers and James Parton

Mat Clayton co-founder of Mixcloud joins us to share their fascinating story of breaking all the startup "golden rules” preached in startup blogs, books and podcasts. They went a decade without a CEO, they built their own infrastructure, and all whist never raising a penny in venture. The result? 20 million monthly users. In this conversation we learn how, and much much more.

Our conversation covers communicating and protecting the company vision and culture. The fear of questioning the tech team, the tech team not sharing concerns or issues, and people avoiding difficult conversations. Creating safe spaces isn’t enough, commandos, infantry, police and the importance of joint design. We finish off with accountability and objectives and tips for non technical founders. Related links: https://www.troubleshootingagile.com/ http://conversationaltransformation.com https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.codinghorror.com/commandos-infantry-and-police/amp/

We wrap up 2019 - and our first full year of the podcast - in the perfect way by chatting to Tim Robinson, CEO of TechEast. We learn all about the state of Tech in East Anglia, covering how TechEast represents the region and lobbies government, what’s going on and where is hot, talent & skills, the role of Universities, and we debate if the region needs a stronger "Tech identity”. Remember to pass the pod on to friends and colleagues, and have a great break - see you in 2020.

Patrick - who first appeared in Episode 13 - joins us for a deep dive into his startup, Sano Genetics. We cover entrepreneurship at The University of Cambridge, their experiences since attending the billion pound scale-up challenge event, how they are building intimate relationships with their customers, their duty of care with their user's data, and how they will continue to deliver that at scale.

Jérome joins us to walk through his experiences as a student entrepreneur and navigating two successful exits as founder of Cambridge Nanosystems and Nymbly. Now an investor, we discuss the pitfalls of student entrepreneurship and put to the sword the myth that entrepreneurship is cool. We highlight the importance of self awareness, developing your skills as your company scales, and so much more!

Experienced serial entrepreneur Steve Barlow joins us to share his learnings from working on the first video phone at Cambridge Consultants some 8 years before the iPhone launched, how Steve told Apple his company was too small for them to work with which directly led to his first trade sale and a deal with Apple to supply chips for the video iPod. We then dig into the challenge of balancing solving specific problems with thinking big and creating a compelling vision for investors.

In this episode we reprise the recent Cambridge Start-up Billion Pound Scale-up Challenge event to drill into the three biggest challenges facing startups. You’ll hear the advice given by Poppy Gustafsson - CEO Darktrace, Jamie Urquhart - Co-founder ARM, Monika Biddulph - Independent Consultant with additional extended discussion from Adelina and James. * Challenge 1 from Patrick Short, co-founder Sano Genetics - How can you grow your customer base without spending millions on marketing? * Challenge 2 from Tony Ballardie, co-founder Capito.ai - We got great feedback in our sales pitch, but it didn't lead to a contract, why? * Challenge 3 from Dan Cowell, CEO Psyomics - How should we go to market? Direct to consumer, via partners, what is the best path? If you wanted to hear more from the panelists, you can dip in to our archive - Elly was episode 2, Jamie was episode 4, and Monika was in episode 5.

Thayer joins us to discuss building diverse teams, the do's and dont's of recruitment, interview no no’s, creating a positive inclusive culture and company values. The conversation tackles representation on company boards and senior management setting the tone, a self policing culture where inappropriate behaviour is called out, hiring people like us, lazy filters on job ads, and ads vs head hunting. That’s a lot of insight packed into just 51 minutes!

Set to the backdrop of a career walk through, Jon share’s his tips from how he first broke into Tech. Once in, we learn how by being unafraid to ask he opened powerful doors, and then built out from there, super charging his network. We chat about holistic relationships and loops, an American attitude of paying it forward, and simple tips to help you filter connection requests. Finally when you have the guy that has been involved in pretty much every accelerator in Europe over the past decade, we do talk about incubators and accelerators, and what the future looks like!

In our first show focused on marketing we cover so much, including the wall of indifference - why should people care about your product, clarity on your audience, researching your market, feedback loops with customers, the language of tribes, identifying and engaging influencers, content marketing and establishing thought leadership.

Wireless Industry Partnership CEO Caroline Lewko joins Adelina and James to chat about her work with Corporates supporting their open innovation strategies and software developer engagements. We chat about what good looks like, common traps, and community building in both tech and the local neighbourhood.

Episode 8 In a wide-ranging conversion, we learn about Andy's role as Pro-Vice Chancellor of Enterprise and Business Relations at Cambridge University, the local Cambridge ecosystem, the programs across the University to support Entrepreneurship and how it commercialises its research. If that was not enough, Andy highlights the work across the University that is exciting him, and we even get to cover Brexit and its predicted impact on the University.

Episode 7 We are joined by Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner at Balderton Capital. We tap into his vast experience of building companies in the US and Europe to cover paying it forward, celebrating ambition and success, and being open about failure. We move on to talk about “The Boffin Fallacy”, the various paths open to start ups, Suranga’s personal challenges & learnings, and so much more.

Episode 6 Hiring the right people, especially after fund raising, is one of the biggest challenges facing startup founders. You face Intense competition for great candidates and you are desperate to have more resource available immediately, but get it wrong and you could destroy the progress you have made. No pressure, then! We chat to recruitment expert Katherine Wiid about the pitfalls and best practice of writing compelling and inclusive job ads, interviewing and candidate assessment.

Episode 5 In this episode we try something a little bit different, hosting a live de-brief with startup founder Anton Lokhmotov who was seeking a break through meeting with ARM Exec Monika Biddulph as he was trying to sell to ARM a solution he knew they needed. We bring them together face to face for the first time and unpack the experience to discover their insights and learn the perspectives of both sides of buying from a startup and selling to a corporate.

Episode 4 Jamie Urquhart joins Adelina and James to chat about ARM - one of Cambridge’s most famous technology companies. This fascinating conversation covers the ARM founding story, product development, market positioning, customer centricity, company culture, going public, Cambridge Black Hole thinking, and so much more!

Episode 3 Adelina and James are joined by Dimitar Stanimiroff, founder of Heresy, and ex-Head of Europe for Stack Overflow. Dimitar runs us through when is the right time to hire your first salespeople, what a modern sales organisation looks like, and how to adopt a Silicon Valley style data-driven sales approach. You can listen to Dimitar’s Heresy Podcast here: https://soundcloud.com/heresyhq

Episode 2 Adelina and James are joined by Elly Hardwick, Chief Digital Officer of UBS, to help us de-code how startups can effectively sell into Corporates. Elly has enjoyed an impressive career including founding a FinTech startup as well as holding senior executive roles in major banks. Therefore Elly has the perspective of sitting on both sides of the table in those sales discussions. The conversation includes "you had a great meeting, but then all you got is silence, what happened?", how to map an organisation - who are the key people to meet & how to research what is important to them, alternative ways to make inroads into a corporate, hiring Advisors who promise a route in to big customers, why sell to a Corporates at all, and when is the right time to hire your first sales person.

Episode 1: In the first episode Adelina and James chat about their motivation for launching the Podcast and about how it will develop over time. They then move on and discuss insights gathered from the recent Billion Pound Scale-up Challenge event organised by Adelina and hosted at The Bradfield Centre. The conversation includes diversity on conference panels, founders selling internally to their own employees, hiring corporate engineers into start up environments, politics & psychological safety, product development being led by sales, and focus.