Podcasts about techstars london

Cu Vlad Caluș sau Minimalistu aș fi putut vorbi despre multe și mi-ar fi făcut la fel de multă plăcere, pentru că este unul dintre acei parteneri de conversație care te uimesc continuu și de la care ai de învățat de la începutul până la finalul discuției.Vlad este antreprenor, investitor, dar și educator autodidact. Este unul dintre creatorii Planable, este alumni Forbes 30 Sub 30 și Techstars London și, pe lângă toate astea, urmează să se pensioneze în 2026, la vârsta de 30 de ani, pentru a petrece mai mult timp alături de familia lui, pentru a călători și pentru a-i ajuta pe alții să devină independenți financiar.Așa că i-am propus să discutăm despre bani în cuplu. Despre investiții, sisteme de gândire și de management financiar, despre cum cheltuim și economisim în doi, dar și despre cum ar trebui să ne gândim viitorul atunci când suntem un cuplu sau o familie. E un episod foarte util, care o să îți placă! Iată câteva idei pentru care merită să dai play chiar acum:

At age 20, Xenia built a digital marketing agency serving powerhouse clients including Coca-Cola. As Xenia expanded her company she started running into problems, inspiring her to start her own business venture. Xenia is now the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams. Planable supports brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Join us to hear how Xenia leverages product-led content to grow her business. Xenia was recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She is now the CEO at Planable. Tune in to hear Xenia's amazing story… 1:17 – Overview of Planable 3:11 - Workflow problems at the social media agency + the Solution 5:09 – The journey… 0 to 1000 7:17 - Fundraising & Break-Even points 8:29 – Product-led content and SEO 11:48 – All about intent! 13:11 – Unique content based on customer data 15:04 – Leveraging data for a compelling story 17:09 – Sharing stories through case studies & ebooks 17:53 – Over-experimenting, doubling down, and letting go 21:10 – Autopsies for your experiments 22:47 – Favorite growth tool (Superhuman) and favorite book (Stop Overthinking) Resources: Connect with Xenia Muntean Facebook: Xenia Muntean Website & Trial: Planable.io Discount Code: Growth30 (30% off paid plans for 3 months) Xenia's Favorite Book: Stop Overthinking by Stephen Scott or Stop Overthinking! By Daisy Kinge Xenia's Favorite Tool: Superhuman ————————- If you enjoyed this episode, please RATE / REVIEW and SUBSCRIBE to ensure you never miss an episode. Connect with Dennis Brown  AskDennisBrown.com LinkedIn Twitter Instagram [Free Giveaways]

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets. (Episode in English - live recording during cc: Nights in Bucharest) Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 4,000 teams at brands like Jaguar, Land Rover, Viber, and World Food Program. Prior to launching Planable, she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. Gelecek etkinliklerimizden haberdar olmak için bültenimize abone olun: https://www.getcced.com/#CTA You can reach us through our website ( getcced.com ) or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli, Rina Onur and Arin Ozkula.

Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o. she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams, and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing. Learn More About Xenia - Click Here

Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o. she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams, and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing. Learn More About Xenia - Click Here

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Xenia Muntean. Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 years old she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated from Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing. More About Xenia Muntean: The People of Marketing Podcast Get 50% off two months of Planable using code 'DUCTTAPE50' at check out Take The Marketing Assessment: Marketingassessment.co This episode is brought to you Planable and the Hubspot Podcast Network.

Xenia Muntean is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o., she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia joins Ștefan Koritar in a friendly and honest discussion about content marketing and building Planable, a platform that allows agencies and social media marketers to collaborate with their clients. She offers us deep insights on Planable's early days in Cluj-Napoca, on the fact that getting customers, building a team and the co-founders relationship were the main challenges encountered prior to the first founding round, on Planable's main functions and functionalities, and on how saying “No” and risking to lose customers was a major decision in developing Planable as a product. Xenia also gives us a glimpse into the Planable's future and her life outside of being a tech entrepreneur and a start-up founder. Xenia Muntean has been nominated on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. She graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and she took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She is also a writer, as she published a book – "The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams", and the podcast host of "People of Marketing". Having her on the Techtalk podcast was inspiring. That is why this episode is also a call to action to all the Techtalk listeners who are invited to send us names of women that are building great things in business and in the tech community, in order to have them as a guest, because we believe that a greater number of women in business would change the game for the better. Tune in to learn more about:

Comments, likes and shares are great for boosting visibility and increasing engagement but that doesn't necessarily mean more conversions. Social media success is not an exact science but done right it has massive potential for lead generation. Join Matt as he talks to Xenia Muntean about the million dollar question - how to create social media that converts? Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable at 20, she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated from Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams, and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing.   Connect with Xenia Muntean LinkedIn  Planable Facebook Planable Instagram Planable Twitter   Links to other platforms where this podcast is available Apple Podcasts Stitcher Spotify

Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o. she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams, and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing. Learn More About Xenia - Click Here

In this episode, Conor & Stef are joined by Eamonn Carey, the Managing Director of Techstars London, to discuss all things running and work-life balance.  As an early stage investor, Eamonn has a hectic schedule of calls, meetings, & pitches.. so it is no surprise that things can get pretty stressful. Eamonn picked up running just over a year ago and since then he hasn't looked back. He sees it as his chance to get away from his desk, mute his calls/emails, and be one with his music and the world outside of his office. Eamonn's story is easy to relate to and shows the power running has when looking to build a positive work-life balance in a busy world. Enjoy :) Download Lupa here - https://wearelupa.page.link/X3q2

Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o. she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated from Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing. Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction for Xenia and Planable. 4:55 How Planable is different from Hootsuite & Buffer or Asana & Monday 06:33 Instagram Scheduling on Planable 7:33 Everything you need to understand about a marketing product launch journey of Planable from BetaPage to Product Hunt, & App Sumo. 9:50 Is App Sumo better than Product Hunt for kickstart your product in the marketing domain at the early stage? 13:40 Where Planable Fits in your Marketing Mix? 15:25 How 2020 shaped Planable Growth and how they scaled up amid pandemic? 18:54 One thing Xenia from Planable looks forward to the most in Hiring. Be prepared for your next Interview. 24:36 How Miruna Dragomir Ex-Uber & Ex-Oracle helped shape content marketing strategy at Planable. 25:50 Everything about Social Teams 100 List from Planable 29:40 How one hackathon propelled a Social Media Agency to a Marketing Software Product Company. 33:40 Why starting your startup in the early 20s is a good idea 34:40 When should you start thinking about Forbes 30 under 30 or other milestones on your startup Journey 38:40 What's next for Planable in 2021? 40:40 Special Announcement for Agency Listeners.

Xenia Muntean Xenia Muntean is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o. she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams, and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing. Doug Patton Doug Patton is a consummate inventor whose work has spanned over four decades, his efforts generating products in over 20 markets ranging from biomedical equipment to fragrance. He has garnered over 200 patents and design awards in having innovated for companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz, and Bausch & Lomb. Patton Design, his company, currently serves as the genesis of many products sold worldwide.

Founder's FAQ: answers to all the possible questions of a founder. Hosted by Ilker Koksal. This episode's guest is Eamonn Carey. He's the managing director at Techstars London, a partner at The Fund, and an early-stage investor, advisor, and board member for companies across the US, Europe, and Asia. He has invested in over 50 companies around the world and he also runs a regular deal flow email for 800+ angel and VC investors around the world.In this episode;1-) Which startup to invest in2-) To be a coachable founder3-) When to raise a round4-) The right approach to pivotFounder's FAQ is a book for founders and you can pre-order through the website. You can also reach us through @foundersfaq on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube.

Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o., she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated from Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing. BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER: The #1 cause of bad sleep   Show Notes   "People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it." - Simon Sinek   Are you running a digital marketing agency or curious about running one?  This week, The Entrepreneurial You podcast invites  Xenia Muntean to talk about how to do so successfully.   Here is a snippet of what xenia shared:   “You can get a niche based on the platforms you are going to do the digital marketing on WordPress or if you're a social media marketing agency. Are you going to do Instagram or are you going to do Twitter? If you focus yourself on a platform, you get the chance to better understand the nuances of just that 1 platform rather than trying to figure them all out. I think that's really great in identifying a niche beside the depth of knowledge. It also gives you a competitive edge because you can get all the clients in that specific industry; It also makes onboarding so much easier because clients are so similar between each other. It also makes targeting in terms of sales easier because you have a clear persona. So I think that's one of the things, identifying a niche and then obviously you have to establish your own digital presence.”   Listen to the episode and let us know what is your biggest takeaway.   Connect with Host and Creator, Heneka Watkis-Porter   Email Instagram LinkedIn YouTube Twitter Facebook Website WhatsApp - 1876-849-2571   Support The Entrepreneurial You here fo US$5.00 monthly: https://glow.fm/tey.     Connect with Xenia Muntean:   FREE: 30% discount to Planable for 3 months use coupon code: "entrepreneurialyou"   Website Twitter LinkedIn Facebook   Visit our Sponsor: Jamaica Stock Exchange   Looking for spiritual upliftment? Listen to My Daily Devotion. A very short devotional to get you closer to God. Listen on:  Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts  

 COVID-19 has forced marketing teams to rapidly adapt their communication and operational strategies to a work from home environment. With these highly collaborative teams forced to adapt to virtual methods how do they preserve productivity and inspire creativity? Join special guest Xenia Muntean, CEO of Planable, for a discussion about how effective teams are overcoming obstacles and achieving great success in a world of forced innovation and adaption. About Cyndi's guest: Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 5,000 teams behind brands such as Hyundai, Christian Louboutin, Viber, and the United Nations. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o. she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. She has also published a book – The Manifesto on Content Marketing Teams and has launched her own podcast – People of Marketing. WVU Marketing Communications Today is hosted by Cyndi Greenglass from West Virginia University which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel.     

Guest Angel Eamonn Carey, MD of Techstars London and Director of The Fund, joins me to listen to and question Dan Murray-Serter's pitch, Heights. Heights is a mental well-being and brain health brand, starting with a smart supplement to feed your brain every morning. Having spent no money on marketing Dan already has endorsements from the likes of Stephen Fry and an impressive £30K MRR. Dan is looking for funding to now fuel "proper growth", as he calls it. An interesting deep-dive into D2C brands, the importance of community and product/market expertise. Brought to you by my Startup Playground, Horseplay Ventures - www.horseplay.ventures Heights - www.yourheights.com The Fund - www.thefund.vc

Jon Bradford is “doer of many things (badly)” — at least that’s what he sent through when we asked him for a short bio.   However, a quick Google search will tell you that Jon is a highly experienced early-stage investor, MD of Techstars London, co-founder of Ormeau Baths, Ignite, FS6, tech.eu and has been described as “the godfather of European accelerators.”   When I asked a few people close to Jon to describe him they said things like: "He is one of the smartest investors I know and has learned the art of asking the hard questions."   "Jon is like a sneaky ninja working behind the scenes to make magic happen."   And that "he’s a man of few words - who likes brevity and getting to the point."   So with that said, let’s get straight to the point.   Delighted to have Jon here in the studio with us, and am looking forward to finding out more including things like but not necessarily, Jon’s origin story, lessons he’s learned along the way, why he likes to run naked and his favourite quote from Yoda.   Enjoy!   // To see a 'treasure trove' of all things related to Jon (including a photo) please visit https://bestofbelfast.org/stories/jon-bradford-investor   Best Of Belfast is Northern Ireland's #1 Interview Podcast. We've shared 100+ hour-long conversations with incredible people from Northern Ireland.   To find out more, or join 'The Producers Club' please visit https://bestofbelfast.org/   Cheers!   — Matt   

Kate Boyle Before Banjo Robinson, Kate had an impressive career in LA, running writers' rooms for influential screenwriter Etan Cohen, working as a creative executive on Ghostbusters III and Men in Black III for Sony, Museum of Supernatural History for Setven Spielberg at DreamWorks, Candyland for Disney and Daddy's Home for Paramount. The idea for Banjo Robinson came about when Kate's father used to hide mail throughout the house for her to find when she was a child and when she was writing to friends' children back home in England. Thus, Banjo Robinson the company was born. For a generation of tech consumers, proper, paper post was a fresh way to spread magic of storytelling, and so Banjo Robinson - adventurer, penpal and magical cat was born. Kate and Banjo Robinson Connect on LinkedIn with Kate (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kateboyle1000/) Banjo Robinson (https://www.banjorobinson.com/) ABOUT THE HOST My name is Sam Harris. I am a British entrepreneur, investor and explorer. From hitchhiking across Kazakstan to programming AI doctors I am always pushing myself in the spirit of curiosity and Growth. My background is in Biology and Psychology with a passion for improving the world and human behaviour. I have built and sold companies from an early age and love coming up with unique ways to make life more enjoyable and meaningful. Sam: Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/samjamsnaps/) Quora (https://www.quora.com/profile/Sam-Harris-58) Twitter (https://twitter.com/samharristweets) LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharris48/) Sam's blog - SamWebsterHarris.com (https://samwebsterharris.com/) Support the Show - Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/growthmindset) Syncify An app that lets you be social at a distance. Listen to your favourite podcasts and books together with friends and groups. Chat about the audio experiences as you share and learn from other users' perspectives. Commit to taking actions by sharing your ideas. To learn more, visit (www.syncifyapp.com) Top Tips Make learning fun School isn't the only place for learning activities. We learn through every day life and experiences that are not “school-like” in any way, and things do not need to “academically” educational to be worthy of our time and effort. We can all be creative in the ways we learn different things, whether we are young or old! Get your kids excited about discovering something new by disguising the learning activities as fun time. There are many other ways to learn, though, and as parents we can understand our children and see what styles they enjoy and respond to best. The most important thing is that we are encouraging our children to explore the world around them. Foster kindness and empathy It is critical to start and teach kids at a young age, when they can most easily absorb fundamental lessons. Usually, children like to learn from the people around him. They mimic the behavior of others and implement that in their own behavior. They are born imitators. So, we should present an imitable character before them which will help them grow as a good human being. Children are the future habitants of this world. If they are kind and empathetic, the world will be in safe hands. Teach kids the importance of diversity Promote self-discovery by sharing personal journeys and helping kids understand that everyone has a story. Teach children that their lives are enriched when they encounter and befriend people from different racial, ethnic or socioeconomic backgrounds, or who face different learning or physical challenges. Remind kids that everyone is an individual and when kids are self-aware and self-accepting, they are less likely to be judgmental or prejudiced. Subscribe! If you enjoyed the podcast please subscribe and rate it. And of course, share with your friends! Special Guest: Kate Boyle.

Eamonn Carey is the Managing Director of Techstars London. He's been an entrepreneur for most of his adult life - starting several companies in Europe and the Middle East - two successfully, others, less so. He's been an active angel investor in Europe, the US and Asia for the last five years - investing in everything from AI to food tech and from messaging to co-working spaces. He ran the Techstars Connection program in New York, works with the Zeroth AI accelerator in Hong Kong and sits on several boards - including Lingvist, Paranoid Fan, and Motivii. Discussion We cover the way the landscape has changed for investors, technology and entrepreneurs. With radical shifts in how we live there is a lot of current change but also a lot of things that will stay different after this. Eamonn explains the opportunities that are available for those willing to adapt quickly and how entrepreneurs can build new businesses that benefit the world. We outline the problems caused by uncertainty and how to deal with fear and act rationally. Take Homes Accept the Idea of Change Change is inevitable not only in life but in business too. As long as the people and the technology are progressing, so should the businesses around them. Businesses have to improve and develop new ideas that can be incorporated with their plan. They have to have a bird’s view of their business to understand what is going to happen next. This approach will help change the route in the shortest time if there is any unplanned change. Everybody should embrace change in their organization. If not, there will be a negative implication. Businesses that do not adapt to their environment tend to slow down and ultimately die or shutdown. Covenience is Booming With the impact of covid-19, “convenience” has taken on a whole new meaning. Companies offering convenience are taking over. This revolution is affecting all kinds of industries – not just retail – as some companies are developing new ways of doing business that make life easier for the customer. It is clear, no organization is free from the push toward higher convenience. Time to become ‘fast’ and ‘easy’! Good Communication in Business is Key Possessing or developing excellent communication skills will help business leaders and their teams in every facet of business operations. Helping team members learn to communicate in professional and respectful ways builds a positive atmosphere. Friendships build as people are more likely to communicate about work and weekend activities. As your team gets to know each other better, they become stronger as a unit, helping to build team morale. Positive team morale is good for department productivity. Syncify An app to let you be social at a distance. Listen to your favourite podcasts and books together with friends and groups. Listen Live Stream audio together and chat back and forth as you have ideas. Facilitated catch-up Mark shared interests or a playlist to listen to together. When one listens to something it gets put to the top of the playlist of the other individual so they listen on the same day Discover See what others have listened to and join in. Curated playlists Journey of podcasts to teach you how to raise money or develop a growth mindset. Chat about the audio experiences as you share and learn from others' perspectives and vocalising your thoughts. Commit to taking actions by sharing your ideas.Special Guest: Eamonn Carey.

Brad van Leeuwen is the COO and co-founder of Cledara. He enjoys creating things that make the world better. His personal mission is to try to understand things from first principles and move from there. Cledara's mission is to make SaaS scalable for the companies and people that use it. Cledara was named SaaStock SaaS Startup of the Year in 2018, is a member of Techstars London and is backed by Anthemis, one of the world's top fintech VCs. In this episode we speak about embedded payments and how they will drive the future of fintech. We also talk about how the market might change Here is a rundown of the episode, if you want to jump ahead: 02:50 Effect of coronavirus on fintech and startups 07:20 How has fintech changed since the last recession 15:23 Embedded finance as a pipe for innovation 18:10 What is Banking as a service 20:20 Brad's controversial opinions on challenger banking 32:13 What you wish you would have known about fintech when you got started 41:05 What billboard would you put up at your hometown? You can find Brad van Leeuwen on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradvanleeuwen - - - Banking in Air podcast explores the lives and journeys of founders and technology leaders as they work to overcome challenges as they build products in am ever-changing world. Hosted by Marcel Klimo of Vacuumlabs.

I recently read a fascinating story about a particle physicist turned co-founder of an AI-based language learning app called Lingvist and felt compelled to find out more. Mait Müntel was part of the Higgs boson discovery team at CERN, where he was frustrated by being unable to speak French fluently. In typical scientist fashion, he decided to look at the French language as a mathematical problem that could be fun to solve-- and soon used CERN's machine learning capabilities to run his language-as-math hypothesis, then began building out software to test it. Within a year, he was able to study French for 200 hours, then pass a high school French test. So he left to start Lingvist, a company that uses AI to create personalized language experiences, with 1.4 million language users. Mait joins me on Tech Talks Daily to chat about how machine learning is significantly accelerating the language learning process, and how important scientific theories have been to Lingvist's success. I learn how he got the idea to approach language learning like a mathematical challenge and decided to build his own solution instead. Mait's prototype drew upon the machine learning work he had used while searching for the boson particle, along with the basics of language statistics and cognitive science theory. After learning with a homemade prototype for 200 hours, he put himself to the test and took a high-school-level French exam, which he passed with a strong score. That was the seed from which Lingvist took root. Mait took those principles he had used to teach himself and started developing them for anyone to use, with the goal of significantly accelerating language learning and reducing inefficiency in the learning process. They built the proof of concept after receiving the Prototron Grant, a seed-funding initiative for budding startups, in March 2013. In 2014 Lingvist was selected from a pool of over 1,500 applicants to participate in the world-renowned TechStars London accelerator program. Today, Lingvist is an eclectic team of more than 40 languages and technology lovers hailing from around the world. Members include alumni from Skype and CERN, and specialists in areas ranging from AI and computational linguistics to UX and product development.

Eamonn Carey from TechStars London walks us through the reasons you might want to apply to an accelerator. Beyond the network, beyond the technical and business help, Carey says, there is the forcing function of just getting an MVP ready for demo day.

In this episode of Ponderings from the Perch, Priscilla McKinney and Xenia Muntean discuss the best ways to develop micro and macro content, how content management is handled for B2B models compared to B2C, and how people in the content management world seemed to be lacking the perfect tool to handle social media in a modern way. That's until Xenia came along with Planable, a program that made social media content management more efficient, allowing workflow and scheduling to overlap perfectly.  Xenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 4,000 teams at brands like Jaguar Land Rover, Viber, and World Food Program. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 years old, she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola. Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017. Xenia’s Favorite Podcast: Freakonomics    Fav Book: Sapiens By Yuval Noah Harari  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

OpeningToday we are talking about two of my favorite topics - content and agency-client collaborationIntroduction of GuestXenia is the CEO and Co-Founder of Planable, a content review and marketing collaboration platform used by over 4,000 teams at brands like Jaguar Land Rover, Viber, and World Food Program. Prior to launching Planable, at 20 y.o. she built a digital marketing agency and led social for clients such as Coca-Cola.Xenia has been recognized on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list and she spoke on the Innovation Stage at Cannes Lions in 2018. Xenia graduated Tim Draper's startup academy in Silicon Valley and took Planable through the Techstars London accelerator in 2017.Welcome XeniaYou have already had quite the impressive career, at a very young age - tell us a little about that journey...Agency to SoftwareProblem(s) you're trying to solveChallenges and confusion of tracking complex projects, tasks, and people in email threadsCreating high quality relevant content - at scaleOmnichannel marketing is requiring more and more content - problem only getting worseHow collaboration tools like Planable make things better for the clientHow do collaboration tools like Planable create a higher quality productWhat are the specific next steps for agencies to takeWhat are the specific next steps for In-house marketing teams to takeGuest GoalsSure, we would like to cover the topic of agency-client relationship and collaboration. We’d like to tackle the subject from the perspective of an increasing demand for content and as a result, a pressing need for flawless and efficient collaboration:Speed, quantity, and quality are all important when it comes to content marketingBrands expect synergy with their agencies. Flawless collaboration is now essential because at the moment:Agency - client collaboration is often inefficient due to poorly designed workflows and archaic tools/way of workingInternal agency collaboration isn’t clearly defined eitherAny miscommunication between the client and the agency can quickly turn into a PR crisisAll of the above problems will be supported by results from the Content Marketing Report, such as:More than 1 in 3 agencies produce over 10 content marketing pieces per week1 in 3 agencies have colleagues working remoteIt takes a week in average from creation to publishing a piece of content. Out of that time, a third is spent in collaborationExcessive emails, Project scope isn’t well understood/ defined, a lot of meetings are considered the biggest time-wastersWe’d see this as an actionable episode and after highlighting the issue, Xenia could propose a few actions to improve agency-client workflows.Let us know how this sounds and if there’s anything else you would need from our side.

Social media collaboration and approval software startup Planable has been growing at a rate of 25% month over month, something the company's co-founder attributes to its marketing team structure. This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Planable co-founder Vlad Calus talks about how he built the company's marketing team from the ground up using a three pronged approach focused on people, processes and tools - and why that approach is key to the companies fast growth. Vlad has written a book on building the marketing team of the future and in this interview, he summarizes in detail how Planable's team is structured; the processes they use on a daily, weekly and quarterly basis; and the software tools they've chosen to implement. This week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, IMPACT Live,  the most immersive and high energy learning experience for marketers and business leaders. IMPACT Live takes place August 6-7, 2019 in Hartford Connecticut and is headlined by Marcus Sheridan along with special guests including world-renowned Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith and Drift CEO and Co-Founder David Cancel. Inbound Success Podcast listeners can save 10% off the price of tickets with the code "SUCCESS".  Click here to learn more or purchase tickets for IMPACT Live Some highlights from my conversation with Vlad include: Planable is a content collaboration platform for marketing, freelancers, and agencies. For the first two years of the company's history, the marketing team was trying to use growth hacks to achieve its objectives, but quickly realized that was neither sustainable nor scaleable.  When they hired a new marketing director, the team began a process of studying how high performing marketing teams operated, and from that research, decided to focus on content marketing as the core of their strategy going forward. From their, Vlad identified that there were three main pillars of effective and efficient marketing teams - people, process and tools. When it comes to people, Vlad says that marketing teams need to have individuals with clear roles and clear ownership, as well as a defined quarterly marketing plan. The teams processes need to deliver transparency, consistency and alignment. And the tools that the team uses need to be effective. Vlad's team uses Zoom, Slack, Dropbox, InvisionApp, Google Drive, Planable, and Frame. Resources from this episode: Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS" Visit the Planable website Follow Vlad on Twitter Connect with Vlad on LinkedIn Listen to the podcast to hear Vlad describe, in detail, the approach he used to build Planable's marketing team and how that structure has enabled the company to grow 25% month over month. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth, and this week my guest is Vlad Calus, who is the co-founder of Planable. Welcome back, Vlad. Vlad Calus (Guest): Thank you. Thank you Kathleen, and thanks for having me. Vlad and Kathleen hamming it up while recording this episode together . Kathleen: I am particularly appreciative that you joined me, and it is crazy late at night, your time, because you are based over in Europe. Vlad: Yeah, exactly. I'm currently in Bucharest, and in Eastern Europe. Kathleen: Well, I appreciate you staying up and burning the midnight oil to join me for this podcast. For those who are listening, can you talk a little bit about what Planable is, and your background? About Planable and Vlad Calus Vlad: Definitely, yeah. So, Planable is a content collaboration platform for marketing, freelancers, and agencies. Basically it's a mock up of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, that helps you preview how the content would look like, like 100% pixel content, and then you can simply just ask for feedback or collaborate with any of the stakeholders in the team, including brand managers, or human resources, or legal, or anyone else just to make sure this is the right content that you want to publish on social media. Then you can just simply ask for an approval, and then schedule the content directly to social media. Kathleen: Great. And you personally have a really interesting background. You went through Techstars, you were on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, you're a very active startup mentor. Can you talk a little bit about your background and what led you to co-founding Planable? Vlad: Yeah, I would love to. So, I would say that at the age of 16, I started participating in a lot of non-profit organizations and starting my own organizations, just because I was feeling and trying to fix the problems in my own community. Like starting from really small problems and then just trying to get some use time and good time for myself, and learning something from everyone. And then at the age of 19, I found my first or second job, and I went to a startup competition called Startup Week in Moldova, in my home country. And I ended up meeting two of my current co-founders of Planable just by accident. I was just walking around them, looking for a team to join during the competition. And when I just started with Xenia, who is my current co-founder, we start chatting about the idea that we wanted to work on, and I just started talking to them, "Hey, may I join with your team? Would really love to participate. I really don't want to go home. I would really like to make it happen." And then we started, on the second day, we started actually working on this idea and debating it more. We participated with something related to the social media, but it was like an initial concept before making everything happen at Planable. And we ended up understanding that all of us shared the same passion and frustration for social media, and frustration in terms of the problems that marketing agencies and social media managers are fighting with. And couple of hours after that, we just won the competition, and we were invited to a pre-accelerated program in Romania. And we just founded a company then, and everything started there, and just in couple of months after that, we ended up being part of Techstars London, which I really believe changed the way our company work and exists, because it gave us a big round of funding, over 120K, and lots of support. We also started the company, we started monetizing the product and the company then, during the Techstars, and gave us the first support from actual people, like actual customers, and people that we understood that really, really believe in our vision, our company, our product, and everything that we are doing right now. Kathleen: That's great. And I've always been impressed by the businesses that have come out of Techstars, and so it's fun to get to talk to someone whose gone through the program. Now, one of the things that I thought was interesting about the experience you've had is, you started right from the very beginning, you're one of the founders, and you've been growing this company, and a lot of the people I talk to on this podcast, we talk about their marketing techniques and strategies, and how that fuels growth. And when you and I spoke, I thought something so interesting was that you have plenty of marketing techniques and strategies, but one of the things that you consider to have been a major contributor to your growth is the way you've structured and grown your marketing team in particular. And so, I wanted to dig into that a little bit more with you, and explore how that has worked, and the results you've gotten. How Planable's Marketing Team Is Structured Vlad: Definitely, yeah. So, changing the way our marketing works, our marketing team works, actually was one of the most important things that happened to this company. Because the product side was always working and ticking, and the product was always developing. We had and we still have a brilliant co-founder and CTO that came up with the product and division, and the way everything works. But we had to compensate this with the marketing and the business, and actually getting the first users and customers to the product. So, the first two years of the company, we were trying really, really hard to do any growth hacks that you could ever read on the internet, and all the Facebook groups, and Slack communities, and Twitter, List, and everything else. I would say that we really tried to bootstrap our way in the most possible way. But then we just understood that nothing is actually working, and nothing is actually scalable. Like really, really scalable that could generate us success in the long term, and that we could actually replicate all of this. So, in I would say April last year, we ended up partnering with a brilliant new employee, who is called Miruna. She's our head of marketing at the moment at Planable, and we just started talking with her about the fact that we need to restructure our marketing team. We need to work on something from the ground up and start making some extreme, extreme changes. And we started this by analyzing the whole industry and understanding what are the biggest issues of marketers, and what are our issues, and starting to understand how can we work on solving this problem from the very beginning. So, right now, marketers are facing enormous challenges when it comes to content marketing, because content marketing was something that we wanted to focus on, completely. This would be the ground zero, the main, main focus of our marketing team. And when we understood that there are couple of main problems, like an enormous amount of wasted time and effort results in productive ... loss of productive hours than creating the content. And lots of PR crisis are being created because there is no clear approval process, there is no feedback, there is no communication. And there are campaign that are launched, that should've been launched exactly because the content was not approved. And then we also started to think more about the content marketing, and how can we actually scale it. So, we ended up thinking about many of the pillars, or many of the parts of content marketing, and how it should be structured. And we ended up creating a system for our own team that we started with couple of colleagues and analyzing this within the team, and then we understood that many big companies actually have a very, very similar structure but we would never actually understood this. This was just the way we were. So, we understood that there are three main parts of ... of an effective and efficient marketing team, and this is the people, the processes and tools. These are the three main pillars that we understood that we have to implement in our team. "There are three main parts of an effective and efficient marketing team - the people, the processes and tools." - Vlad Calus Click here to Tweet this quote Building a Marketing Team: The People Vlad: So, I would say that the first when I was mentioning about the people. People are obviously the essence of any content marketing process. You have to have people in order to deliver everything that you want. And then we understood that in order to have an efficient marketing team, all of us have to have very clear and understood roles in our team. And start working on the main skills and best skills that each of us have, in order to actually succeed. So, we just looked at each other and started to think, "What's all of us do?" Because all of us, we were free marketers back then, and we were like full stack marketers. We were doing everything- Kathleen: Everyone was doing everything? Vlad: Exactly, yeah. Everyone was doing everything, no matter what. We just looked at the task and then was like, "Should I do this? You do this? Okay, let me do this today, and then we can next week ..." This is how we would do it. And then we just understood, we looked at everyone and started discussing this. "Okay, what can I do?" I am not the most, in my case, it was I'm not the most creative person, but I can really deliver. I am an efficient person that can deliver lots of stuff, I can promote our content, I can work on twitching the content exactly the way it is from the technical perspective. And then Miruna, my colleague, was the most creative brain of Planable, because she could really speak the way our brand would speak on social media and digital. This is something she just had this from the very first day, and I was amazed by this. And then we also had the third colleague. She was Luciana, she was the most creative person on the social media. She likes engaging with people on social media. So, we understood that we need to have clear roles. In my case, it was SEO, search engine optimization. I need to tweak all of the content that we are creating, and then I also need to write the content for Planable outside of Planable, like writing guest blogs, and also representing Planable outside the building. Miruna was the one that was creating the content and also doing all the design part, and Luciana was doing the social media and the newsletters. So, we had three main pillars of content marketing, divided by three persons, so we understood that we have clear roles established. This was the first part to create clear roles. And also, the second part was to establish a clear ownership of everything. So, if you, for example, Luciana was doing social media and newsletters. There might be chances when we have to help Luciana, she needs creative ideas or design materials on everything else, but this still means that Luciana has a complete ownership on this. We even made ... and this was the second part, and the third part that in terms of the people, we had to do a clear plan for the next quarter. We are doing 12 weeks iterations on the marketing plans, because we think this is the most efficient. We are not trying to jump on the next six or 12 months, or even three years. We believe that this might be a waste of time, so this is why we try to stick close to three months iterations only. So, just to sum up, this was, for us, having a clear ownership, having clear roles, and have a clear definitive marketing plan for the next three months on all of the marketing objectives that we do. Kathleen: Yeah, we use quarterly planning as well, and I agree with you. You certainly could come up with a plan for a longer time horizon, but so much changes, and I've really found over time that quarterly is the most effective time interval for that kind of thing. Vlad: Yeah, definitely. I also was speaking with lots of teams that they are also using that quarterly, but also six weeks iteration. This is definitely something that you can do. Unfortunately, being a small team such as ours, it's hard to actually feel like you've implemented a lot during the six weeks, so we just give us lots of time during this 12 weeks, like three months that we do quarterly. Kathleen: Yeah. So, that's how you approach the people element of your team- Vlad: Exactly, yeah. Kathleen: Yeah. Vlad: And there is also something that we also related to the people, something that was super, super important for us. We understood that we cannot do everything, so this is why we need to get other stakeholders into the team. Meaning that we started using lots of video and audio production teams, like design and branding, website building, link building, data scrapping, people on the PR side, people on the page marketing, and so on. Because we believe that everyone should do the best that they could, and if you don't have the time, but have the resources, you should definitely use. Because for example, we are also doing people of marketing, this is a video blog, and we just understood that we would waste a lot of time on video production. We can film, or we can create a content, but editing and post producing the content is super, super hard for us. Kathleen: Yeah. Building a Marketing Team: The Processes Vlad: Yeah, so moving on. The second part was about the processes, because in terms of the processes, we wanted to make sure that we don't have only a clear plan, but we can also implement all of this plan and we can deliver everything that we proposed ourselves. Unfortunately, lots of teams are making critical mistakes in terms of this, because they are not having the clear workflow and the clear processes established within the team, and within the whole company. And we understood that we have, and we need three main aspects of this. First, we put transparency at the top of our processes. And we put transparency at the core of our entire workflow, because we believe that transparency was the most important thing, and transparency in terms of what's everyone doing today, this week, this month? What are the main files that we should access, for example, I should have the access to all of the marketing files, and all of the marketing materials, even though I don't actually have a need of them, but I should have them in case I need to be involved in this process. And transparency, because there is, for example, social media or email marketing teams, they have two departments and therefore two ways that they are not even communicating between them at the time that they most need, because we believe that collaboration empowers teams to not only create better content, but also be more efficient, and better at the way content marketing team works. Then the second part was about consistency. We understood that we need clear consistency on everything we do. For example, when I just started content marketing and writing articles, this was one and a half years ago. I was literally staring at the blank Google Docs document for 20 or 30 minutes, and could not came up with any ideas at all. So, because of that, I was just trying to get inspired all around the internet with any ideas that I could, and just writing random keywords, and starting to write something from those keywords, just to get this creative flow going somewhere. And then I tried to make it consistent as I could, so I just had the task in my task management tool that each day I am writing at least one hour a day. No matter what, no matter if this is good, no matter how perfect this is, but I just wanted to write. And then at the end of the week, I was starting to editing all of this content, and putting everything that I could. Because I was trying to throw all the raw idea that I had, and instead of editing and then being depressed because nothing really works, I was just trying to constantly came up, like throw ideas to this digital paper, and make sure that I move and I do something actually. Kathleen: Yeah. It's a great goal to be able to write out an hour a day. I feel like so many people say they're going to do something like that, and then they never follow through, so kudos to you for actually doing it. Vlad: Yeah, because I believe that a lot of marketers, and they really show this when I was speaking with marketers over the past year, a lot of marketers have exactly this struggle of writing content. They think that writing an article of 2000 words, or 3000, or even in my case writing a book of 30 000 words, this is super complicated. But I think about this like a process that you have to complete, and something that you have to deliver if you are consistent, and I believe that writing, especially writing, this is a skill that you empower with consistency. If you write more, you can create more and you write better. Kathleen: Yeah, and we should mention that you are a published author. You did write an entire book called Marketing Teams of the Future, which is sort of what we're talking about here in terms of how you built your team, so this isn't just a couple blog posts that you're getting out. This was an entire book. Vlad: Yeah, exactly. Because I focused the book exactly on this part, how to build your marketing teams by showing all of our examples of the team, and then speaking with some of the best marketing teams out there, from InVisionApp, Digital Crowd, Night Watch, and many more, and trying to understand what are the most efficient teams in the world, and how can we do this better with our help and anyone else. And then the third part of processes was about alignment, like making sure that alignment starts with a clear strategy, and then with consistent daily variables. In our team, these are two parts that we did. The first part is that we have a marketing meeting at 10:00 AM each Monday. There is absolutely no chance that we skip this meeting, unless you are on vacation we give you the full freedom on your vacation. But usually if you're traveling, if you're not in the office, we will connect you with a Skype call or Zoom call, or anything else, and we'll do this meeting at least for 10 or 15 minutes to make sure that everyone is aligned. And then the second part, also something that lots of marketing teams give, I believe is super important to do it one to one's between the marketing managers and between the marketing teams themselves because there are lots of things that people usually want to speak, but we just miss speaking just because maybe this is not the right time, or maybe this is not the right environment. Or this is just not the conversation that you would have at the desk with other colleagues in there. And this is why, if you at least plan one, one to one, at least once a month, or in our case once in two weeks, this will help you make sure that everyone is on the same page. You have everyone is expecting the same thing from you and from the team, and from the deliverables and everything that you do. Kathleen: Yeah. So, you've got your three points under people, you've got three points under process. Let's recap each of those again just so that everybody's following along. Vlad: Definitely, yeah. So, in terms of the people, the three things that we did was about making a clear ownership, what's everyone doing, and then the second part was about establishing clear roles, and clear things that everyone is doing. And then the third part was about creating a marketing plan for the next quarter, because this is what we do at the quarter, and this is something that I would recommend. And in terms of the processes, there were three parts of what we do, and I would suggest implementing in your team as well, this is first of all transparency. Everything has to be transparent across your marketing organization. The second part is consistency. Really embrace consistency from the very beginning. Try to do content marketing each day, try to write an article each day, do social media each day. Write at least one newsletter each day, and you will see that day by day, you will feel improvement in yourself, and your own marketing team as well. And then the third part is about alignment by making sure that everyone is on the same page, and discussing and communicating all of the expectations and the variables clearly within your team. Kathleen: I love it. Thank you for recapping that. And then you had ... so, in addition to people and processes, you had sort of your third overarching category of things. Could you talk a little bit about that? Building a Marketing Team: The Tools Vlad: Yeah, the third part was about the tools, and in terms of the tools, I would say that this is pretty straight forward, but I want to mention first of all that, do not rely on tools because no automation tool can or should replace the creative force of your team. Because when time consuming, repetitive tasks are automated, these billable hours can't be spent on creative work. So, we should work only with the tools that we really understand that value for us, and that really feed for our team. And in my case, in the book I just presented a couple of tools that I can also send you the links after that in email, but in terms of the list that we are currently working with the tools, and something that we would suggest. First of all, this is using Zoom for all of your video calls and everything else. We switched to Zoom. Before that we used Appear.in. I really loved Appear for connecting on the video calls directly for the browser, but that didn't work for us all the time. Sometimes we had issues, sometimes our customers couldn't connect, so we just switched everything to Zoom, and wow. Over the past four months, I never had a bug. Never had an issue. Kathleen: Yeah. Vlad: This product is just working- Kathleen: It's pretty great. And people who are listening can't tell, but we are on a Zoom call right now. That's how I record the podcast, and I probably spend six hours of my day on Zoom, because we're a mostly remote company, and so all of our meetings, all of my conversations are on Zoom. It's fantastic. Vlad: Exactly, yeah. And in terms of the other tools that there are, I would obviously recommend to use Planable for all of your content management creation and social media, and then there is also InVisionApp, for all of the prototyping in terms of images and creative content that you are doing. There is also Frame. I really love this company. If you even open the website that they have, it's a super beautiful website. When you are a creative person, or work in a marketing team, this really fulfills your heart when you see a beautiful website in a team. Kathleen: And what's the URL of that website? Vlad: Frame.io, I think. Yeah, Frame.io. Kathleen: Yeah, I'm pulling it up now so I can look at it while we talk. I love looking at nice websites. Oh, okay. So, for video review and collaboration. Vlad: Exactly. Yeah. Kathleen: Yep. Vlad: This is something, so we are basically describing Planable as Frame IO, but for social media. Kathleen: Got it. Vlad: Because this is something very similar. And if you look at the list that I am presenting right now, you can actually see that all of the platforms are also collaboration, because I really believe that collaboration is the key of any marketing team right now. Kathleen: Yeah, absolutely. Vlad: And then there is obviously the Slack for building a transparent environment that we were speaking about because you can create all of those channels, and anyone can join those channels and you can simply collaborate on everything that you do. Obviously also for assets management, you can use Dropbox, or Google Drive, or anything that fits you. We are personally using Dropbox, we are personally using Google Drive across the company. I am using Dropbox and Apple Cloud for some personal stuff that I am doing right now. And then the last one that I highly recommend almost all the time, this is Airtable. This is spreadsheets on steroids. Anyway, this is the way I am ... the founders describe it, because you can almost do anything in Airtable, that is similar experience to spreadsheets but actually really different. Kathleen: Well, you have a very similar list of tools to me, because we use all of those I think with the exception of Frame. We actually use Wipster, which is really similar, so very similar functionality. But yeah, if I'm not on Zoom, I'm usually on Slack. Vlad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kathleen: And yeah, and we are using Airtable as well because we had some complex spread sheeting needs that we couldn't solve with Google Sheets and its been great. Vlad: Yeah, exactly. And we use Airtable for almost anything that we do in terms of the list, and the databases in our team. For example, we have a specific list in Airtable for recruiting, we have another sheet for marketing list, like events, or podcasts that we are listening, or events that we want to be part of, or speaking engagements. And lots of other stuff that we do. And Airtable really, really helps us make sure that we are on point with our idea. Even though our marketing plan and ownership plan, and everything that I was saying is also part of Airtable. Kathleen: Yeah. That's great. So, you've outlined really your overarching three kind of pillars, I would say. The people, the processes, and the technology. Talk to me about how that impacted your ability to grow the company, to deliver results through marketing. How Planable's Team Structure Enabled It To Grow Vlad: Yeah, definitely. So, we started implementing all of this processes, and then we obviously did not see any major results from the very first day. But when we started observing some of the patterns that are happening in all of our analytics, so first we started seeing a growth in our traffic. So, it was like the first couple of weeks, it was an incremental traffic. Like 10%, and then 15%, and 20%, and then everything else. And we actually felt like wait a sec, it's growing. It's actually something is happening in here. And when we started understanding where this is coming from, and we ended up analyzing all of the sources, and it's actually from the content that we were creating. And then we started speaking with the people that shared this content on social media, like Facebook, Twitter, and everything else, and we were saying that it's really exceptional content that we are creating, and we really feel like we answered the questions that we proposed from the very beginning of the piece. And this was a clue for us that we are doing something the right way. We are actually creating the right content for the teams, and we understanding for us, this was exactly because we built this processes and workflows in mind, and we were building everything the right way. And when we saw the growth in traffic, we saw the growth in the number of users, and this obviously reflected the number of our revenue. So, and then looking over the past 12 months of the growth from June last year to June this year, we can definitely say that we have month over month growth of between 20 to 30%. I would say that the median number is 23%, but it obviously varies from one month to another month. For example, for our surprise, December was one of the most spectacular months that we've ever had. Kathleen: That is interesting, because I feel like almost every company I know that works in something related to marketing, December is a very slow month because- Vlad: Oh wait, no. Sorry. Sorry about that. This is June. No, this is January. So, January was the most spectacular month, and then December was one of the ... oh my God, one of the most horrible months. Kathleen: I was going to say, that sounds more like every other company... Vlad: Yeah, sorry about that. Yeah. Yeah, this is because we felt ... and in January, we felt like is there anyone looking for a new subscription for their team. Kathleen: Right. We have the same conversation every year. We have usually got tremendous traffic growth in the fourth quarter, and then after the first week in December, it's like it all falls off a cliff. Nobody's working, it seems. Vlad: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I never saw so sad Google analytics on our website like in December, especially the past two weeks. It was just dropping. We had probably minus 60% drop in all of the traffic and then it quickly came up- Kathleen: Which, as long as it comes back is fine. Because if you know it's going to dip every December, you can plan for that. But yeah. Vlad: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And the most funniest thing, I will never understand this, is that people were signing up for new subscription on January 1st. And I was like, "What the hell are you doing in a new subscription?" Kathleen: Right. Vlad: But then we start analyzing, and we understood that their trail had expired, and they had lots of content planned, and they did not want to give up on this, and then we just ended up publishing next. And we had to renew their subscription, which is a good sign, so we can put- Kathleen: That is a good sign. Vlad: Yeah. And we can prepare for more marketing campaigns or ideas at the end of December and beginning- Kathleen: Yeah. What I like about this story is I've always personally had a belief that marketing is a little bit like weight loss, and health and fitness, you know? There's lots of people who kind of think they're going to get this magic solution, this diet that's going to miraculously have them lose all their weight, and it might in the short term. There's all kinds of fad diets that help you lose weight quickly. But does it last? And usually the answer is no. And unfortunately, the real solution in health and fitness slash weight loss is consistency and good old fashioned calories in, calories out, right? And in marketing, I honestly believe it's a lot like that. There are plenty of little fads and shiny objects that you can chase, and they might give you a short term boost, but as you said in the very beginning, those are not scalable things. And with the tech changing so quickly, and algorithms changing so quickly on social and on Google, if you're just chasing the latest greatest fad, you're always ... it's like chasing your tail. You're always going to be chasing something. So, it made me happy to hear that your great results came from consistency and good old fashioned, you know, content marketing. Vlad: I love it. I love your comparison. I was actually thinking yes, this is totally true. I completely agree with that, yeah. Kathleen: Yeah. It's great to see. So, the company is now how old? Vlad: So, we are now ... so, we started the company in February 2016. I would say that we worked two years in order to get the product on the market and actually feel like people see the value of this product. We started monetizing the company after one year and a half, but then it took us two years in total to get to the product market feed when we understood that people actually see the value and we understand, and we are building something valuable for people. Kathleen: Yeah. And in the meantime, you've been seeing this consistent growth and traffic, and leads and sales, and- Vlad: Yeah, exactly. Because we just understood that if something is working, let's try to stick to it. And you can always stick with consistency. Try incremental, super, super small, super, super small steps. But just do this consistently, week over week, month over month, and make sure that you keep up the same pace. Kathleen: I think that you had a lot of great tips, but I think the one for me personally that resonated the most and that I'm going to try to take to heart is blocking off an hour every day to write. Because really, we do live in a world where content is so central to getting found online, it's also so central to how you nurture your leads and convert them. Even once you have customers, content is central to that. Preventing churn, and developing loyalty, so I love that suggestion, and again it goes back to that exercise and eating right analogy. You got to do it every day, you got to stick with it and you will eventually see results. So, that is going to be my resolution. It's not the new year, but I'm going to make a resolution to write for an hour every day. I love that. Vlad: Yeah, definitely. That's a good one. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Well, before we wrap up, two questions that I always ask all of my guests, I'm curious to hear your take. When it comes to inbound marketing, and content marketing, is there a company or a person that you think is really doing it well right now? Vlad: Yeah, I actually have someone else in mind, but when you just asked the question, I immediately came up with Drift. I really think that oh my God, I'm following these guys over the past years. We are using [Intercom] personally, just because we went with Intercom, and it was a great decision back then. But we just can't really change from Intercom to Drift, but I just look at the Drift with what we do, and wow, these guys, what we do is completely amazing. There is the founder, and then there is ... Kathleen: Dave Gerhardt. Vlad: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kathleen: Dave Cancel, and Dave Gerhardt, or as they like to call themselves, DC and DG. Vlad: DC and DG. Yeah, exactly. DC and DG, and what they do on social media, this is completely nuts. They are super, super active what they do. They came up with new projects, new content, new ideas, new landing pages, new books, new everything. And then we do this all of this experience is so beautiful and so extraordinary that I feel like I am part of this company every single day. Every time, when I read something about the company where they are products, I really feel proud that we did this, that we are doing this. I feel part of this company. Even though I am not even a user, I am not even a customer of this. And they did this just by creating a culture of their company that this is like we are building something extraordinary. Especially even their attitude that they do. DC, when they have a conference that we are organizing, probably a couple times a year, and they saw how DC is writing messages in Twitter that, "Let me know if you are coming to the conference. I am coming to personally pick you up at the airport and get you to the conference. From the airport, to the conference." Kathleen: Yeah. Vlad: This is the most amazing thing that a founder can do in the day of the conference. When you have so many things to focus on in the day of the conference, you are picking up people from the airport. Like, really? This is the commitment that I want to see from all the company that I am using. Kathleen: That's great. You know, it's funny. So, I did have Dave Gerhardt, who's DG, on a as a guest on the podcast, and he was one of the earlier guests, and it was so fun to pick his brain specifically about what he is doing with LinkedIn Video, because he's really good with that. And but what I love about what you just did is I've had, since that time, I've had a lot of my guests actually mention Drift when I ask this question, but you're the first person who's gotten really specific about what it is you like about how they're doing their marketing and how it made you feel. And I think that's so interesting, and I love what you said about feeling like you're a part of the company even though you're not an employee, you're not a customer. That's a very fascinating take on it. Vlad: Yeah, in case of my book, I interview 20 people, and DC was one of the people that I wanted to make an interview for 20 minutes, to get him in the book. But he actually didn't have time, and he forwarded the message to DG, and when DG also didn't have time. But when I asked for a quote, and he gave me at least a quote. Kathleen: Oh, that's nice. Yeah, they have a lot going on. Vlad: Yeah, exactly. I was like, "Okay, I totally get it. Please give me a quote at least. I would be super, super happy for a quote." And they did it. Kathleen: That's good. Well, second question. The world of digital marketing is changing at a lightning fast pace, and the thing I hear from most marketers is that they don't have the time to keep up with it. So, how do you personally educate yourself and stay on top of everything that's changing so that you remain on the cutting edge? Vlad: So, couple of things that I do, this is I have couple of people that I'm following on Twitter. This is obviously Matt Navarra, everyone knows about Matt Navarra in social media. There is no chance you don't know about Matt Navarra in social media, because he is writing all the latest updates in social media, and everything what's happening. And then there are also other people that I am following, like Geoff Desreumaux, from We Are Social Media. Also, I am also following We Are Social Media a lot. This is WeRSM- Kathleen: WeRSM. Yeah, one of my other guests turned me onto their newsletter, which is great. Vlad: Yeah, this is super awesome, I love their newsletters just because they add the GIF usually in the beginning of the newsletter, and it's usually fun. Yeah. And I'm also following, and I am part of lots of Facebook groups. Like SaaS marketers and founders, and product marketers with Josh Fechter, and B2B bloggers as well. And I believe that Facebook groups are helping me to stay in touch with the marketing industry, like from underneath. From the underground of it. Because you can read lots of updates and everything else what's happening in the industry with like on TechCrunch, and many other websites. But actually getting the true reaction and understanding what's truly happening in industry, you can only get from the people that are doing this every single day, consistently. And then this was the first. There's Twitter, then second is Facebook, and the first part, this is Zest. I met the founder last year, and- Kathleen: Yam? Yam Regev? Vlad: Yeah, exactly. And they are doing an incredible job with building a platform that helps you put all of the best content right in front of you directly in your face, and they really put some of the best content. I am constantly ... if I'm looking for some marketing content, there is no chance I'm not looking this on Zest first of all, and if I don't find a good answers, I might Google it or as for someone else for more tips and tricks on this. Kathleen: Yeah, that is a very good one. I know we use it a lot at Impact. And I actually just emailed Yam, who is the founder of Zest, saying I wanted to have him on the podcast, so Yam, if you're listening ... answer my email. Vlad: That's awesome. Yeah, if you want I can just drop him a quick message- Kathleen: Do it. Do it. Let's gang up on him and get him to come on. He's great. Vlad: I will message him on Facebook after our call and make sure that he answers your message. Kathleen: Perfect. Vlad: Yeah, he's really cool. I invited him for a conference in Moldova, in my home country, and lots of people said that he was one of the best guests that they had. So, I really think he'll be a great addition to the podcast. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. And Zest, it's Zest.is, if you're listening. It's a great browser extension for Chrome, so when you open a new window, literally it's like a curated publication of top marketing articles. So, totally agree with you on that one. Great, great suggestions and insights, Vlad. How To Connect With Vlad Kathleen: If somebody wants to learn more about Planable, or get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Vlad: So, if they want to get in touch with me, like really if you have absolutely any questions, hit me up on Twitter, or LinkedIn, or Vlad@Planable.io. I am more than happy to help and answer any questions. As Kathleen also said in the beginning, I am trying to be active in mentoring communities, so I am trying to ... I'm currently actually mentoring couple of people on building their own digital agencies, and also their startups. And if you really have any questions or need some advice in this, we'd be more than happy to chat or jump on a call. And then if you want to learn more about Planable, and see how we are changing the content marketing collaboration generation, just go on Planable.io. Kathleen: Great. Well, I'll put all those links in the show notes, so if you want to check any of them out, head over there and you'll be able to get in touch with Vlad, or check out Planable. Thank you so much. This was really fun, and it's great to hear your story, and I'm so impressed by what a structured process and team you have for a company that really is still very young. So, there's kudos to you for figuring that out as quickly as you did. Vlad: Thank you. I really appreciate that, and thanks a lot for having me today. You Know What To Do Next... Kathleen: Of course, and if you're listening, and you liked what you heard, or learned something new, of course leave the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. We always appreciate it. Vlad: Yeah, totally. Kathleen: And if you know somebody else doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork, because they could be my next guest. That's it for this week. Thanks, Vlad. Vlad: Thank you.

Chandini Jain is the founder and CEO of Auquan. Their platform provides Machine Learning solutions for big finance. Chandini took her experience as a financial trader and built her own platform to take on the problems she saw. She has grown the business Auquan into a platform that empowers big finance to get solutions from ML coders across the world. Auquan is an alumnus of the TechStars London accelerator and has gone on to raise funding and take the business to the next level. Chandini recounts her lessons from trading and tech world and raising finance. Podcast Notes ABOUT THE HOST My name is Sam Harris. I am a British entrepreneur, investor and explorer. From hitchhiking across Kazakstan to programming AI doctors I am always pushing myself in the spirit of curiosity and Growth. My background is in Biology and Psychology with a passion for improving the world and human behaviour. I have built and sold companies from an early age and love coming up with unique ways to make life more enjoyable and meaningful. Sam: Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/samjamsnaps/) Quora (https://www.quora.com/profile/Sam-Harris-58) Twitter (https://twitter.com/samharristweets) LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharris48/) Sam's blog - SamWebsterHarris.com (https://samwebsterharris.com/) Support the Show - Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/growthmindset) TOP TIPS DON’T MICROMANAGE It is so hard to let go of your baby. whether a mother with her child or a CEO with a business. At some point you need to let go so it can learn to take care of itself some more and ultimately become much stronger without your control. DO MARKET RESEARCH It might not be fun or feel like progress. You often risk finding out that you are wrong yourself. Instead of working on your baby as it should be in your mind, you may need to change your precious idea. Validating your idea properly will save a lot of time and money to you can build the right thing the first time. PRACTICE PITCHING TO EVERYONE Talk to as many people about your idea as possible. Every conversation will help you become more clearer in what your mission is and at helping people understand it. Just because someone doesn’t seem relevant you never know who they might put you in contact with. You should just treat all people as if they have the power to make your dreams come true. Subscribe! If you enjoyed the podcast please subscribe and rate it. And of course, share with your friends! Special Guest: Chandini Jain.

Eamonn Carey – once upon a time a TV producer and presenter - is now the Managing Director at Techstars London. He's also founded and exited 2 startups and invested in over 25 companies globally. Eamonn discusses: The path he took from media exec to entrepreneur to investor Why enterprise software companies need to build character & mischief into their products to mimic the user engagement of B2C products  Some of the key societal & technology trends he's excited about - and believes could have huge potential for future Techstars cohorts For more insights into Techstars check out https://www.techstars.com  and for advice on hiring world class talent for start-ups & scale-ups head over to http://alpinasearch.com  

Eamonn is the Managing Director at Techstars London, and an early stage investor, advisor and board member in over 25 companies across the US, Europe and Asia. He also helps out at Zeroth.ai in Hong Kong, who invest in AI and ML companies. He is launching his own VC fund and runs a regular dealflow email for 300+ angel and VC investors. Previously, he was the MD at Techstars Connection in partnership with AB InBev program in New York, and has worked as a mentor on Techstars and multiple other accelerator programs across Europe, the US, the Middle East and Asia. He is a regular speaker at conferences around the world and a wealth of information on the VC, accelerators and tech scene. As such we talk a lot about accelerators, VC’s and tech on the podcast. TOP TIPS 1. You do only have one life on this planet — Enjoy your work If you aren’t super passionate about what you’re doing at work. minimise time at work or start your own business and do something you believe in. find your passion and work for your own goals Don’t work with dickheads The team you work with should be nice people that don’t suck. When interviewing for a role ask mundane questions to see if they can be normal and nice to hang out with. When interviewing a team check to see if they get on with each other within the team and be alert to micro-gestures that might suggest one person is being controlling or isn’t appreciated by the others. 2. Scheduling Keep control of your time by constricting tasks to specific slots so you know when you will be able to do different things and ensure you keep time saved for personal stuff. whether it’s working on specific business tasks or spending time with your family its good to have time that won’t be interrupted by calls. especially when your an investor in many companies and working with accelerators 3. Being a good CEO with Growth mindset Having a can-do attitude where you can constantly learn and improve your skills is the best way to be. His favourite CEO’s are like sponges that are constantly learning from everyone they meet and every action they take whether it has good or bad consequences it is a chance to constantly improve themselves and their businesses. As a bonus, they are normal people who are fun to hang out with due to having varied interests. So go all in on growth mindset 4. Don’t always listen to advice from Mentors / Investors There is no overwhelming easy to implement the strategy on how to take advice. you will always get some good advice and some bad advice and work out which is the best and which isn’t comes with experience. The only thing we can say is to not let advice paralyse you into indecision and when you are unsure try to go with your gut. The story of the business that received mainly negative feedback and stalled on their idea to then lose out to others is hardly unique. Have faith in your vision. If people don’t understand it often you need to explain your vision better rather than give up. or ignore some of the haters. of course, the advice is often really useful and just ignoring people is also stupid. A good rule of thumb is to not listen too closely to people that don’t understand the industry and try rely more on input from your potential customers. CONTACT We are both very happy to discuss any of the idea’s mentioned in the show or anything else =] Eamonn: LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ecarey/) Twitter (https://twitter.com/eamonncarey) Techstars (https://www.techstars.com/) Sam: Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/samjamsnaps/) Quora (https://www.quora.com/profile/Sam-Harris-58) Twitter (https://twitter.com/samharristweets) LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharris48/) Show Notes (https://medium.com/growth-mindset-podcast/13-tech-accelerators-and-how-to-launch-a-vc-fund-d733135eb437) Subscribe! If you enjoyed the podcast please subscribe and rate it. And of course, share with your friends! Special Guest: Eamonn Carey.

"I help companies growth hack their way to success" - Vincent Dignan Vincent Dignan - Serial Entrepreneur, Growth Hacker, & Speaker London-based Vincent Dignan is a writer and professional speaker who helps grow early-stage companies through a combination of rapid social media growth, and guerrilla community management tactics. He founded planetivy.com & screenrobot.com. They have received nearly 20 million pageviews, while content he has overseen for other clients has received over 150 million page views so far. His growth hacks have seen companies go from zero to thousands of signups/followers/users virtually overnight. His company, Magnific, beat 1500+ other startups to be accepted into prestigious accelerator Techstars London. He was asked by The Duke Of York to help his companies at Pitch@Palace 4.0 and boost social media on the night of the event at St. James’s Palace with The Duchess of York. He has been interviewed in Inc, New Statesman, TechCrunch, and The London Economic, and has written for the likes of Huffington Post, Tech City UK, and Tech City News. He put on secretsauceconference.com, a one-day conference to help London startup entrepreneurs boost their companies. It attracted 600+ attendees throughout the day and night event. His company has driven thousands of followers, conversations, and signups for other startups. He has given talks at conferences and events around the world on content marketing, social media, growth hacking, and user acquisition. His "growth hacking in real time" talk was voted best talk at SXSW V2V 2015 in Las Vegas. He is the cover star of, and guest-edited, the February 2016 issue of “Disrupts” in London UK. He recently completed a 45-date speaking tour of North America, speaking at 13 different cities, including AT&T conference in Austin (for SXSW 2016), UCLA, Social Media Camp (Victoria, Canada), and Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Centre (San Francisco). His first book, “Secret Sauce: A Growth Hacking Playbook” has raised over $80,000 on Indiegogo so far. Connect with Vincent: Website | Facebook | @MagnificHQ | Instagram | Youtube Subscribe to the Outlier Newsletter: Click Here Brought to you by: If you enjoy Outlier On Air, please Subscribe & Review on iTunes or Stitcher

Max Kelly is currently Managing Director of Techstars London. Techstars is the world’s leading accelerator programme for early stage start ups, having incubated over 800 companies and developed corporate accelerator programs for the likes of Barclays, Nike and Disney to name just a few. Prior to Techstars, Max spent 12 years at Virgin where he was responsible for the strategy of the group and for starting new companies: - Virgin Insight - delivered big data consultancy to all the Virgin companies - Virgin Mobile USA - grew to revenues of $1bn within 18 months - Virgin Mobile Canada - voted best Canadian network in its launch year - Virgin Healthbank - freezing stem cells cryogenically These companies exited for more than $500M for Richard Branson. Alongside his Virgin commitments, Max also co-founded lastsecondtickets.com which was successfully sold in 2014.   Topics Discussed: - corporate startup relationships - fintech and blockchain - Brexit - why Techstars success rates hover around 90% - what Techstars looks for in startup founders and teams - aligning corporate and startup expectations and metrics   Show Notes: Techstars.com LinkedIn - au.linkedin.com/in/maxkelly   --- I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you’d like to receive a weekly email from me, complete with reflections, books I’ve been reading, words of wisdom and access to blogs, ebooks and more that I’m publishing on a regular basis, just leave your details at www.futuresquared.xyz/subscribe and you’ll receive the very next one. Listen on Apple Podcasts @ goo.gl/sMnEa0 Also available on: Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher and Soundcloud Twitter: www.twitter.com/steveglaveski Instagram: www.instagram.com/@thesteveglaveski Future Squared: www.futuresquared.xyz Steve Glaveski: www.steveglaveski.com Medium: www.medium.com/@steveglaveski

Nancy Fechnay is a Partner @ Flight Ventures where Nancy runs the UK syndicate which now has over 430,000 comitted to the syndicate and Nancy moved to London from Silicon Valley in 2014, having spent time with the likes of Kleiner Perkins and GE Ventures. Now in the UK, Nancy is the Interim Director at Techstars London as well as an advisor to several select UK and U.S. based startups and has a soft spot for wearables and other digital hardware plays, but invests across all sectors. Contained In Today’s Episode: 1.) How Nancy made her entry into the tech and investing world? What was it that attracted Nancy to the world of investments? 2.) Having working in both the US and UK venture scene now, when comparing the US and European scenes what are the biggest differences? Do the entrepreneurs have a fundamentally different mindset? Are UK entrepreneurs more risk averse, as is always suggested? Are investor expectations different in the US? 3.) Does the narrow exit funnel for European startups not concern NancySome suggest that startups must go to the valley if they are to be acquired for $bn plus or have a successful IPO. Does Nancy agree? 4.) Why did Nancy agree to setup Uk Technology by Flight Ventures with Gil Penchina? What is the mission? What is the average investment? Is there a plan to be investing further in Europe in time? 5.) At a talk with the Chicago Angels Network Nancy said that European investors are much more KPI led, in comparison to US investors who follow the passion of the team and the vision? Which side does Nancy fall on and what are the pros and the cons? 6.) What have been Nancy’s biggest takeaways from working with Gil Penchina? Shopping List From Today’s Show: Favourite book and why: Machine Learning: The Art Of Science & Algorithms That Make Sense Of Data by Peter Flach Fave blog or newsletter: The Memo, Term Sheet Most recent investment and why: Lystable As always, you can learn more about SyndicateRoom here: www.syndicateroom.com and see Nancy's latest tweets here: www.twitter.com/NancyFechnay

Max Kelly is Managing Director of Techstars London for those of you that are not so familiar with Techstars, Techstars is the leading global ecosystem for entrepreneurs to bring new technologies to market helping to create the next generation of amazing startups and prior to joining Techstars, Max had a long background running innovation and entrepreneurship at Virgin. While there, he was responsible for the strategy of the group and for starting several companies which eventually exited for over $500M. Alongside his Virgin commitments, Max also co-founded lastsecondtickets.com which had a successful exit in 2014. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.)How did Max make his way into tech and investing? How was his time at Virgin? 2.) What is Techstars and what is the fundamental differentiator to the plethora of other accelerators that exist? 3.) What does Max think of Sam Altman’s recent article on the damning nature of incubator hopping? Does he agree? In what situations is it acceptable? 4.) With many companies graduating from Tectstars every batch, how does Max retain the same quality control and level of mentorship for every company? 5.) What is the most common sector prospective Techstars companies are looking to enter? What is the least common? 6.) How do the VCs play a role in the process? Do some get exclusive access to prior to demo day? What do the best VCs do to make the most out of Techstars? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Fave book: Zen and the art of Motorcycle Maintenance Most used app: Citymapper, Voxer, Headspace, Fave Blog: CB Insights, The Daily Shop, Exponential View As always, you can learn more about SyndicateRoom here: www.syndicateroom.com and see Max's latest tweets here: www.syndicateroom.com/maxkellyuk

GeekGirl was excited to sit down with Rosario, CTO and Co-Founder of Headliner, in the third episode of GeekGirl Meets. See her bio below! Rosario is the co-founder and CTO of Headliner.io, a marketplace connecting live musicians, bands and DJs with amateur and professional bookers in the private events space. Headliner just graduated from the Techstars London 2015 cohort, where Rosario was the first female CTO to go through the London program. Deeply passionate about software architecture, testing, and design; building resilient, scalable systems is a skill which she’s honed from years of hands-on experience. Prior to embarking on her own venture, Rosario was working at Mendeley, a social network for researchers, which she helped growing from a very early stage right until after its acquisition in 2013. There she led the core API and Web development team and helped transition Mendeley to an open platform. In her free time she enjoys running, yoga, playing the piano and dancing. And she can’t wait until she has some time to go scuba diving. Links mentioned: https://www.codecademy.com/ http://stackoverflow.com/ http://twitter.com/phpeach Other links on where to learn how to code online: https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/3k2ehq/codecademy_vs_free_code_camp_vs_code_school_vs/

popsmoke.net/38 - Meet Tak Lo Startup Ronin. Thinker, Operator. Formerly Director Techstars London, ex-Founder/CEO(x2), USArmy Enlisted, London Business School, University of Chicago. Triathlete. In today's episode, Tak answers: How'd you prepare for your TechStars Patriot Boot Camp talk? - Why did you decide to leave TechStars London? - What are the main differences between startups in TechStars US and startups in TechStars London? - What's one of the most interesting companies you came across at TechStars? - At TechStars Patriot Boot Camp, you said you had failed at 2 ventures. What's the main thing you learned from each of those experiences? - What's a challenge you're experience right now in either life or business? - What's something you wish you can delegate? -What do you love most about being a veteran entrepreneur? - What would you say your greatest strength is? - What's your favorite thing to do in the world? - What's your definition of success? - How do you know if you're on the brink of burning out? And what do you do to prevent it? Discussion Questions, Comment Below: - Say you were on Donald Trump's Apprentice, and Trump tasked you with creating and hosting your own podcast. What would your podcast be about? Comment below! - If you can have lunch with anyone in the world, who would it be and what would you ask them? Surprising answer from Tak. Watch video above and then comment below with your response. Thanks again for checking out The PopSmoke Show. Make sure to subscribe to learn about the latest veterans on the go. Hey, do me a favor, after you check out the show please leave an honest iTunes Rating and Review. Your review will make my day and help the show get discovered by awesome, like-minded people like yourself. You can leave your name (and website if you have one) if you would like a shoutout during an episode. Leave your review on iTunes at popsmoke.net/review.

Today we talk to Kaili Kleemeier, Founder and CEO of Estonia-based Deekit. Last week, the startup graduated from the TechStars London accelerator and is currently looking for seed funding. Check out this week's newsletter at http://proceed.to. Intro credit: Shangyne. Jingle credit: Thejack288.

In this episode we were joined by Josephine Goube, Director of Partnerships & Communications at Migreat. She discussed her background, how she became involved in making immigration easier for companies, discussing Entrepreneur Visa options available to set up a business in the UK. Listed as one the top 35 women in Business in Britain in 2015 by Management Today, Joséphine currently heads Migreat, the fastest-growing global platform for migrants to get access to information and immigration support. She previously worked at TechStars London and Rainmaking, co-founded the London School of Economics Business Incubator & graduated from the New Entrepreneurs Foundation.

Jon is Managing Director of TechStars London and has previously founded and worked on startup accelerators around the globe. He’s co-founder of F6S.com which has grown into one of the most important startup program platforms in the world, and has recently cofounded tech.eu to feature startup and tech news across Europe.

Jon is Managing Director of TechStars London and has previously founded and worked on startup accelerators around the globe. He’s co-founder of F6S.com which has grown into one of the most important startup program platforms in the world, and has recently cofounded tech.eu to feature startup and tech news across Europe.

*Eamonn Carey* ( https://www.techstars.com/mentors/eamonn-carey/ ) *is the Managing Director at* *Techstars* ( https://www.techstars.com/ ) *London. Techstars is a global seed accelerator and worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed and is currently in over 150 countries worldwide. Some of their alumni include Classpass, Pillpack, and Contently.He was previously MD at Techstars Connection in partnership with AB InBev in New York, and has been a long term mentor, advisor and angel investor in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the US.* *In the past, Eamonn started, succeeded and failed with several startups in Europe and the Middle East - including Farmvillain - an app which some described as the 'South Park of Facebook'.* *A book that impacted Eamonn professionally is* *The Checklist Manifesto* ( https://amzn.to/2RGxGng ) *by Atul Gawande and one that impacted him personally is* *A Third Plate* ( https://amzn.to/37mcRE2 ) *by Dan Barber.* *In this episode, you will learn -* * *What attracted Eamonn to startups, entrepreneurship and then move to the other side of the table to investing? What are the advantages for startups being part of Techstars London? How is London's ecosystem is different from New York and the bay area? What is his due diligence process like, what are some of the qualities that you look for in founders and determining founder-market fit?* * ** * *What are some metrics that he pays attention in the diligence process and how do you determine if you've found product market fit? What is different about London's ecosystem compared to maybe The bay area or New York? He also sources deals for Zeroth which is a Hong Kong based accelerator. What trends are looking at since you're quite global? What is his view of remote working?* * ** * *How he thinks about consumer trends in different markets and how consumer companies are expanding to different markets? Consumer verticals that he is excited about or focused on for expansion in Asian markets? What are some of the difficulties when investing in consumers? Has today's landscape with round sizes booming changed how he invests?* * ** * *He wrote about how raising too much money can kill you, how does he think about good growth vs. bad growth in a startup? What is something that he would change when it came to venture capital? What is one company that is part of his most recent cohort and why did you invest? What is one company that he had the opportunity to invest in, didn't, and in retrospect wish you did? What is one piece of advice for founders of consumer companies?* * **