Secret Leaders with Dan Murray-Serter
369 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago - ★★★★★ - 20 ratingsThis is the entrepreneurial education I wish I’d had. A few years ago, I thought I'd made it as a Founder. My app was topping the charts, I was winning awards, having drinks with the Queen at Buckingham Palace (she laughed at one of my gags, sure), but as my business started to fail, I realised I had so much more to learn. The trouble was I found most business chat too stuffy, surface level or braggy so I started Secret Leaders to get behind the mask of entrepreneurship. I speak with the best Founders and business experts to learn how great companies are built - especially the things that normally get left out, like their mistakes. We cover the most important stuff, from fundraising to hiring, habits to mindset, so you can learn how to build a successful business. And no, you don’t need to get into an ice bath at 5am either...
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Episodes
Ukrainian Founder Aleksandr Volodarsky on running a company in wartime
March 04, 2022 09:52 - 47 minutesIt’s amazing how important business seems until something really important happens, like a war breaks out. For Aleksandr Volodarsky, Founder of Lemon.io, which connects companies with software engineers, although he and his colleagues had gotten used to operating in a conflict situation since 2014, he was still stunned when Russia invaded. And the most useful thing he can do now is to keep the business going so it can support the war effort - including his employees who’ve gone off to fight. ...
MedMen: what went wrong at the cannabis industry’s first unicorn, with Founder and former CEO Adam Bierman
March 01, 2022 08:11 - 55 minutesLook, we’re going to tell you straight - this is a blinding episode - and that’s because we’re talking to a man who is unflinchingly honest about his Founder experience. On the outside it looked like Adam Bierman had it all. He was the Co-Founder and CEO of MedMen, a cult phenomenon and the world’s first cannabis unicorn. They were seen as the Apple of weed and they looked unstoppable. But in 2019, a year after hitting its all time high on the Canadian stock market, the company had lost 95% ...
DesignMyNight Co-Founder Nick Telson on gay shame and taking the business to exit… exactly as they planned
February 08, 2022 02:00 - 49 minutesWhat’s particularly shocking about Nick Telson’s success with DesignMyNight is how deliberate it all seemed. They set themselves a target each year, achieved it and moved onto the next one until they’d hit the numbers they needed for the exit they wanted. How many businesses do that? And it was the first startup he’d ever founded… Nick explains how they sold the business - the actual steps they took - which isn’t a process that most people know about unless they’ve been lucky enough to go thr...
How to go from a side hustle to a multi-billion market leader, with Houzz CEO & Co-Founder Adi Tatarko
February 01, 2022 07:00 - 48 minutesIt’s the stuff entrepreneurs dream of. Houzz, a marketplace for home renovations, evolved from an evenings and weekends passion project into a multi-billion dollar company with investors queuing up to get a slice of their proverbial pie. So how did the two Co-Founders, husband and wife Adi Tatarko and Alon Cohen, do it? “I think, in retrospect, delaying it and bootstrapping it, the way we bootstrapped it without even understanding that this is what it is back then helped us tremendously down ...
When your mental health forces you to leave the company you’ve just started - with Faire Co-Founder & COO Jeffrey Kolovson
January 25, 2022 07:00 - 47 minutesLife is the sum of your choices, says Jeffrey Kolovson, COO and Co-Founder of Faire, an online wholesale marketplace for retailers and brands. At the end of the day, it’s not what you say, it's what you do and the choices you make and the accumulation of those over time that matters. “I once had a mentor tell me that the prize for winning the donut eating competition is more donuts. And that kind of stuck with me, as things don't necessarily get easier. And the more you do, the more you have...
“He threatened to kill my parents and I had to get a restraining order” - the real Dan Murray-Serter, Chapter 1
January 18, 2022 07:00 - 47 minutesCocaine, £1,000 on roulette, sleeping with the client, a boss demanding bail out of a Malaysian prison, a restraining order - and that’s just one of the stories in this special episode where we turn the microphone on our host, Dan Murray-Serter. This is the start of a semi-regular series where we interview Dan roughly every three months because: If you listen to the podcast regularly we thought you might want to get to know him better. Who is this guy in your ears every week? Dan is the Fo...
“By the end of 2015 we were just about out of money” - and now they’re worth $4B. How did Vuori do it, with CEO & Founder Joe Kudla
January 11, 2022 07:00 - 42 minutesHaving grown up poor, Founder and CEO of Vuori Joe Kudla always wondered what it would be like to have money and go on holiday, so he spent the first chapter of his career proving to himself that he could make money. But then he started to make life decisions differently. “I see myself on my deathbed. And I am coming to terms with that moment, am I going to look back and feel like I went for it, like I seized the day? Did I live a life in alignment with my passions, my heart, my interests? Or...
Curve: Building an $800m FinTech after being laughed out of the room by Mastercard, with CEO & Founder, Shachar Bialick
January 04, 2022 07:00 - 48 minutesCurve CEO and founder Shachar Bialick is a multi-exit entrepreneur with a background in the Israeli Defense Force special forces. “There's a joke in Israel: how do you win a competition in racing? You start as fast as you can, and you slowly increase the pace.” Curve brings all your credit cards and debit cards into one app and card. The idea first came to Shachar in 2006, but he knew that launching a business is all about timing. And so he waited until 2014 to pick it back up, when he knew ...
NetSuite: How Evan Goldberg scaled one of the world’s first cloud companies to a $9.3 billion exit
December 21, 2021 07:00 - 34 minutesHow did NetSuite grow from its humble beginnings above a hairdressers in 1998 to almost 20,000 employees 23 years later, and selling to Oracle for $9.3 billion dollars? Today we’re speaking to Evan Goldberg, founder and EVP of NetSuite who make software which helps businesses with stuff like accountancy and inventory management. “We provide [services] for businesses that are fast growing, that have increasing complexity, they've outgrown the simple systems that they were using to help them ...
Welcome to the death industry, with Farewill’s Co-Founder and CEO, Dan Garrett
December 14, 2021 07:00 - 49 minutesThe only certainty in life is death (and taxes!) And yet the industry of death had remained largely unmodernised by the time Farewill was co-founded by Dan Garrett in 2015. “Out of 100, losing a spouse, or a parent or a best friend, is the 100 out of 100 worst thing you ever go through. And what a great funeral can do is bring back some of that connection that you have with someone.” Dan says that despite death affecting every single one of us it’s also historically lacked the kind of custome...
I went to sleep one day... and woke up gasping for air - Morning Brew Co-Founder Alex Lieberman
December 07, 2021 07:00 - 46 minutesBeing a Founder takes its toll on you - even if it looks like everything is rosy from the outside. Today we’re learning from Alex Lieberman, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew, which became a darling in the media industry because it actually became commercially successful. But whilst everyone else was applauding the company’s success, for Alex at least, he was trying to cope with anxiety and panic attacks. The company sold late last year to Insider Inc (of Business Insider) fo...
Vivino - how to disrupt a $400 billion industry that no one had really cracked, with Co-Founder Heini Zachariassen
November 30, 2021 07:00 - 46 minutesHow many times have you stood in front of a wall of wine in a supermarket and taken a punt on one because the bottle looked nicer than the others? We’ve all done it… and often been disappointed by results. So, in 2009 Heini Zachariassen, Co-Founder, Former CEO and current board member of Vivino, decided to fix the problem. “Why is wine something that nobody has disrupted? And why is wine something where the only thing I can base my decision on is looking at a label.” Vivino’s mission is to he...
They had two weeks of runway left and are now worth $1.5b - Loom Co-Founder and CTO Vinay Hiremath
November 23, 2021 07:00 - 47 minutesGrowing a company to 14 million users and a valuation of $1.5 billion should be cause for celebration, but, like so many founders, for Vinay Hiremath, Co-Founder and CTO of Loom, it’s difficult to enjoy your successes. In fact it’s the failures that tend to stick with you. Loom, a video communication tool for businesses, wouldn’t be here today if Vinay and his Co-Founders hadn’t had their ‘sliding doors’ moment which revealed what they should be building right before they were going to have t...
When you think Google might sue you but instead they hire you as a 17 YO - Larry Gadea, CEO & Founder of Envoy
November 16, 2021 07:00 - 46 minutesLarry Gadea built the world's biggest Pikachu pictures website at 12 years old, was recruited by Google at 17, joined Twitter after college and then left to found Envoy in 2013. He did all this after getting smuggled out of Romania as a young child in the late 1980s and watching his parents have to restart their lives several times. Normally childhoods filled with upheaval breed an aversion to risk - but not in Larry. Envoy is a workplace management tool that helps with things like letting y...
You don't start your company to end up in court, with Michelle You, Co-Founder and CEO of Supercritical and former Co-Founder of Songkick
November 09, 2021 07:00 - 41 minutesAfter exiting Songkick, Michelle You was burnt out. It felt like failure and grief (her words). She spent a year backpacking around the world, living on $2 per day, trying to figure out what it took to make her happy, to figure out what mattered to her and what her next business move was. “I went camping and hiking and surfing and climbing for the first time. And it was that that made me fall in love with nature. And that was my gateway drug into the climate change crisis.” Michelle is determ...
Why do we clean our bottoms with toilet paper? With serial entrepreneur and Founder of Tushy Miki Agrawal
November 02, 2021 07:00 - 45 minutesMiki Agrawal was forced to become an entrepreneur having started her career, in her own words, as an awful employee: “I got fired from pretty much all of my jobs growing up, because I just wasn't listening, or I was questioning or I was talking back or I was running in the hall or I was eating while on the job or giving away smoothies to friends. Whatever job I had, I did something wrong.” The daughter of an immigrant who came to the US with $5 in his pocket, Miki learned early that if you se...
Kraken - from growing up poor to founding Europe’s largest crypto exchange, with Co-Founder & CEO Jesse Powell
October 26, 2021 06:00 - 46 minutesJesse Powell grew up poor and hustling from a young age. First, he sold physical gaming cards, then he sold virtual ‘gold’ in the game World of Warcraft - and now he’s the Co-Founder and CEO of Kraken, Europe’s largest crypto exchange - with talk of going public for $20 billion. How did he make the jump? “Bitcoin, when I read about it, I thought it was interesting. I first saw it and just thought it was like another World of Warcraft gold that we can sell on the website.” Jesse has been in c...
Killing Kittens - the world famous sex party turning into a tech business, with Founder & CEO Emma Sayle
October 19, 2021 06:00 - 48 minutes“Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten, and I went ‘right, that's it, that's what I'm calling my business.’” This is the story of Killing Kittens, the cult-like sex party, founded by Emma Sayle. “Everyone starts talking to each other and mingling and then you'll see maybe a few couples disappear off into a room, or you know a group of girls go off. One minute you've got a packed bar and the next minute it's only 10 people in the bar and everyone's gone off into different rooms, getti...
When and why to pivot your life, with doctor-turned-YouTuber Ali Abdaal
October 05, 2021 06:00 - 45 minutesHow do you live a happier, healthier, more productive life? This is the question that doctor-turned-YouTuber Ali Abdaal is obsessed with. “Most of my childhood was spent chasing this dream of making magical internet money that mostly didn't work out. And it was like a string of failures. But when I did end up making magical internet money, I felt that a lot of the failures from childhood had been worth it.” Ali’s first business, 6Med, which he started in university in 2013, helps people get i...
The startup that all other startups will want to succeed - MicroAcquire, with Founder & CEO Andrew Gazdecki
September 28, 2021 06:00 - 46 minutes“It’s really hard for companies to get acquired. I was shocked at how many entrepreneurs reached out to me after we announced the acquisition [of Bizness Apps], like ‘how did you get acquired?’” With a couple of exits already under his belt, Andrew Gazdecki saw first-hand how broken the process of selling a company was. He used that experience to start MicroAcquire in January 2020, a platform that helps startups get acquired by connecting them with buyers within 30 days. The goal is to give s...
Lora DiCarlo - the sex tech startup that made Cara Delevingne orgasm three times in six minutes and got banned for being ‘obscene’ at CES 2019
September 21, 2021 06:00 - 47 minutes“When I was about 28 or 29 I had a squirting orgasm, I completely lost my mind. I couldn't tell if I was having a religious moment or a seizure, or maybe both or neither. As I lay there on the cold tile floor staring at the ceiling, all I could think was, oh my god, how do I do that again? And more importantly, how do I do that again by myself?” Lora DiCarlo is the founder of the sex tech startup also called Lora DiCarlo, and is determined to change the face of sex products. Having won an awa...
Saved from the Nazis, she started a unicorn software company in the 1960s staffed with only women and just £6 - Dame Stephanie “Steve” Shirley
September 14, 2021 06:00 - 48 minutesDame Stephanie Shirley, known as ‘Steve’ for reasons explained in the podcast, escaped Nazi persecution before founding a software startup in 1962 with just £6 which provided employment to hundreds of women when they weren’t taken seriously in the workplace. “I remember selling a six figure software project to a junior minister, and he was trying to pinch my bottom. It was very hard to maintain a sort of professionalism.” Steve’s story is one that reminds us both how much the world has moved...
How exponential technologies will change the world - with founder, journalist and author, Azeem Azhar
September 07, 2021 06:00 - 47 minutes“Technology does not appear from nowhere, it is closely allied to the shape of society. And if you have exponentially changing technologies, they will force changes on society, or create a gap.” Humans coming second best to technology isn’t a new subject but our guest today, Azeem Azhar, has a new, thoroughly researched take on it which goes further than anything we’ve seen before. Azeem is a founder, journalist, speaker and now author of the book ‘Exponential: How Accelerating Technology ...
Ethereum fallout - how the second biggest cryptocurrency in the world nearly didn’t happen, with Anthony Di Iorio, Co-Founder of Ethereum and Decentral
August 31, 2021 06:00 - 48 minutesHow many of us are kicking ourselves for not investing $100 in Bitcoin in 2010 - it would be worth almost $48 million today. Anthony Di Iorio, one of the co-founders of Ethereum, the massive open-source blockchain, which is home to Ether, the second biggest cryptocurrency in the world after Bitcoin, is not kicking himself. Anthony was an early investor in Bitcoin putting in $8,000 back in 2012. With the proceeds of his first sale of Bitcoin, Anthony was able to initially fund Ethereum with th...
The other way to build a massive tech company - doing it slowly, with Airtable Co-Founder and CEO Howie Liu
August 23, 2021 23:01 - 49 minutesMost investors didn’t understand the concept. Most non-technical entrepreneurs at the time didn’t get it either. But Howie Liu, Co-Founder and CEO of multi-billion dollar tech juggernaut Airtable, had the conviction to bet the next 10 years of his life on it. “I didn't come up with Airtable as an idea, on a lark, it was informed by a lot of the research I did, a lot of the observations I had of the enterprise software landscape, of looking back at other companies that did similar things. I th...
How to build a business at 16, recover from a $1b dollar deal collapsing, and walk on hot coals, with multi-exit entrepreneur Norman Crowley
August 16, 2021 23:05 - 47 minutesWhat would you do if you sold your business and effectively retired at the ripe, old age of 28? Phenomenally successful serial entrepreneur Norman Crowley took just three weeks before jumping back into business. “A business isn't just a vehicle to make money. A vehicle is an expression of your creativity, it's working with friends. And then the thing nobody warns you about is that when it's sold, you just end up with a bank balance, and the friends are gone, the mission has gone.” Norman has...
Overcoming crippling anxiety and how to get work/life balance right, with Mathilde Collin, Co-Founder and CEO of Front
August 10, 2021 14:05 - 46 minutesMathilde Collin is the co-founder and CEO of Front, a communications platform that has developed a cult following - despite having to stop working at one point because her anxiety had become so debilitating. Find out how Mathilde learned to overcome burnout, an incapacitated co-founder, and a serious case of competitiveness that almost let work take over her whole life. Front has grown quickly since its founding in 2013, amassing a cult following, and recently announced a huge series C round...
Breaking startup scandal: how blood pressure medtech TLT scammed investors out of millions, with investigating reporter Sara McCorquodale
August 02, 2021 08:32 - 48 minutesTarilian Laser Technologies (TLT) was a medtech company founded by husband and wife team, Dr Sandeep and Nita Shah, who bamboozled everyone from the UK government to PWC. They claimed to have a revolutionary wearable blood pressure monitor, powered by a secret, proprietary algorithm. They raised millions, before everything came crashing down. This is an audio exclusive with the journalist who just broke the story in The Sunday Times, Sara McCorquodale, founder and CEO of CORQ. When Sara, a f...
The American fixing the race problem in UK venture capital - Eric Collins, star of Channel 4’s The Money Maker and CEO of Impact X
July 26, 2021 23:05 - 48 minutes“Impact X exists because I'm tired. And there are a lot of people who are tired of asking the question - what to do to improve the lives of black Britain? We've been having this conversation for a long, long time.” Meet Eric Collins. He’s done some work for President Obama, built some of the world’s biggest tech companies, is the host of a new TV show on Channel 4 called ‘The Money Maker’, and is the CEO of Impact X, a venture capital fund in the UK for underrepresented founders. How did Eri...
How to build a $65b company, with Twilio Co-Founder and CEO Jeff Lawson
July 19, 2021 23:05 - 48 minutesToday’s guest is at the helm of probably the biggest company we’ve ever had on Secret Leaders. Jeff Lawson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Twilio, a cloud communication platform that helps businesses use everything from text to video calls in their sites and apps. Since its founding in 2008, Twilio has grown to 4,500 employees, annual revenue of $1.74 billion, and is valued at $65 billion. Yup, $65 billion. Woof. All this despite investors not being interested at the beginning which forced Jeff...
Fighting P Diddy, managing Gwen Stefani & Nas, what Roger Moore said in Monaco, and turning the music industry on its head, with Steve Stoute, Founder and CEO of United Masters
July 12, 2021 23:05 - 48 minutesBefore he was the manager for Nas and Gwen Stefani, before he was the producer for the film 8 Mile, before he was getting into fights with P Diddy and 50 Cent, Steve Stoute was an entrepreneur. He’s always been an entrepreneur - starting out shovelling snow and selling mortgages. And boy has he got some stories to tell, like what Roger Moore said to him when 007 met Steve and Bono in a bar in Monaco. Find out how Steve is turning the music industry on its head as the founder of United Masters...
Building world’s best elite match-making service, with Rachel MacLynn, Founder and CEO of Vida
July 05, 2021 23:05 - 46 minutes“I came across a job advert for a psychologist to join a matchmaking agency. I wouldn't describe myself as a spiritual person, but it just felt like my dad had sent [me] this opportunity. I had butterflies in my stomach. That was the moment that changed my life.” Are you unlucky in love? Or perhaps you’re exploring a very niche entrepreneurial path, then don’t miss Rachel Vida MacLynn, the founder of The Vida Consultancy, widely considered the best elite matchmaking agency in the world, on th...
Learn the art of negotiation with Chris Voss, FBI’s former chief international hostage and kidnapping negotiator, and author of Never Split the Difference
June 28, 2021 23:05 - 46 minutesWant to know what it’s like to negotiate for a person’s life? Want to learn the secrets of great negotiation? Want to find out why a deal can break down with no warning? “The deal-killers are as important as the decision maker”, explains Chris Voss. “We've changed our hostage negotiation strategies to take the people not at the table into account. And we found the exact same dynamic in business.” If you feel like your negotiation skills need sharpening, you’ll like this episode with Chris Vos...
How Gorillas became Europe’s fastest ever unicorn and what it means for your supermarket shopping, with Co-Founder and CEO Kağan Sümer
June 07, 2021 23:05 - 44 minutes“We were 100% sure about one thing: if you go to the fucking moon, you shouldn't go to the supermarket. We have the technology to go to space and we’re still going to the supermarket? This is counter intuitive.” Kağan Sümer is the founder and CEO of Gorillas, a grocery delivery service which promises to have your order delivered to your door in under 10 minutes, at retail prices. They’ve been blowing up. Recently launched in the UK, they’re the quickest ever European startup to be valued at o...
Healthily: Building a “moonshot” for the health of a billion people, with Co-Founder & CEO Matteo Berlucchi
May 31, 2021 23:05 - 41 minutesMost of the founders we speak to have already achieved much of their startup’s mission, but today’s Secret Leader is in the midst of a much longer journey with his company. Meet Matteo Berlucchi, a serial entrepreneur and the founder of Healthily which has spent several years building their product to a point where they can play for the ‘big prize’. “Healthily is a moonshot, it’s the textbook definition of a moonshot. The idea behind Healthily is to use technology to enable people to manage ...
Myprotein: How to bootstrap a £500 overdraft into a £350m exit, with Founder Oliver Cookson
May 24, 2021 23:05 - 53 minutes“I was a keen gym goer and I used to buy protein powder from what was the leading sports nutrition company in the UK at the time. And about six months in I looked at the back and thought, ‘what actually is this?’” Oliver Cookson founded the sports nutrition business Myprotein in 2004 with just a £500 overdraft, selling it to The Hut Group seven years later having kept 100% equity. The deal ended up being worth north of £350m for him. So how did he pull it off? “I don't live with regrets becau...
Double Jeffardy: the story of Seedrs and its vetoed Crowdcube merger, with Co-Founder Jeff Lynn and CEO Jeff Kelisky
May 17, 2021 23:05 - 57 minutesHow did two Americans called Jeff come to lead Seedrs, one of the UK’s leading crowdfunding platforms? And why did their planned merger with bitter rivals Crowdcube get blocked? In today’s ‘Double Jeffardy’ episode, Seedrs Co-Founder Jeff Lynn and CEO Jeff Kelisky share their experiences and learnings - from the biggest missed opportunities when scaling, to what the CMA got wrong with the merger. “The CMA has chosen to take an exceedingly aggressive stance on anything that looks like a tech ...
After his startup IPOd in record time everything fell apart, with Eve Sleep co-founder Kuba Wieczorek
May 10, 2021 23:05 - 49 minutesFounders dream of being early to market, garnering flattering press, watching their product fly off the shelves and IPOing in record time. For Kuba Wieczorek, Co-Founder and former Chief Marketing Officer of Eve Sleep, the dream became a reality. And then the wheels came off. Kuba founded DTC mattress company Eve Sleep in 2015 with his cousin Jas, and they quickly started experiencing explosive growth. Within just two years they’d raised £35 million and were valued at £140 million. To top it ...
Bolt: Markus Villig skipped university at 19 to take on Uber and become the youngest unicorn founder in Europe
May 03, 2021 23:05 - 43 minutesMarkus Villig was 19 when he decided to spend the $5,000 his parents had saved up for university on starting a business instead. His initial goal for Bolt, then called Taxify, was to solve Tallinn’s (Estonia) taxi problem. By 25 he was the youngest unicorn founder in Europe and had shown that Uber wasn’t going to win everywhere. “Today, Bolt is the fastest growing mobility company in the world. We have more than 50 million customers on the platform. We operate in more than 40 countries. And w...
A startup Covid tale: how accuRx got to ⅓ of UK vaccine bookings and 99% market share of GPs, with Co-Founder and CTO Laurence Bargery
April 26, 2021 23:05 - 49 minutesYou might not have heard of today’s guest or his company, but if you’ve had a Covid jab in the UK (or are going to) there’s a good chance you’ve used their tech. Laurence Bargery is co-founder of accuRx, a healthtech supplier trusted by 99% of GPs, and with ⅓ of all vaccine bookings in the UK now taking place through their systems. “Within about four or six weeks of us releasing this suite of Covid tools we'd gone up from that 50% point to about 99% of GPs using us.” Laurence and co-founder ...
Insights from 12 world class founders & thinkers for our 100th episode
April 19, 2021 23:00 - 1 hourWe’ve been making the UK’s startup podcast since 2017 and this is our 100th episode. To celebrate, we’re doing something a little different and bringing you a bunch of the most powerful stories and insights from some of the amazing guests we’ve had the honour of talking to over the years. In celebration of this milestone, we’re also giving away a pair of Apple Airpod Pros to a lucky Secret Leaders subscriber/follower. Entering is super simple and takes just a few seconds - go to www.secretle...
How to land LeBron James & Michael Phelps in your first 100 customers - Will Ahmed, Founder of Whoop
April 12, 2021 23:05 - 50 minutesAs the captain of the Harvard squash team, Will Ahmed trained and prepared as best he could. But, whatever he tried, his body kept breaking down. He didn't know why so he started researching the human body, devouring medical papers. Now, several years later, those personal frustrations have grown into Whoop, a wearable tech startup you can see on the wrists of NFL players, pro golfers and Navy Seals - despite being consistently told his strategy was wrong. “The vision for Whoop has always bee...
Trinny Woodall reveals her surprising, untold startup journey - from dotcom bust to beauty boom today
April 05, 2021 23:05 - 54 minutesMost people recognise Trinny Woodall for being one half of Trinny and Susannah from their breakout TV show: What Not To Wear, but not many people know this side of her story. Trinny is a serial entrepreneur. She was a founder in the dotcom bubble back in the day, and is the founder of soaring makeup startup, Trinny London, which booked £42m of revenue in the last year. What happened? How did she get here? In today’s episode of Secret Leaders, Trinny shares her really surprising entrepreneuria...
Bloom & Wild: building world’s fastest growing flower company with Co-Founder & CEO Aron Gelbard
March 29, 2021 23:10 - 50 minutesHow big can a flower company really be? Well, the industry processes over a billion transactions every year and Bloom & Wild is leading the charge to become the dominant player. In today’s show we talk to Co-Founder and CEO Aron Gelbard about how it all nearly failed before it had even begun, and how much of that market they can really take. “We're doing a few million of those. So we've made meaningful headway. But there's a huge way to go around the world.” That’s not bad for a company that ...
Four top female founders reveal what it’s really like in the startup hot seat
March 23, 2021 00:05 - 49 minutesTo mark Women’s History Month, we’re serving you the secret sauce of four incredible female founders: Alice Bentinck, co-founder of Entrepreneur First; Debbie Wosskow, co-founder of AllBright; Saasha Celestial-One, co-founder of Olio; and Tamara Lohan, co-founder of Mr and Mrs Smith. Although the numbers for female-founded businesses are improving, it still remains that of the 6 million businesses in the UK, only 1/5 are run by women. There are twice as many male entrepreneurs as female ones....
World’s youngest Dragon, with Michele Romanow, Co-Founder of Clearbanc
March 16, 2021 00:05 - 53 minutesYou can’t take your ears off our guest today. Born and raised in Canada, Michele Romanow has been building startups since university (a cafe which still operates today) followed by a venture in an industry she knew nothing about - caviar - right when the 2008 financial crisis struck. “There I am, 21 years old, selling the world's most unnecessary luxury product. I realised the world owes you absolutely nothing, that everything can fall apart in a second, that it can be your fault. It can be t...
From living on benefits to the American dream, with Pipe Co-Founder Harry Hurst
March 09, 2021 14:00 - 51 minutes“I was a young kid with a family on government benefits living off £600 a month. I was surrounded by people that could afford private school. And from a naive child's perspective, they seemed to have everything that I didn't have when I went home to my reality. But I think that was the formation of Harry Hurst, the hungry, ambitious, immigrant entrepreneur.” Today’s Secret Leader, Harry Hurst, has been hustling ever since he was kid - and he’s had to. He credits his poor upbringing for his en...
Former Monzo CEO Tom Blomfield on falling out of love with your work
March 02, 2021 02:00 - 38 minutesGet you own unique referral link: https://www.secretleaders.com/hype Tom Blomfield, the former CEO and Co-Founder of Monzo, and Co-Founder of GoCardless, knows a thing or two about the fintech industry. “We wanted to create something different than existing banks. We believed that the banks weren't serving customers particularly well at that moment. Customer expectations had been raised dramatically by things like Spotify, Uber and Airbnb, in terms of the user experience and functionality.” ...
We're trying something that's never been done before
February 23, 2021 02:00 - 2 minutesTo get your own unique referral link, please head to https://www.secretleaders.com/hype. And if you have any feedback please email [email protected]. Thanks!