For this season finale, we invited Steve Brown to embark on the journey of what's next. Via his fathers job as a Physics lecturer, Steve was introduced to science and technology at a very early age - and that sense of magic has never left him. After studying how to make a computer, he went on to have a fascinating career with the one and only Intel…

It’s fair to say that Parker Crockford quickly became a citizen of the world; travelling and gathering experiences that have helped shape his career. In this podcast, we explore how Fintech is developing and growing in the US and Europe, and what the breakout segments look like. As ever, regulation is always lagging but can’t be ignored in building…

It’s fair to say that Rav has grown up with Customer Success (CS), starting his career in the Unix admin world at Accenture and IBM, before being catapulted into the startup world at the then young company Salesforce. Since then he’s gone on to hold senior CS positions at Yammer, Zendesk and Slack, seeing first hand how CS has grown and matured as …

It’s fair to say that Chris Bruce has had some interesting twists and turns in his career before he met his co-founder and created Thomson Online Benefits. In this podcast, Chris talks through the early days of the business, how they honed the value proposition and why they had to totally rebuild the tech for the next stage of growth. After some hu…

It is a pleasure to talk with David Quantrell about his road to becoming Chair of a number of tech businesses. After starting in the long project world of defence, and a return to school, David has gone on to two IPO’s, four company sales through to running a large division of an IT giant - he’s worked with well known names such as Box, McAfee and …

With a non-traditional path into tech, Pat Phelan has been right in the middle of the evolution of the Customer Success function. In this podcast, Pat discusses how Customer Success aligns with the vision of the business, and at the same time, the needs of the customers. How this is reported to the c-suite, and how this contributes to the northstar…

Jonathan ‘Jono’ Gill has been a student of personal growth and development ever since he held down 4 simultaneous jobs whilst still at university. It was great to sit down and chat with Jono as he talked about how his early career prepared him for the world of sales, and how this combined with the rise of the cyber industry, set him up for his late…

John Kreisa has been a marketing leader at a string of data product companies, including Business Objects, Hortonworks, Docker and now Couchbase. In this episode, John breaks down his thinking on why Product Marketing is so central to a Marketing team at data software companies, and how that translates into effective sales motions. He also talks ab…

Dan Hyde co-founded Erevena over 20 years ago, with an initial focus on hiring executives for B2B software companies. In that time he’s seen the market change and evolve, with the emergence of EMEA as a startup powerhouse, combined with new fast moving software categories. The war for talent is as strong as ever, with demand at an all time high for…

Starting out as a software engineer, Ingrid Burton, CMO, Quantcast, quickly moved into Marketing during her long tenure at Sun Microsystems. Her deep experiences of Sun’s early pioneering move to Open Source key software components has fuelled much of her stellar career as CMO of many leading companies such as Hortonworks and H2O.ai. There aren’t m…

Amandine Le Pape describes how Open Source was pivotal in building Matrix, how the business model and GTM evolved and how they manage their rapid scaling. Highlights: - Open Source and the power of community can solve big problems - Business models for Open Source are evolving quickly - Rapid Scale needs senior people early in the journey - The mis…

Jason Corsello is a much admired and respected figure in the world of HR Tech, but how did he start as an analyst, become an operator, and then found and manage a dedicated HR Tech fund? In our session we explore how HR Tech has evolved over the years, what trends he sees emerging, and how the pandemic has accelerated changes in the employee experi…

Growing up via a very diverse cultural journey, Kamal Kirpalani, VP Sales & GM Americas at Mirakl, shares some hard learned and honest lessons around mastering the art and science of Sales. Highlights: - The e from eCommerce is going away - it’s just Commerce - Complex deals need executive team involvement including the CEO - You need to hire a Sal…

A very honest conversation about sales with the one and only Jennifer Bers, who lives and breathes sales excellence, and has lost none of her passion and energy around the craft. Her drive and results are incredible. Highlights: - There are four key traits to look out for when Sales hiring: intelligence, integrity, hunger and coachability - In orde…

“The Art of Exiteering”, or taking the long term view, in order to maximise the value of an M&A or IPO — building long term readiness to have a significant and positive impact on that outcome. Highlights: - If you are building a great tech company you must have a thorough understanding of the ecosystem you are disrupting - Partnerships are very imp…

Understanding a VC firm's investment strategy - focus, stage, thesis and so on - is critical as a founder develops their investment proposition, but so is understanding the individual strategy of each partner in a firm. This allows a founder to tailor their pitch but more importantly, get the right investor excited and committed as soon as possible…

Within the context of the startup, grow up and scale-up life cycle of a venture backed tech company, the topic of internationalisation soon emerges and typically the focus of the discussion is on the US. From our personal experience and from discussions with founders we know that a critical success factor is one of the founders, and often a few han…

The journey from startup to global category leader is a daunting task, for a million or less in revenues, when we might invest 100 million revenues, or more, in less than ten years. This is what VCs hope to find, and it’s what many founders plan to achieve. There are strategic challenges of balancing short term operational excellence, with long ter…

The type of companies that Notion Capital invests in are redefining the rules of an entire industry. They become synonymous with a category which they solve uniquely well. Highlights: - Defining a category is about showing the world: -- What problem you solve -- How you are uniquely positioned to solve that problem and finally, -- Building an ecosy…

SaaS businesses are ultimately recurring revenue streams, often with significant upfront costs for customer acquisition. Any profit or contribution from an individual customer is only typically generated in the second or third years. In order to be viable they need to have a deep understanding of their business model and, critically, an understandi…

Pricing and monetisation is a critical topic for any company at any stage but particularly for SaaS, because as recurring revenue businesses the decisions they make on pricing strategy have far reaching consequences. When companies really think about how to maximise growth and net revenue retention, pricing and monetisation is one of the strongest …

Lean customer development is a topic that people may think relevant only to early stage startups, but in our opinion the imperative of customer development - building products your customers will actually buy - never stops, whether this is at the startup, grow up or scale up stage. Cindy Alvarez discusses this with Stephen Millard and Paul Papadimi…

Martina Lauchengco is a Partner at venture capital firm Costanoa Ventures, and also a Partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, where she leads on product marketing — a critical function for any high growth SaaS business which she discusses here with Stephen Millard and Paul Papadimitriou. Highlights: - Product marketing is all about strategy, deliv…

Andy Leaver, Operating Partner at Notion Capital, on how do we build on the people, processes and tech to get to the next revenue boundary — the 1s and 3s. Interviewed by Paul Papadimitriou and Stephen Millard. Highlights: - Why, as enterprise tech startups grow, they follow the rule of 1s and 3s - An effective rev ops function is essential - The “…

Renn Vara, Co-Founder, SNP Communications, interviewed by Paul Papadimitriou and Stephen Millard. Communication is critical in startups, especially as an organisation grows. Ensuring everyone across the business is aligned with the company's vision and values, the behaviors, what matters most, the path to success. The importance of communication is…