Episodes
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Today, Mike speaks to David Hirschfeld, a seasoned entrepreneur who has worked on 30+ tech and software startups to discuss why developing a founder mindset is critical. David explains why founders need to switch from a creative to a managerial mindset.
He shares why taking a clinician's approach, testing and measuring results, embracing failures as learning experiences, and being open to pivoting are all so essential. David also explains how you can use AI to automate and improve workflows while generating revenue early and keeping the cost of customer acquisition below one third of their lifetime value.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
An evidence-based approach is essential. Generate revenue from your customers early. It makes you less reliant on investors and you quickly learn what your customers want. If you are not out there in front of your potential customers from the start, that is a sign that you do not have the right founder´s mindset. David explains why and how to address this issue. You need to generate revenue from your customers early on. It makes you less reliant on investors, as well as more attractive to them. Look for a way to quickly produce something simple and get it in front of potential customers. At the founder stage, you need to switch from a visionary mindset to a managerial one. Value stream mapping will help you identify bottlenecks. As soon as you have a workflow that is generating decent results, create a playbook for it.BEST MOMENTS
2.52 "Clinicians don't believe in anything. They just test and measure, then make a plan based on the results of those tests."
7:58 "Founders often exhibit an obsessive leadership style and autocratic decision making, which can lead to poor decision making and strain team dynamics."
13.08 “ Founders shouldn't love their product. They should love their customers' and be committed to mitigating their customers problems."
30.37 “I looked to see where my business flow was kinked ... and focused my energy on (removing) that restriction."
34.41 “It starts to become very obvious where to focus your effort based on your cashflow.”
45.39 “When you're ready to bring someone in … give them the playbook.
55.03 “Predictability means if I spend more money in that area, I should see an equivalent return, in terms of what we're producing.”
1.03.17 “Make sure that they follow the playbook.”
1.04.49 “Founders that are really successful don't think of them as failures. They think of them as tests.”
1.07.14 “They (highly successful CEOs) are brilliant contingency planners.”
1.21.17 “If you want to accelerate through investment, having a conversation with an investor is a completely different discussion, because you've got a growing customer base.”
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://tekyz.com
https://tekyz.podbean.com/ - Scaling Smarter Episodes.
www.scalingsmarter.net - Schedule an interview
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/ https://x.com/tekyzinc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/
https://www.facebook.com/dmhirschfeld
David Hirschfeld is a 35-year software development veteran with a unique perspective on startups, technological innovation and business growth. A former physics student from UCLA, David's career spans leadership roles at tech giants like Computer Associates, Texas Instruments, Intel, and Motorola, before launching his first startup—which grew to 800 customers across 22 countries and was successfully sold in 2000.
Since founding Tekyz Inc. in 2007, David has emerged as a strategic advisor specialising in AI-driven workflow transformation for scaleups and in the design & development of startups. David's expertise bridges cutting-edge AI technologies, workflow optimization, and startup ecosystem dynamics.
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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This episode is all about finding opportunity in frustration and turning it into a platform trusted by 1 million+ users including tech giants like Airbus and Wal Mart. Mike speaks to Tanmai Gopal the CEO and co-founder of Hasura that enables users to easily build, run, govern and evolve high-quality APIs for all types of data. Reliably providing them with accurate real time data that can then be used in numerous ways to serve customers effectively and drive growth.
Tanmai shares the story of Hasura’s development, how to scale effectively and how to use PromptQL to turn AI from a flaky assistant that regularly lets you down into a tool you can rely on.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
ā Getting the timing right is crucial. Understand your market and product to work out what to focus on when and launch when the right tech and demand is there.
ā The Hasura team started out by offering consultancy services and made good money, but they stopped doing this to focus on product development. You can´t spread yourself too thin.
ā Identify the problem that is at the front of your customers minds, solve that and you will attract the product champions you need to gain momentum.
ā Be cautious about how you use AI. Even with access to live data it still hallucinates. Prompt QL is making AI far more reliable.
ā Letting the AI figure out how to achieve your objective and build its own program to achieve it is a far more effective way of using AI.
ā If you are tempted to build your own product, just do it. You will soon know whether entrepreneurship is for you.
ā Failing fast is still the most effective way to create a product that solves people's problems
BEST MOMENTS
2:39 "This episode is about finding opportunity in frustration and turning it into a platform trusted by tech giants."
25:20 "To have the experience of the best kind of products and have access to high quality, instant, secure data is essential."
32:34 "What´s really important is to be aligned to how people think about a particular problem – What is hot for them?"
48.17 “For AI to become a part of our day-to-day lives, it needs to become a part of our processes and our workflows.”
52.03 and 54.08 “We actually tell the AI to first plan what it wants to do with the data, then write a program to extract the right data, aggregate it and present it.”
56.23 “The business logic was the actual automation flow.”
1.13.28 “To be aware that there is a right time where things happen is very important.”
1.16.40 “You create the perfect timing by doing proper market research and just understanding the biggest problem spaces. You create a product when people are ready for that product, so the adoption is just simply there.”
ABOUT THE GUESTS
https://hasura.io
https://promptql.hasura.io
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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Missing episodes?
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If you are juggling too many ideas and do not know which one to focus on or are stuck because you are overthinking everything, this episode of the Managing Tech Growth podcast is for you. To discuss how to navigate your way out of that situation and avoid it in the future, Mike is joined by David Boice.
David is a serial entrepreneur who, at just 22, founded his first business. Today, it is worth hundreds of millions. His current companies employ 500+ associates who are mainly engaged in developing and providing technology for several transport industries.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Achieving growth takes time, but once you have it, maintaining momentum for a few years is relatively easy.
Once you demonstrate growth, attracting capital becomes much easier.
Focus on solving a problem that exists. If you solve a problem only you and a few others believe is an issue, you will go nowhere.
Constantly striving to improve your understanding of your customers and their problems is a growth essential.
Set up a customer advisory board of 12 to 15 engaged clients, a mix of big and small.
Identifying your exit strategy before establishing your business is counterproductive.
Be careful with automation. Often, to ensure that the customer gets the best service possible, you will need to insert humans into your systems
Be positive publicly. Regularly congratulate people for their achievements. Discuss problems, but primarily in the context of solving them.
You will meet resistance to change regardless of whether it is good or bad.
Put in place systems that enable you to step back. If you don´t you will burn out.
Not every founder should automatically become the CEO.
BEST MOMENTS
5.46 “There's a whole category of private equity firms called growth investors.”
8.36 “Just make sure you're solving a problem before you start looking at anything else.”
22.18 “We kept thinking, and kept staying curious about, what could we do next? What do our clients need? What problems are we solving?”
25.08 “We weren't as prepared for how profitability was really going to drive the ultimate value of the company.”
26.59 “I am very much against pre-planned exit strategies.”
36.19 “The customer advisory board is a great way to have a constant focus on where you want to go.”
44.36 “Because clients don't always know what's possible… our job is to come up with the really big, visionary ideas.”
47.51 “Bring in people that have the skill sets that you don't have.”
1.00.36 “If you manage your downside, the only outcome that is left is positive.”
1.14.22 “Change, whether good or bad, is going to be resisted with equal intensity.”
1.22.49 “You can be aligned at the head, and you can be aligned at the heart, but the best alignment is at the wallet.”
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://teamvelocitymarketing.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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Today, Mike is joined by Ivan Gekht a Siberian Aerospace Engineer and CEO of Gehtsoft, a custom software development powerhouse. For the past 20 years, he has delivered complex solutions for numerous industries. Ivan has led transformative projects at both startups and billion-dollar enterprises. He explains why, regardless of the industry you are in, developing and delivering products at speed is essential.
Ivan explains how the need to move at speed impacts the way you structure your business, go through development, deploy it, market it and more. Ivan covers using Agile, value stream mapping, decision making, creating a robust and sustainable team and much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Prioritize speed and the ability to solve problems quickly. If you can´t move fast, you will fail.
If it takes just a few days to create the product, then it takes 6 months to bring it to market, you lose.
Not using Agile well will slow you down. Using examples, Ivan explains how to fix that issue.
Use value stream mapping.
Take a holistic, value stream-based approach to identify and address bottlenecks. This approach improves efficiency by 30%.
Don´t end up with just a few go to people. If they leave, the project can fail.
Empower cross-functional teams and the product owner to make decisions.
You can´t 100% solve every problem, you just need to solve it enough to get to the next level and bring your product to market.
Be truly customer-centric
Often, asking 8 potential customers the question is enough to validate an idea.
Achieve sustainable performance by providing a safe, learning-oriented environment.
You need to learn to fail and do it safely.
BEST MOMENTS
00:38 "Slow teams don't just lose, they get wiped out."
10:17 "If you know exactly what needs to be done and the outcomes are predictable, you don't need Agile."
17:52 "The majority of the time is wasted not on doing the work the wrong way, but rather on doing the wrong work."
21:35 “They (the product owner) should be trusted … to make these decisions."
31:20 “Harvard Business Review reports that organizations using value stream mapping can identify bottlenecks that lead to 30% improvements in operational efficiency."
51:04 “It's not about perfection… it´s about making it good enough to hit the market … that's where you get the speed."
57.12 “For the user stories … your personal opinion doesn't matter. It's not about you, it's about the end user.”
1.05.30 “That emergent knowledge and emergent decisions come up through the teamwork process to be able to deal with the complexity.”
1.27.24 “Make sure that everything you work on brings value to the people who are paying for it and make sure to shorten time to market.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-gekht
https://www.gehtsoftusa.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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Today, Mike is joined by Ian Myers, founder and CEO of Oceans. He is an expert in building high-growth companies by hiring the right global talent, delegating effectively and creating a company culture which enables everyone, including remote workers, to thrive.
Ian and Mike discuss the best way to source talent from across the globe while avoiding common issues. Including, fraud, inadvertently breaking labour laws, and people working full-time for multiple companies and not delivering. They also discuss how to improve communication and inspire people to successfully work proactively.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When you hire the right person, you will see an uptick in growth.
Hire talent from sources that are usually overlooked by your peers.
Look for people with overlapping skill sets. Soft skills matter.
If you realise after week 3 you´ve hired the wrong person, go back to the drawing board.
High-growth companies need thinkers who can pivot.
Global teams are the future. They are productive, resilient and work 24/7. Forbes reports that those hiring global talent grow fastest.
Employing globally keeps costs low, which is especially important for startups.
Using an agency that specialises in providing companies in your country with global workers helps you avoid many of the most common pitfalls. How is explained in the podcast.
Successful companies deliver the culture the people they hire are attracted to.
Hire using referrals from your employees.
Being good at delegating is a superpower; you are 33% more effective.
Tell your people they are expected to be proactive. Make it a foundation of your culture.
Pick someone people trust and respect and get them to introduce and lead changes.
You have to manage remote workers differently e.g. your communication has to be more precise.
BEST MOMENTS
1:03 "If you still think productivity can only happen in an office; you're clinging to an outdated model."
25.24 "Make good on the promises of the culture you're promoting."
34.39 "Referrals, when hiring, are overlooked by many firms."
37.49 "Innate intelligence, adaptability and understanding of how to pick up new things… that's what's going to matter the most."
48.32 "We give our people permission to be proactive by telling them they need to be. ."
59.20 "You no longer need to hire all-arounders … AI can handle most all-around tasks."
1.06.28 “Using channels to communicate instead of DMS is a huge unlock for visibility alignment across remote teams.”
THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-myers-oceans
https://www.oceanstalent.com
HBS delegation - https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-to-delegate-effectively
AI global economy - https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/artificial-intelligence/publications/artificial-intelligence-study.html
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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Today, Mike speaks to Michael Nicastro who is the VP group, director of technology and head of accessibility at Digitas. They discuss a very overlooked aspect of scaling tech ventures - digital accessibility which is not just a compliance checkbox. It is actually a growth strategy that unlocks new markets, drives revenue and helps your product reach its full potential.
Michael is passionate about ensuring that digital products are accessible to everyone and uses quality assurance and automation to drive growth without sacrificing inclusivity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1.3 billion people worldwide face barriers when using digital products. Some have permanent disabilities, and others have temporary disabilities.
Companies that are ignoring accessibility are losing out on an estimated $1.2 trillion annually.
Lawyers are literally hunting for companies that are not complying with accessibility laws. The fines are high.
In 2025, the EU is introducing new accessibility legislation.
All areas of the business are involved in delivering true digital accessibility.
There are 40 to 50 keystrokes that a page reader may use to read a URL. Each page needs to be tested to ensure each keystroke works, which is time-consuming.
Outsourcing checking accessibility is far more cost-effective than doing it yourself. AI may change that.
If your cart process is not fully accessible you lose sales.
DAIs force you to focus on the experience you offer for all customers.
Standardisation and automation are essential.
BEST MOMENTS
00.32 "If your company isn't making accessibility a priority, you missing out on revenue and losing customers.”
12:12 “Screen reading one URL can take up to eight hours. You have to do it for desktop, PC and Mac, Android and IOS."
20.03 “If there's an image there needs to be an alt text behind it that tells you what the image is.”
30.46 “When you fix issues for those who have a disability, you're fixing issues for all.”
38.11 “There are trillions of dollars in the hands of those with disability and their families across the planet.”
42.24 “Passion is vital for mastering tech growth.”
57.40 “Ask - How can I build automation one time?”
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-nicastro-2862061
EPISODE RESOURCES
WCAG Guidelines - https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/#guidelines
European Accessibility Act 2025 - https://www.deque.com/blog/european-accessibility-act-eaa-intro
Tools
Screen readers
Mobile (Native)
IOS Voiceover
Android Talkback
Desktop
JAWS https://support.freedomscientific.com/Downloads/JAWS
NVDA https://www.nvaccess.org/download
Colour Contrast Analyzer https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker
Digital Accessibility checker https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/axe-devtools-web-accessib/lhdoppojpmngadmnindnejefpokejbdd?pli=1
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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In this episode, Mike speaks to Jason Barnard, CEO of Kalicube. Using cutting-edge Brand SEO, he shapes brands on Google to reflect a growth-driven vision. Jason unpacks strategies for controlling your brand story in Google and all of the AI engines so you can take full control of your online reputation, be easily found by potential customers and convert them into clients.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When it comes to tech growth your brand is the most influential factor.
Your personal brand is just as important as your business brand.
The way both Google and AI platforms represent you is critical.
Your content needs to be packaged in a way that the machines can understand, so they can find you and showcase what you offer.
Your website is the touchpoint AI and Google trusts and uses to verify who you are and what you offer. In their eyes, that website is the foundation stone.
What you publish on 3rd party websites and how you reference and connect that content on your personal website makes a huge difference in getting found in the SERPS and AI searches.
If you do not take control of your brand, it will be incredibly easy for a malicious actor to take control.
How you structure your About page and align 3rd party sources with it is important.
Focus on the sites and URLs the machines think are important. The Knowledge Graph will help you to do that.
How you manage any career pivots matters.
Publish in the places your potential customers are looking.
Being found online is just the first step. People will research you, so everything said about you or by you, matters.
Reputation issues can be fixed, but it takes time.
Track what is said about your brand online and quickly deal with problems, including errors in video transcripts.
Focus on your website. Get the structure right so the bots can understand it.
BEST MOMENTS
2.07 "The brand is going to drive your business growth."
12.32 āThe secret to (brand) control is making sure that you have one source of truth about you that you control.ā
22.56 āTake control today, by cleaning up and optimising your digital footprint.ā
33.01 āOur data from the Kalicube Pro database with 2 billion data points tells you the walk that you need to walk to be the most effective representative within your industry.ā
43.48 āBe visible across the entire research environment for the topics we specialize in.ā
48.42 āAnybody and any company can and should have a knowledge panel.ā
50.31 āGenerative AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Bing and Copilot have created new demand.ā
1.00.59 āIf the algorithm decides that something is true, it will be true, and if it decides that it's true, you have to figure out why it thinks that's true and correct the source of information.ā
1.08.26 āVideo is increasingly important.ā
GUEST RESOURCES
https://kalicube.com/solutions/free-downloadable-guides
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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Mike speaks to Alex Levin co-founder and CEO of regal.io a leader in customer journey optimization through understanding customer intent, Alex has guided companies to go beyond reactive strategies and meet customers exactly when they are ready to engage. He shares how anticipating and responding to customer intent can unlock untapped growth.
They cover capturing and analysing customer data, including doing it in real time and incorporating contact centre interactions. As well as the current role AI agents are playing and how they are likely to develop.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The rate at which one customer turns into more customers or $1 can turn into more $s is the factor that leads growth.
Your customer needs and motivators change. You have to constantly analyse and update the way you approach them.
Obtaining customer data is vital. Without it, you canĀ“t keep your understanding of them up to date.
Go beyond gathering customer data online. What they click on only tells you so much.
Contact centre interactions are where you find the gold nuggets of customer understanding.
Brands that invest in contact centres and reach out to customers at the right times with suggestions or help in a similar way they do with sales and marketing are seeing huge ROIs.
Customers like you getting to know them and the fact you offer them truly personalised sales and support.
Certain data patterns are strong indicators of intent. Figure out what they are for your business.
Customers want contact, but only if it is relevant to them. Tailor your emails, calls etc.
Analysing customer data is initially costly, so wait until your turnover is big enough or the spend per customer is high enough.
Invest in building a real-time data pipeline to gain fresh insights fast.
Now is the time to shift to using AI agents in your contact centres. They can absorb a lot more information than a human and hone in better on what the customer needs.
BEST MOMENTS
04:31 "Whatever works today is probably not going to work tomorrow, so constant reinvention is necessary."
09:35 "That old low-touch model in customer service does not work."
16:04 "I'm not in favour of buying customer data .. but there are cases where there are reasons to do it."
21:35 "As a business understand what behaviour patterns you consider high intent with your customers."
35:10 "No matter who you are, we can ingest the data."
42:41 "The big thing now is, the shift to AI agents in the contact centre."
46:38 "Soon they're going to say, I'm so pissed off that x airline sent me to a human instead of an AI agent, because the agent would have gotten to my issue faster. It's gonna flip."
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlevin1
https://www.regal.ai
Email: [email protected]
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.snowflake.com
https://www.usehatchapp.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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For this episode, MikeĀ“s guest is Nick McEvily a product leader and a startup advisor who has raised over $40 million for tech ventures. They discuss why so many startups fail and how to stop that from happening. Including why so many startups inadvertently end up building a product that their customers donĀ“t want.
Nick shares the validation methods, human-centred design, rapid product testing, de-risking and pre-sale strategies the startups he works with use to ensure that they build exactly what people need and sell it in huge numbers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Even good products fail if they are not a good market fit and are not tested early enough.
There is no replacement for knowing your customer. That means truly listening and never assuming you know what they want.
Invest in your research, interview your target customers and be prepared to reward them for their time. Nick explains how to find them and capture what you need to know.
Pay close attention to the language potential customers use to describe your product and mirror it.
If you canĀ“t find people to interview about the product you are planning, you have to ask if there is really a market for your idea.
Initially, use LinkedIn for outreach and to start to get your outbound marketing language right.
You need to use pre-sales, but the people who buy then may not be fully representative of your main customer type.
The validation process should be kept going indefinitely so you continue to gain insights into what your customers truly want.
Understand your risk profile. If it is too high your product may not be viable. Nick explains how to check for this.
Mastering tech is a lifetime task.
BEST MOMENTS
00:20 "The brutal reality is that most products aren't failing because they are bad. They are failing because they weren't tested early enough"
8:38 āAs a designer and a founder myself, I'll never outsource talking to my customers."
13:08 āThe first litmus test for a founder is finding their product market fit."
15.35 āHow will you sell it if you cannot find people to talk about what you're planning to sell?ā
19:00 "Ultimately, to move this thing forward, you need compartmentalised skill sets ā¦. departments that all have their own specialities."
33:53 "You need Google Search Console and Google Analytics plugged into your site map, your landing page."
41.51 "The market product fit analysis is never finished."
47:20 "The risk profile is too high if it takes a long time to find the talent you need."
57:35 "You got like, 10s of millions impressions on the game when it went live with your go-to-market campaign, and then you got hundreds of 1000s in the first week or so."
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.nickmcevily.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmcevily
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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In this episode of Mastering Tech Growth, Mike looks at the challenge of scaling tech operations without compromising growth. To do this he is joined by Andrew Parsons, an industry veteran who, for decades, has been transforming operations for Vive Bank, HSBC, MasterCard, Admiral Group and more. Andrew shares his insights on achieving operational excellence without slowing the pace at which a startup grows and evolves. A critical but often overlooked factor of tech scaling.
Whether you're in a fast-growing startup or managing an established venture, this episode offers actionable strategies to help your operations grow.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Be aware of the risks, but still be bold enough to innovate and break the mould.
Use Jeff BesosĀ“s decision-making process to make sure you donĀ“t become so risk-averse that progress freezes.
Set clear goals, clearly define your roles and set clear accountabilities.
Fail fast, move forward, and spend your money wisely.
Leverage frameworks, to improve operational consistency. This is especially important when you grow through mergers.
Effective change management is the key when scaling. Set clear goals, take a structured approach to communicating them effectively and monitor the impact of the change.
Communicate clearly in a calm, measured and consistent way, especially during mergers.
Be an active listener ā read between the lines.
When things go wrong, calmly evaluate why and logically assess the problem layer by layer.
Put automation at the core. Everyone should be driving it.
Think carefully before automating decision-making.
At the growth stage you will need to quickly hire the talent you need. Prepare for this, in advance.
From an early stage encourage testing failure modes, to build resilience.
Turn each crisis into a learning opportunity.
BEST MOMENTS
04:04 "Risk management is the daily day buzzword. You're always trying to do something to make sure, it is the right thing for now."
16:03 āClear goals, clear roles, clear accountabilities. If those are all correct, the people with those accountabilities will be the first to say, I need another person."
21:52 "You can never really communicate enough."
32:32 "Find a way of asking your questions that's not going to negatively charge the conversation and take things in the wrong direction."
47:05 "Gen AI will, and should, be used to augment and make life better for everyone."
01:11.14 āMake sure you've got a risk management framework that you can log these things into."
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-parsons-49b6135
Jeff Besos decision making - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxsdOQa_QkM
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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Mike speaks to Jinesh Patel, co-founder and CEO of Uptime Health, to discuss the importance of strategic partnerships in scaling a tech business. Jinesh used 15+ strategic partners to grow from Ā£1 million turnover in 2023 to Ā£10 million in 2024. He explains how they found the right partners and built effective relationships with them to sell an innovative product that those involved in the dental industry had never heard of or thought about using before.
He explains how to put together deals that are so good for the partners that they will not be able to resist working alongside you.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
ā With so many ways to promote your business, it is easy to choose the wrong ones and waste money. Jinesh talks about how to avoid this pitfall.
ā Use partners who have a rolodex of the type of people who need your product so you are targeting a pre-filtered list of prospects.
ā Take a highly structured approach to partnerships. Include regular milestones and incentives.
ā Create a clear go to market strategy.
ā Look for partners who are likely to sell your products alongside theirs e.g. anyone who sells medical equipment is also likely to sell medical software.
ā Take the time to educate your partners.
ā Vet your partners as you would investors.
ā Reaching out to partners automatically improves brand awareness.
ā Attend conferences as attendees and approach people in the booths who could be good partners for you.
ā Tailor the incentives to appeal to each partner. Look for synergies and ways to help them to grow their business too. Examples are shared in the podcast.
ā As you grow, partnerships need to evolve.
ā You need different types of partners. Often, once a few have jumped aboard others will follow.
ā If you are just getting started, target smaller partners. Jinesh explains why.
ā Craft the contract to ensure that you have a way to contact the end customer.
BEST MOMENTS
00:13:08 - "We educate the partners. They educate the clients, and theyāre only bringing us opportunities that make sense.ā
00:33:13 - āQualifying your partners is just like when you want to raise capital from an investment group. You want to make sure youāre taking in good money, and it has good reputation.ā
00:47:50 - "We still do direct [sales], because at the end of the day, not everyone wants to buy from a partner.ā
01:06:39 - āThe best way to hedge is to have more than one partnership of that size, so youāre not putting all your eggs in one basket.ā
01:18:18 - "Closing a partnership has this huge element of pitching the product, talking about it, and...getting feedback."
01:19:07- āWeāre always pushing out articles, podcasts just to educate and inform the community. That's been our go-to-market strategy.ā
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jineshjpatel
https://www.uptimehealth.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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For this episode, Mike speaks to Gautam Hazari an influential TED speaker and the visionary CTO of sekura.id. He is at the forefront of developing innovative security solutions that tackle the complex challenges of identity management and fraud prevention.
They start by looking at the impact fraud is having on businesses and why the situation is about to get a lot worse. Before discussing what you and the tech industry can do to mitigate fraud. Including being ready for when the fraudsters start using AI bots to work on an even larger scale than they are doing now.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Deepfakes are already being used in real-time using voice and video. Fraudsters are now training AI bots to carry out their fraud for them so they are not reliant on how fast their staff can work. When a business is a victim of fraud, the trust clients and investors have in them is undermined which can trigger them to look to your competitors. Fraudsters use our chemistry against us. They turn on and appeal to the emotional side of our brains. They try to scare you or appeal to greed. Time is your friend. Pausing and counting backwards from 30 before taking action engages your logical brain and helps you to spot fraud more often. Passwords no longer work. It is too easy for fraudsters to steal those details from companies. Even password credential managers. Between 80 to 86% of data breaches are related to credential (identity) failure. That is why sekura id is focused on providing better ways to confirm someoneĀ“s ID. Cryptographic authentication tied to their SIM gives everyone, including those in poorer countries, a far higher level of security. There does not need to be a privacy issue, mobile providers are already heavily regulated.BEST MOMENTS
02:59 ā 6% of global GDP is impacted due to fraud."
08:41 "When they (fraudster employees) are replaced by these AI chatbots, there is no scaling problemā¦ and that's scary."
33:56 "The internet doesn't have an identity layer."
50:36 "These startups are getting targeted more now because they are easy targets if they want to do everything themselves."
53:22 "Passwords are a problem."
57:11 "The SIM is nothing more than a cryptographic engineā¦It's a hardware-based cryptographic engine."
1.03.05 āEvery single phone on earth has a SIM providing or doing that cryptographic protection right now. Why don't we use that?ā
1.1.52 āIt's not going to be a man-in-the-middle attack, it will be AI-in-the-middle attacks.ā
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://sekura.id
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sekura-id
https://www.ted.com/talks/gautam_hazari_digital_me_why_we_need_a_world_without_passwords
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/people/gautamhazari
https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir
https://www.netflix.com/es-en/title/81183491
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
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For this episode, Mike is joined by Keith Harrison a seasoned software development leader with 24 years of commercial experience. They discuss the intersection between community building and tech innovation and how it catapults your personal and business growth.
Keith explains how to set up your own tech community. Including, securing sponsors attracting high-quality speakers, pricing, finding venues, and more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Constantly learning is essential. Meetups and similar events are an excellent way to do this. Before setting up your tech event be clear about its purpose. What is needed for a business-focused event is quite different from what wors for community events. Sponsorship is powerful, it gives you credibility and attracts attendees, speakers, and partners. Know your audience and make sure the talks are relevant. Keep talks short. People have been at work all day, so attention spans are short. Initially, attracting the best speakers will take a lot of effort. In time, they will approach you. Pricing is a tricky subject, Mike and Keith discuss this in-depth.BEST MOMENTS
8:17 "We try and keep the talks broad enough so pretty much anybody could come along that has an interest in tech and get something out of it.ā
10:34 "Decide which one you are: is this a community-based event, or a business-focused event? If you pretend to be a community event but it's for business, it won't work."
11:48 "Word of mouth has been our biggest driver."
11:50 "You can't beat LinkedIn... it's been great for reaching out and getting more people to come along to our meetup."
12:50 "Start by deciding your focus and building your community."
26:30 "We try to keep talks around 25-30 minutes because people are tired after work."
35:33 "Venue is the number one problem... I nearly quit over venue issues."
55:02 "If you want to scale, adding more events multiplies the effort. It's not the same process scaled up."
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.meetup.com/techmeetup/events/303972875/?eventOrigin=group_events_list
https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithdharrison
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
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Mike speaks to Nathan Yeung, a seasoned fractional CMO with a keen interest in using consumer psychology to drive marketing success in the tech industry. Nathan explains how it should inform your marketing strategy and campaigns. Including creating a network effect, building trust, social proof, case studies, repackaging, anchoring, the impact of AI and why so much unethical marketing still works.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Effective marketing is key to success. Focus on selling to a small group of consumers first to benefit from the network effect. Nathan explains why. Most Gen Z brands are community-led, so get a community talking about you. Social proof is particularly powerful for new businesses. Some forms of marketing generate long-term, almost passive results e.g. SEO. Invest in mid to long-term strategies and be patient, you need to be consistently present for consumers to remember and trust you. Trust is built on empathy, authenticity, logic, and heuristics. Be hyper-specific and provide high-quality, literally invaluable products and information. Use case studies. Consumer psychology is why unethical marketing practices still work. Anchoring is powerful. Nathan shares how to do it for tech products. You have to be memorable, be bold.BEST MOMENTS
04:28 "You have to do everything you can to help solve problems and educate your customer about how you solve that problem."
09:37 āYou're trying to get a community to bring up your nameā¦ if you can drive conversation you win."
15:17 "Everything is a choice, and you have to provide enough value for someone to make that choice."
23:29 "Social proofing has high influence, high impact ā¦ Every touch point you have in marketing has a level of influence on an individual."
39.07 "If I open up a pop-up on Fifth Avenue, people inherently think that I must be a legitimate companyā¦ anchoring is huge."
44:47 "The first thing is, is that you need to have a good website. I can't stress this enough."
49.15 āGoing out there and solving a problem - anyone can do that. It's whether or not you can frame it in such a way that's going to be different, and that's being bold.ā
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.findyouraudience.online
https://www.linkedin.com/in/yeungnathan
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
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Mike speaks to Greg Rog a serial entrepreneur and expert in AI-driven automation and streamlining who co-founded easy.tools, easycart, Automation House, and Zencal. His latest innovation, Alice, is an AI assistant that works seamlessly with your apps to simplify tasksāa daily tool Mike uses.
Greg explains how Alice solves the automation challenges you are having including, dealing effectively with AI hallucinations, and being able to use your custom APIs as well as the automation you have already created on platforms like Make and Zapier.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Alice enables you to talk to and interact with your current stack e.g. custom-built automations/APIs and those built on platforms like Zapier and Make.
You can talk to the interface using natural language.
Most companies map only a small percentage of their processes, with many existing only in one personās head. Automation pushes firms to examine, streamline, and update these processes.
Once a process is automated, people stop checking to see if what they need for their part of the process is ready. They waste less time and are more relaxed.
When a new task is introduced ask, should a person do this, or can AI do it?
Link simple automations together in a chain to complete complex processes, so you can easily debug and update them.
AI tools like Alice will reduce the need for people to specialize in certain business areas, e.g., sales or marketing.
To learn the tech and become a skilled prompt engineer. When you find yourself doing a repetitive task try to automate it.
BEST MOMENTS
5:01 "Thanks to automation, we have millions of operations working for us daily."
7:49 " Alice formats it as data ā¦. trigger our automation, and make sure that the process is finished within our API or some other API."
16:39 "Design automations so nobody has to wait."
25:57 āAI models tend to hallucinate. But ā¦ our way to approach it is basically, it's mistake-free. ."
35:42 "The beauty is actually in simplicity with these automations."
49:39 āThe mindset is very important ā¦recognize small things in your workflow that can be automated and pursue this automation."
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://easy.tools
https://www.heyalice.app
https://x.com/greg_rog
https://www.linkedin.com/in/grzegorzrog
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
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Mike speaks to Jothy Rosenberg an incorrigible entrepreneur who has sold 9 of his tech startups for millions of dollars each. In this episode, Jothy explains how he does it and how you can do the same.
During this episode, Jothy covers assessing the viability of your idea, how to get the attention of investors and raise funds, honing your pitch, self-financing, building a team, the impact of dilution on equity, and much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Without product market fit your startup will fail. Product-based companies sell for multiples of 5 to 15 times revenue. Service companies typically sell for a multiple of 1. Use LinkedIn to find a lighthouse customer. An early adopter in desperate need of your solution who can afford to pay and will work with you. Launch big, invest in marketing. From day one, build your culture, that is how you attract your founder team. To be self-funded, start with a service, then build a product based on that. You can raise money before you make a single $. Approach the right type of funders at the right stages. Jothy explains how to handle JVs, seed funds, incubators, and more. Find investors on LinkedIn. Your pitch has to go beyond being good it has to tell a compelling story and include research and proof.BEST MOMENTS
17:12 "Find a lighthouse customer ā¦ a kind of early adopter, who will work with you to make sure that what you're building solves their problem."
24:18 "We had this typical situation; we had this product and now we were looking for a problem and we never found one which was a disaster."
43.47 āYou can raise money as a seed with a small foundational team, clear identification of a big opportunity and you don't need to yet be getting any revenue.ā
45:12 "Don't just send a business plan to a VC."
1.05.43 ā I don't believe that in an early stage, anyone except the person who's got the vision and the most passion should deliver the pitch, but they can get help.ā
1.13.15 ā100% of nothing is still nothingā¦ at the end of the day, the equity translates if you sell it.ā
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.jothyrosenberg.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jothy
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Startup-Toolkit-Launch-Strong/dp/1633438422
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distill practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
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Today, Mike talks with Maarten Ectors, an award-winning innovator in AI, Web3, and next-gen tech, known for launching the worldās first blockchain reinsurance solutions. They discuss the transformative impact of AI on society and the future of work. Including what developers, coders, and technical architects can do to position themselves now to take advantage of the wave of AI innovation and new technologies.
He also shares how AI is likely to impact the lives of less technical people like your parents and drastically change the way society works.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
AI is on the cusp of replacing millions more jobs across numerous industries e.g. robotaxis will make human drivers irrelevant. When you add robotics to AI, the transformative impact accelerates e.g. what happens to the food industry if we print our meat and fish? In a few years, we will have unlimited energy, which is what AI needs to explode and rapidly transform society. Work that requires human contact or where human contact enhances the experience is not likely to be eliminated by AI e.g. hairdressers. Think about what needs to change to make the new technology viable. They will need developers to create the framework to facilitate that change. Get involved in DevOps for AI and Cloud. Understand how to make models that get deployed on the Edge in the cloud and can be scaled out. Big companies who put together small teams to solve a specific problem as spin-off businesses succeed E.g. Amazon pizza teams. Most highly skilled work can be done gig style. AI could bring together a group of people with the right skills to solve a specific problem or build something like a super rocket. Once done, everyone moves on to another project. Generative AI is going to be a problem for coders but what it produces still needs to be evaluated and fixed by experts. That means youĀ“ll still need coders. Technical architects are a vital part of AI technology development. Someone has to see the broader picture and make sure that is what gets delivered. AI speech recognition will transform lives in the next couple of years. Because AI is likely to greatly reduce the availability of work the structure of society must change radically e.g. universal income.BEST MOMENTS
03:38 āThe AI-enhanced worker will very quickly eat the market of the rest."
9:19 "Do something that will require human contact."
25.01 āA lot of companies now scale through technology, not through users, not through workers.
26.28 āThey need teams that can do 500 different things in a small unit, not 500 people that are all the same.ā
33.52 āThe DevOps person that goes towards Edge or AI DevOps is going to have a lot longer runway than the person that just stays doing what they've always been doing.ā
35.37 āGenerative AI doesn't mean there will not be programmers, but I think the architects are going to become more important.ā
36.42 āAI-enhanced experts is the model for the next five years afterward, it will depend.ā
54.06 āIf you don't have users adopting and an easy go-to-market, hence product market fit, technologies are relevant.ā
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://candao.io/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mectors/
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distill practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each
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Today, Mike speaks to Krista Neher about the increasingly critical subject of personal branding. Krista is an award-winning digital marketer, bestselling author, social media specialist, speaker, trainer & CEO.
Regardless of the tech work you do, how you present yourself makes a huge difference to the opportunities you attract. Your personal brand builds credibility and makes you attractive, so the information in this episode is critical to your success.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Your personal brand is who you are. The person people see when they meet you. Work with you, listen to you or experience your work. Be that face-to-face or online. Your brand needs to demonstrate to potential clients that you have what they need and something extra to offer. Think why would someone pick me over someone else? Look at how your competitors differentiate themselves. When building your personal brand online, focus on one channel. Listen closely to what others tell you about how they perceive you. You have to be memorable. If you donĀ“t stand for something you stand for nothing, so nobody will remember you. Create a great elevator pitch for yourself. Be authentic. If people feel they canĀ“t get to know you they wonĀ“t connect with you. DonĀ“t feel fenced in by your brand. People expect you to evolve and pivotBEST MOMENTS
O7:58 "WhatĀ“s the reputation you are building for yourself that is unique? What sets you apart from others? ā ThatĀ“s the way to think of your brand."
08:19 "If you're an entrepreneur, are looking to get clients or grow your reputation externally, it's really about how people perceive you and being deliberate and consistent."
36:46 "The first is memorability. Which is specificity, simplicity and consistency."
36:52 "Authenticity. So, if people don't feel like they are getting to know you, they will not connect with you."
48:36 "Points of differenceā¦. what are some meaningful differences that I would get with working with you than working with someone else?."
57.10 āGet your elevator speech down. Your elevator speech is what you say when you meet someone.ā
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://launchyourself.com/
https://bootcampdigital.com
https://kristaneher.com
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
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Mike speaks to Joe Pulizzi, who is a content marketing guru who is the founder of multiple startups including The Tilt, Content Expo Events, the author of 7 books, and the host of several podcasts. He also runs The Orange Effect Foundation which provides children with consistent speech therapy.
Joe explains how he went down the content marketing rabbit hole and how any business can leverage it. He and Mike discuss, which platforms you should use, software, automation, knowing your audience, email list building, leveraging AI and much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
If you want to grow significantly you need to build a strong relationship with your customers. Content marketing enables you to do this. People come to know, like and trust you, over time. It is a marathon, not a sprint. DonĀ“t just go create content. Know who your audience is and be clear about what your marketing goal is. To find your sweet spot, ask what my audienceās pain spots are, what am I qualified to talk and tell stories about, and what differentiates us from our competitors. DonĀ“t publish on every channel. Joe explains how to choose which ones. Initially you will need to set up listening posts so you can better understand what your audience wants. But donĀ“t forget to talk to your customers. Use your content to build your list. You need to get peopleĀ“s email addresses to gain one-on-one access that will enable you to better serve them. Once you have peopleĀ“s email you can use that to look at their buying behaviour. Use your data to the full. So many businesses donĀ“t. Before investing in software, get the most out of free tools like Google Analytics. Create a long-form piece of content e.g. a podcast, then pull your short content out of that. Make sure you post to a platform you own e.g. your website. The socials constantly change the algorithms, so you can never 100% rely on it. Leaning too heavily on AI stifles your creativity and makes you sound the same as everyone else. AI does however make a great assistant for example doing research. It takes a long time to build a business, years, which is why patience is essential.BEST MOMENTS
05:52 "It (content marketing) takes a lot of time, but it is the absolute best form of marketing on the planet."
13:45 āCreate content that differentiates you and rises above all the other content clutter out there?"
25:48 "At some point you have to think like a marketing strategist and say I need to have the data."
27:20 "Build a program to get people back to your website and sign up for something."
40:17 "We don't have the time or resources to really figure out all these channels and do what we need to do. So just choose one."
48:33 "I think youĀ“re in trouble if youĀ“re getting your content from an AI tool."
55:57 āDon't spend frivolously. Don't be on every platform. Be strategic."
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.thetilt.com/tilt-author/joe-pulizzi
https://cex.events/speaker/joe-pulizzi-2/
https://theorangeeffect.org/about/
https://www.joepulizzi.com/signup/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joepulizzi/
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
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Mike speaks with Adelina Chalmers the founder of Geek Whisperers. She helps CTOs, Heads of Engineering, and others to improve team performance. In her 20s, Adelina stopped working in human rights organisations when she realised, she could help people far more by working in tech.
Her mission is to transform engineers and their leaders. To do that they both need to know how to give and take feedback. Something that we are socially and biologically engineered to struggle with. Adelina explains how to unpick that and use feedback to transform our performance.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Those who work in tech have an incredibly powerful impact on peopleĀ“s lives. The projects we work on really move the needle. Feedback is critical. Without it, nobody knows if they are doing a great job or not. Feedback is not a personal attack. Often, for biological and social reasons we see it that way, Adelina explains why and how to get past that feeling. Lean into feedback. Regardless of how you feel respond by saying āTell me moreā Think of feedback on your performance as being like the feedback you get from customers when developing products. Remote feedback is more difficult. Adelina explains how to get around this. For feedback to work well, the two people need to trust each other and have a proper connection. Remote teams need some face-to-face time. Tell people in advance why you need to speak to them. DonĀ“t blindside them. Coach first if that does not work give feedback. Remember constant negative feedback wears people down.BEST MOMENTS
02:11 "Giving feedback and receiving feedback is effectively how we all grow."
03:43 "When people ask for feedback, most people mean, please donĀ“t hurt me, give me good feedback."
29:03 "If you think about growing, by default, you have to make mistakes, learn from
32:19 "My key tip would be to build a relationship of trust with this person."
50:06 "Coach them every time they make a mistake. And if the coaching doesn't work, then you can move a gear up to feedback."
1.00:00 "The business strategy tells you what you need to do with your tech strategy.ā
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.geekwhisperer.co.uk/adelina-chalmers
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/alternative-st-sandwich-time-writing-adelina-chalmers
ABOUT THE HOST
Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.
As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.
ABOUT THE SHOW
Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.
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