Episodios
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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1:03 "If you still think productivity can only happen in an office; you're clinging to an outdated model."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 “The secret to (brand) control is making sure that you have one source of truth about you that you control.”
22.56 “Take control today, by cleaning up and optimising your digital footprint.”
33.01 “Our 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.”
43.48 “Be visible across the entire research environment for the topics we specialize in.”
48.42 “Anybody and any company can and should have a knowledge panel.”
50.31 “Generative AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Bing and Copilot have created new demand.”
1.00.59 “If 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.”
1.08.26 “Video is increasingly important.”
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 can´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, Mike´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 don´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 can´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 “As a designer and a founder myself, I'll never outsource talking to my customers."
13:08 “The first litmus test for a founder is finding their product market fit."
15.35 “How will you sell it if you cannot find people to talk about what you're planning to sell?”
19:00 "Ultimately, to move this thing forward, you need compartmentalised skill sets …. 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 Besos´s decision-making process to make sure you don´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 – 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 “Clear 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 “Make 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 £1 million turnover in 2023 to £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
● 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.
● 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.
● Take a highly structured approach to partnerships. Include regular milestones and incentives.
● Create a clear go to market strategy.
● 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.
● Take the time to educate your partners.
● Vet your partners as you would investors.
● Reaching out to partners automatically improves brand awareness.
● Attend conferences as attendees and approach people in the booths who could be good partners for you.
● 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.
● As you grow, partnerships need to evolve.
● You need different types of partners. Often, once a few have jumped aboard others will follow.
● If you are just getting started, target smaller partners. Jinesh explains why.
● 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 they’re only bringing us opportunities that make sense.”
00:33:13 - “Qualifying your partners is just like when you want to raise capital from an investment group. You want to make sure you’re taking in good money, and it has good reputation.”
00:47:50 - "We still do direct [sales], because at the end of the day, not everyone wants to buy from a partner.”
01:06:39 - “The best way to hedge is to have more than one partnership of that size, so you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket.”
01:18:18 - "Closing a partnership has this huge element of pitching the product, talking about it, and...getting feedback."
01:19:07- “We’re always pushing out articles, podcasts just to educate and inform the community. That's been our go-to-market strategy.”
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 someone´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 “ 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 problem… 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 engine…It's a hardware-based cryptographic engine."
1.03.05 “Every single phone on earth has a SIM providing or doing that cryptographic protection right now. Why don't we use that?”
1.1.52 “It's not going to be a man-in-the-middle attack, it will be AI-in-the-middle attacks.”
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.”
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 “You're trying to get a community to bring up your name… 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 … 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 company… 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 “Going 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.”
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 tasks—a 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 person’s 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 …. 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 “AI models tend to hallucinate. But … our way to approach it is basically, it's mistake-free. ."
35:42 "The beauty is actually in simplicity with these automations."
49:39 “The mindset is very important …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 … 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 “You 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.”
45:12 "Don't just send a business plan to a VC."
1.05.43 “ 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.”
1.13.15 “100% of nothing is still nothing… at the end of the day, the equity translates if you sell it.”
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 world’s 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 you´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 “The AI-enhanced worker will very quickly eat the market of the rest."
9:19 "Do something that will require human contact."
25.01 “A lot of companies now scale through technology, not through users, not through workers.
26.28 “They need teams that can do 500 different things in a small unit, not 500 people that are all the same.”
33.52 “The 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.”
35.37 “Generative AI doesn't mean there will not be programmers, but I think the architects are going to become more important.”
36.42 “AI-enhanced experts is the model for the next five years afterward, it will depend.”
54.06 “If you don't have users adopting and an easy go-to-market, hence product market fit, technologies are relevant.”
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 don´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 can´t get to know you they won´t connect with you. Don´t feel fenced in by your brand. People expect you to evolve and pivotBEST MOMENTS
O7:58 "What´s the reputation you are building for yourself that is unique? What sets you apart from others? – That´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 difference…. what are some meaningful differences that I would get with working with you than working with someone else?."
57.10 “Get your elevator speech down. Your elevator speech is what you say when you meet someone.”
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. Don´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 audience’s pain spots are, what am I qualified to talk and tell stories about, and what differentiates us from our competitors. Don´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 don´t forget to talk to your customers. Use your content to build your list. You need to get people´s email addresses to gain one-on-one access that will enable you to better serve them. Once you have people´s email you can use that to look at their buying behaviour. Use your data to the full. So many businesses don´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 “Create 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 you´re in trouble if you´re getting your content from an AI tool."
55:57 “Don'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 people´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 “Tell me more” 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. Don´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 don´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.”
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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Mike speaks to Michael Orant who is an entrepreneur, fractional CTO and racing driver. Today, they discuss fundraising, covering when to raise funds and how to talk to VCs, what to expect from them and spending the money strategically.
To do this, Michael shares several real-world examples. Over the years, he has played a significant role in helping several startups to raise money.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Even when investors are more risk-averse, you can still raise funds. Think about your exit and the exit for the investors and make that as attractive as possible. Accelerator events are a great way to find funders. Get a warm invite. Michael explains how to do that. Practice articulating the opportunities to different types of investors in a range of settings. Practice on friends and family, if they understand investors will too., Be honest and realistic about what your business is worth and the potential of your idea. Model out the future, in particular, consider what future rounds of fundraising will look like. Do everything you can to avoid having to raise further funds. Remember you are inviting the investors into your business and will be working with them for the long term. Fundraising takes a long time, so plan ahead to avoid running out of cash before the funding arrives. Sometimes the VC will want to change the board and management team. Engage with the investors and set expectations. You will have to hire a lot of people fast, prepare early and empower people to recruit for their teams.BEST MOMENTS
12:57 "You need people that will ground you or at least challenge your thinking so you can check your facts and numbers are right."
24:31 "Be transparent with everything. Let the skeletons out of the closet early."
34:35 "Think about cash conversion. And actually, what can we do to mitigate having to go for further investment rounds."
36:42 "You are inviting someone into your business, to be part of that business, do your due diligence on them."
54:33 "If you're looking for highly skilled roles, then there is an advantage of using niche recruiters."
42:45 – “You have to make sure that they're (VCs) buying into that plan that you've put forward, or you accept that you're going into their plan.”
57.11 – Don´t underestimate how exhausting fundraising can be.”
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 Robbie Clutton a fractional CTO, who does pretty much anything engineering-related. Today, they discuss transitioning from being an individual contributor to taking on a leadership role. Looking at how to decide if this is right for you and what you can expect that new role to look like.
Robbie also shares some really practical tips to help you to coach, manage and develop your first team. He covers giving feedback, managing one-to-ones, building relationships, effectively managing up and much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Becoming a fractional CTO genuinely gives you control over how and when you work. To cover any lean times, have some cash behind you, reduce your spending and develop several income streams, e.g. coaching and advising. Not everyone can lead so try before you buy by taking on temporary leadership roles. Be wary of roles that require you to code but spend a lot of time managing people. You won´t be able to get into the necessary flow state to code well. Correct poor behaviour quickly. Creating a culture in which people can thrive is a leader´s No. 1 priority. Don´t protect your team from everything. They need to understand why things are needed in a certain way, if they don´t the hows they come up with may not work well. When asking for resources be clear about what you need and ask early. Consider using an external mentor. There is no bias in that relationship. The smartest people always ask for help.BEST MOMENTS
04:21 "During school holidays, it's very easy for me to dial down the work."
14:07 "Before you take on any formal responsibility start looking for the informal ownership of things." (Robbie explaining how to work out if a leadership role is a good fit for you)
42:00 "There´s no way you´re gonna be good at leading people if you´re not able to have a courageous conversation and give course-correcting feedback."
54:19 "For managing out make sure what you´re asking for is clear and ask it kind of early."
RESOURCES
https://ctocraft.com/
Micheal Bungay Stainer - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B002QK41GQ
Non-violent Communication - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Life-Guides/dp/189200528X
The Leadership Pipeline - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Pipeline-3rd-Developing-Leaders/dp/B0CYJ6NJZY
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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For this episode, Mike´s guest is Pleo CTO, Meri Williams. They take an in-depth look at building high-performing, fully diverse, and inclusive teams, discuss how to attract and retain people from widely different backgrounds and create an environment in which they uncover and develop the innovative solutions that are so often missed by less diverse teams.
Meri has led both small and large teams for 17 different organisations. Including, P&G, Monza, MOO, M&S and several startups. So, the recruitment, training and retention strategies Meri shares here are highly practical.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
True inclusion is missing from most companies. People are rarely asked for their opinions, and they don´t feel they can be their true selves. If you only pay lip service to inclusivity people from diverse backgrounds just won´t apply. Hire people from different backgrounds whose life experience means they genuinely see things from a different angle. Go where people from diverse backgrounds train to find more candidates. Have a robust and effective onboarding process to improve retainment. Engineering managers need to want to and be capable of developing others. Tech leads need to be prepared to do the glue work e.g. refining processes Provide people you promote internally with leadership training and explain why they need to lead in a certain way.BEST MOMENTS
06:50 "The first thing I do is go meet every team and I ask them, what are they proud of? What are they worried about? And if I had a magic wand, what should I do with it?" (How Mari decides which challenges to tackle first when starting a new leadership role)
35:43 "I think actual diversity, where people are from different backgrounds, different demographics, different life experiences is much more likely to lead to true diversity and true different thinking."
37:23 "Making it an environment where lots of different people can be themselves and still succeed is the litmus test for whether you've got the right to go and get those people who are different in the first place."
51:03 "As you get bigger, it becomes easier to attract people who are different, because there's now more chance that they're not the only one who's different."
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/meriwilliams
https://leaddev.com/events
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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In this episode, Mike talks about B2B, B2C, and B2B2C business models with Benjy Meyer, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Commonplace. Benjy shares his knwoledge on the complexities of different business models, the challenges of transitioning between them, and the unique role of a CPTO. With a mix of personal experiences and industry observations, Mike and Benjy share knowledge for anyone navigating the tech growth landscape.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
B2B and B2C models require different skillsets and approaches, with B2B focusing more on stakeholder management and B2C on data-driven decision-making. Transitioning from B2C to B2B can be a strategic move to increase revenue and customer loyalty, as seen in examples like Naked Wine and Design My Night. B2B2C models face unique challenges in balancing opposing forces from different sides of the marketplace and aligning motivations. Feature flags and customisation in B2B products require careful management to avoid technical debt and maintain scalability. The role of a CPTO combines strategic product vision with technical execution, requiring trust from the CEO and board, and the ability to think critically across both domains. Organic search and social media, particularly Facebook/Meta, can be powerful channels for building and engaging audiences in B2B2C platforms. When starting a tech venture, prioritising an entrepreneurial mindset in early engineers over perfect infrastructure can accelerate growth and learning. Building anticipation through waitlists and leveraging personal networks can help gather valuable early feedback and create a foundation for product development.BEST MOMENTS
"I would rather fail in a B2C where I've got a lot more data that teaches me, gives me learnings about why I failed, um, so that I can apply those to the next iteration, if that makes sense." 27:22 Discussing the difference between B2B and B2C
"We want built environment professionals, real estate developers, local government to come and use the platform to talk to communities so that they can get their planning applications through faster, build better places that are better designed, but they don't really want to talk to communities. We're kind of their enemy." 43:37 Explaining the challenges of B2B2C platforms
"You really have to understand in detail the user problems And motivations on both sides of that marketplace to come up with the right OKRs So that you don't like build this spurious motivation for your teams that imbalances" 45:05 Explaining the importance of understanding user problems in B2B2C
"What matters most at that level is the structure that's underneath. Those leaders and like in theory, let's say I'm working in a company of 300 people or something. I don't need to be that deep, right? I've got a team of 20, 30, 50 people working in products and technology. I need them to be amazing." 54:43 Discussing the role of a CPTO
"When you're kicking off entrepreneurial doesn't really care about the infrastructure doesn't know much about the infrastructure is just hungry for more data to help them make decisions and help you have good conversations together about what to build next" 01:00:48 Describing the importance of the first engineer in a tech venture
ABOUT THE GUEST
Benjy Meyer
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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