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Patrick Campbell, SaaS pricing guru and CEO & Founder of Profitwell talks – in conversation with Stephen Cummins for 14 Minutes of SaaS. Patrick opens up a lot about his own strengths and weaknesses as a founder CEO, but he puts his mitts up to the world too - saying that most big companies in the business analytics world paint pretty pictures with data, but have failed to evolve into companies that pro-actively surface solutions for customers.
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Episode 3 of a 3 part interview with Patrick Campbell, SaaS pricing guru and CEO & Founder of Profitwell, chatting with Stephen Cummins. reveals his ambition in 2 ways. Firstly he opines that the sort of work-life balance delivered to employees by the Basecamp guys is really tough if you want to build a very large company. Secondly he sees VC funding as a tool that he’ll use at some point in the future. #14MoS
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CEO & Co-founder of YouCanBook.me Bridget Harris chatting with Stephen Cummins. She chats about her history and colourful CV – from Covent Garden busker to film and television to a very successful career in politics to serial product creator with her husband and co-founder Keith, to bootstrapping YouCanBook.me - appointment scheduling SaaS
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Martin Henk grew up in a small place in Estonia and ultimately became Co-founder and former CPO (Chief Product Officer) of a certain well known rocket-ship known as PipeDrive. He talks about the importance of product validation as early as possible, and about how entrepreneurs and product builder need to stay focused and clear and avoid distractions. In conversation with Stephen Cummins.
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This is the first episode of a 3 part series with Polina Montano, Co-founder of Job Today interviewed by Stephen Cummins. Previously interviewed way back in episode 3, this conversation is a deeper and more personal dive into who Polina is, the challenges she faced in Russia, her adventures abroad and ultimately how she became a major tech founder
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Episode 2 of 3 in the mini – series (episode 63 of 14 Minutes of SaaS)
In Luxembourg by now - A multiple prize winning doyenne of Retail leaves her prized fashion store and works in an all conuming hard core retail position for Shell managing 6 petrol stations with accompanying mini-supermarket stores. Then leaves to do a masters in entrepreneurship and tech - and uses that as a springboard to apply her new knowledge and great idea to make the traditional world of hiring much more immediate, more local and much faster for companies and people looking for service and casual positions.
Transcript
Polina Montano
I won Golden retailer - like being the best in the country twice. And after that I decided … ‘okay, what else I can do?’ So while I was still running my petrol station business, I just said well … let's just go and find something about learning about technology, because I was very much in the traditional sector of operations … of retail .. and going back to university was so good for me. It really like made a difference in making the world of technology accessible and exciting … really like opening my eyes on opportunities, on how much technology actually allows you to do nowadays. And already practically instantly I was excited about the possibility. How we can leverage such beautiful technology and innovation to improve the day to day lives of people and businesses maybe in traditional industries. And then the idea actually came along pretty fast.
Stephen Cummins
Welcome to 14 minutes of SaaS, the show where you can listen to the stories and opinions of founders of the world's most remarkable SaaS ScaleUps.
In this, the second part of a 3-part mini-series recorded with Polina Montano in the WebSummit in Lisbom, she tells us how she left a very successful career in traditional retail industries to become an almost overnight success in the tech world.
The first notable one was V&J or the Stefanel boutique in Luxembourg? 1. What brought you to Luxembourg? And 2. What was your interest in Luxemburg? Fashion? ..
Polina Montano
Oh, you make it sound so serious. I mean just for record … Let's just remember I was like 24. I wasn’t thinking so deeply. I went to Luxembourg for the best reason ever … I followed my husband who got relocated, for some work .. because he worked in finance .. and I just followed him to the country. I already knew I wanted to do something for myself.
Franchising structures seemed like a great compromise - you can still get the support of existing brands – the brand also gives you like a few procedures - kind of helps you set the business up - in the same time you experience a great degree of freedom in how exactly you run this location - and fashion obviously – young Russian girl 25 years old. I mean a fashion boutique was like a dream coming through … right? Like all of a sudden you have this beautiful shop – beautiful clothes. I mean what more could you possibly want? But guess what… it didn't last too long?
Small Talk ends
Stephen Cummins
Yeah. It lasted less than four years?
Polina Montano
It lasted about two years - after two years of me running this shop, I got an offer from Shell - you know, the core company for gas stations etc back then - show or revisiting their retail management structures. And they decided to offer franchising as a formula and they decided that it would work very well for the group. And they actually at that moment offered me the opportunity - which once again took me way out of my comfort zone. Like I mentioned me being super happy with my little fashion store - like my little baby. It's like a lifestyle business. Starting all over again. Southern you actually go over the contract or finding a chain of selling points which essentially is much more than just selling gas. It's like having this little 24 hours supermarkets next to it. So it was quite an impressive structure - over more than 50 people staff - six locati... -
Polina Montano, Job Today Co-Founder – 3 of 3 – a Tech Star is Born
A Tech Star is Born - Polina goes deeper into Job Today and discusses the changes that have occurred in the company and the reason why it can be a motor for economic growth by empowering companies to hire faster and better and to subsequently succeed better - as well as provide better opportunities for candidates.
TRANSCRIPT
We are the ones that are imposing these limits on ourselves. We have to believe in ourselves a bit more … like … just cut yourself some slack and give yourself some credit and say ‘why not?’ ‘why would I not be able to do that if I really… really want to? If I'm really really motivated. It's our own fears of not being good enough … of not being qualified … of not being able to do that. This is something which prevent us from doing things.
Stephen Cummins
Welcome to 14 minutes of SaaS, the show where you can listen to the stories and opinions of founders of the world's most remarkable SaaS ScaleUps.
This the final episode of our three part mini-series with Polina Montano - recorded in the Websummit in Lisbon. She goes into more depth on Job Today and the service they provide. She talks about it from the point of view of both the employer and the employee - and she's also touches upon the future of work issues around inclusivity and gender equality.
Polina Montano
Work is a vital need for most of us. And so, the impact on the economy is tremendous if we make hiring easier – something that might take the hassle out of hiring. We would like the beauty of the platform to be also how it enables new job creation - because as a small business owner if you know, it's going to be very difficult for you to bring someone onboard - chances are you're just gonna put more pressure on your existing team. And by giving you a solution which is easy and intuitive and fast and inefficient to use … chances are they actually help you maybe hire more people and give opportunities to more candidates out there.
Stephen Cummins
Okay, now a couple of things I love about the philosophy behind the company is that, it allows for example, graduates, who don't have any references really in the workspace you know, to present themselves in a video format - so the employer gets an immediate impression about the individual. From the employer's point of view if they're not just putting bums on seats .. they actually can see the individual and think that my work actually ,…. that person could work in team … but I love the local! The fact that you focused on the local because that's the great irony .. people are down the road from you… you can't… you can't connect with them. Is there any vision to go a little step further where by you make the connection, you're the employee or the employer and whereby you somehow facilitate even the meeting place … is there any plan to build that out … where everything just gets seamless? Where Job Today even facilitates the meeting and everything. Is that too much?
Polina Montano
No it's definitely not too much! The whole idea is to make hiring simple. That's the core mission - just take the friction out of hiring. And absolutely - the scheduling of interviews and making sure it is a better fit and the best match between employer and candidate. It's definitely the direction in which I'm working – it makes perfect sense. As you know, the biggest hiring pain in service industry is no shows - we track which people apply for jobs with which vendor. They don't bother come for the interview. So clearly better communication and better processes can improve that.
Stephen Cummins
And if you were a candidate and you sign up for job today and you do two or three no shows, will that affect your ranking … because I know you're ranking the employers. Are you ranking the job seekers?
Polina Montano
Yes, absolutely. In the future yes – we are working on our ranking system right now – its all about bringi... -
Phil Chambers, CEO & Co-founder of employee engagement software leader Peakon chats with Stephen Cummins. Founded in 2014, it’s raised $68M in investment. Employee numbers have gone from 80 to 230 in 24 months. Phil tells us his story leading up to this startup and how Peakon can detect whether your best staff are thinking of leaving up to 250 days in advance
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Part 2 and concluding episode of Phil Chambers, CEO & Co-founder of employee engagement software leader Peakon chats with Stephen Cummins. We go much deeper into the value that Peakon actually introduces into the world – and how things like contextual learning targets can improve management teams more effectively and how comparatively high Peakon numbers can be used to attract employees to your company
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Episode 72 – Part 1 of a 4-part mini-series with Jonathan Anguelov, co-founder and COO of Aircall in conversation with Stephen Cummins. Founded in Paris in 2014, it’s the only cloud phone system that has built integrations into 100 different SaaS applications in 2019. Its mission is to unlock the power of voice, specifically the power of telephone calls through integration the Intercoms, Salesforces, Zendesks, gong.io’s and freshdesks of today. It's valuation is already north of 250M USD
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E73 - Part 2 of a 4-part mini-series with Jonathan Anguelov, co-founder and COO of Aircall.
In this episode Jonathan talks about growing up in Paris with an inspiring Mum who immigrated from Bulgaria and became a business person, giving Jonathan a front row seat into the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur. It didn’t put him off because he started his career as an entrepreneur while still in university, aged 20. -
E74 - Part 3 of a 4-part mini-series with Jonathan Anguelov, co-founder and COO of Aircall. Jonathan doesn’t see VC rounds as reasons to celebrate, but he does see VC as a no-brainer if the ambition is both huge and urgent – and his vision is to build the future of telephony in less than 10 years. He reveals a love for open office working - and explains why he believes in ever-increasing employee specialisation and Sales Fordism as they take on the challenge of onboarding 10 new employees a week.
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E75 - Part 4 and concluding episode of a mini-series with Jonathan Anguelov, co-founder and COO of Aircall. In this final episode we find out about Jonathan’s beliefs regarding a lot of faster developing tech areas – and, more importantly, why they should be adopted and introduced into the business with caution. And - he has some amazing advice for anyone seeking to start a business.
