Category: Podcast

2019 U.K. Angel of the Year, Sunil Shah, explains why doing your homework before you pitch an investor, and listening – yes listening – are the keys to getting an angel round done.

Simon Thorpe from U.K.-based Delta2020 uses a basic model when vetting potential investments and it boils down to four things: the right team, the right technology, intellectual property that is defensible, and a very big market.

Hire people who can take over your job. Sounds simple, but then you have to really let them do it, and that’s hard, especially a CTO used to getting her hands in every bit of code. Plus, how your marketing department can take a cue from agile development routines.

Sehkar Madathanapalli has built systems for some of the largest companies in Silicon Valley, as well as leading venture capital firms. With his own startup Liscio, where he is co-founder and CTO, Palli has baked in some of those big companies lessons alongside the startup tenets of speed and constant improvement. For Palli, it starts with a structure that is flat, but not too flat.

ReDI School is a startup social enterprise that teaches technical skills to refugees from all over the world. It is unlike any startup in the world, and yet its co-founders are working through the same issues that every startup faces.

Flip-flops in the office, tracking everything, driving out fear, and giving everyone visibility into everything are just some of ways Bridgement is building a very fast-growing fintech startup in one of the fastest growing markets in the world.

Spoiler alert: The only thing that matters is building something your customers love. But the trick as a startup CEO is staying close enough to customers to know that.