Harjas and Lucas discuss the story behind Shares, a social investment app. Shares aims to connect users with their existing network and bridge the education gap in investing, by allowing them to communicate and share insights about their investment decisions within the app. Harjas discusses how Shares was founded, the infrastructure that sits behind it and its European expansion plans.

Tom and Lucas discuss the importance of leadership hires to help start-ups and scale-ups win. Startups often struggle with slow or inaccurate executive search campaigns that can take 120 days to close plus on average in Europe another 90 days to get the person in a seat, at times with the wrong profile and with a sizeable fee (around 30% of a competitive package) being paid out to external recruiters. Introed helps solve this problem by providing start-up founders with a self-serve toolkit that emphasizes the importance of understanding key factors when selecting potential operators. the failure rate in the tech start-up industry has remained consistently high around 85% for the past 20 years, however, serial entrepreneurs are 67% more likely to succeed vs. first-time founders. Nailing the fundamental steps from conception to success is key, and patterns exist regardless of the industry or business size - this is where leadership comes in and is so important.

About Thomas Pyle

Tom spent 12 years working side by side with founders and executives, scaling up some of Europe's most exciting and successful start-up and scale-up organisations from Badoo/Bumble in social media and dating to bunq in neo-banking. Tom is now the co-founder of Introed, with a simple mission, "help more start-up and scale-up founders win". Giving them access to the right leadership talent, in the right form at the right moment. Introed is breaking the status quo of leadership and executive search in early-stage companies.

Nicola and Lucas discuss the importance of startups building a strong legal foundation, a team which complements each other and what investors look for from startups from a governance perspective.

About Nicola McConville

Nicola is a Partner in Mishcon de Reya’s Corporate Department with particular experience in advising companies and investors on funding rounds from seed through to exit. Nicola advises startups on how to structure investments effectively, particularly in sectors like health tech, AI, and quantum tech. On the investor side Nicola advises venture capital funds, including VCTS and EIS funds, as well as venture builders, Family Offices and business angels, both from the UK and overseas, helping them to navigate and de-risk their investment through appropriate structures and documentation.

Ken and Lucas discuss Ken’s experience working in commercial roles at fintechs and banks, his current focus of building a VC for SaaStock and the intersection between VC, sales and partnerships.

About Ken Thomas

Ken is a New Yorker building a venture capital fund here in London. He also helps companies exit and build commercial partnerships. Before coming to London, he worked in traditional banking with banks like HSBC. Since moving to London in 2020 during the pandemic, he worked for two fintechs while completing two master degrees. His main goals are to help build up founders and get to the next level.

About Adheeb Rifdi

Adheeb is a sales and revenue operations leader, having worked at multiple scale-ups including Flock and Mulesoft. At Flock, Adheeb initially led sales before aligning all revenue-generating functions towards company OKRs, while at Mulesoft in a revenue operations role. At Mulesoft, Adheeb helped organisations change and innovate faster by making it easy to connect the world’s applications, data, and devices through the use of APIs as an account executive.

About Flock

Flock is a fully digital fleet insurance company that provides connected vehicle fleets (cars, vans, and trucks) with insurance to enable and incentivise safer driving. It leverages millions of miles of driving data, environmental data, accident and crime data to predict, price, and reduce vehicle risks.

About Sarah Hiraki

Ben Stocken

Ben is the founder and Managing Director of West Peak. His work over the last 20 years has enabled teams and businesses to achieve far more than they believed was possible before they met him. His background as an adventurer,  performance coach for England Rugby and subsequent people and organisational development roles across industries have given him an unrivalled skillset when it comes to rapidly enabling groups to become high performing teams. Today he leads the fastest growing team of leadership development experts in the UK (West Peak), who are helping leaders change the game.

West Peak 

West Peak are the go-to Leadership and Team Development Consultancy for businesses looking to grow, increase performance and engagement beyond what they currently believe is possible. Their fun, challenging and scientifically backed practical approach leads to lasting results.

Eva Piskadlo is a lifestyle Influencer and Blogger based in London. Eva has worked with an array of luxury hotels and restaurants worldwide, including the Edition Hotel group, The Mandarin Oriental, Belmond Hotel Group, The Four Seasons, The Royal Mansour and MGM Hotels. She has also partnered with exciting brands and tourism boards such as Lavazza for their iconic Wimbledon and Royal Ascot sponsorships, Go Turkiye, Visit Malta, San Pellegrino for their BAFTA partnership, and BMW for their ‘Living with Electric’ Campaign. Eva is also a freelance writer for her own blog and CSP Times, a Hong Kong expat luxury lifestyle publication.

About Superscript

Stephanie and Lucas discuss Recurly, the world of subscriptions and enterprise marketing, focusing on customer retention, streamlining user experience and taking a multi-channel approach towards marketing.