cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

Zaky is the founder of Bukalapak, a unicorn and one of the largest e-commerce companies to ever come out of Indonesia. Zaky started Bukalapak 10 years ago with very humble aspirations, as a commerce company targeting hobbyists and cyclists. Over the last decade, the platform has been instrumental in bringing over 4.5million of mom & pop shops and SME sellers to go digital.

What’s in this episode?

1) Starting with humble beginnings and quickly taking on bigger ambitions

2) Biggest challenges faced at the point of inflection during the startup journey

3) Going public in emerging markets as a source of liquidity and exit opportunity

4) Stepping down from the day-to-day leadership of a startup one co-founds

5) Life as an operational investor and the advantages for deal-flow access & management

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

Carlo Gualandri is the Founder and CEO of Soldo, a fintech startup that focuses on the flow of money inside organizations with a focus on managing multi-user spending for businesses and enterprises. Raised $83M since its founding, Soldo has offices in London, Rome, Milan, and Dublin.

What’s in this episode?

1) 20 years of experience in startups as a 4x entrepreneur

2) Effect of Covid-19 on enterprise spendings

3) Evolution of the Italian ecosystem since the mid-1990s

4) Reasons for moving to London, but still building Soldo from Italy

5) Pan-European play and potential overseas expansion

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

Melih Odemis is the Co-Founder and previous CTO of Yemeksepeti, the largest food delivery platform of Turkey acquired by Delivery Hero in 2015 for $600M. Having co-founded Yemeksepeti only 1 year after graduating from college, Melih spent years at his first endeavor against many odds, both internal and macroeconomic. Currently Melih is an active angel investor and mentor, backing early stage tech companies with defensible and scalable products.

What’s in this episode?

1) Starting entrepreneurial journeys “too early” when your market isn’t ready or mature enough

2) Having a co-founding team with little to no professional working experience

3) The psychological difficulties and inner-battles in the early days of building a category leader

4) The importance of having technical people in founding teams

5) Building and retaining a technical team in a fast growth startup

6) The dynamics of ex-entrepreneurs in building vs investing co-founders

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

Artem Gassan is the General Partner of SaaS Growth Ventures, a VC fund with an operational approach to scale revenue and sales for SaaS companies in the US market. Artem is an expert to fuel growth and revenue for SaaS companies and has been involved with 500 Startups for over 6 years.

What’s in this episode?

1) Investment thesis behind backing capital-efficient SaaS businesses that lack momentum

2) Importance of sales velocity for SaaS businesses

3) Golden formula to optimize SaaS product pricing

4) Ideal SaaS metrics for seed and Series A

5) Different growth types and benchmarks

6) Ins and outs of the freemium business model

7) SaaS multiples and public comparables

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

Kinga Stanisławska is the General Partner of the Experior Venture Fund and actively invests in data-driven startups from CEE. She founded one of the oldest VC funds in Poland and also started the European Women in VC initiative.

What’s in this episode?

1) Outlook of Polish ecosystem from a decade ago

2) Success of the Warsaw Stock Exchange in taking tech companies public

3) How Polish fund of funds activity gave birth to 80 new VC funds

4) Staying local, going regional or global from Poland

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

John started Five9 with only $10k in his bank account and grew the company $20M annual revenue in 5 years. Five9 IPO’d in 2014 and now has a market cap of ≈$8B. John then started DoctorBase and exited it to Kareo in 2016. He is now on a mission to build the #1 offshore software development team, JetBridge.

What’s in this episode?

1) Getting to $20M ARR as a solo non-technical founder

2) Vulture capital approach in the beginning of 2000s

3) Resigning from your own company and watching it reach $8B at the public markets

4) Why John moved from enterprise SaaS to health tech

5) Deep dive into the integration problem in health tech

6) How John beat his competitors with only a fraction fo the capital

7) Tips for entrepreneurs starting in Eastern Europe

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

Barbaros is the co-founder and CEO of Iyzico, the leading payment management systems platform in Turkey, which was acquired by PayU in 2019 for $165M. Prior to Iyzico, Barbaros had the opportunity to work with payment leaders such as Telecash, FirstData and Klarna. He came back to Turkey with the intention of building Iyzico, because he saw a serious gap in the market, which was unfulfilled by incumbents such as PayPal and PayU.

What’s in this episode?

1) The path that took Barbaros to Iyzico from his past at places like Klarna

2) Replicating a proven business model in an emerging market and scaling rapidly

3) The advantages of hyper-local businesses in competing with global incumbents

4) Raising funding initially from local VCs and then from internationals while remaining a local platform

5) Surviving seismic macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility while running a funding round

6) Life at Iyzico after the exit

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

Emma Tracey is the Co-Founder and CEO of Honeypot, Europe’s leading developer-focused job platform. Honeypot started in 2015 to rethink the tech job market and scaled profitably to 150k developers. Honeypot eventually got acquired by XING in 2019.

What’s in this episode?

1) Candidate-driven, developer-first approach pulls more developers

2) Opening up global talent pools

3) Reasons for the early exit and why selling was better than getting more funding

4) Staying as a separate entity post-acquisition and the long term incentives

5) How Honeypot attracted top talent

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

Joanne Chen is a Partner at Foundation Capital and focuses on entrepreneurs that leverage proprietary data assets to disrupt business functions. She invests in AI-first B2B applications and data platforms that are the building blocks of the automated enterprise.

What’s in this episode?

1) Diverse backgrounds from the start breed better decision making

2) Investments into companies with overseas development teams and distributed functions

3) Immigrant mentality brings resilience and perseverance

4) Perspectives on artificial intelligence and ethical concerns

Check out Foundation Capital’s Credo: https://foundationcapital.com/credo/

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.

cc: growth journeys from emerging ecosystems to global markets.

One of the most prolific technology investors in Israel, Gigi is a two-time CEO, founder, board member, and was previously a super-angel, before becoming the Managing Partner of NFX. He served as the CEO of 888 Holdings, one of the world’s leading online gaming entertainment companies in the world, until mid-2011 when he turned his hobby of investing in startups into his full-time job. Gigi has either been a cofounder or board member at many giant companies such as Playtika, Kenshoo, Plarium, SweetIM, Eyeview, Gooodjob and Superfly.

What’s in this episode?

1) Running an investment fund as a group of past operators

2) Being an investment firm that’s always on the founders’ side

3) Evolving from an accelerator model into a classical seed stage fund

4) Investing heavily into network effects around the world

5) Connecting Israeli founders to the Silicon Valley

6) Running multi-country offices in scaling startups founded by Israeli teams

You can reach us through our website or @getcced on Instagram, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, and Linkedin. Hosted by Enis Hulli and Rina Onur.