We Invest In People is the oldest principle in venture capital. It's also, Soma Pirityi argues, the industry's longest-running paradox. 65% of startups fail due to team-related issues, not because they can't sell or find product market fit. So why can't we better measure, predict and guide startup teams to success? 

Soma is the founder of ETA Technologies, the Cambridge-based company that's on a mission to measure, model and inform team dynamics. They've analysed over 10,000 startup teams and built mathematical models to spot the patterns of success - and failure - and realised that the team is the soul of the company.

In this episode, we get into the data behind startup failure, the sometimes counterintuitive dimensions of what makes a great founding team, and why the single most predictive factor in startup survival is something most founders have never heard of.

Listen to find out:

Chapters:

Links:

Book recommendations:

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

You couldn't make it up. But Neil Mullarkey does. He co-founded the World Famous Comedy Store Players with Mike Myers, appeared in the Austin Powers films, and has spent 40 years making things up in front of live audiences. For the last 27 years, he's been sharing those skills in boardrooms, with teams, and even with cybersecurity experts. In this episode, discover why thinking on your feet isn't a party trick - it's a critical business strategy for leaders managing complex teams and uncertain moments.

His book In the Moment makes the case that the ability to listen, adapt, and build on what you're given isn't just good stagecraft. It's the most urgently needed skill in business. What's more, it's one that many teams and organisations struggle with. He argues, with warmth and hard‑won experience, that the same instincts that keep an improvised scene alive - listening, accepting an offer, and building on what’s been given - are the skills businesses desperately need to foster.

In this conversation, I learn about Neil's journey into improv and we get into mistakes, blame, trust, failure, permission, laughter, silos, scripts, chaos, a soda syphon, and the surprising thing a room full of cardiologists taught Neil about improvising at the sharp end.

Listen to find out:

Links:

Neil's book 'In the Moment':

More about Neil and ImprovYourBusiness:

Connect with Neil on LinkedIn:

A rare appearance by Neil with the Comedy Store Players on Sunday May 10th: 

Chapters:

0:01:44 - More than a jolly: when to use improv and when not to

0:05:28 - How do you make it stick?

0:08:09 - Hackathons and the improv vs. structure tension

0:12:20 - The meetings chapter: tell, decide or implement?

0:13:21 - Permission, leaders and curating questions

0:15:08 - Origin story: from soda siphon to Comedy Store Players

0:19:32 - Confidence, failure and the improv stage

0:22:07 - Do you rehearse improvisation?

0:30:11 - What business pain does improv training address?

0:33:42 - Improv and cybersecurity crisis management

0:36:23 - The show must go on: mistakes, blame and Miles Davis

0:39:21 - Two pizza teams and the optimal team size

0:46:22 - Has anything changed in 27 years? AI and the human element

0:48:55 - Silos, shadowing and equifinality

0:53:05 - Improv or Best Practice? The cardiologists story

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

Chris Stone has spent 13 years in the podcast industry, creating audio and video content for major UK publishers like The Telegraph, Evening Standard and New Statesman. He also writes the Podcast Strategy Weekly newsletter. But there's a twist: he doesn't have a podcast of his own. Why?

Instead, he's launching Podcast Crew - a vetted marketplace solving a huge B2B gap in podcast production hiring. In this conversation, we explore why he chose to build infrastructure over personal brand, how podcasting fits into an overall content strategy, and how B2B leaders can apply this thinking to their own growth.

Chris also challenges some of the most common assumptions podcasters hold: that social clips drive listeners, that video is for younger audiences, and that everyone who wants to grow their business should start a show. He also has a lot to say about where podcasting is heading - and why AI and podcasts are good news for live, in-person events.

Listen to this episode to find out:

Chapters:

03:10 – The Telegraph, Prince Harry, and Bryony Gordon's Mad World

04:45 – Building the New Statesman's podcast from a cupboard to 200k YouTube subscribers

07:47 – The three skills that make podcasting work

09:46 – Going off-the-cuff at the Labour Party conference

12:08 – Why Chris started writing Podcast Strategy Weekly

16:06 – Why a podcast producer deliberately doesn't have a podcast

20:04 – How B2B podcasts build trust (and why that matters more than reach)

21:30 – The case for video in podcasting

24:37 – What social clips are actually for (it's not what you think)

29:56 – Why hiring in podcasting is broken

32:11 – Building on Airtable and Softr with a developer from Upwork

34:18 – The podcast everyone should hear

38:05 – Three big opportunities in podcasting right now

Links:

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

After growing up as a programmer, hating school, and being given a chance to follow his passion via an apprenticeship, Justin Megawarne is the co-founder of Megaslice, a technology consultancy with a difference. Justin progressed to consulting, software architecture and CTO roles. However, he became tired of seeing technically excellent work fail commercially. So, along with co-founder Mikal, he built Megaslice with a mission to let no good idea go to waste.

In this episode, Justin argues that the tech industry is structurally set up to fail its clients - through broken billing models, misaligned incentives, and methodologies that function primarily as ways to transfer liability to the client. He makes the case for value pricing as the more ethical model, explains why the right quality in a founder isn't confidence but arrogance, and outlines his approach to shared risk and long-term client relationships.

In this episode:

Links: 

More about Megaslice:

Connect with Justin on LinkedIn:

Chapters:

0:01:06 - Megaslice and Justin's background

0:06:33 - The Lemon Market problem

0:10:41 - Time and materials, Agile, and broken industry incentives

0:13:42 - Interest alignment and giving clients what they need

0:16:33 - Qualifying clients — founder profile, arrogance, and capital

0:21:48 - Why organisations find software so difficult

0:26:14 - Why start a company — and how Megaslice has changed

0:28:27 - Hiring for intrinsic motivation — and the hi-vis jacket story

0:35:01 - The biggest thing founders get wrong

0:38:16 - Who inspires Justin — the crackpots of history

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

How do you build and fund a business built around a mission that life-changing for your community but doesn’t represent a typical 10x opportunity for investors? Meet Kirsten Jack, founder of Uncommon, the online community where neurodivergent young people can connect, find their people, and build the support networks they need.

At a crossroads in a her career, Kirsten did more than change jobs. She answered a call she’d felt since childhood. Diagnosed with autism in her teens, she was shaped by years of navigating organisations not built for her. When she became a parent she found that the world’s newfound openness to neurodivergence wasn't translating into real support. She found long waiting lists, a patchwork of under-funded groups, and families left to improvise. That frustration sparked Uncommon, an online community built because Kirsten refused to wait for someone else to act.

Autism, ADHD, dyslexia and other types of neurodiversity aren’t rare. It affects somewhere between 10 and 15% of the population. However, many young people are undiagnosed (especially girls), and are navigating it without even knowing why things feel so hard. The scale of unmet need is significant, and it’s a gap that Uncommon exists to fill.

1:00 - Building Uncommon: A Safe Space for Neurodivergent Youth

7:35 - Supporting Neurodivergent Employees in the Workplace

12:21 - Decision-Making Strategies for Solo Founders

14:20 - Building Early Support Systems for Youth Mental Health

16:59 - Challenges Faced by Neurodivergent Students in Mainstream Schools

19:22 - Supporting Neurodivergent Youth Through Flexible Online Programs

23:43 - Targeted Fundraising and Impactful Business Models

28:19 - Supporting Young People Through Clubs, Mentoring, and Fun

33:59 - Empowering Youth Through Safe and Supportive Creative Spaces

38:21 - Strategic Insights and Challenges in Educational Community Building

42:09 - Transformative Impact of Uncommon on Youth and Families

Find out more about Uncommon:

Read the testimonials from grateful parents:

Connect with Kirsten on LinkedIn:

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

While competitors race to scale by loading their products with emulsifiers, humectants and sweeteners - and call it health food - The Protein Ball Company has stayed stubbornly natural, and accepted slower but more sustainable growth. This is an episode about the hard yards of business: logistics, cash flow, risk, scaling production, export paperwork, and the instincts no degree or accelerator will teach you.

The Protein Ball Company was born eleven years ago after Matt Hunt spotted the rise of protein snacking at an LA trade show. What began in a small unit with a single machine is now exporting to 14 countries, with listings in Caffe Nero, Black Sheep Coffee and Flying Coffee Bean, and a major UK supermarket listing in the pipeline.

In this episode of Curious Business, Matt talks candidly about how Covid tanked their revenue from £4m to £1m overnight. He explains what kept the business alive, and why they’re committed to natural ingredients in a category dominated by the chemistry set - even when everyone told him they'd never scale if they didn't follow suit. 

Listen to this episode for some hard lessons about cashflow, hedging your bets, trusting your gut, and the fine margins of business:

Links from the episode

The Protein Ball Company:

The Protein Ball Company on Amazon:

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn:

Robot Foods and the rebrand:

Books mentioned

Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill (affiliate link)

How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie (affiliate link)

Other episodes mentioned:

Curious Business #12 with Ella McKay of Fatso:

Chapters

0:00:45 - Elevator pitch

0:01:09 - Why he started the business

0:02:06 - Why balls, not bars

0:03:44 - The main phases of growth over 11 years

0:05:32 - What does success actually look like?

0:07:10 - How the Caffe Nero listing came about

0:09:35 - Matt's background - the market, the olives, the degree

0:11:43 - Cash flow, hedging and keeping the business alive

0:12:37 - Why everything is in-house

0:13:41 - What Matt spends his time on

0:17:38 - Throwing some shade on the protein sector

0:20:42 - Trade shows as the engine of growth

0:22:45 - Why brand was deprioritised - and why it was time to rebrand

0:27:55 - New product development - certainty, failure and the kids' range

0:29:55 - Analytics vs. intuition

0:31:11 - Books, podcasts and the "turning the dials" idea

0:33:40 - Goals for the year ahead

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

What happens when a professional writer who finds AI-generated content "quite horrific" decides to build an AI writing platform to help people show up more authentically on LinkedIn? With AI as his development team?

Nigel Jay Cooper found himself in exactly that position. He'd spent a decade training professionals and teams in employee advocacy to create authentic LinkedIn content. He was also determined to fight the flood of ‘beige’ content generated by ChatGPT et al - thoughtless, generic posts lacking personality and spark.

His first instinct was to fight against AI. But when everyone kept using it anyway, he realised he was fighting the wrong battle. The question wasn't whether people would use AI. The question was: can they use it in a way that reflects their personality, experience and humanity? So he set out to build Ghostart, even though he's not a software developer.

Listen to this episode of Curious Business as Nigel shares how he built Ghostart over the past year, and discusses:

Chapters:

0:01:06 - The Beige Content Problem

0:04:27 - Who Ghost Art Serves

0:09:10 - Building with AI - The Vibe Coding Reality

0:11:47 - Tools and Techniques

0:17:31 - Keeping AI Focused

0:21:20 - The Hardest Parts to Build

0:27:17 - The Beta Launch

0:30:53 - What Users Actually Valued

0:35:47 - Lessons and Success

Links:

More about Ghostart and try it free:

Request a demo:

Connect with Nigel on LinkedIn:

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

Imagine being told someone you love is dying, and then discovering they have been trapped in a coercive and controlling relationship. You'd turn to a number of agencies to seek help, guidance and justice. But it turns out you often need to know the 'magic words' to unlock that help.  

Upon being bounced between agencies, the compassion of frontline staff was undermined by broken processes, so Stephen turned to AI. What began as a query on ChatGPT became a practical set of tools that can help others facing the same awful challenges.

Stephen describes balancing his time between building crude, command-line tools with spending precious hours with his mother. The system he’s developing, named LINDA in memory of his mum, is a translator, memory bank, assistant and also a tool to support charities working in the space. He wants to make hidden pathways visible and give people the options they often aren't told about.

What we cover:

Links and Resources:

Charities mentioned:

Disclaimer: Stephen Midgley is not a legal professional and nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.

Thanks to Jari Worsley for sharing Stephen's 'AI For The Rest of Us' talk with me in the first place:

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

With ecosystems increasingly outperforming standalone firms, marketing leaders’ key skills may lie in their ability to get their organisations to influence, persuade, enable, and collaborate. In an ever-noisier and more complex market, the companies that can co-create, communicate and change to bring customers value tend to be the winners - but it requires a very different approach.  

In this episode, former three-time global CMO Leeya Hendricks makes the case for platform thinking in B2B marketing, where value is co-created across networks of customers, partners and complementors rather than pushed through linear channels. 

She shares insights from her new book The Platform Playbook and explains why the CMO is uniquely positioned to orchestrate ecosystem growth - connecting product, technology, data and partners around shared value.

What We Cover:

Key Takeaways

About Leeya Hendricks

Leeya is the author of The Platform Playbook (Palgrave Macmillan), Managing Director of Hark Consultants, and has served in three global CMO roles across major technology companies including IBM and Oracle. She lectures in digital ecosystems and orchestration, and runs My Barre Vibes, a digital-first fitness platform.

Connect with Leeya on LinkedIn:

Order The Platform Playbook (affiliate link):

Find out more about My Barre Vibes:

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.

What’s it like to be a real legacy business? One with a heritage going back over 100 years? How do you navigate new methods, classic products and changing tastes? This is a masterclass in knowing who you are, who your customers are and what you’re about.

Andy Valentine is a food industry veteran who now feels like the proverbial "kid in the sweet shop". He’s responsible for developing direct, B2B and private-label channels for a business that combines traditional handcrafted techniques with state-of-the-art facilities.

Stockley's was founded in 1918 in Accrington, Lancashire and has managed to navigate tastes, trends, the second world war, the demise of Woolworths and, more recently, a number of different owners. But how far and fast should you go to open up new channels in a £6bn market dominated by multinationals?

Listen to this episode to discover:

Find out more and buy online:

Connect with Andy on LinkedIn:

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Curious Business is here to bring you insights, experiences and ideas from founders, leaders and experts to help you think differently about your business and its marketing.