Entrepreneurship and Leadership

Michał Borkowski is the co-founder of Brainly. This Project Kazimierz interview with Michał was recorded back in 2016. Since then, Brainly has gone from strength to strength. Michal explains the importance of building, growing, and nurturing a community. Richard and Michał break down the competition within the networking platforms. Sam and Michal look into education and the need for personalisation within the system. Listeners are encouraged to note Michał’s sense of mission and commitment to the users of his many sites.

About your host - Richard Lucas

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded, led and/or invested in more than 30 businesses, Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre-schools to leading business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here.

Sam Cook was the co-host of this podcast from 2015-17

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This interview was recorded and first published in early 2020 when the NBN had about a million downloads a month. Since then the downloads have increased more than four-fold to just below 5 million monthly downloads at the end of 2021 and the number of hosts has increased greatly as well. On the New Books Network authors to talk about their books with a specialist host. Founded in 2007 by Marshall Poe, formerly a Russian history professor from the US. The NBN has grown to be the most downloaded podcast of its type in the world. 

About your host Richard Lucas

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded, led and/or invested in more than 30 businesses, Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre-schools to leading business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here.

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Matt Clifford is the co-founder of Entrepreneur First. One of the most successful British accelerators, specialising in supporting the most talented engineers they can find to build companies from scratch. Their programmes are in London, Singapore, Toronto, Bangalore, Paris and Berlin. EF aims to give those who get in the best possible chance to build a world-class technology company. EF have helped over 3000 people build 500 companies with over $5bn portfolio value.

About Matt Clifford

Matt Clifford is co-founder and CEO of Entrepreneur First, which he started with Alice Bentinck in 2011.Matt sits on the board of Code First Girls, which he co-founded in 2013 to teach young women how to code. Matt started his career at McKinsey & Co. and holds degrees from Cambridge and MIT, where he was a Kennedy Scholar. He was awarded an MBE for services to business in the 2016 Queen’s Birthday Honours.

About Richard Lucas

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded, led and/or invested in more than 30 businesses, Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre-schools to leading business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here.

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Jethro Binns was rated 84th in the world squash rankings. A terrible accident on court cut his career short, later he founded Squashskills, which is now the world's leading online squash training resource.

 About your host Richard Lucas

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded, led and/or invested in more than 30 businesses, Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre-schools to leading business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here.

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Gill has been s a volunteer librarian at Claremont Primary School in Cape Town South Africa since 2010. Through her initiative she has been able to give several hundred children aged 6-14 from largely disadvantaged backgrounds access to books and advice about reading. She believes that this has been life changing for a significant number of her readers – as well as giving her life profound value.

Gill is a great example of a social entrepreneur. Richard nominated her to speak at TEDxCapeTown,

Watch her talk here For the love of books | Gill Grose | TEDxCapeTown 

About your host Richard Lucas

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded, led and/or invested in more than 30 businesses, Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre-schools to leading business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here.

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Using “community” as a tool to strengthen and enhance the value a company or organisation delivers to its stakeholders is a concept and idea that entrepreneurs need to understand.

Richard Millington is both an entrepreneur and a world expert in online community management. FeverBee uses proven social science to develop successful online and offline communities for B2B organisations around the world. Over the past 13 years, Richard has helped to develop over 250+ successful communities, including those for Facebook, Google, The World Bank, Oracle, Amazon, Autodesk, Lego, The United Nations, Novartis, and many more. Richard is the author of the world’s most popular online communities blog and Buzzing Communities. Buzzing Communities has been widely cited as introducing best practice into developing successful online communities. Richard has delivered keynote talks in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Switzerland, Romania, Lithuania, and several others. Richard focuses obsessively behind cracking the ‘social code’ driving successful social groups. FeverBee’s approaches combines cutting edge social psychology with advanced data insights and a library of repeatable case studies. FeverBee shows organizations how to foster hosted online communities (not the social media kind) which can be used to identify and generate leads, increase repeat purchases, improve search rankings, drive a research agenda and resolve customer questions quicker than any customer service line. Since this podcast was originally recorded, Richard wrote a follow up book Build Your Community: Turn Your Connections Into a Powerful Online Community

Our NBN interview with David Spinks who wrote “The Business of Community” is clearly relevant to those interested in the topic.

Mentions and links:

This podcast was originally recorded in 2017 for Project Kazimierz.

The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal story of our carefully selected guests aiming for the atmosphere of an informal conversation in a bar or over a cup of coffee.

About Richard Lucas Twitter Linkedin

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including investments in Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network. Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre- to business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here. Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk here.

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Since 2011, Kevin Rabinovich has been working in youth civic engagement, community organizing, and design thinking. He is the founding organizer of TEDxYouth@Columbia, South Carolina’s TEDxYouth event. In this episode you hear Richard interviewing Kevin, and learn how his decision to found a TEDx Youth turned a young teenager into a formidable leader. It’s a deep dive into the world of TEDx organisers, and gives an insight into how volunteering can create opportunities.

Relevant links

This podcast was recorded in 2017 for Project Kazimierz. The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal story of our carefully selected guests aiming for the atmosphere of an informal conversation in a bar or over a cup of coffee.

About Richard Lucas Twitter Linkedin

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including investments in Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network. Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre- to business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here. Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk here,

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David Troy is a serial entrepreneur and community activist in Baltimore, Maryland.

This podcast was recorded in 2019 for Project Kazimierz.

Dave is CEO and product architect at 410 Labs, maker of the popular e-mail management tools Mailstrom.co and Chuck. He has been acknowledged by the founding team at Twitter as the first developer to utilize the Twitter API, with his project “Twittervision,” which was featured in the 2008 MoMA exhibition “Design and the Elastic Mind,” curated by Paola Antonelli. He uses social network data to map cities. He is also organizer of TEDxMidAtlantic in Washington, DC and is passionate about data, disinformation, elections, cities, and entrepreneurship. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and two children.

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In this episode Marcus shares the story of his highly programmed upbringing in Brooklyn, New York, with significant sporting achievements somewhat hiding his challenges in conventional learning environment because he is and was a “learner by doing”. We hear how he was challenged by freedom of the world of university education: dropped out, dived into the world of hip hop and failed to make a go of this as a business. His onward journey demonstrates hard work, a series of steps forward and back, major moments of change as he moved from the world of blue collar waitering to being a junior developer, and developed self-awareness through years of therapy. We hear insights into why soccer could be the sport of the future, its important role in integration and civic pride, and his reasoning for forming a fund that only invested in health care startups in Nashville. His conclusion that you should explore that entrepreneurial itch if you have it so as not to die with regrets is one that will resonate with many.

In his book Create and Orchestrate: The Path to Claiming Your Creative Power from an Unlikely Entrepreneur, as well as sharing the learnings from his entrepreneurial journey he sets out a framework of eight core concepts he argues that every entrepreneur needs when building their business. Four internal: Leadership, Finance, Operations, and Growth and four external, Product, Service, Sales and Marketing. They make sense for both a seasoned entrepreneur and are very useful for someone who hasn’t yet started out on their journey.

About our guest

MARCUS WHITNEY is CEO and founder of Health: Further, a strategic advisory firm working with leading healthcare organizations, as well as founding partner of Jumpstart Health Investors, the most active venture capital firm in America focused on innovative healthcare companies. Marcus is also a co-founder and minority owner of Nashville Soccer Club, Nashville’s Major League Soccer team. He is an in-demand speaker who hosts a podcast called Marcus Whitney’s Audio Universe and sends out a weekly newsletter called Two Worlds. Marcus has been listed in the Upstart 100 by Upstart Business Journal, Power 100 by Nashville Business Journal, and has been featured in Inc., Fast Company, and The Atlantic.

The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate and entertain, sharing insights based on the personal story of our carefully selected guests aiming for the atmosphere of an informal conversation in a bar or over a cup of coffee.

About Kimon Fountoukidis Twitter Linkedin

Kimon is the founder of both Argos Multilingual and PMR. Both companies were founded in the mid 90s with zero capital and both have gone on to become market leaders in their respective sectors. Kimon was born in New York and moved to Krakow, Poland in 1993. Listen to his story here,

About Richard Lucas Twitter Linkedin

Richard is a business and social entrepreneur who founded or invested in more than 30 businesses, including investments in Argos Multilingual, PMR and, in 2020, the New Books Network. Richard has been a TEDx event organiser, supports the pro-entrepreneurship ecosystem, and leads entrepreneurship workshops at all levels: from pre- to business schools. Richard was born in Oxford and moved to Poland in 1991. Read more here. Listen to his story in an autobiographical TEDx talk here,

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Many Western entrepreneurs and businesses have foundered in trying to set up shop in China. Different expectations, different ways of doing business, different institutions and platforms—all come together to remove any pretensions that one can easily transplant a foreign business model into the Chinese market.

One of these entrepreneurs was Xavier Naville, who moved to China in 1997 where he built Creative Food. Unlike many others, his venture was a success. It's now a key supplier to major restaurant chains across the country including McDonald's, KFC and Starbucks.

The Lettuce Diaries: How A Frenchman Found Gold Growing Vegetables In China tells Xavier’s story growing Creative Foods: managing a Chinese team as a foreign manager, trying to work with farmers to improve how they conducted agriculture, and navigating investor demands. 

In this interview, Xavier and I talk about his time in China, what he learned about starting a business, and whether things are different in a more developed, more advanced economy.

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of The Lettuce Diaries. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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