How can you better understand your customers? In this episode of Entrepreneurship Now, we are joined by Roger Wade, Founder and CEO of BOXPARK, London’s award-winning food and retail revolution, who shares his experiences, purposes, and key insights on how to run a successful business.

Roger’s entrepreneurial journey offers valuable lessons for aspiring business leaders. Firstly, he emphasises the importance of creating unique experiences for your customers, as well as stressing the significance of product excellence, driving traffic to your business, and optimising conversion rates. Finally, Roger also discusses the importance of emotional intelligence and elaborates on the difference between entrepreneurs and leaders.

For more thought leadership and business insights from London Business School faculty and alumni, visit london.edu/think. 

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What does it take to launch and scale a sustainability-focused business? In this episode of Entrepreneurship Now, Jane Khedair, Executive Director of the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at London Business School, is joined by a diverse panel of impact entrepreneurs, who discuss overcoming problems as a start-up business, their motivations and drivers, and how they accelerated their business development by collaborating with other stakeholders of society. Finally, they consider how to measure the social impact of their ventures, as well as looking at how to find the balance between impact and income.

The panel includes Jules Buker, founder of TreeApp; Harriet Scriven, founder of Re-Style; and Giorgia Granata, co-founder and CEO of Wype.

For more thought leadership and business insights from London Business School faculty and alumni, visit london.edu/think.

Sign up to receive a curated selection of articles, podcasts and films direct to your inbox twice a month at london.edu/think/subscribe.

Follow us on social media:

Follow us on social media:

twitter.com/LBS

linkedin.com/school/london-business-school

facebook.com/LondonBusinessSchool

Luis von Ahn, founder of language learning platform Duolingo, talks to London Business School’s Jeff Skinner about his experience of becoming an entrepreneur and his commitment to creating products that do social good. It’s a journey that offers up some useful lessons for any entrepreneur starting out. 

Luis von Ahn is an entrepreneur and former professor at Carnegie Mellon University who is considered one of the pioneers of crowdsourcing. He is known for co-inventing CAPTCHAs, being a MacArthur Fellow and selling two companies to Google in his 20s.

He is currently the co-founder and CEO of Duolingo, a language-learning platform created to bring free language education to the world. With over 500 million users, it is now the most popular language-learning platform and the most downloaded app in the Education category worldwide on both iTunes and Google Play.

Luis has been named one of the 10 Most Brilliant Scientists by Popular Science Magazine, one of the 50 Best Brains in Science by Discover, one of the Top Young Innovators Under 35 by MIT Technology Review, and one of the 100 Most Innovative People in Business by Fast Company Magazine.

Luis was in a fireside chat with Jeff Skinner, Teaching Fellow of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, London Business School.

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LBS Start up diaries and entrepreneurship series. Jeff Skinner (Executive Director of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship), discusses the growth of entrepreneurship with the architect of the movement, Prof John Mullins. The shift hasn’t just been driven by corporate downsizing but some great role models who have shifted perceptions and made it cool.

What makes an entrepreneur? Find out in our new podcast series. In the first episode, we hear from Monique Baars, former management consultant, London Business School alumna and founder of Fineazy.

“Not many people resign from BCG to do their MBA and then start a business, but for me it was very deliberate,” she tells Jeff Skinner, Executive Director of LBS’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

“I’d reached a time when I thought, if I could apply everything I’ve learnt and spend these hours solving one of the biggest social problems of our time, imagine the impact I could have.”

Fineazy empowers people to make better financial decisions with the help of an AI chatbot.

“I’ve never woken up in the morning more excited to get stuff done,” says Baars. “At the same, I’ve never had to manage the incredible highs and lows that come every hour of every day…”

Ever stopped to think what the internet says about you? James Chance tells Jeff Skinner how pondering that very question gave him the idea for a new business – and why, for all of us, it’s more necessary now than ever to keep track of our online identities and who has access to them. This is episode 2 of our entrepreneurs’ journey series.

How can we alleviate travel anxiety? In the third episode of our ‘Start-up Diaries’ series; we speak to two MBA students who are aiming to do just that. In conversation with Jeff Skinner, Executive Director of the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Sherpa founders Eliska Mallickova and Allie Fleder discuss their start-up solution to soothing travel stress, and how the LBS experience opened their eyes to entrepreneurship and building a business.

Juan Andrade (EMBA2018) of Rebank had a clear idea of what he wanted out of London Business School. Before LBS he also had a clear blueprint for his start-up and despite not holding an undergraduate degree he applied looking for that something extra.

In this podcast he chats to LBS’ Jeff Skinner about why the EMBA proved to be the experience he needed. After graduating, he executed a refined strategy, successfully launching Rebank with Simon White. Rebank gives you a complete view of your business banking and optimises the way you make payments - without forcing you to switch banks.

In this episode of the Start-up Diaries podcast series, LBS’s Jeff Skinner is joined by two of the three founders of Stotles (John Witt and Taj Kamranpour) to talk about their journey from consultants to tech founders.

For information about entrepreneurship at LBS, please check: London.edu/innovation

Hindsight is an incredibly powerful thing. How many of us still cringe at something we’ve said or regret ever hitting ‘send’ on a certain e-mail? We’ve all made mistakes – although not necessarily at the same level and with the same impact.

Mistakes are all part of learning in any business. Three start-up founders looked back at what happened in the past year and joined us to share their experiences and learnings. Hear what happened to them and how you can avoid it happening to you.

Featuring:

Rosie Bailey SLN2019, Co-founder and CEO of Nibble, an AI chatbot with a sense of humour.

Pedro Cabrero MIFFT2019, Co-founder and CFO of Yayzy, an app that helps you track your personal carbon footprint and reduce and compensate your impact on the planet.

Nasi Rwigema MBA2020, Founder of Umwuga, a social network for tradespeople and service industry workers.

About the series:

This talk is part of the Entrepreneur's Journey series hosted by the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital at London Business School. The programme is uniquely packaged to take would-be student entrepreneurs through each stage the process, from deciding whether to pursue an entrepreneurial career path, through to implementation of their aspirations and towards taking their business to the next level. Visit www.london.edu/ejs to see more.