Founder Radio

Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Antonia is COO and Co-founder of Kontempo. Kontempo is a leading payments and credit platform for Mexico’s industrial sector. Started in 2021, but with previous experience in the sector, they’ve executed with laser focus. In 2024 they 10x-ed their business are are now expanding the team and preparing for the next phase of growth. Antonia shares everything from Kontempo’s business and their first year, to her own development and a lot of wisdom for future founders and tech operators.

Listen to this episode for lots of insights on

• The first year of Kontempo: The plan, the execution, the focus
• How Kontempo benefitted from the tight knit network amongst their customers
• How Kontempo learned to move up in each value chain they were active in
• The people Antonia is inspired by and what she learned from them
• The importance of endurance, both in private life and in business
• The right and the wrong reasons to start a business
• The character traits Antonia thinks you need to enjoy the ride
• Timeless lessons on planning vs going with the flow, and being yourself

Enjoy listening!

Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Tinashe is CEO and Co-founder of Flexclub. Flexclub is piloting an Uber-like car-network for long term rentals, and for other brands to build on top of. Started in 2018, they’ve gone to multiple iterations of their product, while navigating radically changing circumstances for mobility companies: COVID and the end of ZIRP. Tinashe opens up on Flexclub’s rollercoaster, his personal journey, and his learnings along the way.

Listen to this episode for lots of insights on

• The first year of Flexclub: The idea, the team, partners, pivots
• How Flexclub responded to the pandemic and the end of ZIRP
• Why being a founder is like playing Age of Empires (!)
• The idea maze of the on-demand car industry
• Tinashe’s lessons with regards to raising capital
• Tinashe’s lessons with regards to finding product / market fit
• Find a leadership style that’s both effective and true to yourself
• Tinashe’s personal growth throughout the adventure

Enjoy listening!

Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Yoram is CEO and founder of Dealroom. Dealroom is a Bloomberg for early stage private companies: It provides data on the companies, their founders, their funding rounds and valuations, and many other aspects of the business. Dealroom’s data is used by investors, corporates and governments in equal parts. In 11 years, the company has grown from just Yoram to over 90 FTE in 2024.

Listen to this episode for lots of insights on

• The early days of Dealroom: The idea, the data, pivots, first traction
• The trends Yoram is spotting in investor interests
• Dealrooms own fundraising experiences
• What Dealroom data is being used for
• Yoram’s lessons on building a company
• The different phases of growth, and what that requires from a CEO
• The importance of following your intuition and doing something different

Enjoy listening!

Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Karun is part of the founding team and Chief Growth Officer of GetVantage. GetVantage invests between $25k - $2.5m in emerging business in India across certain sectors, like eCommerce, SaaS, gaming, cleantech. Karun is also an investor and advisor in GajiGesa, who’s founder Vidit was on this podcast earlier. Karun has a PR and comms background and has 15 yoe at both corporates and scale-ups like Uber and Rolls Royce, before starting GetVantage.

Listen to this episode for lots of insights on

• The early days of GetVantage: The idea, the team, the technology, first traction
• The USD 500 - 1,500bn SME funding gap and how GetVantage is helping close it
• How GetVantage is able to provide business loans within 7 to 10 days (!)
• The Indian government’s breakthrough initiatives to build a national digital infrastructure 
• Karuns journey from India to the US to Singapore to India, and the change he sees
• Karun’s lessons on PR and comms and key tactics for others to up their game
• Karun’s lessons on entrepreneurship, and the importance of always remaining a student

Enjoy listening!

Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Vidit Agrawal is the founder of GajiGesa (Indonesia), which manages employee finances in South-East Asia, and has amassed 350k users in just under 4 years. With GajiGesa, employees have early access to their wages and no longer need predatory lending, and employers save thousands of hours on administration. Before GajiGesa, Vidit has spent time at several iconic companies: UBS, Uber, and Stripe, and he explains what their cultures were like, and what parts he incorporated. 

Listen to this episode for Vidit’s stories on

• Selecting a business opportunity to work on
• How he factored lifestyle and passion of the problem into that
• The early days of GajiGesa: Finding product market fit
• After product market fit: Scaling and and repetitive processes
• Whether Vidit recommends starting a company with your wife..
• What needs to happen to make the company break-even in 2025
• Why Singapore is such a great country to live and do business in
• The quality of live in Indonesia, and the first wave of tech businesses there

Enjoy listening!

Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Fred Jordan of FinalSpark (Switserland) and his team are building a revolutionary new kind of computer, out of human stem cells. The human brain is several orders of magnitude more energy efficient than silicon based computer, and Fred's team hopes to unlock those efficiencies for out-of-brain computation. They have opened up their platform up to research universities, and to the public, and we've pasted the link below. After having financed FinalSpark from the proceeds of his other business for years, Fred is currently raising EUR 50m to accelerate realising their vision. 

Listen to this episode for lots of insights on

• Why the human brain is such an incredible processing machine
• How Fred and his team have been working towards replicating a human brain in a lab
• What it would mean if they manage to build a working and lasting biocomputer
• Why Fred is fundraising and what he expects to be able to achieve with it
• How Fred has built his other business AlpVision, and his lessons learned
• How Fred's journey as an entrepreneur has changed him, and his advice to others
• And please find a link to FinalSpark's biocomputing platform here: https://finalspark.com/live/

Enjoy listening!

Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Pit Janssen of MedApp has exited his prescription medicine adherence and delivery company to the biggest, stock exchange listed, EUR 2.0bn market cap online pharmacy company in Europe. MedApp launched as a medication adherence app, and rolled out an integrated pharmacy with a delivery function in 2020. They bootstrapped the company with a students loans and IT consultancy work until 2017, at which point angels came in. After raising money from Tablomonto Ventures, M3 Ventures and Health Innovations, they were acquired by Shop Apotheke Europe (ETR: RDC) in 2021.

Listen to this episode for lots of insights on

• Innovation in the pharmacy business
• How oldschool pharma fought back
• How to bootstrap your company
• Finding hidden funding (!)
• The importance of a great co-founder
• What to look for in a co-founder
• How to exit your business to a multinational
• How life changed for Pit and this team after the acquisition
• Pit’s background, drive and values
• Parenting tactics for nurturing killer entrepreneurs

Enjoy listening!

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Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Joel co-founded London-based Trubrics, which helps product teams track what’s happening inside LLM models. He and his co-founder founded the company when they saw companies investing heavily in LLM models but remaining in the dark on what is going on inside. They’ve just closed a pre-seed round, did their first hire and are about to launch their first version of the product to customers.

Amongst many other things we talked about 

• Trubric’s pre-seed round
• LLMs and LLM applications
• His evolution from engineer to sales to CEO
• When to seek advice and when to ignore it
• The sales tactics Joel mastered
• Joels drive and values
• Joels first companies at age 13 (!)
• How Joel manages his confidence

Enjoy listening!

Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Meet one of Europe’s most driven impact entrepreneurs: Kees Aarts, founder of Protix. Protix is an insect protein company founded to radically reduce the environmental footprint of our food system and help stop the loss of biodiversity in our seas. Kees and his team started out 14 years ago, and today they are the world leader in insect ingredients, running the largest insect farm ever built. Their mission is to bring the food system back into balance with nature. There were many gems in this conversation, amongst many other things we discussed:

• Kees trigger to start Protix
• Kees first year as a founder 
• Kees philosophy for success: Evolve every single day
• Key moments of evolution in his personal and professional life
• Kees analysis of why wealth can make a country less innovative
• Kees thoughts on the business climate in the Netherlands
• Kees thoughts on artificial intelligence and the future of our species

Enjoy listening! 

Want to know how successful founders turn ideas into empires? Listen to Founder Radio for inside stories from innovative entrepreneurs from all over the globe. Hit follow on your podcast app or YouTube for instant updates!

Kim Durand hails from Paris and moved to Mexico City to start Cheaf, which reduces food waste by offering high quality food that is close to the expiry date at steep discounts. Started less than 4 years ago, the company now employs 30 FTE.

Kim was born and raised in France and has worked at incubator Nova Founders Capital and Uber, before starting Cheaf. 

Amongst many other things, we discussed 

• Kim's business journey spanning from France to Malaysia to the Netherlands to Mexico
• Kim's development from numbers guy to becoming founder and CEO of Cheaf
• The reality versus the perception of starting a company
• Kim's routines to stay fit and deal with stress
• Kim's plans for the future

Enjoy listening!

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