Founders Uncut: Real Startup Stories

Founders Uncut: Real Startup Stories

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Founders Uncut: Real Startup Stories episodes

  • 20. Kate Ryder of Maven Clinic - Give People a Place to Grow because Companies are Only as Good as Their People

    I’m here with Kate Ryder CEO of Maven Clinic. Maven have raised over $300M and is one of the only unicorn startups in women’s healthcare. Prior to founding Maven, Kate was a successful VC and a journalist. 

    Hear more from her on:

    • Building the plane while flying
    • Why companies are only as good as their people
    • Giving people a place to grow 
    • Founder life, as a mom of three


      • Learn more about Maven Clinic here

      Find out about Kindred Capital at KindredCapital.VC

      This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

      38 min
    • 19. Aron Gelbard CEO & Co-Founder of Bloom & Wild- Be Obsessed with Customer Feedback

      Every year, Bloom & Wild send 6 million deliveries of plants and flowers to several million customers across 8 countries in Europe. To date they have raised over $100M with CEO & Co-Founder Aron Gelbard at the helm.

      Hear more from him on:

      • Merging cultures when you make acquisitions
      • The value of founder forums
      • Setting up your technology for scale from day one
      • The importance of obsessing over customer feedback


        • Want to try out Bloom & Wild? Start here: https://www.bloomandwild.com/

        Find out about Kindred Capital at KindredCapital.VC

        This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

        Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

        38 min
      • 18. Wemimo Abbey of Esusu - Head for Business, Heart for the World - From 326 No’s to Unicorn & Bridging the Racial Wealth Gap

        I’m here with Wemimo Abbey from Esusu. Esusu raised over $140M and the company is valued at $1BN today, as a unicorn company. Their partnerships with real estate owners and operators represent 2.5 million units across 50 different states and they are helping people improve their credit score with the rent that they pay. They are leveraging data to help bridge the racial wealth gap in the United States.

        Hear more from him on:

        • Why You should Raise in a Position of Strength
        • Navigating Fundraising as a Minority Statistic Founder
        • Justice Capitalism - Giving People a Fighting Chance
        • Building Your Mansion On a Solid Foundation
        • Friendship Being the Antidote to All Life’s Challenges
        • Head for Business, Heart for the World


          • Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut

          This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

          35 min
        • 17. James Lochrie, The Language Founders Speak

          With me today is James Lochrie, Co-founder of Wave, which sold to H&R Block. He now runs a venture firm called Thin Air Labs.

          Hear from him on:

          • The Language Founders Use
          • Should You Lie to Yourself?
          • Taking Control of Your Board
          • An Inevitably Better Future


            • Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut

            This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

            Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

            41 min
          • 16. Hugo Renaudin, Co-founder & CEO of P00ls - Success Favours the Crazy, Raising $10M in One Hour, Manifesting Your Own Serendipity, Get Respect & Trust by Giving it, Managing People much Older than You

            With me today is Hugo Renaudin, Co-founder & CEO of P00ls. This is his third business and he sold a prior business $250M. He also completed the largest ICO in France raising $20M in under 10 hours.

            Hear from him on:

            Building Team in a Post Pandemic World

            • Empowering Your Team
            • Why Following Your Team on Instagram is Better than Zoom Happy Hour
            • Getting Creative Brainstorming Done Remotely
            • Holistic Human Relationships


              • Guiding Principles

              • Manifesting Your Own Serendipity
              • When to Trust Your Gut
              • It’s Not About Being the Smartest
              • Success Favours the Crazy


                • Being the Right Type of Leader

                • Managing People Much Older than You
                • Get Respect & Trust by Giving It
                • Doing What You Love


                  • Some Great Moments On His Journey

                  • Selling the Company
                  • Doing the largest ICO in France
                  • Raising $10M in One Hour, $20M in <10 Hours
                  • More Money, More Problems


                    • Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut

                    This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

                    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                    40 min
                  • 15. Jamie Hale, CEO & Co-founder of Ladder - Earn the Right to Work on the Next Challenge, Tough Decisions on Your Shoulders - Layoffs and How to Handle, Being the Shock Absorber for the Company, Wisdom in what may be hard to hear and Joy from Work

                    With me today is Jamie Hale, CEO & Co-founder of Ladder, which has issued over $50BN in life insurance and raised over $100 million. Hear from him on:

                    The Founding Journey

                    • Jamie’s Recurring Nightmare as a Founder 
                    • Feeling Alone Even if you Aren’t 
                    • Who is Your Cheerleader?
                    • Shock Absorber for the Company
                    • Mindset of Getting Better Everyday
                    • The Feedback Vacuum
                    • Choosing the Right Cofounder 
                    • Getting Your Teeth Kicked in Everyday


                      • Key Learnings

                      • Tough Decision on Your Shoulders - Layoffs
                      • Wisdom in What May Be Hard to Hear
                      • Managing Board as a Distributed Boss
                      • How to Get Feedback & Accountability as a Founder
                      • How the CEO Role Changes over Time
                      • The Difference between a CEO & a Founder
                      • Husband/Wife Co-founding Teams


                        • Maintaining the Culture

                        • Mark the Moment & Celebrate 
                        • Earned the Right to Work on the Next Challenge
                        • Joy from Work - Applying Talent & Creativity to Problem Solving
                        • The Scars from Failing and Getting it Wrong
                        • Always Asking if You Are Right for the Job
                        • Growing Talent Within
                        • Board Culture


                          • Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut

                          This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

                          Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                          36 min
                        • 14. Natasha Vernier, CEO & Co-founder of Cable - Building a Company as You Build Your Family, Creating a Diverse Cap Table, The Operating System of Cable’s Culture, and Why It Pays Off to Be Kind

                          With me today is Natasha Vernier, CEO & Co-founder of Cable. Natasha was on the Monzo scale up journey as employee number 17 to over 2000 people, on their journey from 100 to over 4.5 million customers. She has now founded her own company - Cable.

                          Building a Company as You Build Your Family

                          • Decision to Found the Company
                          • IVF and Term Sheets
                          • The Mental Journey of New Mom & Founder Life in COVID
                          • How You Survive the Tough Moments
                          • Your Partner As Your Cheerleader


                            • The Founder Mindset

                            • What She Learned on the Monzo Scale Up Journey
                            • Lots of Ways to Start a Company
                            • Harnessing Value from Early Angels & Investors
                            • Anybody can do it! Let’s Solve Diverse Problems
                            • Importance of the Right Cofounder Choice
                            • Cable Culture & Operating System
                            • Why Being Kind Matters
                            • Translating Values and Principles into Behaviros & Actions
                            • Delighting Consumers
                            • What Surprised Her most about the Founder Journey


                              • Diversity & Inclusion in Tech

                              • Changing the Narrative to get a Diverse set of Founders
                              • Building a Diverse Cap Table
                              • Why the “Friends & Family” Round Shouldn’t Be a Thing
                              • Lowering Angel Minimum Check Size for Diverse Investors

                                • Buildign Cable's diverse cap table


                                Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut

                                This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

                                Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                                34 min
                              • 13. Raj De Datta, CEO & Co-founder of Bloomreach - Coming Back from Near Death Company Experiences, Is the Planet You are On Inhabitable? Learning to Rely on Your Own Judgement, Things that are Worthwhile to Do are Hard

                                With me today is Raj De Datta, CEO & Co-founder of Bloomreach and bestselling author. Bloomreach has over $100M in ARR, powers $400BN of ecommerce sales and has raised over $400M. But these are just the headlines. Listen to the real story on Founders Uncut. In this episode, you will hear more from him on:


                                Near Death Experiences 

                                • When 25M ARR Just Isn’t enough
                                • Telling Investors This Could Be a Zero
                                • Realising what may be a False Dream
                                • Culture is Tested In the Hard Times
                                • Making Tough Decisions Early


                                  • Coming Back from Near Death

                                  • From $25M ARR back to $1M to over $100M in 6 years
                                  • Is the Planet you are Inhabiting Repairable or Uninhabitable 
                                  • Finding another Planet while keeping Employees & Investors with You
                                  • Growing for 5 years without Raising - Revenue Based Growth
                                  • Hero to Zero and Zero to Hero overnight


                                    • The Founder Mindset 

                                    • Why you have to be 100% in as the Leader
                                    • The Question you are not Allowed to Ask Yourself
                                    • Defining Himself as a Founder
                                    • Why You Don’t Want investors to have all their Eggs in your Basket 
                                    • Relying on Yourself - In the End it’s Your Judgement
                                    • Building Early Investor Relationships
                                    • Probability of Value Destroyer VC versus Value Add 
                                    • The Best Part of Being a Founder - There is Nothing You Can’t Do 
                                    • The Process of Writing a Book
                                    • Things that are Worthwhile are Really Hard 


                                      • Get Raj's book The Digital Seeker here.

                                      Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut

                                      This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

                                      Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                                      33 min
                                    • 12. Charlie Delingpole of Comply Advantage - Relentless Conviction, Failure is an Orphan and done in Silence, Let the Market Pull You, and Tough Decision at Silicon Roundabout

                                      With me today is Charlie Delingpole, Founder and CEO of Comply Advantage - the world's leading data technology company transforming financial crime detection Comply Advantage has raised over 100M, has over 1.5k clients and is 440 people today. Charlie is also an active angel investor and recently a new dad.

                                      Hear more from him on:

                                      The early days of company building

                                      • Running a lending company in a downturn/credit crisis
                                      • When what you think is a tech business is really garden furniture
                                      • The choice to use his own equity in a tough situation
                                      • Tough decisions made at Silicon Roundabout


                                        • Lessons from a serial founder

                                        • That feeling of o something to nothing
                                        • Best and worst part of being a founder 
                                        • Failure is an orphan and it’s done in silence 
                                        • Survivorship bias and learnings from failure
                                        • Relentless conviction 
                                        • Let the market fund the platform, not investors
                                        • Doing things right versus doing the right thing


                                          • Why take VC money

                                          • The right VC relationship
                                          • Want what you build to diffuse in society
                                          • Deliberate about choosing cofounder or capital partner
                                          • The intellectual promiscuity of angel investing
                                          • How angel investing affects him as an operator


                                            • Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut

                                            This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

                                            Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                                            38 min
                                          • 11. Damian Kimmelman of Batelle & Rho - Perfect vs Clear & Consistent Decisions, Default to “I am Probably Wrong”, Lean into Subjectivity, The Best Founders Know Their Scent, Surround Yourself with Kind People

                                            With me today is Damian Kimmelman, Co-founder of https://batelle.com/ (Batelle.com), https://www.rho.co/ (Rho.co) and Founders Pledge. Batelle trains parents how to put their children to bed in under 5 minutes and sleep through the night within 2 weeks, guaranteed...

                                            Hear more from him on:

                                            1) Decision Making in Startups

                                            • Driving to Consensus Versus Driving a Strategy
                                            • Perfect Decisions at the expense of Clear, Consistent Decisions
                                            • Frameworks for Decision Making


                                              • 2) Information Theory - Lean into Subjectivity

                                              • The Shared Language of Decision Making
                                              • Default to “I am Probably Wrong”
                                              • What Actually Matters in a Startup
                                              • Navigating Culture across different types of hires


                                                • 3) Diversity and the Value of Heterodox Opinions

                                                • What ACTUALLY matters in the startup journey
                                                • Long term Value Creation
                                                • Consistency in Leadership
                                                • Messaging to Company


                                                  • 4)The Founder Journey

                                                  • What’s Misunderstood in the Founder Journey?
                                                  • Navigating the Complexity of Dealing with people at scale
                                                  • The Best Founders Know Their Scent
                                                  • True Impact - Upstream Interventions
                                                  • Why You Should Surround Yourself with Kind People


                                                    • Book recommendations:

                                                    Decoding Reality - by Vlatko Vedral 

                                                    The Science of Can and Can't - by Chiara Marletto

                                                    Find out more at KindredCapital.VC/FoundersUncut

                                                    This podcast was produced by Fascinate Productions

                                                    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

                                                    27 min

                                                  About Founders Uncut: Real Startup Stories

                                                  From the publisher's feed

                                                  The show that interviews entrepreneurs, uncovering the moments of fear and doubt that even the most successful founders face. On Founders Uncut, you'll hear how they deal with these moments. If you're an early stage startup founder and the going is tough, listen in. You are not alone - being a founder is just hard! Host Maria Palma, General Partner at Kindred, an early stage venture capital fund, is here to shine a light on the parts of the startup scaling journey that often go untold and never make the headlines. You'll hear about: - How to hire a senior leadership team - How to successfully raise a venture capital funding round - How to motivate a team and operationalise company values - How to personally grow with your startup scaling journey so you can be the leader your company needs at every stage and stay sane in the process.