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Ade Hassan knew she was onto something with Nubian Skin lingerie when she posted the first product photo on social media and gained one-thousand new followers in a week. It was 2014 and the photo went on to garner over thirty-five thousand notes on Tumblr and over twenty thousand followers on Instagram, in less than a month. The UK-born, London-based founder created the brand to satisfy her own need but the internet’s response let her know that she’d struck a chord.

After graduate school, Ade went into a career in finance but couldn’t find suitable skin-tone lingerie and hosiery to go with her wardrobe. If she was experiencing this problem, she imagined that other women of colour had the same need. What she didn’t realise was how immediate the need was.

Nubian Skin has had an out-sized influence on the fashion industry, with many other parts of the industry realising the need to be more inclusive. In 2017 Ade was awarded an MBE at Buckingham Palace for services to fashion. The award was made to recognise Ade’s commitment to her mission to redefine nude, and the impact she has consequently made on the fashion industry. In this episode, Ade tells us about the sacrifice that must be made in entrepreneurship, how she found her purpose, how she was awarded an MBE and much more.

Topics

* Getting a MBE

* Sacrifice In Entrepreneurship

* How Did You Find Purpose?

* Advice To Those Who Dream Of Quitting Their Job*

* Having A Support System Around You

Ade Hassan:

https://www.instagram.com/itsadehassan/?hl=en

Nubian Skin:

https://www.nubianskin.com/

Ade’s TEDx Talk:

https://www.ted.com/talks/ade_hassan_the_reality_of_reaching_your_goal

From a young age Timothy has been heavily influenced by business and technology starting his first company, Alpha Tutoring at 14 and his second EntrepreneurXpress at 17 which he ended up selling 11 months later.

In his second year of university studying Computer Science, Timothy started Fanbytes after seeing how marketing to Gen Z was broken.

Fast forward 4 Years, Fanbytes is a 65 person company helping brands like the Government, Deliveroo, McDonalds and Nike to win the hearts of Gen Z.

Timothy is an internally renowned speaker on the topic of marketing sharing the stage with Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix and Ogilvy’s Rory Sutherland to name a few as well as a guest columnist for The Guardian, The Drum and Campaign Magazine.

Timothy has also used his influence for good, building the Fanbytes fund which invests and funds influencer campaigns for black businesses aiming to erode the cycle of a lack of support and funding for black owned businesses.

In this episode, Timothy and Simon discuss how you build a sellable company, how to become successful at a young age, and what it takes to build a team of over 60 people.

Topics:

* Building A Business To Exit

* Your Economic Moat

* Building A Brand Of Value

* Getting Investors On Board

* What’s Next For Timothy

Timothy Armoo:

https://www.timothyarmoo.com/

Fanbytes:

https://fanbytes.co.uk/

Every single day I ask someone this question and the answers will blow your mind!

There are two things in history that have recently happened. If we don't acknowledge the change that it has had on our society and start to readjust, the whole fabric of humanity will fall apart and anarchy will follow. If it hasn't already begun. And to trace these two changes back, you have to look at the history of the last 100.

First of all the history of education, how education was formalized 150 years ago. And how that formation of a formalized education left people no longer working within an instinct. Within their purpose within a structure of necessity, real-life skills, doing real-life things. We got sidetracked into what I can only describe as a factory to make factory workers.

We were trained to obey, to listen, to authority that getting an a and memorizing things and doing labours tasks was the most important thing we need to get back to the original reason. That we self-educate to fit within an ecosystem that needs the skills that we have. The second thing that has dramatically changed is the way we're no longer tribal.

We're not tribal in the way that we are meant to be original. When we were working together in open fields, where we all built homes together or caves, we all had a role to play. We would help each other. No one would sleep outside. There was no such thing as homeless. We've gone back in. When homelessness is part of the vocabulary, how has this happened?

Well, I basically put it down to the beginnings of banking. When the banks were invented when they were being created by the very people that across this problem, they wanted the banks to lend lots of money and almost make people work for the banks and the institutions that created them. And part of that structure was a mortgage.

It was almost like your destiny to buy a home suddenly, and that you should get into debt and buy that washing machine that you don't need, or that car that shows your status, and suddenly the image of what was important, shifted from community and friendship and connection to what we have social media, isn't actually to blame for this social.

Media's just a product, an outcome of some of the steps that were taken in the early days of banking. Now we all live in separate homes. We have our stuff. We're no longer thinking about the person at the end of our street that's homeless that has no food. We're thinking I want to make sure I'm okay.

And therein lies, the two biggest problems created in recent history. If we don't address, first of all, the need to be back to our tribal instincts and help each other and learn to reimagine education, to not control us, but to free us, financial literacy, understanding how the financial system works, thinking about how it's possible to give people purpose, teach people what purpose is, teach people that taking a risk and going out and hunting is the fun piece of life. Not waiting in the cave for someone to bring you a fish. And when you want another fish, Begging them to give you one and they'll review you in three months and let you know, if you will, you are in control of your own destiny.

We need to unplug people from the system that has been engineered. Even money itself has been created as the holy grail in modern society of success. When of course anyone that's successful will tell you money. Doesn't buy you happiness, in fact, it only makes you happy if you're already happy. So how do you get happy?

We go back to our basic instincts. We care about each other. We start realizing that we have a purpose and we're not meant to chase an immaterial, pointless product, like money.

Tony was born in Beirut, Lebanon, during a violent civil war, and was lucky enough to travel to France at the age of seventeen to study for a computer sciences degree, then attended the IMD Business School in Switzerland.

After graduating, Tony founded Nexmo, a pioneer in the Communications Platform as a Service (“CPaaS”) category. Nexmo made it easy for software developers to add essential communications capabilities (like sending messages between ride-sharing drivers and passengers) to their applications, on a global scale. Nexmo went public via a merger with Vonage in 2016.

After the Nexmo exit, Tony took some time off to consider what to do next. He began to invest in “platform models that can change the world”, Tony’s investments include Pento, Truelayer, Dialpad, Hopin, and Claap.

That other talented individuals in emerging economies should enjoy similar career opportunities, without the need for geographic displacement, is a persona, passion and the ideological cornerstone of Tony’s career. It is where the idea of Oyster was born.

For most people in emerging economies, career fulfilment means moving to another country. Tony believes this necessity to be in the office sets up unassailable inequalities for many people in emerging economies. Why should they have to move halfway around the world, away from their community and support system, to have a successful career?

Tony created Oyster to remove the remaining barriers to successful remote work, including hiring, compensating and managing team members who are physically far away from the office.

In this episode, Tony reveals the secrets that helped him scale Oyster to 1$ Billion valuations, as well as his unique journey to success. Simon and Tony also go deep on how to get investment, purpose and Web3.

Topics

Suneera Madhani is a payments innovator who has disrupted the industry with her unicorn company Stax. After seeing the need for a better payment experience for merchants, her entrepreneurial spirit took hold and she decided to solve the problem herself. She built Stax from the ground up, providing a sophisticated and business-friendly platform

Stax is a subscription-based payments processor that charges merchants a flat subscription fee rather than a percentage of sales for in-person and digital transactions. Over the past eight years, the 300-person company has processed $23 billion in payments for more than 20,000 customers across retail, professional services, and health care.

On top of being CEO at Stax, Suneera also runs CEO school, a platform which empowers women to understand the power they have to change their lives, shift their legacy, and alter the course of history. In this episode, Suneera reveals the 3 steps to building a billion-dollar business, the TRUTH about why less than 2% of female founders make it to $1 Million, and much more.

“Most successful CEOs start off with making the business about YOU. But as you scale and grow it has to become less and less about you, and more and more about the impact.”

Topics

Suneera’s Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/suneeramadhani/

CEO School:

https://theceoschool.co/

Stax:

https://staxpayments.com/

FOR MORE HELP START HERE: https://purposefulproject.com

Chris Barton is a well-respected entrepreneur and one of the masterminds behind the music recognition app, Shazam. Shazam was created in London over 20years ago and caught the interest of Apple who went on to purchase the technology for a speculated $400 million in 2017. The app is now among the most popular apps on both iPhone and Android with over 1 billion downloads to date.

Chris’ career also includes companies such as Google where he worked for 8 years and Dropbox, where he held the position of head of mobile operators' business development. He has collected a wealth of knowledge and experience through his journey to make him a leading entrepreneur within the digital field and more specifically, mobile applications. He is now embarking on creating a new startup focused on machine learning and computer vision.

In today’s special episode of The Unicorn Podcast, Chris tells his story of building software that was so ahead of it’s time, as well as giving you all the highs and lows of his career, so you have the knowledge you need to replicate his success for yourself.

"Things take longer than you expect. You hit different hurdles and unknown things happen. Early revenue in your business is like oxygen. Make revenue for your business a priority from day one. If I had realised how important that was, even if it meant delaying my main vision, it would have been a better route to take."

Topics:

How Chris became an entrepreneur

Chris’ unconventional start-up approach

Shazam - How it went from an idea to a reality

Shazam - Finding an engineer to ‘invent’ the technology

Shazam - The four co-founders and their partnership dynamic

Shazam - Allocating job roles

Shazam - Raising funding

Persistence + Timing

Hiring CEO’s + getting out of your own way

Chris’ new company ‘Guard’

Apple’s acquisition of Shazam

What is it like after selling a company?

Why Guard?

One piece of advice to your younger self

Chris Barton:

https://chrisjbarton.com/

📚 FOR MORE HELP START HERE: https://purposefulproject.com

John Roberts is the Founder and CEO of AO World, the online retailer specialising in household appliances and electricals. AO operates following John’s two personal mottos of ‘treat every customer like your gran’ and ‘make your mum proud’, which has allowed the company to attain more 5* reviews than any other electrical retailer.

John started AO in 2000 after a friend bet him £1 to set up a business. He had previously been working as a kitchen salesman, and the internet was just reaching mainstream utility, so he decided to set up a company that would sell appliances online. In 2014, Roberts led AO World’s listing on the London Stock Exchange, valued at the time at £1.2 billion.

John has also supported Bolton Lads and Girls Club for 25 years, he’s a chairman at OnSide Youth Zones and a councillor at OneYoungWorld. Each of these organisations supports young people and aligns with John’s mission to leave the world a better place. In this episode, John gives us an in-depth insight into his life and career, as well as what it takes to build a billion-dollar company.

“Be really clear about what it is that you’re going to do, and be awesome at it. Obsess about being awesome, and be clear on what problems you’re solving because If you’re going to be average at it… Well, there's a lot of average in the graveyard.”

Topics:

John Roberts: https://twitter.com/johnrobertsao

AO: https://twitter.com/ao

Anne Boden is the Founder and CEO of Starling Bank, a modern British bank that brings new technology to the forefront, delivering a more engaging experience for customers than traditional high-street banks. Since 2014, Anne’s vision has served more than 2.5 million customers as Starling continues to grow into one of the UK’s leading banks.

In January of 2014, Anne decided to quit her job to pursue her vision of creating a better bank, defying all stereotypes of women in their 50s with a corporate background. Starting a bank is one of the most challenging businesses to launch, and people thought she was crazy, but Anne was determined to make it work.

“I felt silly, I felt people would laugh at me for having this audacious goal. I didn’t just want to create a new bank, I wanted to create one that had the very best technology right from scratch, treating customers very fairly, with a new way of doing things and engaging with customers. Nobody believed me. Nobody thought it was possible.”

Topics:

Anne:

https://www.instagram.com/anneboden/

https://twitter.com/anneboden

Anne's book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/BANKING-How-I-Disrupted-Industry-ebook/dp/B084H6N2GS

Starling Bank:

https://www.starlingbank.com/

📚  FOR MORE HELP START HERE: https://purposefulproject.com