In today’s episode we speak to Frank Rotman, a Founding Partner of QED Investors which is a global leading venture capital firm based in Alexandria, Virginia founded by Nigel Morris and Frank Rotman in 2007. QED Investors is focused on investing in early stage, disruptive financial services companies in the US, the UK, Latin America and South East Asia. QED Investors is dedicated to building great businesses and uses a unique hands on approach that leverages its partners decades of entrepreneurial and operational experience helping their companies achieve breakthrough growth. Those investments include Avant, AvidXchange, ClearScore, Current, Creditas, Credit Karma, GreenSky, Kavak, Konfio, Loft, Mission Lane, NuBank, QuintoAndar, Remitly and Sofi.

We kickstart the show by asking Frank how do you become a VC/PE guy and what has led him to this point:

Then we ask Frank, what does the thirst to make a difference look like in his world:

We then ask Frank, what are some of the must haves to a big business or big idea:

We have Frank explain, what is the journey of getting product market fit and where do you guys come in?

We move on to the personality stuff, asking Frank what has been his journey when working with founders and making them leaders?

Next we have Frank tell us, does he feel like it's possible to fill all those roles or do you gravitate towards one?

We ask Frank, regarding Series A funding, setting expectations with companies around investment?

We move on to asking Frank where he feels fintech is going?

We ask Frank to highlight some trends of what his seeing in his portfolio:

In today’s episode we speak to Lisa Swartz, Executive Virtual Assistant and Founder of Taflynn Worx. Taflynn Worx does research, recruitment, executive admin, and social media management to remote clients anywhere in the world.

Offering excellent organisational skills, deep insight into business procedures and exceptional communication skills.

With 13 years of experience from being a Senior Coordinator, Office Manager and Executive PA, she oversaw many duties such as recruitment, social impact, and managing executive schedules.

She was recently appointed as President of the Intrepid Chapter at BNI – Business Network International.

We kick off by asking Lisa to share her career story, how its lead her to this point and what value she adds at Single Focus Talent:

We then ask Lisa to tell us what she's learnt about young companies trying to make it and what she feels they have in common:

Then we have Lisa share with us whether she's seeing any resistance in companies hiring Virtual Assistants that they can't physically monitor:

We move on to asking Lisa, we feel a great advantage for South Africans in the virtual world is native English and similar time zones to most parts of Europe, would she agree?

Next, we ask Lisa what platform she feels we can not live without:

We ask Lisa to share some of her business goals:

We check with Lisa what value she feels she adds most:

In today's episode we speak to Roberta Matuson - President at Matuson Consulting, who is an author of many books namely Suddenly In Charge, The Magnetic Leader, Evergreen Talent and she's written the book on leadership, soon to be Can We Talk.

We kick off by asking Roberta to take us through her career journey and what drove her to this point:

We ask Roberta where does she start when you need to coach someone and help the management team from negative feedback, how do these things translate to revenue:

We then ask her what she feels is the difference between a boss and a leader and what are the important qualities:

Then we ask Roberta how she writes so many books:

We move on to the book Can We Talk:

In today’s episode we speak to Andrew Wood, Cofounder and Chief Commercial Officer at a very innovative company called Willo. Here at Single Focus Talent, we have just partnered with Willo to explore the possibilities that self-led video based interviewing can bring to the table for our own candidates and clients. Very innovative technology that is helping us as an organisation scale in the tech space in a very succinct fashion.

We kick off by asking Andrew to tell us about the co founders, their story and how Willo came to be:

We ask Andrew what has been the initial feedback from the world on working in this new way?

We ask Andrew to share his opinion on our previous process?

Three times more likely to get an interview based on this format, we ask Andrew to tell us where this comes from?

We ask Andrew what kinds of conversation are they having with vendors in the space, CRM’s etc?

Then we ask Andrew how he finds setting the tone for leadership in the new culture and in Willo, remote leadership?

In today's episode we speak to Karl Alomar, Managing Partner at M13. M13 is very much mixing it up in the venture space with accolades around Pinterest, Lyft, Ring, SpaceX and SnapChat to name a few. Their approach is different and we wanted to chat to Karl to tell his story and how they see the world.

We kick off by asking Karl to share with us his journey and his path that brought him this far:

We ask Karl, what examples can he share about true scale and some accolades.

We then ask Karl what are the important milestones when making big people and capital decisions?

Then we ask Karl to tell us about a time when he quickly diverted a problem before it had time to develop.

We shift gears and we ask Karl to share his M13 story.

Then Karl shares with us some passion projects.

Next Karl shares with us how he achieved success and how creates culture.

Lastly we ask Karl, productivity, what is his hack?

In today's episode we speak to Oliver Libby - Managing Partner at H/L Ventures founded in 2009. A family company representing a new kind of firm, dedicated to building high growth businesses that add value to society by protecting and promoting people and the planet with a strong preference for diversity. He was invited to speak at Harvard and the UN and numerous business conferences. His work has been covered in publications like the New York Times, Bloomberg, Business Week, Fast Company and has appeared on CMC. He is a Harvard Grad.

We kick off by asking Oliver to share his journey with us and how he got to this point:

We ask Oliver to share some of his passions:

We ask Oliver how he identifies the people he wants to work with:

Then we have Oliver describe some technologies that he feels are disruptive:

We ask Oliver what is his view point on systemic issues around deregulation:

We move into asking Oliver, do we have the ability to fix the damage we have made as the human race?

Then we ask Oliver to define what he believes is his super power:

Lastly, we ask Oliver what is his advice to new founders?

Today we speak to Raghu Ravinutala CEO & Co-founder of Yellow.ai, the world’s leading CX automation / conversational AI / AI-powered chatbot. Yellow.ai combines the best of AI and human intelligence to automate customer experience and even internal employee support for over 700 big brands and enterprises like Sephora, Domino’s and Siemens.

Raghu has over 20 years of experience working in leadership roles across companies such as Texas Instruments and Broadcom. He can speak to AI, automation, improving customer experience, using digital assistants for internal business support and productivity, etc. India-based Yellow.ai most recently announced its expansion into the US and new voice AI capabilities that augment the company’s existing strengths of powering chat automation channels for websites, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram and more.

Yellow.ai also aims to democratize AI through its no-code/low-code bot builders, omnichannel virtual assistants, and ticketing automation. The company’s bots support 100+ languages.

We kick off by asking Raghu to share with us how he ended up here, his career thus far and his journey along the way.

We ask Raghu what he looks for when he looks at a new opportunity? And what makes Bangalore such a tech driven place?

We then have Raghu share his view of CX today and how AI is changing the game.

About the voice bot, we ask Raghu to dive deeper?

We ask Raghu, how does it cope with all the accents and what does perfection look like?

We ask Raghu to share some use cases that transform how you deal with customers?

Then we ask Raghu to share how they would scale?

What's his take on leadership and culture?

Lastly, what does Raghu do for fun?

In today's episode we speak to Eugene Zhang - Founder and CEO at TSVC, also one of the early senior members at Cisco and founding team member at Juniper. TSVC was founded in 2010 proud to be a leading early stage venture capital fund in Silicon Valley, investing in forward thinking ideas and cutting edge de-technologies as well as parking with exceptional founders and extraordinary entrepreneurial community. It has been ranked in the top early stage VC funds in Silicon Valley. Over these 11 years they have delivered outstanding returns for their investors by funding 160 startups in the deep tech focused areas such as SaaS, AI, GIPS, FinTech, Biotech, Blockchain and Semiconductors. With unicorns such as Zoom to their name.

We kick off by learning about Eugene's story and how his gotten to this point:

What drove you to drive opportunities and what special criteria did you think was important?

Leadership skills, who and how does someone wow you?

What technology do you believe is ground breaking?

Do you think you have a high tolerance for risky things or is it how you process risk?

Do you ever engage in discussion with founders who need help with culture?

Lastly, what do you do for fun and when do you have free time?

In today’s episode we talk to Jason Hartman who is the Founder and CEO of Hartman Media. Jason Hartman has been involved in several thousand real estate transactions and has owned income properties in 11 states and 17 cities. His companies help people achieve The American Dream of financial freedom by purchasing income property in prudent markets nationwide. Jason’s Complete Solution for Real Estate Investors™ is a comprehensive system providing real estate investors with education, research, resources and technology to deal with all areas of their income property investment needs.

While running his successful real estate and media businesses, Jason also believes that giving back to the community plays an important role in building strong personal relationships. He established The Jason Hartman Foundation in 2005 to provide financial literacy education to young adults providing the all important real world skills not taught in school which are the key to the financial stability and success of future generations.

We kick off by asking Jason where he sees this new world?

We ask Jason what is the gold standard and why is creating currencies so dangerous?

Then we ask Jason to tell us what he means by the price is not compared to the right metrics?

We then ask Jason to share why do governments not play catch up? Why can’t you increase taxes?

Lastly we ask Jason, where do we go when we can’t get interest rates any lower?

In today’s episode we speak to Arne Allewaert, who is the Managing Partner at AMAVI Capital. Who are trailblazers in the PropTech sector. They are an independent investment vehicle in the European network established as fourth leading in the most prominent scale, active companies in the PropTech industry. A unique space.

We kick off by asking Arne to tell us about his career journey and how his gotten to this point and what he has learnt:

We then ask Arne how he feeds data into decision making and where does it start?

What data is Google listening to?

Construction build process itself, what shifts is Arne seeing?

We ask Arne what his sense is for the new world office space in his industry?

Then we ask Arne, with the access to data, could it steer governmental decisions?

We then have Arne share his exciting game changing investments?

Lastly we ask Arne to share what he thinks his superpower is and what his predictions for 50 years in the future are?