We're excited to bring you a special cross-over episode from our friends at the 'Think Fast, Talk Smart' podcast. Host Matt Abrahams joined us and recorded this live session at the Stanford Seed Transformation Network Summit in Cape Town, exploring the authentic communication strategies that every entrepreneur needs to master.

Real connection means understanding your audience, staying true to yourself, and creating space for others.

How do you communicate who you are, what you stand for, and leave space for others to do the same? At the Stanford Seed Summit in Cape Town, South Africa, three Stanford Graduate School of Business professors explored why real connection is built through authentic communication.

For Jesper Sørensen, authentic organizational communication means talking about a business in ways customers or investors can understand, like using analogies to relate a new business model to one that people already know. For incoming GSB Dean Sarah Soule, authentic communication is about truth, not trends. Her research on "corporate confession" shows that companies build trust when they admit their shortcomings — but only if those admissions connect authentically to their core business. And for Christian Wheeler, authentic communication means suspending judgment of ourselves and others. “We have a tendency to rush to categorization, to assume that we understand things before we really do,” he says. “Get used to postponing judgment.”

In this special live episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, host Matt Abrahams and his panel of guests explore communication challenges for budding entrepreneurs. From the risks of comparing yourself to competitors to how your phone might undermine genuine connection, they reveal how authentic communication — whether organizational or personal — requires understanding your audience, staying true to your values, and creating space for others to be heard.

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Welcome to Grit & Growth’s final episode. After five years and 90 episodes, we’ve asked four Stanford GSB professors who teach in the Seed Transformation Program to tell us what they’ve learned — about the grit of intrepid entrepreneurs working in emerging economies and the growth they’ve experienced in their own teaching.

Jesper Sorensen, Baba Shiv, Jonathan Levav, and Sarah Soule are all Stanford Graduate School of Business professors who have also spent years with Seed teaching business leaders from nearly 30 countries to grow and scale their companies. Their reflections include key takeaways about the resilience, honesty, and heart required to overcome unique challenges and the joy in seeing them triumph. As teachers, these professors also know how to learn from their students. And they’ve incorporated many of those lessons in the MBA and Executive Education programs back at Stanford.

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Perkenalkan Denica Riadini-Flesch, seorang mantan ekonom yang menjadi pengusaha. Ia sedih melihat perjuangan para pengrajin dan petani tradisional di pedesaan Indonesia sehingga ia mendirikan perusahaan untuk membantu mengubah hidup mereka. SukkhaCitta adalah merek mode dari petani-ke-lemari, yang mengembalikan daya kepada para perempuan yang membuat pakaian kita. Misinya: mengakhiri eksploitasi terhadap perempuan dan sekaligus meregenerasi planet ini.

Menyeimbangkan tujuan dan keuntungan, sekaligus melawan permintaan masyarakat akan fast fashion adalah upaya yang cukup berat. Pakaian murah yang diproduksi oleh peretail pasar massal membebani para perajin kecil di mana-mana. Namun, dampak fast fashion terhadap planet kita bahkan lebih dramatis. Industri ini bertanggung jawab atas 10 persen emisi karbon global. Memproduksi satu kaos katun saja bisa menghabiskan 2.700 liter air. Dan semua tekstil yang dibuang menumpuk di tempat pembuangan sampah, menambah 92 juta ton sampah setiap tahun. Begitu Riadini-Flesch mulai memperhatikan cara pembuatan pakaian, ia tahu bahwa ia harus melakukan sesuatu. “Dalam ekonomi kerajinan, pada dasarnya mereka membuat sesuatu selama enam bulan, dan baru setelah itu mereka mencoba menjualnya. Namun pada saat itu, perempuan tidak memiliki daya tawar. Mereka membutuhkan uang tunai agar keluarga mereka bisa bertahan hidup. Dan itulah mengapa sektor ini juga dipenuhi dengan begitu banyak eksploitasi,” jelasnya.

Riadini-Flesch mengambil pendekatan holistik, memperluas akses ke pendidikan dan pasar, dan bisnisnya berfokus pada kalender pertanian, bukan kalender mode. “Kami adalah perusahaan sosial. Apa yang kami lakukan di desa-desa didanai oleh bisnis kami. Jadi pada dasarnya, untuk setiap yang dibeli, pelanggan kami memulai siklus regenerasi di desa-desa kami. Dan karena hanya menggunakan bahan alami dan pewarna alami, pakaian kami hanya butuh sekitar dua hingga empat minggu agar terurai sepenuhnya kembali ke tanah,” katanya.

Mempelajari cara mengembangkan bisnis sambil mempertahankan nilai-nilai yang dipegangnya membuat Denica memikirkan kembali definisi kesuksesannya. Ia mengatakan, “Pertumbuhan bukan hal buruk, selama kita tahu apa yang ‘cukup’ bagi kita. Dan begitu kita mencapainya, kita mempertahankannya. Kita mencari cara untuk menjaga semua orang yang terlibat. Kita mencari cara untuk memberi lebih banyak daripada yang kita terima. Dan ketika itu, bisnis bisa benar-benar menjadi kekuatan untuk kebaikan.”

Dengarkan kisah inspiratif Riadini-Flesch dan bagaimana ia menciptakan perusahaan sosial yang memberi kesempatan nyata bagi perempuan di Indonesia, bukan hanya bantuan.

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Meet Denica Riadini-Flesch, a former economist turned entrepreneur, who was so saddened by the struggles of traditional artisans and farmers in rural Indonesia that she created a company to help change their lives. SukkhaCitta is a farm-to-closet fashion brand that puts power back in the hands of the women who make our clothes. Its mission: to end the exploitation of women and simultaneously regenerate the planet. 

Balancing purpose and profit while fighting society’s demand for fast fashion is a challenging endeavor. Inexpensive clothing produced by mass market retailers puts a strain on small artisans everywhere. But fast fashion’s impact on the planet is even more dramatic. The industry is responsible for as much as 10 percent of global carbon emissions. Producing a single cotton T-shirt can take 2,700 liters of water. And all the textiles that are thrown away pile up in landfills, adding 92 million tons of waste each year. Once Riadini-Flesch began really looking at how clothes are made, she knew she had to do something about it. “In the craft economy, you basically make something for up to six months, and only then they try to sell it. But at that moment, women don't have any bargaining power. She needs the cash for her family to survive. And that's how this sector is filled with so much exploitation,” she explains.

Riadini-Flesch took a holistic approach, expanding access to both education and markets, and her business focuses on a farming calendar, not a fashion calendar. “We're a social enterprise. What we do in the villages is being funded by our business. So in essence, with every that our customers buy, they start this cycle of regeneration in our villages. And our clothes, because we use only natural materials and natural dyes, it takes only about two to four weeks for it to completely biodegrade back to the soil,” she says.

Learning how to grow her business while maintaining her values means rethinking her definition of success. She says “Growth is not evil, as long as we know what is our ‘enough.’ And once we hit it, we maintain. We find ways to take care of everyone who's involved. We find ways to give back more than we take. And in that sense, businesses can actually become a force for good.”

Hear Riadini-Flesch’s inspiring story and how she’s creating a social enterprise that gives women in Indonesia true opportunities rather than aid.

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Meet Wyclife Omondi, co-founder of BuuPass, a company committed to tackling one of Africa’s biggest challenges: transportation inefficiency. The solution seemed simple enough – digital ticketing – but making it happen took persistence, adaptation, and plenty of strategic pivots. Learn about Omondi’s entrepreneurial journey as he scales to include other modes of transportation and expands across the African continent.

Born and raised in Kenya, Omondi studied in Singapore and the United States, and only returned to Africa after entering a student competition with his future BuuPass co-founder. Their winning business model to use digital ticketing to bring transparency and efficiency to Africa’s transportation system came with a $1 million grant!

Seamless movement across Africa is BuuPass’s mission, but the road to get there has been far from seamless. While the company is named after a Swahili slang term for bus, the business model was transferable to other modes of transportation, including trains and planes. Expanding across borders created even more opportunities, but with that came more regulatory and cultural obstacles. With a flexible mindset and willingness to pivot, Omondi keeps thinking bigger while raising venture capital, including from Silicon Valley investors, to achieve hypergrowth.

Omondi admits that entrepreneurship is hard. “It's your baby, and you don't want anyone to correct your baby, and you're so tied to it. That makes pivoting a bit difficult. If something doesn't work, we reiterate and go. But also in Africa, when you go alone, you go this far, but when we go together, we can go much further. So value partnership and collaboration to make your business more successful.”

Hear how Omondi is transforming transportation for operators, ticket sellers, and travelers – however and wherever they go.

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Meet Santhoshi Sushma Buddhiraju, CEO and cofounder of Autocracy Machinery, a heavy machinery manufacturing company located in southern India. The idea for her company began with a simple question: Why is India, the world’s largest consumer, so reliant on imported machinery? Answering that question entailed bold risks, fearless leadership, and personal sacrifice.

Santhoshi had a strong foundation to start a business, even one that was extremely male-dominated. She got a world class education at IIT Madras, created a food delivery start-up on the side, received a prestigious internship at Georgia Tech in the United States, and ultimately built her corporate career at HSBC. But solving local problems in her home country of India captured her imagination and fueled her resolve.

While most entrepreneurs were shutting down their businesses during COVID, Santhoshi was launching her start-up with a vision to transform India’s infrastructure and economy through local manufacturing expertise. According to Santhoshi, India imported $43 billion in machinery in the last financial year alone. “That’s huge,” she says, “and imagine being the biggest population of the world, the biggest consumer of goods. And then we realized why are we not manufacturing our stuff and very basic stuff? You have more manpower than anybody can imagine and imagine what magic you can do,” she declares.

Santhoshi identified and capitalized on an enormous opportunity. She explains: “Our cities are developing, our ecosystem is developing, and our population is rising. What India is trying to do is build a better utility network – water pipelines, gas, electricity, digital networks, cable, optical fiber networks, all of this to every household. And it all requires machinery. There's a need. There's an opportunity. Why don't we manufacture the machines, machines which we are importing at $150K?” And so she did, manufacturing machinery that was cheaper, faster, and responsive to local needs, first in the utility industry and now in many others.

Hear how Santhoshi is breaking down barriers, listening to her customers, relying on her team, and encouraging entrepreneurs to do the same.

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Meet Sumit Sinhal, founder and director of Kin’s Health, a growing healthcare company located in West Bengal, India, at the foot of the Himalayas. While most entrepreneurs would see obstacles in delivering care to this remote region, Sinhal’s passion, innovation, leadership, and strategic vision are creating opportunities — for both patients and doctors. 

India is infamously known as the diabetic capital of the world with over 80 million people suffering from the disease and an equal number who don’t even know they have it. In 2011, Sinhal’s company set out to change that statistic with early detection care and has since expanded to provide cutting-edge healthcare, including telemedicine and wearable devices, to underserved and hard-to-reach communities.

While working in remote regions has its advantages (less competition, for example), recruiting skilled staff can be a challenge. As a leader, Sunhal realizes the importance of creating a shared vision that extends beyond the founder.

“One of the most important stakeholders that you have is that of employees, especially in a service industry, that of healthcare. It is very important to have exceptionally trained employees to make sure that they understand the vision of the company. What is it that you intend to do? What is the passion behind doing everything that you do?” Sunhal says.

While Sunhal and his team are meeting the needs of underserved patients, they’re also empowering doctors to become entrepreneurs themselves. “We want to become the business partners for doctors, help them become docpreneurs , be a digitally savvy business, and provide the best of care that patients could possibly receive” he explains.

Hear how Sunahl is creating impact, embracing technology, and using innovative solutions to build his business and provide a model of care in other underserved regions.

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Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on sales, featuring Celine Duros, a woman who started her career in sales at 16 and is now both an experienced sales director in emerging markets and consultant to entrepreneurs seeking the secrets to successful sales – whether you’re pitching yourself, managing teams, or selling a specific product.

Celine Duros sold earrings at a holiday market in France, transitioned to men’s fashion, and only realized after business school that sales was her true calling. She moved to Ghana a decade ago and has honed her craft by working across 25 African markets, building relationships first and selling second. With so much experience selling and consulting across the African continent, she has stories to tell and lessons to share with entrepreneurs everywhere. 

Top Six Masterclass Takeaways 

Actions speak louder than words

“If I had been in touch with the actual decision maker, I would have seen that there was some skepticism and the value was not as clear. You can trust the word, but really, if you want to forecast, look at the actions, cause that's where you're going to be able to actually see through.”

Stay involved in sales

“One common mistake that I've seen is that CEOs or cofounders that are not comfortable with sales, they delegate to team members. And there's so much at stake ‘cause you know, sales keeps the lights on, but it's also what gets the company to grow.”

Document your sales process

“There's usually no documentation, and that's usually what I see in a lot of organizations that I work with. Not transferring, not having an actual way of selling, not providing the tools and just like, ‘Oh, you come to meetings with me and then you learn from that.’”

Review every rejection

“Frame it from a research perspective. Actually have a discussion with the client straightaway and say our goal is to make sure that we improve our solution to make our customers happy, so I'd love to get your feedback and it's just no pressure. It's just, I'm doing research. I'm not here to sell you again after you already said no.”

Tell stories, and have a library to draw from

“Telling a story of who I am as an individual and why I work for this company, telling a founder story, a vision story, who-my-customers-are story, this is going to be building the trust, whatever topic, I have a story library of about 32 stories that you can use at every stage of the sales process.”

Listen to know what stories to tell

“I always tell my team, don't be a product pusher, be a solution finder. You can abuse storytelling if you just throw stories all the time and you don't throw the right story at the right time.”

Listen to Duros’ sales advice spanning topics like delegation, emotional intelligence, compensation, bullshit radars, and more.

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Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on the do’s and don’ts of pitching VCs, featuring Zach George, general partner at Launch Africa Ventures, one of the leading early-stage venture capital funds on the continent. Sitting in the investor seat gives George valuable insights on what entrepreneurs should and shouldn’t do to attract the right kind of investment for their company.

After earning a master’s degree at Stanford University and spending over a decade on Wall Street, Zach George turned a vacation to South Africa into a lifelong career … and, ultimately his home. He instantly saw Africa’s potential as a hub for innovation, but felt that funding for start-ups was very old school. What’s more, he recognized that African entrepreneurs required more than just capital, they needed mentorship, connections, and intellectual capital. So he created a unique venture capital firm to provide it all. 

To date, Launch Africa Ventures has raised $36.2 million, making it the largest early-stage fund in Africa. After meeting with so many founders seeking funding, George has plenty of advice to share.

Top Six Masterclass Takeaways 

Due diligence is your responsibility, too.

“It is almost impossible to find founders that can put themselves in your shoes as the investor. They've done thorough diligence on us as a fund and our portfolio companies and they can convince us how our portfolio companies can be better off because of what they do. That, for me, is a no-brainer.”

Be open to advice.

“I always say founders should get VCs as coaches, not captains. We don't run the ship, but we coach you, right? Now, if as a founder, you're not coachable, then that is an immediate red flag.”

 Understand your customers.

“Retaining customers is a lot easier than getting new customers. So if that simple equation makes sense, why aren't you incentivizing your existing customers to refer you to other customers, right? Understanding unit economics is super, super, super important. You know, the tech is almost irrelevant, if you don't understand your customers.”

Don’t overstate interest in your company.

“In Africa, there are about 35 to 40 credible VCs on the continent and we know most of them. So if someone walks into a room and says, ‘Oh, I've got a term sheet from this VC or this investor is very interested in me, and our rounds are almost closed,’ the reality is I'm going to WhatsApp the GPs of those funds almost immediately.”

Don’t underestimate how difficult it is to scale.

“If you're in South Africa or Nigeria, you can get away with just being in those markets up to your series A. But if you're in Uganda or Rwanda or Senegal, you really have to be thinking about cross-border expansion prior to series A. And not having a roadmap for that is a yellow flag. The wrong answer is always ‘it's not relevant, I'm not there yet.’ If you're the CEO you better have a plan for how you're gonna expand to multiple markets.”

Make sure your IP is in an investor-friendly jurisdiction. 

“You've got to be clean from a legal and tech perspective. So the most common structure is you have a holding company in Delaware and you have multiple local operating subsidiaries. And the Delaware holdco owns 100 percent of all the African subsidiaries. And the investors only invest at the holdco. You've got to have that set up before you talk to a VC.”

Listen to George’s advice to founders, plus his insights on the changing demographic and economic landscape in Africa, his thoughts on AI, and his desire to create a value chain of funding with blended capital that goes beyond just equity.

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Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on downsizing with Esi Ansah, executive director of the Center for Leadership at Ashesi University and founder of Axis Human Capital, an organizational development consulting firm. From managing team morale to ensuring your downsizing plan is data driven, Ansah provides a clear blueprint for leaders facing tough HR decisions.

Without a doubt, downsizing is one of the most dreaded tasks – for CEOs and employees alike. Which is why Esi Ansah tries to prepare leaders to handle it with clarity, effective communication, and compassion. And she also reminds small to medium-size businesses that, regardless of size, every company needs to have policies and plans to deal with downsizing.

Key Takeaways 

Gather data – before you even think about downsizing

“The most common mistake is the lack of data documentation. It always comes back to bite you. When you need to downsize, you need to justify every decision that you make.”

Honesty can be the hardest part of downsizing

“Sometimes it shocks people because they didn't see it coming, and they didn't see it coming because perhaps the leader in that organization did not articulate it clearly enough or, in the bid to avoid causing fear and panic, they actually avoid telling people the full truth.” 

Communicating bad news requires data, transparency, empathy, and support

“One of the best things you can do, especially for SMEs, is: don't wait till all the decisions have been made and then, bam, you just release the information. Once you get a sense of whatever change in your circumstances is driving the need for downsizing, start with just sending out a couple of feelers and, you know, soft communication.”

Always follow your local labor laws

“If you skip any of those loops and an unhappy employee wakes up to the reality that, hey, I don't think I'm being treated fairly, and then off they go – sometimes without coming back to you to say, look, I realize that you've skipped some steps here. They go straight to the labor commission. And then once they call you in, that's not pleasant.”

CEOs shouldn’t offload everything to HR

“Visibility of leaders is extremely important in a time like this. The last thing you want is HR feeling already overburdened and probably handling all the pressure that comes from the team. But when you have a CEO who would go around, you know, walk the floor, talk to people, and where there's anything that he can do, you know, he does it and he makes it very visible.”

Communicate your vision for AFTER the downsizing

“If you focus on the reason why you're downsizing and you don't focus on what you are evolving to do differently, you will have people who see the doom and gloom and there's really nothing that inspires them about the future. That's dangerous. You lose more people that way.”

Listen to Esi Ansah’s advice on how to identify –— and, more critically, avoid – the most common pitfalls of downsizing. Learn how clear policies and transparent communication can help minimize messy post-layoff negotiations and allow leaders to focus on supporting laid-off employees through the transition, as well as those who stay.

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