On this episode of How to be a CEO we’re continuing our series looking at start-up success stories.

Pockit is a London-based fintech, serving customers left behind by mainstream banks. It was launched in 2014, has more than 900 thousand customers, and last summer it raised ten million dollars in funding – but it hasn’t been all plain sailing.

Its CEO Virraj Jatania spoke to the Evening Standard’s business editor, Jonathan Prynn about:

• How Virraj’s childhood growing up in a family business shaped his entrepreneurship
• Why seeing the struggles of people restricted from mainstream banking made him want to launch Pockit
• The chance meeting with Sir Alex Ferguson that led to him becoming an early investor
• How his role as CEO changed as the company scaled up
• What happened when a big funding round collapsed just as the pandemic arrived
• How the Wirecard scandal led to a crisis at Pockit
• The “two primary objectives” he has for the company’s future

How to be a CEO drops every second Monday. Hit your follow button to make sure you don’t miss an episode. You can read more from Jonathan Prynn at standard.co.uk/business

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Kickstarting a season of shows looking at the SME market, we speak to Theo Paphitis, the former Dragon's Den star whose retail group includes companies like Ryman Stationery, Robert Dyas, Boux Avenue and London Graphic Centre. He's also the man behind the phenomenally popular Small Business Sunday network, which he started from his kitchen table in 2010. In this episode we talk about:

• Why starting a business makes you “bounce out of bed in the morning” 
• How to deal with the curveballs when they come an SME’s way.
• Why you should wear your business scars as a “badge of honour”
• Could he do today what he did when he first started out as a young man?
• The simple tweet that started the Small Business Sunday phenomenon
• How he overcame “incredible shyness” to develop a network when he first started in business
• The “chance network meeting” that led to Ryman Stationery helping him out in his early days
• Why he runs the Theo Paphitis Retail Group as a small, family business
• Who’s really making money from online retailing… and why it’s not the retailers?
• Why retailers need to “have a reason to exist” to get people through the door
• Ryman's "unique" approach to disrupting the greetings card market
• Why business rates are "the most unfit tax known to man"

Theo will be appearing at the Evening Standard's SME Expo, where there’ll be 4,000 SME founders and decision makers hearing from keynote speakers and joining in the workshops and networking events taking place over the two days. It’s free, go to smexpo.co.uk for more details. 

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Formerly group CEO of Barclays, Antony Jenkins is the founder and CEO of 10x Banking. It's a tech company created in 2016 with an ambition to “build better banks”. In this conversation we talk about:

• The future of banking

•The influence of big tech in finance with innovations like Apple Pay

•Why he founded 10x Banking with his own money and the difficulty developing new technologies

•The ageing banking technology and why it’s difficult to replace

•How neobanks are able to take business away from traditional banks

For more interviews, news and features, check out standard.co.uk/business or pick up the Evening Standard newspaper.

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Polly McMorrow is CEO of McCann London, part of one of the biggest advertising agencies in the world. Clients include Xbox, Aldi, Just Eat and Wimbledon. In this episode we talk about:

• What her New Year Resolutions for business are
• How to make a great marketing campaign 
• Why she nearly turned the job down as soon as she was offered it
• The future of marketing 

For more interviews, news and analysis go to standard.co.uk/business or pick up the Evening Standard newspaper

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It's been an extraordinary year, with extremely challenging conditions for businesses large and small across all sectors. In this edition of How to be a CEO we're joined by the Standard's business editor Jonathan Prynn and Business and Tech correspondent Simon Hunt. 

• What's going to get better in 2024?
• What sectors will thrive in the next twelve months?
• The opportunities in sectors like tech, hospitality and finance
• How will AI evolve, and will it still dominate the conversation?
• Is social media going to change even more?
• Why is Jonathan "optimistically pessimistic" about 2024?

For more interviews, news and analysis go to standard.co.uk/business

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This is a special edition of How to be a CEO, in support of the Evening Standard and Comic Relief’s Winter Survival Campaign. To donate go to comicrelief.com/winterdonate. The campaign continues until December 22nd.

Running a business in a cost of living crisis is hard. Imagine running a charity? Samir Patel’s the CEO of Comic Relief, which last year raised fifty million pounds to help causes addressing poverty and injustice. But the crises just keep coming, and economies around the world remain volatile. So, in all that, how do you persuade people with less money in their own pockets to give you something?  

In this episode we talk about: 

•How Comic Relief believes charity can be fun and the need to inspire hope

•The constant change required to stay relevant

•How global crises are affecting donations to the charity sector

•The shocking deprivation this year's Evening Standard & Comic Relief Winter Survival campaign is trying to tackle

For more on the campaign go to standard.co.uk. To donate, go to comicrelief.com/winterdonate 

Get more interviews, news and analysis at standard.co.uk/business

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It was 2002 when entrepreneur Nick Woodman first set up his GoPro business, something he calls today "the realisation of a dream".

What was only intended to be a small, niche business offering a new way of filming for surfers, grew into a household name synonymous with action cameras for extreme sports, adventuring and capturing footage in all conditions.

In this episode Nick tells us about his 21-year journey with GoPro, how he deals with competition in the secctor, the company's ethos of helping creators do more, and his future plans for the brand.

In this episode:

• Nick's belief in 'a great deal of lucky timing'
• Why he was 'terrified' of hiring people at the start
• Nick's fear of competition and what he does to stay on top
• Plans for desktop video editing software, and AI to make editing easier
• 'Stay tuned' for new types of camera from GoPro
• Why being passionate about a business is key to success

For more news, interviews and analysis go to standard.co.uk/business.

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Graham Bell took the reigns at B&Q in 2018, and has seen the company through a rapid evolution.

In this episode we talk about: 

• His first day on the job and what his priorities were
• How the Covid pandemic turbocharged their development
• What the company's priorities are now
• How customer demands led to them opening smaller stores
• Why he's grateful to the person who bought the diy.com URL all those years ago

For more interviews, news and analysis, go to standard.co.uk/business

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Twenty years ago Richard and his twin brother Anthony Joseph set up their company, Joseph Joseph, with an idea to revolutionise tasks in the home. Simple things like making better chopping boards for the kitchen, ironing boards that fold, and all sorts of ways to tidy up those kitchen drawers. Of course, not everything worked out. Yet, even with a few missteps here and there, Richard’s now CEO of a company that made a pre-tax profit of 20 million pounds last year, with 75% of their sales coming from outside of the UK. Not bad for a couple of brothers whose first steps into the international market involved loading a small car with chopping boards and driving around Europe for three weeks. In this episode we talk about:

·      How Joseph Joseph was formed

·      The kitchenware buyer that saved the company with one order

·      Why Richard’s been buying up their old designs on ebay, and what they’re worth today

·      Why product prices are “quite far down the track” during development

·      How their homes are all full of prototypes of failed experiments

·      The “gremlinesque” story of the spring-activated potato masher that didn’t go to plan

·      How online reviews have transformed how they listen to customers

·      How they got to a point where 75% of their sales are international

For more interviews, news and analysis, go to standard.co.uk/business.

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Charlie Bigham is the founder of the food company that bears his own name. Created in 1996 in his own kitchen, it now employs 700 people and sells dishes from chicken and mushroom pies you put in the oven to pan-fried Pad Thais. In this episode we talk about: 

• Why he gave up his career as a management consultant to pursue his own business
• The importance of keeping things simple, from business ideas to recipes
• Why it would have been harder to set up a company like his in France or Italy
• How the business is adapting to new technology and AI

For more business interviews, news and analysis, go to standard.co.uk or pick up the Evening Standard newspaper. 

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