How to be a CEO

When BT Business was officially launched in April this year, Bas Burger was the man entrusted to take the reigns. He’s in charge of 24,000 people, and a multi-billion pound strategy to make the UK’s broadband infrastructure fit for the future. In this episode we talk about:

·      Why BT Business had to be created and why he wanted the top job

·      Why a CEO should “ask questions and not give answers for as long as you can”

·      The challenges it faces to make the UK prepared for the AI revolution

·      Why every company’s a digital company and what that means for technology demand

·      How Canadian ice hockey legend Wayne Gretsky’s influenced his strategy

·      The importance of knowing “what’s not going to happen” in the future

·      Why the UK’s “arguably” fallen behind Europe in digital communication

·      How he was first made a CEO at the age of 31, and how fast he had to learn

·      Why as a student he spent all his money on a plane trip from the Netherlands to the UK to get his first ever job

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tjodolf Sommestad is the President of King Games, creators of Candy Crush. One of the earliest 'freemium' games, over the last decade it's become the most downloaded match game in the world, with three billion downloads across platforms. In this episode we talk about: 

• How Candy Crush was developed
• Why its rapid success forced Tjodolf to put his own job at risk
• What you do when there's no map to follow in a new market
• Could AI play Candy Crush for you?
• What level of the game is he on?

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After taking WordPress from a small blogging site in the 2000s to an all-in-one website creation platform, which is now the backbone of around a third of all websites, Matt Mullenweg has now set his sights on social media. Now as CEO of Tumblr, Matt reveals his plans to revamp the site, welcome disillusioned ex-Twitter and Reddit users, and create a social site that is, at its core, open-source. In this episode:

• Matt’s battleplan for making Tumblr better
• How social media sites copy features from competitors
• Where Matt got his nickname as ‘the blog prince’
• How Wordpress took on tech giants like Microsoft, Google & AOL
• Making Tumblr’s algorithm open-source
• How AI will play a role in improving Tumblr
• Is generative AI a concern?
• Can social media actually help people connect?

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

If you've ever had a text reminding you about a hospital appointment, there's a good chance it'll have come via DrDoctor. The platform was built in 2012 and allows patients to book or cancel visits. When co-founder Tom Whicher was developing the idea, the concept of sharing data, and using AI in healthcare was controversial. Now, it's commonplace and the company started this year by winning £10 million of funding. So, how did they do that? We also talk about: 

• The use of AI in healthcare and why doctors will never be replaced by machines. 
• Why winning large funding rounds means the work has only just begun
• How they kept the company going through its rough earliest years
• His reaction when he got his first real appointment reminder text via his own company
• The car he sold to get DrDoctor started, and the one he's just bought (which might surprise you)

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rafael Oliveira is International Markets President at Kraft Heinz, which has operations in more than 50 countries. Now based in London, he started life in Rio de Janeiro where he says the democracy of the beach taught him how to negotiate with people from different backgrounds. In this interview we talk about:

·      How Kraft Heinz handles global communication with staff and customers

·      The value of regional teams within an international framework

·      How he learned how to negotiate by playing football and surfing in Brazil

·      The importance of food to the world’s economy

·      How the cost-of-living crisis is affecting Kraft Heinz and its customers

·      What “taste elevation” means and how acquisitions are helping achieve it

·      The Ed Sheeran ‘Tingly Ted’s’ deal and how that happened

·      Why people have an “irrational love” for Heinz and how superfans help the brand

·      What is the perfect sauce?

·      And… this one simple trick to get Heinz ketchup out of a glass bottle.

You can get all the latest interviews, news and analysis from the Evening Standard every day. Pick up the newspaper or go to standard.co.uk/business. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

MLB's trying to expand the game of baseball internationally, with a major focus on breaking the UK. But in a country that hasn't paid much attention to 'America's National Pastime', how do they attract attention. MLB Europe's MD Ben Ladkin sits down with us to talk about their strategy. In this conversation we chat about: 

• The Baseball Takeover of Trafalgar Square
• How they're using iconic merchandise to get people's attention
• The role of stadium food in enticing audiences
• Their broadcast deals with the BBC and BT Sport
• The development of grassroots baseball fans
• How Ben's time at Arsenal Football Club prepared him for a role at MLB

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Cris Miller, doesn’t give many interviews but the online secondary ticket market he helped pioneer, and the company he’s global MD for, Viagogo, have been taking a reputational battering. Over the last twenty years, he’s faced a range of crises from an initially sceptical market, to a major rival announcing a competitive service… to a global pandemic shutting down the world.

In this interview we talk about:  

• Why his first employer, StubHub, was set up because its founder couldn’t get tickets for a date 
• How the company saw the opportunity in a fragmented, untrustworthy secondary ticket market 
• Why it’s the buyer that sets the market value of a ticket, not the seller 
• The “constant hustle” to find and secure partners to help get the start-up off the ground 
• Why the company wasn’t “really ready” for government scrutiny 
• The £300 million hit they took during the covid pandemic, and how they survived 
• Advice on when the best time to buy a ticket on the secondary market might be 

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

After over a decade as CEO of password management firm 1Password, Jeff Shiner's now envisaging a 'password-less' future, and one he's very much involved in. Since 2012 he has overseen 1Password's growth from a company with less than 100 employees, to around 900, over a period of time where the importance of online security has never been more important. Jeff discusses how to sell the idea of being responsible for your security, the challenges of business growth, and the future of passwords and passkeys.

In this episode:

• Why people 'suck at security'
• How 1Password was founded on the premise of convenience, rather than security
• How Jeff became CEO of the company
• The challenges faced when businesses double in size
• When managers become a 'blessing'
• How do you sell a responsibility?
• Jeff comments on 'most used passwords' research
• How passkeys could replace passwords in the future
• Why you should always thing 'What do I want to do next?'

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There are dream jobs, right? Everyone has their own: Astronaut, athlete, having your own ice cream parlour on a beach. All exciting. But running a beer company. That’s gotta be pretty high up on the list for a lot of people? Brian Perkins is the president of the Budweiser Brewing Group in the UK and Ireland, a job he took over in December 2021, just as the world was recovering from the pandemic and about to enter the cost-of-living crisis.

In this episode, we talk about:

• How people’s tastes have changed dramatically in the last three years.
• The growth of non and low-alcoholic drinks
• Why more women are drinking beer
• How a beer company created one of the largest e-commerce systems in the world
• The role of big brewers in supporting pubs and bars
• The opportunities, and responsibilities, big brewers have over smaller companies

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

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Raphael Sofoluke is the CEO and founder of the Black Business Show, part of Black Business Week. The event is now the biggest in the UK and Europe, with around 15,000 attendees expected in 2023. But it started as a side-hustle! Raphael is also one of the angels in the AXA Startup Angel competition. There are six chances to win, including two top prizes of £25,000, mentorship from the AXA Startup Angels including Raphael himself, and business insurance for a year, thanks to AXA.

In this episode we talk about:  

• Why he was surprised there hadn’t been a Black Business Show before he started in 2017 
• How Raphael worked on the first Black Business Show in the evening while holding down a full-time job 
• Why he used his own money to bootstrap the business, but now wishes he had more capital to grow faster 
• How he had 25 stands for the first event, and more than 300 businesses wanting one 
• The importance of black role models in business 
• How to respond to the pressure to do better every year 
• Why some of the best businesses are created out of “frustration or inspiration” 
• His advice for aspiring entrepreneurs entering the AXA Startup Angel competition 

For more interviews, news and analysis go to standard.co.uk/business. To get more information on the AXA Startup Angel competition go to standard/co.uk/axastartupangel 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.