Season 2 is officially here - and what an episode we have for you to kick off the new season!

Today, we have the pleasure of being joined by one of Europe's most ambitious and exciting entrepreneurs: Hjalmar Ståhlberg Nordegren. Hjalmar, who appears on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, is a Co-Founder of Karma, an exciting and innovative tech startup based out of Stockholm, Sweden that focus on providing consumers with amazing deals on food, helping retailers and suppliers to save on their food waste whilst also keeping revenue and also, making a huge impact on the planet by preventing excess food waste.

Originally starting as a wider deals platform, Karma quickly pivoted to focus on the food industry. When the founding team started to research just how big the issue of food waste actually is, they really started to pay attention. Food waste accounts for $1.3 Trillion per year and several billion tonnes of food are wasted each year. That results in huge Co2 emissions and makes a big dent to the planet.

Looking for the business opportunity, Hjalmar and the team realised huge potential to connect local restaurants and chains to the consumer, helping to not only reduce the amount of food waste, but also, by offering amazing value to consumers on unused food. Through the pandemic they have also developed a new product: the Karma Box, which allows people to receive amazing values on home deliveries of fresh fruit and vegetables.

So, not only are they helping to save the planet, but everyone gets a great deal out of it at every step of the food chain!

What an amazing guy and what an amazing business that we are so proud to help raise awareness of. Go and check them out if you haven't already!

www.karma.life

Rachel Haines is an Organisational Development Director at Klarna, where she leads a team of 250 people across 35 teams and in every global region which they operate. In her role, it is Rachel's team that are responsible for making Klarna the very best place to work for their amazing teams.

Klarna are one of Europe's most successful technology companies. Originally starting in Stockholm, Sweden in 2005 with the simple aim of making shopping online easier for everyone, they are now one of world's most recognisable FinTech and online brands and also one of Europe's biggest banks. They now boast offices all over the world and continue to grow at a pace which most of us can only dream of being able to.

As a company, Klarna are well-known to have an amazing culture, way of working and for providing exceptional opportunities for their staff. Today, Rachel gives us amazing insight into just how Klarna have been able to achieve some of this success and how they continue to scale at such pace. Part of her mission, was to help re-create the operating model for the entire company. A huge task. Over the past few years, she has been an extremely influential figure at the company and has helped to implement an entire new model in which the company operates on a global scale.

I had a lot of fun recording this episode and was amazed to finally hear how one of the world's most successful technology companies and banks operates. We hope you enjoy it!

Wow - what a treat we have for you today! Our first duo of the series; and what a duo it was!

On today's episode of the Leaders & Founders podcast, we were delighted to be joined by Arif Harbott and Cuan Mulligan, senior transformation leaders at AlixPartners. Together, they have designed, led and delivered some of the world's most successful and effective transformation projects and are deeply passionate about their work. Having held posts such as CIO, CTO, CDO and Advisor to some of the world's most advanced technology and government projects, they have seen first hand what makes transformation successful, and not.

After a chance meeting on a digital government project around 5 years ago, they have worked together closely ever since, commenting that one thing they love about working together is that they constant challenge and push each other on opinions, thoughts and processes. During this time,  they have created an effective playbook and framework for how to approach and implement change and transformation - The HERO Transformation Playbook. This has evolved over years of working in the industry and will help other leaders to work effectively and approach transformation in the right way.

With first hand experience of seeing where transformation projects fail - and some that should never have even started in the first place - The HERO Transformation Playbook gives leaders, boards and practitioners a step-by-step guide to how to start a transformation, how to deliver it and also, if you should even start it in the first place!

I loved having these guys on, their energy and enthusiasm is first class and we had a lot of fun getting this one out there.

Enjoy!

What an amazing story we have today as we are joined by Benjamin Wootton, one of the ex Co-Founders and Global CTO of Contino.

This is what it's all about for us: scaling businesses, the challenges, the hard work, VC funding, exits...this one has it all!

Ben co-founded Contino in 2014 and quickly helped them become one of the world's most successful Enterprise DevOps and Cloud Transformation consultancies. In his 6 years with the business, they scaled the team to >400 people across the UK, US and Australia and became known as one of the most effective and knowledgeable partners in the global DevOps arena. They are a brand that so many people have heard of and respect and it was amazing to hear some of the methods they used to help build both the team and the brand.

Ben gives us a very transparent and humble view on what life looks like in a hyper-growth business. From winning their first few client projects, to receiving huge VC funding, all the way to the end of his Contino journey where they exited and were acquired by Cognizant. Ben gives us valuable insight into what those 6 years looked like and also, some of the things that budding founders and CTOs should be aware of and focus on.

After exiting the business in January 2020, Ben treated himself to a whole week off work before the desire to build his next business became too strong to ignore. We get a quick snapshot of his next venture, Timeflow, and what he has his eyes set on next!

We loved this episode! We're sure you will too!

This episode is part of the Influential Women Leaders series.

We welcome one of Europe's top FinTech founders, Jessica Holzbach, Co-Founder of the Berlin banking platform Penta. Penta is a digital business-banking app, like the UK’s Tide. It has raised over €35m to date and grew its headcount by 200% between Feb 2019 and 2020. Jessica was on the honoured Forbes 30 under 30 list.

In this episode we learn more about Penta and its future plans, Jessica talks about where the idea came from plus how she came to meeting her fellow Penta Founders during her first entrepreneurial adventure before Penta: IAWIE,  “I Am What I Eat”.

Jessica talks through her views on the future of banking and digital as well as some advice to those looking to get inspired and follow a similar path.

Enjoy the Podcast and thank you for listening.

Tom/Adam - Gathered & Found 

Tim Harkness is an experienced psychologist with a career spanning the private sector and elite sports. Since 2009, Tim has been Chelsea FC's Head of Sports Psychology and Sports Science and has worked on some incredible engagements with the IPL, FIFA World Cup and a variety of some of the highest performing and most successful athletes in the world.

Over his career, Tim has worked with professional athletes in the world of football, rugby, cricket, tennis, golf, squash, rugby and many more, as well as working with private sector clients in the financial sector in London. He has seen first-hand what makes athletes, teams and companies successful and believes one of the most important things they do well, is communicate. Communication can be one of the easiest things to do, but doing it well and successfully, is another matter.

Tim has put his experience and learnings into his newly published book: 10 Rules for Talking, which breaks down the laws of conversation and what we must be prepared to do to communicate effectively. By following these rules, you will likely have more effective and meaningful conversations and be able to communicate and collaborate on a much deeper level.

There are so many interesting stories we just didn't have time to cover, but if you are a fan of sport or want to learn how to communicate better with your teams, please give this one a listen!

*This is a slightly longer episode, so apologies, but I still had so much more to discuss with Tim!

Today we had our first PT 2 version of the podcast, where we were delighted to be joined once again by David Brear. As the Founder and Group CEO of 11:FS, David has had to make some very tough and challenging decisions over the past few months. For a business on a huge growth trajectory, they have certainly felt the market following lockdown like most businesses in the world. From having to make redundancies and have the hardest conversations o his career, David and 11:FS - like so many others - have certainly been tested. But, it is amazing to hear his ambition and continued drive to succeed in the coming months and years and he has some great insight for other founders and business leaders experiencing pain.

David has continued to be a beacon of light and knowledge through the lockdown era, with his FinTech Insider and Breakfast show offering amazing insight into the world of business and FS. His guests have been first-class, as well as their insight, so I wanted to get back in touch with him to get the story from his side of things.

David kicked off our very first episode, so will always hold a great place in the Gathered & Found and Leaders & Founders hearts and he doesn't disappoint once again. He is open, honest and above all genuine with his message and how we can all respond.

Kelly Waters is the Founder of 101 Ways, the leading Product Development Consultancy based between London and Amsterdam. Kelly set up 101 Ways around 7 years ago, quickly gaining a fantastic reputation for their innovative and effective work which was supported by Kelly's very successful career in technical leadership positions such as Director of Engineering, Head of Technology and CTO.

101 Ways help their partners to adapt to new innovative ways of working and help to transform teams into forward-thinking and effective product development teams. Whether its adopting DevOps best-practices, micro services or helping to build awesome leadership and delivery teams, 101 Ways have become an integral partner to some of the world's leading tech companies such as: DAZN, Tesco, Not on the Highstreet, The Guardian, Mendeley and Graze to name a few.

Now with work in several European countries, 101 Ways are remaining ambitious despite the current state of affairs. They have certainly seen a slow-down in new projects being born - which Kelly is very transparent and open about - but their desire to continue to be the best is still first-class. Kelly gives us a real account of what it takes to build a leading technology brand and talks us through his early memories of setting up the business and some of the challenges they faced.

He is a great guy, a very humble man and someone I think we can all learn from. We loved having Kelly on board!

This episode is part of the Influential Women Leaders Series, the guest is Kelly Hartman, CPO of Payments company Flywire.

Kelly is a C Suite executive with over 25 years experience which spans across multiple industry's & Countries including: Media, Government, Technology, Retail, Manufacturing & Financial Services, Australia, Europe, Africa and America.

Kelly is a passionate person and this really shines through in this episode. We discuss her background, the role of CPO, tackling COVID with a company that spans across 12 different countries all at different stages of lock-down.

We learn about the role the CPO plays in building and creating a positive and feelgood culture while also learning some good advice for anyone looking to follow a similar path.

Hope you enjoy the episode.

Matthew Sinclair is a Partner and VP Engineering at BCG Digital Ventures, London. In his role at DV, Matthew oversees all technology and engineering activity for the London group, which has allowed him to be involved in an incredible 20+ ventures.

BCG Digital Ventures is a corporate investment and incubation firm, with offices in London, Berlin, New York, Sydney, Shanghai and Tokyo, as well as multiple Labs teams in various digital and technology hubs worldwide. As a business, they build, scale and invest in startups alongside some of the world's most influential companies and are focused on the invention, ideation and creation of amazing new concepts and companies.

Matt joined DV in 2016 having co-founded several businesses in Sydney, Australia. In his role, he is responsible for all ventures and also managing and building a high-pedigree and inspirational team of engineering leaders and Venture CTOs. He is someone that is deeply motivated by innovation and creativity and giving customers and clients a best-in-class build and invention journey.

In this episode, we get a great look into one of Europe's most successful incubation firms and what makes Matt and his team so successful. We hear about how DV have adapted to being a remote-first business, having been traditionally in-person prior to lockdown, and also what their plans for the future are. We understand what they look for in Venture CTOs, what motivates them as a business and also, why it is often a good idea to "get out of the way" and let your team do some amazing work!

A super interesting guy at the heart of an incredibly interesting business, I hope you enjoy this one as much as we did!