Raz Shuty as a Director of Engineering at Delivery Hero, the Berlin-based multinational online food-delivery giant. Delivery Hero operates in over 40 countries internationally and partners with over 500,000 businesses, with offices all over the world and more than 1,500 employees in the Berlin HQ alone. Raz himself has founded his own tech business (which he admits failed faster than he expected!) and has worked in both successful companies that have gone through exits, and at companies that never made it that far.

In this episode, we get right down to the core of what makes engineering teams tick and how to be an effective technical leader; things which lie very close to Raz' heart. From how to hire and build teams, how to communicate with your developers, settling conflict and choosing which sort of leader to be, we get a great look into what has shaped his journey and how he sets his teams up for success.

Raz himself is  very passionate about his craft and drew on a lot of his early experience as an engineer and the managers he had as he grew into his role as a Director of Engineering. He gives us an all-access pass into how his early experiences shaped the leader he is today and we also discuss at length how to successfully build engineering teams; something very close to my own heart!

Raz is also a multiple triathlon finisher and prior to becoming a father trained a serious amount to enable him to compete at the highest level. His ambition and dedication to what he loves is clear to see and I absolutely loved speaking with this super interesting man. He is someone I'm sure every Software Engineer listening would love the chance to work with!

A great episode as we welcome Brad Goodall to the Leaders & Founders Podcast. Brad is one the most progressive and thought provoking tech leaders on the London scene and is the current CEO & Co-Founder of the UK based FinTech Banked.

In this episode we hear about how Brad made his way into business and into tech, from not finishing Australia's version of A-levels and not going to university to taking QMV from start up to a multi million dollar business.

We discuss how his move to the UK where he founded 10x and then his current company Banked which we learn more about. How he is managing the current COVID pandemic, plus some good advice and tips to those next future leaders. 

Thank you for listening and thank you Brad.

Tom/Adam - Gathered & Found 

Anouk Agussol is the CEO & Founder of Unleashed Company, a specialist culture and people partner for Startups and Founders.

Unleashed partner with early-stage and scaling businesses to gear them up for speedy and sustainable success through People + Culture. They typically target three core areas which are often the most challenging for new and growing businesses:

- How to attract and hire the best talent when you don't have a brand

With a rich background in People Ops and strategy around brand, culture and talent, Anouk and her team help some amazing businesses to reach their potential and gear up for growth. Now, more so than ever, her team are busier than they have ever been as their clients look to gear up for life  beyond COVID-19, and start to shape the future of their businesses.

Anouk has a fantastic story and is very passionate about her work, which is core the every single business in existence. She has some fantastic advice for early-stage and scaling businesses and is always on hand to offer great advice and support for the startup community.

In this episode we kick off the Influential Women Leaders series, our first guest is Philippa Rocks, Change Director at Octopus.

We discuss COVID and how that has had an impact on Philippa's role, how she and Octopus have adapted with over 1000 employees working remotely. Philippa talks through her background and how she got into projects and change after leaving Leeds University with a 2:1 degree in Sports Science. There is insight into how she has progressed through different industries and also some advice and tips to those looking to follow a career in change management. 

Thanks for listening, hope you enjoy the podcast. 

Sean Hunter is the CIO at OakNorth, one of the most successful and fastest growing FinTech companies and Challenger banks in the world. Through OakNorth Bank, they help small to medium sized businesses realise their dreams and ambitions, where they may otherwise be overlooked by more traditional banks.

In unprecedented times, OakNorth remains positive and strong in their approach in what is an uncertain market. They continue to lend to businesses to help them achieve their goals and hit their growth milestones, which is all processed through an intelligent internal monitoring analytics platform designed by some of the most talented engineers in the world.

Sean's background is impressive, with a background working as a Quant and FDE at the likes of Goldman Sachs and Palantir Technologies, where he was always deeply motivated by innovative software engineering practices. He is now a startup advisor to multiple early-stage tech businesses and as CIO at OakNorth, Sean became the first employee on their platform team. With a wealth of experience in understanding how to successfully build world-class teams and companies, Sean has some fantastic advice to business leaders looking to expand and for those experiencing challenges in the current climate.

In this episode, Sean tells us about his journey so far and how OakNorth are positioning themselves to continue their own growth in 2020. We get a great look at how one of the biggest lenders in Europe are gearing themselves and their portfolio up for growth and advancement through this strange time, and also get some great advice for how to stay healthy in 2020, what to focus on and what is possible with OakNorth.

Julien Lavigne du Cadet is the VP Engineering at ZOE is a nutritional science company based between Boston and London. They are on a mission to help people eat with confidence and work closely with world-leading researchers and machine learning experts, leading the world’s largest ongoing scientific nutritional research project to understand our unique responses to food.

With a background in high-tech businesses and with a host of leadership positions in businesses including one of the UK's most successful and innovative Hedge Funds, Julien is well placed to share some light on how to build high-performing teams and how to motivate engineers to build hugely successful platforms and applications.

David M. Brear is the Group CEO & Co-Founder of 11:FS. For our very first episode, he was generous enough to take some time out of his hectic schedule to speak with me about all things 11:FS for the Leaders & Founders community. 

11:FS is a challenger consultancy that builds and launches next generation digital propositions for some of the biggest banks in the world. They are a team of FinTech experts on a mission to revolutionise the digital banking industry - and David and his team are doing an amazing job so far!  There aren't many people who have not watched their journey with great interest in recent years, with their presence in both the UK and US growing every day, as well as globally with clients in over 30 different countries.

In this episode, we discuss the current climate and what David and his team are doing to maintain productivity and communication. We also look at what the FS and FinTech industry may look like post-COVID and also how 11:FS have achieved such great success so far. 

David is seen as a visionary in the world of technology and challenger companies and is a true advocate for not doing things usually, as well as taking great inspiration from the world of sport.

He shares with us his great insight into the 11:FS culture, the passion they have for their work and why not being a d*ck is a great trait!

He also has some great advice for business leaders and those in leadership positions experiencing challenges at this time.