Mastering Tech Growth

For this episode, Mike´s guest is Nick McEvily a product leader and a startup advisor who has raised over $40 million for tech ventures. They discuss why so many startups fail and how to stop that from happening. Including why so many startups inadvertently end up building a product that their customers don´t want. 

Nick shares the validation methods, human-centred design, rapid product testing, de-risking and pre-sale strategies the startups he works with use to ensure that they build exactly what people need and sell it in huge numbers.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Even good products fail if they are not a good market fit and are not tested early enough.

• There is no replacement for knowing your customer. That means truly listening and never assuming you know what they want.

• Invest in your research, interview your target customers and be prepared to reward them for their time. Nick explains how to find them and capture what you need to know.

• Pay close attention to the language potential customers use to describe your product and mirror it.

• If you can´t find people to interview about the product you are planning, you have to ask if there is really a market for your idea.

• Initially, use LinkedIn for outreach and to start to get your outbound marketing language right.

• You need to use pre-sales, but the people who buy then may not be fully representative of your main customer type.

• The validation process should be kept going indefinitely so you continue to gain insights into what your customers truly want.

• Understand your risk profile. If it is too high your product may not be viable. Nick explains how to check for this.

• Mastering tech is a lifetime task.

BEST MOMENTS

00:20 "The brutal reality is that most products aren't failing because they are bad. They are failing because they weren't tested early enough"

8:38 “As a designer and a founder myself, I'll never outsource talking to my customers."  

13:08 “The first litmus test for a founder is finding their product market fit." 

15.35 “How will you sell it if you cannot find people to talk about what you're planning to sell?”

19:00 "Ultimately, to move this thing forward, you need compartmentalised skill sets …. departments that all have their own specialities." 

33:53 "You need Google Search Console and Google Analytics plugged into your site map, your landing page." 

41.51  "The market product fit analysis is never finished." 

47:20 "The risk profile is too high if it takes a long time to find the talent you need." 

57:35 "You got like, 10s of millions impressions on the game when it went live with your go-to-market campaign, and then you got hundreds of 1000s in the first week or so." 

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.nickmcevily.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmcevily

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

In this episode of Mastering Tech Growth, Mike looks at the challenge of scaling tech operations without compromising growth. To do this he is joined by Andrew Parsons, an industry veteran who, for decades, has been transforming operations for Vive Bank, HSBC, MasterCard, Admiral Group and more. Andrew shares his insights on achieving operational excellence without slowing the pace at which a startup grows and evolves. A critical but often overlooked factor of tech scaling. 

Whether you're in a fast-growing startup or managing an established venture, this episode offers actionable strategies to help your operations grow.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Be aware of the risks, but still be bold enough to innovate and break the mould. 

• Use Jeff Besos´s decision-making process to make sure you don´t become so risk-averse that progress freezes.

• Set clear goals, clearly define your roles and set clear accountabilities.

• Fail fast, move forward, and spend your money wisely.

• Leverage frameworks, to improve operational consistency. This is especially important when you grow through mergers. 

• Effective change management is the key when scaling. Set clear goals, take a structured approach to communicating them effectively and monitor the impact of the change.

• Communicate clearly in a calm, measured and consistent way, especially during mergers. 

• Be an active listener – read between the lines.

• When things go wrong, calmly evaluate why and logically assess the problem layer by layer.

• Put automation at the core. Everyone should be driving it.

• Think carefully before automating decision-making.

• At the growth stage you will need to quickly hire the talent you need. Prepare for this, in advance.

• From an early stage encourage testing failure modes, to build resilience.

• Turn each crisis into a learning opportunity. 

BEST MOMENTS

04:04 "Risk management is the daily day buzzword. You're always trying to do something to make sure, it is the right thing for now." 

16:03 “Clear goals, clear roles, clear accountabilities. If those are all correct, the people with those accountabilities will be the first to say, I need another person." 

21:52 "You can never really communicate enough." 

32:32 "Find a way of asking your questions that's not going to negatively charge the conversation and take things in the wrong direction." 

47:05 "Gen AI will, and should, be used to augment and make life better for everyone." 

01:11.14 “Make sure you've got a risk management framework that you can log these things into." 

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-parsons-49b6135

Jeff Besos decision making - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxsdOQa_QkM

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

Mike speaks to Jinesh Patel, co-founder and CEO of Uptime Health, to discuss the importance of strategic partnerships in scaling a tech business. Jinesh used 15+ strategic partners to grow from £1 million turnover in 2023 to £10 million in 2024. He explains how they found the right partners and built effective relationships with them to sell an innovative product that those involved in the dental industry had never heard of or thought about using before.

He explains how to put together deals that are so good for the partners that they will not be able to resist working alongside you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

●      With so many ways to promote your business, it is easy to choose the wrong ones and waste money. Jinesh talks about how to avoid this pitfall.

●      Use partners who have a rolodex of the type of people who need your product so you are targeting a pre-filtered list of prospects.

●      Take a highly structured approach to partnerships. Include regular milestones and incentives.

●      Create a clear go to market strategy.

●      Look for partners who are likely to sell your products alongside theirs e.g. anyone who sells medical equipment is also likely to sell medical software.

●      Take the time to educate your partners.

●      Vet your partners as you would investors.

●      Reaching out to partners automatically improves brand awareness.

●      Attend conferences as attendees and approach people in the booths who could be good partners for you.

●      Tailor the incentives to appeal to each partner. Look for synergies and ways to help them to grow their business too. Examples are shared in the podcast.

●      As you grow, partnerships need to evolve.

●      You need different types of partners. Often, once a few have jumped aboard others will follow.

●      If you are just getting started, target smaller partners. Jinesh explains why.

●      Craft the contract to ensure that you have a way to contact the end customer.

BEST MOMENTS

00:13:08 - "We educate the partners. They educate the clients, and they’re only bringing us opportunities that make sense.”

00:33:13 - “Qualifying your partners is just like when you want to raise capital from an investment group. You want to make sure you’re taking in good money, and it has good reputation.”

00:47:50 - "We still do direct [sales], because at the end of the day, not everyone wants to buy from a partner.”

01:06:39 - “The best way to hedge is to have more than one partnership of that size, so you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket.”

01:18:18 - "Closing a partnership has this huge element of pitching the product, talking about it, and...getting feedback."

01:19:07- “We’re always pushing out articles, podcasts just to educate and inform the community. That's been our go-to-market strategy.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jineshjpatel

https://www.uptimehealth.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

For this episode, Mike speaks to Gautam Hazari an influential TED speaker and the visionary CTO of sekura.id. He is at the forefront of developing innovative security solutions that tackle the complex challenges of identity management and fraud prevention.

They start by looking at the impact fraud is having on businesses and why the situation is about to get a lot worse. Before discussing what you and the tech industry can do to mitigate fraud. Including being ready for when the fraudsters start using AI bots to work on an even larger scale than they are doing now.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Deepfakes are already being used in real-time using voice and video.
• Fraudsters are now training AI bots to carry out their fraud for them so they are not reliant on how fast their staff can work.
• When a business is a victim of fraud, the trust clients and investors have in them is undermined which can trigger them to look to your competitors.
• Fraudsters use our chemistry against us. They turn on and appeal to the emotional side of our brains. They try to scare you or appeal to greed.
• Time is your friend. Pausing and counting backwards from 30 before taking action engages your logical brain and helps you to spot fraud more often.
• Passwords no longer work. It is too easy for fraudsters to steal those details from companies. Even password credential managers.
• Between 80 to 86% of data breaches are related to credential (identity) failure. That is why sekura id is focused on providing better ways to confirm someone´s ID.
• Cryptographic authentication tied to their SIM gives everyone, including those in poorer countries, a far higher level of security.
• There does not need to be a privacy issue, mobile providers are already heavily regulated.

BEST MOMENTS

02:59 “ 6% of global GDP is impacted due to fraud." 

08:41 "When they (fraudster employees) are replaced by these AI chatbots, there is no scaling problem… and that's scary." 

33:56 "The internet doesn't have an identity layer." 

50:36 "These startups are getting targeted more now because they are easy targets if they want to do everything themselves." 

53:22 "Passwords are a problem." 

57:11 "The SIM is nothing more than a cryptographic engine…It's a hardware-based cryptographic engine." 

1.03.05 “Every single phone on earth has a SIM providing or doing that cryptographic protection right now. Why don't we use that?”

1.1.52 “It's not going to be a man-in-the-middle attack, it will be AI-in-the-middle attacks.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://sekura.id

https://www.linkedin.com/company/sekura-id

https://www.ted.com/talks/gautam_hazari_digital_me_why_we_need_a_world_without_passwords

https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/people/gautamhazari

https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir

https://www.netflix.com/es-en/title/81183491

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

For this episode, Mike is joined by Keith Harrison a seasoned software development leader with 24 years of commercial experience. They discuss the intersection between community building and tech innovation and how it catapults your personal and business growth. 

Keith explains how to set up your own tech community. Including, securing sponsors attracting high-quality speakers, pricing, finding venues, and more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Constantly learning is essential. Meetups and similar events are an excellent way to do this.
• Before setting up your tech event be clear about its purpose. What is needed for a business-focused event is quite different from what wors for community events.
• Sponsorship is powerful, it gives you credibility and attracts attendees, speakers, and partners.
• Know your audience and make sure the talks are relevant.
• Keep talks short. People have been at work all day, so attention spans are short.
• Initially, attracting the best speakers will take a lot of effort. In time, they will approach you.
• Pricing is a tricky subject, Mike and Keith discuss this in-depth.

BEST MOMENTS

8:17 "We try and keep the talks broad enough so pretty much anybody could come along that has an interest in tech and get something out of it.”

10:34 "Decide which one you are: is this a community-based event, or a business-focused event? If you pretend to be a community event but it's for business, it won't work."

11:48 "Word of mouth has been our biggest driver."

11:50 "You can't beat LinkedIn... it's been great for reaching out and getting more people to come along to our meetup."

12:50 "Start by deciding your focus and building your community."

26:30 "We try to keep talks around 25-30 minutes because people are tired after work."

35:33 "Venue is the number one problem... I nearly quit over venue issues."

55:02 "If you want to scale, adding more events multiplies the effort. It's not the same process scaled up."

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.meetup.com/techmeetup/events/303972875/?eventOrigin=group_events_list

https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithdharrison

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Mike speaks to Nathan Yeung, a seasoned fractional CMO with a keen interest in using consumer psychology to drive marketing success in the tech industry. Nathan explains how it should inform your marketing strategy and campaigns. Including creating a network effect, building trust, social proof, case studies, repackaging, anchoring, the impact of AI and why so much unethical marketing still works.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Effective marketing is key to success.
• Focus on selling to a small group of consumers first to benefit from the network effect. Nathan explains why.
• Most Gen Z brands are community-led, so get a community talking about you.
• Social proof is particularly powerful for new businesses.
• Some forms of marketing generate long-term, almost passive results e.g. SEO.
• Invest in mid to long-term strategies and be patient, you need to be consistently present for consumers to remember and trust you.
• Trust is built on empathy, authenticity, logic, and heuristics.
• Be hyper-specific and provide high-quality, literally invaluable products and information.
• Use case studies.
• Consumer psychology is why unethical marketing practices still work.
• Anchoring is powerful. Nathan shares how to do it for tech products.
• You have to be memorable, be bold.

BEST MOMENTS

04:28 "You have to do everything you can to help solve problems and educate your customer about how you solve that problem."

09:37 “You're trying to get a community to bring up your name… if you can drive conversation you win."

15:17 "Everything is a choice, and you have to provide enough value for someone to make that choice."

23:29 "Social proofing has high influence, high impact … Every touch point you have in marketing has a level of influence on an individual."

39.07 "If I open up a pop-up on Fifth Avenue, people inherently think that I must be a legitimate company… anchoring is huge."

44:47 "The first thing is, is that you need to have a good website. I can't stress this enough."

49.15 “Going out there and solving a problem - anyone can do that. It's whether or not you can frame it in such a way that's going to be different, and that's being bold.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.findyouraudience.online

https://www.linkedin.com/in/yeungnathan

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Mike speaks to Greg Rog a serial entrepreneur and expert in AI-driven automation and streamlining who co-founded easy.tools, easycart, Automation House, and Zencal. His latest innovation, Alice, is an AI assistant that works seamlessly with your apps to simplify tasks—a daily tool Mike uses.

Greg explains how Alice solves the automation challenges you are having including, dealing effectively with AI hallucinations, and being able to use your custom APIs as well as the automation you have already created on platforms like Make and Zapier.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Alice enables you to talk to and interact with your current stack e.g. custom-built automations/APIs and those built on platforms like Zapier and Make.

• You can talk to the interface using natural language.

• Most companies map only a small percentage of their processes, with many existing only in one person’s head. Automation pushes firms to examine, streamline, and update these processes.

• Once a process is automated, people stop checking to see if what they need for their part of the process is ready. They waste less time and are more relaxed.

• When a new task is introduced ask, should a person do this, or can AI do it?

• Link simple automations together in a chain to complete complex processes, so you can easily debug and update them.

• AI tools like Alice will reduce the need for people to specialize in certain business areas, e.g., sales or marketing. 

• To learn the tech and become a skilled prompt engineer. When you find yourself doing a repetitive task try to automate it.

BEST MOMENTS

5:01 "Thanks to automation, we have millions of operations working for us daily." 

7:49 " Alice formats it as data ….  trigger our automation, and make sure that the process is finished within our API or some other API." 

16:39 "Design automations so nobody has to wait." 

25:57 “AI models tend to hallucinate. But … our way to approach it is basically, it's mistake-free. ." 

35:42 "The beauty is actually in simplicity with these automations." 

49:39 “The mindset is very important …recognize small things in your workflow that can be automated and pursue this automation." 

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://easy.tools

https://www.heyalice.app

https://x.com/greg_rog

https://www.linkedin.com/in/grzegorzrog

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Mike speaks to Jothy Rosenberg an incorrigible entrepreneur who has sold 9 of his tech startups for millions of dollars each. In this episode, Jothy explains how he does it and how you can do the same.

During this episode, Jothy covers assessing the viability of your idea, how to get the attention of investors and raise funds, honing your pitch, self-financing, building a team, the impact of dilution on equity, and much more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Without product market fit your startup will fail.
• Product-based companies sell for multiples of 5 to 15 times revenue. Service companies typically sell for a multiple of 1.
• Use LinkedIn to find a lighthouse customer. An early adopter in desperate need of your solution who can afford to pay and will work with you. 
• Launch big, invest in marketing.
• From day one, build your culture, that is how you attract your founder team.
• To be self-funded, start with a service, then build a product based on that.
• You can raise money before you make a single $.
• Approach the right type of funders at the right stages. Jothy explains how to handle JVs, seed funds, incubators, and more.
• Find investors on LinkedIn.
• Your pitch has to go beyond being good it has to tell a compelling story and include research and proof. 

BEST MOMENTS

17:12 "Find a lighthouse customer … a kind of early adopter, who will work with you to make sure that what you're building solves their problem." 

24:18 "We had this typical situation; we had this product and now we were looking for a problem and we never found one which was a disaster." 

43.47 “You can raise money as a seed with a small foundational team, clear identification of a big opportunity and you don't need to yet be getting any revenue.”

45:12  "Don't just send a business plan to a VC." 

1.05.43 “ I don't believe that in an early stage, anyone except the person who's got the vision and the most passion should deliver the pitch, but they can get help.”

1.13.15 “100% of nothing is still nothing…  at the end of the day, the equity translates if you sell it.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.jothyrosenberg.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jothy

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Startup-Toolkit-Launch-Strong/dp/1633438422

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distill practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Today, Mike talks with Maarten Ectors, an award-winning innovator in AI, Web3, and next-gen tech, known for launching the world’s first blockchain reinsurance solutions. They discuss the transformative impact of AI on society and the future of work. Including what developers, coders, and technical architects can do to position themselves now to take advantage of the wave of AI innovation and new technologies. 

He also shares how AI is likely to impact the lives of less technical people like your parents and drastically change the way society works.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• AI  is on the cusp of replacing millions more jobs across numerous industries e.g. robotaxis will make human drivers irrelevant.
• When you add robotics to AI, the transformative impact accelerates e.g. what happens to the food industry if we print our meat and fish?
• In a few years, we will have unlimited energy, which is what AI needs to explode and rapidly transform society.
• Work that requires human contact or where human contact enhances the experience is not likely to be eliminated by AI e.g. hairdressers.
• Think about what needs to change to make the new technology viable. They will need developers to create the framework to facilitate that change.
• Get involved in DevOps for AI and Cloud.
• Understand how to make models that get deployed on the Edge in the cloud and can be scaled out.
• Big companies who put together small teams to solve a specific problem as spin-off businesses succeed E.g. Amazon pizza teams. 
• Most highly skilled work can be done gig style. AI could bring together a group of people with the right skills to solve a specific problem or build something like a super rocket. Once done, everyone moves on to another project.
• Generative AI is going to be a problem for coders but what it produces still needs to be evaluated and fixed by experts. That means you´ll still need coders.
• Technical architects are a vital part of AI technology development. Someone has to see the broader picture and make sure that is what gets delivered.
• AI speech recognition will transform lives in the next couple of years.
• Because AI is likely to greatly reduce the availability of work the structure of society must change radically e.g. universal income.

BEST MOMENTS

03:38 “The AI-enhanced worker will very quickly eat the market of the rest." 

9:19 "Do something that will require human contact." 

25.01 “A lot of companies now scale through technology, not through users, not through workers.

26.28 “They need teams that can do 500 different things in a small unit, not 500 people that are all the same.”

33.52 “The DevOps person that goes towards Edge or AI DevOps is going to have a lot longer runway than the person that just stays doing what they've always been doing.”

35.37 “Generative AI doesn't mean there will not be programmers, but I think the architects are going to become more important.”

36.42 “AI-enhanced experts is the model for the next five years afterward, it will depend.”

54.06 “If you don't have users adopting and an easy go-to-market, hence product market fit, technologies are relevant.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://candao.io/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mectors/

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distill practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals. 

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each

Today, Mike speaks to Krista Neher about the increasingly critical subject of personal branding. Krista is an award-winning digital marketer, bestselling author, social media specialist, speaker, trainer & CEO.

Regardless of the tech work you do, how you present yourself makes a huge difference to the opportunities you attract. Your personal brand builds credibility and makes you attractive, so the information in this episode is critical to your success.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Your personal brand is who you are. The person people see when they meet you. Work with you, listen to you or experience your work. Be that face-to-face or online.
• Your brand needs to demonstrate to potential clients that you have what they need and something extra to offer.
• Think why would someone pick me over someone else?
• Look at how your competitors differentiate themselves.
• When building your personal brand online, focus on one channel.
• Listen closely to what others tell you about how they perceive you.
• You have to be memorable. If you don´t stand for something you stand for nothing, so nobody will remember you.
• Create a great elevator pitch for yourself.
• Be authentic. If people feel they can´t get to know you they won´t connect with you.
• Don´t feel fenced in by your brand. People expect you to evolve and pivot

BEST MOMENTS

O7:58 "What´s the reputation you are building for yourself that is unique? What sets you apart from others? – That´s the way to think of your brand."

08:19 "If you're an entrepreneur, are looking to get clients or grow your reputation externally, it's really about how people perceive you and being deliberate and consistent."

36:46 "The first is memorability. Which is specificity, simplicity and consistency."

36:52 "Authenticity. So, if people don't feel like they are getting to know you, they will not connect with you."

48:36 "Points of difference…. what are some meaningful differences that I would get with working with you than working with someone else?."

57.10 “Get your elevator speech down. Your elevator speech is what you say when you meet someone.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://launchyourself.com/

https://bootcampdigital.com

https://kristaneher.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.