In Episode 4 of Season 2 (Founders) we’ll be talking to Will Billingsley the co-founder of ApTap about his experience with first-time funding. During this discussion, we learn more about Will’s experience with sourcing initial funding and how accelerator programmes can support funding goals.

Will discusses how the biggest challenge to funding is the scenario that you need to build your business to get cash but you need cash to build your business. The key to overcome funding challenges is to successfully sell your proposition and convince investors of your ability to achieve your vision.

Will highlights the importance of having customers and for them to give feedback in order to demonstrate to potential investors that your business and idea has traction. He continues to explain that investors really need to understand what your business hopes to achieve as well as recognise who you are as an individual and as a team. Will emphasises that initial investors are really betting on you as a founder and

Will concludes that knowing when to use the right type of persuasion technique when seeking out investment, whether it’s a data-driven or emotional argument.

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In Episode 3, we’ll be talking to Rohan Wattley, Co-Founder of Clubhouse Mobile Mini Golf, about ‘Having the right mindset when running a business’. During this discussion, we learn more about Rohan’s international journey to entrepreneurship, and the key lessons he learnt along the way.

Rohan emphasizes the importance of being patient, and understanding the value of time in a startup ecosystem. Communication within a team is particularly important and everything you do should be done wholeheartedly and with intention.

He then goes on to explain why it’s important to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses, but not to fear the latter. By creating a multi-disciplinary team, you are able to complement one another’s capabilities and solve problems of any shape and size together. Rohan also explains how important it is to be mindful of cultural differences between individuals, both colleagues and customers. Sometimes it might be appropriate to get straight down to business, but other times, it can be more appropriate to ease into the conversation.

Rohan concludes by discussing the important of cashflow in a business environment, particularly in the midst of challenging times such as Covid 19.

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The second of RogueCast Season 2 (Founders) sees Jay Ugra Rogue Monkey’s CEO and co-founder and Ben Laly Rogue Monkey’s COO and Co-founder talk to Cerys about the “Launching a business during Covid-19”. 

Starting a business during Covid-19 has allowed Jay, Ben and the team to accelerate their plans due to their additional bandwidth. These plans have included developing their brand, recruitment and delivering projects to generate revenue. Ben and Jay emphasise how important remaining customer focussed is. They explain that you must understand what the customer needs and how your product or service can improve their life. User research must be undertaken to ensure that you have a value proposition that can lead to a successful business. 

The team you create for your business is crucial to your success. Building a team that can bounce ideas off each other and work collaboratively will help your business to grow. It’s important to leverage the skills of the team when working towards a common goal to ensure that this goal is achieved as well as building trust within your team. Jay and Ben concludes this week’s episode by how important it is to ensure that you prioritise your mental health whilst building mental resilience.

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The first episode of RogueCast Season 2 (Founders) sees Jiwan Laly (Founder and Managing Partner at Aurora) talk to Cerys about the “Challenges and Rewards of being a Founder”.

Jiwan explains the importance of timing when starting a business. This refers to making sure that the time to start your business is right for you personally. Whether this is waiting for you to gain some more experience or ensuring that you are in a financially stable position to start your business are both important.

Jiwan emphasises that the rewards of starting your business are extensive. You are able to create your own authentic culture and establish your own values. You are also able to undertake varied work where you can move across different areas of the business in the same week and pick up new skills.

Jiwan concludes this week’s episode by explaining the importance of taking a step back and reflecting on your achievements.

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The final episode of RogueCast Season 1 (Corporate Executives) sees Rob Janes (Sales Director at Simple) talk to Jay about the topic of “How to grow your customer base”.

Rob explains why networking is key to the success of your business and how it’s “not about asking for favours from everyone you know”, but rather about “helping others when you don’t expect anything else in return”. He also provides some valuable insight into how to use social networking platforms to grow your personal network by sharing your perspective and updating your industry on important developments in your field.

Rob’s sales mantra means being conscious of focus, urgency and rigour. Focus on the goal at hand; urgency in getting things done in a timely manner and rigour, by applying exacting standards for everything that you do. He also explains how the skill of active listening is key to “understanding your customer and being more focused on servicing them more effectively”.

Developing trust is crucial as people are buying from you to improve something in their organisation or their lives - if they’re spending someone else’s money, they need to trust that what you’re offering is going to deliver them value.

Rob concludes this week’s episode by explaining the importance of resilience in growing your business, and the skill of pivoting your idea when you encounter a roadblock along the way. Please subscribe, share this podcast and leave a review on iTunes and every other podcast app.

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The next episode of RogueCast features FinTech Advisor, Suresh Vaghjiani discussing the important topic of “How to build high-performing teams”.

He starts off by explaining that his motivation for doing what he does is to “push the boundaries on things that have never been done before” and this demonstrated by his extensive experience of developing teams from startup and scale-up level to large corporations.

Suresh goes on to express how important it is to have people in your team that challenge the way things are done and that can offer a fresh perspective often outside of the industry that you’re trying to disrupt. By doing this and “hiring people that are better than you” it becomes possible to stretch the limits of your fields.

One challenge of Suresh’s teams has been that “as the company grows, Founders often talk less to each other” and this communication is an important component of a high-performing team. He also expresses how key it is to understand what makes your team happy and put them in positions where they can thrive in line with their core values.

The finale to the podcast sees Suresh reflect on a situation of conflict with a colleague and goes on to explain how “making other people feel like your ideas are also their own will help the business to be successful”.

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In Episode 8 of RogueCast, Jay talks about “How to develop sustainable business ideas” with Natasha (Tash) Pergl, Global Innovation Manager & Sustainability Lead at SAP Innovation Services & Solutions.

During this episode, Tash explains that humans “collectively produce over 100 million tonnes of ‘stuff’ every year but less than 9% of that is reused or recycled”. This means that, whilst produce is growing, inefficiency is also rising but at a faster rate year-on-year. Based on this data, it’s clear that there is work to be done for us to be more efficient and develop new, innovative propositions that aim to solve this macro problem.

To do this, Tash explains that when developing new ideas, “sustainability isn’t the goal, it’s focused on the problems and solutions and then identifying who you can work with to make a difference”. In addition to the pillars of desirability, feasibility and viability, she also explains why it’s equally important to consider sustainability and scalability for two reasons: the former is because “if the world is aligned on a low carbon future, then any new solutions should supportive of this” sustainable goal; the latter is because sustainability is a global problem, and it’s key that any solutions in this space have maximum impact at scale.

Tash concludes this week’s episode by sharing some gaps in customer needs from a sustainability perspective and highlights how technology can be used to provide data and insight to educate and advise people to make more informed sustainability decisions.

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The seventh episode in this series of RogueCast sees Jay explore “How to shape a winning business model”, with award-winning British-born entrepreneur, Joel Blake OBE.

Joel explains that his “why” is to “help people to maximise their potential regardless of any differences they may have” and how he is “driven by the ability to help people be their best selves”. He also goes on to say that “peoples’ differences are their main advantage” and that diversity is key for personal growth and success.

He describes a business model as the answer to one key question: “what’s the step-by-step process to go from enquiry to money in the till?” In any business, there needs to be a validated need and Joel explains why it’s “key to keep a business model flexible”, especially in the midst of COVID-19.

In the finale of the episode, Joel explains why “business is a reward for taking care of the things that really matter such as family, health and wellbeing” and how prioritising those things actually makes him more productive as an individual and entrepreneur.

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In the sixth episode of RogueCast, Jay is joined by Shabnum Gulati, Product Manager at Facebook to discuss the topic of “How to generate disruptive product ideas”.

Shabnum explains that her key motivation for doing what she does is to “democratise solutions for people through technology” and to “do so in a way that the underserved are given access” to a variety of tools to help them solve important problems in their lives. She outlines the concept of a Product by explaining that in the physical world, whilst a “wrench is a tool that helps us build something, in the digital world a banking app is a tool that helps us to manage our finances”.

One of the most useful skills when developing new products is “structuring your thinking” and it’s also key to “figure out what the customer problem is” and “clearly defining your target market”. Shabnum also explains why whilst you may be “exploring ideas that you aren’t excited about at first” it’s important to be resilient as it “might just solve the problem you’re trying to address”.

In the finale of this week’s episode, Shabnum explains some of the ways that she keeps her ideas fresh in a space that she is often focused on for years at a time.

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In this episode of RogueCast, Jay talks to Tom West, CEO of Hyper - a technology incubator that helps founders in the idea phase validate, commercialise, and raise capital - to discuss the topic of “How to creatively fund your business ideas”.

Tom explains why he “loves getting the chance to invest in early stage start-ups” and that venture capital is a business that enables tech businesses to access the funding needed to scale their businesses much quicker. He also explains why investors are incentivised to deploy their capital in early stage businesses, as it offers the opportunity for tax relief and a much higher return on investment that they could earn in other markets.

COVID-19 has also had some impact on the investment community, but Tom provides some unique insight into why this can also serve as an opportunity for new and existing businesses to thrive, such as the likes of Zoom, Facebook and Tesla.

Tom concludes this week’s episode by sharing a time when he regretted an investment decision due to a conflict between the Co-Founders on the team.

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