Sam Talks Technology

Sam Talks Technology

By Sam SethiBusinessEntrepreneurshipNewsTech News
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Sam Talks Technology episodes

  • Steve Pankhurst talks about the rise and fall of the UK’s first social network - Friends Reunited.
    Stephen Pankhurst was the co-founder of Friends Reunited along with his wife Julie.
    In 1999, Stephen’s wife Julie, was pregnant with their first child. She had just used the internet to track down her long lost Grandfather that she had never seen.
    Realising the power of the internet, and a desire to find out what some of her old school friends were up to, she came up with the idea of FriendsReunited, exploiting a gap in the UK market following the success of US website Classmates.com.
    Friends Reunited was officially launched in June 2000. The very first version of the site looked pretty horrible. Stephen was not a graphic designer, so he just knocked together anything.
    However, the functionality worked and very soon they started to get people coming to the site and registering themselves against schools. Nine months later, after a redesign, some hard work, lots of extra features, encouragement from users and the odd mention or two in the press, things started to get interesting.
    By the end of the year, it had 3,000 members, and a year later (2001) this had increased to 2.5 million.
    By December 2005, Friends Reunited had over 15 million members and was bought by British TV company ITV plc for £120 million ($208 million), plus further payments of up to £55 million based on its performance up to 2009.
    In 2007, ITV Chairman Michael Grade described the site as "the sweet spot" of the internet and stated that "Friends Reunited is one of the great undersung jewels in the crown ... one of the most important bits of ITV going forward, a massive presence, and profitable"
    That year the site made a profit of £22 million, but its market valuation had fallen sharply from the £120 million paid by ITV in 2005 and it achieved growth in UK traffic of only 1.2%, compared to Facebook's 2,393% and Bebo's 173%.
    In March 2008, after losing 47% of unique users in the previous 12 months, the site dropped the subscription fee required to contact members, but the decline continued.
    In 2009, Friends Reunited was sold for £25 million to Brightsolid Limited. By December 2011, Brightsolid estimated that Friends Reunited was worth only £5.2 million, a fifth of the price it paid to ITV two years previously.
    The company relaunched Friends Reunited in March 2012 with a new emphasis on nostalgia and memories.
    On January 2016, Friends Reunited revealed that it would be closing down the website after 16 years of operation. On February 2016 the site closed down.
    1 hr 21 min
  • Shaa Wasmund talks about her amazing career and her new book. “How to fix your sh*t”.

    Sam Sethi talked to Sháá Wasmund about where her name originated from and how she managed to work for Chris Eubank, Sir James Dyson, Sir Bob Geldof all before she was 30.

    We talked about how she turned down £45m by not working for Michael Birch and that surprisingly isn’t her biggest regret.

    We also talked about her current role as an online educator helping small business owners via her Facebook groups ‘Freedom Collective’ & ‘The 6 Figure Expert Club’.

    We finally talked about why Sháá joins other people’s masterminds in order to help herself grow.

    1 hr 21 min
  • Dr Al Pinkerton talks about the effect of social media in the UK & US elections

    Sam Sethi talks with Dr Alasdair Pinkerton and co-host Matt Hodges-Long about the recent UK general election where Alasdair stood in Surrey Heath as the PPC (Parliamentary Prospective Candidate) for the Liberal Democrats.

    Despite losing to Mr Gove, they managed to use social media to crowdfund £25k and increased the LibDem vote by 16%.

    We talked about the potential negative effect social media will have in the 2020 US election now that Mark Zuckerberg has decided not to fact check political ads.

    We also talked about the potential scenarios in a post-brexit Boris world given Alasdair’s PhD research work on ‘Global Britain’.

    1 hr 20 min
  • Dan Wagner talks about his rollercoaster career; from AIM listed at 30 to starting again at 50.

    Sam Sethi talks with Dan Wagner about his three startups MAID, Venda and Rezolve. We talked about how he started MAID in 1984, when he was only 20 before the web and search engines really existed. How he came to be the youngest CEO of Brightstation PLC which was listed on the London Stock Exchange.

    Dan talks about the struggles at the end of MAID with the dotcom crash before he sold it to Thomson Reuters.

    Dan being a serial entrepreneur was soon onto his next business called Venda but this was eventually sold to Netsuite.

    Dan took the core Venda technology to start Powa Technologies, "the Shaazam" for shopping. Powa Technologies, was praised by David Cameron and hailed as a British “unicorn”. Unfortunately it ended badly for Dan with investors and directors.

    Dan dusted himself down and has now launched Rezolve.

     

    1 hr 24 min
  • Andy McLoughlin talks about starting as an Entrepreneur before turning into a Venture Capitalist.
    Andy McLoughlin is a partner at Uncork Capital in San Francisco, focusing on B2B software opportunities.
    Uncork Capital is a seed-stage venture firm that commits early, helps with the hard stuff, and sticks around. Really.
    Andy's investments include LaunchDarkly, Coder, Crossbeam, Focal Systems, Human Interest, Pattern (acquired by Workday), Test.ai, Simplify, Fountain, GreatHorn, Bigfinite, and Identify3D, as well as a number of companies still in stealth.
    Andy was previously a prolific seed investor into many well-known startups. Postmates, Buffer, Intercom, Pipedrive, Hullabalu, RolePoint, Tray.io, Bugsnag, Thread, Calm, Secret Escapes, Apiary (acquired by Oracle), Import.io, Zesty (acquired by Square), Marvel, Cloud66 and more.
    Prior to becoming an investor, Andy is best know for co-founding Huddle with Alastair Mitchell. Andy had many roles at Huddle over the years - Head of Technology, Head of Product, Head of Marketing, Head of Strategy / Business Development, GM North America - but he was most passionate about building a great team and a great product.
    Andy stepped back from his executive role in 2015 but remained on the board of directors until the company's acquisition in 2017, when it was eventually sold to private equity for $89m in August 2017.
    That sum is far less than Huddle's reported peak valuation of up to $300M when it snagged a $51 million Series D funding round in 2014.
    1 hr
  • Paul Fabretti talks about Microsoft’s changing culture and his role in communicating the story.

    Sam Sethi talked with Paul Fabretti about how Microsoft's culture has changed since I worked for them back in the 90's. The insular Microsoft of Gates and Balmer, focused on Office and Windows, that I worked for has been replaced by a more open Microsoft focused on Azure and Open Source.

    But how did this come about? Paul and I talk about the impact of Satya Nadella on the companies new culture and focus.

    Paul and I first crossed paths over ten years ago when he was based here in the UK working for O2. Today Paul is based in Seattle working closely with Kate Johnson, President of Microsoft USA and the executive team.

     

    1 hr 7 min
  • Cary Marsh talks about successfully crowdfunding her engineering project Bootclaw and FlipBook.

    Sam Sethi and Cary Marsh have been friends for over a decade. We first met when Cary was CEO of Mydeo and online video hosting company. In this podcast we talked about Cary's two successful kickstarter projects - Bootclaw and My Flipping World. Cary explains why she prefers to raise funds via crowdfunding instead of through more traditional Angel or VC routes having had such a harrowing time raising funds for Mydeo.

    Cary also talks us through how she had the idea and more importantly how she went about getting the product to market.

    Cary's degree in engineering from Nottingham University was 20 years ago, however there are still so few women engineers. We discussed why that is and what can be done to encourage more women.

    In the future Cary would like to launch more tangible products through Punchfront Innovation via kickstarter.

    1 hr 3 min
  • Jeevan Gnanam talks about building on his grandfathers legacy to create Sri Lanka’s tech scene.

    Jeevan was visiting my good friend Manoj Ranaweera, who runs Techelerate Ventures in Manchester.  

    We spoke about Jeevan's entrepreneurial journey and his entrepreneurial grandfather. Jeevan talked about the first companies he started.  He started a cab driving company while at University with friends in America. He moved back to Sri Lanka and with his brother tried to start and e-commerce company but that failed due to the Sri Lankan infrastructure and market not being mature.  

    Like all good entrepreneurs he pivoted to a successful idea of running Orion City, Sri Lanka’s first operational IT Park to build the infrastructure needed to help other startups.  He soon opened Hatch, Sri Lanka's largest co-working/incubator/accelerator space. 

    Today he also runs Veracity AI an specialist outsourced company that helps other companies build their own AI solution.  

    He has come over to Manchester to partner with Techcelerate Ventures who work with Founding and Management Teams of Technology Product Companies to accelerate their growth and eventually reach an EXIT, including helping them with product development, customer acquisition, strategy, positioning, fundraising and M&A backed by know-how, data, tools and insights.  

    57 min
  • Tony Fish talks about Immutable Data and the need for Corporate Data Governance.

    Tony has been a friend for over two decades.  In this podcast we talked about the problem with immutable data and blockchain and the benefits of the Chinese Social Score and why this is all our futures.  Tony also explained why he thinks 'data is not the new oil to mine.  And finally we talked about companies having to deal with so much data that there is a board level need to manage the data, the value and also take responsibility for protecting it from leaks.  

    1 hr 19 min
  • Dan Murray-Serter talks about his new ‘DNVB’ Heights, that sells smart multi-vitamins.

    Dan and I first met in 2013 when he launched Grabble and I was running Bagzee, my own real-time price tracking fashion startup.   

    In this podcast we talked about why he has started a new smart multi-vitamin, how he formed such an impressive team including Dr Tara Swart, Chief Science Officer and Alain De Botton, Philosopher, Writer, Entrepreneur.   

    Heights is a DNVB (Digital Native Vertical Brand) that sells directly to the consumer.  At present the site is still in beta which means only invited customers can buy the smart multi-vitamin.  Thankfully listeners to this podcast can access the online store and buy their subscription by using the code "Marlow"

    We also talked about why Grabble which raised nearly £2m didn't succeed.  

    Finally we talked about the future for Heights and how Dan hopes to evolve Heights to offer multiple different vitamin products to address different age groups.  Eventually Dan hopes that Heights will be able to offer total personalised vitamins specific to each individual.  

     

    1 hr 34 min

About Sam Talks Technology

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Each week's show starts with a tech news roundup, followed by a chat with Sam's guest about their career, their current startup and is interspersed with the guest's favourite musical tracks. Please join me and tell your friends