Startup Nightmares

Guy Weigert is a Sales-Operations VP in a multinational, fast-growing startup.

His career strategy goes something like:

- Get the best education possible

- Back it up with hands-on experience

- Max your personal contribution to the business

- And then, zoom out to grow your influence through introspection and alliances.

Sounds simple, but with so many fires to put out every day, it's sometimes not about doing the right thing, but about doing things the right way.

Guy provides a glimpse into the complex and nuanced life of a startup VP.

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What happens aeronautical engineers can't find a job?

As strange as it may sound, Timothee de Mierry owes some of his success to this unlikely scenario.

The 2001 'Patriot Act' prevented him - a French national and a recent MIT graduate - to work for any company that had a contract with the US Government.

When discussing aeronautics, that meant practically every company.

These unusual circumstances led to an inspiring career, stretching from Investment Banking to Strategic Development for Palantir - one of the world's most discrete and intriguing tech giants.

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Val joined Revolut as the 100th employee.

When he left the startup had grown to 2,000 people company.

In this episode we deep-dive into the principles and processes that facilitated that growth.

Today, Val has his own startup, Kiko, and in this, episode he shares what he took with him from Revolut, but also - what he chose to leave behind.

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In his relatively short career, Jonathan Riftin had done a lot.

His experiences at Google, a VC, a scale-up and a Startup built his confidence and led to an inevitable conclusion:

It was time for Jonathan to break on his own and become a founder.

What he couldn't plan for is Covid-19.

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Lucy and Hadrien are a couple and the co-founders of The Wern, a PR firm specialising in startups.

Their life were pretty exciting even before meeting each other, but it's after they got together that things took some wild turns.

A story of love, authenticity and vandalism, sprinkled with Brexit, bravery and babies.

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Ellen is a professional startup headhunter. Throughout her career, Ellen interviewed over a thousand candidates and made hundreds of hires. Imagine her shock when she realized she ignored her own advice and made a wrong career turn.

In a brutally honest conversation, Ellen offers detailed and actionable advice to both startup founders and employees on topics like:

- How and who to hire for your startup?

- How to choose a startup to work for?

- What can you do to maximize your chances of landing a job?

- What to do when hitting a rough patch at work?

A mix of professionalism, optimism and critical thinking for anyone who sees themselves in the startup playground for the long-run.

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There is an ideal that says we should measure out lives in experiences, not years. Few people personify this ideal as strongly as Lu Li. 5 countries, 11 cities and a few businesses later, Lu launched Blooming Founders: a co-working space & events company focused on female founders.

Keeping it going meant bringing in £10K per month.

Keeping out of trouble meant figuring out how to deal with a £100K debt.

Keeping alive meant reinventing herself when the WeWork fiasco went down.

The global pandemic that followed didn't help. Corona landed and crushed co-working.

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With over 15 years in senior HR / People Operations roles, professionals at Amy Stein's calibre are hard to come by.

The era of career-hopping presented a lot of opportunities, but also created a lot of painstaking knowledge-gaps, and when dealing with people, these knowledge gaps have real, dire implications on real people's lives, and the lives of their families.

Hiring, firing, crisis and change management, industry changes and new technologies that make entire generations redundant overnight - Amy's been through them all, and in this jam-packed episode, Amy shares some of what she learned.

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The 5th out of 6 kids, Jay Richards is a husband, a father, and not your usual startup founder.

In an unlikely journey, Jay went from stealing computer parts, to printing t-shirts and after university and a tour of duty as a salesperson, he founded his own company, raised money for it and pivoted it.

The company is called Imagen, and they connect Gen-Z consultants with big brands.

In an extremely open conversation Jay shared how he got to be pulled out of his criminal ways, how lucky he was to 'stumble' upon an investment and how little he actually knew about running a startup when the mistakes started piling up.

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