Taking Stock with Anil Stocker

Founder, Entrepreneur 2 Entrepreneur Exchange.After a summer break, Taking Stock returns with my guest Shalini Khemka who runs her own community for entrepreneurs as well as sits on the Mayor of London's Business Advisory Board and is Non-Executive Director of UK Export Finance. Shalini has great access to senior policy makers making real time decisions, so I thought I would check in to hear her views on how businesses should be navigating the next 6-12 months. There's a lot of uncertain...

CEO + Founder, Metail. I met Tom at an entrepreneur roundtable hosted at Runway East in Shoreditch London a few years ago. Turns out we have a fair bit in common given we went to the same school in London and also studied at Cambridge University. We're also both of mixed heritage: Tom is a half-Norwegian half-Nigerian combo to my half-Swiss half-Kenyan-Indian background.I've noticed Tom put up some interesting posts on LinkedIn since the start of the Black Lives Matter protests and thoug...

Liberal Democrat Lords Spokesperson (Treasury and Economy). This week I caught up with Baroness Susan Kramer, a former banker and fund manager who successfully entered politics and served as a Minister under the Cameron/Clegg coalition government, before joining the House of Lords.Susan is a big advocate for the UK Fintech movement and has done a lot to help the sector become world-leading.We spent our Taking Stock time covering topics such as:Her personal story of how she became more po...

I caught up with friend and fellow entrepreneur Mandeep Singh who co-founded Trouva – the leading marketplace for independent shops across Europe.Trouva’s mission is to help local communities and many family-backed shops who use the platform to sell to customers world-wide. Trouva allows them to connect with more customers than would typically walk into their stores – especially now during lockdown.I thought Mandeep would be the right guy to tell us about what effect lockdown is having on ind...

In this week’s Taking Stock I have a wide-ranging chat with Gary Turner, co-founder and MD of Xero UK – one of the leading cloud-based accountancy platforms for small businesses. Under Gary’s watch the company has scaled from 0 to over 600,000 customers in the UK, and close to £100 million in annual revenues.Gary was one of the first movers in the UK fintech scene. After meeting the Kiwi founders of the recently founded Xero, he left a big corporate job and took a bet their vision would becom...

In this week’s Taking Stock I talk to friend and serial entrepreneur Matt Robinson, co-founder at GoCardless and now running the proptech company Nested. We talk about the state of the UK real estate market during and after the COVID lockdown, and lessons he’s learnt from launching and running two VC-backed businesses – is it any easier the second time around? Watch the video of this interview:anilstocker.com/2020/05/27/taking-stock-interview-with-matt-robinson

It’s not hard to attract a hip crowd when you run a cocktail bar in one of London’s party hot-spots, but what happens when those crowds are ordered to stay at home?In this week’s Taking Stock vodcast, I spoke to William Knowles-Mofford, Founder of Looking Glass Cocktail Club, about his journey from dropping out of Goldsmiths to owning one of Shoreditch’s trendiest bars. Life may have dealt him lock-down, but he’s making cocktails, selling them online and delivering them personally, to keep hi...

Scaling a confectionery business from a single stall at a local food market to cracking the American market is no easy feat.In this week’s Taking Stock vodcast, I chatted with Melanie Goldsmith, CEO of Smith & Sinclair and POLLEN, about her journey from getting her first big order for their edible alcoholic pastilles to scaling up and branching out into new categories such as CBD. Watch the video of this interview:anilstocker.com/2020/05/07/taking-stock-interview-with-melanie-goldsmith

Global trade and business are interconnected by a web of supply chains. These ensure factories in China and farmers in South America are able to get their orders and produce to markets around the world. What happens when a global pandemic shuts down supply, halts transport routes and disrupts demand?In this week’s Taking Stock vodcast, I chat with Geoffrey de Mowbray, founder and CEO at Dints International. He talks about his journey to setting up a supply chain logistics company working with...

In an industry that’s centred around people coming together in public places, how does a premium commercial coffee supplier react when those public places are closed?For my inaugural Taking Stock vodcast, I chatted to Emma Loisel, Co-founder and Chair at Volcano Coffee Works about the challenges of doing business during a global pandemic. Watch the video of this interview:anilstocker.com/2020/04/23/taking-stock-interview-with-emma-loisel