Back history of Einblick

• [1:28] - Your journey from professor to entrepreneurship
• [6:45] - At what point in your research did you feel you can commercialize your IP. What was the trigger for starting the company?
• [8:44] - What does Einblick’s product do?  What need is it full filling in the market today?

Process of commercializing academic research

• [14:47] - How did you go about taking research from your academic field to commercialization?  What was the process like?
• [17:55] - What should other entrepreneurs using research from their time at academia be mindful of?  What advice would you give them?
• [21:53] - What is the timeline for taking academic research and setting up a business to exploit it commercially?

Future plans

• [25:58] - Future plans for Einblick
• [27:40] - How did you structure equity for your team?
• [29:48] - What are your personal goals? Do you think you will go back to academia?

Links:

Einblick

Me:)  

Linkedin: Anita Moorthy

Twitter: @anitamirchi, 

Email: [email protected]

[1:18] - Overview of the Baltic startup scene

[10:14] - What are some of the interesting findings and highlights from the Baltic startup report that surprised you?

[14:18] - Given much of the funding for the Baltics startups came from UK or US, what does that say about the Baltics funding scene?

[16:21] - What are some of the trends or niches you see across the 3 countries?

[21:17] - Diversity and inclusion. What is the scene like for women founders and what is holding them back still? Is it similar to the rest of Europe?

[29:55] - How do you apply to the Startup Wise Guys Accelerator and what do you look for?

Links shared:

2020 Baltics Report: 2020 Baltics Startup Report

Startup Wise Guys website: Startup Wise Guys Accelerator

Upcoming event: Latitude 59

• [2:25] - What is leadership and how does it differ from management?
• [5:29] - How did you influence and get support for your ideas at Siebel where you were responsible for a product that made insignificant revenues compared to CRM, their flagship product?
• [12:02] - What is important - leadership or management for a founder?
• [16:25] - What is your philosophy on hiring and how do you hire for talent and cultural fit?
• [21:15] - You joined Qlik when it was a small unknown Swedish company and took it from that to a public company.  Talk me through your journey there and how you evolved as a leader at different stages of the company.
• [32:20] - Having worked in different geos, is there a different leadership style in Europe vs America for example?
• [34:56] - What differentiates good leaders from bad leaders when it comes to performance management and nurturing talent?
• [38:30] - What advice on leadership would you give to entrepreneurs who are dealing with different needs of employees, customers, and businesses because of the pandemic?
• [40:28] - What advice would you give to your younger self on leadership?

Productivity tool: tryshift.com

Book: Power of One

• [0.49] - Your journey to founding Too Good To Go?
• [2:19] - Background on the food wastage problem
• [9:06] - How can businesses be more sustainable?
• [11:59] - What is a B Corp, who can get it, and what is its value?
• [12:58] - What are the trends you see from one city to another based on app downloads and transactions?
• [18:27] - How does Too Good To Go work?
• [22:14] - Why did you scale so fast and what were the challenges you faced?
• [25:11] - What are the specific challenges you faced from scaling so quickly?
• [28:32] - How did you address the impact to your organization when the pandemic disrupted your business significantly?
• [32:09] - How big is this opportunity for VCs and what is the VC landscape like?
• [33:38] - How does food waste innovation in Europe compare to other geos?

Links:

Too Good to Go

Book recommendation: 

The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists

• [1:33] - Why did you get into music tech?  Why are there so many music tech businesses coming out of Sweden?
• [5:05] - How has the transition from B2C to B2B business been for you given all your earlier startups were in the B2C space?
• [7:56] - What did you need to do to go from a field sales go-to-market model to a fully self serve model. What did you need to change in the organization or investment priorities?
• [17:21] - Some stores like M&S have stopped “piped music” completely in their stores. What are some trends you are seeing in the B2B streaming space?
• [25:55] - Is there any enforcement happening that educates businesses that streaming music from their personal accounts is illegal?
• [30:03] - How defensible is your technology and why can’t Spotify or Apple build this into their platform?
• [33:41] - Why did you decide to separate from Spotify and what advice would you give other entrepreneurs looking to partner with a large industry player in their space?
• [40:20] - How did the pandemic impact your business given you sell to businesses that were all shut down for months this year?  How do you motivate yourself and your employees to keep going?
• [44:50] - How are you using the data collected on your platform? What are you doing with this data?

Links

Soundtrack your brand

Market

• [2:45] - Why did you decide to build an automation solution for crypto trading? Why that asset class?
• [4:47] - What is the current state of crypto trading?
• [8:12] - What is the maturity of crypto trading today?
• [11:37] -What is the geographical landscape for crypto trading?

On Coinrule

• [13:32] - Who is this platform for and what problem does it solve for them?
• [20:16] - Are you worried about the exchanges building the functionality you have?
• [22:24] - How do you make money? What fees does an investor incur?
• [24:02] - Can you comment on the state of legislation in regulating these virtual currencies?

On Scaling

• [27:18] - Why did you decide to raise money through a crowdfunding platform?
• [29:38] - How did you get your first 16000 users?
• [32:59] - Biggest mistakes and advice for other entrepreneurs

 If you like the show, please leave a review on Apple or any other platform you listen too,

Links

Coinrule

Books

Traction by Gabriel Weinburg and Justin Mares

Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi

All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren

On Crane

• [1:12] - What was the gap in the VC market you were addressing when you started Crane Venture Partners?
• [4:48] - Talk about a few of Crane’s portfolio of companies and why Crane invested in them.

GTM

• [10:28] - How would you go about helping a company with their go-to-market strategy?
• [15:30] - The 3 pillars of go-to-market: CS, Marketing and Product Marketing
• [22:24] - What are some common mistakes you see founders make?
• [26:33] - What is the difference between deep tech product vs non-deep-tech in terms of go-to-market strategy?
• [29:12] - What are the key metrics you track in the pre-Series A stage to know that they are on track.
• [31:25] - What key metrics do Series A investors look for?
• [34:31] - What are the checklist of items you need to have ready before you go for Series A funding?

Trends in European Tech

• [36:37] - What are the big trends you are seeing in Europe in enterprise tech?

On becoming an entrepreneur and Talkdesk

• [1:15] - What were some people or events that influenced you in your early days before Talkdesk to become an entrepreneur?
• [4:04] - What was the hardest growth stage of Talkdesk and why?
• [6:57] - What advice would you give founders who are thinking of stepping down from something they started?

Cleverly.ai

• [10:48] - On cleverly.ai - what does Cleverly.ai do?
• [11:48] - What is the gap in customer service management that Cleverly.ai is trying to solve?
• [16:42] - How has product development changed from your days at Talkdesk to now at Cleverly?
  • Engineering and data science
  • Design and UX
  • Distributed teams
  • AI embedded
• [26:32] - How do you make remote development work? Any advice or tips for entrepreneurs?
• [29:41] - Does product development differ if it is for DevOps vs a business user?

Go-to-Market

• [31:24] - How are you taking Cleverly to market?
• [33:46] - How are you determining pricing?
• [35:19] - How has the pandemic affected your strategy? What changes have you made to deal with it?
• [37:00] - What is your advice on seeking funding - when you should seek funding, how you should seek funding?

Book recommendation

Play Bigger

Big Picture - Market and Trends

• [1:11] - What is Consumer Identity and Access Management (CIAM) and how does that differ from traditional identity and access management (IAM)?
• [4:21] - How did you go from the traditional open-source code of Sun’s IAM to this new consumer identity and access management.  Can you give a quick history of ForgeRock.
• [6:40] - Can the ForgeRock solution help consumers have more control and visibilities over their identities?
• [12:00] - What are the top trends you and ForgeRock are seeing in the identity space and how will it impact consumers and businesses?
• [18:23] - What does the provider landscape of CIAM look like?

Building the company

• [23:26] - what was your main channel for customer acquisition and growth? In the beginning stages. And then as you grew, has that changed?
• [26:48] - How has the pandemic impacted your strategy and future plans?
• [28:55] - Forgerock believes in building a strong internal culture.  How have you done that?
• [34:20] - Why are you considering going IPO? Why not a strategic exit?  What factors did you consider?
• [36:42] - What market should you IPO in?
• [39:10] - Which stage of growth was the hardest - 1=10M, 10-50M, 50-100M?
• [40:44] - What are your future plans? What will you do with the funds raised from an IPO?

Book recommendation

The Long Earth Series by Terry Pratchett

• [0:58] - Intro and journey to starting Sustainbly.  
• [6:15] - What does Sustainbly do?
• [8:34] - What changes have you seen in the donation patterns since the pandemic hit?
• [10:11] - How are charities leveraging digital to fundraise? Is your platform really making an impact to their bottom line?
• [12:19] - Why have you build Sustainbly as a for-profit rather than a non-profit company?
• [14:37] - What are some concerns consumers have in using such apps and how are you addressing that?
• [16:21] - How did you get help and resources from Virgin Startup, We Work, Founders Factory etc?  
• [19:36] - What advice would you give to entrepreneurs on how to stretch their money in the early months?
• [22:31] - How do you work with a family member and what advice would you give others who are in the same situation?
• [25:56] - What did you do when funding was tight?  
• [27:58] - What were some of the successful strategies you used to get funding?

Book recommendation:

Summer - Alley Smith

Traction - Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

Hooked - Nir Eyal