The Everyday Founder

What if your business could predict the future — even with barely any data?

In this episode, I sit down with Dash Tabor, founder and CEO of TUBR, a predictive analytics platform turning small data into big insights.

Dash started TUBR after one too many packed Tube rides in London — and ended up building a deep-tech company using a physics-based machine learning engine that helps small businesses forecast demand, sales, and staffing needs with minimal data.

But her journey wasn’t smooth.

She’s lost £500k in a day, rebuilt her team after losing her co-founder mid-fundraise, and turned down “life-saving” investor cash on moral grounds — all while keeping TUBR alive and growing.

We get into the raw parts of being a founder:

- Fundraising in a volatile market

- Building deep tech without a technical background

- Understanding investor psychology

- Rebuilding after disaster

- And why she left London for Sheffield

This is one of the most brutally honest founder stories yet.

Chapters:

00:00 - Why founders should never take “trenched” investor money

00:41 - Introducing Dash Tabor & the TUBR story

02:11 - The London Tube moment that sparked the idea

03:47 - From overcrowded trains to AI innovation

05:05 - What “machine learning” really means for small businesses

07:09 - Predicting croissants, customers, and chaos

08:57 - How much data is really needed for AI to work

10:21 - Sponsor: Opus — the network for entrepreneurs

10:41 - How Dash built deep tech without being a coder

12:28 - Leaving a stable job to build something from scratch

14:19 - When Liz Truss’ budget wiped out her customers overnight

18:09 - Losing her co-founder mid-fundraise

20:24 - Rebuilding the team from zero

21:09 - Hitting rock bottom — and the “keep going” moment

25:16 - The near-collapse and the £10K that saved TUBR

26:17 - Fundraising lessons: quantity over tranches

28:22 - The reality of raising as a female founder

31:13 - How to “build the house you want to live in” with investors

32:32 - Saying no to bad money — even when desperate

35:14 - Choosing Sheffield over London

38:48 - Building community and talent outside the capital

39:28 - Finding balance (or trying to) as a founder

43:10 - Who TUBR serves today & their new product “Pulse”

45:57 - What’s next: partnerships, scale, and profitability

47:53 - The real answer: talent vs luck in startup life

49:49 - Where to follow Dash & TUBR

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In this episode of The Everyday Founder, James sits down with Tomas Helgaš, founder and CEO of Sutro — the AI platform that turns a single text prompt into a full production-ready app.

Before Sutro, Tomas worked at Facebook (helping power the “People You May Know” feature), then went on to build and sell Sphere to Twitter after raising $30M.

Now, he’s back for round two — building Sutro to change the way the world builds software. This conversation dives into the mindset, mission, and mechanics behind one of the most fascinating builders in AI today.

We discuss:

- Why Tomas left his dream job at Facebook to start Sphere

- How he built a company that became the foundation for X (Twitter) Communities

- The early days of Sutro and building secure, production-grade AI tools

- The tradeoff between shipping fast vs. building safely

- Co-founders, hiring mistakes, and second-time founder lessons

- How AI will reshape how software is built — and why security is the next big frontier

Chapters:

00:00 – Mission: change how the world builds software

01:18 – Intro: Tomas Halgaš, Sutro, Facebook → Sphere → Twitter

02:08 – Why go back after a successful exit

03:10 – Early bet on OpenAI (GPT-2) and text-to-app ideas

04:02 – Viral demos: prompt → live front- & back-end, fully deployed

05:12 – Sphere origin story & community product

07:42 – From partnership talks to Twitter acquisition

09:24 – Post-acquisition & starting Sutro (overlap period)

11:05 – Co-founder transition; going solo as CEO

12:21 – Sutro thesis: production software with guarantees

14:02 – Security horror stories & why prototypes don’t cut it

15:42 – Comp landscape: “shipping fast” vs “building safely”

16:57 – The mission (again): security-first software at scale

18:13 – Sponsor: Opus

18:38 – From prompt links to better human–computer interaction

19:13 – Product/LLM inflection points; scaffolds & reasoning

21:13 – Moving upmarket: serious, enterprise use cases

21:39 – Raising capital: when VC makes sense

23:16 – What a “good VC” actually does for founders

28:15 – Second-time founder perspective on investor value

28:42 – Family roots, teenage hacking, first sparks

30:16 – Silicon Valley internship & mindset shift

31:01 – Leaving Facebook: parental push & perspective

33:02 – Hiring mistakes at Sphere: brilliant but hard to work with

34:12 – New bar at Sutro: great humans, ex-founders

35:04 – Remote vs in-person; hiring uncommon talent

37:41 – Advice to younger self: read deeply, then build deeply

41:01 – Working with people: persuasion vs. coaching

42:03 – Coaching someone with a “dream job” to leap

43:18 – Calibrate at the best; then go build

45:21 – CTO vs CEO: different learning curves

46:04 – Big tech cycles & urgency vs comfort

47:03 – Co-founders: marriage, commitment, alignment

49:13 – The “F-you number” & exit alignment

51:21 – Host anecdote; aligning on outcomes

52:19 – Post-acq reality: agency & decision-making changes

54:21 – Corporate planning constraints & politics

55:24 – How to set better terms for future acquisitions

56:10 – Where Sutro is going

57:16 – Better models, but HCI is the hard problem

59:16 – English is ambiguous: need precise interfaces

1:00:19 – The compliance/security wave is coming

1:01:27 – Sutro’s advantage: guarantees, compliance, real software

1:01:54 – The next interface: text + visuals + flows

1:02:17 – AI moves fast; strategy expires quickly

1:02:39 – Luck vs talent vs hard work

1:03:39 – Where to follow Tomas & try Sutro

1:04:03 – Outro

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Riham Satti was on track for a life in academia — Oxford PhD, research papers, professorship.

Then she met her co-founder, built an app to get him a job at Microsoft, and accidentally uncovered a billion-dollar problem: human bias in recruitment.

Today, she’s the CEO and co-founder of MeVitae, an AI platform using neuroscience and data to make hiring fairer and faster.

In this episode, we go deep into what it really takes to go from academia to entrepreneurship — without the safety net of VC money or a Silicon Valley network.

Riham’s story is one of grit, grants, and growth — building a mission-driven business the long, hard, but sustainable way.

💬 Watch this episode if you want to learn:

- How to turn research into a real business

- The neuroscience of bias and decision-making

- When to expand to the US (and how to know if you’re ready)

- Why compassion is a founder’s superpower

- How to stay in “startup mode” after 10+ years of building

🎧 CHAPTERS

00:00 – Intro: From Oxford to Entrepreneurship

02:00 – Falling in love with STEM and academia

05:30 – Building an app to hack into Microsoft

08:00 – The first 50k downloads that changed everything

10:30 – Discovering bias in hiring and founding MeVitae

13:00 – Bootstrapping with grants (no VC, no network)

16:20 – Early lessons in startup survival

18:40 – How bias actually works in the human brain

22:00 – The first enterprise client (and the chaos that followed)

25:00 – Building the MeVitae team and culture

29:00 – Expanding to the US — when and why

33:00 – Balancing perfectionism with speed

37:00 – The “10-year overnight success”

42:00 – Compassion, leadership, and building a real company

46:00 – What’s next for Riham and MeVitae

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Florian Ehrbar, founder of OnchainLabs, went from calling time on a failing consulting gig… to convincing the investor to back a new team and a new idea: connecting real-world assets (skis, classic cars, gold - even trees) to the blockchain with actual utility.

We get into radical candour, building “Wallet 2” that feels like email (not MetaMask), no-code tokenization, raising private capital, and leading a half-inherited team while staying focused when you could do everything.

In this episode you’ll learn:

- Why telling the hard truth can start your next company

- Funded-from-day-one: hidden pressures and how to navigate them

- Real user value in tokenization (CRM, warranties/insurance, provenance)

- UX trade-offs: self-custody vs ease, and designing guardrails

- The vision: a white-label, no-code RWA platform you can drag-and-drop deploy

Chapters

00:00 Intro — honesty when everything’s on fire

01:10 The investor asks “what now?” → forming the new team

02:36 Florian’s path: consulting → dating app → investments → founder

05:10 Quitting a safe career with a young family

06:19 Side-hustle vs jump: why he didn’t moonlight (and regrets it)

07:45 Funded from day one: blessings and pressure

09:06 The moment of candour that killed a project and birthed Onchain Labs

11:05 What Onchain Labs does (physical → digital, real utility)

12:54 Tokenizing luxury skis: CRM, insurance, activation incentives

15:04 Blockchain basics (wallets, ownership, self-custody)

17:22 UX reality: too easy vs too risky — finding the line

19:35 Classic cars & provenance: why digitised records matter

21:30 Leading a “half-inherited” team: empower vs decide

23:40 Focus when you can do everything: pick the beachhead

25:05 Building “Wallet 2” — make blockchain feel like email

27:10 Towards a no-code, white-label RWA platform

29:00 Commercial model: SaaS + transactions + implementation

31:05 Who it’s for: gold tokenization, consumer apps, and beyond

33:12 Ambition: the AWS/Shopify of tokenization (for non-financial assets)

35:00 Fundraising, unusual backers & validation moments

37:05 Founder life: work ethic, optimism, taking bigger risks sooner

39:00 Skill vs luck — and where to follow Florian

If this helped, hit like, subscribe, and drop a comment with the next founder you want on the show.

#Startups #Web3 #Tokenization #RWA #FounderJourney #Leadership #EverydayFounderPodcast

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Former RAF pilot turned deep-tech founder, Kyle Thomas is building SAIF Autonomy—the “application firewall” for autonomous systems. We get into embodied AI vs deterministic autonomy, what it takes to certify and deploy robots in the real world, the UK vs US VC mindset, nearly running out of cash (with £22 left in the bank), and why veterans often thrive in startups.

What's in the episode:

- Embodied AI in the physical world (and why “trust layers” matter)

- Defense to startup: decision-making under uncertainty

- Real use cases: drones, logistics, shipping, aviation, space

- Public perception & regulation: earning societal trust

- Raising $1.2M from Silicon Valley as a UK deep-tech startup

- Culture design: borrowing the best of military leadership

- Practical founder advice: start sooner, ignore the naysayers

Chapters:

0:00 Cold open — embodied AI, safety & “wrappers”

1:12 Intro — Kyle’s RAF background & SAIF’s mission

2:23 Military → startup: decision-making & stress tolerance

4:09 UK vs US mindset on speed, growth & work ethic

6:30 Meeting co-founder Matt; origins in RAF programs

7:22 Rapid Capabilities Office & TRL (3→7 fast)

8:42 From scripted autonomy to embodied, goal-based systems

10:03 Real-world examples (drones, Waymo, sidewalk bots)

11:01 Autonomy vs AI — clear definitions

12:53 Deterministic vs embodied AI (and their failure modes)

13:53 Today’s drone deliveries (hospitals, corridors, BVLOS)

14:10 Scaling without city-wide infrastructure

15:52 Proving it on land, sea, air… and space

18:19 Public perception, safety cases & building trust

19:13 Logistics, shipping & aviation use cases

20:06 “Application firewall” for autonomy (trust layer)

22:19 Fundraise story — $1.2M pre-revenue from Silicon Valley

24:03 Why UK/EU VC often feels like PE (risk appetite)

25:59 US lead, diligence, patents & why it clicked

27:12 UK engineering talent vs US scaling capital

29:05 CEO self-awareness: when to level up or step aside

30:39 Targeting specialist US funds next

33:17 Sponsor break — Opus community

33:49 Near-death runway tale: £22 in the bank

36:50 Money lands at 8:22pm on New Year’s Eve

43:17 Split-second RAF story — refuelling saves lives

47:49 Why veterans can excel in startups

49:17 Culture & leadership: high trust, high standards

52:04 Practical rituals (socials, flexibility, outcomes)

55:11 Advice to younger self: start sooner, be bold

58:07 Founder communities: Opus, ICE, Founders Pledge

1:00:12 Be in the room — why London matters

1:01:12 Trust over impressions (in-person beats ads)

1:02:30 Luck vs talent (and timing)

1:03:55 Where to find Kyle (LinkedIn, site, IG)

1:04:45 Blog & updates coming soon

1:05:08 Outro

About Kyle / SAIF Autonomy

Kyle Thomas, Co-founder & CEO, SAIF Autonomy

Mission: a safety & assurance “trust layer” so autonomous systems can operate safely at the edge (air, land, sea, space)

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What does it take to raise $1.5M from 66 angels across 400 meetings?

Jamie Hamer, CEO of Loxa and founder of React News (acquired by Green Street), shares the unfiltered reality.

From walking away from a £150k salary to making 30 cold calls a day, Jamie is building one of the most ambitious insurtechs in the UK—backed not by VCs, but by a cap table stacked with mission-aligned angels.

In this episode of The Everyday Founder, we dive into:

- Why angels is better than funds (and how to manage 66 of them)

- The litmus test for picking advisors (time and money or nothing)

- The playbook for user research that doubles as early sales

- Why founder-led sales is still king in early-stage B2B

- How to build a team around “total ownership”

- What it’s really like to rebrand midstream

- And how to “increase the surface area of your luck”

If you’re raising, hiring, or selling at the early stage, Jamie’s insights are a masterclass in founder grit and strategic execution.

👉 Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and drop your thoughts in the comments.

Chapters

00:00 – Why advisors must have skin in the game

01:20 – Jamie’s journey: from P&G to React News

03:30 – Leaving a £150k salary to start up

06:00 – The power of user research (The Mom Test in action)

08:15 – Building and exiting React News

10:20 – Why angels beat VC funding

13:00 – How Jamie raised $1.5M from 66 angels

15:25 – Managing a cap table of 66 investors

18:00 – Co-founders, vesting, and avoiding dead equity

21:00 – Hiring playbook: KPIs, probation, and personality tests

24:00 – Total ownership as a cultural value

27:00 – Founder-led sales: why cold calling still works

31:00 – The pain (and lessons) of a rebrand

34:00 – Building Loxa: tackling insurtech complexity

38:00 – Transparency, trust, and fixing insurance for good

42:00 – Increasing the surface area of your luck

46:00 – Reflections on skill vs luck in entrepreneurship

49:00 – Jamie’s advice to early-stage founders

53:00 – Where to follow Jamie and Loxa

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Nikhil Arora has built a career at the intersection of leadership, global growth, and purposeful impact. Today, he’s the CEO of Epignosis, the company behind TalentLMS, serving 22M+ learners across 160 countries. But his story stretches far beyond EdTech.

From helping build Kazakhstan’s first stock exchange, to leading international growth at GoDaddy, scaling Intuit in India, and launching WeWork in Asia, Nikhil has lived and worked across 9 countries and 4 continents—all while keeping up a daily running habit.

In this episode, we cover:

- What it takes to step in as CEO after two founders step aside.

- How to balance mission and growth in a global SaaS company.

- Why listening tours with customers and employees shape better strategy than any playbook.

- Building culture across remote, hybrid, and global teams.

- Vulnerability, failure, and why leaders must lead with authenticity.

- The balance between being a missionary (purpose-driven) and mercenary (growth-focused) leader.

If you’re a founder, CEO, or aspiring leader, this conversation is packed with insights on scaling businesses, managing up, and staying grounded while running at speed.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 – Declaring strategy vs listening first

01:00 – Introducing Nikhil Arora, CEO of Epignosis

02:00 – Building Kazakhstan’s first stock exchange

04:00 – What Epignosis does today

06:00 – Taking over from the founders

08:00 – Balancing preservation and change as CEO

10:00 – Product, customers, and culture as priorities

12:00 – Leading a 250-person global team

15:00 – Fireside chats, townhalls, and communication clarity

18:00 – Vulnerability, failure, and celebrating mistakes

22:00 – Creating a safe culture for feedback

25:00 – Clarity, guiding principles, and decision-making

27:00 – Staying focused and prioritising as a leader

30:00 – Red, yellow, green framework for CEO focus

33:00 – Managing energy, family, and fitness

36:00 – Mission vs mercenary: purpose and growth

40:00 – Managing up as an installed CEO

45:00 – The #1 mistake founders often make

48:00 – Why no one is truly self-made

50:00 – Keeping your network and mentors alive

53:00 – The importance of mentors (older and younger)

56:00 – Skill vs luck in business

59:00 – Where to find Nikhil online

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Richard Mabey left a comfortable career as a corporate lawyer at Freshfields to launch Juro, the all-in-one contract platform now trusted by Deliveroo, Cazoo, and hundreds of fast-scaling businesses. Since then, Juro has raised $38M+, grown to a team of 120+, and positioned itself at the forefront of AI-enabled legal tech.

In this episode of The Everyday Founder, Richard shares:

- Why he walked away from a secure legal career to pursue entrepreneurship

- How Juro landed its first enterprise clients like Deliveroo through co-creation

- The long road to product-market fit (and what retention really means)

- Lessons in scaling sales, hiring the right early team, and keeping culture intact

- Betting early on AI copilots and agents—and how that decision is reshaping the legal industry

- His honest take on self-doubt, work-life balance, and what really makes founders succeed

If you’re a founder, lawyer, or builder curious about the realities of growing a SaaS company in a competitive market—this conversation with Richard is packed with hard-won lessons.

Chapters:

00:00 – Why sales isn’t demand (and the role of marketing)

00:49 – Introducing Richard Mabey, CEO & Co-Founder of Juro

01:26 – Leaving law for entrepreneurship: riches-to-rags story

02:44 – The pain point that sparked Juro

04:00 – The inefficiencies of corporate law

05:15 – Taking the plunge despite pressure & self-doubt

07:24 – Early days: learning to code & finding a co-founder

10:10 – Raising seed funding & first customers (Deliveroo)

12:27 – Co-creating with early adopters

16:10 – Slow growth to product-market fit (4+ years)

18:30 – Defining product-market fit (retention & renewal)

21:09 – Building repeatable sales: from scrappy to scalable

23:36 – Why marketing came before hiring sales

25:22 – Content as Juro’s growth engine

26:06 – Founder self-doubt & keeping balance with family life

29:16 – Work-life balance & startup intensity

31:21 – Starting Juro while becoming a parent

33:07 – Early hires, talent density & culture fit

37:12 – Scaling the team from 30 to 100+

39:05 – Rethinking hiring in the AI era

40:51 – Why fewer people, but higher talent density, wins

41:22 – Picking the right VCs & long-term partners

45:28 – Radical transparency with the board & team

47:43 – Building trust with customers (handwritten notes & support)

50:20 – Using community to strengthen customer relationships

51:27 – Betting big on AI copilots & agents

55:09 – How AI is reshaping legal jobs

59:32 – Competing with incumbents & new AI-native challengers

1:02:12 – What’s Juro’s moat?

1:04:24 – The next 5 years for Juro

1:06:13 – Fundraising is just “stopping for petrol”

1:06:40 – Luck vs skill in entrepreneurship

1:08:41 – Final reflections & where to follow Richard

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In this episode, I sit down with Cecily Motley — founder of Harriet and previously the CEO of Motley, a direct-to-consumer jewellery brand that raised millions before collapsing in the wake of Apple’s privacy update.

We talk about the emotional toll of shutting down a business with your name on the door, the lessons she brought into building a venture-scale B2B company, and how she's leading a startup while raising two young children.

This is a conversation about resilience, reinvention, and what happens after your startup fails.

⏱️ CHAPTERS:

00:00 - Intro: Cecily’s story in 20 seconds

01:15 - Why her first startup, Motley, shut down

04:33 - The hidden costs of DTC and the iOS14 death blow

08:10 - The emotional experience of failure as a founder

12:00 - Starting Harriet: a complete pivot to B2B HR tech

15:45 - What Harriet does and why it matters

18:20 - Lessons from DTC applied to B2B SaaS

21:30 - Fundraising post-failure: the mindset shift

25:00 - What makes a defensible company in 2025

28:00 - Building while parenting: realities vs LinkedIn myths

32:40 - Maternity & paternity leave: how founders should lead

36:15 - Advice for founders dealing with failure

39:00 - The importance of self-identity beyond the startup

42:00 - Final reflections and Cecily’s founder advice

#Startups #Founders #B2B #DTC #Harriet #Leadership #TheEverydayFounder #Entrepreneurship

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Why This Founder Left a $160M Startup to Fix Supply Chains with AI

Cedrik Hoffmann is the co-founder & CEO of Ameeba, a startup bringing AI-powered intelligence to supply chain operations. Before that, he scaled and exited Valoreo — a $160M VC-backed roll-up of consumer brands across Latin America.

In this conversation, Cedrik shares the raw truth of leaving high-paid jobs, building in overlooked industries, and how personal loss and failure shaped his founder mindset. From hustling trade shows in Taiwan with no product, to raising millions and leading hundreds — this is a story of grit, reinvention, and staying obsessed with the problem.

—

Chapters

00:00 – The only career where failure is rewarded

01:00 – Cedrik’s early life and unlikely path to Goldman Sachs

03:00 – Realizing banking wasn’t the dream

04:40 – The turning point: advice from his wife

06:00 – Going all in: no business, no plan, just hustle

08:00 – Meeting Jack and taking over a Taiwanese factory

11:00 – How a cold call from old friends led to Valoreo

13:00 – Raising $160M and scaling across Latin America

15:30 – Why fundraising isn’t the milestone

17:00 – The truth about exit returns and dilution

18:50 – The origin of Ameeba and building the tool he wished he had

21:00 – AI in supply chains: hype vs real problems

23:30 – How Cedrik found the right co-founder

26:00 – Choosing co-founders like life partners

29:00 – Why co-developing with customers worked

32:00 – What most B2B founders get wrong about product

34:00 – The zombie tech stack inside global supply chains

36:00 – How geopolitics is reshaping where goods are made

38:00 – Nearshoring, cost misconceptions, and supply chain as a brand story

42:00 – Competing with Shein and surviving retail disruption

44:00 – Why founders need to understand their supply chain

48:00 – Balancing fatherhood and founder life

52:00 – Cedrik’s biggest failure — and what he learned

54:00 – Luck vs talent vs grit

56:00 – Where to find Cedrik online

—

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