The Makers Show

Charlotte Yarkoni is the Vice President at Microsoft for Growth and Ecosystems.

Hosted by Ollie Forsyth host of The Makers Podcast. 

Lara Morgan is a British entrepreneur and the founder and former CEO of Pacific Direct. Having sold her share in Pacific Direct she is now involved in several UK startups. Her first business, Pacific Direct was founded in 1991 at the age of 23. Having arrived in the UK with little or no hotel experience, Lara quickly grew Pacific Direct into a specialist global supplier of luxury high end brands to five star hotels, which she has become world renowned for. Lara sold this business after 17 years for £20 million having acquired battles scars and experience spanning extremely large organizations to small start-ups. She has been involved in multiple disciplines, including, luxury brand licensing, marketing and retail operations to commercial and private label development. She has also managed and owned factories in Czech and China. Lara’s investment strategy is pinned to improving life’s journey, she invests in the fantastic British brands, dryrobe, the ultimate change robe, Gate8 lightweight time-saving functional business luggage and KitBrix, modular sports kit bags. ActiveBod and Global Amenities Direct are two other companies that Lara has built in line with her portfolio strategy. We talk about:

• Growing up in Hong Kong

 Hosted by Ollie Forsyth, The Makers Podcast 

In 2001, Rand Fishkin dropped out of college to start a company with his mom, Gillian. Over the next 17 years, that company, Moz, became one of the most high profile and high growth businesses in the marketing software world. In this transparent, vulnerable talk, Rand will walk through some of the biggest regrets, lessons learns, and things he'd do differently based on his experience. From management and hiring to marketing tactics to product strategy, self-awareness, and more, this presentation will help anyone who's starting or joining a new company avoid some big pitfalls, and feel less alone.

We talk about:

How to pick yourself back up when you hit a wall

How Moz grew to almost $50m in yearly revenue

Replacing your business with a new CEO

Picking yourself back up when you hit rock bottom

Turning down an acquisition offer

Balancing a good work-life balance

Rand’s BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)

The next venture & Rand’s new epic book

Plus so much more!

The Makers Podcast by Ollie Forsyth

Ricky is a serial investor and entrepreuner. He has built five technology disruptors in fintech and telecoms, each of which also does a bit of good for the world.

Before Tandem he founded Azimo and Small World, two remittance businesses, and is managing partner of Hexagon Partners, a private equity firm. He built Tandem to be a digital bank that helps improve customers' lives with money.

Ricky has a first class degree from Bristol University and an MBA from INSEAD.

Hosted by Ollie Forsyth. 

Jason Stockwood, CEO at Simply Business. 

Jason joined Simply Business from global dating website match.com, where he was International Managing Director. He’s also spent time as Managing Director at Travelocity Business, and held roles at Trailfinders, lastminute.com, Skyscanner and The Drinkaware Trust.

In 2016, Jason won overall Best Leader at the Sunday Times Best Companies to Work For awards, completing our Best Companies hat-trick. We’d already picked up the Best Company to Work For award, two years running.

Tom Blomfield is a British entrepreneur. After studying for a law degree at Oxford University, he founded the UK-based company GoCardless and challenger bank Monzo. In 2013, he was recognised as one of the top five entrepreneurs under 30 by the European Commission.

- The Makers Podcast by Ollie Forsyth

Simon Woodroffe OBE is an English motivational speaker and entrepreneur. He started the sushi chain YO! Sushi in 1997, and appeared as a "Dragon" on the first UK series of Dragons' Den. Woodroffe conceived and launched YO! Sushi after an early spell in television.

- The Makers Podcast by Ollie Forsyth

In late 2008, as global financial markets crashed, our founders, Christian Faes and Ian Thomas, saw an opportunity to fill a critical gap in short-term property finance.

They set up a mortgage lending business (then called Montello Bridging Finance), which quickly became one of the leading short-term finance lenders in the UK.

By 2012, we had launched two regulated funds to finance our loans, and were managing £30m of investors’ capital. As demand  grew, we looked for ways to help our customers invest more efficiently.

In 2013, we brought the investment experience online – LendInvest was born. We launched our online investment platform, allowing our investors to build their own tailored portfolios of property-backed loan investments.

We then brought fintech’s first retail bond programme to the public markets, listing the first tranche of a £500m retail bond programme on the London Stock Exchange in August 2017.

Later that year, we launched into the buy-to-let market, with a product tailored to professional portfolio landlords, taking us into the longer-term and more mainstream mortgage market.

And in September 2018 we completed our Series C funding round, raising £30.5m from investors including Atomico, GP Bullhound and Tiger Management, and pushing our fundraising total well over £1bn.

We’re a well-capitalised, profitable business, delivering value as one of the fastest-growing fintechs in the country, and we’ve got the backing to continue investing in our technology and providing property finance that is fast, online and for all.

- The Makers Podcast by Ollie Forsyth