Ventures

We had Alex on VENTURES, where the founder of Problem Kit and neuroscientist-turned-entrepreneur tackles what he calls the most dangerous trend in modern entrepreneurship: founders solving problems they haven't personally experienced. With background spanning GSK Pharmaceuticals and Zinc VC, he's developed "problem mining" methodology to combat cognitive biases. In the conversation, he reveals research showing two-thirds of unicorns were founded by people solving their own problems, explains his ITCHY framework for evaluating ideas, and argues that company-building professionalisation has dangerously shifted focus from problem-solving to market-targeting.

We had Duarte and Antonio (Co-founders at Dojo AI) on VENTURES to break down why most marketing technology is broken and how AI can fix the entire function. "Marketers have been held hostage by all of this technology that actually made their jobs much harder, much more overwhelming, and much less effective.""Marketing technology just wasn't fit for Challenger brands—most were enterprise solutions, very complex to onboard, required large teams." "We could not just build a tool to automate these tasks, we could actually rethink the function from first principles." "It wasn't able to execute a task so it actually did some research and upskilled itself—that gets compounding and integrated back into the system"You can listen to the full conversation with the Dojo team

We had Kyle Odefey (Video Editor at Synthesia) on Ventures to break down how AI video companies can create compelling content without losing the human element. "AI can only do so much. You can only have the puzzle pieces and you actually have to be the person that builds the puzzle together overall." "You go into this like $5 million studio and you're like, wow, this is super cool... Everyone wants to know the behind the scenes of how we actually do it." "We're going to get to a point where we'll probably have so much AI slop in the world where people are just going to be like, well, I don't want to see this. I want more human stuff." "Our initial like, let's see this $5 million studio was kind of the hook, the CTA of it all." You can listen to the full conversation with Kyle on today's show

We had Mariam Amed (CTO & Co-founder at Menza) on the show to discuss how AI is transforming data analytics for consumer brands. "We like to say our product is like having someone who works for you who has way too much time on their hands." "A lot of these companies have often very fragmented data... we try to centralise that data, make it structured, clean it up." "I genuinely am so bullish on the idea of like a one-person unicorn. I am so excited to see someone do that, because I think it is becoming increasingly more and more possible." "If we can't use our own product, then it's not worth selling - MENZA has been huge for us." You can listen to the full conversation with Mariam on today's show

HERE WE GO: We have one mother of a stacked docket today for the showAs cracked as a 1000x engineer12:00: Duarte Garrido & Antonio Alegria - Co-founders, DOJO AI12:30: Brian Da Silva - Head of Social & Influencer, VEED.IO13:00: Alex Revill- Founder, ProblemKit13:30: Kyle Odefey - Video Editor, Synthesia14:00: Mariam Ahmed - Co-founder, Menza14:30: Chris J. Smith - Director, The Gold Studios15:00 Moises Barbera Ramos - Founder/CEO, Drill Surgeries Ltd.Jump in the chatFeed us your thoughts & questions - it's really live. Follow us on Youtube & Linkedin to watch DM me - if you want to appear on the show or sponsor it Today 11:30LFG 🚀

We had Wail Abu Ghazaleh (Co-director at Kickstart Global) on Ventures to break down why UK startup talent remains underserved despite world-class universities. "Students is a big underserved market, especially in Europe - here they're kind of overlooked and people say they don't have experience." "We have the best universities in the world and we should be shooting out companies like the US does, but we're not there yet." "You hear these stories of people going from the UK to San Francisco and raising just in a few weeks what they couldn't raise in months here." "The compounding effect - when you start somewhere and you don't enter a program versus you enter a program, the outcome ten years from now is completely different." You can watch the full conversation with Wail on today's show. Follow Ventures for more.

We had Marius Manolachi & Amir Isaac (Founders at projectOS) on Ventures to discuss revolutionising education through project-based learning. "Courses are not the way to go - most startups in edtech had failed because they tackled accessibility, but content is accessible everywhere nowadays." "Everything in the world is constructed by people - it's just not reality, it's a reality that people created over time." "We have this big problem in sourcing - they have thousands of people they have to screen and just can't find the talent that fits the role." "Most people have the same set of experiences when they work in specific fields - what I like to do is to get as many diverse experiences as possible."

We had Ben Kaluza (Co-founder at NineSixteen Studios) on Ventures to explore the evolution of content marketing for tech startups. "I make videos that look like ads, so brands pay me to make videos that don't look like ads." "As soon as you put a product or service in there, an ad, it just misaligns with your whole feed and people can sniff it from a mile away." "How can you make someone feel like they're going to miss out if they don't watch the video?" "I think we're gonna see just a birth of all sorts of different content - people who are really AI native focused, faceless, full video is AI." You can watch the full conversation with Ben on today's show. Follow Ventures for more.

We had Harrison Hide (Co-founder at Long Lane) on Ventures to break down his vision for wellness-first hospitality experiences. "I was constantly having to sacrifice my mental and physical wellbeing to satisfy my social wellbeing." "Think Soho Farmhouse, but if wellbeing was at the genesis of the idea." "We see this as they haven't really evolved with what the modern day consumer wants - instead of whiskey and cigars, people want yogurt and smoothies." "You can't claim you're a wellness concept when your food's not organic and you've got people slamming espresso martinis at 9am by the pool." Harrison's vision challenges traditional hospitality by putting genuine wellness at the core, recognising that modern consumers seek experiences that enhance rather than compromise their health goals.

We had Georgia Gibson (Co-founder at TBC) on Ventures to discuss building technology that gets people offline and into real-world experiences. "Social media is really fucking sexy and it's really hard not to live out your social life on a screen right now." "If all AI tools are built to help you save time, we're built to help you spend your time better." "All event attendance is built on social proof - you don't go to an event because of what it is, you go because who you know going." "The greatest superpower is being able to change plans really quickly and adapt."