ZANDA TALKS

In our latest episode we have the pleasure of speaking to Claire Smith, a vegan entrepreneur and impact investor who after 20 years has been able to merge her passion, ethics and career, into a business. Claire shares how she is on a mission to accelerate the transition to a sustainable ethical economy through her new online platform, Beyond Animal, which connects a wide pool of investors to a range of vegan companies, events and resources.

 

Claire explains how her experience as an investor helps her support impact businesses overcome the problems they face after their initial investment. She also witnessed the needed shift from passive investment to ethical investment, so created a platform to align with this, which speeds up human connection in a digital age.

 

We get valuable insight from this, investor turned founder, on what she looks for in impact companies and how essential putting together the correct team is; a team that doesn’t just align with the values of the company but lives them, because in this market resiliency is key and authenticity essential.

 

Learn more about Beyond Animal and how you can cut your carbon footprint through ethical investing. Learn more about Claire Smith and Beyond Investing and Beyond Impact. 

Do you want to learn how to grow a brand based around community? How to scale-up a start-up?  How picking a Co-Founder has similar qualities to a marriage?

Then Join us for Episode 3 of our Sustainable Tech Series, in which we are joined by the co-founder of OLIO, Tessa Clarke. 

 

OLIO is a hybrid of a marketplace and a community app, that alerts neighbours of unwanted food in their area, connecting like-minded individuals wanting to fight food waste, and in turn the climate crisis. 1/3 of all the food we produce each year gets thrown away and if food waste was a country it would be the 3rd largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, behind USA and China. Tessa shares how these shocking statistics paired with her respect for the hard work put in to growing food, learnt from a rural upbringing, pushed her to pursue this mission and never go back to her corporate career.

 

OLIO has grown from a whatsapp group and some leftover sweet potatoes, to a 2 million strong community. So far, 9 million portions of food have been saved, which is the equivalent to 20 million car miles off the road and saving over 1 billion litres of water! Tessa shares the challenges they overcame whilst adapting the app to suit their users and how over the next year, they’ll be preparing to go to market for Series B funding.

In this episode, we speak to Jules Buker one of the Founders of the tree planting app, Treeapp. Treeapp was launched April 2020 and connects carbon conscious users with sustainable brands who sponsor reforestation projects across the globe. Jules shares his valuable previous experience working with numerous startups through Crowdcube as well as founding two other businesses. These experiences helped his team produce a highly acclaimed app that can make an impact with the environment and users, having gained ‘app of the day’ and ‘hottest app in the app store’ several times. 

  

Jules shows his real understanding of sustainable reforestation and explains how they have made it accessible to the masses, daily with Treeapp. As you unlock the map, you learn about the country and species you are helping rehabilitate and Jules explains this user friendly experience is refined thanks to endless feedback. From the Green Tech Alliance, to the importance of hiring the right team and Treeapp’s plans for next year, Jules covers the lot in our second episode of this series.  

 

Listen now to learn more about their mission. 

 

Download the app to make your impact and reach out if you are interested in investing. https://www.thetreeapp.org/

 

We are back with our second series of Zanda Talks and are diving into the world of sustainable tech.  It may have taken a pandemic for some of us to see the damage we have done to the planet but ‘A recent poll showed only 9% of Britons want life to return to 'normal' once lockdown is over’. 

So, we are kicking off this series with the CEO of KOMMA, Griffin Peddicord.  KOMMA is striving to create a society way beyond ‘normal’ by providing real world tech based solutions, designed to deliver a better quality of movement and improve the urban landscape for a sustainable future. 

Griffin shares with us how their first product, a compact electric vehicle will tackle numerous issues such as carbon emissions, wasted time and efficiency vs safety.  We discuss how the pandemic has shown us how the world can react to address a global problem and how it has accelerated interest in their product.  

We talk about how investment focus has shifted to businesses creating a legacy and long lasting impact and that is exactly what they are doing by addressing the problem of growing cities, growing population and declining health and happiness that congestion brings us. 

Find out more about KOMMA and Griffin Peddicord here.  

In our final episode we were lucky enough to speak to the brains and driving force behind Blooming Founders, Lu Li. 

 

Lu has been changing the narrative for female founders through challenging the need for diversity and using her acclaimed brand and company to help early stage female founders succeed. Prior to the pandemic, Blooming Founders produced popular business events and ran an award-winning co-working space in London. 

 

In this valuable discussion she shares how the pandemic made her realise the shift in the industry, so she pivoted her business to an an internship placement service, where they match businesses with students and save companies 90% of your typical hiring costs.

 

Lu shares her views on what impact the pandemic could have on female founders and diversity within startups, which leads to discussing the future of funding and the needed shift in behaviour. 

 

As a problem solver with a large amount of entrepreneurial drive, Lu knows the importance of using this time to network, as well as advising others on building a brand that is authentically you. Her book ‘Dear Female Founder’ made up of 66 personal letters of advice written by female entrepreneurs from 20 countries, covers this further. 

In the penultimate episode of our first series of Zanda Talks, we interview telehealth innovator and host of “Digital Health Entrepreneurship Daily” Laurence Girard

 

Laurence, Founder of Fruit Street and CovidMD.com, shares how his past evolved him into the conscious, motivated founder he is today, through playing soccer for the New York Red Bulls Academy in his teens and twenties and being an alumnus of the Kairos Society, a global network of social entrepreneurs focused on having a social impact. We gain an understanding of how he acquired the resilience needed for leading a startup, as well as finding employees who are inherently passionate about helping society.  

Laurence shares with us how he grabbed the opportunity when the pandemic began and pivoted to create CovidMD.com. He is heading up a team of technology experts, business leaders, and nationally recognized physicians who have joined forces to create this risk assessment, triage, and telemedicine platform that keeps people informed during the pandemic, and connects them with medical professionals in the safety of their homes. 

Laurence intends to mould the future of healthcare whilst the need is urgent and then continue the mainstream use of telemedicine in every household. Just like Fruit Street’s flagship product, diabetes prevention and weight loss program which is delivered via live video conferencing with registered dietitians. 

“In downturns of any sort there are huge opportunities and those that are brave and bold will come out far stronger than if they didn’t have the downturn at all. Winners are created in downturns.” Jon Lerner, Smedvig Capital

 

Earlier this month we had the pleasure of speaking to Managing Director at Smedvig Capital, Jon Lerner. Since 1996 Smedvig Capital has partnered with and helped scale over 70 companies in the UK and Nordics. 

 

Jon is currently a board member of Spirable, Masabi, POQ, Infinity, Captify and The Smart Cube and has previously served on the boards of Tusker, ITIS and Selstor. Having worked with so many tech-enabled companies, we thought he was the perfect person to question about the future of tech companies after Covid-19 and get an insight into how Smedvig has worked closely with their portfolio in recent weeks. 

 

In this episode Jon shares an honest insight into the inner workings of Smedvig Capital on a regular day compared to the current situation, and how he believes Covid-19 will accelerate the progress of certain tech industries and create flexible working possibilities.

Businesses are having to reassess whether to shift into the offence or defence.

 

How do you know when is the right time to draw back and retreat or take advantage of the changes and attack? 

 

Co-founder Dav Masaon sits down with SaaS Co-Founder turned Quake Capital Investor Sumay Parikh. In this episode we get an insight into how Quake Capital, (VC & Growth Accelerator) is helping its portfolio navigate through this confusing time and Sumay shares his views on shifting focus, mentorship, thriving industries and using this time to build trust not capital. 

 

Sumay has advised over 60 start-up companies in the last 3 years, working on distressed business turnarounds, general management, finance and operational strategy. With significant VC and operational experience in Seed to Series B companies, he has a strong passion and understanding of the start-up ecosystem from both sides.

In this remotely recorded episode we are joined by Sabrina Castiglione, the CFO of the multi award winning cybersecurity business Tessian. 

 

Since joining Tessian in 2016 as their 7th team member, Sabrina has played a key role in establishing functions across Talent, People, Finance, Legal, Compliance, IT, Tech as the business expanded to 150 people. She currently overseas all these areas, acted as the Chair of the Wise Campaign’s Young Professionals’ Board in 2019, and recently helped to establish WEDS (We Empower Diverse Startups).

 

In this episode we discuss the challenges faced as Tessian evolved from a pre-seed startup to a series B scaleup, the current impact of Covid 19, and learn how the imbalances in gender equality throughout the STEM industries sparked the initiative to help startups with diversity and inclusion.  

Tune in to the latest episode of Zanda Talks to hear Sabrina’s circuitous route into startups and the lessons she has learnt along the way.

Mars has always been an ambitious individual, either through sports or through his entrepreneurial passions. He’s scaled various companies, totaling $200M of aggregate revenues and leading over 500 professionals. He has worked as either CEO or CFO/COO in multiple venture capital and private equity backed companies, which include 2 successful exits and an IPO.

 

In this episode, Mars shares how his athlete mentality has helped him enjoy the challenges that start-ups bring. He’s served as an advisor to 30+ start-ups and growth companies, which has allowed him to see various business models and successful traits. With all that experience, including raising over $4.5B of institutional capital through his career so far, we thought we would question Mars for his advice on Covid-19 and how to continue business, whether you are scaling back or seeking investment. We cover how businesses and founders can reduce the impact of COVID-19, by covering a range of topics from; how you can still look appealing to investors, beta testing new ideas, reducing expenses, and forward looking trends that may evolve as a result of COVID-19.