tech

startup talks

Operators

Suppose you develop a new technology that is valuable to some industry. The old approach was to sell or license your technology to the existing companies in that industry. The new approach is to build a complete, end-to-end product or service that bypasses existing companies. Andreessen Horowitz’s Chris Dixon, Balaji Srinivasan and Benedict Evans discuss the reasons behind, and advantages of, going “full stack.”

a16z Podcast: The Rise of Full Stack Startups

From file cabinets to typewriters, spreadsheets and word processing the tools we use for work change not only what we do, but the culture of our workplace. Steven Sinofsky, a veteran of building software tools for productivity, discusses the latest revolution in technology-enabled tools with Benedict Evans. Why today’s cloud-based tools change the role of managers, and why the perfect tool will never exist (nor would you want it to). 

a16z Podcast: Engineering a Revolution at Work

What do venture capitalists actually do all day? And what is the path that leads to a career investing in startups? Hummer Winblad’s Ann Winblad, Cowboy Ventures' Aileen Lee, Aspect Ventures' Theresia Gouw, Intel Capital veteran and UPWARD founder Lisa Lambert, and Andreessen Horowitz’s Margit Wennmachers discuss VC trends, the importance of technical chops, and how to build the next generation of entrepreneurs and investors. And finally, in front of an appreciative crowd attending the UPWARD event at a16z, Ann Winblad reveals the secret to truly kicking ass.

a16z Podcast: Demystifying Venture Capital

For many of the young, ambitious founders that we back, starting a company might be the first time they’ve had to manage a team. Yet very quickly they’ll need to not only manage a growing startup, but also transform into leading an organisation that could easily grow from 2 to 200 people in just a few short years.

So for this month’s Academy we invited in Gillian Davis, author of 'First Time Leader' and Director of Leadership Development at ustwo, to talk about how to run your startup like a leader.

Gillian Davis, Author of First Time Leader, on How to Run a Startup As a Leader

In this episode we were joined by Josephine Goube, Director of Partnerships & Communications at Migreat. She discussed her background, how she became involved in making immigration easier for companies, discussing Entrepreneur Visa options available to set up a business in the UK.

Listed as one the top 35 women in Business in Britain in 2015 by Management Today, Joséphine currently heads Migreat, the fastest-growing global platform for migrants to get access to information and immigration support. She previously worked at TechStars London and Rainmaking, co-founded the London School of Economics Business Incubator & graduated from the New Entrepreneurs Foundation.

Josephine Goube, Director of Partnerships & Communications at Migreat

In this episode we were joined by Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner at Balderton. He discussed his background, his experience raising investment for blinkx, growing the business, his latest experience as an investor at Balderton, and some of the lessons he’d tell his younger self.

Suranga joined Balderton as a General Partner in 2014. He was previously an entrepreneur and engineer. He founded blinkx, the intelligent search engine for video and audio content in Cambridge in 2004. He then lead the company for eight years as CEO through its journey of moving to San Francisco, building a profitable business and going public in London where it achieved a peak market capitalisation in excess of $1Bn. Before founding blinkx, Suranga was an early employee at Autonomy Corporation - joining as an engineer in the Cambridge R&D team and ultimately serving as the company's US CTO in San Francisco.

Suranga Chandratillake, General Partner at Balderton

In this episode we were joined by Marc Zornes, Founder at Winnow. He discussed his background, his involvement in the food industry, and his latest experience as founder at Winnow.

Marc Zornes started his career at a large wholesale grocers, and food and sustainability have been his two passions ever since. Recently he started Winnow because he saw a massive opportunity in solving the problem of food waste and he's a strong believer that technology can help us change the way we make food. Before Winnow he co-authored the Global Institute report “Resource Revolution: Meeting the World’s Energy, Materials, Food, and Water Needs.’ whilst working as a consultant at McKinsey.

Marc Zornes, Founder at Winnow

Bill is a managing partner at Connect Ventures. He has 10 years working in venture capital and startups, having worked as an investment manager at Amadeus Capital and in a variety of operational roles at several California based startups.  He is on the boards of Citymapper, Knyttan, Marvel, RetentionGrid, Secretsales, and TOTEMS. 

In this Seedcamp Academy podcast, we talk about Bill’s history and draw on his experience of participating in many board meetings. What are their true purpose? When and how should you be setting up your ideal board? And what are some of the best practices for founders to get the most of them.

Bill Earner, Managing Partner at Connect Ventures

In this episode we were joined by Will Critchlow, Founder and CEO of Distilled. He discussed his background, his experience as a founder, and the fundamentals of search, social and content for a startup company.

Will Critchlow founded Distilled in 2005 with Duncan Morris. Distilled provides online marketing services from offices in London, New York and Seattle, hosts the SearchLove conference series in the US and UK and produces the popular online training platform DistilledU. His academic background is mathematics with a degree from the University of Cambridge (St. John’s College) including a graduate thesis on auction theory. Previous jobs included programmer, strategy consultant in the telecoms industry and floor sweeper.

Will Critchlow, Founder and CEO of Distilled

In this episode we were joined by Dan Appelquist, Startup ambassador at The Open Data Institute. After discussing his background, Dan talks about Internet of Things, Privacy, and Open Data, giving insights in to how companies should explore data in a new way.

Daniel Appelquist works with the Open Data Institute startup program and the Open Data Incubator for Europe to build bridges with the startup and entrepreneurial community across Europe. Dan is a Mobile and Web industry veteran technologist who has been bringing innovative and disruptive services to market for two decades. He was an early Internet and Web pioneer, and has been a dot-com CTO and later a dot-com refugee. He helped to launch Vodafone Live! in the UK and has been instrumental in the development of industry standards initiatives and ventures such as dotMobi, the W3C Mobile Web Initiative, and device APIs such as the W3C Geolocation browser API. He has been a community instigator, founding MobileMonday London, as well as the Mobile 2.0 conference series in San Francisco and the Over the Air hack days in the UK. He worked as Open Web Advocate for Telefónica Digital and with Mozilla to bring FirefoxOS to market and build the ecosystem around HTML5.


Dan Appelquist, The Open Data Institute

Keith Wallington, Expert in Residence for Seedcamp and ex-Chief Group Officer of Mimecast, joins Carlos for this Podcast to explore key lessons learned from his experience helping operationalise businesses as a mentor, and internally at Mimecast through his multiple C-level roles. Looking at how these processes can be implemented in different organisations for their own benefit.


Keith Wallington, Expert in Residence, Seedcamp

Will Herrmann, Head of Commercial Operations for Hassle.com, joins Seedcamp's Dave Haynes in this podcast which follows Hassle.com's recent exit, having been acquired by Helpling. Following a session with some of our startups, Will discusses everything from scaling company operations following Hassle.com's Series A round to valuations and M&A.

Will Herrmann, Head of Commercial Operations, Hassle.com

Dimitar Stanimiroff, Managing Director of Stack Overflow Developer Insights at Stack Overflow, a Q&A site for programmers with over 4 million members, joins Carlos and Dave for this deep dive into hiring. 

Discussing everything from the hiring process, how to overcome challenges, hiring from within, and how to recruit technical talent if you're not technical.

Dimitar Stanimiroff, Managing Director, Stack Overflow Developer Insights at Stack Overflow

This Much I Know is the podcast from Seedcamp, Europe’s seed fund.

Tune into hear the inside story from startup founders, investors and leading tech voices: the people who’ve built businesses, scaled globally, failed fantastically and learnt massively.

Seedcamp invests early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. Seedcamp provides the infrastructure to fast-track a founder’s vision and create value through immediate access to smart capital, a lifelong community of support and a global network built upon a decade’s experience backing exceptional talent.

Gillian Davis, Author of First Time Leader, on How to Run a Startup As a Leader

The Seedcamp Podcast