Richard Thornton's’s story begins with his early career in consulting and his serendipitous entry into the tech industry in the early 2000s. He joined a digital data collection business that was looking to disrupt the market research industry. This venture-backed company gave him his first taste of working with venture capitalists and shaped his 20…

In today's episode, I interviewed Stefan Bader, a two-time founder and the current CEO of Cello—a SaaS scale-up pioneering the way B2B companies incentivize referrals. Stefan shares the pain points he encountered as Chief Revenue Officer at Shore, a company akin to Square but focused on European markets. His growth team faced challenges in implemen…

In this captivating episode of "Startup to Scale Up," we delve into the Nordic startup ecosystem with Robin Egerow, Managing Partner at Goose Valley Ventures. With a track record investing in companies like Klarna, Lunar Bank and Receipt Hero, Robin brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table. We kick off the conversation by uncovering…

In this episode, we dive deep into the world of AI-driven productivity with Gabriel Hubert, the Founding CEO of Dust. Dust is a Paris-based SaaS scale-up that's redefining team collaboration and efficiency through the power of generative AI. Supported by global venture capital giants like Sequoia, Dust is on a mission to break down information silo…

In this episode, Gary Reeman interviews Pete Daffern, a three-time CEO and two-time president with a track record transforming fledgling companies into thriving unicorns. With $50 billion worth of software transactions under his belt, Pete’s insights are gold for any startup or scale-up looking to navigate the treacherous waters of growth and expan…

Marcel van der Heijden, a Partner at leading B2B software venture capital and growth equity firm, Fortino Capital, describes the challenging environment for B2B SaaS funding during the past two years. Marcel brings us up-to-date with the status of the B2B software and SaaS funding landscape as of April 2024, the emergence and rise of AI-based produ…

Richard Anton, General Partner at Oxx, discussed the past, present and future of B2B SaaS investing. Richard shared insights about the evolution of the sector during the past 2 decades and explained why he believes Europe will strongly grow its share of global B2B SaaS investing despite the traditional Silicon Valley hegemony. Richard delved into t…

In the latest episode of The Startup to Scale-Up Game Plan, host Gary Reeman invites Mark Beeston, Founding Partner at Illuminate Financial, to share his career journey, investment strategies, and insights into the fluid dynamics of the financial market. Illuminate Financial is a venture capital firm known for its expertise in investing in enterpri…

Adam Liska is the co-founder & CEO at Glyphic – funded by Point72 Ventures – who’ve developed an AI co-pilot to make sales teams more productive, improving conversion rates & increasing revenue. Adam discussed: * Why he felt the market was ready for a fast-moving LLM product company even before OpenAI released ChatGPT * Overcoming the challenges of…

Jason Foster is the CEO of groundbreaking biotech firm Ori who've raised $130m in funding from the likes of Novalis, Octopus & Amadeus. Jason also runs his own angel investment portfolio & supports over a dozen healthtech & Saas ventures as a Board member/advisor. We explored: Ensuring a smooth handover from a technical founder to an incoming profe…

Hannah Meiton is a Founding Partner at the Nordic VC fund, Ampli Ventures who invest in the Nordics’ leading SaaS ventures. We explored: How Hannah transitioned from a career as a senior operator to building a VC firm Why the tough decisions that keep her awake at night are always about people Her passion for investing in individuals who demonstrat…

Amrit Sami is a VC at Mercia Ventures who's taken an unconventional route into the world of venture capital. We explored: how to break into the VC community as an outsider the support system startup CEOs need to build to ensure their businesses survive & prosper the importance of talent diversity when companies are building their leadership teams h…

Seth de Hart is a Venture Partner at Point Nine – he also advises other B2B SaaS startups on building & optimizing go2market We discussed Why product-market fit trumps effective sales processes & sales expertise How to ascertain if you have true product market fit The mistakes CEOs make in hiring sales leaders How to expand a successful European bu…

Jonathan Organ is a Founding Partner at Axiom Equity – a new breed of B2B Saas investor who aim to challenge convention & think outside the box. We discussed: Jonathan's varied operational & investment career path & network the gap in the market for growth equity providers between VC & leveraged PE style investors the traditional VC approach to mak…

Barrie Hadfield is the founding CEO at mindset.ai – a B2B saas venture who make every piece of content easily accessible via a unique combination of generative AI & advanced knowledge graphs. Barrie’s a serial entrepreneur who’s founded 5 companies, employed thousands of people globally & launched several products that went on to be market leaders.…

Kashish Gupta is the co-founder of HighTouch, a Saas scale-up helping companies sync customer data across different back-end databases and systems. HighTouch has raised $90m from investors like Databricks, Bain Capital and Iconiq. We delved into HighTouch's journey, discussed their strategic relationships with Databricks, Snowflake & Hubspot, and e…

Maria Palma is a General Partner at Kindred Capital - a London HQ VC who describe themselves as an ‘equitable venture’ fund where every founder they back becomes a co-owner of the fund. Kindred have raised £266m across 3 funds & have backed startups like FiveAI, which was sold to Bosch in 2022, and Atlas ML, which was sold to Meta within a year of …

Dan Bowyer is a Partner at SuperSeed Ventures a VC fund investing in technical founders who love business automation. Dan has a radically different background to your typical VC - his career spans modelling, performing in a boy band & presenting kids TV shows before switching over to tech, entrepreneurship and eventually VC. Dan’s passionate about …

Jamie Akhtar is the Founder & CEO at Cybersmart, a cybersecurity scale-up, funded by VCs including Oxx & British Patient Capital, dedicated to helping SME's safeguard their data. We explored: “Alive in 25” – the whatever-it-takes playbook to ensure your software venture will survive the next 2 years Healthy work-life boundaries & the importance of …

Guy Rubin is the CEO & Founder of Ebsta, the Revenue Intelligence Platform for Salesforce & Hubspot customers. Ebsta helps high-performing business development teams engage with more target accounts, helps sales teams close deals faster, & helps customer success teams retain happier customers. We explored why: 70% of sales reps are missing their ta…

Magnus Karnehm is a Principal at Left Lane Capital – Magnus heads up their European office We explored Left Lane's unique approach to venture capital – running their fund like a sales team with each investor speaking to 25+ companies a week giving them exposure to off the beaten track sectors as well as the hot and trendy sectors. We discussed the …

Maarten Stolk is the CEO & co-founder at Deeploy - a Dutch startup helping businesses build explainable and responsible AI We discussed: Why people fear losing control of their AI models Challenges with AI model compliance - especially in heavily regulated industries Why companies always run into problems with their AI deployments! Key learnings fo…

Ed Keelan is a Partner at Octopus Ventures focused on B2B SaaS. As well as identifying & nurturing disruptive SaaS startups, Ed's actively involved in various initiatives addressing D&I topics - including neurodiversity - within the VC sector. We discussed: What do VCs really care about when evaluating startups & entrepreneurs? Why many SaaS busine…

William Tunstall-Pedoe's claims to fame include, in his first startup, Evi – which he sold to Amazon - creating the AI technology that now powers Alexa in 100s of millions of devices globally, coding the AI software behind the anagrams in the Da Vinci Code, and calculating that April 11th 1954 was the most boring day in history! William’s latest ve…

Ambre Soubiran is the CEO at Kaiko – a cryptocurrency market data provider who in June ‘22 raised a $55m Series B led by Eight Roads. Kaiko aims to become the Bloomberg of the blockchain & cryptocurrency worlds! We explored: Why Ambre gave up a successful banking career to build a blockchain startup How blockchain data services will empower decisio…

Bastian Karweg is the Group CEO at Echobot & Leadfeeder – these 2 saas ventures were recently acquired & merged by Great Hill Partners to create a ground-breaking sales intelligence & go-to-market platform & appointed Zoominfo's former CEO, Derek Schoettle, as their Chairman. We explored: the strategic thinking & ambition behind the Echobot & Leadf…

Tariq Rauf is the Founder & CEO at Qatalog - backed by $18.5 million in funding from VCs like Atomico, Mosaic & Salesforce Ventures - whose digital work hub enables organisations to scale fast with transparency, automated knowledge flow, & tightly aligned teams & projects. We explored: How Tariq started coding when he was 6, built his 1st software …

Thor Olof Philogène is the Co-Founder & CEO at Stravito who've sold their AI-driven saas research & insights platform directly to blue chips like Mcdonalds, Electrolux & Pepsi Lipton. We explored: Applying the Eric Ries concept of “validated learnings” when launching a SaaS business How a small European venture can sell enterprise SaaS directly to …

Alex Mifsud is the CEO & Founder at embedded finance disruptor Weavr – who recently raised a $40m Series A led by Tiger Global. Other investors include QED, Anthemis, LocalGlobe, Mubadala Capital and Seedcamp. Alex walked me through his: journey from academia to tech entrepreneurship learnings - including "how to go as fast as possible without the …

Jack Macfarlane is the CEO at DeepStream Technologies. DeepStream's SaaS solution delivers a seamless, visible & automated procurement experience to clients like Maersk and BritishVolt. DeepStream was originally backed by TechStars and angel investors - before raising a Series A, led by Beringea, in 2021 Jack discussed: Switching from investment ba…

Jussi Maatta is CEO & Founder at the Finnish health tech disruptor, Buddy Healthcare. Buddy's platform helps healthcare providers reduce their huge waiting lists & enhance the patient experience. We explored: implementing agile processes right the way across your organisation how a company's name can encapsulate the company's culture and ethos the …

Sven Lackinger is the co-founder & CEO at Sastrify - a rapidly scaling SaaS venture who’ve raised $23m dollars from major VCs like HV Capital and FirstMark for their SaaS procurement solution. We explored: Why 4 co-founders is too many - you're better off with 2 co-founders who then hire “experts” for the other c-suite roles The benefits of hiring …

Sampo Parkkinen is the CEO & founder at Revieve whose SaaS platform uses AI, AR & computer-vision to help brands and retailers like Number 7, Superdrug & JC Penney personalise the customer experience and build long term customer relationships. We explored: Why scaling yourself - as a leader - is the hardest thing to do as an entrepreneur “The Power…

Jonas Thordal is the Co-founder & CEO at Weld – funded by VCs like Frontline Ventures & Cherry Ventures Weld aims to build the world's most customer-centric data company - empowering customers to unlock the full potential of their data. We explored: Building a utopian culture – how to eliminate politics, tedious decision process & hierarchies Why o…

Malcolm Burenstam Linder is the Founder & CEO at Series A funded Alva Labs whose digital hiring platform helps organisations improve the quality & diversity of the talent they recruit. We explored: why combining data-driven AI & machine learning with psychometrics helps companies improve the quality and diversity of the talent they hire as we strug…

Hubert Rachwalski is the CEOat Nethone who in 2021 were named Poland’s fastest-growing company in the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Nethone provides machine learning-based fraud prevention solutions to online retailers and financial institutions We explored: the arms race that pushes software innovators like Nethone to continue to develop advanced te…

Simon Bird is the CEO & co-founder at RevLifter who combine AI, hyper-personalization, data, algorithms, and cutting-edge UX and design to enable retailers to personalise their online offers. Revlifter raised their Series A from Gresham House Ventures & Maven Capital Partners - they’ve rapidly scaled to $10m ARR and sold to online businesses of all…

Arthur Nobel is a Principal at Knight Capital, having previously worked at Rocket Internet & co-founded Flexpat where he went through both the startup hype and the trough of disillusionment! Arthur wrote the best-selling book “Leaders of Growth” and hosts the Leaders of Growth Podcast. We explored why: The concept of a single product-market fit nee…

Nicola Ebmeyer is the co-founder at Gain.Pro - a 3 year old European SaaS fintech looking to become the Bloomberg of the private finance market! Gain.Pro already has a stellar list of loyal clients like Bain, Mckinsey, 3i and BCG - their ARR has consistently grown at well over 100% YoY and they've delivered exceptional NRR & NPS Nicola explained ho…

Dr Shay David is the CEO at retrain.ai – a startup developing the world’s leading AI talent intelligence platform to unlock talent insights and optimize the hiring, retention, & upskilling of their employees. Shay’s previous venture was Kaltura which he took from inception to $100m+ in revenue – Kaltura ipo’d in 2021. Shay discussed: why he wanted …

Oliver Edholm is a teenage entrepreneur shaking up the world of AI & ecommerce! Oliver launched the ecommerce SaaS startup "Depict" - funded by Northzone & EQT - after a spell at Klarna Depict uses AI to deliver Amazon-quality product recommendations for any e-commerce store enabling small & medium-sized retailers to compete on a level playing fiel…

Neta Meidav is the CEO of Vault Platform. In 2017, inspired by the #MeToo movement and her own experiences with harassment, Neta left her job as a climate adviser to found Vault. Vault is a Series A scale-up pioneering TrustTech - a new category of ethics-enabling workplace technology helping companies address compliance, risk, and HR challenges. N…

Jan Andriessen & Mick Mackaay are Partners at HenQ - a Dutch-based VC investing in European B2B software startups addressing "unexplored problems" & "defining their own markets". They've an exceptional track record backing unproven leadership teams who've subsequently scaled massively e.g. SendCloud - who now have 400 employees, 23,000 ecommerce cl…

Judith Dada is a General Partner at La Famiglia - a European VC investing in early stage digital disruptors like buynomics and y42. We explored a wide-range of topics including: “Learning the craft of VC” is more important than a business school education Migration should be viewed as a powerful driver of growth - hence society's perceptions need t…

Eva-Valerie Gfrerer is the founding CEO at MorphAIs - the pioneer in AI-driven VC investment. MorphAIs uses a data and technology driven approach to reduce human error & bias & make investments more accurate, transparent and inclusive. Eva discussed many data-driven VC topics including: ❇️ entrepreneurial talent is equally distributed – it’s the ac…

Niels Brochner is a co-founder at Contractbook who provide document & contract automation to 150,000 users across more than 100 countries. Contractbook, based out of Copenhagen and now also NYC, have raised $43m – mostly from US VCs Tiger Global, Gradient & Bessemer Venture Partners Niels discussed: How to create a culture where people actually wan…

Henry Alty, Investment Director at Gresham House Ventures, invests in process & workflow automation software, digital transformation, & scale-ups looking to improve the use of data & analytics We explored: the opportunity to build profitable, sustainable, scale-ups - "camels" - that many investors overlook in their search for unicorns how to scale …

John Goulding is the CEO at Workvivo - an employee engagement and communication platform venture he co-founded in 2017 to create an engaging virtual workplace & replace the intranet. Workvivo’s growing 200% year-on-year & has over half a million users across more than 80 countries with 100% customer retention! Workvivo is backed by Zoom founder Eri…

Gary Brotman is the CEO at Secondmind - a UK start-up who've raised $51m from VCs like Amadeus, Atlantic Bridge & Passion Capital to help companies achieve sustainability through machine learning. We explored: Is building a purpose-driven culture and brand crucial for any business looking to become a market leader? How does Secondmind leverage ML t…

Yusuf Ozdalga is a Partner at QED Investors and a Board member at Fidel API, Wayflyer, GetGround, Capitalise, Weavr, and Rest Less. He’s also a Jiu Jitsu bronze medalist! During our interview we delved into mental health and addiction issues and the Operation Lighthouse initiative: After 1 of their Partners, Greg Mazanec, died from opiate addiction…