Mike speaks to Jothy Rosenberg an incorrigible entrepreneur who has sold 9 of his tech startups for millions of dollars each. In this episode, Jothy explains how he does it and how you can do the same.

During this episode, Jothy covers assessing the viability of your idea, how to get the attention of investors and raise funds, honing your pitch, self-financing, building a team, the impact of dilution on equity, and much more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Without product market fit your startup will fail.
• Product-based companies sell for multiples of 5 to 15 times revenue. Service companies typically sell for a multiple of 1.
• Use LinkedIn to find a lighthouse customer. An early adopter in desperate need of your solution who can afford to pay and will work with you.
• Launch big, invest in marketing.
• From day one, build your culture, that is how you attract your founder team.
• To be self-funded, start with a service, then build a product based on that.
• You can raise money before you make a single $.
• Approach the right type of funders at the right stages. Jothy explains how to handle JVs, seed funds, incubators, and more.
• Find investors on LinkedIn.
• Your pitch has to go beyond being good it has to tell a compelling story and include research and proof.

BEST MOMENTS

17:12 "Find a lighthouse customer … a kind of early adopter, who will work with you to make sure that what you're building solves their problem."

24:18 "We had this typical situation; we had this product and now we were looking for a problem and we never found one which was a disaster."

43.47 “You can raise money as a seed with a small foundational team, clear identification of a big opportunity and you don't need to yet be getting any revenue.”

45:12 "Don't just send a business plan to a VC."

1.05.43 “ I don't believe that in an early stage, anyone except the person who's got the vision and the most passion should deliver the pitch, but they can get help.”

1.13.15 “100% of nothing is still nothing… at the end of the day, the equity translates if you sell it.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.jothyrosenberg.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jothy

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tech-Startup-Toolkit-Launch-Strong/dp/1633438422

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distill practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Today, Mike talks with Maarten Ectors, an award-winning innovator in AI, Web3, and next-gen tech, known for launching the world’s first blockchain reinsurance solutions. They discuss the transformative impact of AI on society and the future of work. Including what developers, coders, and technical architects can do to position themselves now to take advantage of the wave of AI innovation and new technologies.

He also shares how AI is likely to impact the lives of less technical people like your parents and drastically change the way society works.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• AI is on the cusp of replacing millions more jobs across numerous industries e.g. robotaxis will make human drivers irrelevant.
• When you add robotics to AI, the transformative impact accelerates e.g. what happens to the food industry if we print our meat and fish?
• In a few years, we will have unlimited energy, which is what AI needs to explode and rapidly transform society.
• Work that requires human contact or where human contact enhances the experience is not likely to be eliminated by AI e.g. hairdressers.
• Think about what needs to change to make the new technology viable. They will need developers to create the framework to facilitate that change.
• Get involved in DevOps for AI and Cloud.
• Understand how to make models that get deployed on the Edge in the cloud and can be scaled out.
• Big companies who put together small teams to solve a specific problem as spin-off businesses succeed E.g. Amazon pizza teams.
• Most highly skilled work can be done gig style. AI could bring together a group of people with the right skills to solve a specific problem or build something like a super rocket. Once done, everyone moves on to another project.
• Generative AI is going to be a problem for coders but what it produces still needs to be evaluated and fixed by experts. That means you´ll still need coders.
• Technical architects are a vital part of AI technology development. Someone has to see the broader picture and make sure that is what gets delivered.
• AI speech recognition will transform lives in the next couple of years.
• Because AI is likely to greatly reduce the availability of work the structure of society must change radically e.g. universal income.

BEST MOMENTS

03:38 “The AI-enhanced worker will very quickly eat the market of the rest."

9:19 "Do something that will require human contact."

25.01 “A lot of companies now scale through technology, not through users, not through workers.

26.28 “They need teams that can do 500 different things in a small unit, not 500 people that are all the same.”

33.52 “The DevOps person that goes towards Edge or AI DevOps is going to have a lot longer runway than the person that just stays doing what they've always been doing.”

35.37 “Generative AI doesn't mean there will not be programmers, but I think the architects are going to become more important.”

36.42 “AI-enhanced experts is the model for the next five years afterward, it will depend.”

54.06 “If you don't have users adopting and an easy go-to-market, hence product market fit, technologies are relevant.”

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://candao.io/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mectors/

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distill practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each

Today, Mike speaks to Krista Neher about the increasingly critical subject of personal branding. Krista is an award-winning digital marketer, bestselling author, social media specialist, speaker, trainer & CEO.

Regardless of the tech work you do, how you present yourself makes a huge difference to the opportunities you attract. Your personal brand builds credibility and makes you attractive, so the information in this episode is critical to your success.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Your personal brand is who you are. The person people see when they meet you. Work with you, listen to you or experience your work. Be that face-to-face or online.
• Your brand needs to demonstrate to potential clients that you have what they need and something extra to offer.
• Think why would someone pick me over someone else?
• Look at how your competitors differentiate themselves.
• When building your personal brand online, focus on one channel.
• Listen closely to what others tell you about how they perceive you.
• You have to be memorable. If you don´t stand for something you stand for nothing, so nobody will remember you.
• Create a great elevator pitch for yourself.
• Be authentic. If people feel they can´t get to know you they won´t connect with you.
• Don´t feel fenced in by your brand. People expect you to evolve and pivot

BEST MOMENTS

O7:58 "What´s the reputation you are building for yourself that is unique? What sets you apart from others? – That´s the way to think of your brand."

08:19 "If you're an entrepreneur, are looking to get clients or grow your reputation externally, it's really about how people perceive you and being deliberate and consistent."

36:46 "The first is memorability. Which is specificity, simplicity and consistency."

36:52 "Authenticity. So, if people don't feel like they are getting to know you, they will not connect with you."

48:36 "Points of difference…. what are some meaningful differences that I would get with working with you than working with someone else?."

57.10 “Get your elevator speech down. Your elevator speech is what you say when you meet someone.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://launchyourself.com/

https://bootcampdigital.com

https://kristaneher.com

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Mike speaks with Adelina Chalmers the founder of Geek Whisperers. She helps CTOs, Heads of Engineering, and others to improve team performance. In her 20s, Adelina stopped working in human rights organisations when she realised, she could help people far more by working in tech.

Her mission is to transform engineers and their leaders. To do that they both need to know how to give and take feedback. Something that we are socially and biologically engineered to struggle with. Adelina explains how to unpick that and use feedback to transform our performance.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Those who work in tech have an incredibly powerful impact on people´s lives. The projects we work on really move the needle.
• Feedback is critical. Without it, nobody knows if they are doing a great job or not.
• Feedback is not a personal attack. Often, for biological and social reasons we see it that way, Adelina explains why and how to get past that feeling.
• Lean into feedback. Regardless of how you feel respond by saying “Tell me more”
• Think of feedback on your performance as being like the feedback you get from customers when developing products.
• Remote feedback is more difficult. Adelina explains how to get around this.
• For feedback to work well, the two people need to trust each other and have a proper connection. Remote teams need some face-to-face time.
• Tell people in advance why you need to speak to them. Don´t blindside them.
• Coach first if that does not work give feedback. Remember constant negative feedback wears people down.

BEST MOMENTS

02:11 "Giving feedback and receiving feedback is effectively how we all grow."

03:43 "When people ask for feedback, most people mean, please don´t hurt me, give me good feedback."

29:03 "If you think about growing, by default, you have to make mistakes, learn from

32:19 "My key tip would be to build a relationship of trust with this person."

50:06 "Coach them every time they make a mistake. And if the coaching doesn't work, then you can move a gear up to feedback."

1.00:00 "The business strategy tells you what you need to do with your tech strategy.”

ABOUT THE GUEST

https://www.geekwhisperer.co.uk/adelina-chalmers

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/alternative-st-sandwich-time-writing-adelina-chalmers

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge, and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Mike speaks to Michael Orant who is an entrepreneur, fractional CTO and racing driver. Today, they discuss fundraising, covering when to raise funds and how to talk to VCs, what to expect from them and spending the money strategically.

To do this, Michael shares several real-world examples. Over the years, he has played a significant role in helping several startups to raise money.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Even when investors are more risk-averse, you can still raise funds.
• Think about your exit and the exit for the investors and make that as attractive as possible.
• Accelerator events are a great way to find funders.
• Get a warm invite. Michael explains how to do that.
• Practice articulating the opportunities to different types of investors in a range of settings. Practice on friends and family, if they understand investors will too.,
• Be honest and realistic about what your business is worth and the potential of your idea.
• Model out the future, in particular, consider what future rounds of fundraising will look like. Do everything you can to avoid having to raise further funds.
• Remember you are inviting the investors into your business and will be working with them for the long term.
• Fundraising takes a long time, so plan ahead to avoid running out of cash before the funding arrives.
• Sometimes the VC will want to change the board and management team.
• Engage with the investors and set expectations.
• You will have to hire a lot of people fast, prepare early and empower people to recruit for their teams.

BEST MOMENTS

12:57 "You need people that will ground you or at least challenge your thinking so you can check your facts and numbers are right."

24:31 "Be transparent with everything. Let the skeletons out of the closet early."

34:35 "Think about cash conversion. And actually, what can we do to mitigate having to go for further investment rounds."

36:42 "You are inviting someone into your business, to be part of that business, do your due diligence on them."

54:33 "If you're looking for highly skilled roles, then there is an advantage of using niche recruiters."

42:45 – “You have to make sure that they're (VCs) buying into that plan that you've put forward, or you accept that you're going into their plan.”

57.11 – Don´t underestimate how exhausting fundraising can be.”

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

Mike speaks to Robbie Clutton a fractional CTO, who does pretty much anything engineering-related. Today, they discuss transitioning from being an individual contributor to taking on a leadership role. Looking at how to decide if this is right for you and what you can expect that new role to look like.

Robbie also shares some really practical tips to help you to coach, manage and develop your first team. He covers giving feedback, managing one-to-ones, building relationships, effectively managing up and much more.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Becoming a fractional CTO genuinely gives you control over how and when you work.
• To cover any lean times, have some cash behind you, reduce your spending and develop several income streams, e.g. coaching and advising.
• Not everyone can lead so try before you buy by taking on temporary leadership roles.
• Be wary of roles that require you to code but spend a lot of time managing people. You won´t be able to get into the necessary flow state to code well.
• Correct poor behaviour quickly.
• Creating a culture in which people can thrive is a leader´s No. 1 priority.
• Don´t protect your team from everything. They need to understand why things are needed in a certain way, if they don´t the hows they come up with may not work well.
• When asking for resources be clear about what you need and ask early.
• Consider using an external mentor. There is no bias in that relationship.
• The smartest people always ask for help.

BEST MOMENTS

04:21 "During school holidays, it's very easy for me to dial down the work."

14:07 "Before you take on any formal responsibility start looking for the informal ownership of things." (Robbie explaining how to work out if a leadership role is a good fit for you)

42:00 "There´s no way you´re gonna be good at leading people if you´re not able to have a courageous conversation and give course-correcting feedback."

54:19 "For managing out make sure what you´re asking for is clear and ask it kind of early."

RESOURCES

https://ctocraft.com/

Micheal Bungay Stainer - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/author/B002QK41GQ

Non-violent Communication - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nonviolent-Communication-Language-Life-Guides/dp/189200528X

The Leadership Pipeline - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Leadership-Pipeline-3rd-Developing-Leaders/dp/B0CYJ6NJZY

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.

For this episode, Mike´s guest is Pleo CTO, Meri Williams. They take an in-depth look at building high-performing, fully diverse, and inclusive teams, discuss how to attract and retain people from widely different backgrounds and create an environment in which they uncover and develop the innovative solutions that are so often missed by less diverse teams.

Meri has led both small and large teams for 17 different organisations. Including, P&G, Monza, MOO, M&S and several startups. So, the recruitment, training and retention strategies Meri shares here are highly practical.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• True inclusion is missing from most companies. People are rarely asked for their opinions, and they don´t feel they can be their true selves.
• If you only pay lip service to inclusivity people from diverse backgrounds just won´t apply.
• Hire people from different backgrounds whose life experience means they genuinely see things from a different angle.
• Go where people from diverse backgrounds train to find more candidates.
• Have a robust and effective onboarding process to improve retainment.
• Engineering managers need to want to and be capable of developing others.
• Tech leads need to be prepared to do the glue work e.g. refining processes
• Provide people you promote internally with leadership training and explain why they need to lead in a certain way.

BEST MOMENTS

06:50 "The first thing I do is go meet every team and I ask them, what are they proud of? What are they worried about? And if I had a magic wand, what should I do with it?" (How Mari decides which challenges to tackle first when starting a new leadership role)

35:43 "I think actual diversity, where people are from different backgrounds, different demographics, different life experiences is much more likely to lead to true diversity and true different thinking."

37:23 "Making it an environment where lots of different people can be themselves and still succeed is the litmus test for whether you've got the right to go and get those people who are different in the first place."

51:03 "As you get bigger, it becomes easier to attract people who are different, because there's now more chance that they're not the only one who's different."

EPISODE RESOURCES

https://www.linkedin.com/in/meriwilliams

https://leaddev.com/events

ABOUT THE HOST

Meet Mike, a seasoned tech entrepreneur and visionary with over two and a half decades of invaluable experience in founding and scaling successful tech start-ups. Mike brings a wealth of firsthand knowledge and a deep understanding of the challenges faced by entrepreneurs and tech professionals.

As a host, Mike is dedicated to sharing actionable insights, strategies, and stories gathered from conversations with industry leaders, innovators, and experts. With a remarkable ability to distil practical wisdom from guests, Mike curates engaging discussions that resonate with both aspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned professionals.

ABOUT THE SHOW

Welcome to Mastering Tech Growth, where we dive deep into the strategies, challenges, and triumphs of scaling tech-driven ventures. Join us as we explore the dynamic world of technology businesses, uncovering the secrets behind successful growth trajectories. Each episode brings you candid conversations with founders and industry experts, sharing invaluable insights, proven tactics, and real-life stories. Whether you're a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, discover the roadmap to navigating the complexities of scaling in the ever-evolving tech landscape.