Episodios

  • Social Media: What Not To Do If You Want Lasting Growth in 2025 with Tim O’Hearn
    Jun 24 2025
    For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Tim O'Hearn, a software engineer, former Black Hat growth practitioner, and the author of Framed a Villain's Perspective on Social Media. For many years, Tim’s been inside the system, building tools that successfully manipulated feeds, scaled fake social media engagement and exploited attention at a mass scale. It is fair to say Tim has his finger on the pulse when it comes to what works on social media and what doesn´t. Yet, the approach he now advocates may surprise you. KEY TAKEAWAYS Mastering tech growth means capturing as much of the audience as is feasible Understand the difference between a founder brand and a business brand and don´t mix the two. Stop chasing virality. Searcher intent matters more than you think. It´s now almost impossible to reverse engineer and beat the algorithm. If you try, it raises black flags. Most social media platforms do not allow the use of automation tools; some can even be illegal. Some social media platforms shadow ban you which makes you less visible when they see guidelines being breached. You will have a trust score on social media. Tim explains how to protect that score. Taking the time you normally spend scrolling through socials and using it to tackle a big project is an incredibly powerful way to step up your game. Personalised outreach works; it outstrips everything else. Algorithm engineers are the new lobbyists. BEST MOMENTS 5.15 - "It's becoming surprisingly easy to start something. And then it becomes this game of attention online." 15.51 - "Often times chasing it (virality) means compromising the values of your brand." 21.00 - "Generative AI is a big problem." 36.07 "To my knowledge, in 2025 automation, in the general sense, is forbidden by most social media platforms." 53.08 "Even for us, we don't have a great way of identifying shadow bans as they happen." 55.17 "If you try to grey hat or black hat, it might just lead to you losing all your efforts to grow that account." 1.15.15 "That same (anti-terrorism) technology could very easily be used for mass censorship or surveillance of dissenting opinions. I think that is happening. I just don't know to what extent.” 1.26.35 "Personalized outreach is really, really important." 1.39.40 "An email list is the greatest safeguard against a platform banning you, or you getting de-platformed." If you enjoyed the show, please do me a favour - Hit that subscribe button and send me your growth challenges at https://masteringtechgrowth.com I really want to know what you're working on and what keeps you up at night. ABOUT THE GUEST Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Framed-Villains-Perspective-Social-Media-ebook/dp/B0DW2X8YSK https://www.linkedin.com/in/tohearn 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. This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
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    1 h y 44 m
  • Flipping the script on how tech startups are built with Amir Barsoum
    Jun 18 2025
    For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Amir Barsoum, who is the founder or co-founder of multiple highly successful businesses including Vezeeta, a leading digital healthcare platform, and In-Vitro Capital. Instead of looking for founders to invest in, Amir starts with a problem, looks for a solution, finds the right experts to solve that problem, and then builds the company. Amir walks us through how this works, why most people get things wrong and what it takes to build scalable AI-powered companies from scratch. If you enjoyed the show, please do me a favour - hit that subscribe button and send me your growth challenges at https://masteringtechgrowth.com . I really want to know what you're working on and what keeps you up at night. KEY TAKEAWAYS Building products that customers are almost compelled to pick is key to mastering tech growth. Referrals are rocket fuel. You can’t beat others speaking enthusiastically about how your product solved their problems. Find solutions for boring industries and niche down. There are lots of opportunities and far less competition. Invest time and money into validating the problem before developing a solution. The CEO must be strong in sales or engineering. Sales focuses on building relationships with customers, fully understanding their problems and the practicality of your solution. The engineer has a strong knowledge, often hands on, of the problem and the necessary expertise to identify, influence and deliver the solution. Access to a strong base of clients and customers is essential. Track your cash flow every day. AI will massively grow markets, which is why it won´t cause unemployment. AI agents will need to be managed. Build AI with tomorrow´s far lower costs in mind. Every employee should be doing outreach every day. They need contact with the market. BEST MOMENTS "Amir starts with an idea, a solution to a problem and only then finds the right experts to deliver it and turn it into a company." "The real growth comes from referrals." "A good CEO is either sales or engineer, anything else to us is a waste of time and effort." "Sales is the capacity to build bridges with your clients." "Take an LLM, train it on your own information and data, so the decisions it will be making will be without the potential for hallucination." "You structure the data in a way that feeds your AI agents, so you end up with better agents." "We´re very generous with the equity of a hired CEO and we call them founder." "They´re not just moving with the herd …. They're very good leaders." ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirmbarsoum jobs@invitrocapital.com info@invitrocapital.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. This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
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    1 h y 19 m
  • Process Mapping Yourself Away From Organisational Complexity and Chaos with Michael Schank
    Jun 10 2025
    For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Michael Schank, the founder of Process Inventory Advisors and the author of Digital Transformation Success. For over two decades, Michael has helped companies clean up the way they work so they can grow without the chaos. Today, Michael walks us through his process and inventory framework. He breaks down the simple steps most startups skip which lead to small bits of waste within their processes that have a huge impact on their growth. KEY TAKEAWAYS If you don´t map your processes you are wasting a huge amount of time, energy and money. Start by process mapping one small area of your business. Then expand from there. Michael shares his process mapping technique in detail. Process mapping reveals everything that a company does and aligns all areas of the business. Lead times cripple businesses, and process mapping reveals these bottlenecks and waste. You will be surprised by the overlap between teams and misalignment. Involving every single person in process mapping actively encourages innovation and hugely improves engagement at all levels. Complex environments lead to a lack of agility. Process mapping ensures you use the fewest tools and the right ones. Once you know your processes, you can immediately see what can be automated. Documented processes enable you to train AI on how your business really works and ensures you do not feed AI garbage data. AI hallucination is still an issue, so you have to double check it. Startups need to be more intentional about how they grow. BEST MOMENTS 1.29 "Small bits of waste in processes can have a huge impact on growth." 14.21 "It all has to look and feel the same, so that you can read a process inventory for any group without needing a decoder ring." 27.25 "There's democratic innovation, where you recognize that every employee has some level of expertise in what they do, and if you can tap into that, you drive innovation into every process.” 41.52 "Having that full map gives you all the details you need to choose the right processes to automate." 42.38 "AI delivers its biggest benefits when built on structured and consistent operational data. Otherwise, it amplifies inconsistencies." 1.01.15 "If you make all the data transparent, and you make the accountability very strong, now you're distributing it across everybody." If you enjoyed the show, please do me a favour - hit that subscribe button and send me your growth challenges at https://masteringtechgrowth.com . I really want to know what you're working on and what keeps you up at night. GUEST'S LINKS LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/michael-schank My book - https://a.co/d/7WAR6qa My website - ProcessInventory.com ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-schank https://processinventory.com Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Transformation-Success-Achieving-Delivering-ebook/dp/B0CKSF1Z94 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. This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
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    1 h y 8 m
  • What are VCs Really Looking For? with Alexandra Nicoletti
    Jun 3 2025
    Do you want to know what separates the startups that get funded from the ones that don´t? Today, Mike is joined by Alexandra Nicoletti, a partner at Camber Creek, one of the leading VC firms. Prior to this, Alexandra was in real estate and private equity at Apollo and worked in investment banking at Goldman Sachs. Alexandra has seen every version of a pitch you can imagine. Today she breaks down exactly how to target the right investors, prepare a winning pitch, deliver it and follow up. KEY TAKEAWAYS Mastering Tech Growth is about continually optimising the growth of your business. VCs now focus more on how strong the founding team is than they do on the product idea. Growth at all costs is no longer viable. Be clear about what your customer´s pain point is and why you decided there was money to be made from solving it. Tool change is painful for corporations. Demonstrate that what you offer represents an improvement that makes it worth going through that pain. Your investors become your partners, so it is vital they are a good fit. It´s no longer possible to ride the AI wave, it´s becoming old. Head in the cloud pitches don´t work. Be realistic and honest. Clearly identify who your customer will be. Pre-revenue startups can still raise funds. User testing, social proof and pilots are strong signs of traction. Briefly outline your go to market strategy during the pitch. If you can´t convince a VC they will not believe you can sell to a customer. BEST MOMENTS 2:27 "Every decision comes with a trade-off, particularly in the early stages." 7.00 “What VCs are looking for right now is smart growth. It's not growth at all costs.” 9:55 "At the end of the day, we're investing in the people. Less so the product." 10.22 "VCs will invest in a B+ idea with an A+ founding team versus an A+ idea, with a B+ founding team." 24.21 "We don’t need more generic wrappers for ChatGPT. What we do need is fresh perspectives….people doing things differently. " 32.05 "If you can’t sell to an investor, how will you sell to a customer?" 34.33 “Having put some thought into things like go to market is really important.” 41.41 "Founder relationships are a key reason why companies run into issues down the road.” 59.53 "Saying you're 100% going to IPO in five years … that is a red flag." 1.05.43 “I do not want to spend time watching a video demo of the product.” 1.14.53 “I want to know how much you're spending and what you're spending it on.” If you enjoyed the show, please do me a favour - hit that subscribe button and send me your growth challenges at https://masteringtechgrowth.com . I really want to know what you're working on and what keeps you up at night. ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-nicoletti-a205ab11 https://cambercreek.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/camber-creek/ 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. This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
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    1 h y 22 m
  • Zero Ad Spend, Maximum Growth: How Ben Sharf Built Platter Using Founder-Led Content
    May 27 2025
    If you're serious about scaling without relying on paid ads, this episode is for you. Today, Mike is joined by Ben Sharf, co-founder of Platter, creator of 160+ Shopify storefronts, angel investor, and host of Turning Pro. He breaks down how shifting from company marketing to founder-led storytelling can be your biggest growth hack. Founders don’t win because their posts are perfect—or because they pour money into ads. They win because people buy from people, not logos. In 2025, founder-led content is the fastest, leanest way to build trust, drive growth, and scale—without breaking the bank. Ben shares how he did exactly that. KEY TAKEAWAYS Tech growth is about figuring out what you are good at and leaning into it. That´s your superpower. Ben scaled Platter without spending $1 on ads and with zero cold calling. People buy from people, not logos, founder led content is the fastest, most sustainable way to build trust, attract customers and scale. The story needs to be authentic, resonate and must be told by the founder themselves. People forget quickly. They only remember your last couple of posts. You have to post consistently to reinforce your message. Some of your biggest future customers will be silently following you. A content led strategy requires a lot of touch points before people buy. Lead with value, build a relationship and trust. Most of your content should not be salesy. To be memorable use the contrarian perspective. If you are selling to other businesses, focus on LinkedIn. Engage with people who engage with your posts. BEST MOMENTS 00.37 “People buy from people, not logos. In 2025, founder led content is the fastest, most sustainable way to build trust, attract customers and scale.” 03:12 "We´ve never spent $1 on an ad yet." 8:24 "Focus on what you're good at. Get really good at it and find someone else to do the things you're not good at." 15:00 " 99% of the time people don´t get started (with social media) because they're scared of being judged by others." 16.40 “People follow founders who post content because they fall in love with their story and they want to support them and become an advocate for them.” 17.10 “It takes a couple of seconds to break the trust, but it takes years to build it.” 32.18 “We've landed some of our largest investors and some of our best hires all through founder led content.” 48.00 “If you're asking, and it's just not happening it could simply be because you're not solving problems for people.” 51.25 “Don't overthink it. Start sharing and the quality will come with iteration.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-sharf-b554a5b3 https://www.platter.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. https://masteringtechgrowth.com challenges@masteringtechgrowth.com This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
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    54 m
  • How to Scale as a Solopreneur Without a Team by Leveraging AI with Mike Todasco
    May 20 2025
    For today´s episode, Mike is joined by Mike Todasco a visiting fellow at San Diego State University and former director of Innovation at PayPal. Mike holds over 100 patents and has a passion for leveraging AI to get things done fast. If you are a solopreneur who wants to scale quickly without building a team, this episode is very much for you. KEY TAKEAWAYS AI genuinely can super charge your business. Experiment to get the most out of AI. When it comes to mastering tech growth experimentation is key. According to McKenzie, businesses can use AI to eliminate 60 to 70% of their tasks. Use an AI bracelet to record what you do each day. Eliminate the tasks that are no longer necessary and aim to automate the rest. Use tools like make.com to start automating app-based tasks. It may take time to get each task automation to work, so you need to be persistent. You can outline a task to Zapier, and it will create a workflow of automation for you to tweak. Find a space or activity that lets you switch off fully and really think e.g. running or driving. That´s when the ideas flow. Pick an AI tool and go with it, learn it throughly. Once you´ve done that you will be able to master other AI tools far faster. Automate tasks that are expensive to outsource. Mike shares some surprising use cases. Empower the people who work for you with AI tools. Explore Notebook LLM for content creation. It relies solely on the sources you give it. Use reinforcement learning to get the most out of AI. The more feedback you give it the better. ChatGPT can now remember your previous chats, which means it can now learn about you, your preferences, what you are working, the language you like to use and more. Use AI in your day-to-day life e.g. to create your training routines BEST MOMENTS 00.57 "The majority of solopreneurs use AI without a system, no workflow, no structure, no AI leverage." 5.23 "Embrace your inner child, you need to experiment, you need to try stuff, you need to fail. That´s how you work with these AI tools." 13.08 "If you are not occasionally adding steps back into your processes that means you are not removing enough." 26.24 “The thing that kills ideation is having a phone. You just think oh god I´m so bored, I need to go on TikTok.” 38.26 “Just pick one AI tool and go with it. All of them are so darn good.” 52.16 “According to MIT Sloan, AI systems perform much better when they are treated as collaboration partners.” 1.02.16 “Find the tasks which are low hanging fruits, quick wins, which should not be done by hand.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/todasco https://www.bee.computer – AI bracelet 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. This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
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    1 h y 5 m
  • Staying Visible in the World of AI Search and Invisible Clicks with Quentin de Quelen
    May 13 2025
    Today, Mike is joined by Quentin de Quelen the CEO and cofounder of Meilisearch, one of the fastest growing open-source search engines, which can easily be integrated into websites and applications. Quentin helps companies create fast, customisable, typo-proof search experiences. Today, for research, 46% of Gen Z prefer Instagram and TikTok. YouTube is now the go-to for tutorials and reviews, while ChatGPT, Perplexity, Voice Assistant, etc. are also popular. In an environment like that, you have to ask yourself, "How are people going to find me and find what they need from me?" This episode has the answers. KEY TAKEAWAYS How people search and the evolution of the tools they use changes monthly. Most of the time, you can still impact how you appear in the various search interfaces. Consumers are increasingly in discovery mode; they are no longer simply looking for one specific thing. E.g. They are less likely to type in a specific trainer; they want to know what is available and choose from there. Meilisearch is very good at ascertaining the intent of the search and delivering results based on that. The structure of our website data will change to facilitate LLMs, Quentin explains why MCPs are likely to play a role. Having very intentional pages on your website helps to better control what content ChatGPT etc uses to answer users’ questions. There is very little difference between how you target voice searches and LLM searches, but the response needs to differ. To glean invaluable information about your customers, analyse all of your user queries and their search intent. Meilisearch is particularly good for this. Use your query results to create better adaptive content. Keep your data clean to make it easier to search. To build user trust, be transparent and provide sources. Schema still helps to organize data. Consider using LLM.txt. In the LLM age, c**p site content is even more damaging. Use as many formats as possible for your content, including video. BEST MOMENTS 3:42 "Search, today, is moving quite fast…now it´s changing every month." 6:48 "Whatever the medium, there is always transcription to a final search that will be made." 14:07 "You don´t want to let ChatGPT call your website, find whatever results and showcase it all to users." 21:44 "One intent, one page…works best." 28.33 “Know when not to answer.” 44.11 “People can choose whatever model they prefer …it’s easier to be trusted.” 50.13 “Think about what your user expects and manage your data to look like what your user expects.” 57.01 “Split your pages into relevant segments.” 1.07.25 “Write content that is mindful, content people want to read.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.meilisearch.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. This Podcast has been brought to you by Disruptive Media. https://disruptivemedia.co.uk/
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    1 h y 12 m
  • How to Plan for 10x Growth Without Over Engineering with Marcus Fontoura
    May 6 2025
    For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Marcus Fontoura, Azure Core CTO, Technical Fellow at Microsoft, holder of 50 patents and the author of A Platform Mindset. Marcus is certainly a man who knows how to scale tech without breaking it. If your startup is taking off so fast that you can’t keep up or are drowning in bugs and relying on hot fixes and workarounds to hold things together, this episode is for you. It teaches you how to stop scaling your technical debt and redirect your energy and resources into scaling success. KEY TAKEAWAYS Marcus helped to shape some of the planet´s fastest scaling systems, including Google and Yahoo. Disconnected systems slow you down more than missing features. Decide on the technology, platforms, and tools early and get everyone to use them. When you tell developers which tools they will use from day 1 it frees up bandwidth for them to create faster and avoids resentment when you have no choice but to standardise the platforms used. Recognise when it is time to move from the validation stage to the professionalisation stage. Invest in infrastructure and tools that are easy to scale as demand rises. Avoid over engineering. Make sure all of your systems integrate to avoid silos and repeating work. Marcus explains how. Most startups (75%) fail because they scale too fast. On average, a day per week per developer is wasted fixing poorly planned and implemented code etc. Creating a high performing team culture is the key to fast and efficient growth. People don´t change easily that is why you need to cultivate sound cultural values, communication, trust, collaboration, willingness to take feedback etc. Protect your company values even when hyper scaling. Don’t hire brilliant jerks, they pull everyone down. Cultural skills are hard to teach, but most tech skills can be taught in months. The CEO needs to be a good role model. Build trust and collaboration between teams. BEST MOMENTS 1:09 "The fix? It starts with the platform mindset." 4:30 "Tech growth equals preparing for scaling." 16.33 "Developers waste 23% of their time…reworking bad past solutions." 30.00 "Recognise what you don´t know and pull in people who can actually help you." 43.12 "Understand the phase you are in… and scale accordingly." 50.11 "Any system you build should have inbound and outbound APIs." 54.25 "The culture enables a lot of efficiency when teams trust each other." 1.08.11 "When you are ready for hyper growth…hire the best talent you can get." 1.16.30 “Have a growth mindset to build a culture to leverage platforms for impact.” ABOUT THE GUEST https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcusfontoura Multipliers Book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Liz-Wiseman/author/B00369WNUW Ideal Team Member - https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Patrick-Lencioni/author/B001ILFMB2 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.
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    1 h y 19 m