Afleveringen
-
For today’s episode, Mike is joined by Jonathan Mast, the founder of White Beard Strategies. He is a leading voice in AI prompting mastery with over 400,000 followers. Jonathan has helped 1000s of business owners and entrepreneurs unlock AI's full potential using his structured four-step framework. Enabling some of them to experience a 5,000% uptick in their ROI.
This episode is a must listen if you want to stop wasting time with bad AI outputs and start getting results that actually move the needle.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Technology is there to be leveraged to make your life and that of others better. Adding value for your customer is where the growth is. Most people are using AI wrong and blaming the tool when they get poor results. AI can´t read your mind, you need to give it context and invite it to ask you for clarification. Give AI an avatar to write as e.g. You are an expert copywriter who specialises in …. One prompt is rarely enough, you need to provide a framework e.g. To write a book, you need to provide hundreds of prompts. It is still hard to get AI to only use the body of knowledge you give it to create content. Mike shares his method for doing this. AI works with a limited amount of memory, so if you give it too many instructions in one go, it soon loses the thread and goes off track. Johnathan shares several ways to get around usage caps and gain access to all of the AI models. Make using AI a win for your team. Learn how to leverage AI. Doing so turns you into a sought-after employee. Do something new each day with AI. To overcome the hallucinations issue. Trust, but verify. When brainstorming with AI, use your voice. Weirdly, you get much better results. It is also good at transcribing. AI does a great job of organizing and contextualizing what is sometimes a very random stream of thought. The fastest way to learn AI is to use it consistently.BEST MOMENTS
00:55 "It´s not AI that´s broken, it´s your prompts."
7:12 "Give the AI permission to ask you clarifying questions.."
21.15 “If we give it too many things to do, it's simply not going to follow through on that… it works best in a prompt if we give it 1, 2 maybe 3 things.”
38.59 ”When you're rolling it out at first, make it a win for your team, not just a win for the company.”
44.29 “Trust but verify.”
46.03 “By giving it (AI) permission to ask you questions, it'll avoid most of those hallucinations.”
51.18 “Have a conversation with AI. Don't expect to give it one prompt and get perfection.”
53.17 “We make too many assumptions that AI will figure it out. In other words, we don't give it enough context.”
57.53 “We are not at a point, nor do I see us ever getting to a point, where AI is that proverbial money tree in the backyard.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
Personal Website: https://jonathanmast.com
White Beard Strategies: https://whitebeardstrategies.com
AI Prompting Mastery: https://www.facebook.com/groups/aipromptsforentrepreneurs/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathanjmast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanjmast
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@jonathanmast_withai
Twitter: https://twitter.com/jonathanmast
Threads: https://threads.net/@jonathanmast
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonathanmast/
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.
-
Mike speaks to Aditya Jain, the co-founder of Passion Fruit and a leading SEO growth strategist who has helped companies move beyond vanity metrics and generate income from their SEO efforts. They discuss why most businesses get SEO wrong and spend too long chasing rankings instead of revenue. Many are targeting high volume low intent keywords.
Aditya Jain is going to change the way you think about and use SEO. He provides truly practical advice that works in the modern marketplace. Including how to use AI to improve targeting and speed up content creation and data analysis.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Companies waste months chasing rankings instead of revenue by optimizing for high volume, low intent keywords that never lead to sales. Position yourself to solve your customer’s pain point and target those in your SEO. Regularly review this, Aditya shares some of the tools and framework he uses. Ask your customers what their problems are. Use Aditya´s method to ensure you get honest answers and insights. When it comes to building your website, your North Star is matching user intent Your pages also need to be search engine and AI LLMs (e.g. ChatGPT and Perplexity) friendly. If they are not, your content will not be found online. Write with the intent of answering your customer´s questions, especially when using AI. If you don´t, you will get a high bounce rate, and your traffic will crash. Measure how each page is performing, including the sales generated. Use SEMrush, it is a cheap and quick way to get started. AI enables you to dig deeper into your data and sometimes that of your competitors. Don´t just follow trends, you need to focus on what you really do and want to do.BEST MOMENTS
0:18 "High traffic doesn't pay the bills, conversions do."
00:28 "Understand which keywords actually drive revenue and how to adjust SEO in real time to capture more business."
2:24 "What drives growth is your customer’s pain point, figure that out and position yourself to solve that problem."
7:40 "We actually have a living, breathing document of all the common questions and concerns etc that our customers have."
10:16 "90% of pages receive no organic traffic because they optimise for broad, low intent keywords."
13:28 "Your North Star is not just revenue, it’s actually – am I matching my user's intent and am I building topical authority?"
15:10 "The readability of your code base, etc., is increasingly important."
33.10 "Any marketing strategy that involves producing content or doing SEO just comes down to delivering on customer needs.”
50.17 “Reviewing the data actually just tells you what type of customers want you, and then you choose, is this a customer I actually want?”
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aditya-j-985a92108/
https://www.getpassionfruit.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.
-
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
-
Mike speaks to Peter Kaliuzhny, the founder of GetSales.io, who is an expert on B2B sales. He has closed numerous six figure deals with Fortune 100 companies. Peter leverages LinkedIn and can turn any profile into a lead generation machine, which is free to use.
Peter explains how to optimise your LinkedIn profile, create break-through first connection messages and generate inbound profile links. He shares how to understand your customers and use that knowledge to generate massive leads and sales.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Greatly boost your earning potential by creating LinkedIn content that showcases your expertise. LinkedIn is a powerful lead generation and sales tool, not just a place to find a job. Tech growth is about leveraging technology to get better results and generate sales. LinkedIn marketing is free. Optimise your LinkedIn profile to gain 30% more views and 3x more engagement. An effective profile reflects your values, your goals and outlines how you can help. LinkedIn marketing is not about spammy DMs that will get you blocked. Make true connections and turn those relationships into sales. Peter doesn’t use LinkedIn SEO – he explains why. Actively drive inbound links to your profile. Peter explains how. Consistently create high-quality content that solves your customer´s pain. Be careful when using automation with LinkedIn. Peter shares how to do it properly. Start slowly and use the same IP. You have seconds to make a positive first impression. Peter shares how to compose your first message. AI can be helpful when creating your initial messages. Humour triggers emotions which helps build a connection. Personalise your message and make it truly relevant to your prospect. Ask people you already know well who they think might be interested in your service. Regularly review and re-balance your network.BEST MOMENTS
1:00 "Master the art of safe and effective LinkedIn outreach."
8:50 "Test, see how the conversation goes…. Don't just pitch something right away, explore it instead."
14:37 "Really connect … if you want to sell, you never sell. You have to think about how you can help them resolve their problem."
15.05 “Optimise your profile, fine tune it so that it is aligned with your goals.”
27.02 “Post really good content, consistently. content that helps them to solve that pain.”
31.46 “You have to identify those leads and understand what you really want …once you do that, you can go for automation.”
48.01 “Never send a wall of text.”
59.29 “Don't ask for a call.”
1.11.03 “Create content related to your job, to your expertise, it is super cool.. you increase the value of yourself….”
1.11.18 “They will be paying you more later on, if you show your expertise.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaliuzhnypeter
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.
-
Today, Mike is joined by Sabir Semerkant, a top E-commerce growth strategist, with 25+ years of experience. Over the years he has helped brands like Coca Cola, Canon and Tommy Hilfiger to achieve massive growth. Sabir has turned that expertise into his 8D Method - a step-by-step framework for unlocking scalable, profitable e-commerce growth. His rapid 2x program has helped brands grow by an average of 108% in just 21 days
In this episode, Sabir breaks down pricing, marketing, product research and profitability strategies that will transform your online business. He also shares what not to do, his e-commerce sins.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
90% of e-commerce startups fail within 120 days. Sabir knows why and how to stop that from happening to you. Be sceptical, there are a lot of scammers actively selling things that will kill your business e.g., toxic backlinks that will mean your business disappears from the search results. Sabir teaches his students to take care of all of the 8 dimensions an E-commerce business needs. Step 1 is optimising your site for customer attention. You have 1.7 seconds to stop the scroll. Landing page speed is critical. Optimise it for your market and the devices they use. Be laser focused and tackle one vital thing at a time. After addressing customer attention, your bestselling product landing pages are next. Master marketing across multiple platforms. Use your data to understand your customers and turn them into repeat buyers. You need to get people to buy from you at least once every 6 months. Your product pages need to be optimized structurally, for SEO and content. For e-commerce, SEO is vital. You have to put your face on your brand and tell your story. Couponing works, but constantly using promos will bankrupt you. Even small incremental improvements can have a massive cumulative impact, e.g. If you improve by 40% your sales actually increase 3x.BEST MOMENTS
00:39 "E-commerce in 2025 is a battlefield."
02.14 "Tech actually is the thing that helps you elevate and accelerate your growth profitably."
13:25 "As an entrepreneur, you need to have a healthy dose of scepticism.."
21:00 “Don't dwell in the past, … the realities of 2025, are very different from the realities of 2020, and 2022 ."
30.00 “What is the consumer attention span in 2025? - 1.7 seconds.”
41.03 “Most Shopify owners don't know the behaviour of their consumers.”
54.30 “If you're not correcting these problems, it's de-ranking you.”
1.01.36 “When you are doing couponing to that extent, you're robbing yourself of your future.”
1.20.23 “I'm Mr. Miyagi … I'm telling you how to wax on, wax off.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://growthbysabir.com/masteringtechgrowth
Harvard Business School article - https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=62855
https://www.luckyorange.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.
-
Mike speaks to Pranav Dalal founder and CEO of Office Beacon, a leader in remote staffing solutions that has grown the company from just five employees in 2001 to 5,500+, without any VC funding. He and Mike talk about how to identify your competitive advantage, leverage it, and how to automate successfully. They also discuss how to create an irresistible hook to break through the noise and get your conversion rate into double figures.
Pranav also explains how you can try Office Beacon´s fully managed remote staffing free of charge for an entire month.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Businesses that increase customer retention by 5% can boost profits by 25 to 95%. Service is just different levels of speed and price - you can get that anywhere. You've really got to think about those unique things that you can provide. That is your competitive advantage. Your hook has to be unique. If you use the same software as others, your email and LinkedIn titles will look the same as theirs and not get opened. When your hook is right your conversion rate will be in double figures instead of 1 or 2%. Businesses that automate at least 30% of their sales operations experience higher scalability and profitability. But automate gradually. Focus on building trust with your consumers. At Office Beacon, they only automate if they can get payback within a year or so. Work with customers as you make changes, test carefully and roll out gradually. To master tech growth, stay on top of trends and understand how the global climate could affect your business model. Pranav shares how he does this using his Horizon method.BEST MOMENTS
1:54 "Business leaders need to make sure that they stay aligned with their vision, along with industry and consumer trends."
5.45 "Businesses should be looking forward and asking how we gonna position ourselves within the market."
16.17 “It's just different levels of service, speed and price that you can get anywhere. You've really got to think about those unique things that you provide.”
31.49 “Make your initial messaging as short as possible.”
37.59 “Don't invest in automation or big technology until you're sure that that process is ready for it.”
45.14 “The biggest mistake I see is that business owners look at the sales funnel as just a transaction. What you're actually selling as a business is trust.”
1.08.48 “We are hiring top talent in these countries and our pricing is in the range of providing at least a 50% ROI to customers here in the US.”
1.09.19 “If they want to try out our service, we'll give them one month free to test it out (Office Beacon).” – how to sign up is explained
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.officebeacon.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/officebeacon/
https://www.facebook.com/officebeacon
https://www.instagram.com/officebeacon/
Blue Ocean Strategy - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blue-Ocean-Strategy-Expanded-Uncontested/dp/1625274491
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.
-
Mike is joined today by Katrena Friel to discuss how to turn your expertise into 7 new streams of income. Katrena is a business mentor, TEDx speaker and award-winning author who has spent 25 years helping professionals turn their skills into thriving businesses that give them real freedom.
Katrena reveals how you can turn what you know into 7 new income streams and do so within the next 90 days.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Personal growth is the powerhouse behind any business growth. Whether you are actively developing it or not, you have a personal brand. People already have an opinion about who you are. Your brand walks in the door before you. Having a strong personal brand does not require perfection. To achieve that you would need to constantly wear a mask. That is exhausting, so you need to be authentic. Before you can be yourself, you need to know who you are. When deciding what to change, focus on what is causing the most pain. Leverage one on one contact opportunities to make true connections that turn into investments and sales. Teach what you know through books, training, coaching, mentoring, facilitating and consulting. Ideally, you want to take people through each of those formats. Writing a book does a lot of the heavy lifting for you and it is not that difficult to write. Use your book to get on stage and connect with people who will buy your course and hire you as a coach, mentor or consultant. Offering a free discovery session is a highly effective way of attracting coaching and mentoring clients. Katrena explains the difference between being a trainer, coach, mentor, facilitator and consultant. Following Katrena´s approach you can publish your book and set yourself up as a public speaker, coach, mentor and more in just 90 days.BEST MOMENTS
2.18 "Personal development is just as important as professional development."
3.55 "Tech people are missing the people piece."
10.30 "Your brand is out there and it's there in their perception of you. That's happening regardless.”
13.55 "To hold that mask up of perfection is burnout waiting to happen."
15.21 "The more authentic you are, the more endearing you become."
34.48 “Speak to educate. Don't speak to sell or market yourself, be genuine, authentic, real, and your tribe will find you and connect.”
41.27 “The book still has gravitas, you're not the expert, until you've got a book.”
51.03 “Create a signature program for people, one that creates transformation. An end-to-end solution.”
55.30 “These online programs just aren't cutting it. People want personalised.”
1.04.38 “You need to mentor people, and other times you need to facilitate some sort of change.”
1.23.43 “I just teach you the bit that you need to know and when to do it.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.becomingtheexpert.com.au
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.
-
For this episode, Mike sits down with Jade Pruett, an award-winning SEO specialist and founder of HelloSEO, with an impressive client list that includes CNN and Business Insider. She uses AI to create authentic and effective content. Doing so in a fast and effective way that was just not possible pre-AI. She shares several in-depth techniques that you can start using immediately.
Learn how to turn AI from a shortcut into a secret weapon for building trust and winning customers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Truly understanding your customer´s pain points is key to mastering tech growth. SEO is still essential for reaching customers online. AI is making it far easier to write content that appeals to the right type of potential customers, while also pleasing the ranking algorithms. Google and other algorithms prioritise content created by Experts that have Authority and are Trusted (EAT). Jade explains how to leverage this. When you give AI an exclusive body of research to work from, it produces unique and more accurate content. Re-hashing what the AI finds online isn´t enough. Jade shares a keyword research technique she uses to better understand the users pain points and the questions they need answered. You always have to edit what AI produces. If you publish AI content you will break trust with the reader and Google. Learn how to use canonical links. SEO has a better ROI than most lead generation. You have to constantly produce new content. Authentic backlinks and digital PR will boost your ranking. Use your network to create guest post backlinks. Podcast backlinks are powerful. Track and understand your metrics on all platforms. AI will potentially replace traditional search engines. You need to evolve.BEST MOMENTS
00:35 "Using AI the wrong way can hurt your credibility and waste your time… but when used right, AI generated content can become your secret weapon."
1:58 "Really understand your users, what their pain points are… interview your users."
8:32 "EAT… Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, that's what Google is looking for."
10:01 "We increased her traffic by 400%, in a month."
19:34 "There's no one prompt you can put in and get something great … it is time consuming."
22.08 “You want to be pulling from your own information, otherwise, you're just getting information that already exists online.”
25.52 “Breaking trust with your users .. is going to hurt you in the rankings.”
40.56 “You never want to stop maintaining your SEO processes …it´s like watering a plant.”
43.41 “There´s no quick fix to backlinks.”
50.22 “Google Analytics is going to give you more than you need, and it's free.”
55.53 “By the time it's gone through human hands, you can't tell that that AI had a part in it.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
SEO is Jade's superpower. A skilled SEO Specialist, she has empowered hundreds of brands and businesses to gain visibility in Google and connect with their ideal clients. As the Founder of HelloSEO, Jade works 1:1 with small businesses to develop SEO strategies and achieve killer ROIs. Her client partnerships are customer-driven, insight-led, and fully transparent. Empowering businesses to grow and flourish never gets old. With Jade, you don’t just get an SEO specialist. You get a long-term brand advocate and support system.
https://helloseo.com/seo-report-card-tool
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.
-
Mike speaks to Eran Friendinger the cofounder and CTO of Voyantis, a company that helps businesses grow using AI. Including big brands like Lennar, Miro, and Figma that have used his strategies to get 20 to 50% better results from running their ads.
Scaling in 2025 isn't about doing more. It's about working smarter with AI. If you're not using AI to help you, you're wasting time and money while your competitors are speeding ahead - The right AI deployed in the right way helps you to make you better decisions and predict what your customers want. Freeing up your time to focus on what really matters.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Companies that foster data driven culture are 3x times more likely to outperform competitors. Understanding the right KPI to measure an outcome is essential. If you are not measuring the right thing the insights will be worthless. Budget for experimenting with AI. Set your company culture up to accept and work with AI and to be data driven. AI can be used as a natural extension to your gut feeling, your intuition. You can´t effectively crunch the data to confirm that gut feeling, AI does it in seconds. Predictive analytics works for every industry. You have to spend money on working out how to use AI in your company. At some stage the data pipeline will break, and the AI will fail. You have to monitor output, spot issues, have contingencies and fix things fast. You can tell AI to write 100 SQL queries, show you the results and highlight which ones are most interesting. Automating business processes can reduce operational costs by 30%. AI is good at running marketing campaigns, but it needs some human input. Providing Google and Meta with as much consolidation information as possible will improve your campaigns. AI is great for customer support, but make sure it knows when to send the person to a human.BEST MOMENTS
00:40 "If you're not using AI to help, you're wasting time and money while your competitors are speeding ahead.."
5:57 "We were in the dark and we had a flashlight, and we were looking for those interesting nuggets of data points or KPIs, and then AI just turned on the light."
6.58 "AI could be the missing link to scaling smarter, not harder."
15:12 "Choose what's important to your business."
22.25 "The data will break. Don't expect that it is going to continue performing… Do some risk management."
32.17 “You can create automations by sending the right feedback to the AI."
42.22 "Automation can handle repetitive tasks, but businesses still need to maintain that human touch."
53.08 "Look far enough into the future .. there´s nothing to stop AI from mimicking all human behaviour ."
GUEST RESOURCES
https://www.voyantis.ai
https://www.youtube.com/@Voyantis-ai
https://www.linkedin.com/in/eran-friendinger-5b38506
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.
-
Today, Mike speaks to David Hirschfeld, a seasoned entrepreneur who has worked on 30+ tech and software startups to discuss why developing a founder mindset is critical. David explains why founders need to switch from a creative to a managerial mindset.
He shares why taking a clinician's approach, testing and measuring results, embracing failures as learning experiences, and being open to pivoting are all so essential. David also explains how you can use AI to automate and improve workflows while generating revenue early and keeping the cost of customer acquisition below one third of their lifetime value.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
An evidence-based approach is essential. Generate revenue from your customers early. It makes you less reliant on investors and you quickly learn what your customers want. If you are not out there in front of your potential customers from the start, that is a sign that you do not have the right founder´s mindset. David explains why and how to address this issue. You need to generate revenue from your customers early on. It makes you less reliant on investors, as well as more attractive to them. Look for a way to quickly produce something simple and get it in front of potential customers. At the founder stage, you need to switch from a visionary mindset to a managerial one. Value stream mapping will help you identify bottlenecks. As soon as you have a workflow that is generating decent results, create a playbook for it.BEST MOMENTS
2.52 "Clinicians don't believe in anything. They just test and measure, then make a plan based on the results of those tests."
7:58 "Founders often exhibit an obsessive leadership style and autocratic decision making, which can lead to poor decision making and strain team dynamics."
13.08 “ Founders shouldn't love their product. They should love their customers' and be committed to mitigating their customers problems."
30.37 “I looked to see where my business flow was kinked ... and focused my energy on (removing) that restriction."
34.41 “It starts to become very obvious where to focus your effort based on your cashflow.”
45.39 “When you're ready to bring someone in … give them the playbook.
55.03 “Predictability means if I spend more money in that area, I should see an equivalent return, in terms of what we're producing.”
1.03.17 “Make sure that they follow the playbook.”
1.04.49 “Founders that are really successful don't think of them as failures. They think of them as tests.”
1.07.14 “They (highly successful CEOs) are brilliant contingency planners.”
1.21.17 “If you want to accelerate through investment, having a conversation with an investor is a completely different discussion, because you've got a growing customer base.”
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://tekyz.com
https://tekyz.podbean.com/ - Scaling Smarter Episodes.
www.scalingsmarter.net - Schedule an interview
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/ https://x.com/tekyzinc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhirschfeld/
https://www.facebook.com/dmhirschfeld
David Hirschfeld is a 35-year software development veteran with a unique perspective on startups, technological innovation and business growth. A former physics student from UCLA, David's career spans leadership roles at tech giants like Computer Associates, Texas Instruments, Intel, and Motorola, before launching his first startup—which grew to 800 customers across 22 countries and was successfully sold in 2000.
Since founding Tekyz Inc. in 2007, David has emerged as a strategic advisor specialising in AI-driven workflow transformation for scaleups and in the design & development of startups. David's expertise bridges cutting-edge AI technologies, workflow optimization, and startup ecosystem dynamics.
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 episode is all about finding opportunity in frustration and turning it into a platform trusted by 1 million+ users including tech giants like Airbus and Wal Mart. Mike speaks to Tanmai Gopal the CEO and co-founder of Hasura that enables users to easily build, run, govern and evolve high-quality APIs for all types of data. Reliably providing them with accurate real time data that can then be used in numerous ways to serve customers effectively and drive growth.
Tanmai shares the story of Hasura’s development, how to scale effectively and how to use PromptQL to turn AI from a flaky assistant that regularly lets you down into a tool you can rely on.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
● Getting the timing right is crucial. Understand your market and product to work out what to focus on when and launch when the right tech and demand is there.
● The Hasura team started out by offering consultancy services and made good money, but they stopped doing this to focus on product development. You can´t spread yourself too thin.
● Identify the problem that is at the front of your customers minds, solve that and you will attract the product champions you need to gain momentum.
● Be cautious about how you use AI. Even with access to live data it still hallucinates. Prompt QL is making AI far more reliable.
● Letting the AI figure out how to achieve your objective and build its own program to achieve it is a far more effective way of using AI.
● If you are tempted to build your own product, just do it. You will soon know whether entrepreneurship is for you.
● Failing fast is still the most effective way to create a product that solves people's problems
BEST MOMENTS
2:39 "This episode is about finding opportunity in frustration and turning it into a platform trusted by tech giants."
25:20 "To have the experience of the best kind of products and have access to high quality, instant, secure data is essential."
32:34 "What´s really important is to be aligned to how people think about a particular problem – What is hot for them?"
48.17 “For AI to become a part of our day-to-day lives, it needs to become a part of our processes and our workflows.”
52.03 and 54.08 “We actually tell the AI to first plan what it wants to do with the data, then write a program to extract the right data, aggregate it and present it.”
56.23 “The business logic was the actual automation flow.”
1.13.28 “To be aware that there is a right time where things happen is very important.”
1.16.40 “You create the perfect timing by doing proper market research and just understanding the biggest problem spaces. You create a product when people are ready for that product, so the adoption is just simply there.”
ABOUT THE GUESTS
https://hasura.io
https://promptql.hasura.io
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.
-
If you are juggling too many ideas and do not know which one to focus on or are stuck because you are overthinking everything, this episode of the Managing Tech Growth podcast is for you. To discuss how to navigate your way out of that situation and avoid it in the future, Mike is joined by David Boice.
David is a serial entrepreneur who, at just 22, founded his first business. Today, it is worth hundreds of millions. His current companies employ 500+ associates who are mainly engaged in developing and providing technology for several transport industries.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Achieving growth takes time, but once you have it, maintaining momentum for a few years is relatively easy.
Once you demonstrate growth, attracting capital becomes much easier.
Focus on solving a problem that exists. If you solve a problem only you and a few others believe is an issue, you will go nowhere.
Constantly striving to improve your understanding of your customers and their problems is a growth essential.
Set up a customer advisory board of 12 to 15 engaged clients, a mix of big and small.
Identifying your exit strategy before establishing your business is counterproductive.
Be careful with automation. Often, to ensure that the customer gets the best service possible, you will need to insert humans into your systems
Be positive publicly. Regularly congratulate people for their achievements. Discuss problems, but primarily in the context of solving them.
You will meet resistance to change regardless of whether it is good or bad.
Put in place systems that enable you to step back. If you don´t you will burn out.
Not every founder should automatically become the CEO.
BEST MOMENTS
5.46 “There's a whole category of private equity firms called growth investors.”
8.36 “Just make sure you're solving a problem before you start looking at anything else.”
22.18 “We kept thinking, and kept staying curious about, what could we do next? What do our clients need? What problems are we solving?”
25.08 “We weren't as prepared for how profitability was really going to drive the ultimate value of the company.”
26.59 “I am very much against pre-planned exit strategies.”
36.19 “The customer advisory board is a great way to have a constant focus on where you want to go.”
44.36 “Because clients don't always know what's possible… our job is to come up with the really big, visionary ideas.”
47.51 “Bring in people that have the skill sets that you don't have.”
1.00.36 “If you manage your downside, the only outcome that is left is positive.”
1.14.22 “Change, whether good or bad, is going to be resisted with equal intensity.”
1.22.49 “You can be aligned at the head, and you can be aligned at the heart, but the best alignment is at the wallet.”
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://teamvelocitymarketing.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.
-
Today, Mike is joined by Ivan Gekht a Siberian Aerospace Engineer and CEO of Gehtsoft, a custom software development powerhouse. For the past 20 years, he has delivered complex solutions for numerous industries. Ivan has led transformative projects at both startups and billion-dollar enterprises. He explains why, regardless of the industry you are in, developing and delivering products at speed is essential.
Ivan explains how the need to move at speed impacts the way you structure your business, go through development, deploy it, market it and more. Ivan covers using Agile, value stream mapping, decision making, creating a robust and sustainable team and much more.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Prioritize speed and the ability to solve problems quickly. If you can´t move fast, you will fail.
If it takes just a few days to create the product, then it takes 6 months to bring it to market, you lose.
Not using Agile well will slow you down. Using examples, Ivan explains how to fix that issue.
Use value stream mapping.
Take a holistic, value stream-based approach to identify and address bottlenecks. This approach improves efficiency by 30%.
Don´t end up with just a few go to people. If they leave, the project can fail.
Empower cross-functional teams and the product owner to make decisions.
You can´t 100% solve every problem, you just need to solve it enough to get to the next level and bring your product to market.
Be truly customer-centric
Often, asking 8 potential customers the question is enough to validate an idea.
Achieve sustainable performance by providing a safe, learning-oriented environment.
You need to learn to fail and do it safely.
BEST MOMENTS
00:38 "Slow teams don't just lose, they get wiped out."
10:17 "If you know exactly what needs to be done and the outcomes are predictable, you don't need Agile."
17:52 "The majority of the time is wasted not on doing the work the wrong way, but rather on doing the wrong work."
21:35 “They (the product owner) should be trusted … to make these decisions."
31:20 “Harvard Business Review reports that organizations using value stream mapping can identify bottlenecks that lead to 30% improvements in operational efficiency."
51:04 “It's not about perfection… it´s about making it good enough to hit the market … that's where you get the speed."
57.12 “For the user stories … your personal opinion doesn't matter. It's not about you, it's about the end user.”
1.05.30 “That emergent knowledge and emergent decisions come up through the teamwork process to be able to deal with the complexity.”
1.27.24 “Make sure that everything you work on brings value to the people who are paying for it and make sure to shorten time to market.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivan-gekht
https://www.gehtsoftusa.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.
-
Today, Mike is joined by Ian Myers, founder and CEO of Oceans. He is an expert in building high-growth companies by hiring the right global talent, delegating effectively and creating a company culture which enables everyone, including remote workers, to thrive.
Ian and Mike discuss the best way to source talent from across the globe while avoiding common issues. Including, fraud, inadvertently breaking labour laws, and people working full-time for multiple companies and not delivering. They also discuss how to improve communication and inspire people to successfully work proactively.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When you hire the right person, you will see an uptick in growth.
Hire talent from sources that are usually overlooked by your peers.
Look for people with overlapping skill sets. Soft skills matter.
If you realise after week 3 you´ve hired the wrong person, go back to the drawing board.
High-growth companies need thinkers who can pivot.
Global teams are the future. They are productive, resilient and work 24/7. Forbes reports that those hiring global talent grow fastest.
Employing globally keeps costs low, which is especially important for startups.
Using an agency that specialises in providing companies in your country with global workers helps you avoid many of the most common pitfalls. How is explained in the podcast.
Successful companies deliver the culture the people they hire are attracted to.
Hire using referrals from your employees.
Being good at delegating is a superpower; you are 33% more effective.
Tell your people they are expected to be proactive. Make it a foundation of your culture.
Pick someone people trust and respect and get them to introduce and lead changes.
You have to manage remote workers differently e.g. your communication has to be more precise.
BEST MOMENTS
1:03 "If you still think productivity can only happen in an office; you're clinging to an outdated model."
25.24 "Make good on the promises of the culture you're promoting."
34.39 "Referrals, when hiring, are overlooked by many firms."
37.49 "Innate intelligence, adaptability and understanding of how to pick up new things… that's what's going to matter the most."
48.32 "We give our people permission to be proactive by telling them they need to be. ."
59.20 "You no longer need to hire all-arounders … AI can handle most all-around tasks."
1.06.28 “Using channels to communicate instead of DMS is a huge unlock for visibility alignment across remote teams.”
THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-myers-oceans
https://www.oceanstalent.com
HBS delegation - https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/how-to-delegate-effectively
AI global economy - https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/issues/artificial-intelligence/publications/artificial-intelligence-study.html
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.
-
Today, Mike speaks to Michael Nicastro who is the VP group, director of technology and head of accessibility at Digitas. They discuss a very overlooked aspect of scaling tech ventures - digital accessibility which is not just a compliance checkbox. It is actually a growth strategy that unlocks new markets, drives revenue and helps your product reach its full potential.
Michael is passionate about ensuring that digital products are accessible to everyone and uses quality assurance and automation to drive growth without sacrificing inclusivity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
1.3 billion people worldwide face barriers when using digital products. Some have permanent disabilities, and others have temporary disabilities.
Companies that are ignoring accessibility are losing out on an estimated $1.2 trillion annually.
Lawyers are literally hunting for companies that are not complying with accessibility laws. The fines are high.
In 2025, the EU is introducing new accessibility legislation.
All areas of the business are involved in delivering true digital accessibility.
There are 40 to 50 keystrokes that a page reader may use to read a URL. Each page needs to be tested to ensure each keystroke works, which is time-consuming.
Outsourcing checking accessibility is far more cost-effective than doing it yourself. AI may change that.
If your cart process is not fully accessible you lose sales.
DAIs force you to focus on the experience you offer for all customers.
Standardisation and automation are essential.
BEST MOMENTS
00.32 "If your company isn't making accessibility a priority, you missing out on revenue and losing customers.”
12:12 “Screen reading one URL can take up to eight hours. You have to do it for desktop, PC and Mac, Android and IOS."
20.03 “If there's an image there needs to be an alt text behind it that tells you what the image is.”
30.46 “When you fix issues for those who have a disability, you're fixing issues for all.”
38.11 “There are trillions of dollars in the hands of those with disability and their families across the planet.”
42.24 “Passion is vital for mastering tech growth.”
57.40 “Ask - How can I build automation one time?”
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-nicastro-2862061
EPISODE RESOURCES
WCAG Guidelines - https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/#guidelines
European Accessibility Act 2025 - https://www.deque.com/blog/european-accessibility-act-eaa-intro
Tools
Screen readers
Mobile (Native)
IOS Voiceover
Android Talkback
Desktop
JAWS https://support.freedomscientific.com/Downloads/JAWS
NVDA https://www.nvaccess.org/download
Colour Contrast Analyzer https://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker
Digital Accessibility checker https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/axe-devtools-web-accessib/lhdoppojpmngadmnindnejefpokejbdd?pli=1
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.
-
In this episode, Mike speaks to Jason Barnard, CEO of Kalicube. Using cutting-edge Brand SEO, he shapes brands on Google to reflect a growth-driven vision. Jason unpacks strategies for controlling your brand story in Google and all of the AI engines so you can take full control of your online reputation, be easily found by potential customers and convert them into clients.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
When it comes to tech growth your brand is the most influential factor.
Your personal brand is just as important as your business brand.
The way both Google and AI platforms represent you is critical.
Your content needs to be packaged in a way that the machines can understand, so they can find you and showcase what you offer.
Your website is the touchpoint AI and Google trusts and uses to verify who you are and what you offer. In their eyes, that website is the foundation stone.
What you publish on 3rd party websites and how you reference and connect that content on your personal website makes a huge difference in getting found in the SERPS and AI searches.
If you do not take control of your brand, it will be incredibly easy for a malicious actor to take control.
How you structure your About page and align 3rd party sources with it is important.
Focus on the sites and URLs the machines think are important. The Knowledge Graph will help you to do that.
How you manage any career pivots matters.
Publish in the places your potential customers are looking.
Being found online is just the first step. People will research you, so everything said about you or by you, matters.
Reputation issues can be fixed, but it takes time.
Track what is said about your brand online and quickly deal with problems, including errors in video transcripts.
Focus on your website. Get the structure right so the bots can understand it.
BEST MOMENTS
2.07 "The brand is going to drive your business growth."
12.32 “The secret to (brand) control is making sure that you have one source of truth about you that you control.”
22.56 “Take control today, by cleaning up and optimising your digital footprint.”
33.01 “Our data from the Kalicube Pro database with 2 billion data points tells you the walk that you need to walk to be the most effective representative within your industry.”
43.48 “Be visible across the entire research environment for the topics we specialize in.”
48.42 “Anybody and any company can and should have a knowledge panel.”
50.31 “Generative AI, ChatGPT, Gemini, Bing and Copilot have created new demand.”
1.00.59 “If the algorithm decides that something is true, it will be true, and if it decides that it's true, you have to figure out why it thinks that's true and correct the source of information.”
1.08.26 “Video is increasingly important.”
GUEST RESOURCES
https://kalicube.com/solutions/free-downloadable-guides
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.
-
Mike speaks to Alex Levin co-founder and CEO of regal.io a leader in customer journey optimization through understanding customer intent, Alex has guided companies to go beyond reactive strategies and meet customers exactly when they are ready to engage. He shares how anticipating and responding to customer intent can unlock untapped growth.
They cover capturing and analysing customer data, including doing it in real time and incorporating contact centre interactions. As well as the current role AI agents are playing and how they are likely to develop.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The rate at which one customer turns into more customers or $1 can turn into more $s is the factor that leads growth.
Your customer needs and motivators change. You have to constantly analyse and update the way you approach them.
Obtaining customer data is vital. Without it, you can´t keep your understanding of them up to date.
Go beyond gathering customer data online. What they click on only tells you so much.
Contact centre interactions are where you find the gold nuggets of customer understanding.
Brands that invest in contact centres and reach out to customers at the right times with suggestions or help in a similar way they do with sales and marketing are seeing huge ROIs.
Customers like you getting to know them and the fact you offer them truly personalised sales and support.
Certain data patterns are strong indicators of intent. Figure out what they are for your business.
Customers want contact, but only if it is relevant to them. Tailor your emails, calls etc.
Analysing customer data is initially costly, so wait until your turnover is big enough or the spend per customer is high enough.
Invest in building a real-time data pipeline to gain fresh insights fast.
Now is the time to shift to using AI agents in your contact centres. They can absorb a lot more information than a human and hone in better on what the customer needs.
BEST MOMENTS
04:31 "Whatever works today is probably not going to work tomorrow, so constant reinvention is necessary."
09:35 "That old low-touch model in customer service does not work."
16:04 "I'm not in favour of buying customer data .. but there are cases where there are reasons to do it."
21:35 "As a business understand what behaviour patterns you consider high intent with your customers."
35:10 "No matter who you are, we can ingest the data."
42:41 "The big thing now is, the shift to AI agents in the contact centre."
46:38 "Soon they're going to say, I'm so pissed off that x airline sent me to a human instead of an AI agent, because the agent would have gotten to my issue faster. It's gonna flip."
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexlevin1
https://www.regal.ai
Email: [email protected]
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.snowflake.com
https://www.usehatchapp.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.
-
For this episode, Mike´s guest is Nick McEvily a product leader and a startup advisor who has raised over $40 million for tech ventures. They discuss why so many startups fail and how to stop that from happening. Including why so many startups inadvertently end up building a product that their customers don´t want.
Nick shares the validation methods, human-centred design, rapid product testing, de-risking and pre-sale strategies the startups he works with use to ensure that they build exactly what people need and sell it in huge numbers.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Even good products fail if they are not a good market fit and are not tested early enough.
There is no replacement for knowing your customer. That means truly listening and never assuming you know what they want.
Invest in your research, interview your target customers and be prepared to reward them for their time. Nick explains how to find them and capture what you need to know.
Pay close attention to the language potential customers use to describe your product and mirror it.
If you can´t find people to interview about the product you are planning, you have to ask if there is really a market for your idea.
Initially, use LinkedIn for outreach and to start to get your outbound marketing language right.
You need to use pre-sales, but the people who buy then may not be fully representative of your main customer type.
The validation process should be kept going indefinitely so you continue to gain insights into what your customers truly want.
Understand your risk profile. If it is too high your product may not be viable. Nick explains how to check for this.
Mastering tech is a lifetime task.
BEST MOMENTS
00:20 "The brutal reality is that most products aren't failing because they are bad. They are failing because they weren't tested early enough"
8:38 “As a designer and a founder myself, I'll never outsource talking to my customers."
13:08 “The first litmus test for a founder is finding their product market fit."
15.35 “How will you sell it if you cannot find people to talk about what you're planning to sell?”
19:00 "Ultimately, to move this thing forward, you need compartmentalised skill sets …. departments that all have their own specialities."
33:53 "You need Google Search Console and Google Analytics plugged into your site map, your landing page."
41.51 "The market product fit analysis is never finished."
47:20 "The risk profile is too high if it takes a long time to find the talent you need."
57:35 "You got like, 10s of millions impressions on the game when it went live with your go-to-market campaign, and then you got hundreds of 1000s in the first week or so."
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.nickmcevily.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmcevily
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.
-
In this episode of Mastering Tech Growth, Mike looks at the challenge of scaling tech operations without compromising growth. To do this he is joined by Andrew Parsons, an industry veteran who, for decades, has been transforming operations for Vive Bank, HSBC, MasterCard, Admiral Group and more. Andrew shares his insights on achieving operational excellence without slowing the pace at which a startup grows and evolves. A critical but often overlooked factor of tech scaling.
Whether you're in a fast-growing startup or managing an established venture, this episode offers actionable strategies to help your operations grow.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Be aware of the risks, but still be bold enough to innovate and break the mould.
Use Jeff Besos´s decision-making process to make sure you don´t become so risk-averse that progress freezes.
Set clear goals, clearly define your roles and set clear accountabilities.
Fail fast, move forward, and spend your money wisely.
Leverage frameworks, to improve operational consistency. This is especially important when you grow through mergers.
Effective change management is the key when scaling. Set clear goals, take a structured approach to communicating them effectively and monitor the impact of the change.
Communicate clearly in a calm, measured and consistent way, especially during mergers.
Be an active listener – read between the lines.
When things go wrong, calmly evaluate why and logically assess the problem layer by layer.
Put automation at the core. Everyone should be driving it.
Think carefully before automating decision-making.
At the growth stage you will need to quickly hire the talent you need. Prepare for this, in advance.
From an early stage encourage testing failure modes, to build resilience.
Turn each crisis into a learning opportunity.
BEST MOMENTS
04:04 "Risk management is the daily day buzzword. You're always trying to do something to make sure, it is the right thing for now."
16:03 “Clear goals, clear roles, clear accountabilities. If those are all correct, the people with those accountabilities will be the first to say, I need another person."
21:52 "You can never really communicate enough."
32:32 "Find a way of asking your questions that's not going to negatively charge the conversation and take things in the wrong direction."
47:05 "Gen AI will, and should, be used to augment and make life better for everyone."
01:11.14 “Make sure you've got a risk management framework that you can log these things into."
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-parsons-49b6135
Jeff Besos decision making - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxsdOQa_QkM
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.
-
Mike speaks to Jinesh Patel, co-founder and CEO of Uptime Health, to discuss the importance of strategic partnerships in scaling a tech business. Jinesh used 15+ strategic partners to grow from £1 million turnover in 2023 to £10 million in 2024. He explains how they found the right partners and built effective relationships with them to sell an innovative product that those involved in the dental industry had never heard of or thought about using before.
He explains how to put together deals that are so good for the partners that they will not be able to resist working alongside you.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
● With so many ways to promote your business, it is easy to choose the wrong ones and waste money. Jinesh talks about how to avoid this pitfall.
● Use partners who have a rolodex of the type of people who need your product so you are targeting a pre-filtered list of prospects.
● Take a highly structured approach to partnerships. Include regular milestones and incentives.
● Create a clear go to market strategy.
● Look for partners who are likely to sell your products alongside theirs e.g. anyone who sells medical equipment is also likely to sell medical software.
● Take the time to educate your partners.
● Vet your partners as you would investors.
● Reaching out to partners automatically improves brand awareness.
● Attend conferences as attendees and approach people in the booths who could be good partners for you.
● Tailor the incentives to appeal to each partner. Look for synergies and ways to help them to grow their business too. Examples are shared in the podcast.
● As you grow, partnerships need to evolve.
● You need different types of partners. Often, once a few have jumped aboard others will follow.
● If you are just getting started, target smaller partners. Jinesh explains why.
● Craft the contract to ensure that you have a way to contact the end customer.
BEST MOMENTS
00:13:08 - "We educate the partners. They educate the clients, and they’re only bringing us opportunities that make sense.”
00:33:13 - “Qualifying your partners is just like when you want to raise capital from an investment group. You want to make sure you’re taking in good money, and it has good reputation.”
00:47:50 - "We still do direct [sales], because at the end of the day, not everyone wants to buy from a partner.”
01:06:39 - “The best way to hedge is to have more than one partnership of that size, so you’re not putting all your eggs in one basket.”
01:18:18 - "Closing a partnership has this huge element of pitching the product, talking about it, and...getting feedback."
01:19:07- “We’re always pushing out articles, podcasts just to educate and inform the community. That's been our go-to-market strategy.”
ABOUT THE GUEST
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jineshjpatel
https://www.uptimehealth.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.
-
For this episode, Mike speaks to Gautam Hazari an influential TED speaker and the visionary CTO of sekura.id. He is at the forefront of developing innovative security solutions that tackle the complex challenges of identity management and fraud prevention.
They start by looking at the impact fraud is having on businesses and why the situation is about to get a lot worse. Before discussing what you and the tech industry can do to mitigate fraud. Including being ready for when the fraudsters start using AI bots to work on an even larger scale than they are doing now.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Deepfakes are already being used in real-time using voice and video. Fraudsters are now training AI bots to carry out their fraud for them so they are not reliant on how fast their staff can work. When a business is a victim of fraud, the trust clients and investors have in them is undermined which can trigger them to look to your competitors. Fraudsters use our chemistry against us. They turn on and appeal to the emotional side of our brains. They try to scare you or appeal to greed. Time is your friend. Pausing and counting backwards from 30 before taking action engages your logical brain and helps you to spot fraud more often. Passwords no longer work. It is too easy for fraudsters to steal those details from companies. Even password credential managers. Between 80 to 86% of data breaches are related to credential (identity) failure. That is why sekura id is focused on providing better ways to confirm someone´s ID. Cryptographic authentication tied to their SIM gives everyone, including those in poorer countries, a far higher level of security. There does not need to be a privacy issue, mobile providers are already heavily regulated.BEST MOMENTS
02:59 “ 6% of global GDP is impacted due to fraud."
08:41 "When they (fraudster employees) are replaced by these AI chatbots, there is no scaling problem… and that's scary."
33:56 "The internet doesn't have an identity layer."
50:36 "These startups are getting targeted more now because they are easy targets if they want to do everything themselves."
53:22 "Passwords are a problem."
57:11 "The SIM is nothing more than a cryptographic engine…It's a hardware-based cryptographic engine."
1.03.05 “Every single phone on earth has a SIM providing or doing that cryptographic protection right now. Why don't we use that?”
1.1.52 “It's not going to be a man-in-the-middle attack, it will be AI-in-the-middle attacks.”
EPISODE RESOURCES
https://sekura.id
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sekura-id
https://www.ted.com/talks/gautam_hazari_digital_me_why_we_need_a_world_without_passwords
https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbestechcouncil/people/gautamhazari
https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir
https://www.netflix.com/es-en/title/81183491
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.
- Laat meer zien
