This Much I Know - The Seedcamp Podcast

“Consumers of today like to have a dialogue with their brands...consumers can now ask the harder questions.” Ingvar Helgason, Co-Founder of VitroLabs In this week’s TMIK, Managing Partner Carlos Espinal and Seedcamp team member Polina Stavrovski chat with two very exciting guests, Ingvar, and Joy Howard who are both building companies in the sustainable fashion space. Ingvar’s mission with VitroLabs is to decouple the leather industry from the meat industry by creating a new source of leather from animal cells. Their technology allows high-end fashion brands and creatives to have a new source of leather with all the same properties and no compromise on quality. Joy’s mission with Early Majority is to build a technical streetwear brand that makes outdoor gear for all eventualities, by operating in categories that have traditionally left out the woman’s point of view. The four delve into a discussion on the shifting nature of consumer behaviour and how they’re in turn empowering brands from a top-down approach, changing traditional notions of shareholders and stakeholders. Joy offers her take on greenwashing, explaining how she has two minds about companies that can seem ‘performative’ with their sustainability branding. “Over time, it *does* lead to a change in consumers' perceptions and their behaviour, but at the same time it’s tough for people who are building something radically different and true to the ideals of sustainability,” she comments. Ingvar nods to the importance of companies being transparent, and that “it’s really telling to see which companies are answering the questions and which companies are brushing them away.” He also mentions the importance of the role governments play in creating carbon emission taxes or at least levelling the playing field by removing subsidies from companies emitting a lot of carbon. “For everything we are consuming, we are not paying the real price,” Ingvar notes. Joy and Ingvar also discuss the transfer risks associated with migrating from the usual suppliers with decades of experience (but that are way more wasteful), to a more sustainable supply chain that has the same quality of timeline, delivery, and product. Although there has been an increase in demand for sustainable materials, this can also prove quite challenging for startups in competition with more established brands. Finally, Carlos asks Joy and Ingvar what science fiction book they recommend that will most likely represent our future. Tune in to hear their answers and the full discussion, it’s a good one! If you’re interested to learn more about Ingvar and Joy’s respective ventures, check out VitroLabs and Early Majority. Show Notes: Vitro Labs: vitrolabsinc.com Early Majority: earlymajority.com/ Ingvar Helgason: twitter.com/ihelgason Joy Howard: twitter.com/joyehoward Carlos Espinal: twitter.com/cee Polina Stavrovski: linkedin.com/in/postav/ Seedcamp - seedcamp.com

In this Seedcamp Deep Dive, Head of Brand Natasha Lytton speaks with Maria, Head of Product at Spill about the intersection of technology with mental health, and the growing opportunities that exist when offering accessible mental health services moving forward for both patients and clinicians. Spill’s mission is to “put high quality talk therapy in the pocket of every person on Earth” by not using a traditional finger-wagging approach. Maria and Natasha dive into discussing what it means to build trust across a product for users. Maria suggests that the most actionable way of viewing trust in a product is through ‘consistency over time.’ She advises that PMs need to stop thinking about users’ interactions with product as a snapshot in time, but rather expanding their outlook to a series of interactions. The two also discuss the shocking fact that the financial industry is more regulated than the mental health industry. The episode finishes off with Natasha and Maria hypothesising around how tech will evolve in its intersection with mental health in the years to come. Listen in, it’s a good one! This is a part of the Health series, stemming from our recent Deep Dive on Health within the Seedcamp portfolio. Show notes: Maria Boghiu - twitter.com/MariaBoghiu Natasha Lytton: twitter.com/Natashalytton Spill - spill.chat Finger-wagging: nytimes.com/2019/05/06/well/family/doctors-is-it-ok-if-we-talk-about-why-finger-wagging-isnt-working.html Health blog post: seedcamp.com/the-future-of-healthcare-and-the-tech-companies-out-to-improve-it/

Seedcamp EiR David Mytton and VP Devin Hunt have both been successful, technical founders (Server Density, Lyst). As they scaled respective internal teams, they gathered a plethora of experiences on the matter. On this week's TMIK, our Managing Partner Carlos Espinal chats with David and Devin about "Unpacking the Stack", and the various angles to consider across product, engineering and design teams. The three dig into a range of topics, starting with hiring, and whom to hire first for both technical and non-technical founding teams. Then, they break down the terminology and various responsibilities of the different functions. Taking the example of product, Devin explains that the Chief Product Officer (CPO) is there to set the product vision, whereas a Product Manager (PM) manages an aspect of that vision. Furthermore, he explains that product teams are responsible for delivery, as well as working hand in hand with engineering and design teams. On that, David points out the importance of building cohesiveness within teams to better the communication (and shares a couple cues, including the power of show & tell meetings) Finally, Carlos asks Devin and out different reasons for early start-up killers. Some answers covered the balance in technical know-how in founding teams, the bias in prioritising engineering problems (vs. actually helping the business) or the difficulty to fire wrong hires early-on. We've been lucky enough to have both David and Devin with us at Seedcamp. This episode (un)packs a lot, so definitely tune in - lots of valuable insights shared!

“Technology alone is not enough. Without the right governance, it may still lead us down the road of overconsumption and environmental catastrophe.” — Azeem Azhar, Author of Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It Azeem Azhar knows a thing or two about what direction exponential technology is heading toward, and how it's challenging our well-established social, economic, and political systems. On this week’s TMIK, Managing Partner Carlos Espinal chats with Azeem on his newly published, must-read book, ‘Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It.’ Neither the conversation nor the book is about a dystopian future, but the two definitely dive into some dystopian outcomes! The two discuss a range of themes that technology has transformed, particularly around the changing landscape of labour, increasing levels of local productions, and transport. In regards to the labour market, Azeem brings up the contradicting nature and impact that one single business model and economy can have in developed countries versus developing countries. The gig economy model is one interesting example. In developed countries where labour markets are formalised, the gig model creates flexibility, but more insecurity; however, in less established countries, the model provides *more* certainty to the labour force. The two also highlight the importance of not shying away from ML and robots. One fun tidbit: in 2020, the companies that had most heavily invested in robots and ML, also hired the most people (Amazon, Netflix, JD.com). Finally, Carlos asks what investment themes Azeem is currently looking at. “I rely on the founders to tell me,” Azeem states, but he does share a few he’s keeping an eye out for. Think smart car batteries, protein engineering, and bio-manufacturing. This episode packs in a lot, so definitely tune in; it’s a really good one. Shownotes Azeem Twitter: twitter.com/azeem Azeem Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/azhar/?originalSubdomain=uk Exponential book: amazon.co.uk/Exponential-accelerating-technology-transforming-business/dp/1847942903 How the Gig economy could drive growth: forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2017/03/23/how-the-gig-economy-could-drive-growth-in-developing-countries/?sh=1b1783104a49 Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee Seedcamp - seedcamp.com

“Keep it simple. Be brilliant at the basics”. This is the advice that Andrew Bartlow, Founder of Series B Consulting gives to small, high-growth organisations looking to scale rapidly on this week’s This Much I Know episode. Managing Partner Carlos Espinal chats with Andrew about Andrew’s recently published book, “Scaling for Success: People Priorities for High-Growth Organizations.” The two discuss common challenges related to rapid growth, including the brilliant jerk’ phenomenon, along with the merits of when a company should define a proper HR function. Regarding the latter point, in super early stages of a company, HR encapsulates payroll, employee benefits, and recruiting. But when a team starts to have around 20 employees, Andrew suggests that a CEO should hire a dedicated recruitment role. “You want a dedicated internal recruiter once you’re hiring 10-12 people a year,” Andrew says. “The recruiter will easily pay for themselves.” They also discuss how to find the right advice from the right people for founders. It’s important to prioritise context over content and to not go shopping across a bunch of different people for advice - it’s better to find the targeted advice that fits a founder’s own context better. Tune into this week’s episode to hear some of the secrets to scale your high growth startup successfully! Shownotes: Andrew Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/bartlow Series B Consulting: seriesbconsulting.com Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee Seedcamp - seedcamp.com Book, Scaling for Success - amazon.co.uk/Scaling-Success-Priorities-High-Growth-Organizations/dp/0231194447](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scaling-Success-Priorities-High-Growth-Organizations/dp/0231194447 Brilliant Jerk Phenomenon - hbswk.hbs.edu/item/can-the-brilliant-jerk-be-managed-effectively

90% of startups fail. For early-stage founders, this can come from both false positives or negatives. Two factors include: bias towards early adopters vs. mainstream customers, that are mostly necessary to scale, or giving up too early on a project that turns out to be a billion-dollar business idea a couple of months later. Tom Eisenmann, Professor at Harvard Business School, discusses this and much more in his recently published book '*The Fail-Safe Startup'*. In this episode of This Much I Know, our hosts Kate McGinn and Carlos Espinal have a chat with Tom to cover topics at the heart of founder journeys. This includes a few key factors to keep in mind for early-stage founders, such as MVP testing or upfront customer discovery work. Tune in to hear more about what Tom observes in academia around patterns both founder and investors tend to follow! Show notes: Tom Eisenmann: twitter.com/teisenmann Tom's book: penguin.co.uk/books/315/315444/the-fail-safe-startup/9780241420171.html Kate McGinn: twitter.com/ktmcgn Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee Seedcamp - seedcamp.com

The landscape of working and hiring remotely has drastically changed. Recruiting some of the best global talent as an employer requires a lot of knowledge on highly locally specialized topics because doing the statutory minimum is simply not enough anymore. Dee Coakley, the CEO and co-founder of BoundlessHQ, is on a mission to make it easy to employ anyone, anywhere. In this episode of This Much I Know, our host Carlos Espinal has a chat with Dee to cover topics at the heart of global organisations around multi-country payrolls and HR compliance. Tune in to hear more about the best practices on topics around compensation for internationally remote teams, employee stock options and more! Links Dee Coakley: twitter.com/DeeCoakley Carlos Espinal - twitter.com/cee Seedcamp - seedcamp.com

Restructuring a company can happen on all scales. Whether it’s within a founding team or a huge corporation, there are important common threads that are applicable across all business sizes to ensure value creation. On this episode of This Much I Know, we have a very special guest, Managing Partner Carlos Espinal’s father, Carlos Espinal Sr, Business Transformation & Restructuring Specialist, to discuss restructuring lessons that founders and CEOs can apply to their startups. Carlos Senior shares several past professional experiences that shaped his knowledge and understanding of how to best restructure a company. Carlos and Carlos discuss the importance of honest and transparent communication with stakeholders, identifying the root cause of a company’s problem, assessing the quality of a team on delivery outcome, and the key ingredients within a transformational plan.

The power of community lies in the ability to thrive virtually and scale across borders. Behind these communities, lie powerful and dedicated leaders whose intrinsic motivation to connect and support members creates compounding value. On the final ‘Precious on Community’ episode, Precious speaks with Erika Batista, VP International at On Deck on managing and growing their communities. On Deck is an ecosystem of founders, investors and angels providing programmes and creating communities that strengthen each other one after the other. Erika shares her experience of building community through new geographies and finding the ‘North Star’ that resonates with individuals and unites them as a community. She offers advice on striking the balance between doing things that don’t scale, and managing the influx of information that comes when thinking about community as a growing product. Precious and Erika explore the difference between operational failures and experimental failures, and Erika offers some hot tips on how she manages to get her community members always coming back to events. Tune in, it’s a good one. Show links: Precious Oyelade - www.twitter.com/preciousOlade Erika Batista - www.twitter.com/erikabatista Seedcamp - www.seedcamp.com OnDeck - www.beondeck.com

The power of community lies in the ability to thrive virtually and scale across borders. Behind these communities, lie powerful and dedicated leaders whose intrinsic motivation to connect and support members creates compounding value. On the second-to-last ‘Precious on Community’ episodes, Precious speaks with Hung Lee, Curator at Recruiting Brainfood on managing and growing communities. Recruiting Brainfood is an industry newsletter for talent professionals that Hung Lee started in 2017 and has grown to 38,000 subscribers. Hung shared a lot of important questions to ask yourself when starting, managing and moderating a community: Have you nailed the community values down by being true to your intrinsic motivation? What does the community member get for showing up? How will you ensure the community doesn’t get corrupted? The age-old question of Platform was raised as Hung shared his preference for newsletters over Slack (naturally), and how setting up a community is as customised an experience as setting up a bar, “you need to go and create a reason for being”. Tune in, it's a good one! Show links: Precious Oyelade - www.twitter.com/preciousOlade Hung Lee - www.twitter.com/Hunglee Seedcamp - www.seedcamp.com Recruiting Brainfood - www.recruitingbrainfood.com