Millennial Masters

📺 Watch the full episode on Substack Yehong Zhu’s story is a blend of journalism, technology, and entrepreneurial spirit. A Harvard graduate, she began as a business reporter at Forbes, uncovering market trends, before transitioning to Product Manager at Twitter, where she bridged media and tech. Now, as the founder of Zette, a Silicon Valley startup tackling paywall fatigue, Yehong is reimaginin...

This bonus episode of Millennial Masters features a condensed version of Barney Hussey-Yeo’s evidence to the UK House of Lords inquiry on scaling AI and creative tech. Barney is the founder and CEO of Cleo, the financial AI assistant founded in the UK in 2016 and later scaled in the US. In this session, he lays out a blunt view of why the UK keeps producing talent, startups, and technical breakthr...

Dumi Siwo built his way in. After moving from Zambia to the UK at 13, he ran into the same wall a lot of young people do. Getting a foot in the door was harder than it should have been, so he made his own entry point. That started with club nights, cameras, artists, DJs, and being close to where culture was actually moving. It grew into Firmative, a creative business that has gone on to work with...

Lexie Kirkconnell-Kawana works in a part of the world where pressure reveals what people really stand for. With a background in law and leadership, and now as CEO of Impress, the UK’s independent press regulator, she sits close to some of the hardest questions in media, trust, accountability, and organisational culture. In this episode, we get into what ethical leadership looks like when decisions...

William Stokes moved from engineering in oil and gas into property, then used that shift to build something bigger. He started by converting commercial buildings into residential units before spotting a gap in the market for well-designed co-working spaces outside London. That became Co-Space. Today, the business has three live locations, dozens more in the pipeline, and a clear bet on where work...

Peter Watson is Managing Partner of Featured Group and has been in business since he was 16. Since then, he has built, scaled, and exited companies across multiple industries, using sharp marketing, smart bets, and a way of working that turned ADHD into an advantage rather than a limitation. He is especially interested in how AI and emerging technology can challenge stale business models and help...

Millennial Masters started with a simple question: What does it really take to build something that lasts? After 14 years of the startup grind and plenty of hard lessons along the way, I wanted to create a space where millennial founders, leaders, and entrepreneurs could share their journeys… the real ones, with all the wins, losses, and everything in between. This podcast and newsletter is for an...