Entrepreneurship and Leadership

In this episode, Richard and Kimon interview each other about B2B sales, also known as enterprise sales. These days, many businesses are considering how they can incorporate AI technology to boost sales, but when dealing with large enterprise clients, nothing beats the value of building personal relationships. B2B sales are generally bigger in scale compared to consumer sales (B2C), requiring more...

In this episode, Richard and Kimon interview each other about the role of ego in business. The common perception is that entrepreneurs, typically men, have large egos, constantly seeking attention and dominating conversations. Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, serves as a classic example. While some level of ego is indeed necessary, effective leaders also understand when to control their egos a...

Richard and Kimon speak with James Hyde, non-executive director of James and James Fulfilment, in addition to founding and formerly running the company. Initially unemployed out of college, James and his eventual co-founder, took minimum wage jobs. They were working at a shipping and fulfillment facility, and were frustrated by the lack of efficiency they encountered. Starting in 2010, James Hyde...

JeVon McCormick was born the son of a black pimp father and a white orphan mother. Hear how, as a nine year old, he critiqued the way his father managed prostitutes, to his rejection of concepts such as “hope” and “luck”. When he was in juvenile detention neither of his parents knew where he was. His journey from toughest of upbringings to fame and fortune is unforgettable and inspiring. Kimon and...

Szymon Słupik regards himself as lucky. He tells us how he made enough money by the time he was 35 that he would never have to work again. We learn how growing up in communist Poland taught him to be enterprising, at ease with taking risks, and being open to opportunities, which he took time after time. He believes that the challenges of starting a business in 2021 are child’s play compared to how...

Kimon and Richard speak with Jonathan Gorczyca, the founder of Mentor Deck and Helm Experience & Design. Jonathan has worked as a product designer for almost 20 years, helping companies design and launch their products, often for the first time. Based in Buffalo, New York, Jonathan has been an integral part of the start-up scene. He specializes in UX (user experience) and helps early-stage venture...

In this episode, Kimon and Richard speak with Nick Sonnenberg, CEO and Founder of Leverage. He is also the author of the book, Come Up For Air: How Teams Can Leverage Systems and Tools to Stop Drowning in Work (HarperCollins, 2023). Nick began his career as a high-frequency trader. He learned to build algorithms to trade stocks, which allowed him to build a nest egg over the course of eight years....

In this episode, Kimon and Richard speak with Sameer Narula, Managing Partner of August One, a private investment firm. Despite self-identifying as an engineer, Sameer has an entrepreneurial mind. Prior to starting August One, Sameer founded two companies, selling one in the early 2000s.  His first ever venture was at the age of 13 when he and several friends started writing and drawing comic book...

In this episode, Kimon and Richard speak with Val Pilch, CEO of ForMeds. Val was born in Krakow, living there for his early childhood before moving to New York in the 1990s at the end of high school. He studied initially in New York before moving to North Carolina to attend Duke University for business school. Val describes the pros and cons of this path, suggesting that an MBA might give someone...

Kimon and Richard speak with Christian Arno, founder and CEO of Pawprint, about how companies can effectively achieve sustainability goals. As a young child growing up in Aberdeen, Christian was interested in pursuing entrepreneurship. His first venture was in comic book sales, and his first clients were his parents and schoolmates on the bus. When his father learned more about the finances of Chr...

Kimon and Richard speak with Cormac Russell, Managing Director at Nurture Development. Cormac focuses on helping institutions, NGOs, governmental organizations, and companies interested in improving their communities. The biggest issue that Cormac encounters in these organizations is a problem with disconnection. In this interview, Cormac discusses his work to overcome disconnection and bring peop...

In this interview, Richard and Kimon speak with Rudradeb Mitra, CEO and founder of Omdena. He was born in India, moving to England as an adult to complete a master's degree at Cambridge. He worked as an AI researcher and then at a start-up before realizing that making money was not his primary goal in life. Rudradeb saw that there were many issues in the AI community and tech world, including bias...

In this interview, Richard and Kimon speak with David Regn, CEO of Stream Companies. Collectively, David oversees about 600 employees, generating an annual revenue of around $225 million. Growing up in a middle-class family, David got his first job at age 14. He worked at a grocery store, starting as a bagger, before quickly being promoted to run the in-store bakery. He worked in the bakery for fi...

Jack discusses different health care markets around the globe, including why there are 20 markets he would sooner want to enter than the European market. Evolution Surgical owns the full value-chain from end-to-end, meaning they are a manufacturer and a distributor. This allows them to more sensitively listen to customer feedback, which allows them, as as smaller company, to compete with big, mult...

In this interview, Véronique Özkaya, CEO of Argos Multilingual talks to Richard and Kimon about her career journey. She describes her first taste of the work world, helping her parents as a teenager as they ran their business. As an adult, Véronique first thought that diplomacy would be the right path, though, after just several months, she quit. Without a job and needing to pay rent, Véronique...

Richard Lucas and Kimon Fountoukidis speak with Krzysztof Zdanowski, language and technology entrepreneur. Krzysztof argues that entrepreneurship is about emotional and social intelligence. He discusses the ups and downs on the road to building Summa Linguae Technologies, a company with yearly revenue of $35 million.  Krzysztof studied applied linguistics in college, which helped lay the groundwor...

In this episode Anna Woodward Kennedy reflects on fundamental issues of relevance to all entrepreneurs. How her challenging childhood home environment in Brazil made her hypervigilant to the moods of others, and how she had to take responsibility early in life. She shares how important it was for her to find mentors and other women as role models, and the way in which her “hard work and lifelong l...

Bryan Amaral began his career as an entrepreneur going door-to-door, selling custom-made suits. He learned how to work closely with clients as a therapist might work with their patients. By his mid-20s he was able to establish a brick-and-mortar location and create a showroom. He moved away from simply selling suits to building entire wardrobes for his clients. Soon after, in the early 90s, Bryan...

At the age of 18, Jonathan Little opened an online poker account with a $50 deposit. By age 21, he had about $350,000 in his account. In this episode of the Entrepreneurship and Leadership Podcast, Jonathan Little explains how he was able to parlay his poker hobby into a profession by keeping his expenses low and saving his winnings. This frugality allowed Jonathan to play in bigger games and main...

Head ninja. Top strategist. Main innovation engine. Chief optimist. Sören Stamer wears a lot of hats, and it’s one of the main reasons he wears the CEO hat at CoreMedia so successfully. CoreMedia markets an open, best-of-breed, API-driven solution that combines a headless content repository with an advanced web-based UI. It allows editors to access content from any source and preview front-end cus...

What’s important about de novo protein design from an entrepreneurship perspective? Everything. As the founder of AI Proteins, Chris Bahl leads a company focused on building proteins completely from scratch. The research and subject matter itself are nothing new to Chris, but the entrepreneurial side of his work certainly is. From October 2017 to October 2021, Chris served as the head of protein d...

When John Sloan was growing up in a small town in rural Texas, he learned at a very early age what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur. John’s dad ran the local grocery store, and ever since he can remember, his father taught him by his own example the importance of a having a strong work ethic. It was a lesson John has lived by ever since. His path to becoming an entrepreneur, however, w...

Some people just seem to have all the luck, and Robin Bennett is one of them. Robin is a British entrepreneur, writer, and documentary producer. He is also the founder of The Bennett Group, a consortium of companies that primarily provide professional communication products and services. One of the companies, The Aktuel Translation Group, serves businesses that need to communicate globally; Quarto...

When Ukrainian-born Denys Zhadanov went to London to study at the age of 19, he had no idea that a year later he would be launching one of the world’s most successful developers of productivity apps for Apple devices. Nor did he know that, working from his rented flat and with no outside funding, in a few years Forbes would recognize him as one of the top 30 under 30 business leaders in Europe. Th...

When Andrew Smart co-founded Slator, he banked on a major paradigm shift—and an industry-first—from the very beginning. His hunch more than paid off. Slator is a business news, research, and advisory service for the language services and technology industry. Unlike most business segments, however, providers of translation, localization and globalization services had virtually no trade media to kee...