Not My First Guess

In this episode we’re joined by Amardeep Parmar, Co-founder of The Bae HQ which is the number one community for British Asian Entrepreneurs; curator of the Tedx Chigwell programme, and host of the Entrepreneurs Handbook.  As if that wasn't enough, having written and edited hundreds of Articles around the subject of entrepreneurship, Amar is also an Angel Investor. Before lockdown, Amar was a...

Today I’m joined by Alberta Asafo-Asamoah, a social entrepreneur and educationalist, and co-founder of Liquify, an invoice marketplace that enables SMEs in emerging markets to get quick access to affordable cash. Having started her career building deep expertise in the financial world, Alberta left banking in 2018 to pursue a career in impact investing because she wanted to combine her knowledge a...

This episode is a little bit special. We're doing our second fundraising compilation, taking different tips and hard won lessons from our founders we've interviewed before. In this episode, we're going to focus on five founders: 1. Jay Richards: At the time of interview, Jay's company Imagen had 25, 000 community  members across 111 countries, having raised just 400k. Incredibl...

Today I’m joined by Jasmin Thomas, Serial Founder & Angel Investor. After a successful career building the first teams of unicorns like Deliveroo, Algemy, Improbable and Dark Trace, Jasmin turned her hand to her own business. Having been diagnosed with MS, Jasmin had experienced the benefits of CBD oil first hand, from relieving period cramps to flare ups she was having. From this, she was ins...

Today I’m joined by Jacqui Patton, Founder of Ink Blot Creative. After training as an actress, Jacqui’s life took some twists and turns, including an eye-watering stint as the lady behind the number dishing out hair removal emergency advice at Veet, before finding her way into the world of marketing. A truly natural and masterful communicator, it’s no surprise that a simple (yet radically candid)...

Today I’m joined by Abi Foster, Founder of Elent. After becoming a qualified ACA Chartered Accountant, Abi began her professional career in the luxury magazine sector at Condé Nast, before moving on to Hearst Publishing's finance department. She enjoyed spending time outside of work supporting colleagues and friends to better understand their own personal finances, though through this experie...

Today I’m joined by Martha Silcott, Founder of FabLittleBag. Martha invented FabLittleBag after she was forced to smuggle her used tampon from the bathroom to her handbag at a friends dinner party when faced without a bin in their downstairs loo. The experience was so awful that she decided to do something about it and the more she looked into it, the more she was horrified at the impact of flushi...

Today I’m joined by Farah Kabir, Co-founder of HANX. One day, while enjoying a stable career in Asset Management at Goldman Sachs, Farah stood in line at her local Boots ready purchase a box of condoms when she realised her boss was standing behind her. Utterly mortified, Farah felt the very relatable pang of shame rise within her until… she suddenly thought “actually, why should I be embarrassed...

Today I'm very excited because we are doing a special episode all about fundraising. This is a topic I get asked about all the time from founders wanting to know who they should go to for investment, what investors are really looking for, and what they should be asking investors in turn. It's a topic we've talked about a ton on this podcast. We've had angel investors give their...

Today I’m joined by Sanya Rajpal, Founder and CEO of AdagioVR. Sanya is an Activist, International Development Expert and Serial Entrepreneur dedicated to transforming systems that unleash individual potential - and a truly remarkable individual in her own right. She built her first company while at Law School, Dignifly, with the goal to empower people to transform their own lives and solve proble...

Today I’m joined by Milly Tamati, founder and CEO of Generalist World. After growing up on a farm in rural New Zealand, Milly set herself the North Star of travelling the world in her twenties. Driven by a deep desire to keep moving, she found herself venturing down the path of entrepreneurship as a way of funding her wanderlust. Along her journey, she’s founded multiple businesses across the glob...

Today I’m joined by Victoria Armstrong, Angel Investor, Advisor and Mentor. Victoria is an inspiring player on and off the pitch with an impressive entrepreneurial background of 20 years worth of experience in rapidly growing start-ups including Biotech, Mental health and SaaS, and has the stories to prove it. She’s invested her journey across three very different markets (New Zealand, the US, and...

Today I’m joined by Emmie Faust, Serial Entrepreneur, Investor, Advisor, Mum of four, Host of The Growth Podcast with Emmie Faust and Founder of Female Founders Rise. Emmie is an experienced exited entrepreneur with over 20 years in digital marketing, having personally scaled and sold not one, not two, but three businesses. She also has the rare and exceptional tale of facing modern day dragons on...

Today I’m joined by Lauren Currie (OBE) Founder of UPFRONT and Host of the podcast UPFRONT Moment with Lauren Currie. UPFRONT is an organisation dedicated to changing confidence, visibility, and power for 1 million women and non-binary people. The idea was born of Laurens own frustration with the lack of women speakers and the dominance of all-male panels at conferences. She’s been doing this work...

Today I’m joined by Jessica Alderson, Co-founder and CEO of So Syncd. So Syncd is a dating app and website that matches compatible personality types. Based on the 16 personality types theory, So Syncd is the first dating app to connect compatible personality types by pairing couples who have just enough similarities to understand each other and just enough differences to create a spark. After brea...

Today I’m joined by Joyeeta Das, Co-founder & CEO of Samudra Oceans. Joy is a serial deep-tech entrepreneur who’s founded five startups, three of which have had successful exits. She’s also an influential and active member of the wider startup community with additional roles as an advisor and investor. She’s scaled projects to hundreds of million of dollars in revenue, managing teams of three...

This episode is a little flashback for us, jumping back to a conversation Hattie had with Matt Meeker, Co-Founder, Executive Chairman and CEO (that’s Canine Enrichment Officer) at Bark, and former founder of Meetup. Today, when she’s teaching founders how to test their ideas in the early stages, Hattie still comes back to how Matt tested both Meetup and Bark with customers, and with so many valuab...

Copy Club is a community for marketers who want to help each other do great things. And there’s a lot of them out there with the Copy Club community having grown to over 1000 members from over 800 brands since Lottie founded it in 2014. After working with massive global brands including Proctor & Gamble, Lacoste, and Dolce & Gabbana, Lottie created Copy Club as a means to feel less lonely...

Porto and Bello are an accessible clothing brand that seeks to help ease some of the fear and anxiety around cancer treatment by focusing on the person and not just the patient. Alexia launched Porto and Bello in 2021, with husband Josh, following her own experience of being treated for breast cancer which she was diagnosed with at 29, 34 weeks pregnant with her second child, in March 2020 - five...

Daye are on a mission: to close the gender pain gap, and overcome historical gender biases in medical research and product innovation. They launched their first product, CBD tampons in 2019, with a focus on sustainability and pain relief, and have since branched out to other products supporting vaginal health, including their latest product- vaginal screening using a tampon sample. But they'r...

Most founders dream of going public- but what happens after you ring the bell, if share prices tank, and the company you used to leap out of bed to run is destroying your mental health? For anyone who hasn’t heard of Eve mattresses, they were one of the first companies in the UK to offer a mattress in a box- and the countries fastest retail IPO at the time they went public just a couple of years a...

Recorded live from Sifted Summit, this episode unpacks the challenges of fundraising as a diverse founder, practical tips on fundraising, and what we can do at individual, organisational, and systems levels to fix inequities in the startup ecosystem. Our incredible guests are: Simi Lindgren is the founder of Yuty , tackling bias in AI to match customers based on ethnicity, skin type and medical co...

What is a female urinal and why does it matter?  Ever walked past a massive queue for the ladies, while the queue for the mens is non-existent and wondered why? Ever wondered what the solution is?  Women have to urinate more often and on average for longer than men. Plus, we have more reason to visit the loo (typically we take on more care duties for children or adults who need assistance, plus me...

Meet serial entrepreneur, angel investor, musician, physicist and self-professed big geek Chris Howard! Chris has raised millions in investment for his own startups, taught entrepreneurship by giving founders £100 and a raspberry pie, and started to invent an "anti-accelerator" at his new startup, The Rattle.  In this episode Chris shares:  How he wrecked his first startup after raising...

Meet Foong, reformed Consultant turned Founder, who loved her colleagues at PWC, but found she lacked Purpose in her work.  When Foong made the leap, it was to Matchable, a company intent on helping people like her find more purpose by volunteering their specialist skills to startups and charities; which are impact heavy but resource poor. Today, Matchable has projects ranging from transforming Co...