Secret Leaders

Here at Secret Leaders we are all about bringing you the best entrepreneurs in the world - those people who you wouldn’t ordinarily hear from, but who have inspiring stories to tell. They share their highs and more importantly their lows, with the aim of sparking a fire in you to follow in their footsteps, or accelerate the path you’re already on.  Because let’s be honest, success stories are all...

Founded in 2010 in the USA by Co-CEOs brothers Dan and Michael Broukhim and Editor-in-Chief Katie Echevarria Rosen Kitchens, the wildly successful lifestyle subscription platform FabFitFun is a lifestyle membership that inspires happiness and well being.  Their flagship product, the FabFitFun box (now available in the UK), delivers a curated collection of full-size products across beauty, fashion,...

In this live podcast episode we talk about what makes a healthy body, a healthy mind and the future of technology enabled healthcare.  We’ve previously talked to both of today’s guests - Michael Acton-Smith, founder of Mind Candy, Firebox and Calm.com in Series One of Secret Leaders and Ali Parsa, founder and CEO of Babylon Health in Series Two.  But to have both of these guys (who are revolutioni...

Secret Leaders is all about hearing from founders and CEOs of some of the world’s most successful startups. We grill each guest on the highs and more importantly lows of starting and running a startup, and one of the biggest hurdles for any startup to overcome is financing and funding. “Leave investors with two or three messages that are really clear what is special about your business, what's gre...

If you’re an entrepreneur in the FMCG industry, this episode of Secret Leaders is one you don’t want to miss. Today we talk to the founders of Grenade, one of the fastest growing companies in the UK, featured in the Sunday Times Fast Track Top 100 companies four out of five consecutive years.  Launched in 2009 as a hobby company, “we were only ever planning on launching one product, but then it di...

If you want to know what it takes to start and run a technology company, then you need to listen to two of our most pioneering guests discuss their experiences live, as they started visionary companies in every single sense of the word.  In this special episode we talk live to Jess Butcher, co-founder of Blippar - the augmented reality giant, and Dhiraj Mukherjee, co-founder of Shazam - the app th...

Want to know what it takes to become a food and drink millionaire? Of course you do. That’s why you need to listen to Julian Hearn talking about how and why he founded the powdered food product Huel. Huel is marketed as a super convenient, nutritionally complete meal replacement. With sales of £14 million last year and a projection for 2019 at more than £40 million, this makes Huel one of Britain'...

Ever wonder what goes on behind the scenes when one well-known start up buys another well-known start up?  Well, wonder no more.  You’ve heard us talk to both Nick Jenkins (founder of Moonpig) and Graham Hobson (founder of Photobox) in Series One. But we thought it would be fun to bring them together and have a Q&A with them, side by side.  So that’s just what we did.  Because you normally only he...

Welcome back to series 4 - what a season have we got lined up for you! Kicking us off is Cal Henderson, co-founder and CTO of one of this decade’s most famous tech companies - the team communications platform the majority of companies couldn’t be without, Slack. But Cal hasn’t always been CTO of Slack, he cut his teeth as co-founder and VP Eng for Glitch, a web-based massively multiplayer game, be...

Today’s guest is Payal Kadakia, founder and executive chairman of ClassPass. Payal started ClassPass in 2011 a business that was born out of her love for dance, which she has been doing since the age of 3. Prior to founding ClassPass, Payal worked as a consultant at Bain & Company and in Warner Music Group’s Digital Strategy and Business Development Group. However in 2010 Payal realised that her t...

Investment funds for female entrepreneurs are not exactly commonplace in the world of finance. But today’s guest, SheEO founder and Canadian entrepreneurial powerhouse, Vicki Saunders, has been on a one woman crusade to change that. Her mammoth task has involved championing the term ‘radical generosity’, which means allowing people (men and women) to share capital in order to help like-minded wome...

Sherry Coutu CBE is a serial entrepreneur, former CEO, angel investor and non-executive director based in Cambridge, UK but originally from Canada. She is best known for investing in Lovefilm, Zoopla and for sitting on the advisory board of LinkedIn. A self-confessed techie, Sherry has now turned her hand to philanthropy, having learned first hand that the number one problem for scaling businesses...

Serial tech entrepreneur William Reeve realised early on that he wasn’t quite techy enough to be a techy, and so focused on the business side of tech businesses. And without this early enlightenment, we might not have seen the likes of Zoopla, Dunelm, Secret Escapes, Lovefilm or Graze, to name but a few of the businesses that have benefitted from William’s involvement. At the tender age of 23, hav...

Martha Lane Fox is a digital entrepreneur who is not only passionate about the world of tech, but Chancellor of the Open University, a philanthropist and a public servant to boot. Martha can be thanked for making our everyday lives easier, as well as the lives of children, and even prisoners. Martha’s resume is as lengthy as they come, and whilst she is notably the youngest female member the House...

Saasha Celestial-One may sound like a band formed in the swinging sixties, but she’s actually one half of a food waste startup looking to sign up 1 billion users to food sharing app, Olio, by 2025. Born and raised by hippy parents in Iowa, Saasha cut her teeth upcycling and tackling food waste from a very early age. Having grown up with not very much, she set her mind on building a bulletproof CV...

Jed McCaleb is a cryptocurrency legend. He's been involved in some of the most high profile organizations in crypto including Mt. Gox, Ripple, and now his current rocket ship, Stellar.org. But the journey from Little Rock, Arkansas to number 40 in the Forbes rich list has not been a smooth ride. He struggled his whole life with trying to find a balance between wanting to do something huge and want...

Riccardo Zacconi is an Italian entrepreneur best known as the CEO of King, the company behind the most popular game of our generation: Candy Crush Saga. Riccardo cut his teeth in the tech startup world during the dotcom boom of the late 90s, when he joined Swedish messaging startup Spray. He left Spray to become vice-president of European sales and marketing at uDate, leaving shortly after it was...

Today’s guest, Jason Calacanis, is best known for his podcast This Week In Startups and for investing in unicorn companies such as Uber, Thumbtack and Robin Hood; as well as selling shares in Facebook (whilst telling Mark Zuckerberg what he thought of him) and working alongside investors such as Elon Musk. But it took him awhile to get here. Jason was the Founder and CEO of Rising Tide Studios and...

Clara Brenner is co-founder and Managing Partner of the Urban Innovation Fund, a venture capital firm she established to invest in the future of cities. She had a vision to empower entrepreneurs keen to solve urban problems, and so with business partner Julie Lein, she is helping grow tomorrow’s most valued companies. The UIF provides seed capital and regulatory support to social entrepreneurs loo...

Tim Draper is the world’s most famous venture capital investor who’s backed many companies like Hotmail, Twitter or Tesla. He is a ridiculously nice and charming guy (it might be all that Bitcoin he owns, who knows?), he’s full of amazing advice and has a voice like chocolate silk - which, if it did exist, he could probably afford to buy. Tim founded DJF, Draper Associates and Draper University. A...

Tim Brown is an ex-professional New Zealand footballer turned American shoemaker entrepreneur. After a successful football career, Tim got injured. This caused a career turning point and he looked outside the sporting world at a business future. He first obtained a master’s from LSC, and then he entered into a partnership with Joey Zwillinger. The result? Allbirds, a sustainable tech and science-l...

Described as one of the world’s most influential women and CEOs, Justine Roberts is at the helm of one of the world’s most talked about forums, Mumsnet. Loved by many and the cause of many heated discussions, Justine has created a place for open and frank conversations for a wide sector of the public. As a wife and mother of four, including twins, Justine has had the exact experience of how hard i...

Growing up in Swansea with two hard-working parents, Anne Boden couldn’t have dreamt of the future ahead of her. After going on to study Chemistry and Computer Sciences at Swansea University, she made the big move to London to work for Lloyds Bank. Jump forward 35 years and positions at UBS, RBS and ABN AMRO, Anne has put herself out there as a forward-thinking banker who has spotted huge potentia...

WeTransfer started in late 2009 and today it has over 45 million active monthly users. It’s one of the world’s most trusted online brands, helping people to discover and share in every country around the globe. Damian Bradfield, an advertising and marketing specialist who cut his teeth at various agencies, teamed up with Nalden, a famous Dutch design and media blogger. From creating the disarmingl...

Today’s Secret Leader is Jo Malone CBE, founder of her namesake and more recently Jo Loves. Of all the guests we’ve had the wonderful fortune of interviewing, Jo has one of the biggest reputations preceding her, but worry not, it’s an entirely positive one. From battles with dyslexia to cancer Jo is well known for being authentic, inspiring, and a true hero to young entrepreneurs everywhere. We ch...