Secret Leaders

Taavi Kotka is the Founder and CEO of Koos.io but he shot to fame as the CEO of one of the largest software development companies in the Baltics. After he sold the company in a big money deal in 2012, he had a non compete which left him with time when he couldn’t work in the private sector. He was appointed the first Chief Innovation Officer of Estonia whose role is basically to drive technologica...

Gope Walker is the Founder and CEO of Data Kraken, a data consultancy that helps companies make valuable, data-driven decisions. But whilst Data Kraken is making more money than ever today, the venture downstairs is another story. Gope wanted to create a cafe that brought people together. But instead, it left him with depression, loss of appetite, and a £150,000 hole.  He thought he was creating s...

Entrepreneurs need to reframe failure as the norm, says Aidan Corbett. He is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wayflyer, a unicorn which provides funding for ecommerce companies. Not too shabby, and along the way, he has tried and failed with various initiatives. His failures didn’t all come in one go, but what he learnt added up to some pretty good startup lessons.  What happened? If you have any feedbac...

Henry Engelhardt is the Co-Founder and former CEO of Admiral Group. They’re one of Britain’s most valuable companies – currently valued at over £7 billion – and also the only FTSE 100 company in Wales.  Chances are, you’ve used one of their many brands at some point: Admiral Insurance, Bell Insurance, Elephant Insurance, Diamond Insurance, Veygo Insurance… if you’ve ever purchased insurance, basic...

Being really productive isn’t enough to win at startups. Kim Little is the Co-Founder and CEO of Moments of Space, a successful meditation app, but about 10 years ago he was in a very different space. He was living in Australia, having co-founded a semantic driven products company (yeah we get onto what that means). He put $400,000 Australian of his own money into the company and they launched a s...

Ed Perry and Rosie Brown are the Co-CEOs in charge of high-end ready meal company, COOK. Their USP is using the same ingredients and methods a normal person would use in their kitchens to create ready meals that actually feel home-cooked.  A company run by Co-CEOs is pretty unusual but Ed and Rosie are especially unusual because they’re also brother and sister. Ed co-founded the company with Dale...

Mike Dunn is the Founder and MD of Excel TLM Group, a telemarketing and lead generation company for construction businesses.  Excel today is a solid, growing business but they came within a whisper of collapse - as did Mike himself.  It all came to a head on a family holiday they’d saved for years for. Mike thought he could lose everything, including his family.  He felt like he’d hurt and failed...

Holger Seim is the Co-Founder and former CEO of Blinkist, a subscription service that summarises non-fiction books in 15 minute explainers.  The company was started because Holger and his Co-Founders wanted to find a way to read more books in less time whilst together at college in 2012. Blinkist has been downloaded 26 million times and was acquired by Go1 in May 2023, with Holger staying on as Ch...

AJ Keller is the Co-Founder of Neurosity, who make brain imaging devices you can use at home. But before that he experienced an epic fail that put him on the path to where he is today.  AJ’s first foray into brain imagining brought him to a point in the Summer of 2017 when everything was riding on him and his teammates winning an NYU startup pitch competition. If they won, they would get the fundi...

Tim Urban is the writer/illustrator behind Wait But Why, a blog he founded with his business partner, Andrew Finn, as well as the man behind one of our favourite TED Talks of all time on procrastination.  Tim writes long-form articles covering topics from outer space to love to artificial intelligence. As he puts it, he writes about “almost everything actually”. Each post is also accompanied with...

Henry Holland is the man behind fashion brand ‘House of Holland’, known for its signature rhyming slogan t-shirts such as 'Cause me pain Hedi Slimane' and ‘“I’ll Tell You Who’s Boss Kate Moss’. At one point they had over a 100 stockists all over the world. Henry produced special collections for Debenhams and Habitat.  But at the start of the pandemic, Henry called in the administrators and left th...

Mo Gawdat is legendary builder, thinker and now one of the leading voices in the emerging field of AI. This is a topic we want learn more about because it’s going to change our world. Mo spent over a decade as Chief Business Officer for Google X. He’s also the bestselling author of the books Solve for Happy, and most recently, Scary Smart: The Future of Artificial Intelligence and How You Can Save...

Jonathan Neman is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sweetgreen, a farm-to-table restaurant chain making fast food healthy. Unless you’re one of our American listeners, you probably won’t be familiar with Sweetgreen but they’re a staple of the LA, New York and Washington food scenes. They’ve got over 200 sites across the country. You probably don’t think of salad and tech in the same sentence but Sweetgree...

Every few months we interview our host Dan to find out what it’s really like being a Founder because his day job is running his VC backed startup Heights.  If this is the first episode like this you’ve heard then please stop what you’re doing and search for Dan Chapter 1 in the Secret Leaders feed. He’s got a good origin story. If you’re up to date, in the previous episode with Dan a few months ag...

Jess Salamanca is the Founder of Moxie Club, a community for female Founders. But before Moxie there was another business Jess started which could’ve been BIG. She had the opportunity to take it to a whole new level but instead decided to close it down. What really happened? -- If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make the show better? hello@secretleaders.com  -- Sponsor link...

Fall in love with the problem; not the solution - that’s the philosophy of Uri Levine, the serial entrepreneur behind more than ten startups including two unicorns. His best-known success is Waze, the traffic navigation app he Co-Founded in 2007 and sold to Google for over $1 billion six years later. Uri is a well-known speaker but he added “author” to his CV earlier this year, with the release of...

David Wood is a high performance coach. He’s been doing that for 25 years, and has recently taken up acting - but his life has been peppered with failure and tragedy.  David will tell you that failure is a part of a life-well-lived because it means you’re pushing yourself. The people you’ve really gotta worry about are the people who never fail because they’re the ones who never try. David has tri...

Timothy Creswick is the CEO and Founder of Vorboss. They're an internet service provider for businesses which might not sound riveting but that's only until you hear the story of how it came together and what they’re actually doing. Timothy saw a gaping opportunity that the market had missed because of distractions caused by COVID and he seized upon it. Vorboss have secured £250 million of investm...

We've just launched a new podcast at Kindling Media (we make Secret Leaders) helping people learn how to build wealth. It's called Making Money and it's the financial education we wish we'd had. This is the first episode, but dropped into the Secret Leaders feed. You can listen to the rest of the show here: https://link.chtbl.com/secretleaders-mm Or search for Making Money wherever you listen to y...

Dave Foreman is the Managing Partner at Praetura Ventures. He’s not here to talk about a failure in business like normal, although his failure did seep into his work.  Instead, he’s here to tell us about a failure of character.  Dave used to be a knobhead. His words, not ours.  This is how he turned his life - and himself - around. -- If you have any feedback, we’d love to hear it. What would make...

Alex Zaccaria is the Co-Founder & CEO of Linktree, a product that's so simple it’s difficult to imagine nobody thought of it before. It’s a kick yourself kind of product, especially now they are worth over a billion dollars.  Linktree solves a unique problem in the social media age. Most social sites like Instagram only allow you to have one link in your bio. For successful people, in all kinds of...

Lisa Collinson is one of the best guests we’ve spoken to in a while. She has been through the ringer, but fortunately, has come out the other side.  She’s here to tell us what happened and how you can pull yourself out of the grimmest pits that life can throw you in.  Lisa today is the Chief People Officer & Country Manager in the UK of The Next We, a company helping other organisations improve th...

We’re talking to Pete Ward, the Co-Founder and CEO of Humanity. Until now, the thought of slowing or even reversing the ageing process has been pure science fiction. But using readily available technology, Humanity are out to change that.  As a society, we’ve fallen prey to the idea that there’s a one size-fits-all methodology that will improve people’s health -exercise more, eat healthier, drink...

Adam Robinson is the Founder and CEO of Retention.com, a SAAS business which is on an insane growth trajectory. But, before Retention.com, Adam failed. In fact, like most successful people, he had a bunch of failures.  The one that sticks out most to him is what we’re talking about today, when he walked into a room and fired most of the people at his company. What happened? -- If you have any feed...

Do you want to get better at hiring, or being hired?  Sam Franklin is the Co-Founder and CEO of Otta, a job search platform that wants to make the experience of job seekers in the tech industry way, way better. Recruitment and jobs boards might not seem the most exciting areas to disrupt but the subject of hiring is so important and can be very nuanced. All businesses succeed because of their peop...