Startup Scaleup People

I sat down with Kenny Whitelaw Jones , Co Founder of Gridlines, after more than twenty five years in finance, senior roles at KPMG and Deloitte, building a business of around 140 people across four continents, and training tens of thousands of professionals. Then his career took a very different turn. Kenny describes what he calls a midlife awakening . A period where the identity he had built arou...

I sat down with Mike Saraswat, Co-Founder and CEO of Stoa, an entrepreneur who went from building a marketing agency to taking on one of the hardest challenges in fintech. His latest chapter took almost 30 months of fundraising, around 2,000 investor approaches and 300 meetings before Stoa closed its $2.4M pre-seed round. But that resilience was built much earlier. Mike tells the story of spending...

Alan Chang's career has taken him from running restaurants to becoming an Airbnb executive, building startups, navigating extreme financial pressure, completing an acquisition and exit, and starting again in FinTech. In this episode of ExecDNA, Alan shares the decisions, failures and transformations that shaped him as an entrepreneur and leader. Most founders struggle when their role shifts from d...

Building a sustainable cybersecurity career takes far more than technical certifications and initial training. After 26 years in the industry, Robbie Tyrie joins ExecDNA to discuss how he built, adapted and reinvented his career across technology, leadership and information security. This conversation moves beyond entry-level cybersecurity advice to explore what it actually takes to remain relevan...

I sat down with Mark Hedley, Co-Founder and COO of Adeus, a corporate executive who walked away from more than 25 years in senior leadership to start again as a founder. Mark has lived and worked across four continents, held senior roles at Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Korn Ferry, and built a career that began not with a clear plan, but with leaving university and following his curiosity around the...

After 20+ years coaching hundreds of executives, from first-time founders to seasoned CEOs, Nicole Alos kept seeing the same gap: leaders left coaching sessions feeling confident, but froze the moment a real high-stakes conversation began. In this episode of Exec DNA, Nicole joins Mario Rivas to unpack why communication, not technical skill, separates exceptional leaders from competent managers. S...

Amrit Dhaliwal, founder of Walfinch, left hospitality, bought a franchise and spotted what most entrepreneurs completely overlooked: a £68 billion UK home care market with almost no one thinking seriously about scale, quality or wellness. Six years later, Walfinch operates across 40 locations nationwide, serves over 1,000 clients and is on track for £25M in network revenue in 2025. In this startup...

Alessandro Hatami has spent 25 years at the heart of global fintech and banking, holding senior leadership roles at PayPal Europe, Lloyds Banking Group and GE Capital before founding Pacemakers and serving nearly a decade as an FCA regulated non-executive director. In this fintech and board governance masterclass, he breaks down why incumbents have proven far more resilient than anyone predicted,...

Steven Pivnik failed his first two startups, built his third into a $40M revenue business operating across 20 countries, and sold it in 2020 completing due diligence in just 30 days. Now, as an exit advisor and author of Built to Finish, he has helped founders generate over $1.1 billion in exit value across 38 transactions. In this startup and scaleup masterclass, Steven breaks down exactly what f...

40% of Executive Transitions Fail, Navid Nazemian on the Leadership Gap. Navid Nazemian, executive transition coach and author of Mastering Executive Transitions, has coached 350+ senior leaders across 7 industries over 26 years and the data is stark: 4 in 10 executive transitions fail. In this startup and scaleup leadership masterclass, he reveals why technical skills get you promoted into the C-...

In this episode of Startup Scaleup People, Mario speaks with Cory Blumenfeld, serial entrepreneur, founder, investor-backed startup builder, and entrepreneur with multiple successful exits. Cory shares lessons learned from launching businesses in industries where he had no prior experience, raising millions in funding, building startups from scratch, and eventually creating systems that allow foun...

Amanda Groom Built the Bridge Between South Korea and Global TV Amanda Groom, founder of The Bridge, has spent 20 years helping broadcasters, streamers, and production companies expand internationally, turning South Korea into a benchmark for global media scaleup and now unlocking Brazil and India for the world stage. In this episode, she breaks down the structural collapse of the $3 trillion TV m...

Tomás Bercovich, founder & CEO of Global66, scaled a Latin American fintech startup to $1.4B in Q1 2026 transaction volume, on just $20M raised. In this episode, he breaks down the scaleup strategy, capital-efficient growth model, and AI-first transformation turning Global66 into one of LATAM's most important financial platforms. Global66 is now processing $550M in a single month across B2C an...

In this episode of Startup & Scaleup People, Mario sits down with Coen Jonker, Co-Founder of Tyme Group, one of the world's fastest-growing digital banking businesses. Tyme Group operates across South Africa, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong and Singapore, serving more than 22 million customers and reaching a valuation of $1.5 billion. Coen shares the journey of building a digital bank fr...

In this episode of Startup and Scaleup People, Mario sits down with Karen Prado, founder of ChimiLove, the award-winning South American sauce brand now stocked in more than 500 stores across the UK and Canada. Karen shares how a homemade chimichurri recipe became a fast-growing FMCG business, the realities of scaling a food brand, and the lessons learned from building a premium product in a highly...

What does it really take to build resilience as a startup founder in high-pressure environments? In Episode 32, we explore mental fitness, emotional intelligence, neuroscience, and founder performance with Sasha Cayward — ex-VC, former elite tennis player, founder coach, and Head of Community at Hubble. Hosted by Mario Rivas, this conversation dives deep into nervous system regulation, startup str...

In this episode of Startup & Scaleup People, Mario sits down with Tessa Clarke, Founder & CEO of Olio, the climate-tech platform fighting food waste through hyperlocal sharing. Olio has grown into a global community with nearly 10 million users, redistributed more than 140 million meals, and built a network of over 100,000 volunteers helping businesses and local communities reduce waste. T...

What happens after a founder exits a company… and realizes the next big opportunity is even bigger? In this episode, Mario sits down with James Weiss, former bartender turned entrepreneur, inventor, and startup founder, to unpack the journey from building a 7-figure cocktail business to inventing the world’s first self-cooling can. From living in his in-laws’ spare bedroom while bootstrapping a st...

£900K Pipeline From a £20K Bet: Bilal's SaaS GTM Masterclass Most SaaS founders think go-to-market is broken — but the real problem is chasing shiny objects instead of mastering fundamentals. In this episode, Mario Rivas sits down with Bilal, a GTM strategist and operator whose scaleup leadership at UserPilot redefined what modern outreach, ABM, and demand generation look like for B2B SaaS growth....

What if you could clone yourself, and build an AI team that works for you 24/7? In this episode of Startup Scaleup People, Mario sits down with Cien, founder of LaunchLemonade, to break down how AI agents are transforming the way businesses operate, and how anyone can start building them today. From bootstrapping her startup to 10,000 users and 20,000 AI agents, Cien shares the real story behind b...

What’s really happening behind the AI boom? In this episode of Startup Scaleup People, we sis down with Tim Daines, an enterprise AI expert working across the UK, Europe, and Dubai, to unpack the gap between AI hype and operational reality. From billion-dollar investments to failed implementations, this conversation breaks down why most AI projects don’t deliver ROI, and what companies must do dif...

In this episode, we dive deep into corporate governance, board dynamics, and the real role of non-executive directors with Kelly Kuhn, an experienced independent board director, chair, and former global C-suite executive with 30+ years of experience. Kelly shares practical insights on what boards actually do, how governance differs from execution, and how to start a board career, including what mo...

How Mathilda Strom Is Scaling AI in Healthcare In this new episode, we explore how leadership and AI are transforming the future of healthcare and drug discovery. Mathilda Strom shares how foundation models are reshaping clinical trials, improving patient outcomes, and redefining business strategy in biotech and AI. With $76M raised at Series A and over 1 million model downloads, Bioptimus is at t...

Want to scale your company from $100M to $500M? The secret isn’t just strategy, it’s culture. In this episode of the Startup Scaleup People Podcast, Mario sits down with Sharon Parmar, CEO of Humanity Works Consultancy, to reveal how culture, leadership, and trust drive exponential business growth. Sharon has helped global companies scale revenue, reduce churn, and build high-performance teams, an...

How Beth Crosier Helps Startups Become Investor-Ready | Startup Scaleup PeopleStartup and Scaleup founders often struggle with leadership, financial clarity, and funding strategy. In this episode, Beth Crosier explains how strong financial discipline transforms early-stage startups into scalable businesses, and what investors really look for when backing founders in today’s competitive startup eco...