The Pursuit of Scrappiness

Kalev Kärpuk is the CEO and Cofounder of Adact.me - a marketing gamification platform. Kalev has been in gamification for more than 10 years and is the perfect person to talk about engaging users, applied gamification, selling to fortune500 companies and more. In this episode we talk about: The role and impact of gamification Onboarding and employee engagement through gamification Measuring the ef...

Juozas Nainys is the Co-Founder and CEO of Atrandi - Droplet Genomics. Juozas has a decorated scientific career with more than 13 years at Vilnius University Life Sciences Center as well as at Columbia University in New York City. And for the past 7 years Juozas has been building Atrandi. In this episode we talk about: Transition from Scientist to Entrepreneur/CEO What role AI plays in Science Pre...

Reiner Kraft is the Founder of the Mindful Leader consultancy. He has spent 20 years in Silicon Valley and also has a decorated tech career in Germany. He has held such roles as CTO in Deutsche Bank, VP of Engineering at Zalando and Director of Engineering at Yahoo.  Reiner holds 120 U.S. patents, making him one of the most prolific inventors in Silicon Valley. The prestigious MIT Technology Revie...

Mikus Krams, Jānis Vāvere and Kārlis Broders are the co-founders of TraceSpace - a tool that helps developers build complex products 10x faster. The guys managed to raise a substantial 1.5mUSD pre-seed round on the back of a great idea and solid credentials from building Lokalise. In this episode we talk about: Raising VC money at pre-seed stage How much early stage founders should pay themselves...

Gleb Maltsev is a data-driven pitching coach who has trained presenters for industry-wide pitching showcases such as Slush, Latitude59 and Techchill. Every year he works with executives from almost every industry that would make the world a bit better, or at least have a shot at doing so. Gleb is also the co-founder of Fundwise, a founder-to-investor pitching platform with a 70% success rate.  In...

Emils Pakarklis is the Founder and CEO of iPhone Photography School - an online course platform that helps regular people take photos like pros. This fully bootstrapped company has already made 4mUSD in revenue in the first quarter of 2023 and shows no signs of slowing down.  In this episode we talk about: Building a content based business Testing demand without having the product ready Keys for s...

Aune Aunapuu is the Founder and CEO of Yaga - marketplace for pre-loved fashion. Launched in 2019, Yaga is one of South Africa’s most popular online fashion platforms, with over 5 million visits per month with over 5 000 new items listed every day. They raised 2.3 M USD at the end of last year from a range of prominent investors with backgrounds in companies such as  Bolt, Planet42, Wise, Veriff,...

Ana Wolsztajn has over 15 years of experience as an operator, founder and tech journalist. She has been named among Europe’s top 100 most influential women in startups and has been part of investment firms such as Kaya VC and Included VC. Her career and education include names such as Balderton, tech.eu. Adidas, DDB, McCann, Stanford, Cornell and Miami Ad School. In this episode we talk about: Per...

Zoltan Vardy is a startup mentor, trainer, and speaker who helps B2B tech founders build recurring revenue and scale their sales globally with his Launch Code consultancy. Zoltan has closed over 2 billion dollars in sales over his 30-year global career as an executive, entrepreneur, and investor. He is a former Sr. Vice President/Global Sales at NBC Universal International and has also served as r...

Andrius Biceika is a Partner at Revolut and the Co-CEO and Board member at Revolut Bank. He was one of the early employees and has held many leadership roles at Revolut. Prior to that he did stints at such well known Lithuanian companies as Citybee and Transfergo. In this episode we talk about: Early stories of Revolut Growth hacking strategies Building fintech products === Find other episodes on...

Isabel Naidoo is the Chief People Officer at Wise. She has invested her career almost exclusively into people management having held people management roles at such companies as Accenture, Capco, FIS and most recently Wise. In this episode we talk about: What makes an organization people want to work for Building a company with diversity in mind Scaling teams Gender stereotypes impacting workplace...

Rain Vaana is the Founder and CEO of Kwota - a carbon credits trading marketplace. Before starting Kwota in 2021, Rain spent more than 10 years managing units of big international companies like Lindstrom and Ragn-Sells so we also wanted to understand how and why Rain switched from being a career manager to becoming a startup founder. In this episode we talk about: Taking the plunge from experienc...

Eerik Oja and Marten Orgna are the founders of car subscription company Planet42. And it seems they indeed have come from another planet as in this year, when fundraising announcements are scarce, Planet42 announced a massive 100M US dollar round of debt and equity in February. We sat down to see how they have fared since Eerik was our guest on episode #3 back in 2021. In this episode we talk abou...

Robin Wauters is the Founding Editor of Tech.eu - the premier source of European tech news, data analysis and market intelligence. Robin has spent most of his career in media and has founded several companies and worked with numerous outlets and platforms, including being an editor at Techcrunch and currently also a member of the Digital Leaders of Europe program at the World Economic Forum. In th...

Ivan Kaunov and Alex Solovei are the co-founders of Finmap - a company from Ukraine that helps small businesses manage their cash and finance simpler and more efficiently. While they are working to improve cash management for businesses, there is a war going on in Ukraine and since the full scale invasion by Russia more than a year ago now, Ivan has been on the frontline, defending his country.  I...

Jay Johnson is the CEO of Coeus Creative Group - a professional training, coaching and management consulting firm based in the US. Jay has spent more than 15 years guiding leaders in organizational culture, working with such companies such as Ford Motor Company, NASA, General Dynamics, Stellantis, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Johns Hopkins, and Nikon.  He is also an active keynote speaker and author wi...

Peter Sandberg is the Managing partner at Nordic Secondary Fund - the first and only Nordic fund to invest exclusively in secondaries. The fund has invested not only in the juggernaut Klarna, but also quite a few Baltic companies like Kilo Health, Mintos, Sonarworks, Funderbeam, Transfergo and many others. Peter has also worked with such names as Startupwiseguys, Saxo Bank, Carnegie Investment Ban...

Kaarel Kuddu is a Product director at Wise. Kaarel has a long history in IT with over 10 years of experience and has participated in some of the biggest IT projects in Estonia. He spent 6 years at Wise Grew from Product Lead there to VP of Product. He then quit to start his own company, a mental health app which he then decided to close down after a year, because it was not having a significant en...

Christoph Klink is a Partner at Antler – The world’s day zero investor. Christoph is part of Antler Berlin and also oversees operations in Central Europe. He is an investor in multiple companies himself and also spent 10+ years with McKinsey prior to joining Antler in 2020. In this episode we talk about: Super early stage investing (day zero) and the Antler experience Founding team relationship dy...

Maciej Markowski is the Co-founder and Co-CEO of spaceOS - the operating system for safe, flexible, and human-centric workspaces. Maciej has 10+ years of commercial real estate experience with such companies as CBRE, JLL, Cushman&Wakefield and many others. In this episode we talk about: The present and future of workspaces Doing business in proptech Sustainability and ESG == Find other episode...

Cristobal Alonso is the Managing Partner of Startup Wise Guys - one of the leading startup accelerators in Europe. Cristobal is a serial entrepreneur, serial investor with over 200 individual investments + over 300 with SWG as well as author of a book "Perform, the Unsexy Truth of (Startup) Success". He is also serving as Spain's INSEAD Alumni Association President and last but not...

Hedi Mardisoo and Kalle Palling are the co-founders of Cachet - a company building the future of insurance. Hedi is a seasoned communications executive with leadership roles at such companies as Swedbank, Starman and Hansaworld while Kalle has been a long time member of the Estonian Parliament and has served on supervisory boards of several corporations. Cachet has started its journey by solving p...

In this episode we’re talking to Remo Ojaste, Co-founder of Combat Ready leadership training company. Remo has spent more than 8 years in Estonian Special Forces that are known for their elite training and selection process. Combat Ready is the only leadership training in Europe based on US Navy SEALs Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s approach of extreme ownership. This episode is brought to you in c...

Audrius Zujus is Founder and CTO of Argyle, a leading employment data platform that provides companies with access to employment records in real time. They raised $55M Series B in 2022. Audrius is also a former President of the Lithuanian AI association. Hence we ask a lot of questions that are on all our minds about AI, its current applications and potential. Expect to learn: The story of Argyle...

Davis Siksnans is the co-founder of the first Latvian unicorn - Printful. Davis has recently stepped down from operating management of the business and is now acting as a senior advisor to Draugiem Group focusing on building the Draugiem Capital initiative. In the Part 2 of this episode we talk about: Differences between being a founder vs investor Health and productivity tips How to practically a...