Secret Leaders

Today’s guest has been a high achiever since he was a kid, completing his computer science GCSE at 11, his A-levels at 13, and receiving a Masters from LSE by the time he was 20. Some child geniuses burnout before they achieve great things, not Rishi Khosla.  Rishi, according to LL Cool J, is something of a phenomenon in the world of entrepreneurship, and we are wont to agree with him.  Co-founding OakNorth, Europe's highest valued FinTech company having raised over a billion dollars in funding to date, in only four years, Rishi is considered one of the stars of the industry.  And OakNorth is just his most recent headline. He’s an early stage investor, investing in several businesses including PayPal and Indiabulls. He’s already co-founded a company, Copal Amba, a financial research firm which was scaled to 3,000 employees and sold to Moody’s Corporation in 2014. And he helped establish the family office of the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal amongst many things. With OakNorth he estimates they’ve created about

Have you ever wondered what the meaning of life is? Of course you have, you’re only human after all.  Well, today’s guest, Alain de Botton, philosopher and founder of The School of Life, has not only wondered the same thing too, philosophising this age old dilemma, he’s also written a book on the subject.  Actually, he’s written well over 15 books as a solo author and collaborated on countless others.  “I was a young man who really wanted to know the meaning of life. I wanted guidance in the big questions. I wanted to know why I was anxious. Why I might be sad. What love was. How to secure love. What a good relationship was. What friendship was. What a satisfying career might be. I wanted to know all of these things. And really, there were very few clues in my education.” And so as well as writing on meaningful topics to help elucidate these deep subjects, Alain also founded The School of Life. He set it up in 2008 with colleagues, friends, supporters and his family, with the aim to offer an emotional educati

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 good and well, but it’s the failures that shape us; it’s how we handle adversity that makes us who we are. And today’s two live guests are no strangers to adversity.  Jo Malone: “My goals have never been realistic and that's the secret of my success. I really go out there and I push myself above and beyond. I think what we have to realise is that mistakes are a part of life.” Justine Roberts: “I worked very, very hard to find patient capital, which I think is what Mumsnet needs. And I made it very, very clear that we will always put purpose before profit.” Today, sharing the live stage and their entrepreneurial exper

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, wellness, fitness, home, tech and more - to over 1 million members each season. And as well as the box, members have access to FabFitFunTV, their digital lifestyle magazine, a robust online community, members-only shopping experiences, exclusive perks, events, and their mobile app. Now in their 10th year of trading and having surpassed $200 million in revenue, they have recently closed the most remarkably whopping series A of $80 million, led by some of the best venture capitalists in America.  But it hasn’t always been plain sailing.  “We were $1 million in debt when we closed our financing the first time. And we w

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 revolutionising healthcare), sit down together and go through pertinent health issues of the day was too good an opportunity to pass up.  Yes, Michael Acton Smith OBE, once described as the ‘tech version of Willy Wonka,’ may not seem an obvious choice to talk all things healthcare with, but this esteemed guest has focused his recent attention on raising awareness and building businesses in the mental health space, an arena that we are still very much lacking information. And Ali Parsa, well Ali is a one man war on healthcare. He’s a refugee who has set up the world’s largest healthcare app successfully changing the way we as hu

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 great about you and your founders, and how this thing is ever going to make money. They're probably the only three things that [they’re] going to remember from [a] 45 minutes or an hour [pitch]. Sometimes you feel when making a deck that more is more, it really isn't.” Financing and funding a startup seems to be the biggest sticking point for so many businesses. So much so, we invited back three incredible human beings - Anne Boden, founder and CEO of innovative challenger bank Starling Bank, Alex Depledge, co-founder of Resi and formerly Hassle.com (since sold to Helpling) and David Buttress, ex-CEO and co-founder of J

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 did so well that customers and retailers were asking us for more”, and getting down to just £27 in the bank at one point, Grenade was sold in 2018 for £72 million.  So how did this husband and wife team start and grow such a successful company, developing it into a global lifestyle brand?  Alan says, “one of the things that I think has been a real strength at Grenade is that people have enjoyed working with us, whether it's a supplier or customer, or the team, treat people how you'd like to be treated yourself.” It’s honest insights like these that make Alan and Juliet Barratt so listenable. They’re funny, inspiring an

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 that lets you discover the media playing all around you.  Jess was one of our first guests in Season One, and Dhiraj was interviewed for Season Two. We thought we’d bring them back on to the podcast for a catch up, only this time we’d interview them in a live setting.  We know, first hand, how hard it is to be an entrepreneur and get a business off the ground. Which is kind of the main reason we started this podcast, to help entrepreneurs, like us. Because the more we sat down with successful founders and picked their brains, the more we discovered that getting from zero to anywhere wasn’t always the glossy and incredi

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's fastest growing businesses - full stop. But Huel wasn’t Julian’s first foray into entrepreneurism - he sold his first venture, Promotional Codes, for £10m. “I had enough money to retire, but I get bored and I needed something to stay busy.” So his answer to staying busy was getting back into business. And after a few failed ventures he eventually founded Huel. So if you’re looking for inspiration, you won’t go far wrong tuning into Secret Leaders to hear how a guy who just wanted to find a way to spend time at home, not commuting, made millions in his pajamas. We chat about: How a failed entrepreneurial venture le

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 hear the side of the story from the founder who sold their company. You rarely, if ever, hear the story from the founder who bought the company being sold. In this case the wildly successful personalised e-card company, Moonpig.com, that sold for £120m to photo printing giants, Photobox in 2011, which then itself went onto sell for a reported £400m+. You’re in for a treat today - you get to hear from both sides - the good, the bad and the ugly of what happens during a M&A. That and you get a bucket load of advice from two Angel investors who between them have sunk a lot of money into the next generation of start ups. 

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, before that, he was the Director of Engineering for Flickr at Ludicorp (where he first met Slack fellow co-founder Stewart Butterfield) and then Yahoo. As you will shortly hear, Cal is considered to be one of Britain's finest exports. Although it's probably fair to say that he divides people much less than Marmite. Now residing in San Francisco where Slack is headquartered, Cal grew up in the humble county of Bedfordshire, England. After completing a computer science degree from Birmingham City University, he moved to the US in 2003, but not before landing a job after hacking into the email system of the company he wan

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 two lives (working at Warner and running her dance class side hustle) weren’t gelling and she wasn’t being authentic to either. It was the push she needed to dedicate herself to ClassPass full time. Fast forward to today and ClassPass is a monthly fitness membership program worth over $500m. It lets you take classes at different studios and gyms in your local area. It's one membership and with that you get credits that you can use to go to a spin class, a yoga class or a dance class for example, anytime and anywhere. We chat with Payal about: How learning to dance at a young age gave her a way of life and a way to th

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 women turn their light bulb moment into a successful company. Since launching SheEO in Canada in 2015, Vicki has successfully built up a network spanning numerous countries and sectors, with ambitious plans to raise $1bn of funding for one million women, by 2026, she is well on her way. How? Find out as we chat about: Her favourite quote - everything's broken, what a great time to be alive. How the SheEO fund works. How they’ve achieved a 100% payback rate. What path took her to founding SheEO. Why her favourite book is Winners Take All. What it’s like for someone to get investment through SheEO. How people can ge

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 is finding great talent with the necessary skill sets, to enable startup businesses to grow. Sherry’s resume is as lengthy as they come. She founded Interactive Investor International (III) in 1994 which she ran until 2000 when it floated on the London Stock Exchange. She then swapped entrepreneurship for angel investing, because it afforded her a better work/life balance. For 15 years she was a serial angel investor working with hundreds of entrepreneurs. But now she focuses her efforts on charitable endeavours via Founders4Schools. Join us today as we talk to Sherry about: The inspiration behind Founders4Schools

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, having recently graduated from Oxford University with a degree in engineering and having just started his own company, William was told by a family member that he was ‘too young’ to start his own business. Four years later that business sold and netted William £10m. Listen today as we find out what it took to bring Lovefilm to market and how it beat Amazon. Join us as we chat to William about: Other than marriage, what William’s best investment to date was How, aged 27, he sold his first business and made almost £10m in the process Why he chose to go down the DVD subscription route How Lovefilm handled the slow busi

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 of Lords has ever had, you will probably know her best as the founder of lastminute.com. However she doesn’t want that to be her sole legacy. She credits lastminute.com for affording her the opportunity to pursue her other work interests: being on the board of M&S, Twitter, Chanel and Channel 4, as well as her charitable work including setting up Reprieve - a charity helping those suffering from torture and human rights abuses. Martha is a keen advocate of just being human, for not letting your work define you, and so it is no surprise that she is the co-founder of prime evening entertainment venue, Lucky Voice. Jus

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 and worked hard to de-risk her professional career - she admits she was really seeking financial security and career stability. But having worked at Morgan Stanley, McKinley and American Express, she knew her heart wasn’t in financial services and consulting. And it was whilst on maternity leave when she took redundancy, realising she was financially secure, did she finally turn her hand to something she was truly passionate about. Her first foray into entrepreneurship was the hugely successful My Creche, London's first PAYG provider offering flexible childcare for busy parents. But that was nothing in comparison to

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 wanting to just go chill at the beach and surf. Luckily for the rest of us, he opted to work hard to affect a lot of change in the world. Having dropped out of UC Berkeley after just one and half semesters, realising that he could already do what he wanted to do, programming, it still took him nearly four years in the wilderness, building stuff and floundering in the dark, before he started up e-donkey. And the rest, is history. Join us today as we follow Jed’s journey from e-donkey to Stellar.org and listen as we talk about: Why he’s better suited as CTO, not CEO His childhood growing up in the woods with no running w

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 acquired by Match.com, to set up King in 2003. The rest they say, is history. But we aren’t going to gloss over this incredible piece of history, so join us as we talk with Italy’s most successful entrepreneur and take note, he has a lot of advice to share. Today we chat with Riccardo about: Giving King his all in the early days: selling his car and his flat to self-fund his venture and how King got angel investment at the eleventh hour. Why the University of Life is more important than actual university, and why King is harder to get into than Harvard. What he would take if he was stranded on a desert island. Wh

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 Weblogs Inc (which he sold to AOL in 2005 for $25m), before turning his hand to angel investing. Jason is the dinner party guest you want to have at your table - he would entertain and delight because he favours candidness over honesty, and believes that the secret to success is the ability to get on with difficult people. An early investor in calm.com, Jason could see the benefit it would bring to the world and credits the founder, Alex Tew, for having the same levels of creativity as Elon Musk and Steve Jobs. Jason says he loves angel investing because he gets to hang out with the smartest people in the world who