Cocaine, £1,000 on roulette, sleeping with the client, a boss demanding bail out of a Malaysian prison, a restraining order - and that’s just one of the stories in this special episode where we turn the microphone on our host, Dan Murray-Serter.

This is the start of a semi-regular series where we interview Dan roughly every three months because:

If you listen to the podcast regularly we thought you might want to get to know him better. Who is this guy in your ears every week?
Dan is the Founder of braincare startup Heights so we thought we could grill him every 3 months so you can find out what it’s really like in the Founder hot seat - warts and all.

This episode is focused on the early part of Dan’s career - a period when Dan learned how he wanted to lead - from bad bosses.

Dan grew up with an entrepreneur of a father - and saw the toll it took on him. It wasn’t a life Dan wanted, so what eventually convinced him to take the plunge into entrepreneurship?

“Entrepreneurship is a bit of a drug. And the scariest part of it always is and always has been leaving my job to do this full time, that was always the scariest part, because there's no, you know, there was no safety net.”

What was Grabble, Dan’s previous startup? Why did it fail? How did he get invited to Buckingham Palace? Who did he joke about to make the Queen laugh? And why did Brexit kill Grabble?

“I mean, the thing is, it is quite a long story, because sadly, what we should have done is pull the cord. And we didn't do that, we did death by 1,000 paper cuts.”

--

Sponsors

Vorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleaders

Vanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleaders

Vertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders

--

Newsletter

Sign up here: https://secretleaders.email/

You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

At Least 2 Dead and Many “Significant Injuries” in L.A. Area Wildfires