Welcome to The Founder Files! In this week’s episode, we chat with Simon Ellis, the Co-Founder and CEO of SmartWage. SmartWage is a cloud-based HR & Communications platform that focuses on making deskless workplaces in Africa more efficient and engaged. Through WhatsApp, SmartWage helps employers connect with their deskless employees digitally, giving them the ability to digitise payslip delivery, leave management and employee communications. Although he is a qualified accountant, having worked at Deloitte London in the Equity Capital Markets team for almost 4 years, he is an entrepreneur at heart. He's worked with multiple start-ups to help them raise capital, has tried (and failed) to start a number of his own businesses before Smartwage and is also the co-founder of Nutbrook Property, a property development company in London. However, we’re focusing on SmartWage in this episode and how built it into a company that recently attracted $2 Million in investment. Simon shares his challenging experiences in having to pivot the business and change the people that are part of the team. His hardest journey was having to split ways with his original founding team to find a new Co-Founder. However, he's managed to maintain strong and healthy relationships with all parties. Simon also provides some insight into some of the cliched lessons that we hear about entrepreneurship and how he learned to actually apply them in reality.Thanks for listening to this week’s episode and we hope you enjoyed it! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is sponsored by Metavolve. We help make business growth easier through strategy and people development. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!