Venturi's Voice: Technology | Leadership | Staffing | Career | Innovation

Joe Pettersson is a technology leader with a focus on building inclusive, productive and fun engineering and product teams. Joe has worked in a lot of different domains, but has a particular passion for developer tools and B2B SaaS businesses. He is also an active angel and seed investor in the European technology eco-system.  Banked is a fintech startup that powers real-time payments for consumers, businesses and banks. Their dream is to ensure everyone gets paid in the fastest, cheapest, most efficient way possible, so they’re driving an irreversible shift in global payments. During the podcast episode, Ben sits down with Joe to discuss how to successfully scale happy, diverse and motivated engineering teams. They also discussed Joe's book 'Scaling Engineering', (set to be released on July 2022) which consists of interviews with over 400 engineering leaders. "Scaling engineering teams is difficult. It's complex, time-consuming and at times it can feel unintuitive. A few can turn to their networks as they go on the journey, and that can feel like a super power. The knowledge and experience needed can feel inaccessible to those that don't have their own networks. Scaling Engineering is being written to help solve that problem."

Saima Mahmood is Software Development Manager at Oracle. After joining Oracle as a Scrum Master, Saima was promoted to Software Development Manager following her success in leading and organising the team she was working with and delivering everything that was planned across two releases, through detailed planning and communication. Oracle is a cloud technology company that provides organizations around the world with computing infrastructure and software to help them innovate, unlock efficiencies and become more effective. Oracle also created the world’s first – and only – autonomous database to help organize and secure their customers’ data. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Saima to discuss driving diversity in the tech space, Inspiring the next generation, promoting recruitment to attract all types of people, and some of the reasons why people may avoid a career in technology.

Max Ostermeier is CEO of Implandata Implandata is going to transform the management of glaucoma patients. 80 million patients are at risk of permanent loss of eyesight because of glaucoma. Management of glaucoma patients is primarily eye center based. Disease status and progression is unknown in between office visits, resulting in irreversible vision loss at a significant number of patients. Implandata’s breakthrough EYEMATE system introduces remote management and care of glaucoma. Crucial disease parameters are collected at the patient, AI analyzed and provided real-time to the ophthalmologist, enabling personalized therapy guidance. During this Podcast episode, Ben sits down with Max to discuss how Implandata began, how the cutting edge tech works, how to successfully get a product out to market from scratch and the future of tech and data-driven healthcare.

Melissa Snover is CEO and Founder at Nourish3d and Script3d.  Melissa is an award-winning entrepreneur and visionary in the world of food technology. Having started her first company at the age of 23, she has been bringing innovative products to the consumer market ever since. She is a passionate supporter of women in business, as well as being a dedicated mentor; encouraging young people of all backgrounds to begin studying in STEM fields. Nourish3d is the world's first truly personalised nutrition product. Using patented 3D printing technology and a vegan encapsulation formula to create totally bespoke and delicious vitamin stacks. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Melissa to discuss how the business began, the inspiration behind starting the business and how Melissa has used 3D printing to create a solution to combat the limited constraints of mass production in confectionery. As well as Melissa's experience appearing on the BBC Series Dragons Den.

Mario Behrendt is Head of Engineering at Tails.com. Mario grew the software engineering team from 8 to 50 engineers across multiple countries, introduced a QA function and ensured delivery performance across all teams at Tails.com. He managed to scale internationally from 1 to 9 countries, while moving the Python-based monolith to a micro-service architecture. Tails.com is a dog food subscription company that creates tailored food for each and every dog they serve. They start by asking people a few simple questions about the owners' dog. Then Tails.com use that information to create their dog’s unique recipe – so their dog gets exactly the nutrition they need, in the taste they love, delivered to their door every month. Having created an entirely new category in pet food, they’re now scaling fast in the UK and Europe – backed by Purina, one of the worlds largest pet food companies. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Mario to discuss his career history to Head of Engineering, growing up in a small town in rural Germany and working with the tech available to him from a very young age. As well as how to approach hiring at scale whilst also hiring for diversity and without bias.

Ewan Leith leads RealityMine’s software engineering, operations and test teams, to deliver high quality software and services for its clients. He especially enjoys working with cutting-edge technology and great people — two things Ewan believes that RealityMine has plenty of! RealityMine enables the world’s leading market research organisations to monitor real consumers across multiple devices and on all major operating systems. This permission-based data collection provides unique insights into the behaviour of consumers and is integrated by agencies into syndicated products, audience measurement currencies and custom research globally. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Ewan to discuss how to create an environment that spawns innovation, and how to build and support that culture from the ground up. And as times have been more challenging during the pandemic - how to maintain this culture as teams are physically separated.

Tom Dunlop is Chief Executive Officer & Founder @ Summize. As an accomplished commercial and technology lawyer, Tom's experience with reviewing contracts was the catalyst that led to Summize. Prior to this, he worked as a Global Legal Director for several fast-growth technology companies. As a practicing lawyer himself, Tom saw the need to reduce cost and speed up the implementation time of products to change the way legal teams work, spawning the birth of Summize, which started with a simple question - how could contracts be made quicker and easier for legal teams?  During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Tom to discuss Tom's career history and background as a professional GB athlete, his thoughts on the increase of tech adoption in the legal space, why the legal industry has previously been slow on the uptake with new technology.

Emily Zhang is the Head of Product at Oyster. She is excited to be part of this mission-driven company at this early stage to help launch, scale and succeed. Prior to joining Oyster, Emily built products at Carta and eBay. She began her career as a management consultant at Bain & Company. Emily grew up in Sydney and is currently based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Oyster is the platform that makes it easy for companies to hire, manage, pay, and look after their global team members. Their mission is to create a more equal world by making it possible for companies everywhere to hire people anywhere. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Emily to discuss Emily's career to date, remotely building and onboarding teams at scale, and the culture of Silicon Valley.

Lisa Li is Technical Lead at AND Digital. Lisa is a proficient developer with many years of experience in analysis, design and develop web and mobile-based applications. She has worked with design agents, e-commences, small businesses, large corporate and government projects. Lisa's roles have ranged from designing product wireframe, developing web and mobile applications to deploy applications to live environments. AND Digital accelerates the development of world-class digital capabilities, and power the product development of ambitious companies - from British Airways and Conde Nast, to The Telegraph, Gousto and more. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Lisa to discuss Lisa's career in technology with advice on how to grow from Junior to Senior in your role in tech. As well as why the tech industry still has a gender imbalance, and what it was like for Lisa at the beginning of her career entering into a male-dominated industry.

Dan McNeil is Director of Engineering at ComplyAdvantage. ComplyAdvantage, founded in 2014,  provides anti-money laundering technology. The company uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing to help regulated organisations manage risk obligations and counteract financial crime. Dan McNeil is Director of Engineering and has a particular interest in people management, promoting diversity within teams and the importance of mental health awareness in the workplace. During this podcast episode, Ben sits down with Dan to discuss hiring at scale and how to remain inclusive during the hiring and onboarding process when hiring quickly as well as some of the pitfalls to be aware of, and some of the benefits a business can expect when hiring without bias.