The European Startup Show

[1:04] - What do you mean by creating demand and capturing demand?  What should you do in the early stages of the startups when you don’t have a lot of money?[6:41] - How do you create content at scale, especially in the early stages?[15:10] - Can you give client examples of impact to demand gen in 30-60-90 days? [20:37] - How do you influence different personas in the buyer journey?[23:50] - How does demand generation strategy differ from SMB to enterprise segment?[28:13] - When should you use Linkedin vs Facebook ads as a paid channel?[30:46] - What is the difference in strategy for companies growing from $50 M to $100 M in revenues? [34:14] - What metric would you tell companies to look at?[35:37] - How do you see product-led growth model working together with the demand gen model?[37:13] - What are the common mistakes you have seen startups make when it comes to setting up demand gen?[39:26] - How important is demand gen experience in a VP Marketing hire?  [41:32] - What should a founder expect in their 30-60-90 days from their VP of Marketing?

[01:10] - What did you do in your first 30, 60, 90 days of joining Monzo given the timing of your joining (May 2020)[07:42] - How did you navigate the pandemic? What are some lessons learnt?[11:18] - How did you maintain the morale of the people in these turbulent times?[15:30] - Is there anything you would do differently if you had to do it again?[16:23] - How do you balance the need for structure with the need for agility and innovation?[18:45] - How do you hire for someone with the right balance of agility and structure?[20:42] - How do you define a path for success at Monzo?[24:16] - Why expand in the US knowing it is very competitive? Why not other emerging markets?[26:33] - How do you prioritize the conflicting goals of revenues, profits, market share and wallet share? [27:57] - Monzo’s framework or OKRs[30:54] - How can we change impact diversity in fintech sector?Links:MonzoOther:Favorite Book: The God of Small Things by Arundhati RoyProductivity App: Strides

[01:11] Brief overview of what Aiden did and timeline of going from idea to sale to Twitter.[06:43] Do companies still need to relocate to get traction or to be noticed by potential acquirers? Has this changed post-pandemic?[08:22] Reflecting on your journey so far, if you had to write a book, what would you write about?[10:51] Is there any practical advice on how to hire diversely despite inclinations to hire those similar to you? [13:50] Having been an entrepreneur and now an angel investor,  what should entrepreneurs (especially women entrepreneurs) do and not do when trying to raise angel funding?[20:34] What are your thoughts on women founders in Europe? And what could we do to increase the number of women founders?[24:48] What is the next big thing for you?[29:18] How does the product that Twitter has acquired fit their overall roadmap? Has it been integrated or is it a standalone product?[30:25] Closing thoughts and advice for other entrepreneursMarie on Twitter:@MarieOuttierLinks:WHO - How to hire A playersZero to One by Peter Thiel

Her journey from invention to commercialization[01:19] How did you go from researching how visually impaired people use public transport to identifying the food expiry problem?[9:54] At what point does this go from being research to having commercialization potential?[13:28] Did you first get funded for your prototype by your grant and then raise a seed round of funding?Hiring[17:54] How did you think about building and scaling your team?[22:39] Recap of the key points when it comes to hiring. [24:18] What led you to hire a CEO? And how did you go about doing that and what did you learn from that process?[32:42] How does your and the hired Ceo’s relationship work on a day-to-day basis?LinksMimicaBooksZero to One by Peter Thiel

The business[01:00] What made you become an entrepreneur and how did you come up with this idea? [03:54] How is your product different from what other organic products are doing in the market?[05:00] Why aren’t any of the big FMCG brands doing anything like this?The process[07:55] What was your process from concept to production?[10:27] Did you do market validation whilst testing the product?[13:23] Why did you choose to sell directly to customers?The Insights[22:23] What has been the hardest part of the journey?[23:17] What were some of the biggest mistakes that you think you could have avoided?[24:26] What was your larger vision when you thought about creating this company?[29:06] - How did you go about building and engaging your early adopter community?[30:14] What stage is your company in right now?[31:46] How do you keep on top of what you need to do and ensure you don’t burn out?Company: PlaneraBooks:Traction

Caroline’s Journey[1:00] How did you go from founding a mobile development company to founding Apricity?[15:08] What were some of the challenges you faced when you started this company?Apricity[16:34] Do you cover the entire fertility process or only parts of it?[17:08] How do you measure success in a company like yours?[18:51] Where all is Apricity available?[22:18] What trends do you foresee for fertility that are hopeful for those wanting to have kids?[26:31] How did you establish trust?Being a women entrepreneur[28:30] What are some mistakes you’ve made and what have you learned from them?[31:43] Could you give some practical advice on how to balance being a CEO and having a family with kids?[33:53] How do you gain respect and equality when working with an older male colleague?[36:40] How did you bring about gender balance in your company?LinksApricityBooks:My Absolute Darling by Gabriel TallentBetty by Tiffany McDaniel

Intro to Product marketing[1:26] What is product marketing?[4:51] How can product marketing and product management work better together?[6:57] What is the role of product marketing across the three stages of a company - early, growth and multi-product?Product marketing during the stages[10:15] Early Stage[10:23] What should product marketing at that stage look like - how many product marketers and what key responsibilities should they have?[13:20] Advice on how to create priority and focusContent[16:11] How do you organize content to be top, middle, or bottom of the funnel?[19:15] Metrics on the average number of content pieces that need to be producedHiring[20:40] What should you look for in a product marketing hire? How important is domain expertise?[22:37] Can someone with only domain expertise be trained to become a product marketer? And how can that be done?Product launches[24:28] What is your playbook for product launches?Customer reviews[28:51] How do you get customer reviews on sites like G2, Capterra etc.Lead generation[31:45] What is the product marketing manager’s role in lead generation?Advice for first-time founders and entrepreneurs[34:00] Product marketing advice and insights for entrepreneurs and first-time founders. Links:https://www.theproductlaunchmasterclass.com/home

[1:34] - Background of how they came up with the idea.[3:48] - What does Klaus do[6:30] - What are the trends in the market you are trying to capitalize on and why now?[12:53] - What is your advice to founders who are not technical and need to find a technical founder?[14:46] - How do hackathons work?[15:17] - How did you get your funding?[16:47] - What was your growth strategy in the early days?[19:31] - What did you focus on in your early days and how did you prioritize product, community building, and brand building?[23:06] - How did you recruit in the early days to ensure you built a certain type of culture and balance that with the need to also be diverse?[25:35] - How did you set up your initial system of leads and what advice would you give other entrepreneurs.[30:20] - What are the trends in customer support and what is the future of KlausLinksCompany: KlausBooks:The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz Principals by Ray Dalio

[1:45] - What were the events or people that shaped your journey to starting Unreasonable Group.[15:44] - What is Unreasonable Group and what is it not?[18:15] - What do you provide the entrepreneurs that their investors can’t?  Can you share some examples of companies in your portfolio and how do you find them [31:16] - How has covid impacted your portfolio of companies and what are you doing to support them?[36:12] - How can entrepreneurs get in touch with your team, what is the application process?  [36:59] - 3-steps to building culture in any company Company: Unreasonable GroupOther mentionsRiverSimple80 AcresClasscraft1MGMemphis MeatsBook: Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard

Human Layer Security[1:7] - What was your journey going from being a financial analyst with no background in security to founding Tessian?  [6:50] - What does Tessian do, how is it protecting people in the remote working environment and what are some of the top security threats your customers are worried about?[13:05] - How does Tessian and what it does for email security differ from what big security companies like Symantec offer?Go-To-Market Category Creation[17:53] - How did you come up with this “human security layer” and do you see this as a new category in security?[21:09] - How did you create this new category and get the industry to recognize it?[23:17] - How do you constantly differentiate yourself in the marketplace when marketing and what you say can be copied easily?Other questions[26:39] - What does Tessian stand for?[28:51] - Why wouldn’t security teams try to simplify their stack and go with the “good-enough” option from other big vendors?[32:08] - What was your customer acquisition channel in the beginning and how has that changed as you grew?[35:36] - How did you determine pricing for a new category product?[36:50] - Looking back at your go-to-market journey, what didn’t go so well and what did you learn from that?What all Great Pitches have[42:07] - What was your funding journey like? How did you manage to get Accel, Sequoia and Balderton as investors?  LinksCompany: TessianBook:  On Tyranny by Timothy D SnyderNew Podcast: RE Human Layer Security