Secret Leaders with Dan Murray-Serter & Chris Donnelly

How many times have you stood in front of a wall of wine in a supermarket and taken a punt on one because the bottle looked nicer than the others? We’ve all done it… and often been disappointed by results. So, in 2009 Heini Zachariassen, Co-Founder, Former CEO and current board member of Vivino, decided to fix the problem.“Why is wine something that nobody has disrupted? And why is wine something where the only thing I can base my decision on is looking at a label.”Vivino’s mission is to help people find better wine and they’ve been doing it primarily through their mobile app which lets you scan bottles to find reviews, ratings etc. - and ultimately make better wine buying decisions.Vivino isn’t Heini’s first rodeo. His first foray into entrepreneurialism was with BullGuard, a company delivering cybersecurity and VPN solutions.“The real success for me in doing your first startup is learning. It's just incredible how much you learn, what kind of mistakes you do, and that just comes back at you later. That's why second time founders are just better than first time founders.”You don’t build a startup alone, says Heini, you aren’t the only one doing the work. Your family has to make sacrifices, your spouse, your children. And when things go wrong, you feel them in your body. Find out what he means…  --SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

Growing a company to 14 million users and a valuation of $1.5 billion should be cause for celebration, but, like so many founders, for Vinay Hiremath, Co-Founder and CTO of Loom, it’s difficult to enjoy your successes. In fact it’s the failures that tend to stick with you.Loom, a video communication tool for businesses, wouldn’t be here today if Vinay and his Co-Founders hadn’t had their ‘sliding doors’ moment which revealed what they should be building right before they were going to have to give up. “Half the battle is figuring out what the fuck the problem even is, right? What pain points do people actually have? As you're pivoting, you end up finding something that works, and maybe it doesn't line up with your hypothesis perfectly, and usually it doesn't make any sense. And if you see traction, that's the point where you hop on and say, Okay, I'm here for the ride.”And what a ride it’s been. Most founders would be ecstatic if they hit one macroeconomic trend - Loom hit four or five, back to back. But the problem with phenomenal growth is the human cost: the toll it’s taken on the team, on the engineers, on Vinay’s mental health. Is it worth it? “Every year or two years, you're faced with some situation where you're like, is this worth it? Like, am I the right person? I wish I could say that it gets easier. But for me, it really hasn't.”--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

Larry Gadea built the world's biggest Pikachu pictures website at 12 years old, was recruited by Google at 17, joined Twitter after college and then left to found Envoy in 2013. He did all this after getting smuggled out of Romania as a young child in the late 1980s and watching his parents have to restart their lives several times. Normally childhoods filled with upheaval breed an aversion to risk - but not in Larry.Envoy is a workplace management tool that helps with things like letting you know when visitors have arrived at your office and booking meeting rooms. 16,000 workplaces were using Envoy, so on paper it looked like Larry had the dream career. But then Covid hit.“So here we are with our products almost exclusively built for these workplaces that you can't go in. At first it was a little bit crazy. It was very scary, like what do you do?”Find out how Larry and Envoy have got past this genuine iceberg. --SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

After exiting Songkick, Michelle You was burnt out. It felt like failure and grief (her words). She spent a year backpacking around the world, living on $2 per day, trying to figure out what it took to make her happy, to figure out what mattered to her and what her next business move was.“I went camping and hiking and surfing and climbing for the first time. And it was that that made me fall in love with nature. And that was my gateway drug into the climate change crisis.”Michelle is determined not to repeat the same mistakes she made at Songkick at Supercritical, the climate tech startup helping businesses actually achieve net zero.“It took me personally lots of coaching and conversations to feel like okay, I really feel ready now to dive in again, because I was scared, you know, I was really scared of failing, I was scared of having a bad idea, scared of replicating terrible decisions, terrible experiences.”Find out how Michelle found herself again after feeling like a massive failure from her first startup, and why she’s built a climate tech software platform that isn't all just planting trees. “We measure the carbon footprint end to end. This typically takes somebody six months of working with a consultant charging five figures. And that's what I learned [during] my time at LocalGlobe. This can be done with software.”We chat about: Why the end of Songkick felt like grief The importance of a good product discovery process  Why climate is the next diversity and inclusion --SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

Miki Agrawal was forced to become an entrepreneur having started her career, in her own words, as an awful employee: “I got fired from pretty much all of my jobs growing up, because I just wasn't listening, or I was questioning or I was talking back or I was running in the hall or I was eating while on the job or giving away smoothies to friends. Whatever job I had, I did something wrong.”The daughter of an immigrant who came to the US with $5 in his pocket, Miki learned early that if you see something you don’t like, question it and fix it even if you don’t have resources - even if you have no money.  Miki nearly didn’t become an entrepreneur - she was going to be a professional footballer before fate decided otherwise. But now she’s the founder of Tushy, one of the most unusual startups we’ve had on the show. Tushy makes a collection of bidets and other accessories for the bathroom to help you become more hygienic, less wasteful - and kinder to your bottom. “My boyfriend, now husband, got me this really crappy birthday product that he found in some Asian place and he installed it for Valentine's Day and he was like, ‘Look, these will help your butt’ and then it truly changed my life.”Find out how Miki dealt with theft in her first startup and poisonous politics in her second venture making period pants before she realised how much our bottoms need saving. We chat about: Why entrepreneurs have to be naive The best interview question ever Conscious businesses outperform non-conscious by up to 13 times --SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

Jesse Powell grew up poor and hustling from a young age. First, he sold physical gaming cards, then he sold virtual ‘gold’ in the game World of Warcraft - and now he’s the Co-Founder and CEO of Kraken, Europe’s largest crypto exchange - with talk of going public for $20 billion. How did he make the jump? “Bitcoin, when I read about it, I thought it was interesting. I first saw it and just thought it was like another World of Warcraft gold that we can sell on the website.”Jesse has been in crypto pretty much since the beginning, helping out in the aftermath of the infamous Mt. Gox hack when $460 million got stolen from the world’s biggest exchange. It taught him a lot about security but today it’s NFTs that have got him excited.“I think NFTs are going to be a much bigger thing. I think you'll see the tokenization of basically everything. We're already starting to see tokenized securities, stocks becoming tokenized, art is becoming tokenized.”Find out how he found the world’s best hacker and the biggest mistakes he’s made in building a multi billion pound company.“If I could go back again, what I would do is, even if I didn't need the money, I would go through one of the major Silicon Valley accelerators, I would apply for Y Combinator, and I would do it for the network. Because, you know, it's basically like your entrance fee into this elite club.”--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

“Every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten, and I went ‘right, that's it, that's what I'm calling my business.’”This is the story of Killing Kittens, the cult-like sex party, founded by Emma Sayle. “Everyone starts talking to each other and mingling and then you'll see maybe a few couples disappear off into a room, or you know a group of girls go off. One minute you've got a packed bar and the next minute it's only 10 people in the bar and everyone's gone off into different rooms, getting naked, having sex, doing whatever. It’s like Dante's Inferno, limbs everywhere.”Killing Kittens begun life in 2005 as a series of monthly hedonistic parties led by empowered women in London, but it has since grown into a global movement including apps like the most private of private messaging platforms. In this latest episode, Emma shares where the idea for Killing Kittens came from, why women today are much better at owning their sexuality, sexual double standards, what to expect at a KK party, and how to turn something like this into a big business. “I need to raise money because we need to go big or go home on the whole platform side of it. And to make it fly before some Silicon Valley upstart with millions in the bank comes in claiming to own the female digital sex space.”--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

How do you live a happier, healthier, more productive life? This is the question that doctor-turned-YouTuber Ali Abdaal is obsessed with.“Most of my childhood was spent chasing this dream of making magical internet money that mostly didn't work out. And it was like a string of failures. But when I did end up making magical internet money, I felt that a lot of the failures from childhood had been worth it.”Ali’s first business, 6Med, which he started in university in 2013, helps people get into medical schools and has been used by over 10,000 prospective doctors. But recently his career took an interesting turn when, having paused being a doctor to focus on becoming a YouTuber, he realised that his real love was teaching.With over two million subscribers and videos that have racked up over 145 million views, Ali has definitely found his niche.“I started seriously asking myself the question like, what the hell do I want to do with my life? One exercise I found really helpful was thinking about what do I want written on my gravestone? I ended up landing on some combination of good dad, good husband, and inspirational teacher.”Find out how to be more productive, why having fun with your work is so important, and how to tell your mum that you’re packing in medicine for a career on YouTube (eek).--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

“It’s really hard for companies to get acquired. I was shocked at how many entrepreneurs reached out to me after we announced the acquisition [of Bizness Apps], like ‘how did you get acquired?’”With a couple of exits already under his belt, Andrew Gazdecki saw first-hand how broken the process of selling a company was. He used that experience to start MicroAcquire in January 2020, a platform that helps startups get acquired by connecting them with buyers within 30 days. The goal is to give startups an alternative to brokers that’s easier, cheaper and more likely to succeed - and it’s working. In this episode, Andrew discusses the cut-throat world of clarinet playing, graduating Chico State with 2.07 - the lowest GPA of any student in their history; starting and exiting Bizness Apps and Altcoin.io; diagnosing the problems between private equity and entrepreneurs, and why he would support any of his employees who quit MicroAcquire to start their own company. “Entrepreneurship isn't for everyone. It's about understanding who you are as a person. But what I think about a lot is just, the fear of regret is so much heavier than the fear of failure.”--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes

“When I was about 28 or 29 I had a squirting orgasm, I completely lost my mind. I couldn't tell if I was having a religious moment or a seizure, or maybe both or neither. As I lay there on the cold tile floor staring at the ceiling, all I could think was, oh my god, how do I do that again? And more importantly, how do I do that again by myself?”Lora DiCarlo is the founder of the sex tech startup also called Lora DiCarlo, and is determined to change the face of sex products.Having won an award for their first prototype at the world famous Consumer Electronics Show in 2019, the award was subsequently revoked for being ‘obsence, profane and immoral’, prompting outrage over the double-standards on women’s sexuality.Lora’s is a story of orgasms, scandals, celebrity power, the patriarchy, and a sprinkling of robotics engineering. Oh and find out how to bring on board Cara Delevingne as a co-owner.--SponsorsVorboss - get better internet: https://vorboss.com/secretleadersVanta - get 20% off security certifications like ISO27001 and SOC2: https://vanta.com/secretleadersVertice - save on your SaaS or cloud spend ($5k off or a free benchmark) using the code secretleaders: https://www.vertice.one/l/secretleaders--NewsletterSign up here: https://secretleaders.email/You can find our historic newsletters here: https://www.secretleaders.com/episodes