Being paid to get fit may sound too good to be true, but it’s exactly what this week’s Searching for Mana guest Ole Fomenko is doing for his app’s more than 70 milllion users.  Sweatcoin tracks a user’s steps and this summer will covert them into free crypto currency.  Watching a movie with his children was the inspiration for the app; his motivation for driving it lies in repenting for previous professional sins.  It’s a great episode, enjoy…Oleg Fomenko, founder of health currency app Sweatcoin, is this episode’s guest on the Searching for Mana show.  Oleg has an eclectic CV: born in the Soviet Union, he started his career working for global corporate brands such as Coca-Cola and Mars, before coming to the UK and working at Boston Consulting Group, where he learned from other entrepreneurs’ failures.  He decided to create Sweatcoin after realising his own fitness, which once enabled him to climb Kilimanjaro three times, had declined to the point he could no longer run 5k.  And after watching a movie with his children about robots and obese humans…In this episode Oleg talks about the importance of sticking to your vision and not being swayed by others’ opinions or ambitions.  He also discusses how Sweatcoin’s success lies in nature’s failure to award an orgasm for exercise - as well as choosing NEAR foundation as the protocol.This is a wide-ranging interview with great insights into an entrepreneur’s mindset and journey to success. 2:00 The User case – how Sweatcoin came about6:20 Nature’s failure to give humans an orgasm for exercise13:44 Making the business case for Sweatcoin17:00 Stopping the scammers20:20: How Sweatcoin is bringing about behavioural change24:15: Starting his career in corporate life – and how his values have changed27 Becoming an entrepreneur…28:50 Why Boston Consulting Group was an unhelpful experience32 Build a business on a problem rather than an idea37 The importance of staying focused and not getting distracted40 The impact of Covid42:25 The rational for choosing NEAR protocol53:13 Encouraging people to keep moving58 Oleg’s mana….

As CEO of the NEAR protocol foundation, Marieke Flament is currently one of the most successfulfemale leaders working in fintech. But it took some convincing for her to give up an established,super successful corporate career; she was even told she was ‘full on crazy’ for considering it. As shetells presenter Lloyd Wahed in this episode, she defied her critics to join Circle in 2015 where shestayed until being inspired by another female CEO to move to banking app Mettle. The trajectory to the top hasn’t been smooth: admitted into one of France’s Grandes Ecoles to studycomputer science, Marieke discovered that she wasn’t good at coding and looked for alternativecareer paths. A period of time living in China taught her how to be solution-orientated – a mindsetshe describes as key to her success as well as a willingness to show weakness and be prepared tofail. As well as discussing her professional journey, Marieke also talks about her reason for joining NEARover its competitors, and the ground-breaking opportunities innovations such as DecentralizedAutonomous Organisations are offering the tech sector.1.23 – NEAR foundation’s mandate. 5.15 – What is it that appealed to Marieke about Near as a protocol8.52 – Demand for good engineers outstripping supply9’49 – Changing the narrative around Bitcoin11.05 - Attracting a more diverse workforce12.54 – The need for more talent – and not just engineers14.34 – The power of Decentralized Autonomous Organsiations18.57 – How have NEAR raised capital from some of the biggest VCs around20.55 – How and when could the NEAR foundation become redundant?22.57 – Marieke’s background24.35 – How Marieke got into computer engineering – and learning that she didn’t like to code26.08 – What China taught Marieke?27.30 – The importance of a winning mentality28.42 – Leaving Expedia – and believing Bitcoin was run by drugdealers…30.28 – Joining Circle – and being called ‘full on crazy’31.07 – The career decisions you make when you’re 8 years old32.21 – Leaving circle and being inspired by a female CEO34.45 – The diversity challenge in fintech36.41 – Bringing your best self to work – and recognising that everyone has faults38.11 – The importance of confidence40.35 – The importance of family time41.50 – Importance of family time44.11 – Marieke’s mana….

Rodolphe Ardant, CEO of French unicorn Spendesk, is this week’s guest on the Searching for Mana podcast.  Rodolphe enjoyed a peripatetic childhood moving around the world every three years due to his father’s career, and says this instilled in him a ‘sense of curiosity’.  Combined with the ‘autistic boredom’ he felt growing up, Rodolphe had a desire to create and build things from an early age, skills he honed at engineering school.It's clear in this episode that Rodolphe maintains the restlessness that characterized his younger years.  After founding and selling his first company (and learning from the mistakes), he joined the car-sharing platform Drivy as Chief Operating Officer before realising he was best suited to the agile, fast-paced start-up environment.  Spendesk was born and was built on two key values: freedom and trust.This is a great episode with insights into how Rodolphe used his highly technical, entrepreneurial mindset to build one of France’s tech start-up success stories.Watch & Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3sSnmMa 1:10 Spendesk’s mission4:00 Lessons learned while COO at Drivy5:55 Understanding the problem to create the solution8:30 Money is about emotion and having control11:17 Thinking deeply about becoming an entrepreneur again15:50 Spendesk is built on two key values19:25 – Rodolphe’s childhood and how it influenced his career20:22 The joy of solving problems, and autistic boredom23:09 What makes an entrepreneur mindset?24’56 Getting over mistakes27:04 What motivates him in the face of continued success

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsCfKLN1u1cL_luwY5qR4YwApple Podcast: https://apple.co/2Hhg4gB​​ Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3kKZQKlSearching for Mana is a UK-based podcast which focuses on tech innovation in finance, and features interviews with influencers, leaders and founders in the fintech space, from unicorn companies to financial disruptors. Previous guests have included the Director of Growth at Oaknorth, the CEO of BCB Group (the UK’s first licensed crypto bank), the CEO of Innovate Finance (the industry body for UK fintech) and Ed Vaizey, the UK’s longest serving Minister for Technology. Each hour-long episode gains insight into how the guest got into fintech, what they’re currently focused on, what their companies are all about, as well as some of the important trends within the wider fintech sector. The show is presented by Lloyd Wahed, a London-born tech entrepreneur who has founded two recruiting firms, Athelstan Search and Mana Search and has successfully helped scale a number of unicorn technology companies. Follow Mana Search on Twitter: https://twitter.com/manasearchuk​​ Follow Mana Search on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mana-talent/

In the first episode of season 4 of the Searching for Mana podcast, Brett Harrison, US president of leading crypto exchange platform FTX, talks to presenter Lloyd Wahed about the importance of regulation but also the need to take more risks; how staying small has helped FTX to play big; how he balances being a father and an enthusiastic pet owner (six dogs and five cats) with running one of the most talked about companies of the moment. And, of course, what it’s like working with Sam Bankman-Fried.

This is quite a story, listen to Zilch CEO and Co-Founder, Philip Belamant, British Entrepreneur of the year 2021, who has taken the business from series A to Unicorn faster than anyone else in Europe has managed with any other company. He and his team still have control of more than 50% of the equity, and their international expansion starts next year. Philip sat down with Lloyd Wahed CEO of Mana Search to discuss the journey that has seen Zilch achieve over 1 million users in 13 months.Zilch grew their team from 40 to 200 people in a year, and Philip believes his superpower is building teams through finding the best people and binding them together with a vision.Like many entrepreneurs on the Searching for Mana Podcast, Philip was a restless student, not impressed with his university education that seemed more about regurgitating data than anything more creative or problem-solving. He had the good fortune to have a father who was an entrepreneur and shared his passion for technology and building products.Philip found out as a young man that active engagement is the best way to learn, there is nothing wrong with trial and error, and not being afraid to pivot if that produces a better result.His attributes in his own words include, “perpetual dedication to the cause” and “I work at it all the time”  his firmly held belief is that “no-one is special” but “put in the time and surround yourself with the right people” to find success.For Philip, his opportunity came from the democratisation of money and free credit was the way for him to make a difference. He argues that there is nothing new in “buy now pay later”, however for most companies in that niche the retailer is the customer, but going directly to the consumer and enabling them to use any retailer through Zilch is the key to their strategy.

On this week’s Searching for Mana Lloyd Wahed CEO of Mana Search met with Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, the co-creators of the Tezos blockchain to discuss the development of the Tezos ecosystem and how it uses creativity, collaboration and a degree of democratisation to evolve this open-source platform.They see themselves very much as match makers and facilitators, bringing together developers with problems who will contribute to the ecosystem and profit from it. There are a couple of hundred developers in the ecosystem all over the world who know that they can make proposals with a high chance of making a difference for the good of all participants. Along the way they can take advantage of low fees and high capacity on the chain and know that the Tezos Proof-of-Stake methodology is eco-friendly compared to Proof-of-Work models.The platform is built on mechanisms that ensure active community governance and participation. There is no CEO or hierarchy and making a proposal that turns into action requires an 80% majority, a level they feel is a clear mandate but with a healthy respect for the minority.This is a platform to facilitate transactions, they are not obsessed by being an alternative to banking, but they are obsessed with solving problems and empowering creators and connecting them up with others who also want to solve a problem. Tezos facilitates the facilitators, providing the infrastructure to help problem solvers be successful. Tezos suits the smart and the curious, those who work off first principles and take nothing for granted, to some degree it’s a social technology driving a blockchain.

Building anything that is going to survive and prosper requires a solid foundation and that is what Sean Lee CEO of the Algo Foundation described when he met Lloyd Wahed in this week’s Searching for Mana Podcast.  The Algo is the native token of the Algorand blockchain, and the Algo foundation helps users solve real-world problems using the Algo ecosystem which is based on four basic principles:Speed, as it sends money anywhere in 4 secondsScale, to support billions of users without slowing downSecurity, to operate without any forks, andTransparency, as anyone can see how many Algo are in useTo add to that compelling mix of benefits the Algo takes no mining to use, so this is a green, carbon-neutral technology using consensus as an alternative. Here is a different type of platform to solve the blockchain trilemma of being fast, scalable and secure together.Currently, there are 2m Algo transactions a day and Sean sees their role as part of a new generation of technologists with a vast array of opportunities in front of them and a “rising sea to lift all our boats”. Sean studied computer science before working through what he defines as a series of technology-driven waves that have transformed the way life and business work. The first wave was the internet driving new business models, and then social networks changed the way we communicate with each other, which was followed by the “sharing economy” enabled by the cloud and here we are now on a rising tide of transaction innovations increasing efficiency, transparency and security.The Algo foundation invite applications from institutions around the world who want to use the Algorand blockchain, and Sean describes a project with the University of Cape Town, which they will be funding for some years to create a centre of excellence to apply blockchain solutions to digital currency and identity issues across Africa. This is part of the foundation's belief in education and helping the tokenisation of assets release the benefits of ownership and provide equitable financial assets to those that don’t have them. For Sean crypto assets create an economic model by engaging with communities wanting to leverage the blockchain to empower them through better owner models and frictionless ways to transact.If you like what you hear, please subscribe and leave us a review! And don’t forget to follow us on social media:https://twitter.com/manasearchukhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/mana-talent/

Ben Chemla CEO of Shares and Lloyd Wahed of Mana Search met to discuss how Shares is making share dealing a social activity and how Ben has learnt how to grow a company fast in a new market.The idea for Shares came from social investing, seeing friends chatting about their ideas and sharing views, having fun and learning from each other. He saw the opportunity to enable communities around making a safe space to explore opportunities with friends, sharing portfolio activity in real time.Ben uses a comparison with Strava, which informs the community you connect with about the route you took and what you found, but you choose what you share and with whom, and for those that share that interest it’s compelling and often inspiring. Like many entrepreneurs Ben studied law but didn’t want to make it his career, however his creative spark surfaced at university as he created the student association at Le Sorbonne. Creativity has driven Ben to want to build things, he has surrounded himself with the best people to learn from and he is interested in all parts of the business. Solving problems is a creative act and seeing how the whole organic structure functions allows him to use that talent.It’s vital to keep learning and Ben learnt very early on about the type of investors who could support him in the best way, and he clearly thrives in the company of those who can give him the benefit of their experience. The result is that Shares is only 8 months old, they have achieved their first raise, they have 60 employees, and the ambition, vision and belief come from Ben and everyone they hire. Each member of staff needs to demonstrate Ambition, the ability to Impact, the ability to take Ownership and think globally. They want to do business across the EU from March next year, they will add the UK imminently, and they expect to raise every 6 months.Ben uses a chess analogy of thinking 5 steps ahead all the time, and part of making that work is building a strong community as a foundation to rapid growth. Every opportunity to publicise and play their part in the democratising of finance will be taken. He wants his people to have strong views, to be able to express them, but also to be able to listen to each other and understand their contribution and to be happy with the result of an exchange if it is the best way forward. No obstructive ego, learning is about being open to the ideas of others. Ben talks about what he learnt of the intensity of the US tech and scale up scene, and how taking a global view from day one works so well there. This company is very ambitious and Ben is leading the team at a fast rate to a prestigious position in a market they are helping to create.

On this week’s Searching for Mana podcast, Jason Trost CEO of Smarkets and Lloyd Wahed discussed the evolution of Smarkets and how it is disrupting an old fashioned market in betting, and Jason’s own journey to create and lead this London based business from his early years growing up in the US.Smarkets is on a mission to make betting online easier and less expensive “to get out of the way” of the consumer, and simplify what has become over-complicated, and to many inaccessible. Sport dominates online betting but he is a “politics junky” and his passion for politics and trying to understand political outcomes is clear and an important part of the Smarkets product range. The company has been steadily growing for 13 years, and Jason explains how his appreciation of how quickly time passes has changed as he has learnt and matured himself. He is a fearless optimist and was always ambitious to do something big but wasn’t sure what it should be, in fact, he went to university without knowing what he would do, but once in the world of work he looked at the betting industry could see how technology could solve the problem of complexity and user experience and his focus crystallised.On that journey, he has found that people rather than technology have been his biggest area of interest. Understanding the people he works with and how they work with each other is interesting. He is fully appreciative of how a diversity of interests and abilities can exist together successfully in a thriving business, but he sees a weakness in how people are so often not good at the hard conversations that are necessary to move a project on. He wants to “get the most out of people and help them be the best they can be” and his role is to facilitate that, but he sees a weakness in our societal inability to engage in “respectful good faith conflict”. Jason’s view is that our society is at the teenager stage where we are uncomfortable sharing our own views and vulnerabilities, and as a result businesses can be slow to develop. Not everyone is driven in the way that an entrepreneur is but everyone can make the most of their opportunities with more frank and non-judgemental interaction, bound together through transparent targets for the future.